Monthly Archives: July 2009

Jul 12 2009

Rethinking the Need for a Twitter Client

It was with excitement that I received the notice that the Seesmic Desktop had been upgraded to version 0.4. I’ve tried a number of Twitter clients to try and find the one that fits best with the way that I compute.  I’ve tried Destroy Twitter, Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Spaz, Nambu before settling on Seesmic Desktop.  They are all great programs and selecting one over the other is not a comment on any of them.

I’ve also tried web solutions.  I’ve used the Twitter web interface, the Twitter Search page when I’m following a topic, Twitterfall just because it’s pretty cool, and iTweet.

There are a lot of different things that went into my decision.  Once you get used to columns and real time filtering, you turn Twitter into far more than a conversation area.  When you start to integrate Facebook, you get the ability to stay connected across multiple platforms.  When you can filter or search on the fly, you have the ability to leapfrog onto different conversation/research streams.  When you follow a hashtag, you begin to track a hopefully focussed conversation.  In fact, the more that you work it, the more you appreciate and start searching for functionality without compromise.

All of these needs led me to focus on Seesmic Desktop.  It runs on Windows, Macintosh, and Ubuntu and has the functionality that I want and it serves me nicely.  Probably the best environment that I’ve set up for it involves attaching an external monitor and running it full screen “over there” so that there’s a minimum of keyboard intervention involved.

There are couple of things that have prevented this from being the absolutely, positively, drop dead solution though.

Like most Twitter clients, it runs on Adobe’s Integrated Runtime solution.  So, a cold installation involves installing both AIR and the application itself. Not an onerous task but something to be aware of.  More than the installation though, when you let it run for a while, it does collect huge amounts of information and there is an impact on the computer.  In the worst case, the processor gets very warm and the fan comes on.  That’s a good indication that you’re really crunching.  Generally, though, I’ll just notice that the computer becomes sluggish.  Bringing up the task manager shows why as I’ll see that Seesmic Desktop has grabbed a whack of memory and CPU resources.  A quick exit and then restart of the application resolves the situation.

The second issue is self-inflicted, I know.  When running the Seesmic Desktop on my netbook, 576 vertical pixels doesn’t give a great deal of real estate to display tweets.  When you throw in the avatar, it’s often then you get three or four entries per page and then you’re off and scrolling.  While I appreciate the updates from my friends, I really don’t want to work all that hard to get them.  Sorry.


Netbook screen overlay on desktop – note the size difference

So, after I downloaded the Seesmic Desktop update, I wandered over to the Seesmic Website to read the release notes and notice that Seesmic also has made a web interface available.  Well, there goes the rest of the evening.  Got to check this out. I was so amazed.

It’s in its infancy, but the web version is a pretty faithful replication of the client. You’ve got your columns, your search fields, no multiple Twitter and Facebook account yet but it’s early, no lists – but the cool thing is that it runs inside your browser.  So, no more flipping applications to see updates.  Just a CTRL-TAB in Firefox and you’re looking at your updates.  The web uses OATH to authenticate and then you’re in.  The default is to display your home and mentions.  Additional columns are added as you add searches to your desktop.  Very nice.


Desktop showing home, mentions, and a search column for “teach”

Switch to your collection of direct messages reveals a nice approach.  Often direct messages create their own unique thread of 140 character conversations.  The layout changes as your conversation is displayed as a thread.  Very nice.

DMs – blurred to protect a Zut

But, the thing that put me over the top and has me excited is the little icon on the right bar of any column.  Once clicked, it changes from a full view to one that shows only a single line per tweet.  It works like a teaser – when there are more characters than are visible, you click to display them.  However, this will shine on a netbook where space is at a premium.  Instead of displaying 3 or 4 tweets, this preview now shows you up to about 15 of them.  Oh yeah!  New tweets come in as yellow so that they’re highlighted and then fade to the standard bluish grey over time.  This is a very nice feature.

Spaz has much the same display when you ask for small avatars but doesn’t currently display columns.

So, my first look at this approach is outstandingly positive.  I’m really impressed with what I’m seeing for a first release.  If development continues with the web version like it has with the desktop, this could easily change my approach to staying on top of things with Twitter.

The run so far has been interesting.  Twitter is a web based communication environment that has always had better functionality when accessed by a client. With this functionality, that may go away. When the web provides the same or better functionality and eliminates the need to add additional overhead to your computer, we’re looking at a great approach.

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Jul 12 2009

links for 2009-07-11

Jul 11 2009

The Case for Email Literacy

The image below is deliberately blurred as there are some terms in there that are offensive and this high quality blog doesn’t use potty mouth.  <grin>

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m doing some cleanup and maintenance on various accounts and things that I use so that things are relatively organized to make my time online productive.  Part of this means cleaning out mailboxes.  This seems like a never ending task but it’s necessary.  If you don’t, you can easily reach storage limits and have your account suspended or even worse.In this case, I’m clearing out my Hotmail account.  What’s unique about this free account is that I don’t share the email address with anyone – it’s not on a website, blog, or any other resource.  I don’t use the account for general email; it’s just an area where my family can send me email and I can log into Windows Live services like Bing.And yet, the spammers and garbage senders from the web have found this account.

The content filter has correctly identified the garbage above and appropriately files it in the Junk box.  Thankfully, content filters stop these type of messages from clogging up the main mailbox but they are kept around just in case a message gets flagged inappropriately.  It’s good practice to take a quick skim through the messages periodically in case something gets targeted inappropriately.

The spammers have tried their best to avoid the filters – replacing the letter i with the digit 1; replacing the letter o with the digit 0; misspelling words so that they won’t get caught in a dictionary check and yet you still recognize what the word is.

Windows Live Mail
Image by niallkennedy via Flickr

So, I do my quick skim and was about to blow them all away when I started to think about what a student would do.  From the email address, you’d have no idea if I was me, or a business using this account, or a 12 year old student.  Spammers don’t really care – they just want their message delivered and if you’re naive enough, for you to open it and click on a link because your credit card has been compromised or you have a health problem that needs fixing or you’ve got contact from a long-lost relative or you’ve won some sort of lottery.  While it may be amusing at one level, it can be very serious at another.  For all of the millions of pieces of junk mail navigating the internet, the goal is to get a couple of people to get curious and click through to get taken advantage of.

How does education handle this?  Often, quite badly.  Use a content filter to block or filter this stuff so that it’s not visible and therefore doesn’t exist.  Don’t give students email accounts so that the opportunity doesn’t present itself.  Run a simulation to show what “might” happen.  All of the techniques might have some educational value but how effective is it?

Students go home to the family computer and go online real time.  With real email accounts and accepting real internet traffic, they deal with these issues on their own.  A simplistic solution is to say “Where are the parents?”  “Why aren’t they supervising online activities?”  These are very simplistic, passing the buck solutions and don’t really address the situation.  Parents aren’t experts – many did not grow up with email and may be just as naive as their children.

Education has taken on some very serious societal issues in the past.  Sex education, addressing drug use, bullying, etc. are now an accepted part of the curriculum.   Progressive educators are finding ways to incorporate email and other online literacies in the classroom.  It’s time that this become a serious topic covered in all classes, every year, so that we raise literate online citizens.

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Jul 11 2009

links for 2009-07-10

Jul 10 2009

Images

There were big happenings yesterday at Google over its new addition to image search.  My buddy, TheCleverSheep was all over it immediately.  Just announced on the Official Google Blog was the inclusion of a filter to allow you to quickly identify images by type.  Of interest to bloggers and web developers are images that are released under a Creative Common license with permissions to use the images in a variety of ways.

Often, you’re looking for that perfect image to demonstrate a concept in a post or for a presentation.  There are great ways to do it.  TheCleversheep even produced this presentation and spoke about the concept and resources at an Ontario Educatiors’ Meetup.  Until now, you needed to use the search at the Creative Commons website, Compfight (the Sheep’s favourite), or The Flickr CC Search Toy (my favourite).  More recently, I’ve been using Zemanta for this sort of the thing.  The integration into ScribeFire makes this functionaity so useful.

Now, the filter addition to Google lets you have control over the use of images right into Google Search.  Make sure that you’re using the Advanced Search and it’s one feature that’s there among a number of others.

For those who are Photoshop lazy, there are also options for the size of graphic file or the file type.  Need a photo that has a face in it?  How about clipart as opposed to a photo?  All of these are options that let you zero in of the exact type of file that suits your needs.

Upon returning to the results, there’s another interesting feature.

Often, you’ll need an image with particular colours or shading to them.  By clicking the “All colors” option, an additional filter narrows your results to images that have a particular colour to them.

To test this out, I did a search for “Detroit Tigers“.  As you might suspect, what you get is a potpourri of images and graphics and it comes as no surprise that most of them include the Tigers’ logo which is navy blue and orange.  However, if you’re going a green themed post or presentation, can you get results that have green as a predominant colour.

It should come as no surprise that the results now include a lot of photos of the diamond itself.  What could be more green at Comerica Park than the grass itself.All of these features make for expanded functionality of the Google Search facility.  Let’s hope that people explore and use them rather than doing a simple search and compromising with the first result returned.
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Jul 10 2009

links for 2009-07-09

Jul 9 2009

From a Post to Trending

Yesterday was a massive blogging day in response to Google’s announcement of the future of an operating system they’re calling Google OS.  A lot of hacks with keyboards (including myself) threw their two cents worth of thought into the fray.  I spent a lot of time reading thoughts and comments that ran the entire spectrum from this is a great concept, to this is stupid, to do we need another Linux, to will Chrome OS be better than Ubuntu to …  I did a lot of reading. It was good reading.  Insightful, funny, futuristic, negative.  For every keyboard, there was an opinion.

How do we ensure that this will make a difference?  Google, after all, has “Beta” splashed over many of their products and have been known to drop some of their products, including Google Notebook.

There are some things that give confidence that this will be a good thing.


Image via Wikipedia

First of all, Google has promised to open source the code.  This is great news as it has the potential of attracting some of the great programmers to the cause.  Secondly, and there’s no discounting this, the Google Brand is absolutely huge.  There are arguably better web apps in some of the areas that Google is a player, but Google puts it all together as a total package.  There’s a great deal of confidence in that.

However, what put me over the top in terms of confidence was this report from the BBC.  In the article, they list hardware developers who will work with Google

  • Acer;
  • Asus;
  • Freescale;
  • Hewlett-Packard;
  • Lenovo;
  • Toshiba.

That’s a pretty powerful list of vendors.  There are a few names missing – Apple, Dell, Gateway, Sony, … but it’s still early and nothing has been delivered to our knowledge yet.

From the original post on Google’s blog to trending #3 on Twitter as I write this entry, quite a stir has been created in the past 48 hours.  Stay tuned.

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Jul 9 2009

links for 2009-07-08

Jul 8 2009

Rethinking OS

Do you remember the old saying that an elephant is just a mouse built by a committee?  Each year, we replace computers in our educational system.  It’s always a shame; when the computers that we’re replacing were new, they were the fastest, most powerful boxes in the system.  In their infancy, they were highly sought commodities but towards their later use, they are avoided at all costs.

They just get slower and slower as we add more applications to them.  The applications themselves evolve on newer technology and specifications.  The speeds on replacement computers allow the applications and operating system to run faster but they are still based on a common image deployed to the computers.  It’s interesting and certainly academic to watch machines, side by each, boot and get ready to do their thing at noticeably different speeds.  As applications and security updates are applied, over time, the machines get more sluggish to the point where they become the black sheep of technology.  With current technologies, it’s inevitable.  I dread rebooting my computer and it’s only a couple of years old, running Vista, and pretty powerful.

Yesterday, Google announced the development of the Chrome OS.  Many of us have speculated on a development of this ever since the release of the Chrome browser with its support for Google Gears.  Even though it was labelled a “new browser for Windows”, the Chrome browser does a lot of things differently.  It loads quicker, renders images quicker, and just feels different.  Tear off browsing tabs, incognito mode, are all features of a browser with a more contemporary approach.


Image via Wikipedia

Above and beyond the feel, it affirmed the notion that you don’t need to install yet another application to get more productivity for your computer.  As long as you have internet connectivity, you can be productive using Google Documents.  When you remove the need to install software on your computer, it should always run at roughly the same speed.  Sure, you’ll need to add some plug-ins for functionality, but booting, running, executing, should all remain at the same level of performance.

In its post, the Chrome OS will start running on Netbooks.  These are the lesser powered machines that fly when running Linux today and are designed to perform best when operating with web based applications.  A successful launch there may see it move to the more powerful machines shortly thereafter.  But, couldn’t you already do this with Windows and the Macintosh OS?  In theory, yes.  After all, the web is just the web and there are versions of the Chrome browser already available.  And, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer browse the web just nicely.  The difference is that the Chrome OS will be free.

Even in today’s market, when you buy a Netbook, there are two price levels for the same product.  Buy it with Linux and you get one price; buy it with Windows and you pay another.  It’s not hard to see where this is headed.  Microsoft will be in for a huge fight to make Windows 7 viable given the other factors.  It won’t go away; businesses still love their Sharepoints and their locally developed and modified applications that require Internet Explorer.  But, if Chrome OS is successful, huge inroads will be made, particularly for the home user.

More options in the operating system market create more options for the consumer.  Chrome OS will evolve as another Linux distribution with the internet giant behind it.  There will be a big following and with web applications getting better and better, the following will be very happy.

We’re going to be in for a fight if this all pans out and maybe that operating system mouse will remain a mouse.

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Jul 8 2009

links for 2009-07-07