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

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 :)

---

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

---

5 common myths about Second Life

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time in Second Life talking to new users, and also talking to companies/institutions that want to get into Second Life. And one thing my colleagues and I have noticed is that some Second Life myths are still very popular among people. That is why I think that it's important to talk about what Second Life is and what Second Life isn't with a good dose of realism. So, here is our list of some of common myths that should in our opinion be addressed in any serious meeting/discussion about Second Life (and other virtual worlds):

• Second Life = Real Life. Second Life is a just a virtual version of the real world with the same business models, customer needs and behavior. WRONG

Many real world limitations don't exist in Second Life. For this reason, the Second Life users have the freedom to behave differently than in the real world, satisfy different needs (for example, the need to have fantasy outfits) and literally take the world into their own hands. Therefore it should come as no surprise that many established real world business and marketing models simply don't work in SL. Real companies entering Second Life must get to know the virtual world and prove their value to the users.

• Second Life = the world wide web.
  Like on the web, users in Second Life will visit my island to get information about my company/institution. WRONG

Second Life residents are not in SL to receive the same kind of content in 3D as they could on the web. They are there for new experiences, not links to web sites. There is nothing worse for Second Life users than clicking an advertisement and being moved out of Second Life into a new browser window. Established web privacy/value trade-offs (for example, letting a company know your e-mail in exchange for a discount) must be re-evaluated and set based on specific usage.

• It's easy to make money in Second Life. Second Life will, in a short time, grow my company profits or allow me a comfortable side income. WRONG

Yes, we do have money trees in Second Life, but don't expect to get rich in SL with no effort. To make money, an individual or a company must be even more innovative and adaptable than in real world because of larger competition and a level playing field. Success requires time and effort. And don't get in SL just with the vision of making money. Get in, enjoy the ride, and be inspired by what other are doing.

• We know what works in Second Life and in what direction the future will take it. WRONG

Nobody has a Second LIfe crystal ball, which can tell us SL best practices and future developments of virtual worlds. You can't even guarantee that Second Life will work when you've got an important demo scheduled! It is important to remember that virtual worlds are still in early development stages - think of the state of the world wide web in 1995. Don't trust people that claim they've got all the answers, and check the figures; Second Life doesn't have 10 million unique users! And just as we're all still finding our way around Second Life, nobody can predict for sure what virtual worlds will look like in 5 or even 10 years. Could anybody predict BitTorrent, Facebook, YouTube or Flickr in the Mosaic age?

• It's useful for me/my company/my institution to start getting acquainted with Second Life. RIGHT

After the initial stages of experimentation, Second Life and virtual worlds will likely become a new way of communicating with colleagues, business partners, customers, friends and family and enable us a new way not only of doing business, but of living - just like mobile phones and the web have done in the past. Forward-looking companies/institutions and individuals that start learning about virtual worlds now will have an advantage in future. As I always say: there is no better way to understand a new technology than by trying it yourself. And I'd also suggest you to try different usages of Second Life. I might be spending a lot of time in Second Life for business/networking purposes, but I still find time for fun explorations with friends.

I'd like to finish this post by adding some links to articles/resources that can also be useful when discussion Second Life and virtual worlds:

• Information Week: Five Rules For Bringing Your Real-Life Business Into Second Life


• Eight questions your company should ask when entering virtual worlds


• Second Life: What Do We Learn If We Digitize EVERYTHING?


• MPK20: Sun's virtual Workplace


• IBM in the Metaverse


• Metanomics


• Virtual Entrepreneurship in Second Life: the New Pioneers

And what are in your experience the most common myths and misconceptions you have to deal with when talking about Second Life?

---

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

---

Random thoughts about the future of Moodle

Lately I've been spending a lot of time in Moodle; mainly of course as part of my Moodle Teacher Certificate (MTC) program (which I successfully completed last week), but also because of the Austrian Moodle conference, which I attended on Thursday and Friday in Graz (I had a presentation about the Sloodle project). I've been using Moodle in different roles (admin, tutor, user) for quite some years now, and I believe that Moodle is a great platform for e-learning because it's powerful, relatively easy to use, and also expandable and customizable for different needs. What is also great is the fact that the Moodle developer community is very active and always making sure new versions have useful new features and improvements of previous standard modules.

I had the pleasure to attend Martin Dougiamas' virtual presentation about the future of Moodle at the Austrian Moodle conference a few days ago, and I'm really excited about some of the features we'll be soon seeing in version 1.9, and also the roadmap for Moodle 2.0, which in my opinion has the potential of making Moodle 2.0 a great member of the Web 2.0 family. In this post I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts on the future of Moodle. I believe that Moodle has a sustainable future, so I'll focus mainly on discussing upcoming Moodle features and possible future developments.

Among Moodle 1.9 features that Martin presented on Thursday, I was most impressed by the added social networking features. I think it's a great step towards making Moodle even more flexible and user friendly. If you're a Moodle.org site user, make sure you edit your profile and add your interests and try finding users with common interests (check out the page for the tag "moodle" - cool, isn't it?). Right now I sometimes feel limited by the rigid course structure in Moodle, and I really can't wait to have a better way to connect with other Moodle users through tags and shared interests (similar to what Elgg offers). And one of the next steps is hopefully the ability to mark Moodle items (forum posts, resources etc.) as favorites, so each user could create his/her own library of favorite resources.

However, another problem I've been seeing with Moodle for some time now from the perspective of a common user (i.e. student role with no editing rights), was not just being closed in courses, but also being closed and limited to a certain Moodle site. I often found the thought that students lose access to their Moodle resources/activities/data after a course or study year is over disturbing. Of course, teachers have many options to export/import content and date, and move content/data among their courses and among Moodle sites. But the students don't have any easy way to export their work and move it to a new Moodle site or to their personal archive somewhere else. So, I think one of the next steps in Moodle development should also be empowering users and enabling them to create their library of resources and also their Moodle portfolio that they (the students, not the teachers or administrators!) could take to another Moodle site (when changing schools for example). The Moodle development roadmap shows plans of enabling easier connections between different Moodle sites through the Moodle Network, which plans to provide a Moodle Community Hub for sharing content, user info, and enabling better peer interaction. However, I think that moving between Moodles should also be made easy for students, and not just for the teachers.

Moodle Community Hub (from Moodle Docs)

What I'd also like to see, is improvements in helping students getting around their Moodle courses. Moodle provides a block, which shows recent activity since the last login for each course, and also an overview of your course through the My Moodle page (though I really wonder how many administrators/teachers/students are aware of this option?). Still, I think the overview of my courses pages could and should be further improved by adding more flexibility and customization options. This could be very important for large Moodle sites with a lot of activity (like the moodle.org site, which I find very challenging to follow!). What I would like to see on the overview page is something closer to Facebook News feed page. Students should be able to control what appears on this page, in what order, and in how much detail. Some sort of personal dashboard with more user-centric widgets. Now you can of course add some standard blocks to the overview page, but I miss more tools to help the users organize and plan their learning activities and perhaps an option to set up custom e-mail alerts that relate to specific course events. I really don't like to receive e-mails for every Moodle post in a certain forum (especially for the most active ones), but I think it'd be useful to be able to add a rule to receive an e-mail update whenever a new resource/activity is posted (in any of courses you're enrolled in) or when new topics that match your interests (keyword watcher) are started.

All in all I'm really excited about Moodle adding more social networking features and establishing better connections between different Moodle installations and also the rest of the web. With all these improvements I'm beginning to wonder if in the future we could see Moodle also become a standardized personal learning environment with users in control of their learning data and the ability to move from one Moodle site to another (of course with the choice of moving only necessary portions of your Moodle profile data/library/portfolio)? We'll see what future Moodle development brings us. I certainly think Moodle is worth keeping an eye on, and I can't wait to get my hands on the upcoming Moodle versions :)

---

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

---

Starting up a new adventure

As you might have already noticed, my job description on LinkedIn, Facebook and on my blog has changed. Yes, it's true, after weeks of planning and considering different options I finally decided to try something new and co-found a company - Artesia.si that will specialize in 2D and 3D virtual communities. We will be offering consulting for companies wanting to improve or build virtual communities, and I will mostly focus on testing new technologies, planning and delivering (e)learning for our clients, and on presenting our company in Second Life. At least for now we'll be focusing on the Slovenian market, so we only have a website in Slovenian. But we do have a virtual office in Second Life that you can all visit (yeah, we're a real flat world company with no brick and mortar office :) ). And things are actually already moving faster than we could hope for. On Thursday we were invited to help with a piece on Second Life for the evening news on national television in Slovenia! I have the video with English subtitles on Facebook if you'd like to see how it turned out :)

But despite the fact that I'm changing jobs, I still intend to keep this blog alive. It will still remain my personal learning space, on which I'll be talking about my personal learning experiences, emerging technologies, and of course the occasional random thoughts of a geek :) So stay tuned, and if you've got more questions about my new professional adventure let me know!

---

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

---

Giving good directions

Lately I seem to be stumbling a common problem a lot while surfing the web, visiting different places in Second Life or just going to different analogue places by analogue roads. That problem is lack of good directions related to different content and places.

A common example: I often find an interesting blog post, and when I try to find more about the person that wrote it or the purpose of the blog, there is nothing. Nada. On blogs, I often get my hopes up when I see the "About" page, but too often I find the default message to the owner of the blog that no visitor should ever see (something like: "Write something about yourself/your blog on this page"). I really don't expect everyone to provide their full CV and contact information, but even if you decide to be anonymous, you can at least tell us what field you work in and what is the purpose of the blog.

Then another common example from Second Life. I won't even mention those places that are supposed to have a grand opening and can't be found anywhere on the map or under search. What I find even more disturbing is getting to a new place and receiving no clue of what the place is about and no help for getting easily from one part of the sim to the other (i.e. teleporters). Flying is fun in Second Life, but I don't always have the time or will to fly from one corner of the sim to the other to see there is nothing really interesting on the other side.

The immediate reaction to the lack of (good) directions is for me confusion, self-consciousness (thoughts like: are there really no directions here or is it my fault that I can't find them?), and the final result is usually leaving the confusing place without plans to return in the near future. This confusing place should of course never be your online course site, your virtual world presence, or even your personal or professional website.

So, what can we do to avoid users leaving our places, and how can we prepare good directions for our users (students, clients or friends)? Having really good directions is not an easy job I grant you, but I think there are some things we can do to get closer to that goal:

• The first step is of course recognizing that some directions are needed. In our enthusiasm of building something new we often forget that.
• Think like a newbie and like an average user of your content when preparing directions, and (if possible) test them on a random person that was not involved in the design process and is not a super geek. If your grandparents can understand your directions you're certainly on the right track!
• Make directions easy to read, help yourself with simple visual clues (a map, icons etc.). Keep it simple and try to include the basic information. First time users/visitors don't need to know all the details, but they should be able to get to those later when they need them.
• Make directions visible for first time visitor, but not disturbing to frequent visitors. Avoid using intrusive tools such as pop-up messages. The first time user might appreciate them, but only the first time. On the second visit he/she will start looking for the mute button, on the forth he/she will start looking for excuses for not visiting.
• Not all directions should look like they're there just because they have to be there. Add value: entertain your visitor, provide additional functions (i.e. teleporting in Second Life, a list of the most interesting posts etc.), make them feel welcome and appreciated.
• Be polite to all users, not just those that you want to have today or those that pay you. You never know when you'll need somebody, so try to make a good first impression on everyone.
• Provide personal support options. Even if you don't manage to give good directions, you can be saved by giving your users/visitors/students and easy way to contact you and get personal directions from you or your staff. It's the age of a user-centric web, on which we like the feeling we can all go talk to the boss if we want to.
• Listen to user feedback. And don't listen just to the users that talk to you. Sometimes you have to make the first step and ask the users for feedback.

These are just some of my guideliness for designing good directions (that don't apply just to giving directions on the internet, but should also be considered in offline spaces!), but I would of course love to hear how you approach the task of providing good directions for your users. How do you, for example, provide directions for the students of your course or visitors of your website, online profile or blog?

On my blog, I try to provide good directions by having a "Who am I?" block right on the top of the blog sidebar, which has some basic info about me and a few links to my extended profiles if the visitors want to know more about me. Also, I decided to visualize my blog purpose with a simple moto (Click. Learn. Share.) and icons right below. I might also add some links to my most interesting posts in the future, but overall I hope I did a decent job in providing directions and different ways for navigation. If you think I'm missing something, please let me know :)

I certainly think that once in a while we should all stop to think about how new users feel when they first enter one of our places. And I think we can often find some little and sweet details to add that will make the visiting experience for first-timers and regulars alike that more pleasurable and memorable.

---

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

---

Catching up: 8 random things about me

Huh, what a busy August! After a lovely Greek vacation (I highly recommed Greece for vacation - great food, great people, crystal clear sea!) I had one of the busiest week (and weekend) ever: all the catching up with RSS feeds, mails + intensive work on two different projects... and the result of that is that I still haven't managed to reply to all mails (bad Alja, bad!), and I'm also late for my blogger homework, which was assigned to me by The Four Eyed Technologist 12 days ago (so says Technorati :) ). So, it's now time to stop making excuses and join the "8 Random Things" game that has been spreading around the blogosphere for quite some time now. I admit that I've been reading many random things about many of you in the past weeks with quite some interest, so it's only fair to do my share now :)

First, The rules:

1. Post these rules before you give your facts.
2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them.
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged.

My 8 Random Things:

1. I trained track and field athletics for about 10 years in different disciplines; I started in first grade in long distances, and ended up doing long jump and 60m/100m hurdles. I wasn't too bad at it (even got into the national team once), but I quit because I lost my interest in competitions.
2. At the end of elementary school I wanted to study chemistry, but then lost all interest for it in high school and turned towards computer and social sciences.
   
3. I love animation movies and cartoons in general. On my top list are Pixar movies (this short one is imho enough to explain the brilliance of Pixar) and Japanese sci-fi animes, but I like to watch just any animated thing that pops on screen.
4. I don't like travelling much, especially by car. I keep hoping teleport systems will be invented in my lifetime :)
5. My interested for education highly derives from the fact that I was bored at school 90 % of the time, and I spent most of that time drawing various sketches in my notebooks.
6. I am shortsighted - couldn't get far through the day without glasses or contact lenses! Part of it is inherited, and part of it is the price of being a computer geek and living behind computer screens.
7. I love the sea; now that I don't live by the sea anymore, I really miss the sea air, and the wind you only get on the coast... And thinking of that always reminds me of the song "Gente di mare".
8. I had compulsory Italian classes for 12 years in school as I lived in a bilingual zone (near the Slovenian-Italian border). And now I haven't really spoken it for 5 years! I still understand it very well, but I don't dare to speak or write it anymore - and that's something I'd like to change.

So, I hope you found my 8 random things interesting :) Now, I should tag 8 more people, but I feel like so many of you already played this game or been tagged, and I also don't want to make anyone play this game, sooo I will follow Angela's example (and KJ's ;) ) and invite you readers of this blog, who want to be tagged and share with us 8 random things (I assure you: it is quite fun and painless! :) ) to leave a comment on this post and I'll add you to the list, ok? :)

List of great bloggers that will be happy to share 8 random things:

1. Daniel (not a blogger (yet! ;) ), but he shared some interesting things in his comment)
   
2. Christopher
   
3. position open
4. position open
5. position open
6. position open
7. position open
8. position open

---

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

---

Taking another week off

As some of you already know, I'm taking another week off next week. This time I'm going to sunny Greece, and I won't be taking my laptop or have internet access, so it'll be a real offline holiday. I'll be back on Monday, the 13th, and until then I won't be answering my mails or other messages (Facebook, Second Life etc). But I'm planning on having a little experiment with Twitter on my cell phone. I'll post some updates from my phone during the next week (I'm just telling my mom how she can receive notifications :) ), and I've also turned on mobile notifications for some of my favorite contacts. I'm really curious about how this will work out :)

So, I'll be posting again after I return, and hopefully I'll have some nice photos to upload to Flickr :) (I'm such a Web 2.0 addict!)

---

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

---