The Idea Man at Southwest : Weblog

Blender Class: Mini Film Festival ::

I'll be showing some samples of work using Blender, including:

• a short movie combining live action and Blender-created visual effects.
• Blender's official Siggraph 2006 reel.
• trailers for other Blender-enabled movies.
• and, if anyone hasn't seen it yet, or wants to see it again, the Open Movie, Elephant Dreams.

Details:

Date:  Friday, September 1, 2006
Time:  12:00 noon - 1:00 p.m.
Location:  Jennings 12a, Macon Cove Campus
Cost:  Free!

A patent on online learning? ::

On July 26, the U.S. Patent Office awarded a patent to a major vendor of a Learning Management System, i.e., online education software.  The patent has already achieved notoriety for both its breadth and now its use against a competitor. 

And the race to establish prior art has begun.

Update:  read the patent for yourself.

The commercial benefits of blogging ::

Although this Commercial Appeal article talks about blogging as a tool for techie businesses, its primary subject, Justin Palmer of Encytemedia, makes clear that blogging's usefulness transcends that narrow category:

...it's the smaller businesses that really benefit.

"Blogs are about openness and communication," he said. "It puts you in direct contact with consumers and colleagues. It levels the playing field for small businesses and entrepreneurs because you talk directly to clients. If not for the blog, I wouldn't be able to do what I do."

Of course, since it confirms what I've written about before, I deem it correct!

My one caveat is they have a quote from an intellectual property lawyer stating:

"If you have a blog and you start linking to new sites, you have to ask yourself if you have a right to do that linking," said Field, an intellectual property lawyer with Memphis-based Bogatin Law Firm who has advised a number of businesses on Web-related projects.

In order to avoid violating someone's copyright, it's a good idea to have a linkage agreement in place, he advises.

Linkage agreement?  What the heck's that?  I never heard of needing permission to hyperlink to another's website.  In fact, if you're going to refer to someone else or their work, it's good manners if not good law to let your reader decide for themself.  Of course, IANAL, and he is.

Postscript:   I did a google search on the terms "linkage agreement linking blog".  Guess what hit the top?  That's right:  the CA article mentioned at the top.  Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but...

Another reason to have dynamic content ::

Hopefully this will convince you.

If it does, then you should start using tools that make web publishing easier.  Tools like blogs, RSS, wiki, and content management systems.

Open (re)sources for podcasting ::

For the benefit of anyone who might be thinking about spending lots of money to podcast, I give them these resources:

• Indie Podcasting with Open Source.
• Video tutorial on How to setup your Audio for Podcasting using Audacity.
• Video tutorial on How to record your first Podcasts.

Podcasting in the Memphis City Schools ::

Although this has gotten some negative attention, it's not necessarily a bad idea.  After all, if MCS is graduating only 48.5% of their students, what harm can come from trying it? One harm would be to spend money on software and expensive hardware from proprietary vendors that could be used elsewhere, especially since there are free and open alternatives.  But assuming that the school system doesn't buy a boatload of expensive gizmos before they even begin, what other harm could there be?  Perhaps it would divert teachers' limited time resources to less productive means.  Maybe, but we don't know the answer to the question:  will podcasting in fact be less productive than good old fashioned front-of-the-class-with-chalk-and-blackboard teaching? 

A more practical question is this: how will the students even listen to these podcasts?  I don't have the statistics, but my gut feeling is that the students who are dropping out are more likely to come from poor backgrounds than not.  So getting them to buy expensive gizmos, or assuming they have a computer and internet access at home, is unwise and/or unlikely.  Cellphones could be an answer here.  Their sheer ubiquity would make it possible to have them as deployment platforms, if they could play mp3s.  But that capability is not universally here yet, but I bet it won't be long.  This is where buying a propietary solution upstream could also hamstring the system, especially since some vendors sell hardware for the consumption side as well. 

Honestly, I don't think it will work, but who made me Nostradamus?  Give it a try!  I have to assume that no one likes the status quo, so let's give it and other ideas a shot.  If you make your ideas inexpensive you can try lots of things.  If they don't work, you move on.  If they do work, they work.

Podcasting is not an Apple technology ::

In this week's issue of the Memphis Flyer, Shea O'Rourke wrote: 

Give the teacher an Apple. An Apple computer, that is.

Thirty Memphis City Schools principals attended a training session last week at MCS' Teaching and Learning Academy to learn about podcasting, the Apple technology that streams free audio and visual content to computers, iPods and other portable media-players.

Podcasting is not, I repeat, not an Apple technology.   Nor is it a Microsoft technology, nor "Your Favorite Tech Company Here" technology.  It's everybody's technology.

Apple can host seminars about it and sell services or software for it, but the Memphis City Schools and anyone with limited financial resources should understand that they don't need a Mac, they don't need Garage Band, they don't need an iPod, they don't need iTunes, they don't need Final Cut Pro, and they don't need Quicktime, to produce or consume podcasts.

Where's the RSS? ::

I am an RSS junkie.  I now surf (or skim) the web via a newsreader.  Consequently I'm always on the lookout for the Live Bookmark icon that Firefox uses to alert me to the availability of RSS feeds.  When I don't see it, I wonder why?

Could it be:

• that the site is so static that there's no reason to create a feed?  It's pretty easy to discern whether this is the case -- their website has no to little interactivity, it's primarily a web brochure; or
  
• their content might be dynamic, but their webpages aren't?  Everytime they post a new story, they have to manually change the html code behind it.  So if they're manually creating HTML everytime they create a new story, they probably have to do the same with an RSS feed. Just like HTML, they can handcode RSS (it's just XML), but I can't imagine doing that over and over again; or
  
• they don't know about RSS? Therefore, they don't enable that feature in their websites (if it exists); or
  
• they know about RSS, and their content management system supports it, but they've intentionally turned the RSS feed off?  Why would they do this?  Perhaps/probably they're under the illusion that if they provide a feed, people won't come to their website because they will have consumed the content elsewhere.  They're trying to lock their customers into their website.
  

From an RSS junkie's perspective, the first answer is acceptable.  It may not be a smart marketing decision to have such static content, but why provide an RSS feed if your content doesn't change?  The second however shows you're clueless about technology post-1997; the third, clueless about technology post-2002 and the fourth, clueless about customers post-1 Million B.C.

DIY Southwest ::

Southwest should jump into the DIY movement.  This movement, which has existed for at least as long as Popular Mechanics has existed, has been accelerated by massive information sharing on the internet (via outlets like mailing lists, bulletin boards, and sites like O'Reilly's Make magazine, or InventGeek), inexpensive commodity hardware components (like this) and open and/or free tools to run the components.

DIY and community college are natural partners because they share constituencies. They are full of people who want to do something now!  They don't want to wait 4 years before they can write code, or develop a website, or work with PLCs.   They don't want to mortgage their house to create a steadicam, or a robot, or a wind turbine.  DIY doesn't require the overhead of research, which community colleges rarely have.  It just requires curiosity, sweat equity and imagination, something Memphis and Southwest have plenty of. 

Southwest could provide classes, meeting spaces and event spaces for those who want to partake in this movement.  And like all things that are FUN, it will be easy to market and promote.

What I like about open-source software, #937 ::

Okay, this isn't really open-source software, but it is open-content created by an open-source organization.  And the process was the same: mistakes discovered, mistakes admitted, mistakes corrected, apologies made, lessons pondered.

Interestingly, the mistake involved that lightning-rod for open-content controvery, Wikipedia.  But even the vandalism there took just half a day to correct.

What I like about open-source software, #753 ::

When dealing with vendors, I've found that exposure to open-source software makes it easier to discern motives:  does the answer reflect financial and/or marketing choices (what the vendor wants to do), or is it technology limitations (what the vendor can do)?

For instance, does the application not run on widely available version of an operating system because:

1. there are keys portions of the OS that prevent the application from running reliably without major changes to the application; or
2. the application runs well on the OS, but we don't want to spend the money and time to certify that it runs well, plus the support time that might come with a different OS; or
3. the application runs well on the OS and we don't mind supporting it, but we don't want you using the application at all.  We want you to use the new version so we don't want to encourage you to keep migrating the application to different OS?

Note that although 2. and 3. are financial/marketing choices, they are valid reasons.  Usually the problem comes because the vendor tries to hide those choices behind technical reasons. 

I've found that exposure to the DIY, multi-platform and open-standards nature of open-source software makes it harder for vendors to use technical smoke and mirrors.

Blogging -- "the opensourcing of ideas" ::

Here  is an excellent post by Confused of Calcutta on the kinship of method and result between Open Source software and blogging.  Via The Doc Searls Weblog.

The Blender Open Movie premieres ::

I'm looking for more details of the premiere of "Elephant Dreams", but here's a quick report from the man himself, Ton Roosendaal.  Here are the background details on this Open Movie, created by the studio called Project Orange.  Beyond its production with OSS software, the fact that all the project files will be released under a Creative Commons license, for others to use, expand on and learn from is incredible.

Vendor Adds Exciting Exclamation Mark Functionality to Press Release! ::

I saw this in a recent marketing email I got from a vendor:

Tips & Tricks
--------------------------------------------------------------
Trick: Use [vendor product] with your iPod!
1) Record a voice file onto a [vendor product]
2) Export voice file to your PC or Mac
3) Save voice file to iPod then listen anytime, anywhere

Realizing that an exclamation mark can easily take the place of a feature, a coworker thought of another tip that the vendor could pass on to those easily wowed by punctuation:

Tips & Tricks
--------------------------------------------------------------
Trick: Use [vendor product] with your friend who doesn't have a computer!
1) Type your name and phone number onto a [vendor product]
2) Add the text "Call Me"
3) Capture the image using 'Print Screen'
4) Open the image with your favorite image editor
5) Crop the image
6) Print the image
7) Put the printed image in an envelope and mail it to your friends.
8) Wait for a phone call

Insights for email ::

Like every list, these precepts by Guy Kawasaki (found via Halley's Comment) should at least be approached critically.  But they appear sound, even if I am or have been in violation of several.  For instance, I still violate rule 4:  Keep it short.  I like to document what I say with reasons, which makes for longer email.  My thinking on this has been that I may not have other chances to make the point so I need to put forward reasons for what I say.  But rhetorically it may be counterproductive.

Also, check out insight 10.  Thankfully, I don't violate that precept.