Some new things about information distribution…

CreateSpace is the new name of Amazon’s on-demand self-publishing service for the super long tail of books, audio CD’s and film DVD/Blue-ray. Products automatically get an ISBN number(a huge draw-card) and are listed on Amazon.com, including “Search Inside” for books. This extends what is on offer, when compared to Lulu and other self-publishing sites.
The National Archives in USA and CreateSpace will be publishing movies from its collection of over 200,000 public domain films, raising some interesting copyright issues i.e. will public domain files ‘go viral’ either online or via home CD copies?

Getting into Google explains that Google is coming out with a new tag called “unavailable_after” which will allow people to tell Google when a particular page will no longer be available for crawling. For instance, if you have a special offer on your site that expires on a particular date, you might want to use the unavailable_after tag to let Google know when to stop indexing it. Or perhaps you write articles that are free for a particular amount of time, but then get moved to a paid-subscription area of your site. Unavailable_after is the tag for you! Pretty neat stuff!

Barry Shwartz reports that Bloglines released a new public beta of their popular web-based RSS reader. The new Bloglines beta is optimized to run well in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox.

The new beta has several new features including a customizable start page with drag and drop AJAX functionality, three feed viewing options including a “Quick View,” “3-Pane View,” and a “Full View.” New enhanced AJAX drag-and-drop makes feed management and ease, plus a new “Unread System” that makes marking feed items clearer, quicker and easier.

No need to worry, Read/Write Web has a comprehensive review of the new beta Bloglines, plus there is a lot of coverage at Techmeme. You can also read Gary Price’s write up at ResourceShelf.

These three things – nice juxtaposition don’t you think?

Government hacks!

84 million dollars would be a nice bonus for anyone – but it seems the government has wasted that amount of funds (again?). Reports are coming in now about the recently released ‘free net filter’ made available to Australian families.

The SMH reports that Tom, a Year 10 student, took about 30 minutes to break through the government’s new filter, released last Tuesday. He can deactivate the filter after several clicks, while making sure the software’s toolbar icon is not deleted. This way his parents would believe that the filter is still working.

Meanwhile another SMH report tells us that staff in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have been editing Wikipedia to remove details that might be damaging to the Government.

Oh dear!

UPDATE from John’s great post The Blush of Power: The Sydney Morning Herald Mashup page has a discussion on How Good Is NetAlert and Boredomistan has a run down on his test run of one of the filters.

Easy Peasy Rich Media – Voice Thread

I’m not even going to attempt to give my own review of this tool!

What I am going to suggest is that you read Alan Levine’s excellent evaluation of VoiceThread at his post Easy Peasy Rich Media – Voice Thread.  Thanks Alan for the ‘heads up’ on this at Twitter 🙂

From its site:

A VoiceThread is an online media album that allows people to make comments, either audio or text, and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows an entire group’s story to be told and collected in one place.

WHAT a podcasting toolbox!

OK, who can keep up with the good stuff coming out of Mashable these days!

If you don’t already subscribe – you should give it a go. I find the email option invaluable, as the truth is that I don’t always get to read all the stuff in my RSS feeds. Don’t miss out – subscribe to Mashable today!

So now Mashable has given us another great list:  the Podcasting Toolbox: 70+ Podcasting tools and resources. Thanks Mashable 🙂

WHAT a photography toolbox!

Photos are everywhere on the web. From sharing with friends, to editing, printing, buying, selling, searching, remixing and free hosting, we’ve lined up a plethora of resources for photo fiends.

Following up from my post about What a Video Toolbox, here is one I should have included on photography – once again from the Mashable team.

90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources


CEC (NSW) Forum, 2007

Another year, another CEC Forum 😉 How time flies!

Nevertheless many educators gathered together on the first day of the school holidays to attend the ICT Forum organised by the Catholic Education Commission NSW.

As promised my presentation for the session, introducing the concept of social bookmarking, is provided below.

A detailed list of links are provided for you at my ‘social bookmarking’ TAG at Del.icio.us Heyjude.

You may like to use this delicious_setup.pdf from David Warlick to help yourself or your colleagues set up a Del.icio.us account.

For a detailed presentation that covers all the key aspects of managing and using your Del.icio.us account I highly recommend the one below put together by Michael Sauers.

Just start your viewing after the TechSupport page.

WikiMindMap is a tool to browse Wiki content easily and efficiently, inspired by the mindmap technique.

Wiki pages in large public wiki’s, such as wikipedia, have become rich and complex documents. Thus, it is not always straight forward to find the information you are really looking for. This tool aims to support users to get a good structured and easy understandable overview of the topic you are looking for.

First month of development for this tool – which is nice. I particularly like visual techniques for presenting information to students as part of demonstrating research techniques. Several languages available – be sure to choose the right one for your needs. This visual technique allows you to drill down and refine your ideas as you go.

Two searches for Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 provided the following really interesting entry screens – which pick up the key launch points for investigation on each of these two broad topics.  It’s  also possible to hyperlink these screen shots directly to the search query – once again this is useful when presenting information to students and for pointing them to a specific search focus for research and learning.

web-30.jpg

web20.jpg

WHAT a video toolbox!

mashable.jpgWanting to keep up-to-date with information about video and what you can do to create, make and share videos online?

Online video is a huge trend – so huge that’s it’s proving hard to keep track. Mashable to the rescue with Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources. From video sharing sites to video mixers, mashups and converters, they’ve brought together more than 150 of their favorite sites in this category.

See? Now you’re cool!

JumpCut for video-editing

boat1.jpgboat1.jpgIf your school can’t afford to invest in video-editing software, Jumpcut offers a low-cost alternative to getting students and staff up and running on innovative projects that incorporate digital video.

Students actually make online videos directly in Jumpcut’s browser—editing, mixing, and adding music on-site. They can then post them, YouTube-style, for parents to view.

If you have used this, have you got any feedback?

Information design for the web has changed

A quick post, specially for my teaching colleagues, who I know are regularly engaging their students in issues about web media, communications and design.

Here is a good overview, from Infotangle, that looks at current trends in website and application design in the post Information Design for the New Web.

Principles of Information Design for the New Web

People are changing the way that they consume online information, as well as their expectations about its delivery. The social nature of the Web brings with it an expectation of interaction with information and modern Web design is reflecting that.

  • Keep it Simple – Include only necessary functionality and provide a clean efficient design.
  • Make it Social – Meet users expectations by enabling connections through social tools.
  • Offer Alternate Navigation – Reflect the Zeitgeist of the website community and embrace alternate pathways to information including utilizing visual tools.

New Web Philosophies

  • Evolve – Today’s Website creators aren’t afraid to try new things. There is no right answer and everything doesn’t need to be figured out at the outset.
  • Be Nimble – Respond to advances in technology and changes in market needs. Be willing to abandon bad ideas
  • Be Open – Issue and API and design badges and widgets for your users – or they will design them for you.

Read the full post.