And He Blogs

Image by Andrew Feinberg via Flickr

How’s that title for an attention grabber? It basically translates to saying, unless you’re a bad parent, you should drop what you’re doing and pay attention. In blogs, newscasts, and almost everywhere else that you turn we hear the warnings. Scary warnings about food, travel, drugs, and now the de rigueur warning about the hazards of the Internet and [insert dramatic music here] Internet Predators. The latest example is by way of Will Richardson who points to an incident that happened in a Wyoming high school. An officer from the nearby Cheyenne Police Department came to the school and spoke to students about the dangers of predators on the Internet. He used MySpace as an example of where students post their personal pictures and therefore leave themselves vulnerable to those bad people watching out there. Now, while there is some debate about what the officer actually said. Richardson’s point that it is the absolutely wrong approach is right on. He has a suggestion:

Go to your principal or superintendent right now and ask her/him this: Would you really rather have your students learn about safety online from some “authority” figure who drops in and attempts to make them fearful, or from people who they know and trust and see every day in their classrooms who over the course of time in appropriate and balanced ways can educate them instead?

Now I know a few police officers, good men and women all, but I know that their perspective is somewhat clouded by the fact that they see the end result of the "bad Internet". To them it must look mostly bad. So this fear approach to Internet safety doesn’t work any better than other types of "scared straight" education. This results in nothing more than articles like this one from 2003, which starts out like a bad novel. "Christina Long’s life was full of promise." I mean for cripes sake, what purpose does this serve? Christina Long was indeed the victim of a crime, but the Internet was no more of a perpetrator than violent TV, or slash and burn video games. Another example is this pitiful article from Katherine Ramsland.  After referencing the story about Christina Long, she refers to a June 2006 article in Science News:

[The] article reports that nine in ten adolescents utilized Internet resources in 2004, and at least fifty percent went online every day. A lot of them are contacted by predators seeking a viable contact whom they can draw into their net. Most predators have a number of fetishes and paraphilias, so for some, almost any kid who responds will do.

Guess which part of that paragraph were Ms. Ramsland’s words (hint, they’re in bold), because they are, in fact, wrong. Watch the PBS Frontline program Growing Up Online and see how the teenagers talk much more rationally about online life than the adults. Maybe we need to correct some of their laissez faire attitudes, but for the most part they know where the good Internet ends and the bad one begins.

So what is a good source of information that is easily digestible and dispels the myths of online predators? Well, start with the Crimes Against Children Research Center’s fact sheet from the University of New Hampshire. A quick read of this resource will demonstrate loud and clear how much hype there is when it comes to Internet dangers. Kids know when they’re being lied to, especially when we try to scare the crap out of them.

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Mark Cuban has lots of ideas. His best one was back in the late ’90s when he decided to create a webcasting business that was ultimately sold for millions of dollars to Yahoo! Cuban may well have another great idea to save Internet video, but I’ll leave commenting on his ideas to a possible future post. Mark should know something about HD video. He is the Chairman of HDNet, a cable television network that broadcasts exclusively in high definition (HD).

HDNet is one of the few networks that has original HD programming, and by that I mean an independent network broadcasting exclusively in HD. HDNet’s Dan Rather Reports is an example of original HD programming. Depending on who your cable provider is, you may or may not have HDNet available to you. Without getting into the sordid details about why, you likely will have either HDNet or a network known as Mojo available with your cable or satellite provider, or with fiber-optic systems such as Verizon’s FiOS, or AT&T’s U-verse.

So Mark Cuban started a business and is one of the leaders of a company that produces HD video. It is with that knowledge that makes this statement so confusing:

100pct (sic) of the internet video that you see offered on the net as HD, is not HD. Plain and simple.

He then offers the following definition (of sorts):

What is HD video ? HD Vidoe (sic) is video you can watch on a screen of ANY size and say…”that looks good, almost as good as it can get “.

My purpose here is not to picks nits, but if that is his definition of HD video, then by who’s standard do we define “looks good” and “as good as it can get”? Look, there are lots of sites, services, and networks trying to distribute HD video on the Internet, or at least what they self-define as HD video. I should also point out that high definition video on the web is mostly a buzzword, and Cuban’s definition doesn’t help.

Here, let me define HD video. It is digital video that is represented by the minimum dimensions of 1280×720 pixels (720p). Now was that so hard? You can also take a look at the Wikipedia entry for high definition video for many more details. Having tendered those definitions, it should also be said that like all things digital, there is a quality factor that can affect how good HD video looks.  It is generally represented by what is known as bit rate. It is also something that most directly relates to the fudge factor that gets used on some supposed HD video sites. Again, the details start to get way too complicated in terms of what makes good (and bad) HD video, so let’s just stop before we hurt ourselves.

What makes Cuban so wrong is that there are good, and successful, attempts at providing HD video through the web. The screen grab at the top of this post is from one of these Internet TV networks called Revision3. The show is called Tekzilla, and by every measurement that I know of it is high definition. The basic specs of the video are, 1280×720 pixels (again 720p), h.264 video codec, AAC audio. It’s video quality that I’ve raved about before.

There’s a great way to check out more HD content by using software called Miro. It is similar to iTunes, but geared toward online video, and it provides good quality HD programming. If you check out their Miro Guide, you can check out some of the HD choices. I use it on my home theater PC which is connected to my Pioneer Plasma and it looks good, almost as good as it can get. Oh, sorry. That definition is taken. So what’s with Cuban’s 100% not HD statement? Is it because it’s not Blu-ray quality? Well, it will be a while before we are downloading 20GB files to watch on our HDTVs. Is it because it isn’t the same quality as HDNet? Well, no, Tekzilla probably doesn’t use XDCAM HD (cameras that still sell for over $20,000). However, it looks as good as a lot of the broadcast HD content out there, because it not further compressed by the cable or satellite company. All of this technology (do I have to say it?) is constantly improving. Codecs are being developed that will surpass what we have today that will deliver higher quality at equivalent bit rates. Cuban’s standard sounds like something that we may never achieve, and when it comes down to the basic definition of HD video, he’s wrong.

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Time and again, Twitter is proving that there is a huge community out there, wherever there is. Somebody, or bodies, is/are even listening to brief rants (what other types of rants are there on Twitter but brief ones) and responding. The latest evidence involves a personal little beef with Apple that I recently vented about. The tweet went like this:

To which they replied:

To which I snapped back:

They actually answered back:

The question this begs is, who is “Safari Answers”? Are they tech support at Apple? Apparently not if they are directing me to Apple’s forums. Is this someone who is just passionate about Safari? Maybe. Their profile includes the web address to Apple’s Safari page. Hmm. Whoever they are, they calmly, rationally responded to my expletive containing tweet. I did put my little smiley in there to let them know when I was finished, I meant no ill will.

Safari Answers must see other similar comments about this as evidence is here, here, and here. My response about “stop doing it in the first place” is warranted, I feel, because I have checked that Safari box and gone to Tools and chosen “Ignore Selected Updates” before. It seems to come back even when you’ve attempted to ignore it previously. So Apple, if you’re listening, don’t offer up other programs when you’re trying to keep the other software on my computer, that I did want, up-to-date, but that I didn’t need because I don’t need the “App Store” because I don’t have an iPhone, and I hate the fact that you advertise it as half-price and you shouldn’t get away with it so stop it because it pisses me off!!! Thanks for listening.

EPILOGUE: Two last bits. First, I got the original “Safari Push” on my home theater PC, and tweeted accordingly. I got another push on the computer that I am typing this post on while I was in the middle of writing it! I chuckled. Second, this whole tweet and response thing does expose a problem with Twitter in that the reply system is a bit broken. The “in reply to” link at the bottom of the tweet only links to the last tweet by that person, not the actual tweet that it was related to. It would be nice to get that working better. Twitter? You there?

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* = in some areas

The Internet is great for fact checking. When it comes to fact checking, I find that Paul Thurrott does a great job with this. When it comes to the new iPhone, Paul does some debunking of the hype surrounding the new 3G version. The purpose of this post is to bring attention to his fact checking and to add my own comments. This Friday the iPhone 3G goes on sale and the big headlines are, and Apple’s website says “Twice as Fast, Half the Price”. Walt Mossberg’s headline reads “Newer, Faster, Cheaper iPhone 3G“. Other reviewers have varying headlines and opinions. Now I know that columnists generally don’t write their own headlines (unlike bloggers, hehe), but the bottom line is if anyone tells you the iPhone is cheaper, they are wrong. If someone tells you it’s faster, well it depends. If someone tells you it’s newer, well they couldn’t be more right. It IS new!

So what should the purpose of a review such as Mossberg’s be? To inform a potential buyer whether a product is worth it or not, and to point out a company’s misinformation. This post is not a review. I don’t own an iPhone. I’ve heard great things about them. I know at least two people who own one and they say it’s the best phone they’ve ever had. I may own one some time in the future, but is now the time to get one? Why should I get one now?

If you answer “because it’s cheaper” or “it’s half the price”, your not telling me the truth. If you plan to buy one and not activate it with AT&T (if that’s even possible) or only get a talking plan and not a data plan, then it is cheaper than the previous iPhone. If you do plan on using it (with data) then here’s the breakdown. The original iPhone cost $599. Let’s repeat that one. The original iPhone was $600, and early adopters stood in long lines for it. It then dropped to $400 two months later (iPhone 2.0). Thanks Apple. That phone was cheaper. The new iPhone costs $200, but let’s be clear, that’s “up front”. Let’s break down the pricing plan. I’ll round up to make the numbers simpler:

You must sign a 24 month contract and if you have the data plan, which is what the iPhone is made for, this phone is more expensive to own, period.

As to the “it’s twice as fast” claim, well that appears to be true, if you’re going to use the phone where there is 3G coverage. However, unless you live in a large U.S. city, you’re not going to get 3G. Let’s try saying this - It’s slightly more expensive to own the iPhone 3G, and while the 3G network is faster, the coverage is not where the slower EDGE network is right now. With that out of the way, tell me what’s better about the new iPhone?

The most realistic review is from David Pogue of the New York Times. His basic points are that it is still a great looking phone, the audio clarity for calls is much improved, and the GPS capabilities and other software have been improved. However, he immediately points out that the phone is not less expensive. Thank you, David. Mossberg points out some deficiencies with battery life, but doesn’t adequately dispel the “half the price” myth. The other review that Paul points out is by Ed Baig in USA Today. He also says it’s cheaper, and that’s not in the headline.

Why am I going on about this. Because it’s wrong! Some people can afford to get excited about a product that costs more than the last model. Some people can’t! To hide its costs and say it’s less by half is inexcusable. New models of technology products should give you more for less. I’d even settle for more for the same cost. All reviews of the iPhone should call out Apple immediately for saying it’s half the price. If you were able to get an iPhone from Rent-A-Center for $2000 for two years versus $1840 for two years would they be able to get away with saying it was half-price? No.

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I thought about several ways to begin this post, and I was hoping the title wouldn’t scare people off thinking that I was going to vent. No, it’s not that kind of air. It’s actually Adobe’s AIR, or Adobe Integrated Runtime (yes, I’ll just use AIR from now on). AIR has actually been around for well over a year now. I first used it at the 2007 Faculty Academy here at UMW for a program called Twittercamp, which is a program that would aggregate “tweets” from Twitter and display them on a screen (preferably a large flat panel screen). Alan Levine and I have been using it for the conferences we’ve been involved in the past two years, including this year’s Faculty Academy and the NMC event in Princeton. AIR programs function like Flash programs do on the web, only you download them to your computer. You first need the Adobe AIR “runtime” program, then you can install and use all of the AIR apps you want, even use them simultaneously. There’s no need to open a web browser to use these programs.

The question for a while now has been is it worth downloading the AIR “player” and then installing the individual programs? Is there anything compelling out there to use? I can now say that it’s a definitive YES! The point of these programs is that they are small, and quickly installed. To use the programs, they require that you have a live connection to the Internet, but they function on the idea of working “in the cloud“. So after you get Adobe AIR installed on your computer, go install the following programs:

TweetDeck - I’m getting the feeling that this is going to be the next “must have” program, next to using Twitter of course. TweetDeck is one of the many (thousands?) Twitter intermediaries that pull in Twitter posts (tweets) and display them in a unique way. It’s still in early beta (0.151b as of this writing), but it already has some uniquely great features. It allows you to get a handle on how tweets get viewed. TweetDeck sets up as many columns as you need to view your tweets how you want to. The first column is usually the “all tweets” column, but you can move the columns around. You can set up groups by picking individuals that you follow and giving that group a name. Then you see their tweets in another column. You can create another column that is a search term. I used the term “edupunk” and now I get a column that updates automatically with tweets that have the word edupunk in them. You can have still more columns with replies to you, or direct messages. A recent new feature is the ability to collapse the view to a single column. I expect great things from this program.

Adobe Media Player - Now you might be saying, “who needs another media player?”, and you’re right. However, this is well done, and if you use Adobe software on a regular basis, there is enough Adobe content to make it worth it. Add to that clips from TV shows and some “HiDef” content, and it makes for a worthwhile download.

Destroy Flickr - OK, I don’t get why there’s the hostile name because DF is all about a pretty interface for viewing Flickr photos. Photos just look better on a dark neutral grey background, as opposed to Flickr’s all too white web page. Again, it’s a quick install of an Adobe AIR program and you have the many viewing options, called canvases. It remembers where you have been and saves those views in a history, called workspaces. You also have control of uploading and downloading photos to and from your Flickr account. UPDATE: Note the comment from the creator of DestroyFlickr, Jonnie Hallman, below. I got the name wrong on the first go-round. Sorry!

If you want to check out other AIR applications go to freshAIRapps and see just what the potential for the AIR platform is. Note: Because of a current negotiation with Adobe of the use of AIR in their website’s domain, another location for the FreshAIRApps may be at Refreshingapps.com.

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This is a post that I’ve been contemplating for a while and it will not just be a rant, but offer some advice for fixing issues with Windows Vista. I’ll also offer a little perspective to Microsoft’s new OS, something lacking in today’s blogospheric culture. It took an article in PC World to say enough is enough. That and the fact that today marks the last day you can purchase Windows XP in retail stores. In their latest issue, PC World declares Windows XP as one of their top products of 2008. OK, I get it. Very funny. XP is better than Vista - it’s “leaner, meaner and less bloated than Vista” says PC World. Let me give you one advantage that XP has over Vista. There weren’t any blogs around when XP was released. If there were, you would have seen the same gnashing of teeth that you see with Vista’s release. Today, what you have is a cacophony of users, mostly repeating the meme of Vista is a disaster/nightmare/abomination, the “worst version of Windows ever”. I’ve even heard the comparison to Windows ME. Meanwhile, a bizarre love affair with XP has begun.

Now I admit that I was ready to blame Vista for certain problems I was having. As I pointed out then, there were some audio issues that needed to be ironed out. There also was some weird behavior in the copying function, which has since been corrected with Service Pack 1. However, I have been mostly happy with Vista. I upgraded my Toshiba Tablet PC because XP was giving me fits. (I now believe, by the way, that the computer itself was a big part of the problem). So what’s so good about Vista? Well, let’s start with what was Windows XP’s biggest problem.

Security. It’s better in Vista. Have you read all the headlines about Vista being a security risk, and all of the people hacking Vista? Me neither. However, this has actually been turned into a complaint, with a generous amount of help from Apple with their “switching ads”.

“Oh, this sucks. Now my computer is too secure.” Like it or not, more people are trying to hack Windows. More than 90% of the people using computers in the world are using Windows PCs. User Access Control (UAC) can be frustrating. It can, and possibly should be tweaked. But compare it to XP. For XP to be functional, with the need to install plug-ins for web browsers, and the need to do other system file manipulation, it’s almost essential that it be used in admin mode. Not a good idea. Vista forces you to use a computer in protected mode. The additional (and maybe excessive) prompts are the trade-off for more security.

There are lots of other good things about Vista, not the least of which addresses the complaint of XP’s “Fisher Price” interface (remember that one?). Vista looks good and it functions very well on a relatively new PC. Search and indexing are much improved in Vista. Partitions are easily resized. It has very good Tablet PC support with much better handwriting recognition. It has very good built-in voice recognition. It does a much better job of isolating programs that have crashed, so that they don’t freeze the computer. Vista Media Center is much improved. And so on.

What will happen to Vista from here on out? Well, it will grow on people. Drivers will be improved and programs will be updated to run better on Vista. A majority of problems with Vista lie in poorly written drivers and software, and not with Vista itself. Sure, I want Vista to work better. I want it to work great. So in that spirit, here are some tips to get you there:

Ed Bott’s “Fixing Windows Vista, one machine at a time“, and

Vista Tweaks Part 1 & Part 2.

And here is some nice perspective on the similarities to when Windows XP was the new kid on the block:

Hasta La Vista, Windows XP

There I feel better.

UPDATE: After I published this, I noticed that Ed Bott had posted an audio interview with Larry Magid of CBS News, talking about XP’s last day and whether Vista is a worthy upgrade.

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Fellow Virginian and IT person David Carter-Tod wrote a post that was spot-on about setting a tone for customer service at a Comcast office. It’s the kind of post that maybe we all imagine writing while we’re standing in line thinking about how things work, or don’t. Well, as you can see, David wrote, and it doesn’t look like it took too long for Comcast to read it and respond. I had heard that Comcast has been lurking around Twitter, looking for these kinds of issues and responding. I’m going to ask David if he can follow up and report the results. That would be Comcastic!

UPDATE: Comcast gets right on it! Well done.

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So we’re nine days on in the era of Edupunk, and it appears things are perhaps calming down, but not before some rather intense discussions, conversations and kicking over some garbage cans. Let’s see there’s Jim’s original post, the comments, the definition, the critique, the defense, the “narcissism”, the Wikipedia article, the other article (and the comments), and finally the end. There have been lots of arguments about what Edupunk is, whether it’s even worth talking about, along with all of the other non-productive hand-wringing and smack-downs. In less than a fortnight we’ve gone from a made up word, to a term, to an ideology (puhleeze).

Look. See the picture at the top? It’s Jim Groom. Who on earth would take this guy seriously? This is the man, your hero, that coined the term Edupunk (or is it all caps - EDUPUNK?). Need I say more? Do you know what Jim posted about right before his seminal Edupunk meme (Jim says it’s not a meme, by the way) was born. He blogged about ME. What about me? How do I fit into Edupunk? Why didn’t I take off as a meme??? Seriously.

Hey, we kind of know what “Edu” is all about. Everybody is doing their best to make a difference, trying out things, making mistakes. You know learning. “Punk” is about anger. Sometimes misplaced. Often completely irrational. There were some very ugly people associated with punk in its early days. They were angry. Angry at authority. It wasn’t productive. They would eat their own. They would self-destruct. Think the guy in the foil hat is “punk”? Seriously?

So with punk already 30+ years on, Jim started a little revival, angry at the corporate hijacking of education. Um, in case you haven’t figured it out, Jim can be a hot head. Hyperbole flows in his veins instead of blood, but he’s a good man. Someone I am glad to have here at UMW, and proud to call a friend. Someone I take great pleasure in cutting back down to size once in a while . . . OK a lot

So here’s how it kind of happened, as portrayed in a scene from one of my all-time favorite movies Sid & Nancy.

Here are all the pretenders that think they know Edupunk.

So let’s go a little lighter with the Edu-”punk” mantras. We all know education has to change. Just let’s not be punks about it.

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I just got done re-watching Sir Ken Robinson’s terrific TED Talk on creativity in education. Here is an update that expands upon creativity by talking about the power of innovation, and how we systematically suppress it in our classrooms. There IS an education revolution taking place and it is what makes my job one that gets me excited to go to work on Monday mornings. I’ll have more on these ideas of creativity and innovation soon (with thoughts of the neonatal EDUPUNK movement), but I wanted this video to make the rounds as soon as possible.

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Just a quick post on a new discovery - Photoshop tutorials from a deeply disturbed individual entitled “You Suck at Photoshop“. Definitely PG-13 and abusive, but very funny - and yet instructional.

UPDATE: YSAP returns for “Season 2″ on June 27!

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