Technology

information & communication technology

Blogs + webfeeds + podcasting + iPod Shuffle = Business Solution

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The guys at Infosential, a UK-based technology consultancy, have developed a great way to piece together some simple technologies (blogs, RSS, MP3, iPod Shuffle) in order to create a seamless competitive intelligence solution for a globe-trotting client.
Here’s the problem:

Our client is the classic Type-A personality, time-poor, stressed executive with too much to do and too little time to do it – he spends most of his life on planes in transit between meetings. He needs to keep up with the key developments in competitor intelligence, but gets very little opportunity to sit in front of a screen to browse through reports. Neither does he want to drag a large pile of paper around with him.

The solution, according to Tim Ducketts, starts by monitoring a variety of web-based information sources and recording the ones that may be of interest for their client. These recordings are made available as an RSS feed and the client can access these 3-4 minute recordings from anywhere in the world and then easily transfer them to an iPod Shuffle. The Shuffle measures 8.4 x 2.5 x 0.84 cm, which makes it pretty darned small.

This kind of a practical solution to a real-world problem validates the many hours of my monitoring and testing of new technologies, often without knowing where it will lead. In the end, I try to offer similar solutions that link a few of the right technologies with some innovative process and a little bit of insight in order to help somebody out. Well done Tim & Wayne.

Taking back the Web

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So how powerful is the blog as a marketing tool?

One year ago I had about 50 visitors per month on this site. Today, I have more than 30,000. I just did a search for "harold" on Google, and of over 11 million articles, I am now on the first page; the last entry, but still page one. I know that this is a bit of vanity and I don’t believe that this position will last [I may have been kicked to page two already], but the lesson here is that I have spent no money on advertising nor marketing.

I write 3-10 short articles per week and I participate in conversations that interest me. I have not paid for search engine optimization and I have not hired any marketing specialists. I’m just doing on the web what previously I was doing face-to-face. This is the power of blogs; to extend our reach while retrieving our sense of community.

Now this great honour of being on Google page one does not equate to market share nor additional revenue, but it shows how some guy in a small town in Atlantic Canada can be part of the global village. This is the power of networks, as discussed in The Cluetrain and recently evidenced by the over 25 million downloads of the free, open source web browser – Firefox.

Yes, Virginia, we can take back the Web.

ePortfolios

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If you’re wondering about the value of ePortfolios in high school, then read Helen Barrett’s article in response to a student’s question, "I am a student in high school. Why is it manditory for me to make a proficient on my portfolio for me to graduate? I have all of my credits to graduate, but if I make lower than an proficient I don’t get to graduate."

Would you rather spend a day taking a series of tests that just make you nervous, don’t help you learn and only assess how well you can remember a lot of facts or solve a lot of problems, most of which are irrelevant to your life? And if you don’t pass those tests, you have to keep taking them until you do pass? Isn’t it much better to carefully and reflectively develop a portfolio that showcases your strengths and your growth over time?

For those interested in ePortfolios at the university level, take a look at ePortfolio@York

* You can also go to the Open Source Portfolio Initiative and see what this community initiative is doing around ePortfolios in general.

Via Jeremy Hiebert

Research on the Web

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Will, at Weblogg-ed (an excellent resource for educators), discusses teachers, students and information literacy on the Web.

"I think it’s better for everyone if we just give them a list of sites they can use when they do their papers," the principal said, "and tell them they have to have a certain number of those resources in the final product."



Now, this is a loose transcript of the conversation, but the point is clear. Instead of teaching effective use of the tool, the easy way is to limit the reach of the tool, rein it in and limit its effect. If that is or will become the prevailing view, we are all in serious, serious trouble…

I see with my children (Grades 5 & 7) that research skills and media literacy are not developed at all in the New Brunswick school system. These are critical skills, especially since there are fewer resources in our school and public libraries. My own research has found two good online resources for students. The KVL Research Portal is easy to use and my son has found it quite helpful. The Big 6 Information Literacy site has some good information, but is not as dynamic as KVL’s. My perspective is that if the schools don’t teach information literacy, then it’s up to parents.

Any other recommendations would be appreciated. I put "Student Resources" sites on FURL for future reference.

Portals – Lessons Learnt

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In the paper, A False Dawn Over the Field of Dreams? [full-text no longer available], Stephen James Musgrave looks at the UK experience with community portals, including educational ones. He refers to a study of portals that divided them into a four-layer scale of interactivity:

  1. Promotional: sites providing information but little interaction.
  2. Content: sites providing more sophisticated information and some interaction.
  3. Content Plus: sites providing very useful content and more advanced on-line self-service features.
  4. Transactional: sites which are accessible, complete, thoughtful, and coherent; and with more than one type of on-line interaction (e.g. payment, application, consultation, bookings).

Only 2% of sites were considered Transactional – pity.

In concluding how to blend people and technology, Musgrave states:

The People and Technology improvements addressed in this narrative are required so as to enhance a portal based delivery of citizen-centric services through the adoption of common standards, and the development of common components. Technology improvement through systems integration is required to achieve the interactivity demanded by users; giving services that will be valued by users. The use of open source software – with vendor support – is likely to become a "middle way" that gives ownership of core elements to the portal developer community; minimising problems with vendor lock-in, whilst enabling industrial strength portal products to be deployed.

Though not a portal, Scott Wilson’s graphical description of a Virtual Learning Environment shows some of the same principles as those espoused by Musgrave. It is a series of smaller pieces (many open source) loosely joined, and focused on the needs of the individual, not the institution. This approach could avoid the hopelessly optimistic "if you build it, they will come" syndrome alluded to in the title.

Where the jobs are

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As I said earlier this week:

I would infer that as cheap and easy Internet tools proliferate, those with specialised skills in coding, etc, may begin to lose their market worth – unless they also have the skills of inventiveness, empathy and meaning that Daniel Pink believes will be necessary for future employability.

It seems that this is already happening, according to this post from Daniel Lemire, on the lack of jobs for computer science graduates:

The message is quite clear, I believe. If you want to train yourself or students to produce software (programming or software engineering), you better be damn good because the job market is not there anymore. Will jobs come back? Automobile workers in North America are still waiting for the jobs sent to Mexico or elsewhere to come back. Now, programming or software engineering are not useless skills, far from it, but it might be a better strategy to aim for a business jobs where your programming or computer networking skills can be put to good use, for example. It seems that the job market is moving toward information technology (security, networking, using the right technology at the right time, understanding the implication of a given technology for business).


Real Benefits of Blogs

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Starting a blog can be a daunting task, as this tongue-in-cheek Kuro5hin article shows. Dave Pollard says that business is not embracing blogs because they don’t address immediate needs (e.g. in this fiscal quarter). Dave provides good pointers on how and why blogs should be used in business, and he describes his own adoption journey. His is similar to my own experience – heard about blogs, tested out some free stuff, started using a feed reader, and then added blogging to my static website. I don’t like to talk about blogging for blogging’s sake [too many instances of the "b" word in this post], but let’s face it; once you’ve tried it, you’re hooked. You don’t have to write a blog, as there is a heck of a lot just to read.

After an intensive year online, these are the tangible benefits to my business:

  • Using a feed reader (via RSS), saves a lot of time and bookmarking.
  • The information I get from bloggers is usually weeks ahead of the mainstream press. Call this competitive intelligence.
  • By blogging, I have raised my profile on the web and increased visits to my site by a factor of 1000 in less than one year. This is cheap marketing.
  • I use my database of posts when preparing reports, proposals and presentations. It helps to have a searchable system like Drupal.
  • Blogging forces me to think and reflect in order to write, so that what was just an idea in my mind becomes more concrete.
  • The underlying technology of easy posting and RSS to keep track of things, makes a lot of sense for collaborative learning and collaborative work – two areas of interest for my business.
  • Through blogging, I have met a number of business partners.
  • Blogging keeps me in touch with a lot of interesting people and expands my view of the world, providing new ideas for my business.
  • When I have a problem, especially a technical one, I post it on my site or someone else’s and usually get an informed answer within 24 hours. It’s like a large performance support system.
  • It allows people to get to know my opinions before they engage me as a consultant; saving time and potential frustrations.

Like e-mail, blogs are practical tools for everyday business. There are abuses of both (spam) but I think that blogs are one more tool that give the small business operator a real competitive advantage.

“This Internet Thing”

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Seth Godin marketing and branding guru, and author of Purple Cow, latest post is on how the importance of the Internet is only beginning to be felt. For instance:

Penetration. There are 50 times as many people using the Net as there were then [ten years ago]. 50x is a multiple you don’t see every day.

For those in the elearning or social networking business, this is a very important fact. It may mean that business models that failed 5-10 years ago, could work now. Time to clean out that closet of ideas.

Tools. You can launch most any online service with almost no custom programming. Changethis.com demonstrated to me how straightforward this has become. It also means that finding the world’s greatest programmer is no longer a critical component for most services.

I would infer that as cheap and easy Internet tools proliferate, those with specialised skills in coding, etc, may begin to lose their market worth – unless they also have the skills of inventiveness, empathy and meaning that Daniel Pink believes will be necessary for future employability.

 

ATutor 1.4.3

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ATutor, a Canadian Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS), has just released its latest version 1.4.3. ATutor’s trademark function is that it is designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind.

New in this release:

Forum Upgrades: System wide and shared forums for communication across courses. Create communities around groups of course forums, or around an entire ATutor course server. Alumni participation in course forums.
Subscribe to general forums or course forums, or subscribe to specific topic threads to receive messages by email. Quickly access current forum messages through the Forum Posts menu module.



Enrollment Manager Overhaul: Create, import, and export course enrollment lists, and manage enrolled students and alumni. New tabbed display for managing student information, managing course lists, managing roles and privileges, as well as creating and managing groups.



Language Overhaul: Language management has been completely re-designed. Translate, import, and export language from within your own ATutor installation. Support for the UTF-8 character set. ATutor is available in more than 30 languages.



Question Database: Create tests by adding questions to, and retrieving questions from, a test item repository.



Test/Survey Manager Upgrade: Create image based test items, arrange multiple choice questions vertically or horizontally, assign tests to a class, to groups, or to individual students, analyse test data and generate statistics.



Theme Manager: Easily copy, import, and export ATutor themes.



RSS Feeds: Syndicate ATutor course announcements to display them on remote Web sites.



Embed ACollab: Embed ACollab [collaborative workspace] into ATutor, or open it in a new window to participate in course group activities.

Easy Enrollment: Students can now enroll in courses through the Browse Courses screen.

Open source learning systems, like this SCORM compliant LCMS, are steadily improving and becoming viable options for any organization, public or private.

Some Free Advice for Higher Education

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Here is some free advice for any university or college, public or private. If you are wondering how you can stay in touch with your graduates and foster a sense of community, especially when it comes to future fund raising, then offer free blogs. This beats collecting addresses, making phone calls and all the other ways that development officers try to raise interest and money. Let your graduates be part of your university when you’re not asking for money, and they will be there when you need them.

Wellesley College is already doing it, so get on the wave now. If you need any advice, give me a call [shameless self-promotion].