According to a Salon article, which reports on a Education Department study:
...via the Shifted Librarian
The Ghost cam
...via the Shifted Librarian
Acerhas a new wireless initiative for K-12 schools:
With the support of Intel Corporation, Acer America will canvas and select one school in each qualified school district for "Wi-Fi 101", with up to 120 schools participating nationwide for the program. A simple site inspection will determine if a candidate school has an appropriate network infrastructure in place to support the wireless environment. The installation of the wireless access points requires no funding or manpower contribution on the part of schools or district personnel. Interested schools are invited to fill out the form below for additional details.
Dan Bricklin talks briefly, but interestingly about the impact of Digital Rights Management, while managing to also mention VisiCalc and Longhorn.
From the Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing at Stanford University, comes How Everyday Things are Made. The site gives you 'online tours' on the making of jelly beans, wool clothes, airplanes, and food containers, among others.
Viral-learning.net talks about cultural issues in developing e-learning:
So, for whatever reasons - cost, quality, speed, reach, flexibility - the e-learning industry has taken on the challenge of producing e-learning products and services across multiple cultures. But just because technology allows us to work together doesn't necessarily mean that we will work better together. In fact increased cross-cultural contact may, at least at the outset, increase the likelihood of misunderstandings and problems. In starting to investigate this informally, and focussing specifically on relationships between Indian and UK/US organisations, I wasn%u2019t surprised to hear things that suggested that cultural issues were surfacing. For example, Indians speaking of North Americans told me that 'they are so very impatient and aggressive' and 'they could afford to be a little more polite' and North Americans speaking of Indians said 'they just seem to have so many layers of management' and 'they never seem to say quite what they mean'.
Feedroll, which is currently in beta, provides a tool for displaying RSS headlines on your own site.
...via The Shifted Librarian
Baseline has an article on Robert Scoble who is a member of the Windows marketing team and a blogger:
The blog, which Scoble established before hiring on with Microsoft, comes off like a conversation with a smart friend. He links to other bloggers, makes recommendations about Windows-related products, talks about his own upcoming demo of the next version of Windows, known as Longhorn, and mentions the need to balance his personal and professional lives. Almost anything is fair game. "That is the first Apple marketing in a long time that makes me want to buy an Apple product," he wrote recently about an ad for the iPod music player.
And...
There are some barriers to adoption. Using weblogs means trusting your employees to speak honestly and openly. It means conversing with customers, not just marketing to them. It means even more flattening of your organization.
Jay Rosen writes about What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism?. Among the ten reasons he lists:
He follows up with What's Conservative About the Weblog Form of Journalism?
Hey, it's not my title:
Tables existed in HTML for one reason: To display tabular data. But then border="0" made it possible for designers to have a grid upon which to lay out images and text. Still the most dominant means of designing visually rich Web sites, the use of tables is now actually interfering with building a better, more accessible, flexible, and functional Web.
Here's another article, this one from ComputerWorld, discussing the somewhat counter-intuitive idea that free wireless connections make more money for your business than wi-fi for pay:
John Wooley, chairman, CEO and president of restaurant chain Schlotzsky's Inc. in Austin, isn't so shy in sharing details of what he calls the "strong ROI" from the company's free Wi-Fi service. Schlotzsky's currently offers free Wi-Fi in 30 of its 600 company-owned or franchised Schlotzsky's Delis. Wooley says he figures that the free Wi-Fi results in an additional 15,000 visits per restaurant per year by customers who spend an average of $7 per visit.That means Wi-Fi service brings in more than $100,000 per year per outlet in return for an investment of about $8,000 per restaurant for wireless infrastructure, Wooley says. The largest continuing cost is backhaul to the Internet over 1.54Mbit/sec. T1 circuits, Wooley says. Since the cost of a T1 circuit varies from $300 to $700, depending on what part of the country you're in, he says Schlotzsky's would average those costs to induce existing franchisees to offer the service. (New franchisees will be required to offer free Wi-Fi, Wooley notes.)
Wilreless access is everywhere at Dartmouth:
In the late 1980s, Dartmouth College was the most wired campus on the planet, running 10Mb Ethernet into every dorm room. Today, Dartmouth is the most unwired campus on the planet, with 560 access points covering 200 acres. At a recent conference here, Larry Levine, the head of computing services, challenged attendees to find a single spot on campus and surrounding areas that did not have 802.11 coverage. Even the boathouse, adjacent sections of the Connecticut river, the ski lodge, and sections of the ski slope are covered!
David Weinberger at JOHO says in Metadata and Desire:
This is no longer the Age of Information. It's the Age of Metadata
Metadata can't be perfect. There is no 'right' way to categorize everything and even if there were, you'd never convince everyone to use it. A lot of information is organiz--it comes from where it comes from and it is what it is, trying to categorize it may kill it before it ever gets circulated or, at least, make it no easier to find and more difficult to identify.
...metadata, an abstraction of an abstraction, is directly and intimately tied to human projects and human desire. And what's desire? Nothing but the way we're pulled into the world, over and over, against our will and in ways that constantly surprise us. So, the increasing need for metadata pulls us out of the world as our desire continuously pulls us into the world.Welcome to the rhythm of the modern world
CNN reports that Execs who are tech dummies seek secret training:
Shaheen, 32, is a computer tutor to corporate big shots, giving pointers in the fine arts of opening e-mail attachments, navigating Excel spreadsheets and performing other PC chores the executives' minions probably can do in their sleep."You'd be surprised by what they don't know," Shaheen says. "And they're not comfortable asking the IT person in their company because then they show weakness to their staff."
I would hate to break it to them, but I'd bet their IT staff already know....
From the folks who brought you Listamatic and Listutorial comes Floatutorial a step-by-step tutorial on CSS floats.
...via elearningpost
David Weinberger has an article at KM World on tacit emergence:
The most important tacit knowledge isn't simply explicit knowledge that hasn't yet been uttered. Humans aren't databases just waiting for the right queries to be run. The tacit knowledge that lets a senior technician diagnose problems faster and more accurately than others, or the tacit knowledge that lets a CFO see in 10 seconds why a proposed merger is unlikely to work, is emergent knowledge. It comes from a rich, confusing context of memories, heuristics and associations that the technician or the CFO may not be able to explain. In many cases, she or he will form a judgment incredibly quickly and only afterward will try to analyze why.So, the attempt to make explicit the tacit knowledge in an organization may in fact be an attempt to short-circuit the chaotic process of emergence. But that's exactly what emergence doesn't allow. In such cases, a KM system can nourish the intelligence from which wisdom emerges but neither replace it nor make it explicit.
I promised a couple of weeks ago to take a look at disruptive and sustaining technologies with a specific example, so here it is:
For-profit companies are driven and sustained by, obviously, profits, but let's look at an example of how disruptive and sustaining technologies might work in an organization like Extension. For anyone coming in from the outside, 'Extension' is defined (loosely) here as a state University or Cooperative Extension Service associated with a land-grant university and charged with, among other things, communicating and teaching about subjects researched at the university that have a practical impact on people's lives.
Note: I’m still working these ideas out and this isn’t meant to be the one great answer; it’s a way for me to think through what it means and how to understand the adoption of disruptive technologies and the impact they can have. Things will adjust, I’m sure, as I explore further. Comments, as always, would be welcome.
Traditionally, Extension communicates new knowledge through publications, meetings, and demonstrations. If we look for a moment at communication through publications, we can see that this particular mode of communication can take a number of forms--print, web, video, radio, electronic mailing lists, and others. Many of these are technologies that have been adopted by Extension in order to improve the reach and accessibility of Extension publications for our clients. Each of these media production methods have addressed particular needs for Extension’s clients. Each of these methods have established development procedures which involve content specialists, program directors, and communication specialists who work together to provide clear, readable, informative, and accessible materials. The final products are highly polished, well edited, attractively laid out, professional products.
Weblogs, on the other hand, are a direct-to-consumer product. They bypass program directors and communication specialists (except in the sense that a program director or communication specialist might also have a weblog). They are cheap and fast and simple. While the main template can be attractive and readable, they aren’t necessarily as elegant as professional publications, they aren’t always as well-written, and they aren’t edited. They may contain errors that have to be corrected later.
Let’s look at how weblogs and traditional (though often innovative) Extension communication methods compare when considered in the context of disruptive technologies.
1. Disruptive technologies may initially underperform established methods--but they have other features that provide some value.
Weblogs often use standard design templates. They list information in a simple chronological format with some ability to archive information by category and date. There is little complexity in the layout of individual entries, although images and tables can be used in limited straightforward ways. Entries are usually not edited by anyone other than the author and are often short, lacking background and reference material (though most weblog entries include links to additional material on the topic).
However, weblogs are easy to start, require little technical expertise, and are easy to maintain. Good weblogs are frequently updated with current information and breaking news, giving people a reason to return frequently. Information can be posted immediately without a lengthy editorial and review process. The layout makes it very simple to find the most recent information, which some readers value very highly (possibly more highly than excellent production values or high readability). Information is unmediated. It is posted in the specialist’s own voice and it focuses on 'things of interest to this particular specialist' which may include topics such as Extension’s new strategic plan, but may include many other things as well, even things that are not directly Extension-related or content-related. These factors--voice and knowledge filtering--are important in building trust, something some people, in particular those unfamiliar with Extension and those accustomed to searching for timely information on the Internet, value very highly.
2. Technologies progress faster than the market, giving customers more than they need or are willing to pay for.
Some people value fast over excellent. Some don’t want to print publications off the web, they just want to find the information, read it, and move on. Many have no interest in a well-produced learning module, no matter how excellent, that can’t tell them the latest status of an issue today. These clients aren’t teaching a class, they aren’t helping their own clients, they want to know what they want when they want it. And they want to build relationships. They want to collect their own network of experts; their go-to people for the information they need to make the important and everyday decisions in their lives.
For these customers, the time required to produce excellent learning materials or professional print or web publications is a higher cost than they want to pay. While the production is excellent, takes advantage of new technologies and provides a professional product with useful accessible information, it’s more information than they need, too far removed from when they want it.
3. Disruptive technologies are first adopted in emerging or insignificant markets and by marginal customers.
Extension listens to its best customers (as we should) and those customers tell us that they want more publications, more web pages, more learning modules, more video, and more market reports, all of which they do want and all of which help them in some way to learn more and do their jobs better.
Meanwhile, there are also a large number of people who only come to Extension occasionally, who don’t come to Extension because they don’t think we have what they need, or who don’t know anything about Extension and what we can provide. While some of them may indeed want our current publications, videos, and web pages--if we could just make the connection with them--some of them want (or could benefit the most from) something else entirely. If we don’t provide it, there are two other possibilities--someone else will provide it or no one else will and they’ll go away without the information they need and want. In the present days with a global Internet, a third possibility also exists--another state Extension service will provide it and gradually squeeze us out of the picture for that group of customers (and eventually all our customers as the disruptive technology proceeds to become more ‘mainstream’).
Sometimes disruptive technologies completely eliminate the old technologies eventually becoming better, faster, and more responsive. Weblogs will probably never replace traditional Extension communication production. For formal education and other activities, it is likely that there will always be a demand for high-quality, professionally produced materials. Weblogs speak to a different need--the need for timely information, on-the-spot analysis, and relationship and trust-building. While these are all things that traditional approaches may be able to do, they can’t do it as well, as cheaply or as quickly as weblogs can. In addition, weblogs can give a voice to individual specialists and their particular expertise in a way that traditional communication materials often have not. Even newspaper columns, which some specialists produce are not as immediate as weblog publication.
Weblogs are disruptive because they will come whether we ‘allow’ them or not. They are ‘low-end’ compared to our current rich communication offerings, but they provide some things to some people that other tools can’t provide and their capabilities are growing rapidly. How we develop them and some of the new technologies that accompany them, like syndication and aggregation, can determine who we serve, how we’re perceived, and who Extension is in the coming years.
In The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen says that values and processes are much, much harder to change than resources. You can fire people, move people, buy new computers, and make sure everyone has a plenty of pens, but getting the organization to work differently is very, very difficult.
A recent Wired article talks about efforts to transform NASA:
In the land of rocket science, where numbers count for everything and hunches are scorned, two men are on a mission more difficult than plugging a hole in the space shuttle.They're trying to make NASA's shuttle program a warmer, fuzzier place by recrafting the culture that doomed Columbia, and Challenger before that.
Joel Spolsky and Fog Creek just moved to new office space. These were the 'system requirements' for the offices for the developers:
Looks like nice work if you can get it....
...via Windley's Enterprise Computing
The key point of the semantic web is the conversion of the current structure of the web as a data storage (interpretable only by human beings, that are able to put the data into context) into a structure of information storage.
The Creative Commons has a list of applications they'd like to see built to make their ideas for an alternative copyright practical and doable on the web, including:
Ashley Highland, Director of BBC New Media and Technology, recently gave a speech where he said, among other things:
Against this background, new research from the BBC has revealed four new and significant social trends that show that the way in which we consume TV is changing forever. From this we have been able to start changing our programmes and content. Broadly these trends show that viewers are taking much more control of what and how they view, they're joining in with their programmes, consuming more media simultaneously, and sharing all this content with each other.
Some of the things he proposes:
According to Dan Gillmor, the Open Source Applications Foundation which is developing the application Chandler has received 2.75 million dollars in grants to continue their work on the project.
Fast Company reports on IDEO's method cards, which are designed to share some of IDEO's strategies for coming up with such concept breakthroughs as Apple's first mouse and stand-up toothpaste tubes:
The secret, it turns out, reduces to one of those touchy-feely terms that make MBAs squirm: "empathy." In the Ideo universe, great design doesn't begin with a far-out concept or a way-cool drawing. It begins with a deep and empathic understanding of the human condition. The first step for any Ideo team on any project is to try to empathize with the people who might use whatever product or service that eventually emerges from its work.
The Shifted Librarian has a post on using RSS in library catalogs.
Among the things she reports are some excerpts from an upcoming article on integrating internet content:
"At the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Behesda, MD, we have used RSS both to integrate Internet content into the NCI library system and to make content from the library system available on our intranet in the form of RSS news feeds. This new content makes our library system a more useful and timely resource, allowing us to better 'feed' the information appetites of our clients, whose jobs require that they keep up with cancer and healthcare news, events, research, and politics. After the initial investment of time and technology, the information flows without requiring hands-on staff effort....
I'm currently reading a book called The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen. I may write more about the details of the book once I've finished it, but for now, I want to take a stab at explaining the differences between disruptive and sustaining technologies and their impact on established organizations.
All well-run organizations, whether for-profit or not-for-profit have a specific focus. The focus might be producing cardboard boxes or training teachers or building computers. With this focus in mind they create a network of suppliers and employees and customers. If they're a successful, well-run organization, they spend time figuring out what will be successful, listening to what their customers want, and improving continuously.
Sustaining technologies are those technologies or improvements that sustain an organization's focus, goals, and customers. Sustaining technologies allow an organization to do their job better, to improve their products and to increase customer satisfaction. In addition, sustaining technologies provide obvious improvements in the things that current customers want. In an example that Christensen uses in his book, desktop computer users want disk drives with more capacity at the same or lower cost. A sustaining technology would be a new technique or production method or disk drive that delivered increased storage capacity for desktop computer users.
Sustaining technologies can be radical. For example, a method of manufacturing more cardboard boxes per hour might involve completely different equipment for the operation. What it doesn't involve, though, is a change of focus or a creating a new market.
Disruptive technologies are usually those innovations that initially do not improve the focus of the company. Disruptive technologies often don't have a market when they're created. A market must be developed and often it's made up of new customers that the established companies in that field haven't been called on to serve (often 'down-market' from their current customers--smaller computers, smaller numbers, etc). The initial benefits of the disruptive technologies are not features that their current customers are calling for. For example, small, light-weight hard drives with less capacity and a higher cost per megabyte of storage are not appealing to desktop computer users. They don't care about weight because they don't move their machines. They want storage and price. Laptop computer users, however, highly value lightweight storage and are willing to buy disk drives with less capacity if they make significant gains in size and weight. What makes small disk drives a disruptive technology is that they begin to improve in capacity and cost until they reach the same or better price points and storage capabilities as the larger drives. Now desktop customers also want lightweight, high-capacity hard drives and they go to the new companies, leaving their old suppliers scrambling to adopt the new technology.
According to Christensen, failure to plan or respond to disruptive technologies doesn't necessarily mean that an organization was poorly managed or even that they were not visionary. Companies may be efficient, forward-looking, and willing to adopt new technology and still miss out on disruptive technologies. Disruptive technologies are disruptive. They generate new markets that often didn't exist before and establish themselves in those areas with those customers before moving into existing markets. Current customers have requirements that, initially at least, aren't met by the disruptive technologies and when organizations go to their customers to ask what they need, they don't get feedback that compels them to consider disruptive technologies.
From The Innovator's Dilemma:
If good management practice drives the failure of successful firms faced with disruptive technological change, then the usual answers to company's problems--planning better, working harder, becoming more customer-driven, and taking a longer-term perspective--all exacerbate the problem.
Christensen provides the following principles to explain more succinctly the appeal of disruptive technologies and why they are difficult for established companies to adopt:
I'll be making a followup post shortly that looks at a specific example in Extension.
Sometimes it's okay not to know where you're going. Sometimes where you're going doesn't exist yet.
Whenever you have no blueprint to tell you what to do, you must act artfully....
...if you think you know where you're going, you're probably wrong....
Many people in business admit that parts of their work are "more art than science." What they often mean, alas, is that they don't understand those parts. "Art" used in a business context usually refers to something done by "talented" or "creative" people who are not quite trustworthy, who do work that resists reasonable description. There's often a disparaging implication that art-like processes are immature, that they have not yet evolved to incorporate the obviously superior methods of science. The premise that underlies this point of view equates progress with the development of reliable, rules-based procedures to replace flaky, unreliable, art-based processes. We reject this premise.
The quotes above are from an article at HBS Working Knowledge about why managing innovation is like theater. Theater and other collaborative art projects may make better models for knowledge work, the authors say, than more traditional rules-based, scientific processes. Cheap and rapid iteration, gaining experience rather than spending time on detailed planning can lead to faster, better results.
Virual Knowledge: can you 'tip' a community of practice? by KV Sbarcea at Thinkingshift.com explores how the concepts Malcolm Gladwell discusses in The Tipping Point might apply to communities of practice.
Albert Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
The Interaction Designer's Coffee Break discusses this in terms of website design:
Usability is based on principles such as "Less is more" and "Keep it simple, stupid". But there is more to simplicity than meets the eye. By reducing visual complexity at the cost of structural simplicity, you will give your users a hard time understanding and navigating the content of a web site
For example:
One of the most misleading arguments used in favour of reducing visual complexity is the rule of 7 +/- 2. The rule states that the human brain can't handle more than 7 +/- 2 items at a time. If you apply the rule to visual design, it would mean that things such as lists of menu items or items in a bulleted list can be no more than nine.The trouble with this rule is that the psychologist George Miller who formulated it was studying the limitations of short-term memory – not limitations of what people can perceive visually at a time. Humans can only retain 7 +/- 2 items in the immediate memory, but have no problem in dealing with great amounts of information in the field of vision. As long as you have information present for continuous reference, immediate memory plays no significant role in your perception.
...via elearningpost
Inc.com has an interesting article on brainstorming, including why you get some of your best ideas in the shower (actually, I get my best ideas in the car, but, you know, same thing)
...at the Computex exhibition in Taipei.
And there's one shaped like a potted plant, too.
...via The Shifted Librarian