Live commentary (shared note taking)

I just saw a cool use of a new tool - CoverItLive!

Right now, Kristin Hokanson is at the NECC and taking notes. What's cool is that I can read her notes as she takes them. What's really cool is that others can join and help her take notes!

Are you interested in seeing what she noted about the session she took from David Jakes and Dean Shareski's presentation? Check out her blog "The Connected Classroom". During the session, the notes were appearing as she (and others) was entering them.

She took a snippet of code from CoverItLive and embedded it into her blog and then as she typed, it appeared on her site. Since I can't make it to the conference, this is a great way for her to share what she is learning with me (and you!). Also, now she has the notes to the session stored on her blog for future reference.

Is there a meeting or session that you will be attending that others would like to get the highlights - as they are happening? - They could even give you questions to ask the speaker!

Soooo many really cool tools are out there! And they are all easy to use!

Thank you for sharing Kristin!

Another great use for twitter

Over the past year, I've written about interesting ways that Twitter is being used.

• Using Twitter As A Microblog
• Presence Technologies
• More Thoughts On Twitter
• Why Twitter

Michael Martine wrote a good article titled "Twitter is like sex" where he makes the point that you just have to get in and experience it to understand it.

The more I use Twitter, the more I find it to be an invaluable tool. Sometimes the noise to value ratio gets a little high, but then something like today's power outage where eXtension and NC Cooperative Extension house their servers occurs. They can't send an email to any of their mailing lists because they are on the servers that are without power. However, I found out about it because some of the people that I follow 'tweeted' that their building was without power. They also used the eXtensionOrgSys twitter account to post the status of their system.

Last week, I drove with my wife to Pennsylvania. Before leaving, I turned on Twitter's SMS feature to have the tweets from that those I follow sent to my cell phone as text messages. Throughout the day, I was able to keep up with my friends and what was going on in the world. I tweeted what I was doing so they could keep up with me. Vince Verbeke shared how to pronounce Wilkes-Barre and even gave directions to a great garden center to visit from where we were having lunch.

After using twitter for more than a year now, I still feel it is a great information gathering tool. It is a great relationship maintenance and building tool. And it's just fun. Twitter is still the first thing I check - before email or anything else. It's like going to a party with all your friends and being able to listen to and even participate in all the discussions. Some I just listen to and laugh, others I participate.

vcverbeke, myself and some others are posting an IT Tip Of The Day (ittotd).
vvanpetten is doing a great job of using twitter to promote her blog and herself.
jdorner is where you can find me.

If you haven't tried Twitter yet, the way I would suggest getting started is to try it with some friends or family that you don't see often. Convince them to 'try' it for a month.

I recommend using a third party tool to read and post to twitter. "How Are People Twittering" has a top ten list as of January 31, 2008. Right now, I'm using Twitbin in my Firefox window. I also like Snitter. And plan to try out Twitterrific (free w/ ads) on my Mac.

Caveat: Twitter is not 100% stable. At this time, I would not recommend using it for mission critical information. Just this morning, there were a couple tweets that I could read on the twitter web site, but didn't get them in my Snitter or TwitBin.

Sharing your To-Do lists

The power of the web today is the ability to collaborate with others. Another tool to put in your box is a to-do list.

I just found a couple that I thought were worth of mentioning. Ta-da List and Voo2Do

Ta-da List is a very simple to-do list manager that lets you create multiple lists, each with tasks. This way, you can separate your tasks by projects. The number one feature of this is that you can share a list - or have several people working on the same list. Each list can be shared with different people or not shared at all.

My second favorite feature is the ability to subscribe to a list via RSS feeds. This way, when others edit the list, I'll know about it.

Voo2Do has more features than Ta-da List, but it is lacking the two most important ones - Collaboration & RSS (they are working on the collaboration feature). But, if you don't want to share with others, it is a very good option.
Some of the features that I like are the ability to put notes with each task, divide tasks among projects and due dates.

If you are looking for a "To-Do List" tool, get an account for each of these. It is free and only takes a minute.

Blog numbers

One of the first questions I get when talking to people about using a blog for professional reasons is, "How can I measure it?" Usually, they are familiar with numbers like the number of newsletters mailed or the circulation of a newspaper. With blogs, this can be more difficult - but not impossible.

Anne Adrian and I talked last week about this topic I guess it spawned a blog post for each of us. Her article on measuring your blog has some excellent tips for bloggers and recommends using the tools discussed below. She's a faster (and better) blogger than me.

By using a combination of FeedBurner and Google Analytics, there are ways to count the number of people who subscribe to your feed or look at your pages.

Let's start with Google Analytics.

Go to: http://www.google.com/analytics/ and create an account if you don't already have one.

1. Click on "Add a domain".
2. Enter the URL of your blog.
3. Copy the code snippet and paste into the body portion of your blog template (before the "/body" tag at the end of the HTML code).
• If you are using Blogger, add an HTML/JavaScript element to the footer of your page template.
4. Check back to view the traffic reports for your blog.
   

This will count the people visiting your blog. It does not count the people who subscribe to your feed using a feed reader or get it via email. To collect that data, you need a tool like FeedBurner.

Configuring FeedBurner to collect data.

First, you'll need to create a FeedBurner account and add your blog.

1. Go to: http://feedburner.com/
2. Create your account.
3. Add your blog in the "Burn a feed this instant" box.
4. When editing the feed details, enter a url for your "Feed Address" (avoid spaces). This is what you'll need later.
5. Save the Feed Details.
   

Finally, change change your blog's RSS server to use FeedBurner.
FeedBurner has step-by-step instructions for the following blog services:

• Blogger
• WordPress
• TypePad
• MySpace
  

If you are using other blogging software and have figured out how to use FeedBurner's RSS redirection, please let me know.

FeedBurner also gives you a way for people to receive your posts via email. (Under the Publicize tab, click on "Email Subscriptions").

Looking at the data

After you've configured your blog with these tools, you'll want to periodically view the reports. Use these numbers with caution. They show trends and not absolute numbers of people reading your content. I subscribe to lots of feeds that I never get around to reading and I visit lots of pages only to realize that it isn't what I wanted and leave.

But, if you need to report a number to your boss, these tools will give you some good and useful numbers to report.


Disclaimer: I have no financial or other interests in FeedBurner other than as a user of their services. I'm sure there are other services available that offer similar tools. I just don't know about them.

Blogs of Interest to Extension Agents

A good first step into the world of blogging is to start following some good feeds. Subscribe to them in an RSS reader of your choice. (See: RSS For Beginners)

This article was started months ago and I just kept adding links to blogs and categorizing them. Then Anne Adrian's (from Auburn Extension) PageFlakes sparked an idea. A better way to share feeds that might be of interest to the people I work with. So, I created my own PageFlakes page for you to use to find some feeds to get started. As you surf the internet, look for the icon on the page or in the location panel or button bar. When you see this logo, look at the page and ask yourself, "is this the type content I want to keep abreast of?" If so, then add it to your feed reader. Before long, you'll be keeping up-to-date in your field and know more about what's new and what's going on than most of your peers.

If you know of a feed that would be of interest to Extension Agents, please add a comment to this article or email me.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a GREAT way to share documents (word processing files, spreadsheets and now presentations) and work with other people. If you haven't used it yet, you owe it to yourself to take a look! All you need is a Google account.

The key to working smarter is working together. Today, there are lots of tools that can help you do this more efficiently and Google Docs is one of them. I'll write about others I use in future articles.

I have been using Google Docs for about a year now. Now, I save very few, if any, documents to my hard drive. They all go into Google Docs. The straw that broke the camels back and pushed me into using Google Docs for just about everything I do happened one day this spring. I needed to see the budget my secretary kept on her computer and she was out of town for a week. There was no way I could get to that file (legally). When she got back, we put that spreadsheet into Google Docs where we could both access it and work on it. I've heard of many others having similar experiences.

Reasons I love Google Docs:

• I can access my files from any computer connected to the internet. Very nice if you use more than one computer.
• Other people (I choose who) can be invited to edit - this is the REAL power
• Other people (I choose who) can be allowed to view
• Documents can be published to the web to share with a lot of people with two clicks
• Every change is recorded - along with who made the change
• Integrated with Google Mail (if you use gMail)
• Post directly to your blog
  
• FREE
• EASY
• FAST

Reasons Google Docs is not perfect:

• It is not a desk top publishing (DTP) application. For the rare occasion when I need to format a document for paper beyond the capabilities of Google Docs, I save it to my computer and use the appropriate application for DTP. I use Google Docs to create, get others' input and help and then do any final layout using a DTP app on my computer.
• I find it easier to move around and edit a spreadsheet using Excel or Calc. So, if I'm going to be doing some major work on a spreadsheet, I'll work on it locally and then upload it when I'm done.
• Presentations doesn't allow me to edit the background or add animatation.
• Presenations doesn't allow me to save as a PowerPoint file.
  
• It does about 95% of what I need a word processor to do, about 90% of what I need a spreadsheet application to do and about 80% of what I need a presentation application to do. What I lose in functionality, I more than make up for in other ways.
  

Over the last year, Google Docs has made a lot of improvements and new features are being added at a fast pace. If it doesn't do what you need today, keep watching.

For a quick overview of Google Docs, see: Google Docs in Plain English.

Paradigm shifting tools

The world is changing. I really enjoy finding or identifying tools, trends, etc. that I think will effect the rate of change. Finding those things that have the potential to cause global paradigm shifts.

I saw several this morning. All in a 20 minute talk by Hans Rosling.

1. The obvious one was the topic of his talk. How money and political leaders have changed and are changing the health of their countries. Making the public aware of these trends is a great first step towards making changes.

2. Less obvious: new software (at least new to me) can be used to present complex information in easy to follow and understand formats. I had never seen animated graphs like his before. He used it to show global trends, but it won't be long before it will be used in K-12 classrooms to show how much food is wasted in the cafeteria.

3. He concludes his talk about freeing and making understandable the information that is paid for by the public. This requires that the information be ANIMATED, LIBERATED and SEARCHABLE. Gapminder and Google are working towards this end. Reminiscent of Kevin's article "Open Access In Scientific Publishing".

4. PowerPoint presentations (or Google Presentations) will become better (less boring and more infomative) in the future (woo hoo!!!)

5. Social networking tools work. I found out about this when reading my RSS feeds (subscribed to rconlon's del.icio.us feed) You are discovering it by reading this blog directly at http://blog.johndorner.com/ in your own feed reader or it might have been delivered to your email by FeedBurner or other similar service. Those who aren't using at least some of the new social networking tools are getting left behind.

What's really cool - is that you can play with the same software and dataset that Hans Rosling used in his presentation at: http://tools.google.com/gapminder/.

LifeSmarts

Just ran across this site today - LifeSmarts - http://www.lifesmarts.org/

Looks like it would fit in with 4-H perfectly. Competition started 9/17/07, so you need to hurry.

"LifeSmarts… the ultimate consumer challenge is an educational opportunity that develops the consumer and marketplace knowledge and skills of teenagers in a fun way and rewards them for this knowledge. The program complements the curriculum already in place in high schools and can be used as an activity for classes, groups, clubs, and community organizations. It is free and open to all teens in the US in the 9th through 12th grades. LifeSmarts competitions are run as gameshow style matches. Teams of four to five teens compete in district and state matches with the state winners going to the national competition to vie for the national LifeSmarts title. LifeSmarts is a program of the National Consumers League."

LifeSmarts is operated by the National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is a national nonprofit organization that identifies, protects, represents, and advances the economic and social interests of consumers and workers through education and advocacy.

More on Presenting

QOTD: "(powerpoint) bullets don't kill people, people kill people"
I saw this same quote in both Visuals In PowerPoint by Rowan Manahan and in Death By PowerPoint by Alexei Kapterev.

I found these on Slideshare.net this is one of the playgrounds of the Knowledge Worker 2.0 Great stuff here!!! Great place to share your stuff!!!

I don't create many PowerPoints, but the ones I've used recently are there. But, what is even more important are the ones that are in my list of favorites. Those are the really good ones.

I've got to start blogging more... Sorry, I haven't been keeping up my end of the bargain. However, I have been using del.icio.us, SlideShare and Twitter for sharing information, links and my thoughts. If you aren't using these, please look into them!

Useful Site of the Day

The University of California - Irvine
Online course - "Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning"
http://ocw.uci.edu/courses/AR0102092/

Presence technologies

Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, Kyte, Plaxo, Del.icio.us etc.
These are some new applications you might want to learn more about.

The only way to 'grok' these is to get in there and try it for a couple of weeks. Find some friends and do it together.

My id on Twitter, and Delicious is "jdorner".
On Facebook, just search for John Dorner. One of the advantages of having an uncommon name is that there are only two of us on Facebook - so far.

Robert Scoble has a good intro to some of these.

I'll be blogging about these and some others when I have some time to blog. Right now, I've got to go catch my plane.

A graphical dictionary

Scouting around, I found this site: Visuwords. It is a graphical dictionary. It's hard to describe, you just have to go there and try it out. Look up a word with multiple meanings like "network" to get the full effect. I can see this easily replacing the thesaurus I use.

Position your pointer over the word to get the definition.

Pretty cool looking - and useful.

Why Twitter???

Anne (aafromaa) asked for a reason to try twitter. Kevin (k1v1n) answered - because it is fun.

Like Anne, I couldn't see a compelling reason to use Twitter. But, after a couple weeks of using it and a late night discussion with Robert Neely, I finally figured it out - at least a reason for me.

I don't have much face-to-face contact or even telephone contact with most of the people that I work with. Usually it is IM, email and I might see them a couple times a year. When we do get together, I don't know much about what's going on in their life - either personal or professional outside of the project or problem we're working on.

Twitter lets me maintain or improve a connection with my friends. It is a social networking tool. It's amazing how nice it is to know what my friends are doing or thinking right now. It's like a little reminder to think about them and make a mental connection. I hope that when they post, they occasionally think of me.

Another neat use of Twitter was when Beth (bnr1) twittered that she was getting ready for an online class she was leading. It reminded me (I hadn't forgotten Beth) that it was almost time to connect. So, this can also be a marketing tool! Beth uses it effectively to remind me that she is working on the next class - a week or so out.

I was trying to explain Twitter to my wife - she looks at me like I've lost my mind. But she works in an office and has that social network in the face-to-face environment, so she doesn't need twitter - yet. When more of her friends that she hasn't seen in years get on, then I'm sure she'll join in too.

SlideShare

Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/ offers you a way to post your presentations (PowerPoint, PDF, and OpenOffice) - up to 30MB - and share them with the world. Of course, I don't care about sharing with the world, but there are times I want to share my presentations with more than a couple others and this is a great repository for you to use to do just that. Think of it as free web space for hosting your presentations.

It is also a cool place to find presentations on topics you are interested in teaching or learning - (i.e. Teaching Excel or Animals and Disaster). Once you find a presentation in your area, you've also found someone who knows about the topic you are interested. You can see other presentations from that same individual.

PBwiki has gone AD FREE

PBwiki recently made all of their wikis ad free. They are making their money by selling extra features like customizing the design or more file space. The 10MB that comes with the free account is plenty for thousands of pages - you'd want the additional space if you were sharing files or had lots of images.

Their tag line is, “Make a PBwiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich” and it's true! It's hard to imagine that it could be any easier.

This fits perfectly with all kinds of groups of people working together. There are just so many times a wiki would be the perfect tool for all types of projects. I recently started one for our boy scout troop to be able to post the minutes of all our leader meetings and to develop the agendas for our camping trips - http://troop701.pbwiki.com

BackPackIt

http://www.backpackit.com/

Here's another useful tool for collaborating! Amazingly simple to use.

Keep track of a to-do list, notes, writeboards, and links. For a fee, you can share a calendar, upload files and images and have more pages.

I think this could be a pretty simple project management tool.

But, I ask myself "What can you do here that you can't in a wiki?" And I answer myself, "mmm... Maybe it has a better interface for doing what it does - easier for a novice - maybe." Not really sure. I think I'll stick with my wikis for collaborating. I'm sure it's the right tool for something and someone. Certainly worth looking at and creating an account - just to play with for a few minutes.

PBwiki for Educators

I've been a fan of PBwiki since I first found them in 2005. They live up to their promise that creating a PBwiki is as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.

It has all the features I need in a wiki - GUI editor, optional password protection, several templates make it easy to create pages for different purposes, the ability to upload files and did I mention that it is FREE! Of course, if you want more features or more than 10MB for your files, you can get those for a fee. I also love the fact that you get a nice URL i.e. "YOURNAME.pbwiki.com".

PBwiki is specifically targeting and developing tools for educators - http://educators.pbwiki.com/. Check out their Educator Videos and see how other educators are using wikis and what they like about them.

Update: Check out my.pbwiki.com. Now you can create an account that allows easy access to all of your PBwikis.

(Full disclosure: I have no involvement or ties with PBwiki other than being a passionate user)

Google Guide

Want to make your time using Google more efficient? Take a look at Google Guide

If you want to go even farther, check out YubNub. I've installed the YubNub search extension for Firefox and now I don't have to select where I want to search with the mouse, I just type "wp" at the beginning of my search phrase and it searches WikiPedia. Type "d" at the beginning and it searches dictionary.com. Start with "y" and it searches Yahoo!. Start with "g" and it searches Gooogle. There's lots of others and you can customize it too!

Subscribe via Email

FeedBurner has lots of 'tools' available for bloggers. One of these is a widget you can put on your blog to allow your readers to subscribe via email (rather than feed reader). While personally, I think feed readers are the best way to go, I realize that many readers prefer email. By adding this feature to the Scouting Around blog, you have your choice - and that is the most important thing - you choose how you want to get the information you want delivered to you.

Look on the sidebar of this page, there is a link "Subscribe to Scouting Around by Email". You can enter your email address to receive the posts to this blog the day they are posted. If more than one post is made in a day, then they are collected into one message so you receive no more than one email a day.

Let me know what you think of this feature. How's it work for you?

Zamzar - Free Online File Conversion

Have you ever wanted to convert files without the need to download software ?
Someone send you a file and you don't have the right application to open it?
Want to convert a PDF to Word so you can type in it?

Zamzar is a free site (supported by advertising) that lets you email or upload a file and then be emailed when it has been converted.

http://www.zamzar.com/

You can convert many different document formats (CSV, DOC, ODP, ODS, ODT, PDF, PPT, and PS) to your choice of many formats including DOC, HTML, MDB, ODS, ODT, PDF, RTF, CSV, XLS, XML, PCX, PNG, JPG, THUMBNAIL, TIFF, PS, TXT, PPT, and SWF depending on the original format.

You can also convert audio and video files to other audio/video formats.

The only two negatives I could find are that is wasn't 'instantaneous'. It took a few minutes between uploading and receiving the email with the link to the converted file and it doesn't convert MS Publisher files.