iAlja

I'm in love with Pinterest (and why that matters)

2012-01-25T14:56:00.000+01:00

I've got a confession to make. There is a new website that is capturing an increasing number of spare minutes in life. It provides an endless stream of visual inspiration, and every time you use it, you can't help but feel a bit more creative. Yep, I'm in love with Pinterest, the latest over-hyped tech media darling.

I did try to resist it, I swear. When I saw the first blog posts about it, I thought I didn't need a service like that. I tried to convince myself that Tumblr and Instagram were enough for me. And I didn't want to fall into the whole "women love Pinterest" stereotype. But then, as the hype kept growing, I gave in to my curiosity and a professional dedication to trying out all the new cool social services in town. And I haven't looked back ever since. Why is that, and why does it matter?

Pint-huh-ha?

So, what is the big deal? Pinterest describes itself as a virtual pinboard, a place where you can "organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web". Often, you see it described as a bookmarking service with a focus on images. If you ask me, all these descriptions don't really encapsulate the real spirit of the service. Pinterest in basically a great visual experience that you have to try on your own to really get it.

Using it is pretty simple: you drag a "Pin It" bookmarklet to your browser's bookmarks bar, and then click on it whenever you stumble on an interesting image on the web. If you've got a minute to spare, you can see how easy the whole thing is in the video below:

Of course, you can also "repin" images other Pinterst users share. Regardless of whether you create your own original pins or play the curator and just choose the best pins from the community to highlight, each pin helps you construct your own visual board around different themes. And you can even create collaborative boards with your friends.

What can we learn from Pinterest?

As you can see, the service itself is pretty straightforward. However, if we scratch the surface a little, we can easily find simple, yet valuable secret ingredients that can help any service or product become more awesome in today's competitive world:

1) Delight and surprise the curious animal inside me or I'll move on

aka Build insanely great user experiences: It's never been easier to design and create stunning user interfaces that captivate users' attention. This is not the web we knew in 1995 (remember?). Honestly, what is your excuse for not investing into good design and a polished user experience? No resources left?

Well then, what in the world makes you think I'm going to spend my precious time figuring out where to click next or how to open your box? Don't be selfish, take my hand and show me where you want me to go. I don't have time to waste for aimless wandering among buttons, site maps and what now. I'm a curious animal, who wants to be delighted and surprised. Look at how Pinterest makes it easy for users to signup, connect with their friends, and discover cool content right from the start. It's an insanely great learning experience!

2) The importance of spotting the snake in the bush and telling your friends about it

aka We're all social visual learners: Yes, looks matter. Not because you can attract women with pointless "bling" (that, of course, couldn't be further from the truth). Looks matter because evolutionally we have been programmed to be keen visual learners. Those of our ancestors, whom failed to spot the snake in the bush, didn't live to tell the tale. And that is what makes all of us naturally curious visual observers.

And it is why Pinterest is such a magical place. Everywhere you look, it's just full of beautiful photos your eyes can feast upon. Research has shown that faces capture our attention like nothing else, so why are you still building websites, writing books, making videos etc. that don't have a face, that don't focus on people? Images are a very powerful universal language for connecting people. And social is not just a buzz word, it's the best way to learn, discover, and have fun.

Us girls have an especially good nose for great social and visual experiences, that's why Pinterest is such a bit hit and is able to attract typically non early adopters. It isn't just about women, though attracting female users early on is certainly a good sign that you're onto something good. Most importantly though, learn about what makes us tick as human beings, and apply it to whatever your doing.

3) Don't make me walk on land when I'm enjoying a swim in the ocean

aka Mobile matters: having a great user experience on the website is all good and fine. But don't make me visit your website at all costs. You can use Facebook to show my friends what I'm up to, a bookmarket to make it easier to create content, and if you really want to stay competitive in today's world, you also have to plan for a great mobile experience. And that is why Pinterest, even though it's a pretty fresh service, already has a pretty cool iPhone app.

The best thing about the app is the way it lets you focus on content as you scroll down the stream of pins; all unnecessary elements momentarily disappear, so that you don't get distracted by what you don't need. A great idea that aligns perfects with the purpose of the app and makes the service more accessible. Whether you need your fix of inspiration at home or on the road, Pinterest is there to provide a great service.

The big picture

So, why am I writing about all of this? Yes, partly it is so I can justify all the time spent on Pinterest as "doing research", but mostly because Pinterest (an several other hip startups as well) makes me excited about the future of the web. A future where it will be easier to get around, where content will be increasingly more engaging, and where it won't matter which device you'll want to use to do your favorite thing; the experience will always be great.

And while it might be easy to dismiss Pinterest as a superficial fad with no real value, I think it can be a great discovery tool and a new way for people to communicate and share experiences with one another. Because it is through experiences that we learn best.

P.S.:

Facebook is becoming the next big platform with Timelines, smart social apps and better privacy

2011-09-24T21:36:00.000+02:00

I know it's super trendy to be anti-Facebook and looking for more "open" or less "evil" alternatives like Google+ or Diaspora. But after the massive changes announced at Facebook's f8 developer conference on Thursday, I feel like it's time I say this out loud: I love Facebook.

Facebook, one of my favorite web destinations

Skating to where the puck is going to be

I love Facebook as a service, and I love Facebook as a company. I completely agree with MG Siegler from Techcrunch on this: Facebook is becoming the new Apple, skating to where the puck is going to be, and leaving the competition baffled in dust, miles behind.

Sure, change and innovation are often difficult to accept for the now almost 1 billion strong mainstream Facebook user base. Even a minor repositioning of a button is bound to make someone upset. For a week or so.

And that's why I have even more respect for Facebook: despite being very mainstream, they are not afraid to innovate. They could easily sit on their asses for a year or two and wait for Google+ or something else to catch up. Instead, they choose to run head first into the questions nobody is even asking yet, and often finding answers nobody else can think of. Like Apple, Facebook is still able to maintain the mentality of a startup and has the guts to challenge the status quo.

Do they get it right every time? No, of course not. But you're bound to make mistakes if you're trying hard to be the first and the best in what you do. The tricky part is knowing how to recover from your falls, move on, and find the next big thing that will change people's lives forever.

This might seem like a big statement; after all, Facebook is just a social network, right? Well, it seems like they have bigger plans than that. The folks at Facebook are really hard at work trying to find the best ways for people to connect online. And not by pilling up features, but by rethinking the way we connect to each other on a human level.

And human is the keyword to the two major changes announced on Thursday. Firstly, completely redesigned user profiles, now called Timelines. And secondly, the new generation of Facebook apps that enable social experiences, and finally make seem the semantic web a step closer to reality. Let me explain why I'm so excited about all these new features.

Timelines: not just a profile, but a collection of memories

Let's start with Timelines. I think it's really smart that Facebook decided to give these new profiles a new name. Because it really is a new kind of experience. When the first screenshots were revealed, a lot of people were shouting "My Space!", but it couldn't be further from truth. Yes, you do get to choose your own photo to be featured prominently right on top of your Timeline, but what happens below that is… magic.

Facebook will be rolling Timelines to users over the next months; a smart move that will give people more time to adjust and to get used to Timelines by seeing them on their friends' "profiles". If you're a developer or willing to pretend to be one with a little, easy hack, you can already turn on this feature today, but for now only other developers will be able to see your Timeline (once you're ready to publish it). The rest of Facebook users should start seeing the new Timeliness after September 30.

Of course, I'm always in the front row when it comes to trying out new features, so I already enabled mine. Partially, I am writing this blog post so I can justify the hours I already spent exploring and adding stuff to my timeline ;) I think it's a beautiful product, and I suspect a lot of people, even those usually reluctant to change, will love it. Because it really feels more human, and establishes emotional connections.

Here are the three key things I like about the Timeline so far:

The ability to add life events, even in the past. It's just a beautifully elegant way to keep track of your own life and see what big changes your friends have experienced over the years. And the best part? It's super easy to set the privacy for each item, so you can make sure only your friends or perhaps just your family sees certain stories.

Seeing important personal events and achievements in one place. It's like browsing through a personal biography. You can spot trends or opportunities for change, be reminded of precious little moments you almost forgot about. It's powerful stuff. And of course, once Timelines go live for everyone, you'll be able to create powerful connections with your friends. Discover things that somehow never got mentioned in conversations - of course, only if your friends give you permission to view certain items, it doesn't mean you'll automatically gain insight into every aspect of everyone's lives!

You're control of what is shown, hidden or featured and who gets to see it. Just hover over any item on your timeline and you have the option to Feature it more prominently, Hide it, so it won't sneak up on you ever again, check and change the visibility of items and everything else that's relevant for an item. It's a mission control center even NASA would be proud to have. And it's not just for geeks like me; it's really easy to use and understand. I think even my cat will use this feature once he figures out how to use my trackpad.

New generation of Facebook apps: social from inside out, kept in check by smart algorithms

Of course, a new generation of profiles also needs great content. That is why Facebook has also announced big changes to their Open Graph protocol "to include other actions and objects created by apps and enabling these apps to integrate deeply into the Facebook experience" (source).

Basically, this will enable users to "read articles", "cook recipes", "do homework" and what not, instead of just "liking" Pages. Using Graph Rank, Facebook will make sure to promote stories based on user activity and engagement. The Facebook Developer Blog provides a great explanation of the kind of things Graph Rank can figure out:

"We know people are friends with both their college roommates and their colleagues at work, and those relationships are different. Just because my mom is interested in the movies I am watching doesn't mean she is interested in my Github checkins. Graph Rank isn't a global score, but a personalized view of you and your friends' tastes."

This is very, very powerful stuff. My initial comment to this announcement was: Welcome to the semantic web, courtesy of Facebook. And I'm sure that announcement had Google engineers biting their nails.

Google is of course great at content, but they suck at relationships. And compared to what Facebook just announced, Google+, their latest pride and joy, looks old and irrelevant. Unless, of course, you're buying into the whole "Google is open and free" propaganda, in which case I strongly recommend reading the recent Guardian article Is Android really free software?.

The Guardian app: a great example of a new social experience

Speaking of Guardian; I would have probably missed that article if it wasn't for Guardian's new Facebook app. It's a great place to discover popular articles, and the deep social integration makes it easy to see what your friends are reading. At first glance, the fact that your friends see what you're reading may seem scary, but, once again, you have control over that.

Recent Activity on my Timeline; I could hide it, but I decided to let my friends see it

When you first install this new app, you get a review of the sort of content the app might publish, and you get to decided who can see the automatically shared content. You can make it visible to your friends, just your close friends or even just you (the later choice kinda defeats the whole "social reading" concept, but hey! it's still there if you want it). And, once you're on a story, and don't want your friends to see you enjoy reading gossip, you can remove the story from your timeline with just one click.

New dialog box for adding apps with easy to use visibility settings

Of course, if you still feel like that's too much of an invasion, you don't have to install the app and keep reading news on the Guardian site on your own, no questions asked. So, the choice is still yours: either you go for the social experience on Facebook or you don't and keep consuming the content in the way you always did.

Considering the fact that these new features for developers have just been announced, we still have to wait to see the full potential of the new Open Graph. The main thing for me now is the fact that Facebook will be able to filter down the noise from apps much better with these new tools. You won't see every "like" in the News Feed anymore (the Ticker is now the place for such serendipitous, real-time discovery); instead, your News Feed will focus more on surfacing content that attracts more engagement, which is a great answer to the noise problem.

Simple and easy to use privacy, public subscriptions

And I know most users couldn't care less about things like the Open Graph, Graph Rank and other technical mambo jumbo. What they care about is the end result. And Facebook has really made some great improvements in that aspect in the last few weeks leading to the big f8 we just discussed.

Yeah, yeah, the new Ticker aka stalker box is driving a lot of people insane. Truth be told, it only makes sense when you add the new changes to the app platform to the mix (the addition of "light stories" from apps). But the simplification of privacy controls and Smart Lists are yet another huge thing for Facebook. And while, yet again, people complained when Smart Lists started appearing, I think they're brilliantly simple and smart.

It's easy to define the visibility of your content with Smart Lists

So simple, in fact, that both my husband and I were rather shocked to notice his mom (whom you couldn't really describe as tech savvy) posting content to her Family smart list, even though we've had a private family group set up for a while now. I don't like to put too much weight on anecdotal evidence, but if smart lists make more sense to my mom-in-law than the new groups, Facebook apparently is onto something.

And finally, I also love the fact that Facebook now has a Subscribe button, which allows you to follow public updates of people without friending them. Kinda like on Twitter. I generally don't add people I don't know in some way or another as my Facebook friends, but I welcome all new subscribers. Actually, this new feature encouraged me to start posting most content as public. After all, it's the kind of content I've already been posting publicly on Twitter; Facebook just allows me to add longer comments.

Facebook as the next big platform: will it make desktop and mobile operating systems irrelevant?

If you're following rumors on tech blogs, you probably know all of this is just the tip of the iceberg for Facebook. We're all holding our breaths for the release of Project Spartan, Facebook's HTML5 app platform that will supposedly support both mobile and desktop browsers. In other words, no need for an app store when you can just launch Facebook.

And, combining recent f8 announcements and what we know about Project Spartan, it's now easy to see that Facebook is doing something huge. Not just simplifying and humanizing the existing experience, but building the next big platform. And with those kind of plans, it's not so difficult to imagine a future in which the desktop or mobile operating system is just a pretty frame around the bigger picture on your wall. I certainly think Facebook's plans are ambitious enough to make Apple nervous. And great competition is always great for innovation.

Subjot: bridging the gap between Twitter and Facebook with subjects and dicussions

2011-08-12T20:56:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I came across a blog post on TNW on Subjot, a Twitter alternative. Yeah, I know. At first, I rolled my eyes. (Yet) another Twitter is probably not what we need. But I'm glad I read the post anyway and discovered that Subjot actually offers a solution to a Twitter dilemma I've been having lately and builds an interesting product centered around discussion on top of it.

I wouldn't really call Subjot a Twitter alternative. It actually works quite well with Twitter, and in a way provides a middle way between Twitter and Facebook, providing a public space for discussions based around topics user define themselves. Call me crazy, but I actually see Subjot as Google+ done right. Intrigued? I sure do hope so, because I think Subjot is a nice little gem with a lot of potential and a harbinger of a larger trend. Let me explain why.

Subjot: "Talk about your favorite subjects. Let your friends choose what to follow."

The human flaw behind Google+ Circles

Ok, first, let's get the Google+ elephant out of the room. Here's a confession: I don't like Google+. Yes, it's new, it's shiny, it has a neat interface, and has the privilege to sit on top of all Google services we love and use often. I was thinking about writing a blog post about Google+, but these two blog posts describe what bothers me about it more eloquently than I could:

Can We Ever Digitally Organize Our Friends?: the post does a great job at explaining what Google+ Circles (and grouping friends in general) do right and why they suck. Spoiler alert: we're not really good at categorizing people in groups, and every worse at maintaining the categorization; the lines are often too blurry.
Reality Check: Google Plus Is No Facebook Or Twitter Killer: nice explanation of the problem sharing with Circles creates. Spoiler alert: again, we're really bad at deciding what other people are interested in.

It's not that I think Google+ doesn't have potential. It sure does. And Google is very serious about it, so I think that's a rare social Google product we'll have to learn how to live with. I don't think it will kill Facebook; in fact, I see it as a closer threat to Twitter. But unless the majority of friends I interact with the most on Twitter and Facebook ditch Twitter/FB in favor of Google+, I really don't see myself actively using it.

Subjot's selling point: you get to decide which subjects you want to follow

Now, back to Subjot. The main idea behind Subjot that makes it unique is that we all have different interests we like to talk about. For instance, I'm interested in education, mobile technologies, running and cats, just to name a few subjects.

A few of my interests - and you probably don't want to read about all of them

Now, when a person follows me on Twitter or friends me on Facebook, she will get my updates on all of these subjects. But my dear follow just might be a dog person that doesn't think my cat is special (gasp!), which might lead her to unfollow/unfriend me because of my annoying cat updates.

Yes, Google+ is built around the idea that you share content only with a circle of friends that will find certain content interesting. The problem is that I don't always know who out of my friends likes cats. Meaning, some of my friends might end up missing important updates on my awesome cat! (terrible thought, I know)

And this is where Subjot finally comes into the picture: on Subjot, my followers decide which of my subjects they want to follow. Each jot I share has a subject. And if some of my followers are fellow runners, they can follow just the updates about running. If they are interested in social media, they can follow just my updates on social media and ignore all cat posts (although, to be honest, cute cats have always been a big part of social media!).

Your feed, you get to decide which updates you want to get. There are a lot of different follow options for each person you want to keep an eye on.

Subjot subjects are not just (hash)tags

I know what you might be thinking: it's like using hashtags on Twitter or tagging your blogs posts. Well, yes and no. For one, Twitter doesn't let you filter your friends' content by hashtags. If a person you follow tweets excitedly about a conference you're not attending, your feed gets really noisy and there's nothing you can do unless you unfollow your friend temporarily (rude, I know!).

And while you can use several hashtags on Twitter and on your blog, Subjot only has one subject per update. And I think that's brilliant because it keeps the service simple. You don't have to understand tagging to categorize content on Subjot. Just pick a subject, it's that easy!

Plus, the user interface for choosing subjects is pretty smart. You are always offered the three most common subjects you use in the form of nice, big buttons, and an autocomplete tool helps you reuse subjects you or your friends have already used.

Choosing a subject on Subjot - so easy, my cat could do it

And you can also Explore popular subjects on Subjot and find users that job about certain subjects to follow. Again, you don't have to follow everything they post, just the subjects you're interested in.

Encouraging discussion with comments and notifications

So, is Subjot just Twitter with the ability to categorize content and fine-tune areas of interest you follow? Luckily, no. Twitter is all about fast, instant sharing - and it's really, really good at that! What it's not so good at, is keeping track of discussions. You can RT and reply to tweets, of course, but those actions are usually relevant just in that instant.

On the other hand, Subjot borrows two very important features from the Facebook side of the fence: the ability to comment on shared content and notification about other people's comments. Consequently, Subjot offers a really nice, public space for discussion.

Example of a jot with comments

Bridging the gap between Twitter and Facebook with elegant simplicity

Yes, unlike Facebook, where a lot of people choose to have private profiles, Subjot in a public discussion place. Here, again, it comes closer to Twitter, where most sharing is public. So, we can describe Subjot as both as Twitter with better support for discussions or as a public Facebook with asynchronous connections (you don't have to follow people who follow you). And that's the beauty of it.

Subjot is not trying to replace either Twitter or Facebook. In fact, it plays nice with both. Whenever you post of Subjot, you can send your updates to Twitter or Facebook or both. And you can easily find friends on Subjot by connecting your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

You can share your jots on Twitter and/or Facebook

I also like the fact that the creators didn't try to cram too many features in the service right from the start. For instance, there are yet no "Likes", reposts, special privacy settings. And in a way that is ok. I think that at this stage, it's smart to let the users figure out how and what they want to use Subjot for.

What intrigues me about Subjot is that it isn't really trying to clone any of the big, existing social networks, but it's providing a fresh, simple, elegant twist on the way we discuss our interests online. Of course, the big challenge for this little gem is attracting enough users that will (hopefully) start forming passionate communities around subjects.

Subjot's potential as a discussion platform and the question of privacy

And I do think there is a lot of potential for different types of communities to embrace Subjot. For instance, I can see Subjot being used in education, with teachers and students sharing course related content with the ability to follow just that content and not get updates about their teacher's cooking recipes (unless they want to).

Of course, as we start to imagine such use cases, the question of privacy also emerges and it's one that Subjot hasn't addressed yet. For instance, it might be interesting to have the ability to have private subjects and allow followers to view post on those subjects only after approval or upon invitation.

Perhaps there's also a monetization opportunity in there - go pro and create unlimited private rooms for certain subjects? Ads and sponsored content could also be interesting opportunity for Subjot down the road. But of course, growing the user base and keeping a close eye on how users are using Subjot should be the main priority in the early stages of the product.

The big picture: can the Subjot approach cut down the social networking noise?

I think it's pretty clear by now that there is something about Subjot that really excites me. I really think Subjot is onto something with this idea of allowing users to follow specific areas of interests when they choose to follow certain people. Of course, we yet have to see how the Subjot approach scales up, but I think a few things are pretty clear by now.

First, we all have different interests we like to talk about, and usually our friends don't share all our interests with us. Second, there is a need to cut down the noise in social networks. Third, we are not so good at predicting what are friends are interested in and neither are machines (yet). Is the Subjot approach a good solution for all of this? I don't know, maybe it is.

But I certainly think we'll start seeing more and more social networks trying to cut down the noise by filtering content based on users' interests. For instance, just recently, Facebook started experimenting with the aggregation of news feed stories by topic. Isn't the next logical step in this story "More about topic X" and "Less about topic Y"? Not to mention the increasing number of iPad news app that are trying to figure out what content you like and serve you a highly personalized selection of content based on your friends and behavior.

Facebook is trying to get smart by grouping news feed posts by topic

We'll see who does a better job at filtering content - humans (on Subjot or even Google+) or smart algorithms (on Facebook and all those fancy news apps). But it's certainly something that will be an important competitive advantage in the coming years. After all, I don't hear anybody complaining about there not being enough content online, but you can hear a lot of complaints about social networks being too noisy and good content hard to find.

Still with me? Good, now give Subjot a try!

Anyhow, thanks for bearing with me through this ridiculously long post. If you did, I do hope you're now ready to give Subjot a try. If you want to connect with me there, just sign up using this link: http://sjot.it/qwwPUQ. I really do think that Subjot deserves a fair chance, and I'm really interested in seeing the direction and shape it will take in the future.

Making Tumblr my online home

2011-07-19T20:43:00.001+02:00

The mission: find a new home for my online hub

Not long after Steve Jobs announced iCloud, a free service that would replace (and, quite honestly, dramatically enhance) the existing paid MobileMe service, it was clear that those of us that were using MobileMe to host our iWeb website would have to look for a new home.

Which, for me, meant looking for alternatives for hosting my online hub @ iAlja.com. Until recently, my online hub was a simple iWeb website that pointed to all my profiles around the web that I'm using actively, and had a few extra pages for an extended bio and featured work. Nothing complicated, and I liked it that way.

Goodbye, old iWeb website!

But apparently time had come to find a new home for my online hub; a journey, which ended up on Tumblr. So, read on if you want to know why I chose Tumblr and how I'm using this micro-blogging platform as my personal website.

Comparing alternatives for a personal online hub

I started my journey with relatively simple requirements. I didn't have a lot of content, so I didn't need a complex CMS behind the website. I could have just transferred the website to different host, but I also wanted a simple way to edit the content whenever it was needed, without having to deal with HTML files and FTP upload.

So many different options... which one to choose?

At first I considered transferring everything to a hosted WordPress blog and purchase extra options such as the ability to use my own domain name, customs designs etc. But that seemed like an overkill, considering that I wouldn't be using most of the features of a system like WordPress. I already have my main blog on Blogger, and I like it just the way it is.

And yes, I could have just added a few extra pages to this Blogger blog and use my domain to point directly to this blog, but I wanted to keep it as a separate place. After all, it already has several links pointing to its content (or so I like to think ;)), so I didn't want to fix what wasn't broken.

I also didn't want my domain to point to a profile on a social network, even though I hear it's fashionable to direct your domain to Google+ these days. Partly because I'm not a fan of Google+ yet, but mainly because I still wanted a more unique look and more flexibility when it comes to the content, design and layout of my hub.

The next option I looked at were simple to use web builders, such as Weebly or Moonfruit. Both offer a simple web editor and the premium upgrade options for using your own domain and other goodies. I actually started recreating my old website in Weebly, but I felt the editor was a bit too limited (compared to the flexibility I was used to in iWeb), and I didn't really like any of the templates.

Revisiting Tumblr as a personal website

Then, finally, I decided to have a closer look at Tumblr, a minimalistic blogging platform that has been getting a lot of attention lately. I've had a Tumblr blog (ialja.tumblr.com) since January 2009 and I occasionally used it to share different types of content. I've always liked it because it was simple to use and allowed me to share smaller bites of content that were't full sized blog posts, but yet I could share more in a Tumblr post than I can on Twitter.

I've read people were using Tumblr as their personal websites, so I was curious to see what I could turn my existing Tumblr blog into. I know I could add static pages to the blog, but was there a way to make the blog look less like a blog and more like an online hub? In other words, was there a way to display some static content right on the first page without the latest post getting all the attention?

As it turn out, the answer was yes. You just have to find the right theme.

Tumblr's secret sauce: powerful, great looking themes

Tumblr has many great features that are making it increasingly popular, such as the simple, yet powerful editor for content of different types and the dashboard that makes it really easy to reshare, like and follow content posted by members of the Tumblr community. But one of my personal favorite features of Tumblr is the rich Theme Garden, which features all sorts of amazing looking themes.

Tumblr themes aren't just pretty to look at, but can also help you to use Tumblr for different purposes. There are themes for designers/photographers that can turn Tumblr into a portfolio, professional looking themes for business websites and much more. And here's the best part: you can get a lot of great looking themes for free!

A few examples of Tumblr themes

Ok, I confess: I spent quite a few hours browsing through different themes in the Theme Garden and on different websites. I've never imagined I'd have so much fun playing virtual dress up with my blog! But there's also another thing you should take into consideration when choosing your Tumblr theme: the customization and advanced options it provides.

For instance, I was looking for a theme that would let me choose custom colors for links and titles, had the ability to easily add Disqus for comments, and my Google Analytics tracking ID. Yes, you can also do all that by fiddling with custom HTML, but why bother if you can find an awesome theme that does all that work for you?

The Single A Tumblr Theme: sticky post, featured tag and more

Well, lo and behold, at the end I ended up finding the perfect theme for just what I was looking for. It's called Single A Theme, it's free (!), and provides some features that I haven't found in any other Tumblr theme and lots of cool customization options. The key feature of this theme is certainly the ability to have a sticky post at the top of the blog - perfect for an online hub!

So, here's how my online hub iAlja.com looks now with this great theme:

New, simple look for my online hub

It's simple, it has just the colors I wanted, and it works. I'm using the sticky post feature of the theme to display an intro text with all the key links at the top, and I also use Tumblr's Pages to display static content from my old website (About, Featured Work). In addition to that, I've also added a link to this blog in the menu, so it's easily accessible from any page.

The theme also allows me to display me latest tweets in the sidebar, and I can use the Tumblr blog to post quick thoughts or interesting content I come across. For longer posts, such as this one, I still use my main Blogger blog, and then just post a link to the post on the Tumblr blog.

Single A Theme: lots of customization options

Thumbs up for Tumblr!

All in all, I'm really happy with this solution and with my newly discovered online home. I found Tumblr to be flexible enough, while simple to use. Yes, it might take a little while to find the perfect theme, but once it's set up, you can just focus on posting content.

It's so simple, I even decided to open another Tumblr blog dedicated to running. The fact that it's ok to share bite size content on Tumblr encourages me to share more, and to do it faster, without getting in the way.

So, if you're looking for a simple way of sharing content that you can make your own with a unique look, and a great community on top of that, Tumblr is definitely the way to go. Thumbs up for Tumblr!

5 key mobile trends you should know about [Lecture]

2011-07-07T23:23:00.000+02:00

Recently I was invited to prepare a guest lecture for a small group of business and management students attending an E-learning course as part of their Summer School in Koper. I was told to choose a topic that would be fresh, something that students don't get to hear about that often in regular classes.

And that's why I decided to put together an overview of some of the key trends in the mobile industry that are already influencing the way we study, work and socialize, and will probably be an increasingly important part of our day to day life. You can find the slides and the video of my lecture, as well as a text recap, in this post.

Lecture slides with additional resources

Because choosing just a few trends, just a few technologies wasn't easy, I decided to prepare slides that students could also use to explore parts of the lecture they found most interesting in more details. That is why I added a lot of links to current articles with cases studies, stats, analysis and what not. You can view all of the slides embedded below.

5 key mobile trends you should know about

View more presentations from Alja Isakovic

Don't like flipping through slides? Here's a recap.

To sum it all up in a more coherent form, here are the 5 key mobile trends I decided to highlight:

1. Mobile devices are making learning (and other activities) more magical

The magic of touch (source: Apple)

Interactive content is nothing new. What is new is the way mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets (that include smart sensors and touch screens) allow us to physically touch the content. It does feel a bit like magic, touching just isn't the same as clicking with a mouse. It's more intuitive, more personal. It gets to you.

And while today apps like Our Choice are often seen as fun gimmicks that you can use to impress an audience, I believe that in a few years we'll wonder how we've ever settled for learning with content we couldn't touch directly. Ok, make that a couple of more years; we all know most edu folks aren't exactly early adopters. But I believe that someday the shift will happen, because touch just feels so natural to all of us.

2. Apps and app stores are rocking the world

The App Store has over 400,000 apps (source: Apple)

There certainly is an app and an app store for that - whatever your "that" might be. Apart from satisfying our desire to help angry birds get revenge on those naughty, egg-stealing pigs, mobile apps (and the development ecosystem Apple envisioned) are teaching everyone some important lessons. There are many reasons why apps are so successful. The most obvious one is because they are just so much more awesome and magical, if you will, than our desktop software.

But another very important lesson (one that Apple already learned with the iTunes Store) is that we don't mind paying for digital content if it's easy and convenient to do so and if the content provides us with enough value. And, on the other side of the fence, we are eager to develop good content if we get the chance to earn a few bucks and be the coolest kid in town aka the app store of our choice.

The application stores are also making business models that rely on selling virtual content (in-app purchases) more popular and widely acceptable. I don't think I'm stretching it too far if I predict that in a few year we'll be spending 99 cents on fancy templates for Microsoft Office. Right within the software, or app, as we'll all be calling it by then. One click, ka-ching! Of course, Apple will probably the first one to offer in-app purchases in Pages ;) Which all leads us to the next trend...

3. Website and desktops are changing because of mobile devices

Apps in Mac OS X - looks familiar, doesn't it? (source: Apple)

Mac OS X Lion, which will hopefully be released in a week or so, looks like iPad's big brother. Full screen apps, a new app launcher, the Mac App Store, heavily integrated gestures... Yep, Apple has learned a lot from iOS, their mobile operating system, and it's bringing most of it (including the App Store business models) to their big, desktop OS.

And don't think this is just an Apple fad - Windows 8 will also look like Windows Phone 7's big brother. It seem like we've got no choice but to adapt to seeing our desktops becoming some sort of clumsier mobile device with a big screen.

Not to mention websites also all want to look like apps. And HTML5, CSS3 & co. will make that all possible. Expect to see more websites that look and behave like apps or at least websites that will be smart enough to have the decency to self adjust to your screen size and even device type. I sure do hope to see more responsive design on the web in the coming years.

4. Location data makes mobile better

Even Facebook is crazy about Places (source: Facebook)

Ugh, location. Where to start? It's pretty clear that adding location data can make many services more useful and even fun. From local searches that help you discover cool nearby places, to the phenomena of telling all your friends not just what you're doing, but also where you're doing it and getting specials or offers in return, mobile payments and mobile commerce taking off, geo-fences that enable location reminds, ad-hoc social networks based on location, and... and... and...

There is A LOT going on, so I really suggest you take a look at some of those additional links provided in the slide deck above. There's no doubt that relying on location data to enhance services is a big trend that is just starting to evolve. As a side note, it is of course also worth noting that we have a lot of open questions about privacy and trust to figure out yet, especially when it comes to sensitive location data.

5. The cloud will make everything easier

Don't worry, the cloud will take care of everything (source: Wikipedia)

As more and more companies expect us to have more and more of their devices of different sizes and shapes, it's a bit of a relief that they are also thinking about ways of connecting all our devices and making up for our instinctive human laziness when it comes to backing up and syncing. The new wave of cloud services from all the big boys are all trying to making it easy for us to access our content, data and files from any of the devices we own.

And while most people, who today know very well computers just aren't to be trusted, are still skeptical of all these promises (it does look a bit like science fiction, doesn't it?), I think in a few years we'll all get adjusted to things just working seamlessly through the cloud.

And that is probably the master trend to rule them all - the technology is slowly getting out of the way, fading in the background, while allowing us to be the forgetful, spontaneous, touch fixated human beings that we all are. In this world, experience is the killer app.

Prefer video to text? No problem, look over here!

If you prefer to listen to me go through these key points and watch me passionately gesticulate as an added bonus, you can also take a look at the video recording from the lecture (I do apologize for a few minor technical glitches; an hour long HD video is apparently quite a big bite for my good old iMac to swallow).

As always, you are more than welcome to leave your comments, questions, likes, tweets, +1's and what not. All feedback is appreciated!

iPad, AirPlay Mirroring and Apple TV: the new portable interactive white board that can do so much more

2011-06-07T10:02:00.001+02:00

Yesterday's Apple Keynote at WWDC 2011 was full of big announcements. No shiny hardware upgrades this time, but a lot of great stuff coming up for our desktops with Mac OS X Lion, our mobile devices with iOS 5 and a solution to keep it all nicely synced together, iCloud.

I'm still digesting all the new announcements, but here's one particular feature of iOS 5 that I think could really be a huge hit in our classrooms: AirPlay Mirroring.

AirPlay Mirroring brings the ability to mirror your iPad screen through Apple TV. You can see a short demo in the video I've embedded below.

Now, imagine this setting: instead of hooking your classroom overhead projector to the painfully slow computer on the teacher's desk, connect it to the $99 Apple TV. And then use AirPlay Mirroring on your iPad to share presentations, your web browser or any of the 90,000 (!) beautiful apps for the iPad.

And the best thing? You're free to walk around the classroom and let your students interact with the apps.

There are of course already several iPad apps that can help you turn your tablet into an inexpensive, portable interactive white board, but with this set up you could do so much more. It's not limited to an app - you can do anything you can do on your iPad. Not to mention the setup is super portable, so you can take it along to any classroom you visit, not just at your own school.

Unfortunately, AirPlay Mirroring isn't out yet; it will be available in fall with the release of iOS 5. But I still think we'll be seeing some nice uses of iPads hooked up to the not very expensive Apple TVs through AirPlay Mirroring. Bringing the magic of the iPad to the classrooms or meeting rooms, enabling people to work together just by passing the tablet around the room.

iMoot 2011: the Experience (Part 2)

2011-05-03T21:11:00.001+02:00

In the previous post I highlighted some of my favorite presentations from this year's iMoot, a web based international conference dedicated to Moodle, an open-source learning management system. The 4 day event ran 24 hours a day to accommodate all time zones and was packed with 50+ speakers across 6 continents. So, how does it feel to attend such event purely online?

First of all, I would like to thank and applaud the iMoot organizers for putting together such an amazing event. Julian Ridden and his team worked hard day and night to make sure everything was running smoothly and everyone had the necessary support. And if you're wondering what it takes to orchestrate such an event, just take a look at Julian's "iMoot Control Room".

The program was well planned and ran simultaneously in two tracks. There was just enough time to catch a little break between sessions, plenty of opportunities to interact with the presenters, and the repeat sessions made it possible to attend almost every session I was interested in in person.

Basic options for every iMoot session

By the way - all repeat sessions were done live, not with recordings of the previous session! And in case you missed the repeat, you still have the chance to watch the recording on the conference website, usually posted within the day after the session.

I also got a lot of opportunities to practice Moodle 2.0 on the conference site, and the organizers did a great job at providing a dynamic conference schedule (custom coded by Shane Elliott). The schedule showed your local time for all sessions and made switching between sessions a breeze. You could even save it and print it as a PDF file in case you wanted to have it on paper.

Awesome dynamic schedule with all session links on the iMoot site

I must say it was a bit confusing to have a separate course for each session, particularly because each session had its own discussion forum in its own course, so there wasn't much discussion going on on these individual forums - after all, it is difficult to follow forums in over 60 courses. It must be said that some presenters did a great job at adding extra resources to their courses and even used them for demos during presentations.

So, the main place for asynchronous discussions was the iMoot Lounge, though most discussions were related to the technical issues and questions/comments about the program. That's why I think it might be perhaps a good idea to have session discussion all in one place, perhaps right in the Lounge, so we'd all be exposed to more content oriented discussions.

iMoot 2011 conference lounge

But of course, as with face-to-face conferences, most of the interaction took place during the live sessions. All presentations, panels and keynotes were delivered through Adobe Connect, a professional web conferencing solution, which is relatively easy to use and set up (note: I have used the system before in different roles, so I came prepared). Yes, there were some technical problems along the way, particularly in sessions with over 40 participants, when we'd all get occasionally kicked from the session room. It kinda reminded me of Second Life events with sims crashing and all (good old times!).

Adobe Connect during Martin's keynote

But hey, it really wouldn't be a real web conference without tech problems, would it? Plus, the support staff was very helpful and fast in solving any issues, so for the most part the technology did work as it should have and the sessions were easy to follow. I especially enjoyed the lively backchat during presentations that was usually both informative and fun, and provided a great opportunity to learn from one another.

Big kudos also to all presenters that really engaged their audience in the presentation and did a great job at keeping an eye on the live Chat while presenting. I really feel we had more opportunities to ask questions and steer the direction of the presentation than we would in a face to face conference.

So, regardless of whether you're a Moodle pro or a Moodle beginning still exploring what Moodle can do, I strongly recommend attending an (i)Moot. It's a great experience and wonderful opportunity to connect with Moodlers around the world, get direct feedback and insight from core Moodle developers, and learn tons of practical tips and tricks. Also, way more affordable than attending Moodle Moots around the world, though that's of course also a great experience if you can afford it.

And finally, to all fellow iMooters, class 2011: hope to see you again next year! Perhaps I'll even find the time/courage to join in with my presenter hat as well :)

Related post:

iMoot 2011: the Highlights (Part 1)

iMoot 2011: the Highlights (Part 1)

2011-05-03T20:59:00.004+02:00

I'm really glad I took the time to attend this year's iMoot, a web based international conference dedicated to Moodle, our beloved open-source learning management system. The 4 day event ran 24 hours a day to accommodate all time zones and was packed with excellent speakers and presentations.

That is why choosing just a few highlights from the conference is anything but an easy task. But I want to give it a try anyway, so, without further ado, here are seven of my favorite presentations from iMoot 2011:

1) General Moodle tips: Best practices in Course Design

We all know that Moodle can do almost anything a teacher would ever want it to do. But how to organize that "anything" into a format that will be easy to navigate for students? Michelle Moore provided a nice set of Best practices in Course Design with clear and simple to follow guidelines. No fancy Moodle hacking or tech skills necessary, just simple tips that work.

Teaching with moodle - Best practices in Course Design

View more presentations from Michelle Moore

2) Cool Moodle activities: The Workshop Module

Michelle Moore also had a nice interactive session about the Workshop module, a not often used tool that supports peer-reviewed assignments. Michelle provided us with the opportunity to try out the module, which received a nice upgrade in Moodle 2.0, from the participant's and teacher's point of view - a great experience for all session attendees! For an introduction to the Workshop module, check out her presentation, and I'd also encourage you to play with the module on your own and see what it can do.

Mastering the Moodle 2 Workshop Module

View more presentations from Michelle Moore

3) Cool Moodle add-on: Flexible Progress bar block

Two years ago, I blogged about my idea of introducing some basic game mechanics to Moodle with a simple progress bar. I was really happy to see that Michael de Raadt had the same idea and actually turned it into an awesome Moodle block that allows students to keep track of their progress in Moodle courses. The block is very flexible, works with Moodle 2.0 Completion tracking and you can have multiple instances of the block in your course (e.g. for each week or topic). The first sample of students also seemed pretty satisfied with this tool, so I highly encourage everyone to give this block a try - you can get it for free from the Moodle Modules and plugins database.

Time management in Moodle

View more presentations from deraadt

4) Cool tool that plays nice with Moodle: BigBlueButton

I was also impressed by BigBlueButton (BBB), presented by Fred Dixon. BBB is an open source web conferencing system with a clear focus on the educational market. They also put a lot on emphasis on keeping the whole thing simple to use, guarantee a simple installation and setup, and provide a nice integration with Moodle 1.9 and 2.0. I like the fact that they are not competing with Moodle, but rather trying to provide a quality product for supporting synchronous activities that you don't usually get to do in Moodle. I'll certainly keep an eye on BBB, and who knows - perhaps the next iMoot will be running on BBB instead of Adobe Connect.

5) Cool Moodle 2 feature: Community hubs

Moodle 2.0 comes with several new features and improvements to existing tools. But perhaps the single most potentially game changing feature is the addition of Community hubs, which were introduced at iMoot by Tomaz Lasic. In a way, Community hubs provide an open marketplace for Moodle course, but they also provide a space for collaboration. You can have your own private community hubs connecting just a few schools, or make your courses available to the global Moodle community by publishing them on the Moodle.org Open Community Hub (MOOCH).

By connecting to a hub you don't give away your user data and such, but just allow others to view or download your courses (your choice). You're in complete control of what courses you want to publish and what kind of license you want to use. Go on, visit MOOCH and take a look at some of the first courses that are have already been posted! And oh, if you want to try out community hubs and other cool Moodle 2.0 feature, head over to Mount Orange Moodle 2.0 Demo site, where you can play around with a sample Moodle 2 installation in different roles.

And below you can see an older version of Tomaz's presentation - I'll update it as soon as the new one with a more detailed explanation of community hubs is posted.

Moodle 2.0 Community hubs

View more presentations from Tomaz Lasic

6) Biggest Moodle 2 mystery: Where are my course files?

Mark Drechsler did a great job at uncovering the inconvenient truth behind the way Moodle 2 manages files. Gone is the course-centric approach to storing files, please make room for external repositories and resource based file system!

It's certainly a change that is making a lot of Moodle 1.X confused and frustrated, but Mark does a great job at explaining why we should embrace this change. He's certainly got me convinced! If you're switching from Moodle 1.X to Moodle 2.0 and still can't wrap your head around the new approach to files, I strongly recommend Mark's presentation embedded below or a visit to Mark's blog, where you can find a more detailed explanation.

Moodle 2.0 Files - an inconvenient truth

View more presentations from Mark Drechsler

7) The future of Moodle

It really wouldn't be a a real Moodle Moot without a Martin-note - a keynote by Martin Dougiamas, the founder of Moodle, who is still actively managing the whole project. He shared hot info and thoughts about current Moodle development and future plans, and he also took the time to chat with attendees and answer all our questions (he's incredibly friendly!).

Most noteworthy bits from the Martin-note:

stable Moodle releases (2.X) will be releases every 6 months, no excuses (2.1 coming out in June 2011), so planning for upgrades will be made easier,
official Moodle mobile iOS app is coming with the release of Moodle 2.1 in June,
Moodle.org site will be revamped and made really pretty (we got a little sneak peak!),
Martin is looking forward to teachers sharing courses through MOOCH and other community hubs that will enable global connected communities of learners.

His keynote presentation hasn't been uploaded to Slideshare yet, so I've embedded his slides from the MoodleMoot Japanese that have some common themes:

MoodleMoot Japan 2011

View more presentations from Martin Dougiamas

If all this great content hasn't yet convinced you that attending next year's iMoot is a must, I also invite you to read part 2 of my iMoot 2011 report, in which I'll describe the overall conference experience in more detail.

Related post:

iMoot 2011: the Experience (Part 2)

Android for girls: a new frontier

2011-03-08T12:31:00.002+01:00

According to last year's AdMod Mobile Metrics Report, nearly three quarters of Android users are male. Sure, other tech gadgets and smartphone operating systems do tend to show a slight male bias, but why is the percentage of Android female users so dramatically low? And can anything be done to make Android more appealing to women?

These were the two key questions I tried to answer while searching for a topic to present at the recent MobileCamp Ljubljana, Android edition. I was pretty sure more than three quarters of the audience at the event would be male (I was correct), so that seemed like a nice topic to explore with the guys, mostly app developers.

You can see the slides from my talk embedded below. As the slides attracted quite some interest on SlideShare (my first presentation that got featured on the homepage!), I also decided to do a little write-up on my blog, to expand on some of the key points.

Android for girls: a new frontier

View more presentations from iAlja

So, why aren't more girls using Android? What can we do to make Android phones feel right and not (only) a geek device?

Who defines the user experience and perception of Android?

Given the complexity of the Android ecosystem, we basically have three major groups of players that define the look and feel of Android:

On the basic level we have Google defining core OS functionality and design.
On the next level we have various phone manufacturers (HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson etc.), who define the hardware characteristics of the devices and can also create their own user interface modifications and software modifications. Together with mobile operators, they're also the ones that make sure end-users buy their Android devices through ads and promotions.
And finally, on top level, we have application developers, who create apps that enhance the functionality of Android phones.

Android as an operating system

Without any doubt, Google has a "cool" status among geeks. We all love free Google services, and the geeks and hackers rejoiced at the announcement of Android, Google's "open" alternative to Apple's "evil" iPhone walled garden.

In some aspects, Android is trying hard to imitate iOS (the operating system running on iPhones), but on the other hand, it does provide users, manufacturers and developers a bit more freedom when it comes to customizing your device. Ask any true Android geek, and they'll tell you how awesome their Android phone is if you just install the right ROM (a modified version of the OS).

Wait, what? Yeah, it does sound a lot like listening to Linux fans. And we all know that your typical Linux users is certainly not female. Well, the same problem seems to apply to Android. Perhaps the manufacturers, with their unique user interfaces, can make Android look prettier to girls?

Android as a product

Well, sort of. To be fair, some manufacturers are really trying to make Android easier to use for us, common people, and not just the geeks, who have the unstoppable urge to hack everything with a chip.

For instance, HTC is really trying hard to make Android devices friendly little helpers through HTC Sense. It can do some pretty nifty tricks like ringing louder when it's tucked in our bags or displaying friends' latest Facebook status update when they call, so you can instantly tell it's their birthday.

But then, you get ads for Android devices like the following one for Motorola's Droid. Let's watch it together:

Oh yeah! 30 seconds of pure, raw manpower. Did you get the chance to grab a beer?

Ok, to be fair, it's not a new ad, and some of Motorola's recent ads are a bit more neutral. But the ad above is an extreme case of a trend we often see when manufacturers and mobile operators promote their Android devices: too much emphasis on technical specifications and forgetting the human touch.

Motorola's Xoom Super Bowl ad was a bit better at making their Android device look more human friendly, but their final tagline still reads "The world first Android 3.0 tablet". Yawn!

Now, dear Motorola (and others), do watch how you make ads that focus on the experience and human emotion:

But of course, to make ads like this, you also need products that focus on the end-user, who is not necessarily a geek or a hacker.

Android and apps - the Market(ing) problem

So finally, we reach the apps, the final piece of any modern smartphone puzzle that can make or break the user experience. Here is when I came across some interesting research; according to The Wall Blog, women with smartphones (not such a minority anymore) are twice as likely as men to never have downloaded an app. Hm, that's a huge gap.

When asked for reasons, some of the most common answers given by women were that the they felt overwhelmed by the choice of apps, and that apps were not relevant to them because they didn't help them or enhanced their lives. So, we clearly have a marketing problem when it comes to selling apps, especially to women.

My guess is that this problem is more pronounced in the Android Market, where, due to the lack of strict guidelines, it's more difficult to find quality apps. Apple is trying to make app discovery easier by providing curated selections of apps.

For a good example of this, visit the Apps for iPhone section on Apple's website, where apps for different needs, such as Apps for Moms and Dads, are clearly presented with big pictures and short descriptions. And you can be pretty sure that apps that make it to this page have been thoroughly tested and will probably make a good purchase.

And that is what Android Market could really use. But who will be brave enough to attempt such a massive feat of strength? And how will users find such content, when most of them probably aren't looking for specialized blogs and sites on the subject? Apple certainly has the advantage of being the one and only company to make their phone, market it and sell apps for it through their own App Store.

What do women want from mobile apps?

The big question for all app developers is, of course, what do women want from mobile apps? How can we make apps that women will want to download?

I found a really good answer to this on the Handshake 2.0 blog, where Maureen Carruthers writes about what she's looking for in mobile apps (emphasis mine):

"The ﬁnal quality of my favorite apps is how they make me feel - about myself. ... these apps help me feel loved, well-read and prepared. ... Most importantly, they are intuitive, so they never make me feel stupid. No matter how potentially amazing an app may be, if I can’t easily ﬁgure it out, it will gather virtual dust."

Another survey among female mobile app users came to the conclusion that (emphasis mine):

“Women want to be connected. They want to be informed. They want apps that help them through the day, whether it is comparison shopping, turn-by-turn directions, or a way to be more organized.”

So, we don't want clutter, we don't need extra bling - we want apps that are easy to use and that makes our lives better or easier! Women are probably more likely than men to see their phones as tools that shouldn't require a manual, but should provide clear value in everyday life.

Of course, this doesn't apply to just women - many users outside the geeky, tech crowd feel the same! And here's my advice for app developers: focus on everyday usability and experience, not on fancy algorithms and tech talk.

Instagram, for instance, is a good examples of a great mobile app service that isn't anything special from the technological point of view, but it does provide great experience and community. And that's what counts for most users, not necessarily just women. (Excellent blog post on a related note: Quora is from Mars, Instagram is from Venus)

A girl's app manifesto

Finally, here are 7 key points I wish every app developer, male or female, would keep in mind when planning, designing or programming mobile apps.

Think about me.
I don’t like wasting time.
Make my life better or fun.
Don’t make me feel stupid.
Don’t make me change for you.
I’m looking for experiences, not features.
Yes, I like pretty, but I’m not a princess.

There are of course several resources anyone can find on the web that can help you better understand how women are using mobile apps. Some interesting sites I recently came across are: LadyGeekTV.com and WomenWithDroids.com.

And in the comments, I'd love to hear from more women using smartphones (Android or other) and particularly your experience with mobile apps. Android and mobile app development might still be a man's world, but we can try to change things by speaking out about what we do and don't like.

P.S.: Happy Women's Day!

iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7: the classroom potential [Part 2]

2011-03-05T19:31:00.001+01:00

In part 1, I talked about my personal experience with three of the most popular operating systems for mobile devices of today and the future. In this post, I'd like to continue my analysis by looking at which OS has the biggest potential to become a hit product of our classrooms.

So, we have three main contenders running for classroom OS of the year:

iOS, the app focused OS running on incredibly sexy Apple mobile devices,
Android, the geeky OS of many choices and opportunities that can even be installed on an e-book reader and
Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's attempt to catch up by focusing on a simple user experience (and making Apple fans feel bad for liking a Windows device).

What the school is looking for

And we're at Sunnydale High School. Helen, the principal, really wants to make their school cool and fun by providing their students and teachers with one-to-one technology. After all, it's so hard to capture students' attention these days, and being proficient with computers will surely give students a competitive edge in the information society of the future.

But here's the thing: the school is on a really tight budget and they have to decide what to invest in. Should they install interactive blackboards in every classroom? Get a computer in every classroom? Give each student their own computer?

That's all very expensive, and the investment they made in those tiny netbooks two years ago didn't really pay off. Nobody likes them. The teachers hate them because the screens are so tiny and because Word is so slow to use. The students hate them because they are slower than the computers they have at home and because even their phones provide a better Facebook experience. And the IT stuff hates them because they are just as annoying to maintain and support as their big brothers in the computer lab. So, the netbooks are mostly collecting dust in the closets. or being used as paperweight - at least something they're sort of good at.

Is the answer in those new mobile, post-PC devices everyone keeps talking about? Let's take a look!

The smartphones

There is one big problem with using smartphones in classrooms: most students don't have them (yet) and schools probably can't afford to be buying phones for their students, as the prices are quite steep without a contract with a mobile operator.

In a few years, when smartphones become common place, sure, they might become great learning aids in classroom, but until them we'll probably see them used as personal learning tools by students with the privilege of owning one. Unless mobile operators start making deals with schools, of course, which is not probably not something we can put our money on.

And even when most students have smartphones, the biggest potential might not be in their operating systems and native apps, but in web apps that students on any mobile platform with a modern browser can use. Even Apple already has a nice webpage dedicated to touch ready Web apps. Truth be told, web apps are probably more convenient for schools than managing native mobile apps (especially paid ones). The only requirement for schools here is a reliable WiFi network that can handle hundreds of concurrent devices.

Microsoft did however showcase an interesting glimpse into the future of connected devices with a Windows Phone 7 integration with Kinect, a system that allows Xbox users to control games with body movements. The video below looks like pure fun, but just imagine transferring this idea to a classroom full of students and enable them to interact with software with a combination of body movements and touch inputs on various mobile devices.

Verdict: Smartphones are probably not a viable option for most classrooms yet. However, as smartphones with modern browsers become more commonplace, web apps might have the biggest potential because they are platform independent. Just make sure to have a good WiFi network in place to avoid expensive data charges. Another interesting opportunity will be brought by the ability of smartphones to connect to other devices and form a rich interaction network based on natural inputs.

The smartphones minus the phone

The next category of devices to look at is the smartphones without the ability to connect to cellphone networks i.e. mainly Apple's iPod Touch. It's got most of the goodies of its big brother, the iPhone 4, but at less than half its price.

The drawback is that you have to rely on WiFi networks for internet connectivity. Luckily, these are getting increasingly popular at more and more places, and practically all schools I've visited recently have at least some sort of WiFi network of their own.

And the iPod Touch also brings an important advantage to the table: there are already several documented studies of successful uses of iPod Touches (and even the less capable devices in the iPod family) in classrooms. And Apple even provides a special PDF guide for using iPod touch and iTunes for teaching and learning.

We're probably all aware of the fact that podcasting has been in use for several years in education now, and that's all the iPod Touch does extremely well. But it's biggest strength are of course the apps. A lot of quality apps that can be used in classroom.

And while the school still needs to figure out ways to manage different iPod Touches and keep them all charged and synced, the updating process certainly is less of a hassle than on regular computer. There are several ways to use the same computer with different devices or have multiple devices linked to one iTunes account, a special program for buying and distributing apps to students in volume, and even custom mobile labs (more on that later). However, having to sync Apple's devices with iTunes is probably the biggest hassle iOS devices have, so that's probably something to keep in mind.

Ok, moving on to competitors. Hmmm. Ah, there is one - Samsung's Galaxy Player, the first Android powered competitor to the iPod Touch. But here's the thing - it's not on the market yet. It will supposedly be a bit cheaper than the iPod Touch - both in price and hardware. So, let's just wait to see this one on the market first and see how it does, ok?

Right. So, we have Windows Phone 7 left. Sadly, as the name indicates, it's a phone OS, so no real competition here either. On the other hand, we could include Zune HD, Microsoft's portable media player, in the mix, considering the experience is somehow similar to WP7.

So, what does the Zune HD has to offer? Yes, music and video of course. What about apps? Aye, it has apps! How many? 42. And how many apps are there for the iPod Touch? About 350,000. Right, I rest my case.

Verdict: The iPod Touch certainly is a big winner here with a proven track record of classroom excellence. It's a great device for podcasting, and on top of that supports tons of quality educational apps. It will be very hard for competitors to catch up with this little gem anytime soon!

The tablets

Let's just move to the next category of mobile device that will supposedly be a bit more crowded this year: the tablets.

This week Apple announced the iPad 2. Now thinner, faster, lighter, with cameras, 10-hour battery life, even more magic and the same starting price - $499. It's the original iPad made better and there are over 65,000 apps designed specifically for the iPad.

The original iPad is already being used to enhance teaching and learning on all levels. For some inspiring examples, have a look at the short promo video on the Learning with iPad site. And for schools, Apple is even offering incredibly sleek iPad Learning Labs (I want a cabinet filled with iPads too!), so it's definitely a big plus to have various iOS Learning Solutions readily available.

15 million iPads were sold all over the world in just 9 months, so there's no doubt the new model will also be a hit. Probably the biggest challenge that Apple is facing with the iPad is how to ship enough units to satisfy the huge demand for this truly magical device - and that's certainly a good problem to be having!

Now, moving on to Android. The recent Mobile World Congress was full of new Android tablet announcements. The powerful Motorola Xoom, already on sale in the States, Samsung offering a new, iPad size 10 inch version of its Galaxy Tab, LG G-Slate, Acer Iconia Tabs, Asus Eee Pads, Dell Streak 10... They come in all shapes and sizes, varying from 7 to 10 inches. One thing they all have in common: Android 3.0 Honeycomb. The first version of Android designed specifically for tablets.

My first impression from the videos and reviews? It looks... crowded. Yes, some elements are rather nice - the way it does multitasking, notifications. But it seems like it's trying to borrow a bit too much from the desktop world. I especially wonder how that will work out on the smaller tablets. I haven't had the chance to try out a Honeycomb device yet, as they are only starting to ship, so my opinion might change once I actually get to try a Honeycomb device first hand.

But there is one big elephant in the Honeycomb room: the lack of apps for Android tablets. Sure, Honeycomb does a good job at scaling up apps made for Android smarphones of smaller sizes, but having apps designed for tablets in mind is a different story. Think The Elements app for the iPad.

And here, yet again, Apple has a massive head start. Sure, in a year or two the number of Honeycomb apps will probably be more respectable, but for now, sitting around 100, the lack of apps remains it's Achilles' heel.

In the meantime, the iPad is getting new, amazing new apps every day. Like the mind blowing iPad versions of iMovie (shown above) and Garage Band made by Apple. I can't imagine those two running on an Android tablet, but I surely can see those two apps being used by students all all ages in classrooms all over the world!

So, the impression I get here is that the manufacturers will have to invest a lot of effort in making their Android tablets more user friendly. HTC, for instance, has showcased a pretty nifty notetaking app that works with Evernote on its 7 inch HTC Flyer tablet (also just announced at the Mobile World Congress, not yet on the market). Not sure about the additional stylus, but it looks pretty interesting!

Another interesting fact is that the HTC Flyer won't ship with Honeycomb, but rather with Android 2.3 Gingerbread with a special edition of HTC Sense (HTC's custom UI modification for Android) made just for tablets. HTC says a Honeycomb update is being worked on, but it certainly doesn't help with the Android fragmentation issues.

Now, the great thing about Android is its tight integration with Google services. And that could be a good selling point for Android tablets in education, as a lot of students already have Google Accounts, and a lot of schools might even be using Google Apps for Education already. Very convenient!

It would be even more convenient if Google you could get Google Apps for Education in a big package with Android tablets, but unfortunately that is very unlikely considering that Google isn't a hardware company. Which means that schools looking to buy Android tablets will have to do it on their own or get help from some other company (anyone aware of companies providing Google Apps and Android tablets bundles?).

But let's not forget App Inventor, Google's free and relatively easy to use tool for programming Android apps that is targeted at the educational market. Now, THAT looks interesting, but it's surely not for every school at every level. It's more of a niche candy that will hopefully attract students to Android development, which might someday result in better Android apps.

So, Android does have some advantages, but at the same time the tablets are having a hard time matching iPad's $499 starting price. For instance, the Motorola Xoom's $800 (no contract) entry price is anything but compatible. Yes, it does Google services well, but there are still tons of other apps that are still missing.

What about Windows Phone 7? Again, notice the phone in the name? Microsoft apparently wants your to have the WP7 experience on your smartphone only. And the Windows tablets will be running, well, Windows 7. Windows tablets have been on the market way before the iPad with little success.

Sure, it's a familiar environment for users, but so far it seems that users prefer a much more simpler OS on their portable devices, so I'm not really placing any bets on Windows 7 (or 8) tablets. Steve Jobs had this to say about tablets: “These are post-PC devices, that need to be even easier to use than a PC.” Agreed.

Verdict: It seems that 2011 will yet again be the year of the iPad. Yes, Android tablets have great integration with Google services most of already use, and the App Inventor is an interesting tool for learning and teaching programming, but the steep prices and the lack of apps are a major disappointment. Plus, most of the new Android tablets that have been announced are not on the market yet, so we'll probably have to wait at least another year for a real Android tablet breakthrough. As to Microsoft, they'd better start thinking about how to make the tablet experience as pleasant as their new smartphone experience. Again, at least a year or more before that happens. In the mean time, the iPad might become just as iconic and commonplace as the iPods on the market for MP3 players.

Which devices are classroom ready? Today?

I think I've made it pretty clear that the market for smart mobile devices is far from mature. Apple is leading the way in practically every category and others are playing catch up. Sure, Android is rapidly gaining market share when it comes to smartphones (not surprisingly, considering the number and variety of devices), but the tablet market (much more interesting for education) is still in its infancy.

Apple's iOS devices - mainly the iPod Touch and the iPad - do however have one huge advantage: the choice of quality apps and the affordable price. Additionally, schools can even get convenient mobile learning labs with iOS devices, so they're easier to manage. And that's why I think that today the iPod Touch and the iPad are the best choice for classrooms - and for encouraging learning outside of classrooms as well.

The Android tablets have been rather disappointing so far, though the situation might change when more Honeycomb tablets (and apps) become available on the market. But without apps that can compare to those already available for the iPad, the competition will be a rather boring one.

So, for today, my vote certainly goes to the iPod Touch and the iPad (depending on your budget). I know I might sound like an Apple commercial, but these two devices are truly amazing to use, and the competition is still lagging behind. So, for now, I really can't wait to get the new iPad and have tons of fun exploring all the new apps and learning new stuff along the way. What about your classroom?

>> iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7: the facts and my experience [Part 1]

iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7: the facts and my experience [Part 1]

2011-03-04T13:41:00.001+01:00

Q4 2010 brought a big milestone to the mobile industry: smartphones outsold PCs for the first time ever. And that's not even taking into account tables and iPods that provide similar functionality. In short, mobile devices - or "post-PC devices", as Steve Jobs calls them - are hot stuff right now.

However, it's easy to get lost and confused by all the devices and even by all the mobile operating systems we can choose from. Apple is certainly leading this new revolution with the iPhone and the iPad, but other software and hardware companies are trying their best to catch up and capture our imagination.

Last Summer I started blogging at Mobitel Tehnik, a blog about mobile technologies, on which my posts (in Slovenian) mainly cover news and tips related to mobile app development. As part of my assignment, I've been using and following the development of some of the recently most popular smart mobile operating systems on the market.

That is why I've decided to sum up some of the thoughts and experiences I've had with various platforms on my blog in two parts: in the first part, I focus on introducing facts and my personal experience with 3 of the most talked about smartphone operating systems: Apple's iOS, Google's Android, and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. And in part 2, I will try to imagine the potential of using iOS, Android and WP7 mobile devices in classrooms.

Ok, so let's take a look at the facts and my personal experience with each of the three platforms first.

iOS: It's all about beautiful apps

Basic facts: Apple's mobile operating system that runs on iPhones, iPod Touches, iPad and Apple TV - all Apple devices. Launched in June 2007, current version 4.2. Got its application store, the App Store (tied with the iTunes Store), in July 2008 and now features over 350,000 apps.

The experience: Unfortunately, iPhone isn't officially sold in my country (the only blank spot in Europe!), so I've been using iOS on my 2nd generation iPod Touch. Truth be told, I don't really use it as an iPod that much - my primary iPod used mainly for running is the new iPod Nano. The iPod Touch is, however, my mobile device of choice for browsing and apps. I use it to play various casual games like Bejeweled Blitz, Fruit Ninja and Tiny Wings (my current favorites), manage my shopping list with ShopShop, plan my runs with Runner's World SmartCoach app, rate my favorite Movies, and much more.

And I'm just in love with iOS apps! The App Store provides great choice of both free and paid apps, and it's really easy to discover beautiful new apps. It's the kind of store where you buy a $2.99 weather app just because it's sooo pretty.

The magic behind the App Store lies in detailed guidelines and excellent developer tools that make it easy to have good looking apps even if you use just the default UI elements provided by Apple. Yes, a lot of people complain about the strict App Store approval process, but from the user perspective, it pays off to have a store full of quality and well tested apps.

Android: It's all about opportunities and promises

Basic facts: Usually thought as the biggest iOS competitor, developed by Google and other members of the Open Handset Alliance. Launched in October 2008, current version 2.3 Gingerbread, although the majority of users currently still runs version 2.2 Froyo. Android runs on all sorts of smartphone and tablets devices in various price ranges. The devices are made by different manufacturers, which also provide their unique user interfaces (such as HTC Sense, Samsung's TouchWiz etc). The Android application store, Android Market, launched in October 2008 and now features over 250,000 apps.

The experience: Ah, dear Android. The joy and love of the tech crowd. The supposedly "open alternative" to Apple's evil walled-garden. And, more often than not, quite irritating to use.

I've used Android on several HTC devices (Desire, Legend, Wildfire) and the overall look and feel is quite good. The hardware was good, but what annoyed me to no end, was the need to constantly fiddle with settings and other details of the software. And the regular need to reboot, which reminded me of what it was like to own a PC.

All in all, it was usually nothing huge per se, but there was always that tiny little detail that required your attention and sometimes got your head scratching. Like the mystery of why apps that I had never used (e.g. Stocks, Music, News) were always running in the background.

Speaking of apps. Sure, in theory it does sound wonderful that Google lets almost anyone publish apps on the Android Market. But in practice? The Market is flooded with poorly designed apps. And as Android Market works with Google Checkout, which is not supported in my country, I was stuck on using free apps only.

Then, the games... just not comparable to iOS games. And sure, the gaming aspect is supposed to be improved with the next big release - and that is basically what we keep hearing all the time. "The next Android update will kick iPhone's ass!" Anyone else got tired of waiting for the savior?

Ok, I've got to be fair - Android does have a few strong points as well. I loved the integration with Google services, particularly Google Maps. And the WiFi Hotspot app (for tethering), introduced with the Froyo update, was awesome. And oh, I really liked HTC's weather widget on the home screen!

Wondering why I've been using the past tense here? Ah, that's because I've been using Windows Phone 7 as my primary phone OS for a couple of weeks now, and I honestly don't miss Android all that much.

Windows Phone 7: It's all about the simple experience

Basic facts: The new kid on the block, even though it's the successor of the ye olde Windows Mobile platform. Microsoft decided to get a fresh start with Windows Phone 7 and introduced a radically different user interface and no backwards compatibility with previous versions of Windows Mobile. WP7 launched in October 2010 and has yet to receive a major update (expected to be released soon-ish). Like Android, WP7 runs on devices by different manufacturers, but Microsoft sets the hardware requirements for WP7 phones and doesn't allow major modifications of the user interface, so all WP7 phones have a consistent look and feel (unlike Android phones). Its applications store, the Windows Phone Marketplace, launched with the release of the first phones in October 2010 and now features over 8,000 apps.

The experience: This may come as a surprise to those of you that know how much I love using a Mac - I actually enjoy the Windows Phone 7 experience. Yes, me, enjoying a Windows product! Shocking, I know.

But I think Microsoft did the smart thing by dropping the outdated Windows Mobile legacy platform and focused on a fresh, unique mobile experience. It's a mobile OS that tries to help users do what they're supposed to be doing without getting in the way.

Coming from Android, the contrast can be quite stark at first. But after a while, you just sit back and enjoy the ride. No need to worry about turning the GPS on and off manually. If an app, such as Maps, needs it, it will turn it on and then off again when you're done.

The home screen with live tiles makes it easy to see important information on the go, and the OS uses hubs to bundle key content and media together. For instance, the People hub brings together your contacts and their Facebook updates in an attractive panorama view. Plus, it can also sync music, photos and videos with your computer and there's even a Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac OS X that can sync content from iTunes.

However, it must be noted that WP7 is still a version 1.0 OS, so there are "a few" bugs and oddities that will have to be sorted out. Similarly, the Marketplace is still only a few months old, so the selection of apps isn't that great. For instance, there is no Dropbox or Evernote app, and I miss more apps from Google, particularly Google Maps - WP7, not surprisingly, has Bing Maps integrated and the app just doesn't work as well as Google's.

And just like the Android Market, the Windows Phone Marketplace doesn't allow purchases from my country, so I can't really enjoy any of the cool game titles already available in the application store. You do however get the option to Try out a lot of the paid apps and games, which is a really cool feature.

And the winner is...

One thing is for sure - while similar on paper, iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 provide quite a different user experience. Which one is best? Well, it really depends on what you're looking for.

iOS is certainly a more solid platform with an amazing selection of apps, which isn't surprising considering it was the first to launch. Android is perfect for geeks that enjoy fiddling with their devices. And WP7 is cute, but needs to grow up a bit more and get more developers interested in making good apps.

For me, iOS is certainly the first choice. It's simple, yet mature enough to provide all the extra goodies (such as tethering). WP7 is also an OS that I could see my grandpa using, as he probably wouldn't miss any of the yet missing apps. And Android is a solid choice for everyone that is bothered by Apple's "closed" system and is looking for variety in hardware, but not something I'd recommend for the average user.

What does it all mean?

So, we have at least three platforms that will be running smartphones and tablets of our future. And we keep hearing the future will be mobile, which also means we can expect the big mobile operating systems to find their way into our classrooms and be used as teaching tools. I therefore invite you to join me in part 2 to explore which of the 3 platforms might have the biggest potential for learning.

>> iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7: the classroom potential [Part 2]

iMoot 2011 to explore New Directions

2011-02-01T10:58:00.003+01:00

MoodleMoots, conferences dedicated to users, administrators and developers of Moodle, our beloved open-source learning management system, have always been my favorite events for exchanging learning and teaching experiences. This year, I'm particularly excited about attending iMoot2011, the second annual web based International Moodle Moot.

iMoot2011 will be running from 30th April to 3rd May 2011, 24 hours a day to accommodate different time zones. If you want to get involved as a presenter, you can submit presentation proposals and academic papers by February 19th, or register as an attendee (got my early bird registration yesterday!).

The theme for iMoot2011 is New Directions, a fitting title considering Moodle 2.0 has finally been released at the end of last year. However, it's good to know that Moodle's new directions won't be the main focus on the conference; instead, the goal of the conference will be to explore the potential of using new technologies and pedagogical ideas in an evolving online learning space, where Moodle is just a piece of the puzzle.

You can find more info about the conference on the official iMoot2011 website. I'm certainly looking forward to participating in the conference, getting new ideas and meeting new and old Moolde buddies. Will you be joining us?

Sharable Bits: Compliments, Doing Nothing, Standing Desk

2011-01-24T15:09:00.000+01:00

Blog post: Genuine compliments matter

Students say: "I'd rather have a compliment than sex or pizza!"

Why it's worth sharing: Vicki A. Davis reminds us about how important it is to give genuine compliments to our students and colleagues every day. I certainly try to follow this advice in my day to day work. Remembering to thank people for their effort and acknowledging their success is a simple gesture that can make a big impact. After all, we all want to be good at what we're doing and to know that what we do is meaningful, don't we?

Challenge: Do Nothing for Two Minutes

Why it's worth sharing: It's a simple website with a simple idea: relax and do nothing for only two minutes. Easy, no? Well, it turns out it can be quite a challenge if you're used to constantly check your e-mails, Facebook, Twitter and what not. It's certainly a nice idea that encourages to stop and relax, even if it is just for our couple of minutes. Perhaps we'd all felt a little bit better if we passed this simple challenge every day. (via @mashable)

Idea: Standing desk

Why it's worth sharing: Gina Trapani's blog post Why and How I Switched to a Standing Desk provides a nice overview of the transition from a traditional "sitdown desk" to a standing desk and working on your feet. As someone, who tends to sit behind the computer desk in awkward positions all day long, I find this idea quite intriguing. I admit - I haven't decided to make the switch yet, but at least the post reminded me that I should get up and stretch more often during the day.

Sharable Bits is a series of weekly posts that will highlight some of the most interesting bits and bytes that I stumble upon. No bad news, just ideas that inspire, touch or entertain in a unique way.

Mobile single-tasking leads the way to a more human friendly desktop

2011-01-13T13:53:00.002+01:00

The web seems like somethings everyone should know how to use by now. But what about the less experienced aka the majority of users? Do they really know how to use their browsers? And understand what's going on on their computer screens?

I think computers are still mysterious, magic boxes for a lot of people outside the tech savvy crowd, and we need to keep looking for solutions that can change that perception. Perhaps by learning from simple, easy to use, user centered mobile devices, like the iPad.

The web is a strange place for the average user

As a reader (or occasional visitor) of this blog, you probably have a good basic understanding of how the web works. You're probably familiar with the concept of a web browser and how your browser interacts with web servers to display different web locations. You know how to copy, type and check the URL of a website to make sure you've opened the right web page, and you're probably reading this page in one of the many tabs open in your browser, perhaps even an RSS reader.

But all of the above isn't such an easy task for everyone. If you think the web is easy to use, I challenge you to observe the way so-called "average users" interact with it. Users, who have never received any real training, and are not really interested in understanding how the whole system works. They just want to check their e-mail, share photos on Facebook or find a store's phone number on the web.

I have seem that many times in the past few months (while trying to teach them how to use a pretty complex online tool), and I must say it has changes my perspective. The web just seems like a different place for the average user than it is to me or probably you. It's a place where the Google search box is your starting point because you don't know the URL of your school's website, it's a place where you only use one window at a time (tabs? what tabs?), it's a place full of confusion and notifications you don't really understand. Update? Pop-ups? RSS? Java script? Is that even English?

It's just so different from the world we, the tech crowd, live in. It's not a world where the lack of multitasking before iOS 4 was a problem, it's a world where no multitasking is a great feature.

Why do you make me switch windows and apps?

It's certainly something that we should all keep in mind when designing user interfaces and user experiences on the web. You think your registration process, which requires e-mail confirmation, is simple? Think again. The average user doesn't want to switch windows and apps, and doesn't want to read your friendly instructions about activation and other nonsense. They just want to get things done.

Photo: Microsoft.com

And that is where we can learn a lot from the new generation of smartphone operating systems (thinking mainly about iOS and Windows Phone 7, I'll leave my Android rant for another post). They make it easier for people to understand what they'll get and where to get it. With big, easy to tap icons, and a simple, physical Home button that always gets you back to the starting line. No complicated lists of programs, no need to decide where to save your files... In many ways, the mobile OS is smarter than your desktop OS, even though the "smartness" is a result of the limits such small devices have.

Let the OS do the work and just enjoy the ride

Many of the features that make current smartphones so pleasant to use, were first introduced by Apple. Of course, a lot of skeptics laughed at the lack of multitasking, physical keyboard and what not, but 4 years after the original iPhone came out, everyone is trying to make a better iPhone. Not a better smartphone per se, but a better iPhone. And even though the geeks love Android for being a more open platform, iPhone keeps setting the standard for the high-end smartphone market.

And I think Apple is actually on the right track again with the concept of Mac OS X Lion, the next major upgrade to their desktop OS due to be released this summer. Lion will take a bold step at bringing features from the mobile world - the magic of iPad, as they call it - to the desktop. A unified place to download, buy and update your applications, a launchpad with big, colorful icons, and full-screen apps that take away all the distractions of your desktop.

Photo: Apple.com

I can see all this being a big hit with the average users (time to switch grandpa to Mac OS X!). An app for Facebook, an app for your e-mail, an app for your workspace (which lives in the cloud, but you don't really know or care about it), and an app for Google, so you can find everything else. And you don't have to worry about whether apps are closed or open and about saving your work. You want to do something else? Fine, hit the "Home button" and come back to the first app when you're done, picking it up just where you left it.

Mobile devices are changing our expectations

While the emphasis in the discussions about the mobile revolution often seems to be on portability and the business opportunities of mobile apps, let's not forget about how all these mobile devices are changing the way people interact with computers and their expectations.

We are already seeing examples of how the iPad and similar devices are influencing web design, and I definitely think that's a positive trend that will make more and more web destinations feel more natural and uncluttered. Now is the right time to take a look at the web sites we build and maintain, and figure out how to make it more mobile and consequently human friendly.

And the end result will not be something just the less tech savvy users will enjoy; I think we can all benefit from less clutter and distractions. After all, it makes much more sense to have interfaces that adapt to the way people think, than to have people adapt to interfaces they have to use.

Additional readings:

Happy Holidays

2010-12-26T10:35:00.000+01:00

I just wanted to stop by for a minute to wish everyone Happy Holidays and a 2011 full of new discoveries with my favorite video of this holiday season. See you next year!

14 great tools for teaching, learning and collaboration

2010-12-19T21:55:00.001+01:00

When delivering introductory courses for teachers that want to start using Moodle, the most popular LMS used in Slovenian schools, I also like to share a list of my favorite tools that can be used with Moodle or independently. I think it's important for teachers to realize that a LMS can be a good starting point if you want to provide your students with an online hub for your course, but that there are many other tools out there that are better suited for certain needs.

And I just realized I haven't shared this list on my blog yet, so here it is: 14 great tools that can help teachers create interactive content, collaborate, and facilitate learning. All of these tools are free and available either online or on multiple platforms (Windows, Mac).

Desktop software

Hot Potatoes - a simple, free tool for creating quizzes and other interactive activities that can be easily included into Moodle.

eXeLearning - a free, open source software for creating and publishing web content. Teachers can easily export content into SCORM and add it to Moodle. Great for our teachers because it's also available in Slovenian (and other languages).

Xmind - an open source brainstorming and mind mapping tool.

Google tools

Google Docs - easy to use collaborative tool for documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Google Sites - a simple tool for creating web pages.

Blogger - free, simple to use blogging platform. If my grandpa can use it, so can your non-tech savy teachers and students. Love the fact that you can have private blogs, available only to specified readers.

Picasa and Picasa web albums - Google's free image organizer and editor that also supports free web albums. I admit - I don't really use Picasa (I have iPhoto on my Macs), but my grandpa loves it, so I like to recommend it to non-Mac folks.

Multimedia

ScreenToaster - free online screen recorder. Can easily be used for simple screencasts.

Audacity - open source audio editing software. Again, as an iLife user, I don't really use it myself, but I know a lot of teacher who use it in classrooms.

Anywhere, anything

Evernote - my absolutely favorite tool for notes and what not. I use it to write drafts fro blog posts or messages for my students, to save notes while grading, as a collection of links and ideas and so much more. I love the fact that it's both a desktop and online app, so you can really access all your notes from anywhere (even on my mobile phone).

Google Reader - web RSS reader. My favorite way of keeping track of blogs on all sorts of different subjects.

Dropbox - I've got to agree with their tagline: "the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online". I even know teachers that use Dropbox to collect student's assignments, and it's also great as a personal backup tool and as a way to collaborate on files with others.

Sharing

SlideShare - my favorite tool for sharing presentations that can easily embedded almost anywhere on the web.

Scribd - simple tool for publishing docs and embedding them almost anywhere on the web.

And that's it, that's the list of tools I like to show to teachers starting to explore digital learning and learning. Yes, yes, I know there are many other tools that would deserve to be on the list, so I also provide a link to Jane Hart's amazing Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 List (but a list of 14 items is usually easier to digest for beginners).

So, here's my questions for you: which 14 tools would your put on your list, while keeping in mind they should be easy enough for beginners and freely available on all platforms? Let me know in the comments!

Sharable Bits: Heroes in Our Lives, Clickers, Search Zeitgeist

2010-12-17T19:08:00.000+01:00

Photos: Superhero Therapy for Grandma

More photos and info at My Modern Metropolis

Why it's worth sharing: French photographer Sacha Goldberger managed to help his grandma overcome depression by dressing her up as a superhero and making some amazing photos along the way. I love the photos - the fact that they helped the photographer's grandma smile again, and as a reminder that it only takes a little imagination to make those we love feel special. After all, we all need a little attention now and then, and the knowledge that we matter to someone, don't we?

Tool: Clickers, a simple technology for classrooms

Donald Clark provides seven simple uses and advantages of using clickers in his post Clickers: mobile technology that will work in classes

Why it's worth sharing: Mobile clickers provide a great example of how much we can do with simple tools that are applied in the right way. You don't have to invest a lot of money to buy expensive tools with limited use. Instead, focus on more versatile tools, like clicker mobile apps that will work on students' existing equipment.

Video: Google Zeitgeist 2010: Year in Review

Why it's worth sharing: With the year ending, everyone is making lists and recaps of the main events of the year coming to an end. Google's video Zeitgeist is my favorite recap so far. It reminds us of the challenges we face, the tragedies, but also of the achievements, things that made us smile. I guess I'd just like to thank Google for all the successful searches in the past year and for helping me find my way around the web. How the hell did we find anything before we had Google? :)

Sharable Bits is a series of weekly posts that will highlight some of the most interesting bits and bytes that I stumble upon. No bad news, just ideas that inspire, touch or entertain in a unique way.

Embracing the mind games and bad runs

2010-12-14T19:51:00.002+01:00

I recently came across the following short movie about the mind games runners face when choosing to run and challenge themselves on a daily basis. I think it's a great snapshot if internal battles that go through our heads when we try to do something outside our comfort zone:

Yes, it's hard to go out and run with temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius, it's hard to go out and run in rain or even snow. And when you do it, the internal battles don't end. You think you won't be able to run more than a mile today, your legs are heavy, the water puddle appears out of nowhere and your feet are wet now... The list of "reasonable" excuses seems endless.

And this isn't specific to running, of course. We play that sort of mind games when it comes to other tasks that are difficult and (usually) non urgent. Going into super productive mode when facing a deadline or pressure from someone comes naturally to us, but when you choose to do something for your own good, like a New Year's resolution... ah, that's when the mind games come into play.

And it's that sort of mind games I personally often face when it comes to blogging. I'll finish this blog post tomorrow... What if my ideas aren't good enough? Someone is better at this than I am...

But if there's something I've learnt from running on my own, it's that the effort pays off in the end. Mind games are part of the challenge, and the trick is to take it slowly, one run at a time, stick to your schedule, and not let the bad runs stop you. Oh yes, there will be bad runs in the mix, you can count on it. But in the end it's those runs that count the most and make you stronger. Because afterwards, you feel like a hero, and you won the game against the part of you that wants to keep you safe by doing nothing.

So, what are you waiting for? Go take that run, publish that blog post that has been collecting dust as a draft for way too long now, take the trip you've always wanted to take, start that big personal project you've been putting off. Just don't fear the bad runs.

Saving bear cubs in Cataclysm - or - the story of why e-learning needs game designers

2010-12-10T17:17:00.001+01:00

This week Cataclysm, the third, long-awaited expansion for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW), has finally been released. The expansion brought many changes to the game and completely redesigned Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, the two old continents that have been part of the game since its launch. In a sense, it does feel like a new game all together, and even experienced players have to relearn many aspects of the game.

But I'm not here to talk about all the game changes and complain about the missing portals in Outland and Northrend. Instead, I'd like to play a bit with some of the new elements of the game that facilitate learning and could be used to improve serious (aka not fun) online learning.

It must be said that WoW has never been a difficult game to learn. The basic mechanics and interface elements are pretty straightforward and easy to pick up even for casual players like myself. But I've got a feeling they took everything even a step further in the new expansion. Let's take a look at examples I've encountered so far as I'm trying to level up my gnome mage to level 85. So please, hop on my flying gryphon, so I can show you around.

Just in time learning

Cataclysm seems to be really good at providing simple tips to guide you through the game. For instance, as you reach a new level, you get notified of any new abilities or talent points that are available to you. A small, but very useful reminder.

Similar tips have also been implemented in some of the quests (missions you complete in the game). Apart from tips and hints in the quest instructions, you now also get easy to follow tips as you do the quest. For instance, tips on the procedure needed to complete the quest: 1) equip the lance, 2) now mount the bird, 3) ok, now click the button to flap the wings and make the bird fly! Easy to understand, and displayed just when you need it; you're not told how to fly the bird unless you've got your lance ready and have saddled up the bird.

Sounds simple, yes? So why don't we display tips like that in our online learning environments? "Stuck on the task? Head to the forum and ask for help!" And by the way, by tips I don't mean a whole set of complex instructions; we all know few people read the manual. By tips I mean simple to understand one line suggestions on what you should do next. For example, "Don't forget to replace the lance with your main weapon after you've completed the quest!"

Challenges you care about

While they are still many "Kill n of X, so I can make Y" quests in Cataclysm, you now often get quests that are more meaningful and more fun to do. For instance, one of the quests asked me to climb a tree, pick up the young bear cubs stuck in the trees, climb to the top, and toss them on a trampoline, so they can return to safety. I've got to admit I wanted to keep saving the cubs even after I saved the required amount for the quest!

What makes this quest great is that players can easily relate to the theme. You surely don't want to leave adorable bear cubs stranded in the trees, do you? The quest isn't just something you have to do to get more experience points, but something you want to do because you care about the bears (and because it's fun to climb trees).

Similarly, we're all more willing to learn about things we care about. And we care about things that are relevant to us, about things that touch us on an emotional level. And that can be achieved by telling great stories. Not stories like "Annie has 6 marbles and loses 2, how many does she have left?" (who the hell is Annie and why should I care?), but stories that capture our imagination, that get us involved. How do I save the bears? Won't they get hurt after I toss them on the trampoline?

Making the player feel part of something bigger

Games have always done a great job at making players feel special. You're the hero, the future of the world is in your hands; only you can save the princess! And WoW has always emphasized the importance of your actions through quests texts and interactions with various non-player characters in the game. But in Cataclysm, there is even more emphasis on making your storyline personalized (using phasing technology), especially in the starting zones that you go through as a new character.

The experience of starting a new worgen character is a great story on its own, told over and over again for each new player. You start as a human character, helping your people defend your city, which is under attack by the savage worgen beasts. As you're trying to get more help, you get bitten by one of the creatures, and at one point, you find yourself in jail, accused of turning wild. The world changes around you and the non-player characters help you to fill in the story of what's going on.

Similarly, as a high level player you are told to take a mercenary ship that will take you to one of the new continents of the expansion. While you wait for the ship to arrive, a group of Stormwind soldiers chatters around you about the recent world events, the Cataclysm. And just by listening to the soldiers, you can learn about what's new and about Deathwing, the dragon that is the cause of all the changes brought by Cataclysm.

It doesn't feel like homework, like something you have to do. You just casually listen in to the conversation the characters around you are having. It feels authentic, and it makes the Cataclysm story seem more believable, more tangible.

And a meaningful narrative is often what we fail to convey in online learning environments. We provide students with a series of resources and activities that will supposedly guide them to achieve the desired learning outcomes, but it's usually all boring, disconnected from reality, just an endless to-do list... Well, it isn't learning if it isn't hard, right? Well, no, I believe there must be a way to place fun and learning in the same bag.

Being an active member of the group pays well

Speaking of making the player feel special; Cataclysm also introduced a guild leveling system. Guilds (groups of players) now get experience points through various activities by their members. As a guild levels up, its members can get special perks and abilities. In order to use guild abilities, you have to build up your reputation with your guild by being an active player. So basically, it pays well to be loyal and active in your guild.

WoW Guild (source: WoWCataclysm.net)

Compare that to how groups usually work in our classes. Students, who do nothing, often get rewarded by choosing an active group that covers up for the inactive "player". Sucks, right? Well, it could be fixed if we also measured a student's "loyalty" to the group, just like in WoW. Unless you contribute enough, you just can't get the group perks (i.e. a good grade), so you're encouraged to play nicely with others and complete group tasks.

But my class just can't compete with WoW ...

I know what you might be thinking - it's easy to talk about having fun in immersive games like WoW, but making learning fun is just too difficult. Well, guess what? Making games fun isn't an easy job either! Good game design is both science and art that is difficult to master, and it takes tons of trials and errors to get it just right. WoW has been around since 2004 and in every expansion you can see big, gradual improvements in game design.

So, what I'm suggesting is that we find better ways to apply the lessons learned by game designers to our online learning environments and instructional design. E-learning will probably never be as fun as playing WoW, but can't we all just try a little harder to make learning a bit more engaging than flipping through sleep inducing "interactive" courseware, and to start telling our students meaningful stories? Perhaps we won't be saving bear cubs in class, but there are many other missions we all care about and can teach us about what we need to know along the way.

And it doesn't need to be in 3D or full immersive environments. With a little imagination and clever game design I suspect we could turn our boring text-centered Learning Management Systems into Learning Experience Enabling Technology - LEET systems. We all know many teachers are great storytellers; we just need to find a way to enable them to tell better stories online as well.

Related posts:

Improving student engagement with game mechanics and a smart progress bar

Sharable Bits: The Mystery of Life, Firefox Cuteness, Winter Running

2010-12-04T11:35:00.001+01:00

Discovery: Life built with toxic chemicals

Mono Lake Research area (source: NASA)

Why it's worth sharing: When NASA announced a press conference about a new discovery related to astrobiology, many were hoping for a confirmation of extraterrestrial life. The actual news wasn't as huge as expected - they found a bacteria living on arsenic right on our home planet - but it's still significant because it shows how little we actually know about life and how much we tend to assume. I certainly hope the discovery encourages us to keep looking further into space and deeper into our own planet.

More about the discovery:

News: Mozilla project protects the open web and endangered species with cuteness

Why it's worth sharing: Helping the open web and the insanely adorable red pandas all at once - what's not to like? :) Great initiative by the Mozilla Project that uses cuteness to remind us about the importance of preserving biodiversity on our planet. So, hop on to FirefoxLive.org for a good dose of cuteness and help spread the word about this awesome project!

Idea: Walking and running on snow made safer

Winter arrived early this year with a big bag of snow. Sure, it's a nice view from the window when you don't have to go out, but snow quickly turns into an issue if you're planning on running outdoors throughout the winter. Luckily I found the perfect solution: YakTrax Pro ice grips that help prevent slipping on packed snow and can be worn on any regular shoe.

Why it's worth sharing: The most simple ideas can sometimes make a big difference. Not as big of a news as the NASA discovery or endangered species preservation, but nonetheless a great tool that will help me stay fit and healthy during the dark, cold winter. Staying in and being cosy is so tempting that I welcome anything that makes going out a bit easier. I'm actually looking forward to all the snow runs now!

Sharable Bits is a series of weekly posts that will highlight some of the most interesting bits and bytes that I stumble upon. No bad news, just ideas that inspire, touch or entertain in a unique way.

Sharable Bits: Healthy Computer Use, Technology in Education, Magic iPad Fiddle

2010-11-27T14:04:00.000+01:00

Blog post: Eye health in a digital world

5 Important Tips for Better Eye Health in a Digital World

Why it's worth sharing: A good reminder that there are several tools and approaches we can use to avoid health issues related to the use of digital devices. And as someone with several vision problems, I pay extra attention to what we can do to protect our vision. The blog post provides great starting tips, especially the one about taking regular breaks and remembering to blink (sounds obvious, but it isn't when you are engaged in an epic game battle or get caught in the flow). A tool I often like to use is Time Out, a simple break reminder app for Mac OS X.

Blog post: Technology in Education

8 Ways Technology Is Improving Education

Why it's worth sharing: A great showcase of technology use in education that work and are simple to understand. Always handy to have such lists ready when talking to technology skeptics, who think of anything digital as pure evil. Especially with the media habit of presenting the digital risks before the benefits. The recent NYTimes article Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction does explore both sides, but the headline is still all about distraction. Isn't it time to challenge that perception?

Video: Fiddle Quartet on the iPad

Why it's worth sharing: Seeing phones and tablets turned into music instruments with the help of magical mobile apps never stops to amaze me. And I can't wait to get an iPad just to try Magic Fiddle, the latest app from Smule (developers of Ocarina), which turns your iPad into a fiddle. Isn't it great to have a single, affordable device that works as dozens of instruments? I sure do hope it brings the joys of playing musical instruments into the hands of more people.

Related posts:

Smule adds Magic Fiddle to its Ocarina and Magic Piano apps (the story behind Smule's success)
10 Terrific iPhone and iPad Musical Performances (more iPad/iPhone music magic)

Sharable Bits is a series of weekly posts that will highlight some of the most interesting bits and bytes that I stumble upon. No bad news, just ideas that inspire, touch or entertain in a unique way.

Don't be afraid to break the "rules"

2010-11-24T18:24:00.001+01:00

We often get caught in thinking about the right and wrong ways of using tools like presentations, blogs, Twitter, and what not. Sure, it helps to know what mistakes to avoid - death by PowerPoint anyone? - but that doesn't mean you have to limit yourself to the "10 rules of [insert sticky title]".

A great example: meet Travis Isaacs, user experience designer. He uses Keynote, a presentation software, to create wireframe prototypes for websites. Wait, what?

That's certainly not in any rulebook or manual, but it sure works. And Travis even figured out how to turn his approach into a product (more about that on Mashable: Essential Web Design Advice From a Wireframing Master).

Somehow that reminds me of a quote from the movie Pirates of The Caribbean:

Elizabeth: You have to take me to shore! According to the Code of the Order of the Brethren—

Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement, so I 'must' do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the Pirate's Code to apply, and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner!

So, the next time you discover a fancy list of rules for using this and that, think about whether the rules apply to you (are you a pirate or are you a ninja?) and whether it would be helpful to improvise and invent new rules. Think of the usual ways of using a tool as guidelines, not rules. Sometimes a little hack goes a long way!

Sharable Bits: Rethinking Innovation, Attention and Social Games

2010-11-21T16:16:00.002+01:00

Idea: Rethink the status quo by looking at the big picture

"Facebook to launch e-mail killer" - a popular headline on tech blogs before this week's Facebook special event dedicated to their Messages service. But luckily, Facebook didn't listen and didn't launch (yet another) e-mail service. They tried to think about the way we communicate in a different way. Let's take a look at the simple idea behind the new Messages with social inbox:

Why it's worth sharing: Revolutionary design of a new product or service usually happens when you look at everything you know with a fresh perspective. It's not about adding a long list of features, it's not about pleasing the tech crowd. It's about figuring out what works and what people need (not say they want). And while Facebook doesn't always get things right, they do have the guts to think outside the box and seem to have a real passion about enabling stronger connections among friends. Kudos for that!

Idea: What are you doing to deserve the attention?

Ewan McIntosh uses a dialog from the movie The Social Network to remind us that we often assume we have (or deserve) the attention of our students, colleagues, and other audiences. Let's take a look at this great clip from the movie:

Why it's worth sharing: Stop assuming people will listen or care about what you have to say just because you're talking. Be prepared to earn the attention, trust and respect from your listeners. And that means not just caring about what you're talking about, but being prepared to present your message in a way that is relevant to the listeners. Want a good case study? Head over to Danah Boyd's blog and read about why “Bullying” Has Little Resonance with Teenagers.

Blog post: Social Games are here to stay

Cracking the Mainstream: Why Social Gaming Is More Than Just a Fad | Mashable

Why it's worth sharing: It's popular to dismiss the success of social games like FarmVille as a fad. But, as Ravi Mehta points out in his Mashable post, social games fill an important niche in the social web and are evolving with new approaches to social fun. And here's my favorite quote from the post:

"Throughout the history of entertainment media, content has been developed in short and long formats. Five hundred page novels, full-length feature films and television mini-series coexist harmoniously with blogs, 30-minute sitcoms and two-minute YouTube videos. Why? Because each format serves a different purpose and, without subsuming the other formats, manages to engage users in unique ways and for different reasons."

Sharable Bits: Living on Facebook, Buildings coming alive, Work smarter

2010-11-12T14:30:00.001+01:00

On Sharable Bits: I decided to start a series of weekly posts that will highlight some of the most interesting bits and bytes that I stumble upon. No bad news, just ideas that inspire, touch or entertain.

Video: A life on Facebook

Why it's worth sharing: A life story told through Facebook status updates. Great music, great execution, the video makes you wonder about how our lives are seen through Facebook. On a related note, it's worth reading about why some teens deactivate their FB accounts every time they log out to keep total control of what their friends post about them. Facebook as a perfect, edited record of our lives?

Video: Buildings coming alive with 3D projections

Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Projection on Vimeo.

Why it's worth sharing: Though an article on Mashable I came across the amazing work by NuFormer, a company that does incredible life-like 3D projections on buildings. It's mostly commercial work for various corporate clients, but I think their approach to bringing buildings alive is just awesome. It's great how their technology fits right in with the architecture of various building and how it adds another layer of experience to familiar object. I really hope to see/experience one of their projections live someday.

Idea: Working smarter not harder

Clive Shepherd reminds us that working harder is not always better, what matters is working smarter. He also shares the quote by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson from ReWork:

"Not only is workaholism unnecessary, it’s stupid. Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more."

(... more exerpts from ReWork)

Why it's worth sharing: It's good to remember that recharging your batteries now and then is ok. Don't get caught into the state of super busy, in which never ending meetings, shuffling papers and e-mails keep you busy, but don't allow you to get any real work done. Stop for a minute, think, breath, and figure out how to work smarter.

7 things I love about Evernote

2010-08-25T15:18:00.007+02:00

In the Web 2.0 era I don't really use a lot of desktop applications anymore - everything is on the web, right? But there is one application that I just can't imagine living without (even though you can also use it on the web): Evernote.

You might have heard of Evernote before - after all, it now has over 4 million (very happy) users. At its hearth, Evernote is a simple note taking app that works on almost every computer, phone and mobile device out there, and can instantly sync your notes across all your devices. You can use it as a repository for all your ideas - not just in shape of simple text notes, but also as webpages, photos, audio recordings and various files. For a nice overview of the service, check out the intro video below:

How can you not love a service that includes hard working cloud elephants? ;) If the video hasn't convinced you to give Evernote a try yet, here is my list of 7 things I love about Evernote:

1) Available anywhere

I love the fact that I always have access to Evernote, regardless of which computer or mobile device I'm using. And with the desktop version, I don't even have to be online to work with Evernote (very useful on train trips!). Most of the time, I use the Mac OS X desktop version, but I sometimes check notes on my Android phone or iPod Touch. And yes, there's also a Windows version, a web version and custom applications for major smartphone platforms (see the list of available downloads).

2) Free for basic use

Oh, did I mention it's free? You don't have to pay for basic use or any of the apps. But in case you need more space or want awesome features like Note history, you can go Premium for $5/month or $45/year. I'm still using the Free version, which has plenty of space for all my text notes, but I'm thinking of going Premium just because I find the service so useful.

3) Capture ideas, prepare them for publishing

With Evernote I finally have a single place to store all my ideas and little notes. No more sticky notes all over the desk, no more .txt files on the desktop, just one app. And I also find it great for transforming ideas I collect into drafts that I can move to blogs, text editing software etc. for final design and publishing. And yes, I also wrote the draft for this post in Evernote and only moved it to Blogger when it was nearly finished. I really prefer to write in the simple, clutter free Evernote window - I usually double click the note I'm working on and leave just that note window open.

4) Easy sync

I always use Evernote to take notes on my laptop during meetings. No more wasted paper and illegible hand written notes! And if you still need to draw something on paper or whiteboard, you can just take a picture of that and add it to your Evernote meeting note. The best part is getting home after meetings to find the latest notes already waiting for me on my desktop computer. In other words, no extra time needed to sort and read through notes, as I can start working right within Evernote.

5) Image recognition in the cloud

The cool part is that Evernote is not just a simple backup service for notes. In fact, the Evernote elephants in the cloud also do image recognition on any photos you add, so that it's easier for you to find your stuff. You can for instance use Evernote to scan and save images of business cards and Evernote makes sure all the text becomes searchable.

6) Different ways to search and sort

There are many different ways to sort notes in Evernote. I like to create new notebooks for major projects or areas of interests, and you can use tags to sort your notes even further. I must admit I'm pretty sloppy when it comes to using tags, but that's ok - Evernote doesn't mind that, and helps me find what I'm looking for through Search.

7) The magic Evernote Trunk

And if you're looking for ways to improve Evernote, look no further than into the Evernote Trunk! The Trunk, also accessible from the desktop applications, is basically a showcase of apps that work with Evernote and can enhance your Evernote experience. The Trunk has only been launched this summer, so I'm really looking forward to seeing more apps added in the future.

Nearly perfect for remembering everything

The only two feature requests I have for Evernote are better sharing/collaboration options within the desktop app and color coding for notes. But other than that, I really think Evernote is a great product that is simple, yet incredibly flexible and usable in all sorts of situations.

So, if you're not using Evernote yet, I suggest you give it a try and see how it works for you. Keep in mind that there is no right or wrong way to use it - be creative and start adding your ideas in any format into your digital notebooks. And if you're looking for new ideas on how to use Evernote, check out the Tips and Stories section on the Evernote blog.

If you've got any good Evernote tips, let me know in the comments!

Imagining a mobile Moodle

2010-05-23T00:03:00.000+02:00

For this year's 4th International Slovenian MoodleMoot I decided to explore the efforts being made to bring Moodle to mobile devices. I found several interesting projects in this field, although I think we're just starting to explore all possibilities, and that more interesting developments will follow in the next few years, especially when teachers start experimenting with things like geolocation, augmented reality and resources that can interact with sensors on mobile devices.

The main goal of my paper and presentation was to invite teachers to think about possibilities that mobile devices can offer for education and the ways we could embed mobile learning in Moodle, a well established Learning Management System.

Here's the abstract from my paper Taking Moodle Out of the Classroom: Making Learning Mobile, Context-Aware and Fun:

"Mobile devices are becoming increasingly more powerful, better connected and are able to provide better user experience and new services based around location and context of users, which opens new possibilities for learning. The paper presents an overview of mobile learning and the efforts being made to provide better support for mobile devices and learning activities/resources in Moodle. In conclusion we also present some future trends in mobile computing that could also provide new ways of learning on the go."

You can see a video of my presentation at the conference on YouTube (total length 15 min):

And if you'd like to learn more about the topic, you can read my full paper on Scribd:

Having Fun and Getting Fit: An Overview of Exergames

2010-05-11T21:56:00.002+02:00

With the arrival of Eye Toy for Playstation 2, the widely popular Nintendo Wii, and the upcoming release of Project Natal for Xbox, the term exergaming - the use of video games as a form of exercise - has started gaining popularity. But how effective are these games? Can you really get fit by playing, let's say, Wii Sports?

It's been a while since I've embarked on a quest to find the best exergame aka geek friendly exercise, and throughout the course of my journey I've tried out many different games (mainly on Playstation 2 and Nintendo Wii), so I thought I'd do a little overview of what you can expect to gain from different types of exergames.

Casual Exergames: Lots of Fun with Friends

Examples: Wii Sports, Mario Cart Wii

Most Wii games fall into this category and I would also include games supposedly more focused on exercise, like Wii Sports. These games count on a limited amount of moves, and you don't even have to invest a lot of effort into the right moves to make it through the game. The focus is on fun rather than burning calories and these games usually won't hold your attention for long.

So, don't be fooled by the Sports in the title; these games won't really prepare you for any real sport, but the plus side is that they really are a lot of fun to play when you're having friends over!

Medium Intensity Exergames: Balancing Fun and Exercise

Examples: Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), Eye Toy Kinetic, We Cheer, Wii Fit

The games in this category can be quite demanding, especially if played on higher difficult levels, although they sometimes don't get your whole body moving (for instance, We Cheer is mostly a good exercise for your arms). But be prepared to spend a lot of time navigating menus, choosing exercises, songs and what not. Also, be prepared to invest some time in making sure your moves are detected properly, which can be quite frustrating and can spoil your immersion in the game. However, if everything works fine, these games provide a lot of fun and some exercise, but a lot of time is lost on pointless tasks (and if you're out of luck, a cumbersome navigation through menus).

The bottom line is: if you invest enough energy in these games, they can make you sweat, but you have to play these games a whole lot (read: at least an hour per session) before getting any real results.

High Intensity Exergames: Emphasizing Exercise

Examples: My Fitness Coach (Wii)

Interestingly enough, the highest intensity exergame I found for the Wii doesn't even use the motion sensing abilities of the Wiimote or the Wii Balance Board. It's just a continuos exercise routine that really gets you moving around. It's up to you to make sure you're doing the right thing, but if you're interested in getting fit, you should have the motivation for that anyway. What I like about My Fitness Coach is that you only have to choose the duration and daily focus of your workout, and everything else is done for you. No wasting time on menus, you're just asked to assess the difficulty of the workout after completing major sections, so that the next workouts can be adjusted accordingly. A great feature is also that you are asked to do a Physical Challenge every 10 workouts, so you can really track how your workout affects different parts of your body.

All in all, My Fitness Coach is a real exercise that will can have real effects on your fitness level if you decide to stick with it. And it's a nice way to get prepared for more difficult forms of exercise if you're starting from scratch.

Leaving the Game Consoles: Nothing Beats the Real Deal

Examples: Nike+

Not surprisingly, at the end of my exergame journey I came to the conclusion that nothing beats the real deal: going out and running. But as a true geek I wasn't prepared to settle for a workout without gadgets, so I decided to give Nike+ iPod Sports Kit a try. While it's not a true exergame, it's a great gadget that can keep you motivated and provides real-time feedback during your runs. After every run, I love to see how the latest run compares to previous ones, compete in different online challenges with or against other runners and set personal goals to beat.

As you can see from my profile, I haven't been using Nike+ for long, but I find it very easy to decide to go for a run after seeing how close I am to a goal or how other runners are beating my distance. Nike+ brings elements of games to real exercise and that I think is the winning combination.

Exergames: Easy Start and a Filler Activity

So, what exactly is the role of exergames then? Are they worth it?

If you're looking for something that will help you to get up from the couch, I'd suggest starting with some of the Medium Intensity Exergames I listed and then progress to Higher Intensity or outdoor activities. Having fun can really make you appreciate exercise and I found less intensive games like Wii Fit to be a great way to get used to regular workouts, but you'll probably soon feel the desire to progress to something more demanding (especially if you want visible results).

Apart from providing an easy start, exergames can also provide you with an exercise option on days when you feel like taking a little break, but still want to workout. For example, my current workout routine includes Nike+ running around 3 times a week and My Fitness Coach in between to strengthen specific body muscles. And when I just feel like having fun, a dose of We Cheer can also provide some light exercise.

To sum it up: exergames do have some positive effects, but don't rely on exergames alone to get fit. I can certainly recommend using them as a fun way to encourage and maintain regular exercise - but don't forget that there are also gadgets like Nike+ that can make serious outdoor activity more enjoyable.

Facebook News Feed and Social Games: How to Manage the Spam?

2010-03-31T17:56:00.003+02:00

One of the most important things for a pleasant Facebook experience for you and your friends is knowing how to manage your Wall and News Feed, which I suspect is not something that a lot of Facebook users know how to do well. That's why I decided to share some tips on how to deal with "spam" created by social applications and games like FarmVille and how to peacefully coexist with your friends whether you're a social gamer or not.

How not to spam all your friends while enjoying social games

Let's start with some tips for social gamers. Our favorite social games would like nothing more than let all of our friends know how much fun we're having in the game. And while we appreciate the treasures our friends post to our News Feed, we also have friends who just don't see the appeal of farm life and similar hobbies (yet!). So, what can you do if you want to keep sharing lost animals, eggs, fuel and what not with your game friends, but at the same time don't want to spam your friends who hate the game?

The solution is pretty simple: use Friend Lists. Friend Lists can be created and managed by choosing Edit Friends from the Account menu (top right). Once you create your game list, you can add your game neighbors to that Friend List and whenever you're prompted to publish something on your wall, make it visible only to your game friend list. For instance, I have a Friend List for all my active FarmVille neighbors and whenever I post something, I make sure only people on that list get to see it:

Step 1: Before Publishing a story, click on the privacy lock and select "Customize"

Step 2: Select "Specific People" in the "Make this visible to" drop-down menu and start typing the name of your game specific Friend List;

Save Settings and you're ready to Publish your update

Yes, it does take some time to set up the list and manually manage all posts, but on the plus side you don't have to bother your students, coworkers, clients or whoever with your FarmVille addiction (unless you want to) and you will avoid complaints about your FarmVille "spam" from friends, who haven't yet discovered the magic Hide option in the News Feed (more about that in a minute). But don't forget to check back on your game Friend List(s) once in a while to add your new game buddies or remove friends that have stopped playing the game.

Another helpful thing you can do if you don't want to see your profile Wall cluttered with various game updates, is to prevent games from publishing short stories on your wall. You can do that by choosing "Application Settings" from the "Account" menu (top right). Find your application on the list, click on "Edit Settings" and check the "Additional Permissions" tab in the box that opens.

I love you FarmVille, but please don't spam my wall:

I always uncheck the "Publish recent activity" option for games

Bonus tip: don't spam all your friends with game invites. Send invites only when you really think a certain person is going to enjoy the game or application you are playing. And don't send various in-game gifts to friends that are not playing your game!

How to hide or block unwanted apps your friends play

Ok, and what can you do if you just can't stand the spam your friends publish through various Facebook applications? Don't worry, there's no need to remove all your friends or quit Facebook; just make good use of the "Hide" button in your News Feed.

Hiding apps (or people) you don't want to see in your News Feed is easy: hover over one of the posts you don't like, and click on the "Hide" button that appears in the top right corner of the post. You then have two options:

hide all News Feed posts from your friend that posted the update or
hide all News Feed posts from a certain app.

You can unhide friends/pages/applications by clicking on "Edit Options" link at the right bottom of your News Feed.

And if you have a very insistent friend, who keeps sending you requests for an application you're just not interested in (or if you're trying to recover from a game addiction), don't forget that you also have the option to completely Block an application. Just visit the application page and click on the block link to never see or receive anything from that application again.

"Block Application" option on an application page

I hope these tips can help you enjoy Facebook more and prevent your game addictions get in the way of your friendships or even reputation :) If you have any other tips or suggestions, feel free to share them in the comments. And make sure to enjoy your games without spamming your friends!

Second Life isn't dead, but it's a niche

2010-01-06T18:59:00.001+01:00

Lately, some articles wondered about what had happened to Second Life, the virtual world that had a quite intensive hype period in 2007 and 2008. Usually, these articles follow a similar pattern: a journalists revisits the "lost" virtual world, isn't really impressed by what he/she sees. The article is then followed by a few comments by average visitors, who tend to agree with the journalist, and then the Second Life community discovers the article and start defending their world with examples of great projects being done in Second Life and sooner or later accuse the journalist of not going to the right places and not taking enough time.

Second Life is a niche

Well, here's the thing: I did spend a lot of time in Second Life, met many, many wonderful people in there, and I know what great things people are doing there. So I hope I can add my 2 cents into the debate from a fair perspective. If you ask me, SL certainly isn't dead, and it is in fact doing quite well from a business perspective. But I also think it's fair to say that it is a niche service. It's great for content creators, artists, musicians, it's great for people with enough patience and perseverance to put up with the lag and other technical issues. But it's awful for the average internet user, and I must confess that I'm also having difficulties with finding reasons to log in other than to read and respond to the occasional message or notice.

Yes, you can attend many wonderful events, see a lot of great art etc.. But only if you are prepared to spend a lot of time troubleshooting various technical problems. Have meetings? Yes, but only with people already using SL. In all these years I haven't managed to convince a single friend to try out SL, and believe me, I tried!

Doing one thing really, really well

I think the main problem with Second Life is that it can do almost everything, but that it doesn't do anything really, really well, but at the same time it has a huge learning curve. On the other hand, a more limited virtual world like World of Warcraft is really good at keeping its users engaged and entertained for hours and hours. No, you can't have your own house or design your own clothes in there, but nonetheless you have a lot of fun! And I must confess that lately I prefer killing Murlocs in Azeroth (and paying for it!) to waiting for the newest Second Life wonder to load.

My lil' gnome mage (right) might not have custom hair or skin like my SL avatar (left), but she's more fun to hang out with

A lot of potential, but not there yet

Now, don't get me wrong. I still do believe that virtual worlds have a lot of potential, potential for education, potential for doing business. But I can't teach if my students have to spend hours just to start feeling comfortable in a new environment, and I can't do business meetings without having any of my business partners in-world. I would love to do all that, to save all of us the environmental and other costs of travels, but I can't.

So, while there is a lot of potential, there isn't a virtual world that fully uses it - at least not for the average user, who isn't willing to spend hours learning a new piece of software.

Who is going to reinvent virtual worlds?

And that is why I'm still waiting for someone that will be able to reinvent virtual worlds in such a way that it will be easy and nice to have classes in-world or business meetings. And at this point I'm not sure Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, will be able to pull that off. M Linden is no Steve Jobs. And what we need is an iPhone of virtual worlds. Something that will be so intuitive, so sexy that everyone will want a piece of it. Something with an awesome user interface that is able to provide a great user experience. That's the one thing my ideal virtual world should do really, really well.

And while I'm running out of patience for Second Life's technical woes, I still believe that someday something that reinvents virtual worlds will come along. Perhaps it will be some sort of augmented reality application or something entirely new. I don't know, but I can wait for the right thing.

Google Wave: First impressions

2009-11-17T21:37:00.007+01:00

I recently got my Google Wave invite* (thanks to Jure) and I wanted to share some of my initial impressions. As most of you probably know already, Google Wave is an online real-time collaboration and communication tool, which combines elements of e-mail, instant messaging, social networks and wikis (watch the overview video for more info).

It was first announced in May, with a big promise of reinventing e-mail for the 21st century. It has been in private beta for some time now, and it's been getting mixed reviews with many people marking it as overhyped. So I was really curious to try it out on my own and see if it can live up to its (big) expectations.

I've now been using Google Wave for about a week with various existing and new contacts. Currently, one big limitation is that you don't get any invites when you start using the service, so your pool of contacts is initially quite limited and therefore you probably won't be able to immediately use the tools in that many real-life situations. Overall, I still believe this tool has a lot of potential to replace many collaboration tools (don't think it will replace e-mail in the near future though), but it still needs some important features before if can go really public.

The cool features

These are the main things I like about Wave:

the basic functions are quite easy to use and understand (although I was already familiar with the basic philosophy and interface from watching the hour long developer preview),
easier to use than wikis because of a familiar e-mail like interface,
the ability to collaborate in different ways,
adding links with the Google Search function is really cool,
you can get a lot of additional functionality with Wave extensions like the Mind Map gadget shown below.

Using the Mind Map Gadget in a wave: the initial mind map was created by me, other participants were able to add and vote on the elements

The missing features

And here are the main things that I don't like:

you can't add new Wave extensions with one simple click (here is how you do it - ouch!),
embedding waves on the web should be as easy as embedding YouTube videos,
as a wave creator, you should have more control over who can edit your waves and in what way (currently every wave participant can edit everything in a wave),
when using Wave you're always shown as online to your contacts and there's nothing you can do about it,
participants in the same wave can see what you're typing in real-time and you can't change that; real-time typing is useful in some cases, but not always (a good thing about e-mail is that you can rethink and rewrite your message before it gets sent out),
you should be able to organize contacts into groups,
the ability to edit blips in a wave and adding in-line comments isn't very intuitive or easy to use, so most people just keep adding replies at the end of the wave, which easily turns waves into noisy chatrooms; as my friend Angela said in a wave conversation: "It's the same as IRC but with rich content",
you can't delete waves.

Bottom Line: Not there yet, but certainly useful in the real world

So, Google Wave provides a lot of great functions, but it lacks many privacy/permissions settings, plus a lot of features are still too difficult to use. A lot of users also complain that it can also be quite slow (especially if you add a lot of extensions in a long wave). But let's not forget that Wave is still in beta, so I hope that some of the main annoyances get fixed before it opens up to the public. I browsed through Product Ideas for Google Wave today, and I think most users agree on the basic improvements that Wave needs.

Even though my list of missing features isn't short, I'm still a Google Wave believer and can't wait to try it out in the real world. For example, I really like the idea of using Google Wave at conferences and in classrooms or the ability to use Google Wave widgets in Moodle courses (I'm also looking forward to an activity module for embedding whole waves into Moodle).

Links that can get you started

If you're just getting started with Google Wave and still feeling a bit lost, I suggest you check out the 5 minutes overview of 15 key Google Wave features and Mashable's Google Wave Complete Guide. If you're on a Mac, you can also try out Waveboard, a desktop app for Google Wave. Personally, I keep Waveboard always open, so I can see when new waves or changes are made. And there is also Waver, an Adobe AIR Wave client, which works on all operating systems.

Let me know about your first impressions in the comments or let's talk about it in Google Wave! (my username is alja.sulcic (at) googlewave [dot] com)

* Sorry, don't have any invites to send out yet, will tweet when I do.

The power of the unexpected

2009-10-26T17:56:00.004+01:00

We're all naturally curious beings, but our day to day lives often get stuck in predictable routines that can dull our minds. And what's a great way to wake up our curiosity? The unexpected. Something that makes us pause and wonder, something that requires us to reconsider what we know about the world.

Like the company that added the ability to hear a duck quack when calling their toll-free number. Or The Fun Theory initiative, which among others included the world's deepest bin to motivate people to throw garbage into the trash bin. Take a look below and pay attention to people's reactions.

I love this example because it shows a lot of people inspecting the bin, trying to figure out how it works.

And that makes me wonder why is there so little of such wonder in our schools? The place, where such behavior should be expected; the people in the video above show a very clear desire to understand the bin, to learn why it behaves in an unexpected way. Do our students have such a desire to learn in our schools? And if not, what can we do to bring the unexpected and the wonder in our schools?

Helping people find answers

2009-09-22T19:34:00.006+02:00

My experience with teaching online courses (and participating in various online communities) has led me to believe that there are three basic groups of people when it comes to finding answers to their questions:

Social learners: people who prefer finding answers by asking other people.
Resource learners: people who prefer finding answers on their own using any available resource.
Passive learners: people who prefer waiting for answers to find them.

We can be part of a different group in different settings, although usually people tend to have a preference for one of the groups. And why do I find this important? I think it's important to be aware of how people prefer finding solutions to their problems when you're trying to teach people or provide technical or other types of support. And be willing to accommodate differences in their favorite approach. This is especially important in an online setting, where there's a spatial and often a time barrier when you're interacting with your students, colleagues or clients.

What the first group, the social learners, needs the most is an easy way to ask other people their questions. Provide them with different channels, make yourself available. And if you want them to keep asking questions, you have to make sure they get their answers in a reasonable time frame and that the answers provide enough information value and that they don't make the person feel bad or even stupid for asking the question. Thank the people when they're asking questions, and try your best to answer them. And don't forget that often an honest "I don't know, I'll have to look it up." can be the right answer. Also, be prepared to answer the same questions all over again, but don't be afraid to link to previous answers when you're working in an online environment.

In a large group of people the second group, the resource learners, can also help you provide the right answers for social learners. Resource learners often like the challenge of an open question and will gladly share what they've learned on their own to help out their peers. Just take a look at Twitter or Yahoo! Answers. What you can do to help resource learners solve their problems more effectively, is providing a lot of different resources, which should be easily accessible and searchable.

The most difficult group to deal with are the passive learners. They tend to solve problems by following what others do, find answers that are not related to the question or simply walk away. Different circumstances can make an individual a passive learner, such as lack of time or interest, lack of confidence when using an unknown communication tool or even fear of asking the wrong questions. They often complain when they don't achieve the expected results, but you just can't seem to be able to convince them that asking questions when problems arise can help them solve problems.

So what can we do to help passive learners? My usual approach is to provide regular directions from different angles, sometimes provide answers to questions nobody is explicitly asking, and to keep offering help. Some people just might need some time to start feeling comfortable before they start asking questions, and I try to make sure they know it's never too late to start.

But at the end of the day don't forget that you probably won't always be able to turn every passive learner into a social or resource learner. This doesn't necessarily mean that you've done something wrong or they are not successful learners. It might just not be the right time, place or circumstance for them. You can't always help everyone, but do try to find out how you can best help each individual.

The problem with workshops

2009-07-13T15:10:00.003+02:00

Here's the thing: I don't believe one or two days long workshops really work when you're trying to change the way people do something or convince them to use a new tool. These workshops are like a first date. It can go really well, you get all excited... but then, the next day, you have this urgent thing at work to do, so you don't have time to call back... and then you have another big project to plan and... oh wait, what was the workshop all about? I'll go to another one next year.

The problem with short workshops is that you usually make a good impression, but you don't develop a relationship. Sure, you might get one or two people excited enough to get involved with the subject further, but most people won't. Most people won't really get it after a day or two. They need the time and place to figure things out on their own. If there's somebody by your side immediately solving all your problems for you, you don't really learn much.

So, what do I believe in? I believe in longer lasting workshops where participants are gently guided by a tutor, but require participants to invest their time and energy in solving problems. I believe in workshops that keep participants active with regular challenges and that provide a lot of feedback for the participants. And workshops that provide some follow-up, opportunities for keeping the relationship alive even after the workshop is officially over.

For example, I recently guided several groups of teachers through a three weeks long Moodle introductory workshop delivered online, through Moodle. During that time I was there for the participants to help them get through problems on their own, and to encourage them, to let them know they were doing a great job. The time we spent together was enough to start developing a good relationship, but I also tried hard to let them know that was just the beginning: Yes, you have successfully completed the training, but this is where the real work begins. Go into your own classrooms now, and practice. And nowadays there's always a way to get more help online; either from other users or from me. The important thing is that you keep asking questions!

The thing to keep in mind here is that adopting a new tool/way of thinking (aka learning) is not an event, it's a process. And not an easy one, so don't expect to be done with it in a few hours by having people clicking together in the same room!

Google Squared - a great tool for educators?

2009-06-04T14:45:00.011+02:00

Yesterday Google announced Google Squared, a new release from Google Labs. From the official announcement: "Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet.". I've played with it for a while today, and while it might not be the best way to search for things, I can imagine a lot of great ways to use it in classrooms.

A sample Square on cloud types

The most obvious use is for teachers to use Google Squared sheets as learning materials. You can easily create a list of US presidents, african countries, renaissance artists, cats breeds, learning management systems, ... and much more. Textbooks are all full of lists, but they are static. With Squared, you can create your own list, edit rows, columns and data, and easily change the whole list whenever you want to.

The automatically generated lists are (of course) far from perfect, but that's exactly where I see the biggest learning opportunity. You can present an incomplete list to your students and have them find missing data or check the validity of the provided data. You can also have students try to create their own lists (you can even start with an empty table), save them on their Google accounts, and then compare lists with peers. Who got the data right? Is your data source reliable? I think this can be a great exercise on how to deal with online resources. And even the Squared Help page emphasizes double-checking the information in your Square! :)

Do you see Google Squared being useful in classrooms?

Virtual worlds in education and Moodle

2009-05-22T22:19:00.006+02:00

Today I'd like to share with you my recent paper about using virtual worlds in education, with a special focus on how we can use virtual worlds with Moodle. I wanted this paper to be a basic introduction to why virtual worlds are good for education, and also provide a basic overview of some of the most interesting virtual worlds/tools on the market today.

Here is the embedded version from Scribd:

Virtual worlds in education and Moodle Virtual worlds in education and Moodle Alja

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Internet & Technolog Research Virtual worlds second life

I presented this paper at the 3rd International Slovenian MoodleMoot with a live demonstration of Webline.lite (a super easy way to add avatars to any website), and I hope I managed to encourage some teachers to think about virtual worlds as a possible addition to their online courses. This year I was positively surprised to hear so many teachers using blogs and wikis in their classrooms, so perhaps next year I won't be the only weirdo talking about virtual worlds anymore :)

New Moodle Presentation

2009-03-26T18:28:00.004+01:00

It's been almost two years since I created a brief video presentation of Moodle, and now I finally took the time to update it with a new version. Initially, I just wanted to update the usage statistics, but I ended up doing a redesign, and I also added some information, so it's slightly longer than the previous version. In addition to that, the video is now available in better quality and in widescreen format. And now, without further ado, I present you the new, improved Moodle Presentation:

You can view the video presentation on YouTube, Vimeo, and blip.tv. I created the presentation in Apple's Keynote, so you can also view the slides that I used on SlideShare.

I hope you enjoy this presentation; and feel free to use it to spread the word about Moodle!

Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day

2009-03-24T13:19:00.008+01:00

If you haven't heard it yet, today is Ada Lovelace Day, "an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology". I must confess I haven't heard much about Ada before today, but I have of course heard much more about Charles Babbage, the inventor of the computer she was programming on. And that's a good indicator of how history often forgets to mention women's contributions. Let's all take a moment to remember who Ada was:

"She is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is today appreciated as the "first programmer" since she was writing programs—that is, manipulating symbols according to rules—for a machine that Babbage had not yet built. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities." (Wikipedia)

Luckily, times are changing, but women in technology (and many other fields) are still a minority, and that's why I, as a woman in tech myself, can relate to the idea of Ada Lovelace Day. For me, today is about thanking the women in our lives, who have the power to inspire us all in unique ways.

And I'm glad that it's with the help of technology that I came in touch with several women, who use technology in inspiring ways. Today, I'd especially like to thank Angela Thomas, a researcher with a unique approach to digital media, Alanagh Recreant, who is using technology to promote sustainable development, Aliza Sherman, an unstoppable web pioneer, Chris Collins, a passionate educator and community builder, and Grace McDunnough, an innovative musician and explorer of new worlds.

And, last but not least, I'd also like to thank my mom. She showed me that it's ok for women to know about technology, and she brought computers and the internet into our home at a time when these things were still considered irrelevant by most people. It was thanks to her that I practically grew up with computers and that I saw the great potential of technology from an early age.

Thank you all, and keep up with the good work!

Interested in Moodle? Find a MoodleMoot to attend!

2009-03-23T12:33:00.012+01:00

Moodle is a great open source and freely available online learning management system, but what really makes it special is the large community of teachers and administrators that are using it in many different and innovative ways. And that is why Moodle conferences called MoodleMoots (gatherings of wise Moodle users) are always great events to attend for anyone already using Moodle or trying to learn more about it. They are a great opportunity for people to share best practices and to find new connections and even friendships.

And it is with great pleasure that I'm now helping organize the 3rd International Slovenian MoodleMoot, which will take place on May 22nd in the lovely and sunny coastal city of Koper, Slovenia (my birth place!). I would like to invite you all to attend our Moot and present your experience with Moodle; and if you can't make the trip to Koper, you can even present remotely via Skype. If you'd like to learn more about our MoodleMoot, see the official Call for International Presentations.

In case the timing of our conference isn't right for you, I'd also like to encourage you to take a look at the list of other MoodleMoots that are being organized all over the world. So far I was only able to attend the Austrian Moot once, but I sure hope I get the chance to visit others as well! Moodlers are usually a really great crowd, and I'm already looking forward to seeing some great practical uses of Moodle and related tools at our Moot. I hope to see you there too! :)

P.S.: Speaking of great conferences... don't miss The Virtual World Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference this weekend (March 27-29) - it's a free conference taking place in the virtual world of Second Life.

Improving student engagement with game mechanics and a smart progress bar

2009-03-13T00:11:00.011+01:00

Keeping students motivated and interested can often be challenging; even more so when you're dealing with distance learning. There are of course several pedagogical approaches that we can use to keep students motivated, but lately I've been thinking about how we could make the tools that we already use in education more student friendly, more engaging and fun to use. And here's an idea I've been playing with in my mind lately: the integration of smart progress bars into a LMS (Learning Management System) to increase student engagement.

Progress bars on the web - nothing new

I've noticed that several websites are using progress bars to encourage users to fill out their profiles. You've probably seen this on LinkedIn or SlideShare and even in various tutorials. Another thing I've noticed is that these progress bars really work on me! Every time I see one of these I try to increase the level of completeness; I admit that it even convinced me to give out my e-mail address to a Facebook app! What is great about these progress bars is that they usually suggest the next step you should take to increase the completeness. "Want more? Add this box to your profile!" It's simple, easy to follow, and you get something new to do each time.

LinkedIn profile completeness

It's also common to show some kind of progress bars in learning activities such as online lessons. You've probably seen this too: "You've completed 80% of this lesson". Unfortunately, these progress indicators are often way too impersonal too provide anything else than plain information. And this can be quite boring. You know in advance that all you have to do is keep clicking the Next button and you'll eventually get to the end.

Integrating progress bars with smart suggestions into a LMS

Now, what if we would try to integrate the interesting type of progress bars in e-learning courses? I'm thinking about some sort of course-wide (and even site-wide) progress indicators. Let me explain what I mean.

You have an online course, and you're using a LMS; let's say Moodle (the LMS I'm most familiar with). And you have a set of activities students have to complete. Your LMS allows you to group these activities by weeks or topics. Now you also have a tool that allows you to set the connections between activities. For example, a student should first read the introductory article, then discuss it on the forums, and at the end of the week write a blog post about the subject or make a podcast about it. And let's also say that you could define a set of activities that have to be completed to unlock the next section.

Now, imagine a block that would show each student how much of the activities have been completed or how many points the student has accumulated in the current week/topic. At the bottom of the block there is a link that says: "Well done Lucy, you've completed 80% of this week activities! Click here to find out what else you can do this week." or "Great job Lucy, you've earned 80% of the available points for this topic! Click here to find what you can do next to get that perfect score!"

A sample Moodle block with a progress bar

After clicking the link, our student, Lucy, gets a list of activities that she hasn't completed yet or that she can improve. It's not necessary to show all activities; the LMS only shows activities that make sense for Lucy at that time. Just a few of activities that Lucy can do next. If we want to get really smart, we could even suggest activities that best suit Lucy's learning style. Let's say we know that Lucy likes doing podcasts, but hates writing. In this case, the LMS would just suggest Lucy to do a podcast, and leave the option of blogging out (Lucy could of course change her preferences at any time and choose from a full set of activities).

At any time in the course, Lucy can also get the info about how successful she was in previous weeks/topics and have a look at the course overall progress bar. To make things more interesting for Lucy, we focus on the overall course goal, and reward her each time she completes one with activity with another activity that bring her closer to achieving the overall goal. Lucy is also getting curious about what kind of activities she'll get to do after she completes the current section. She knows her teacher always find interesting things to read and do. And you know what? I also think Lucy has been a good student so far, so she certainly deserves a special reward each time she completes a section of activities. We can display another star next to her name, and this week she also made it on our list of top students! Hurray Lucy! You're so close to becoming the master of the course and save the princess!

Ah yes, these are all well known game mechanics, but we're currently not doing a very good job at implementing them in education, so why don't we try do engage Lucy by giving her a clear sense of achievement in each course she's taking? And if Lucy is doing really well, we might even give her the option to tell her Facebook friends about how good she is by allowing her to export some of this info into her Facebook stream.

The same principle could also be implemented site-wide. For example, upon login in her school's LMS, Lucy can see how much of the activities she completed in the current semester/year/program and receive suggestions on what activities she should do next - across different courses. If we want to get really, really smart, we can let Lucy tell us how much time she has available and suggest an activity that she can do in that amount of time or let's try to guess which subject would most suit Lucy on a Monday morning! And again, we can also take into account her learning style preferences or even what we know about her past behaviors.

Should we do it?

Showing students exactly where they are and what their next steps can/should be is very important. And I think that progress bars and smart suggestions could provide an interesting motivational tool and a powerful way to help students organize their study and follow the progress of their study or a course.

Technically speaking, integrating the progress bar in a LMS course or site shouldn't be too difficult. It might get a bit more tricky to develop a really smart suggestion system, so I don't expect to see that one soon. Right now, I'd really be happy just with a smart and personalized progress bar :)

Now, I've seen a lot of individual online activities that provide some sort of progress bar and feedback (for instance, the Moodle Lesson module), but I haven't yet come across any LMS that would provide this for the entire course or site and that would allow teachers to easily and precisely define the flow of different types of course activities. And I also haven't seen any smart suggestion systems for learning activities. Am I missing something or is this something that hasn't been done yet? Is anyone up to the challenge of implementing the described game mechanics into our courses? Let me know!

A little attention goes a long way

2009-03-09T19:26:00.006+01:00

I recently celebrated my birthday, and one of the most memorable greetings came from quite an unexpected source: the business social networking site Xing. I received an e-mail informing me that they are giving me 10 days of Premium Membership. That in itself is a nice touch, but what really brought a smile to my face was the picture of a Xing cake with my name on it that was attached to the message.

My own virtual cake! Yummy! :)

Technologically speaking, it was nothing special; it's quite simple to program a piece of software that does this for every member's birthday. But still; Xing took the time to think of a special way to wish their members a happy birthday, and it certainly worked for me. I confess that I don't even use Xing regularly, but this simple gestures has increased my appreciation for the site. An unexpected and original display of affection can certainly go a long way. Can you remember when was the last time you tried to do something different, unexpected, something personal for your customers/students/friends?

My grandpa is a blogger and doesn't even know it

2009-02-26T22:27:00.004+01:00

When I talk about social media I often mention the fact that my grandpa has a blog. Well, actually two blogs: one for his local mycological society and the other for his local pensioner organisation. It all started when his mycological society wanted a website where they could post news and announcements. I told him I would set up a website where he could post his own news. And that was it. I also created a short manual with a few annotated screenshots of the Blogger interface, so that it would be easier for him to start. And now he rarely needs my help with his two blogs; he writes and tags his posts, adds pictures from various events, and even gets an occasional comment from his peers.

Why am I writing about this? I think this is a good example of how sometimes there is no need for getting too involved with the specifics of a technology we want to adopt (or convince others to adopt). My grandpa doesn't need to know what social media or blogging is and he doesn't even need to understand how hyperlinks work because he mainly writes about real life events nobody else is blogging about. He had a need and I helped him to find the right tool for the job and provided what he needed to start. And that's where we should all start when thinking about new technologies: with the need they can help us fulfill. The tools are usually not the problem anymore. So don't be tempted to make web 2.0 (or any other shiny new technology) about buzzwords or about technical specifications. Web 2.0 is a web that enables people to share experiences easily and more effectively, and Web 2.0 is for me a web where my grandpa is a blogger.

In case you've been wondering...

2009-02-23T18:44:00.004+01:00

Yes, it certainly has been a while since I last posted on this blog. I can easily think of several reasons for this: finding micro blogging easier for sharing quick ideas and cool content, having the feeling that what I have to say has already been written more eloquently somewhere else, not finishing drafts, spending more time writing a newsletter for my company, dealing with health problems, struggling with finding the right direction and voice for this blog... and probably much more. But that's not really what I want to talk about today.

I started this blog as a personal exploration of this new medium and perhaps it's best to keep it this way. It's just one of the many channels I use to communicate with the world and right now I have no desire to have this blog as my main channel. That's why I'm not writing this post to promise to blog more regularly or to keep this blog in a certain direction. And neither am I giving up on this blog completely. I might post again tomorrow, next month or even next year; the thing is that I just don't want to worry about that anymore. I never considered myself a blogger anyway; right now I'm just somebody who enjoys writing blog posts once in a while, and I think I do a better job at sharing interesting content through my Google Reader shared items or on my recently revived tumblelog.

So, I guess I just wanted to make an announcement that this blog isn't quite dead yet, but at the same time admit that I really have no idea of what you can expect here. All I can do is to invite you to keep watching this space and watch its journey with me. Who knows, we might find something interesting along the way :)

Slovenian MoodleMoot'08 International Section Speaker List

2008-06-02T19:11:00.006+02:00

The preparations for the upcoming MoodleMoot in Koper, Slovenia are in full swing not just in real life, but also (this year for the first time!) in Second Life. Today we've just successfully installed and tested the Sloodle WebIntercom, which will make communication between real and virtual conference attendees even easier through the conference Moodle site. And we also have the list of presenters for the International Section of the conference, which will be partially broadcasted into Second Life and partially taking place in SL. Many thanks to all that agreed to present!

So here is the basic info for the international section:

2nd International Slovenian MoodleMoot 2008
Friday, June 6th, 2008

International Section – between real and Second Life®

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rockcliffe%20X/131/38/21

CET 5 PM – 6.30 PM
SLT 8 AM - 9.30 AM
(Check your time zone)

Real life

Using Moodle for the international study programme Media Production Management
dr. Peter Purg, University of Primorska, Faculty of management Koper and Institute and academia for multimedia Ljubljana

Moodling in a business school in Slovenia
dr. Viktorija Sulčič, University of Primorska, Faculty of management Koper
Alja Sulčič, Artesia Ljubljana, Slovenia

Second Life

Second Life Education: In Medius Rez
Chris Surridge (SL Christopher Flow), South Korea

Sloodle community
Giannina Rossini, UK

Sloodle 0.3 – Improving Web and Virtual World Integration
dr. Daniel Livingstone (SL Buddy Sprocket), University of Paisley, UK

Hope to see you there! :)

Slovenian MoodleMoot 2008 - Call for Presentations

2008-05-21T14:52:00.005+02:00

Today I have the pleasure to invite you all to attend or present at the upcoming Slovenian MoodleMoot. Some of you may remember me writing about last year's (first) Slovenian Moodle conference, but the big change this year is that we're making the conference more international and more accessible to a wider audience. We will be in fact broadcasting the international section of the conference live in Second Life and we're also looking for international presenters that are willing to present their experience with Moodle or Sloodle to the Slovenian and Second Life audience through Second Life. The combination of physical and virtual presentations will be the first of its kind for everyone involved, so I hope we can get the technology to cooperate ;)

And here's more info about the conference and about how international guests and presenters can get involved:

When: June 6th, 2008
Where: Koper, Slovenia; Second Life®
Deadline for application: May 31st, 2008
Contact info: cei@fm-kp.si

About the conference

Last year the Faculty of Management decided to host the first Slovenian Moodle conference (also known as a MoodleMoot) to bring together users, developers and administrators of Moodle, one of the most popular online learning management systems in Slovenia. This year we decided to make the Slovenian MoodleMoot international and invite Moodle enthusiast from all over the world to share their Moodle experience and meet with Slovenian Moodle fans. The 2nd Slovenian MoodleMoot will feature several presentations from Slovenian users, but also a real life and a virtual international section in English. The international section will be broadcasted into the virtual world of Second Life.

Call for presentations

We invite you to present your experience with using Moodle or Sloodle either at the real life conference location or in Second Life. Presenters in Second Life will be asked to use Skype during their presentation and can use presenter slides and other visualization tools. If you would like to present at the Slovenian MoodleMoot, send us an e-mail at cei@fm-kp.si by May 31st that includes:

your name (SL presenters also add your SL name) and affiliation,
chosen presentation mode (real life or Second Life),
the title and a short abstract (no more than 500 words) of your presentation,
special requirements for the presentation (if any).

Presentations should be limited to 15 minutes.

Attending the conference

You can attend the international section of the conference for free either in real life in the sunny coastal city of Koper, Slovenia or in the virtual world of Second Life (exact location to be announced). If you plan on attending the conference in Koper, Slovenia, we ask you to announce your attendance by May 31st at cei@fm-kp.si. Second Life attendance does not require prior registration.

Other info

We expect the international section to be scheduled at 5 PM CET (8 AM SLT) on Friday, June 6th, 2008. You can send additional questions about the conference at cei@fm-kp.si or post them on the conference Moodle site. For additional information about presenting in Second Life, you can also contact Alja Sulčič (SL iAlja Writer) directly in Second Life or through e-mail (alja@artesia.si).

The conference is organized by the Centre for e-learning at the Faculty of Management Koper in collaboration with Artesia, Open Source Center Slovenia, and National School for Leadership in Education.

Zemanta: making blogging fun again

2008-04-02T12:29:00.003+02:00

Blogging can be quite a time consuming activity if you want to get it just right. First, you have to find something interesting to write about, then you have to find the right words to present your point, and if that wasn't enough, you also have to find and choose suitable images, links and tags to make your post more useful for the ready and also to establish context of your post. The last part of the blogging process may seem like the easiest one, but if you've ever spent some time on linking all the names in your blog post or searching for the right image, you know that it can take away a lot of your precious time. But fear not fellow bloggers! Zemanta, a startup from Slovenia, is here to help you with a content suggestion tool for your blog posts.

The only thing you need to do, is to install their Firefox plugin (found on their website) and start writing your post on any Wordpress, Blogger, and Typepad blog (with more support coming soon, they promise). As you write, you will start seeing link ang tag suggestions, and a list of images and articles that might be relevant to your post. The good thing is that all suggested material has a Creative Commons license, so you can use it without fear of copyright infringement. You see all the hyperlinks in this post? And the related articles? I added all of that just by clicking on the suggestions provided by Zemanta's plugin as I was writing this post. I usually like to add my own custom images to my blog posts, but I really appreciate the ease of adding links to all the sites/concepts I usually mention in my blog posts with a simple click.

You can also see a demo of the Zemanta plugin in the following video:

Zemanta Blogger integration from zemanta on Vimeo.

I should mention that the technology is still in development, so it may not work perfectly all the time, but I'd suggest everyone to try it out and see if it works for you. So far, I can give it thumbs up and a big thank you for doing the time consuming job for me and for allowing me to focus on the content. I'm looking forward to see how they'll be developing their technology further and make blogging even more fun for us!

MMC island opens to the public

2008-03-25T15:52:00.006+01:00

With great joy and pride I can finally announce the public opening of my company's first major Second Life project: the MMC island. MMC island is an extension of Multimedia center, the new media department of Slovenian public broadcaster (RTV Slovenija). The main purpose of the island is to provide users with the ability to organize their own events on group owned and managed land. You can read more about the project in our press release.

You can already visit the island right now, and on Saturday, March 29th from 10 AM to 4 PM SLT we'll be having the official opening party with 6 hours of live music and other activities (including a presentation of the project in English at 1 PM SLT). Here is the promo video we made at the rehearsal party (the real one will be even better! ;) ):

So, I hope you can all come to visit our new sim, and admire the amazing builds made by Beta Technologies. We are realy looking forward to shape the image and purpose of the island with you, all Second Life users, so if you've got a suggestion of how to make the place even better, please let us know! :)

I'll try to blog more info about the island in the coming weeks (after I get some sleep :) ), so stay tuned!

metaHUD - bringing Web 2.0 to Second Life

2008-02-23T11:36:00.018+01:00

A big part of what makes Second Life so appealing for me is the ability to meet and interact with interesting people from all over the world. I've been in Second Life for over a year now and in this time I've made some great friends with whom I love to discover new places in SL, have great serendipity moments or attend various events with. And we use a lot of different tools to keep in touch - mainly Twitter and Facebook. But I often wished for an easier way to let my SL friends know about a great event going on or a great place I'm just visiting... and that is why I was really excited to discover a new Second Life tool last week called metaHUD.

metaHUD is a HUD (Head-Up Display) that you can wear in Second Life. The developers of metaHUD like to describe it as a social networking platform for Second Life that enables Second Life residents to share their Second Life with friends. It can also be used only as a search engine for SL places and products and as a shopping tool, but its real power is in allowing residents to follow and use what their friends are doing. Let's see how this is done through different parts of the HUD.

metaTravel - Travel guide

When you're wearing the metaHUD, it keeps track of your teleport history and other activities, and stores all that into your personal Timeline. Whenever you teleport to a new place, you can rate it by simply choosing a green thumbs up or red thumbs down button. If you wish, you can also tag the place to make it easier for other metaLIFE users to find it through keyword search, and you can even leave a comment about the place. If you really like the place, you can also add it to your Favorites (works similarly as the "Picks" tab in standard SL profiles).

metaFriends and metaTIME - Social life

Next, the metaHUD offers the ability to search for people. If your friends use metaHUD, you can view their Timeline, Favorites, Home location, choose to follow that person (if you follow a person, you have their updates in the Friends Timeline), and even add tags and comments to their metaHUD profile. The Timeline feature is very similar to the Facebook Mini-Feed that tells you what a friend of yours has been doing on FB - in the metaHUD the Timeline tells you what a friend has been doing in SL. Also, the ability to add comments is similar to the FB wall feature. So basically, we can now have some of the useful features of web social networking sites within Second Life!

Now, if you're a Twitterholic like me you might wonder whether there's also a way to post your status to friends. Well, you don't have a separate place in the metaHUD to answer the question What are you doing?, but what you can do is add comments to places you're visiting - and that appears in your metaHUD Timeline, so friends can easily read a comment that says "There is a great concert going on in this place!". Of course, not always the best solutions, but when I talked about this with Robbie Kiama (one of the developers), he told me that they are planning to make a RSS feed from your Timeline and add better connectivity with Twitter and similar services, which is something I'm really looking forward to!

metaStore - Shopping channel

And let's not forget that the metaHUD also lets you use the metaLIFE Meta Mart shopping system, which enables you to browse items in the Meta Mart system that are for sale (apart form an alphabetical list you also have lists of Latest, Favorite, Popular, Purchased and Free items), search for items using keywords, rate and comment virtual items (thus making it easier for other user to find good content), and you can also buy items directly from the HUD itself. Kind of what you can do on SL Exchange or Onrez, but without having to switch back and forth between the SL viewer and your browser. The shopping feature is of course very handy, and it even allows you to teleport to the actual store if you want to (something I personally miss on the web shopping sites!) and even send items as a gift to friends.

If you're a content creator, you can find more info on how to sell your items through the Meta Mart system on this page. There is also a paid Referring Partner system that can earn you some L$, but I personally haven't tried it yet.

meta-LIFE.net - Web interface

And finally, the metaHUD also generates a personal password for you, which can be used to sing in to the meta-LIFE.net site. Here you can manage your metaHUD profile and items (if you're selling your objects through the metaHUD Store), and manage your metaHUD privacy settings, so you get to decide whether your teleport info, shop history, and other actions are visible to all metaHUD users, your friends only or nobody but you.

I've been using the metaHUD for a few days and here's what I personally think are its strong points:

easy to use, the interface is consistent, and the HUD is quite fast once it loads,
great list of features (my favorite is the Friends Timeline),
customized privacy settings,
doesn't obstruct your view too much when minimized.

But of course, the product was just released and there is always room for some more improvement. Here's what's on my wish list for the next versions:

a version that can be used on the left or even top/bottom part of the screen (currently the HUD is made for the right side of the screen, which in my case is already taken by other HUDs, so it'd be great to have more choice),
the option to receive an IM when chosen actions from Friends happen,
more web connectivity (especially with Twitter),
added support for events (the ability to announce events and sign up for events).

But all in all I think the metaHUD is a great product that finally brings some Web 2.0 in-world. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on the metaLIFE team for future projects, as they really have some great ideas. Yesterday they also released metaPRESENTER, a presentation screen for SL that is controlled through a HUD. Pretty neat! You can of course get your free metaPRESNTER through the metaHUD, which you can pick up at the in-world Meta Mart location. And please, do feel free to leave a comment under this post with you opinion about the metaHUD, I'd love to hear what you think about it!

Another Second Life presentation announcement

2008-02-20T13:58:00.013+01:00

I'm having a really interesting week in Second Life: last night I was a guest speaker of a Second Life event for the first time, and today I have the pleasure of announcing another in-world appearance. Grace McDunnough, Sophrosyne's Saturday Salon guest host for this week, invited Jan (my business partner) and me to talk about our company, online communities and about what we've both learned about Second Life and virtual worlds in general. If that sounds interesting, please join us for a discussion this Saturday, February 23rd, from 1 PM to 3 PM SLT at Extropia Core. You can read the event announcement here.

If you want to know more about my presentation at ISTE last night, you can read a summary on Kevin's blog, check out the slides on SlideShare, and there are event some nice pics from the event on Flickr. If you'd like a transcript of the event (generously provided by Veritas Variscan), IM me in-world and I'll send you a notecard. And a big thank you to everyone that attended my presentation!

ISTE Speakers Series Session in Second Life

2008-02-17T16:43:00.008+01:00

Just a brief announcement and invitation: I was invited to be the guest of the next ISTE Speaker Series Session in Second Life on Tuesday, February 19, 6 PM SLT. I'll be talking about my experience of being an online tutor and I hope you can join me for a great discussion. Here's the official announcement from the ISTE Second Life wiki:

Online Tutoring Across Different Platforms with Alja Sulčič (SL: iAlja Writer)
Alja is a virtual platform expert in Slovenia working for Artesia, a small start-up focused on building virtual communities. Prior to joining Artesia she was an online tutor at the Faculty of Management Koper at University of Primorska for three years. She will be presenting about her experience as an online tutor in an online e-business course in which students were introduced to different internet technologies, from Moodle to Second Life, and about the challenges of working with emerging technologies in general. Alja is a member of the Second Life Volunteer Program, working mostly with new Slovenian Second Life users.

ISTE hosts great regular events, so you might want to check out their wiki for announcements for other events as well or check out Kevin Jarrett's blog for great posts about what's going on at ISTE Second Life HQ. I must admit I haven't yet managed to attend any of their events in person (6 PM SLT means 3 AM for me! :( ), but I've heard great things about them. So, hope to see you on Tuesday!

List of abilities and roles for Second Life groups

2008-02-04T17:45:00.000+01:00

I wish that me spending more time in the virtual world of Second Life could be a good excuse for not blogging lately, but it really isn't. Oh well, while I try to get into a blogging mood again, I've got a little something to share that will hopefully be useful to fellow SLers. I'd like to talk about Second Life group management today (and no, it's not another we-need-more-groups rant - Grace already nailed that subject better than I ever could).

Groups are a great way for two or more people to manage a parcel of land in SL for a common project, but when you need to have a larger group of users with different skills and roles, you might want to define more roles with different abilities in the group that owns your land. For example, you might not want to give less experienced users full control of objects on group owned land, but you might want to give them the ability to send out group notices.

And something similar is just what I'll soon have to do on a group owned land. As I need to carefully define the roles, I wanted to have a table outside SL with all possible abilities for roles listed. I was surprised not to find such a list, so I made one on my own. You can get the list in Excel and PDF format on Scribd.

As there are three default roles (Everyone, Officer, and Owner) in each SL group, I also marked which abilities each of the default role has. I also copied the comments for each of the ability. These comments are available in the Abilities tab under the Members & Roles tab in the Group Information window and most of them include more details and the occasional useful warnings for group owners, so you might want to read them if you're not sure what a role does. If you're new to managing SL groups, you might also want to read the Knowledge Base articles about the Group Roles and about Group Owned Land. Torley also has a great tutorial about creating groups and using the Group Information window for beginners.

And I would love to hear how you go about defining SL group roles or any good advice/best practice you have about managing group roles and choosing abilities!

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-25T13:07:00.000+01:00

I just wanted to wish all readers of this blog happy holidays!

May all of you have at least one secret wish granted in the year 2008!

Facebook - what, why, how?

2007-11-25T09:45:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know it's been awhile since my last blog post - but rest assured, I haven't forgotten about my blog, it's just that lately I've been dedicating more time to other social channels, especially Twitter and Facebook, and of course also my Second Life. I really believe that you have to get immersed in any new technology in order to really understand it and be able to figure out why it works for so many people.

I already wrote about what I believe to be the magic behind Twitter, and today I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts on Facebook. I decided to choose this subject not only because I find Facebook quite fascinating, but also because there are a lot of people out there wondering what FB is all about and what it should/can be used for. In fact, FB might seem pretty straightforward, but it can take some time to figure it out. And that is why I've decided to share my personal experience with FB.

Ok, let's just start with the basics. As you probably know, FB is a very popular social networking site, which enables you to create your profile and connect with friends. In addition to this, it has its own developer platform, which developers can use to build different applications that enable users to do more or less useful activities. Yes, these apps only work in the closed environment of FB, making the site almost some kind of web operating system that doesn't want to talk to the rest of the web on its own, but requires developers to learn its language (called FBML) to bring the magic of the web and social interactions to it. Not surprisingly, many people criticize FB for being a walled garden, and Google is now trying hard to out open social networks with OpenSocial; but for an average Joe all this is not very relevant. If you've got most of your friends on FB and a lot of fun things to do, you don't really care how it's done, so I'll discuss the OpenSocial vs FB platform (or the new FB advertising options) some other time. Today, I'd just like to focus on the user perspective about various uses of FB apps, which in my opinion are the magic ingredient that make FB so appealing to an increasing number of users (some might add: and such a time waster ;) ).

I think we can divide FB apps, and consequently FB's value for the users, in three main categories:

Self-promotion and branding: At its core, FB is a place where you can build your own profile. When we build an online profile, we create our online persona, which will be seen by our friends or even the entire world. We might not realize that, but when we fill in various profile fields or choose our profile picture, we decide how we want to be presented to the world. You might want to emphasize your professional side or your fun side; but in both cases we make a choice in how we "brand" ourselves to our public (which we can choose by limiting our profile only to contacts for example). And there are many FB functions and apps that can help us build our persona (or even our personal brand), for example: various default profile options (picture, interests, work & education info, favorite things,...), joining groups (the FB groups function is awful, but I find it useful to publicly express my interest in certain topics), labeling yourself as a fan of something (made possible by the new product pages), your choice and variety of friends, the choice of profile layout (choosing which info to make public, having your music playlist, favorite quotes or the result of a personality test displayed, ...), your FB statuses, the items that appear in our mini-feed etc.. Some people even prefer having multiple profiles for different personas (for example, a different account for their Second Life avatar). Building our FB persona can be quite a task, and a lot of people choose to use just this aspect of FB. They register, fill in the info and connect with friends, and use FB just to say "I'm online too - if you want to connect to me use my e-mail/phone number".
Social play: The next category of FB apps enables us to have fun and keep in touch with out friends. We all have busy lives, a lot of our friends live in different cities or even parts of the world, and it's often not easy to find the time or way to hang out together. And here is where FB can help: it enables us to keep in touch with friend through different social (often playful) activities. Even if you're extremely busy, you can always find a minute or two to poke your friends, throw a sheep at them, turn them into a zombie or send them a virtual pet, flower or image. All these apps help us say "I'm thinking about you" in different ways. It might look silly, but it feels nice to receive virtual cakes when you set your status to ill. We often like to say "It's the thought that counts", and I think the social play apps in FB are a great proof of that. Also, the FB news feed, which displays various news about our friends, can help us feel closer to each other as it's constantly reminding of people, telling us what they are doing and providing an easy way to interact with them ("Click here to hug your friend too"). Sure, the feed items are a great way for developers to promote their app, but it does have some positive side effects I've just mentioned.
(Social) toolbox: The last category of apps is represented by a set of utilities that can help you save time, provide useful information and even be more organized. These apps can make FB a more "serious" tool. They enable us things like checking our e-mail, collaborating on documents with friends, getting info about weather, keeping track of what time it is for our friends that live in different time zones (my latest favorite app!), displaying latest blog entries from your friends and yourself and much more. These apps are the main reason why people are considering using FB as a business tool or even an e-learning tool. It's comfortable to be able to do so many different things (from play to work) on one single site, and if we want so, we can even make our "serious" activities social by choosing to display info from utility apps on our profile, and thus provide some valuable info to our contacts (I like to use FB Posted Items for this purpose).

These categories can of course often be overlapping - for example, social play apps or social toolbox apps can be used as a branding tool, and often the line between social play and social toolbox can be a fine one. An important point to remember here is that you don't need to use every aspect of Facebook; use what makes sense to you. It's fine if you just want to create a basic profile, and it' fine if you just want to use FB as a social toolbox and ignore the play aspects.

I'd like to conclude this post with some basic Facebook tips that I hope can help you in the process of getting to know FB and finding the added value of this tool for you:

Play with FB, but make sure you've got friends to play with. Try out different apps, explore, and be curious, but try not to annoy your friends while doing that. You don't have to send out invites to ALL of your friends for EVERY app you add (there's always a Skip button!). Show your friends you care and know them by sending them invitations for apps that you are pretty sure will be interesting for them.
Take some time to adjust your privacy settings. Decide which info/activities can be public, for friends or entirely private. You can also decide whether you want your name to appear in search or not. In the future we'll have the abilities to group friends and have different profiles for close friends, professional contacts, family etc.; but until we don't, try to figure out the best way to present yourself to all the people on your contacts list. You might want consider using the limited profile contacts you don't know well. You can find all these settings under the Privacy link in the upper right corner.
Remember that you don't need to have every app you use on your profile. You can access apps from the left-hand menu or the application list. Removing an app box from your profile only will not delete the app, and you will still be able to receive gifts, bite chumps and do all the other *fun* activities. Your friends can often see your app info (for example: Linkeness score) from the app itself, so there's really no need to keep everything on your profile. I know it's not easy, but try not to overload your profile page. When I choose what I want on my profile or not, I like to think about what info I can provide to a new friend that want to get to know me better, and what info I can provide to friends that I haven't spoken in a while. So, to put it simply, take care of your persona, and remember that you can choose the visibility for each profile element. Some info are for friends only while you might want to have some available public.

But of course, this post is based entirely of my Facebook experience in the past few months, and I'm sure we all have our own story to tell. So I'm really interested in hearing your Facebook story: how and why are you using FB, and what is in your opinion the added value of FB over other social networks? Also, what do you think are the best tips you could give to people just starting with FB or people still trying to figure out what the fuss is about?

OnRez Second Life viewer & CSI:NY in SL

2007-10-25T11:53:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we were finally able to get our hands on the new OnRez viewer for Second Life that was made for a special episode of the hit show CSI New York (which was also aired last night). The viewer is available both for Windows and Mac OS X and it's got a simplified user interface and a built-it browser. If you're familiar with the existing Linden Lab's viewer you'll need some time to get adjusted to some changes. The most obvious one is the fact that you now have the Friends button in the lower right corner instead of the Inventory button - I suppose they think users will need their friends' list more often then their inventory, which can now be found under a button at the top of the screen and it's been renamed to "My Stuff" (I don't even want to comment on that). The good news is that most of the shortcuts still work, and you still have the client menu and all the advanced options (you need to manually enable the Build menu and the advanced options under the View menu).

Some of the new UI elements (the HUD is detachable)

And even better news is that we now finally have the back button (and teleport history) built-in. The home button in the upper menu bar is a bit confusing for me though - it takes me to Central park on the CIS sims, although the usual shortcut for home still takes me to my real home. But the best feature of all (at least for me) is the built-in browser. Sure, it's pretty basic (no Flash for example), but it works, it's fast, easily accessible and it seems like a better way for displaying text help files than through notecards, as web pages can of course be hyperlinked and enriched with various design elements.

Viewing my blog in the OnRez viewer

Overall I think I prefer the OnRez viewer to the Linden Lab's one. Yesterday I had some problems with textures not rezzing, but now everything appears to be ok (they already had their first update yesterday). You do get CSI pop-ups each time you run the viewer and login, but they can easily be closed. I think I'll stick with this viewer for now - mostly because of the browser.

Now, moving on to the CSI part of the story (note: until now I've never seen an entire CSI episode - I usually switch after a few minutes). Yesterday I already picked up my CSI Toolbar (a HUD) on one of the many CSI Orientation sims, walked through the orientation process, and solved my first crime. I must say the whole experience was quite pleasant and engaging. I think they made a good job of introducing the basics and they also prepared an interesting crime game. They also have nice video tutorials on the special Virtual CSI:NY site. It makes one wonder how we could make some educational sims as interesting...

Working on a crime scene with the CSI Toolbar

Anyway, I was also curious to see the CSI TV episode to see how they presented Second Life. I got the chance to see it this morning, and... hm... let me just say I've laughed out loud a few times. I don't know which world they filmed this episode in, but it only looked like Second Life if you took screenshots of the scenes. There was absolutely no lag (!), everything (especially dressing up) was done through a keyboard, no pie menus etc. Not to mention the silly gladiator game effects (there was a large audience at the event - certainly over 40 avatars - and no lag or crashing!), everybody using tools to fly, the silly comments made by most of the CSI team, and some sort of Second Life virus? Somebody's been reading Snow Crash I presume or just playing another video game. Oh well, we've all seen how hacking is usually presented in movies. But anyhow, I'm not quite sure the picture of Second Life on the show would manage to get me interested enough in SL if I were a CSI viewer that's never heard of Second Life. I mean, why would I want to go into a virtual world in which there's a tech savvy professional killer or a world in which you can get a strange virus that keeps a whole team of IT experts busy for hours to fix? I certainly hope the commercials were better than that.

Virtual crime and a game I like to call "Guess who's the sponsor of the project"

Anyhow, quite many viewer of the show were apparently intrigued by the whole thing, and at this moment we still have many CSI newbies wandering around (btw we've also got improved versions of Clint & Brandy - they come with skin, prim hair and decent clothing now ;) ). A few moments ago I re-visited some of the orientation spots and I saw a lot of confused users. Not many very talking. Maybe they just didn't realize they can use text chat - in the CSI episode they were using voice chat all the time; yeah I know, how realistic! Actually, just one newbie said hello and asked me "what are we suppose to do or where are we suppose to go?". Hm, maybe not such a good orientation after all. Maybe we should have more greeters at the starting points (I did meet one last night).

Meet the new Brandy - this defaults certainly look better than usually

I think it's still way too soon to make any final judgments on the successfulness of the whole CSI in SL thing. I'm personally glad I got a nice new viewer, but we still have to see if and how the CSI viewers will play along in this game. The Second Life grid survived last night (the load wasn't even that big), but let's wait for a few days to get more numbers and to see how many of the new users will stay in SL after they learn how the world really works.

Oh an by the way - today we have another big Second Life TV appearance on the series The Office. Oh dear. Not sure whether I should be excited or scared about that :)

Giving your Facebook profile a Second Life

2007-10-17T17:55:00.000+02:00

If you are like me, you probably have some of your Second Life friends among your Facebook friends. And until recently, we had no good way of connecting the two worlds. But now we can; and there isn't just one, but two Facebook applications that can help you with that.

Second Friends
The first app (by release order) is called Second Friends and was developed by Art Fossett (I'm using the developer's SL names in both cases). The app lets you display your avatar name and picture and a list of your Facebook friends that are using Second Friends on your Facebook profile. To use the app you need to do two things: you need to add the app on Facebook, and you need to pick up a personal key at an in-world kiosk on Eduserv island (you can reset the app and get a new key anytime).

In-world kiosk on Eduserv island for Second Friends

You can then enter the key and your avatar name in the Second Friends form in Facebook. If you got that right, the app will import your Second Life profile picture into Facebook, and you are ready to display your SL name and avatar picture (if you wish so) on your profile.

To add and check for Facebook friends that are using Second Friends, you have to go to the My Friends tab under the app, and a list of friends (including their RL and SL names) will be added to your profile. If you wish, you can also choose to display their SL profile pictures instead. The functionality of this app is pretty simple right now, but future plans include adding an in-world tool for updating your Second Friends status while in Second Life and more.

Second Life Link
The second app, Second Life Link, was developed by Fire Centaur and another developer. It enables you to display your Facebook using SL friends in a similar way to the Facebook's defalt friends' list.

The setting up process is similar to the one you have to go through with Second Friends, although it has a few extra functions. You can start the process by either adding the app on Facebook or by touching the in-world terminal in English Village.

Fire Centaur standing beside the Second Life Link terminal in English Village

In both cases you will get a personal key that you must enter either on Facebook or in-world (again, you can get another key anytime). A neat thing about Second Life Link is also the fact, that your Facebook friends get the option to register for a Second Life account on Facebook (in case they don't already have one) after adding the app. So you can also send invites for the app to Facebook friends that don't have a second life and trick them into getting one ;) After you've confirmed your identity, the app will automatically fill in your friends list with Facebook friends that are already using the app. Then you can also modify your Second Life Link profile by adding your avatar photo and one home and one favorite SL location you want to share with friends. Your SL friends will then be displayed on your profile with avatar photos and names, and if you click the See All link in the app on your profile or access the app from the left-hand menu, you can view whether your friends are online or offline in SL, and you can also teleport to their home or favorite location from Facebook.

That's how my friends using Second Life Link can see me

Second Life Link also has advanced privacy settings, as you can see from the screenshot below, so you have full control of what your friends can see/do.

Both apps are still in beta, and I'm sure both developers will welcome our feedback. Currently, I have both apps installed and appearing on my Facebook profile, because they both help me connect my Second and Facebook life in a bit different way. I'm certainly looking forward to new features of both apps; and who knows, maybe we'll soon be able to "throw a sheep at" or "poke" our friends in SL from Facebook (throwing sheep should look spectacular in SL! ;) ). But for now, I'm really excited about the fact that my SL friends can get a special place on my Facebook profile. So, if you're a Facebook and Second Life user and want to connect the two, I recommend you give both apps a try, and let me (and of course the developers) know what you like/don't like, and what features would best for future versions :)

Musings on the importance of speaking English

2007-10-08T17:28:00.001+02:00

For me, one of the important questions I always have to answer before creating any kind of content is: in which language will it be? Will it be in Slovenian (my mother tongue) or in English (the international language of the web that I've learned as a second language)? This was, of course, also a major question when I started this blog. And sometimes I really hate this question, and I hate having to choose between languages.

On one hand, writing and speaking in Slovenian is always easier for me, but by choosing Slovenian as the language for my content, I automatically limit myself to an audience of probably no more than 2 million people (and the number is even smaller if you consider the number of Slovenian speaking people that are actually interested in what I'm writing about). The fact that a lot of the current tech terms (and buzzwords) don't yet have a good Slovenian translation, also make my decision more difficult because I sometimes feel like I'm writing half in English anyway.

On the other hand, I get a much bigger potential audience by writing in English, but it makes writing/speaking a bit more difficult, and it may also make my content more difficult to understand (or maybe even relate to?) for Slovenian people that don't speak English well or at all. And although I consider myself fluent in English, I often feel a bit insecure or self-conscious when I write or speak in English (especially for an audience of native speakers). The self-consciousness is even more apparent in synchronous communication situations - like IM or more recently with Second Life voice. When I blog or write emails I have the time to reflect, analyze, run a spellchecker, so I feel more confident (though I always worry about making typos that could be interpreted as insufficient knowledge).

But no matter which language I choose, there is always the question: should I translate this to the other language? And sometimes I do translate, but usually I don't because I don't have the time or motivation to do it - and let's not forget that some things are always lost in translation no matter how hard you try. There is just so much good content out there that's impossible to translate it all back and forth to one language and another.

So how can one deal with the language problem? I often choose English over Slovenian just because it helps me to get in touch with so many wonderful people around the globe, but I sometimes miss more discussions in my own language. And that is why on some levels I'm glad I can now also blog for my company's website in Slovenian, but then again: I often wish I could share some of my Slovenian content with my English speaking friends... I guess the language question can never have just one answer. For me, it's always a bit of a struggle, and in the end it's up to each individual to choose his/her "side". It isn't easy, but I guess it's one of the prices you have to pay to live in a flat world.

I'd like to finish this post by turning to you, dear reader, and asking for your answers to the language question. If you're not a native English speaker, how do you choose the language you write/speak in? And if you're a native English speaker, how do you deal with all the non-English content on the web? Do you ignore it or try to understand it by turning to native speakers of the foreign language or by trying to learn a foreign language? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject :)

(And by the way: one of my Slovenian friends answered the language question when he recently started his blog, so I guess I'm not alone in the language dilemma :) )

Skitch: Fast 'n' Easy photo sharing (review)

2007-10-03T11:42:00.000+02:00

Last night I finally got a invite for Skitch, an application (currently for Macs only) that lets you easily capture and annotate photos and share them with friends through web (on your myskitch page), by mail, Bluetooth or just by saving the image to your hard drive. Skitch offers different ways for getting images: you can take snapshots (it's easy to capture just part of your screen), take a photo through your camera or work on any photo on your hard drive or on the web by dragging it into Skitch. Once you've got a photo in, you can add text and various shapes, and do a few basic edits. When you're done, you can easily share it in any way you want. And what if you want to change the text or delete a shape later? No problem, you can always come back to the saved or uploaded images later and edit them again through Skitch (by the way - Skitch can also export images in the svg format; apart from the standard jpg, png, pdf and tif of course).

Uploaded with Skitch!

I saw the promo video of Skitch some time ago, but then I really didn't imagine how great it is to actually use it. It's super fast, very easy to use (I love the fact that you get subtle, not intrusive, and useful help tips just when you need them), and it works like magic (even though it's still a beta). The app was created by plasq, the makers of Comic Life (another application I love to use!), and I can only hope that we all get a copy of Skitch in the next releases of Mac OS X (just like we get the basic version of Comic Life).

Uploaded with Skitch!

I really see myself using this application a lot for different purposes. One obvious use is surely making images for blogs, and I think it will also be great for making annotated screenshots for user manuals (which can be really time consuming!), sharing ideas fast or just having fun by adding captures to photos :) Skitch is surely a great product that wisely uses simplicity and provides with all the tools you need to make photo sharing a bit more fun and fast. I think I'll keep the Skitch icon (it's a cute pink heart :) ) in my dock from now on, just in case I need to skitch something fast (it's surely much faster than Photoshop for simple tasks Skitch was built for). ~~The only negative comment I can make about Skitch so far, is the fact that I didn't get a 100 invites, so unfortunately I can't yet invite you all to try it :(~~

If you want to know more about Skitch, take a look at plasq's site and watch the Skitch introductory video, which is in my opinion a great example of how to make an attractive video manual for first time users (I usually give up on video manuals after a few seconds, but this one kept me interested).

Edit: Just got 100 invites to give out! Leave you e-mail under the comments or e-mail me at ialja (at) mac (dot) com to get an invite and to try out the Skitch magic :)