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All posts for “Technology in Plain English”
It took me a while to get into del.icio.us. My initial impression was that the interface is not ready for prime time and seems too geeky. That impression stands, but has been surmounted by experiencing del.icio.us's sheer usefulness and simplicity.
What I’m describing today is a way to bookmark a web site using Del.icio.us and have that bookmark (along with others from that day) automatically show up on your Movable Type blog, once every 24 hours. The blog posts looks like this.
I figured... Continue Reading
Scott Moore reminded me of a series of posts that started one year ago tomorrow right here at Common Craft. These posts, though a bit sprawling, mean more to me and what I do than perhaps any other.
Why? Because it's a framework that can be used to describe social tools. Either they flow (timely and engaging) or they are stock (archived, organized reference). I'm resurrecting them because the framework will be a big part of Social Design for the Web.
This graphic makes the distinction.... Continue Reading
A point that was driven home (for me at least) at the Northern Voice blog conference was that the weblog world is often thought of as “a million voices�?, but it is actually a million *listeners*. The blog world thrives on speedy access to the voices, opinions and people that are making the new form of news.
How does this happen? What enables a blogger to hear so well? Why can bloggers listen better than others?
The primary culprit of this new ability to listen is RSS and the use of RSS... Continue Reading
In case you haven’t noticed, the social software world is tagging. A handful of sites are turning to tags as a way organize information on the web (often referred to as "folksonomy").
Tags are like keywords that are assigned by users- essentially metadata (information about information). By collecting these tags, a complex and growing site can provide users with a useful look at information based on grouping resources around the words users use to describe it.
For instance, I might tag a... Continue Reading
Lately I've been promoting the possibilities of using social networking to bring managers together within an enterprise. Recently, after introducing the concept, a teammate said: "This is just another virtual team/community collaboration tool- we've seen a lot of those and they never work."
While my introduction to the concept surely played a part in this perception, I couldn't help but wonder about the real differences. What are the significant differences between social networking... Continue Reading
A few weeks ago, I first heard about podcasting and have been seeing nothing but buzz since. It seems that everyone is talking about it, so I thought I'd join the chorus. So far many of the descriptions are pretty geeky, so I'm going to go for the plain English version.
It all starts with audio- people recording themselves or a conversation and making it into an MP3 file. As an MP3, it can be loaded on an iPod and listened to like any other audio files.
You might think- what's the big deal... Continue Reading
Worlds are colliding, people. Your friendly neighborhood message board is not alone in the online community world any longer.
This year we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the message board. Since that time, interfaces have improved, email has been integrated, but comparatively little has changed regarding the basic structure and intent of the message board.
However, in the last few years, w've seen the arrival of a new set of tools and processes that offer additional opportunities for... Continue Reading
Updated: We have created a short (3:52) video called "Wikis in Plain English " that you might enjoy. It was inspired by the content of this post.
This entry should provide an easy-to-understand (but fictional) example of a wiki at work for people new to the technology/concept. While this use of a wiki may be unconventional, I think it provides a foundation for understanding how wikis can be used to accumulate and organize group information.
Background:
My friends and I are going on a camping... Continue Reading
Updated: We have created a short (3:52) video called "Wikis in Plain English " that you might enjoy.
You may have seen the word wiki used to describe a website used by a group to collaborate. My intent with this post is to describe wikis and the basics of how they work- in plain English.
The basics:
Ultimately, a wiki is a specific type of website. A wiki is special because it allows a group of people to build, edit and modify a website with no programming or HTML whatsoever. Because it... Continue Reading
Bill Anderson at the new Praxis101 weblog pointed me to an article by James Fallows from the New York Times (purchase req) that asks a fundamental question about how we look at “knowledge�?.
The underlying intellectual question about knowledge management is whether people actually think of knowledge as a big heap of laundry just out of the dryer, or as neatly folded pajamas, shirts and so on, all placed in the proper drawers. The "big heap" theory lies behind some of the programs: we don't... Continue Reading