I Get My News on Twitter and How to do it Better
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/27/2008 - 11:03At the journalism conference at Central Connecticut State University, I told one of the organizers that I had heard about the conference through Twitter. She was pleased to hear that and mentioned it in part of the introduction. Twitter is changing the way people gather news. As I sat there, it occurred to me, “I Get My News on Twitter”.
When major events, or even minor events happen, I usually hear about it first on Twitter. Yesterday, Colin McEnroe talked about Twitter on his radio show, and I heard about that via Twitter. I heard about the attacks in Mumbai via Twitter. When there have been earthquakes or tornados, I’ve heard about that first from Twitter.
One problem is that I currently follow over 900 people on Twitter. It can be hard to keep them straight. One tool that I used to try and help with this is FriendFeed. FriendFeed aggregates information from Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Identi.ca, Flickr, and many other services. Beyond that, it allows you to set up rooms where people can gather. I’ve set up rooms for various groups that I’m part of and that has been helpful.
Another site that I’ve really liked recently is My Social Chatter. It brings up a Twitter screen in half the page and a FriendFeed screen in the other half. Every two minutes it refreshes.
It was watching the FriendFeed section of MySocialChatter, that I learned about PeopleBrowsr. When I first started playing with it last night, it was very slow, perhaps because Robert Scoble had just mentioned it. It is still listed as being in Alpha testing; as I write this, it is listed as version 0.691.
This morning, I went back, and started to use it to tag people that I know from EntreCard. It was very easy to find a lot of friends from EntreCard on Twitter using PeopleBrowsr and to tag them. Unfortunately, I haven’t found an easy way to see a stream of all the people with a specific tag. I hope this is coming soon.
As I write this blog post and continue to test PeopleBrowsr and post tweets about it, I received a message from NutureGirl about PeopleBrowsr being in Alpha and a new version coming soon. In a subsequent Tweet, she talks about PeopleBrowsr as one of her clients. She describes herself as a ‘Community Flow Catalyst’; a great title. If the folks launching PeopleBrowsr have a ‘Community Flow Catalyst’ working for them on Thanksgiving morning, while they are still in beta, I have very high hopes for the project. Other sites should learn from PeoleBrowsr and make sure they have ‘Community Flow Catalysts’ in from the very beginning.
Another site that I’m keeping an eye on is tarpipe.com. Unlike PeopleBrowsr, they claim to already in be in Beta, but their beta seems much less reliable than PeopleBrowsr’s Alpha. What I like about tarpipe is that it uses OpenID for authentication. However, the signup process just isn’t working, at least for me. I’ll check it again some other day.
On the topic of OpenID, many people are lauding the Obama administration for including OpenID support on change.gov. I’m also very excited about it. They are using intensedebate to handle the OpenID authentication. The one problem I have is that intensedebate does not appear to fully support OpenID v 2.0.
In particular, OpenID v 2.0 supports xri. So, using one of my inames identities, I can log into sites that support OpenId v 2.0. The two inames identities that I use are =aldon.hynes and @ahynes1. They use different inames services, but what is really cool is that if the site supports OpenID V 2.0, like identi.ca does, then I can login simply as @ahynes1. Pretty cool for microblogging services. I just wish I could login a =aldon.hynes on Change.gov
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 08:58
In the Dark of the Night
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 10:49In 2002, President Bush sought the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution. We were told that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that if Congress did not act quickly, something horrible would happen. Well, Congress did act quickly, and something horrible did happen.
With the recent financial crisis, we were told that if Congress did not act quickly on a $700 billion bailout bill, something horrible would happen. Well, again, Congress did act quickly, and we are yet again, trying to clean up the mess afterwards.
One would think that we, as a nation, would learn that when legislative branches act quickly, without proper deliberation or feedback from citizens, we get stuck with a mess.
Politicians, on the other hand, don’t like it if people stop and think about whatever bill they are pushing. People might organize and the politicians might not get their pet project.
Last night, we saw this played out in Connecticut. Yesterday, Rep. Amann and Sen. Williams introduced Bill No. 7601- An Act Concerning Deficit Mitigation, and in the dark of the night, it passed both chambers, with little or no public input.
We can argue about whether the cuts were too big, too little, cutting in the right places, or the wrong places, and what role the rainy day fund should have in this. As a matter of fact we should argue about this. We should encourage everyone to join in a spirited discussion of how the State Government should best spend its money during these difficult times.
Unfortunately, the General Assembly did not chose to give the citizens that opportunity. I hope you let your State Legislators know your opinion about budgets passed in the dark of the night.
(Originally published at MyLeftNutmeg)
Penny wise and Pound Foolish
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/24/2008 - 22:08As I write this, the Connecticut General Assembly is working out ways to address the budget deficit. Currently, they are considering Bill No. 7601- An Act Concerning Deficit Mitigation..
What are the key points of the bill? Cutting three million dollars from the State-wide Energy Efficiency and Outreach budget. Another two million dollars are being cut from the Clean Diesel Buses program and four hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Biofuels. They are also cutting five million dollars from bus operations. In education, they are cutting two million dollars from school safety.
As our economy falters, it seems particularly foolish to cut funding to efforts to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, through promoting mass transportation and use of alternative fuels.
At least the two million dollars for the Bushnell is safe. Too bad I won’t be able to take a bus there to see a musical rendition of ‘Legally Blonde’. It might be more entertaining than the show at the capitol.
Dad, Can You Give Me the Phone? I Want to Take a Picture?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/24/2008 - 13:59The other day, my seven-year-old daughter asked me, “Dad, can you give me the phone? I want to take a picture.” My only hesitation was whether the cellphone or the digital camera would be best for the pictures she wanted to take. In the end, I handed her the digital camera and she walked around the room taking pictures.
This afternoon, I will go to a meeting at our public school library to add my input into our district’s three-year technology plan. The State Board of Education provides a very useful template to help schools develop their three-year technology plans. I’d encourage everyone to find out about the technology plans in your district, and how you can get involved in helping shape them.
I mention my daughter’s question first because I believe it illustrates quite nicely Marc Prensky’s article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Mr. Prensky’s article was published in October, 2001, the month my daughter was born. Not only does my daughter “represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology”, she is part of a generation where educators have been talking about the difference between digital natives and digital immigrants.
Yet not all educators are thinking about how significantly “the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century” has changed our children. Many continue to lag behind even first graders when it comes to understanding digital technology.
Perhaps no one understands this better than Julie Amero and the people that have followed her case. Ms. Amero was a substitute teacher in Norwich, CT. Four years ago, her classroom computer started popping up pornography sites. She did not know how to handle it and some of the students saw the pictures. She was charged, and convicted of four felony counts of endangering minors. It became a nationwide cause celebre, as experts around the country weighed in and deplored the travesty of justice. If anything, the liability should be the school districts for not having properly installed anti-spyware software.
On Friday, with her health deteriorating, Ms. Amero agreed to a plea bargain where she would plead guilty to one misdemeanor of disorderly conduct, pay a $100 fine, and lose her teaching license. According to Rick Green’s column, “New London County State's Attorney Michael Regan …remained convinced Amero was guilty and was prepared to again go to trial.” I join with many people who question whether or not State Attorney Regan is fit for office, but that is a whole different issue.
School districts may be tempted to write defensive three-year technology plans to protect themselves, their students, teachers and administrators from fiascoes like the Amero case and I worry that the technology plans in Woodbridge may be too restrictive for numerous reasons.
Yet the template provided by the State Board of Education takes a positive approach to technology. It quotes the Connecticut State Board of Education Position Statement on Educational Technology and Information Literacy, 12/4/04, which says,
Literacy in the 21st century requires more than the ability to read, write and compute. The State Board of Education believes that every student must develop strong technological skills and continually use them in order to function adequately in our 21st century world. Connecticut schools must ensure that technology resources are integrated across the curriculum in PK-12 and become part of the fabric of instruction.
It goes on to quote the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents Technology Position Statement, 12/14/01, saying, “technology must be a vital link among the staff, students, parents and the expanded community”.
It seems as if that link, talked about a couple months after my daughter was born and after Mr. Pensky’s great article on digital natives was published, is not yet as vital as it should be in many school districts. Cases like the Amero case, if anything, may have weakened that link.
So, how do we re-establish technology as the “vital link among the staff, students, parents and the expanded community”? Perhaps we start by giving our seven-year-old daughters our cellphones, so they can take some pictures. Perhaps we go beyond that and help them set up their own radio shows online.
My daughter’s interviewing skills still need a lot of work, but if people want to talk about technology and how it could be used to meet the goals of Connecticut State Board of Education and the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, they could call Fiona’s Radio Show Sunday’s at 6:30 PM.
If you have other ideas, join the discussion. Drop me an email. Add a comment here. Set up your own Internet based radio show. Let’s work together the strengthen the technology enabled links within our communities.
