tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79150994343554869672024-03-12T19:04:51.598-07:00ElearnEnableMusings on my techie wanderingsPhiliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-74613242675144972342008-02-26T04:05:00.000-08:002008-02-27T02:56:52.382-08:00FET8610Just signed up for FET8610 and one of the first tasks is to produce a personal web page with the answer to the question, "Why enrol in FET8610?"<br /><br />Well, looking at the <a href="http://www.usq.edu.au/handbook/current/edu/MET1.html#programenrolment.pattern">suggested enrollment patterns</a>, I have to take 4 level 8s from the professional studies section. The project is compulsory so 1 down. I've already partially covered FET8611 (will contine it later)strike 2. This only leaves EDU8415 and <a href="http://www.usq.edu.au/course/synopses/2008/FET8610.html">FET8610</a> remaining, so there is no option to choose otherwise.<br /><br />That said, I don't really care as it's all good.Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-90164426203702476332008-02-22T23:38:00.000-08:002008-02-22T23:44:45.678-08:00Testing surveymonkey.comWell testing <a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com">SurveyMonkey.com</a> for usability.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ayWghdIIqHZjmPNRSAAJRw_3d_3d">Click Here to take survey</a>Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-59736550327399092052008-02-16T23:17:00.001-08:002008-02-16T23:18:27.555-08:00WiiHab<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yQLZK6gtBsw&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yQLZK6gtBsw&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />Oh, so true!Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-51018753630335781542008-02-16T22:21:00.000-08:002008-02-16T22:39:41.858-08:00Geni - Genealogical Social NetworkingRecently joined the <a href="http://www.geni.com/">Geni social networking</a> site and found this software quite interesting. It functions as a genealogical tool that also has a social networking aspect.<br /><br />You invite your family, via maual entry or email address book mashup, to collabroatively create your tree. It has all the usual aspects of a social networking profile page but also ties up with a calender function to remind you of birthdays, anniversaries etc.<br /><br />Any family occasions can be entered and photo albums linked, so no forgetting that wedding party where you fell asleep and woke up with your face painted on!<br /><br />You can also invite friends to view your profile, as with other social networking sites, but they can't see your family network. At present still some glitches with adoptive links and western-centric views of kinship and family but the forums said that they were looking into these. Future aspects also include an import/export function for remote editing. Ideal for anthropological fieldwork.<br /><br />Some problems that could arise, and with family they always will, might be sensitivite aspects like family viewing of paternity issues and what information should be recorded/ kept secret but all in all two thumbs up.Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-58409556765496453052008-01-29T23:57:00.001-08:002008-01-30T00:11:48.078-08:00Tube map for web 2008<div> And you thought the <a href="http://www.kwfdn.org/map/map.aspx">KnowledgeWorks map</a> (or the <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/29/tube-map-for-miss-sc.html">tube map for Miss South Carolina</a>) was complicated! The check <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/webtrendmap2008.jpg">this </a>out.<br /><br /></div><table style="border: 4px solid rgb(229, 229, 229); margin: 12px 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; font-family: arial; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 100%; clear: left;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><!-- BEGIN_CLIP_CONTENT ID:7693C8D8-953B-41E4-B962-273F910E411E:0 CLIPMARKS.COM --><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(220, 220, 220); white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-size: 10px;"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="clipmarks' clip-to-blog"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_icon/82bfa91a-76d4-4431-8175-41f4dc7c7b4e/7693C8D8-953B-41E4-B962-273F910E411E/" alt="" style="border: medium none ; margin: 0px 4px; vertical-align: middle; display: inline; float: none;" border="0" height="19" width="19" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/webtrendmap2008.jpg" href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/webtrendmap2008.jpg" style="font-size: 11px;">blogs.guardian.co.uk</a></div><blockquote style="border: medium none ; margin: 4px 0px 8px; padding: 0px 8px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; text-align: left; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;" cite="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/webtrendmap2008.jpg"><div align="center"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/blogs.guardian.co.uk/img/BF52C3CB-DB93-4C1D-9F31-0CB479BE9A28" alt="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/webtrendmap2008.jpg" /></div></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="padding: 0px; font-size: 11px; border-spacing: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td style="border-width: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"><br /></td><td style="border-width: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 107px;" align="right" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/7693C8D8-953B-41E4-B962-273F910E411E/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" alt="blog it" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" border="0" height="17" width="107" /></a></td></tr></tbody></table></div><!-- END_CLIP_CONTENT --></td></tr></tbody></table>Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-24537071016801173852008-01-22T00:56:00.000-08:002008-01-22T01:06:13.536-08:00TwitterWell, I'd heard people talking about <a href="http://twitter.com">Twitter </a>before but being that it's blocked in the UAE, I never paid it any mind (what you don't know won't hurt you). Anyway, <a href="http://twitter.com/JanetBradley">JanetBradley </a>found this nice little piece of software called <a href="http://www.anchorfree.com/">AnchorFree </a>which allows you to get around the proxy ban by creating a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network">VPN</a> so now the Twitter is out of the cage.Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-57843004149397046522007-12-30T04:17:00.000-08:002008-01-02T02:08:38.883-08:00E-Learning Excellence in the Middle East.I saw this elearning conference in Dubai orgainised by <a href="http://www.etqm.ae/">e-tqm</a> and supported by the Minister for Education about a week ago and was initially quite excited. Somebody in the region is finally going to push elearning. However, after looking at it in detail, the shine seems to be coming off it. <br /><br />Now call me spoiled but after <a href="http://www.complexive.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page">the excellent CLTI2007 conference</a> I'm starting to expect certain standards from elearning events. Firstly, this may seem obvious, but I want the option to attend online as a webinar! There are a number of reasons for this. I hate travelling to Dubai. One takes one's life in one's hands every time you venture onto the motorway from Abu Dhabi to Dubai and I don't fancy dying just yet. Also, the price of hotels are so expensive and this is a 3 day affair. But the most important is the backchannel. I find this so useful for urls or just general ideas as <a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22055982&postID=2303887210381736526">discussed on Tony Karrer's blog</a>. Also, recorded webinars allow you to browse back through the conference, reflect on points that were made and generally enable you to get more out of it than being forced just to use one's memory. <br /><br />The next gripe I have is that there is no pre-conference wiki. One of their briefs for the conference is the ability to network. Indeed they promote this as <a href="http://elexforum.etqm.ae/inner/forum/Networking.asp">one of the reasons for the conference </a>and, given Siemens' work on the importance of the network and PLEs, rightly so. So, given this, where is the wiki page for attendees at the conference to add their name, details and links to their respective sites? Where is the discussion board space for attendees to talk over what has been presented and collaborate in the shared definitions of what has and is happening? No read/write web here!<br /><br />As to what is going to be presented, there appears to be quite a diverse list of topics and quite a few business related. As for presenters, a number appear to be from the company organising the conference. Keynote speakers include a few names in industry (Richard Straub) but no trenchline bloggers that I could find. However, that may be down to my ignorance rather than their lack of celebrity. <br /><br />In my defense, I did google the co-chair and came up with links to two blogs - <a href="http://eduspaces.net/kchangbarker/weblog/">eduspaces </a>and <a href="http://futurednews.blogspot.com/">blogger</a>. However, the first had no posts and the second only had two entries and these were from August and September 2006! The August post had 196 comments - mostly spam for viagra. As for <a href="http://del.icio.us/Philip_Lismore/e-tqm">del.icio.us hits</a>, still nobody else has marked it. All does not bode well. <br /><br />They also say that they will be launching elearning journal?(s) - the <span style="font-style:italic;">International Journal of Excellence in e-Learning</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">the e-Learning Grid</span>. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Verdict -</span> I don't want to be too downbeat but this seems to have a lot of conference1.0 attributes. Attendees drive to a fixed location, sit passively while experts broadcast their version of the truth. I applaud them for setting this up (though at 1,500 AED/ c. 300 euros for the basic 3 day conference they aren't exactly altristic) but I feel that they could have done this a bit better. After all, it is supposed to showcase E-Learning Excellence in the Middle East!Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-43336805289950949142007-12-25T23:58:00.000-08:002008-01-01T23:08:06.114-08:00Google Chart<span style="font-family: verdana;">Browsing through the homepage of del.icio.us I hit the </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://techtracer.com/2007/12/17/the-power-of-google-chart-api/">techtracer blog</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> and </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://code.google.com/apis/chart/#url_format">Google Chart</a><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://code.google.com/apis/chart/#url_format">.</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Looks useful so this is a live report as to whether it really is that simple to create a chart. First, make a cup of coffee (everything works better when you have a coffee). 20 mins later and IE crashed while I was writing this up though luckily I was creating the graph on Firefox at the time.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=300x200&chd=s:TOSH&cht=p3&chl=Dec%7CJan%7CFeb%7CMar&chco=FF0000,00FF00,0000FF,000000&chtt=My+First%7CGoogle+Chart&chts=FF0000,20" alt="My first Google Chart" /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;" ><br />The verdict.</span><br /></div>It was relatively painless to turn out the pie chart. It only took me five malformed urls to create it. Main problem was forgetting the ampersand & and then going back through the URL to insert them all. How would it be for a non-techie? Probably a little off-putting. They should really have some sort of dialogue boxes to help you create the URL. It wouldn't really be that much of a problem after all and would simplify it a lot.Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-7194090321008508022007-12-24T02:17:00.000-08:002007-12-30T03:57:40.701-08:00Visitor VilleI was checking out my site traffic with <a href="http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=home">Site Meter</a> the other day and I saw a link to <a href="http://www.visitorville.com/?G1L">Visitor Ville</a> so, ever inquisitive, I clicked it. This seemed to marry site stats with Sid Meyer's Civilisation and 2nd Life - <span style="font-style:italic;">Web Stats meets Videogame</span>. Now, I haven't delved into the free trial yet, though I'm very tempted to drop everything for a week and go play Visitor Ville, but I'm wondering if in all this 3D world creation the metaphor will lose the message and we'll be left with Alan Cooper's "Dancing Bear". Remember the Del.icio.us Lesson.Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-36689301064540366072007-12-22T02:46:00.001-08:002007-12-22T02:52:07.599-08:00LiveScribe<div > Picked <a href="http://www.livescribe.com/sneakpeek/index.html">this up</a> in the 1st week of December from TechCrunch but never got around to looking at it fully.<br/><br/>Anyway, the sneak preview looks "...sweet" to quote one of the characters. Ships in Q1st 2008 so hopefully I can get a look at it then. They also mention something about "dot paper" & "dot positioning system" but yahooed it and came up with a blank.Perhaps you need special paper that ties in with the audio pen. </div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><tr><td valign="top"><!-- BEGIN_CLIP_CONTENT ID:4AFD8D0B-F07B-4576-BA2C-BBB43B29EF5B:0 CLIPMARKS.COM --><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="clipmarks' clip-to-blog"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_icon/4b223b41-7122-4390-9b26-811121a85695/4AFD8D0B-F07B-4576-BA2C-BBB43B29EF5B/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/index.html" href="http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/index.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.livescribe.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/index.html"><div align="center"><img src="http://content15487.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.livescribe.com/img/6ABF6CD6-A46F-473C-8777-3935566374F6" alt="1.3 oz. anodized aluminum smartpen" /></div></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;"> </td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/4AFD8D0B-F07B-4576-BA2C-BBB43B29EF5B/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content15488.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div><!-- END_CLIP_CONTENT --></td></tr></table>Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-59545399071526802892007-12-20T00:09:00.000-08:002007-12-20T00:11:00.773-08:00Bubble video<object width="425" height="373"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/I6IQ_FOCE6I&rel=1&border=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/I6IQ_FOCE6I&rel=1&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="373"></embed></object><br /><br />Don't you just love it.Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7915099434355486967.post-84183983826290223192007-12-18T00:43:00.000-08:002007-12-18T00:47:24.200-08:00Switching OverWell, I've decided to switch across from the <a href="http://www.imontheblogg.blogspot.com">http://www.imontheblogg.blogspot.com</a> blog. Why, I hear you ask? Because that started out as a personal blog and seems to have morphed into a tech blog and I prefer the ElearnEnable title for a techie blog.<br /><br />Right, better get the widgets in place.Philiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146727196144170176noreply@blogger.com0