Keeping up with technology

One of the interesting cultural phenomenon’s that I am following is the constant turn over in technology and the seemingly constant need for a certain section of the U.S. ( and other western countries) population to possess the latest gadget or version of that gadget. The Ipad sold a million units within the first couple of months. Just when Apple computer thought it’s IPhone would be the dominant smart phone for the next several years, Google released the Android operating system which, within a year, has overtaken the IPhone to be the number one smart phone in the world. Until last year everyone was happy with their latest and greatest HDTV, but now slicker, larger, 3D TV’s are marching into local retailers like a hoard of locusts making consumers feel that their 56” widescreen is out of date.

And it is not just the technology that is changing but it is the speed at which it is changing that is becoming an ever increasing issue. The founder of Intel once said that computer speed would double every 18 months (Moore’s Law). In the early 1970’s when this was first uttered it seemed like an astounding rate of change. However, while this law has held true for CPUs and memory chips, 18 months now that seems like a very long time to wait for a new version of a device. As technological devices are now not as tied to CPU’s for advancement in performance, analysts and hard core audiences (groupies) expect a new and better version of their favorite product at least once a year, or sooner if they feel that the completion has produced something significantly better. The Ipad was released in July without a camera, USB port or memory slot. Now the Ipad’s competition, Android tablets, are being released with all of these features, and technology magazines are predicting that Apple will be forced to upgrade the Ipad by January instead of waiting it’s customary year before releasing an upgrade.

Is it just me or is everyone having a hard time keeping up with this? I thought technology was supposed to make my life easier. . . .

Android Market Share for Smart Phones

Interesting article on where the handheld market is going. I while I am no expert, I would predict that Microsoft may have a bigger say in this than people think. By about the third iteration of Microsoft's phone they should get it right. . .

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/android-to-control-half-of-smartphone-market-say-analysts/38881?tag=mantle_skin;content

Bullet Points are dead

Great article in ZDnet's education forum on the importance of great presentations. We read a lot about this in one of my Instructional Design classes last winter. There is a great book called "The Presentation secrets of Steve Jobs, that tells you how to change your presentations to something great. The link above will take you to an article that will summarize the book. It is a good read.

Six things to learn from the Ipad

Six things to learn from the Ipad
This is a great article on what laptop maker needs to learn from Apple. There is now a fundamental shift in the thinking of people when it comes to battery life portability and especially "instant on" capabilities.

I think the landscape has radically changed for the better and I don't even own one.

Evan. . .

Do you really need a wireless carrier????

How to text without a cell phone

Interesting article under CNET's news section. There is an app that will now allow Ipod Touch (not phone) users to text from their touch to any other phone. They get assigned their own phone number and the texting is free. In the last couple of months they have given out 1.6 million "phone numbers" to these text only devices.

I knew texting was popular among teens, especially young teens, but this seems to take it to an entirely new level. The company who makes this is also looking at a text to voice feature that will allow you to text a message and have it ring to a regular phone.

I love how technology keeps getting more and more interesting.

Personal Information - Turn around is fair play

Privacy Battle Gets Personal for Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

This has to be one of the more uncomfortable positions to find yourself in. You make billions (yes that is with a B) on getting people to expose their most personal thoughts and feelings to their friends, families and even complete strangers and then some other website (valleywag.com) hires someone to follow you around 24/7 documenting every aspect of your personal life that they can find.

The discussion of personal privacy is a hot one. Where does your right to have a personal life end and the right for the public to know begin. There is an old saying that goes something like your freedom ends when your fist hits my face. But with the digital arena is not a digital fist just as devastating as a physical one?

When you walk around your house you expect to have a degree of personal privacy. But the minute you walk out the door your "expectations of privacy" are greatly diminished. But how far should they be diminished. If someone was following you into the grocery store taking pictures of each item that you buy would that not be pushing the limits of personal privacy? What about the type of soap you buy, or even more critical the prescriptions that you get at the pharmacy. I don't think that I would want someone documenting all of those things on some blog that never really disappears.

At some point we are going to have some kind of backlash against the type of information that can be posted. It will be interesting to see how all of this shakes out.

Internship half over and what have I learned??

With my internship half over, I thought now would be a good time to reflect on what I have learned so far.

First: Do an internship on site, not online. I know that we live in a very connected world, as my Web 2.0 class continues to emphasize, but when you are just getting your feet wet in a new area of expertise, I really think it is important to be able to gain insights from lots of different people. Even the casual conversations around 'the water cooler' give you a great deal of insight as to what the people are like, the skills that they use on a daily basis, and the challenges that the company is facing.

Second: Remember in your Instructional Design classes when they talk about content experts, and how you have no power over them, but desperately need them in order to finish projects. It is all true. Bribe, beg, plead but do what ever you have to do to get their help. They are invaluable.

Finally, you don't know everything, even though it may seem like what they want you to do is exactly how you were taught to do it in Dr. Reiser's classroom. It is not. Every corporation has their own way of doing things and the most important thing that you have to learn is how to quickly adapt the principles of Instructional Design into the corporate way of doing things.

I am really liking this internship. I just wish I could stay longer. . .

Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

In discussing Education in the classroom this seems to me to be a very appropriate article. It seems that this will be one of the big issues in the next ten years as students come to college with little idea of what is the difference between common knowledge and crediting authors for their works. And to be completely upfront, I have to thank Anne Mendenhal at FSU for linking me to this article on Facebook. I would also like to thank the NY times, and the author, but I can't remember his name so follow the link. . . :)

Time spent on Social Networks Up 43%

Social networks getting more of Americans' time online

This is a great article on the changes that are taking place in American's online habits. Social networks are up by more than 43% over last year while time spent on e-mail is down 25%. Other areas where on-line usage was down:

Portals were down 19% and Instant messaging was down 15%.

It appears that Social Networking is still growing strong and the desire to connect with each other has not abated.

Follow-up on Friendships

Alexandra Alter, “Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 10, 2007, W8, W1.

A few days ago I wrote a piece about Friendship and if we are or are not losing our friends due to Web 2.0. I found this article written in 2007 that I thought was pretty interesting regarding virtual worlds and the impact they have on their "real world". Below are some highlights

"Nearly 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends, according to a survey of 30,000 gamers conducted by Nick Yee, a recent Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University. More than a quarter of gamers said the emotional highlight of the past week occurred in a computer world, according to the survey, which was published in 2006 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press's journal Presence."

I will ask the same question that I asked before: How will this effect society. If we no longer make social connections in the real world, how will we end up being treated, and how will we end up treating others. Will we ignore the real concerns of the world, while enjoying "paradise" in a virtual one? I don't know. . .

Are Friendships dying out?

There was a good article in USA Today, titled Is true friendship dying away. In the article researches state that "Face-to-face chatting is giving way to texting and messaging; people even prefer these electronic exchanges to, for instance, simply talking on a phone.Smaller circles of friends are being partially eclipsed by Facebook acquaintances routinely numbered in the hundreds. Amid these smaller trends, growing research suggests we could be entering a period of crisis for the entire concept of friendship. "

The article concludes by noting that the best way to have friendships is to "put down the device" and engage people.

It is so interesting that we add friends in Facebook constantly, but are they real friends? How many real friends do you actually have? How many would give you $20 without asking for it back? How about $100?

Where does society go if it can't count on one another for friendship? Who is going to get us through those rough spells in life without those neighbors that we have counted on in the past?

I say look people in the eye, say hello, walk your neighborhood and say hello to the people you meet. Ask your neighbor if they need help with their yard, or their car. Smile and be the kind of person people want for a friend.

Evan. . .

Wikileaks and Web 2.0

Wikileaks releases massive set of Afghan war files

Well Web 2.0 has done it again. A huge set of files (75,000) from Junior officers to senior officers outlining exactly how the war is going in Afghanistan. The military is outraged, the white house is outraged, and I am sure the guy in the pentagon responsible for keeping this stuff under wraps is now peeling potatoes in Alaska.

What I find funny is that immediately the government says there is no smoking gun showing that Pakistan is aiding the insurgents in Afghanistran. Excuse me??? 75,000 documents and they already know there is no smoking gun? They don't even read the 400 page bills that go through congress, how do they know what is in 75,000 documents.

It is a paradox. Web 2.0 gives us so much information, but at the same time it gives us SO MUCH information who can digest it all?

Instructional Design

It is day four at my internship. The big news is that I get to put all of those Instructional Design skills to work. I have started a project for creating a training to teach users how to create DVD’s from the film footage that the LDS church creates. Like all large organizations, the structure of this one is changing. This skill that used to be handled by a core group of individuals is now going to be made available to each department, and there is a large need to have training materials available for them so they can create this content on their own. I have started creating a project plan and a flow chart and am working with the content experts to get the materials that I need to produce the training. Very cool.

In other news I got my hands on an Ipad for the first time. It is a great device for content consumption, but I am not sure it is the best thing for content creation. I know people who have one will be saying what of course your can create content. I am not arguing the merits of this, but it is an apple device. Can it run parallels? No. Can it run the major windows suites on it? No. So while it is a great device, (and maybe in history it will be seen as a transitional device between the laptop and the tablet thing that we see in Star Trek) I still see it as an auxiliary device not a replacement for your computer. And as this is a web 2.0 class, and we are discussing produsers, I would have to say it does not move web 2.0 forward, as Web 2.0 is all about users creating content and sharing it.

Well that’s all for today. Still really enjoying my internship. . .

Hey everyone,
As part of my internship I cam across some interesting graphs about how quickly web 2.0 applications are penetrating the market, and how mobile devices are now more than ever being used for data rather than voice.





This first slide shows that Facebook and Youtube are quickly dominating the online usage. This means that produsers are more active than ever in creating content for the web.


This second slid shows how mobile phones are now more than ever being used for data rather than voice.

A third thing that I found this morning was an article talking about how ATT has abandoned their unlimited data usage plan and whether or not this could be a trigger for other wireless carriers to do the same. ( http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2010/07/forecaster-says-end-of-all-you-can-eat-broadband-pricing-poses-threat-to-web-video/1 )

The question then, that we have to ask is: If more and more users are wanting to use their mobile devices for data, and the large Cellular companies are limiting the amount of data that can be sent, how will this apparent conflict be resolved.

Thoughts. . .

Evan. . .

First Day of Internship and Web 2.0

Day 1 of Internship:
Well as I mentioned in my previous blogs, I made it to Salt Lake on Saturday. Today was my first day on the job for the LDS Church. The building that you see here is where I am working. I am on the 27th floor and the view is spectacular. After getting all of my security, and parking passes taken care of I was put right to work on my first project. The project is designed to send text messages to members of our church to give them an inspirational uplift during the day. Members can then give feedback and post comments to others. The project involves a lot of research on the best types of software to use, the feedback that needs to be obtained from the users (including polling results), costs etc. I will be working with the curriculum department (can you say instructional design) on this project. After this gets done, I will be assigned to other projects within the company.

As I am working in the Audio Visual department, I must say that technology here is impressive. They have every type of gadget and gizmo that you can imagine. It is like a techno-geeks paradise.

The church is very much into Web 2.0 and they have both a Facebook page and a Twitter feed, among other technologies. I will keep you updated on my work here and how it fits into the Web 2.0 landscape.

Evan. . .

Blogging from the Road Ogallala Nebraska

Hello Everyone I'm blogging from Ogallala Nebraska (watch short video) at the end of day two of my three day trip to Salt Lake City Utah to start my internship. Day two can be summarized in two words. Corn and construction. I think when the President said he had shovel ready projects to put people to work they were all in Missouri and Nebraska. We started out from Springfield Mo and have drive another 650 miles. On the way we probably went through 40 construction zones. I would have thought that the GPS on my blackberry would have told me about these and rerouted me through a less traffic filled corridor, but no.

Below is my daughter Kayla who will be attending the University of Utah, she has done some of the driving which has been a big help.

And here is the video of Ogallala from the overpass of I-80. It was getting dim out, so you may not be able to make out everything but anything that you see green is probably corn.

I can't giver a formal recommendation on the Best Western (below)that we are staying at, but it does have a really cool looking stagecoach in front of the Hotel. Unfortunately a bunch of motorcycles were blocking it so I couldn't get you a good picture, but here it is from their website.

One of the things that I can say about the hotel is that it has great Wi-Fi access which is allowing me to do this blog. It has also allowed me to Skype to my wife and two other children who are attending the National Down Syndrome Conference in Orlando. My eight year old Down Syndrome daughter was having problems getting to bed after ice cream in her hair, and jumping on the beds in the hotel for two hours, so my wife put me on Skype to be the enforcer from 2000 miles away. Very cool.

Well tomorrow I will finally be in Utah. Look forward to blogging from my brother's home.

Evan. . .

Web 2.0 and trip to Utah for Internship

Today is Thursday July15th, and where is Evan? In Springfield Missouri. Leg one of the the three day trip to Utah is underway where I will start my internship on Monday. How does Web 2.0 apply to this? Well one of the things has to do with the prosummer concept. We are staying at the La Quinta Inn in Springfield. Why this hotel of all of the options? Consumer Ratings combined with the price of the room. This feedback is now possible because consumers are actively rating places like hotels restaurant, and posting these rating systems on dedicated websites set up for this information.

Places like hotels have been gathering users reviews for decades the difference now is that the consumer has access to this information and can use it to actively make buying (or in my case staying) decisions. The response from the Hotel (and other consumer focused industries) has been to upgrade their ammenities, and to offer to make things work right away.

For example when I first checked into my room the T.V. wouldn't work. I called downstairs and someone was to my room in three minutes and made a correction to the code on the remote.

LaQuinta is actively campaigning through their literature and their response time so that when you walk out of the hotel that you will give them a 10. It even says in their folders that are on the bed, "If there is any reason you can't rate us a ten out of ten let us know so we can fix it."

This is the power of Web 2.0 The good hotels will continue to attract customers while those who fail to live up to standards will lose a valuable customer base, leading to loss of profits, and will find themselves with more and more empty rooms (especially in this economy).

Apple Debacle

Great Article on CNET's news site: www.news.com (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20010472-260.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1)

In the discussion about how badly Apple has handled the Iphone 4 antenna problem the writer states:

"Complaints about any product are only a couple of mouse clicks away for any customer, especially in light of the lightning-fast spread of product information. This problem was first identified by an iPhone customer who posted a video demonstration to YouTube, which was picked up by Gizmodo and then the rest of the tech press and eventually mainstream news outlets worldwide. It's impossible for Apple, or any company, to hide from product quality issues anymore."

This is the power of Web 2.0.

Pentagon and Facebook

I read in a recent article (http://www.themoneytimes.com/featured/20100227/pentagon-relaxes-restriction-social-networking-sites-id-10101853.html)that the Pentagon (and the State Department)has reversed their policy on using social networking sites stating that the benefits out weight the risks to national security. Specifically, "Though there is growing concern over cyber security, the DOD believes that access to these sites is important as benefits outweigh the risks."

"Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that unblocking access to these sites is imperative to enable Pentagon to interact with young soldiers who are in their 20s."

"David Wennergren, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, was quoted by Reuters as saying, 'The purpose of the policy is to recognize that we need to take advantage of these Internet-based capabilities. These Web 2.0 tools need to be part of what we use.'"

The article goes on to say that this is important for recruiting, family communication, public relations, and collaboration between military personnel. I think we can take a few things from this article. First Web 2.0 has hit mainstream, second, this marks the end of teenagers wanting to use Facebook. I mean if it has gone so mainstream, teenagers will be looking for something else cutting edge, finally, if we are not careful the government will find a way to regulate Web 2.0 so it is no longer useful.

Evan. . .

Self Service

There is a great article in the July issue of wired magazine called "Self Service" The sub-line reads, "Go ahead and tweet your own horn online - just don't be a jerk about it. The article examines the question of: "When you boast online, are you participating in a brave new social future, or are you just being an ass?"

Is bragging part of social networks? Is it one of the things that makes them thrive? Are we so desirous of people knowing not only that we are engaged in fundamental worthwhile activities (small note I am leaving for my internship on Wednesday and will be working on this class at the same time as the internship so pity me) that we are willing to hang anything out there where people will say "good for you", or "loved your post".

Do we need this. Perhaps we do? My psychology classes taught me that everyone needs attention. Perhaps blogging, tweeting, facebooking, etc. is the new way to fulfill these needs. If it is than Facebook may be here for a long long time. . .

Produsage - The Wealth of Networks

I just finished reading the Wealth of Networks by Benkler that Vanessa assigned to us, and I am exhausted (Vanessa is trying to kill us. . .).

However, after reading it I must say that I can more easily answer this weeks prompt: How might the concept of produsage be applied in your life (personal and/or professional) as it stands today?

Until this class I did not consider myself in the produsage category. I was in fact a consumer of information, a bystander. There are several reasons for this:
1. I didn't think I had a unique perspective about anything
2. I didn't really feel strongly about any subject that motivated me to get involved.
3. The fear factor of someone saying Duh. . .didn't you read such and such. . .
4. Time. Not enough. . .
5. I like to ponder information, and pondering and blogging don't necessarily come together at the same time.

However I must admit that I am quite enjoying this blogging. While I am sure very very very few people will read what I have to say (I feel like I am on that almost invisible thread - Benkler Article: sites interconnected)and thus on my own I am free to develop my own voice knowing that I can work on this for quite some time and then when I feel I am ready I will shoot the link to my blog to some of my friends and family.

And do note that I will be starting my Internship on the 19th of this month and then maybe I will have a lot more to blog about.

One other note: Professionaly speaking I wish we had this technology 20 years ago. We constantly went to developers for advice about product issues (I worked in a call center) and I am sure if the developers had blogs they could have spit a whole of of information at us that we could have commented on that would have made us much more effective for our customers. I can see this being a huge help moving forward.

Military Secrets and Web 2.0

Alleged Wikileaks source charged with leaking classified files
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20009718-83.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1

Perhaps one group that has been hardest hit with the advent Web 2.0 is the military. It used to be that secrets could be kept unless some well trained spy wiggled themselves up the chain, or someone paid someone inside for confidential information. But now the military is having to deal with a different kind of "threat". Soldiers who are now sending classified documents so they can be posted on Wikis. Public opinion doesn't wait for the official explanation what they see and read from the leaks molds public opinion quickly. And with so many soldiers and so much discussion about the nature of the american military, more stories like this are bound to continue.

Information and deciding whats important.

In his book "Here comes Everybody" Shirky states that "Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. . .It's when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen. . ."

We stand at a new point in time where the technology of communication is becoming so common place and the tools so easy to use, that the assimilation of information seems to be about to make a radical shift (if it hasn't done so already). The question that needs to be looked at is what kind of shift will it be.

When information was limited it was treated as some prized possession, something to be pondered over and over again. Poems, pros and even entire books were memorized by individuals. Readings were given at social events, and important occasions. Those who had memorized long and lengthy poems were looked on a very learned.

Einstein changed all of that. He didn't bother memorizing things he could look up easily. He assumed they were there for the taking. Instead he used his brain to contemplate new ideas and postulate new theories. He was acknowledged one of the great minds that has ever existed.

Now information comes charging at us like a dozen frieght trains carrying not car loads of information every minute of every day. How do we assimilate it? How do we decide which precious nuggets we are going to remove from those cars and take the time to think about?

This is the challenge that we face today. Yes Google, and Yahoo and many other sites can "filter", but whose to say that they are filtering the items we want filtered.

We are on the cusp of an information overhaul. How we will learn to glean the information that is presented to us will tell us a lot about what kind of society we will have in the future.

Evan. . .

100 Million Hours

There is an excellent article in the June issue of Wired Magazine called: "Cognitive Surplus: The Great Spare-Time Revolution". (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_pink_shirky/)
I encourage everyone to read it. The premise of the article is that Americans who once spent their spare time watching television are now redirecting a lot of that time toward, "activities that are less about consuming and more about engaging.

The article goes on to say that: "All the articles, edits and arguments on Wikipedia represent around 100 million hours of human labor." If you think about that number, no publishing house in the world could have created it.

The question I have to ask is this going to be a fad, or are people really changing their habits from consuming of information to engaging with others in the acquiring and distributing of information. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. . .

Let's start at the very beginning. . .

Ever since I began my Master's Degree I have kept hearing the term Web 2.0 as if it were some magical mystical realm that only the very elite had knowledge. It would get dropped out of the air in class discussions, or in web postings in online classes to prove an intellectual argument, but no one ever explained what it meant. This was one of the prime motivations that I had to take this class. I wanted to be let into the club, to see what all of this was about. Now that I have read the textbook (yes I admit I bought the text book six weeks ago and read it) I understand that Web 2.0 is not a thing but rather a means of communicating in todays world. It covers all areas of communications and allows everyone in on the conversation. It is not exclusive, but rather it is inclusive. I realize now that I have been using Web 2.0 tools for quite a long time (Facebook, Wiki, etc.)

Where once I thought I was a follower, I now realize that in some respects I was on the cusp of technology in many areas. My goals for this class: Learn as many tools, and gain as much understanding as possible so that I can use it in my career. Of course with our ever changing technology tools change constantly. What is fashionable today will be scoffed at by my teenage kids tomorrow. But that is one of the reasons I find our field so exciting and challenging. It is not just using the tools, but understanding why the tools are being used. That is what I hope to get out of this class: a process for understanding why people use certain tools.