Category: web2.0

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Eight Random Things

You may recall that a little game of tag went around the edublogosphere sometime last year. In this game, many edubloggers were called upon to list five little-known facts about themselves and then tagging the meme on to five more bloggers. It was a fun exercise to help share the love, and a good learning experience in getting to know more about tagging your posts for Technorati.

It seems that round two has started… Jo McLeay just tagged me for a similar meme that’s floating around the edublogosphere at the moment. Jo posted a list of Eight Random Facts about herself, and tagged eight more bloggers to help pass along the idea, incuding myself. So here goes…

  1. I spent 4 years at Art School in the early 80s, and majored in Screenprinting, Photography, Multimedia and Film/Video.
  2. In the 80s I was in a band called The Jellybabies and for a few years we played regular gigs in lot of pubs around Sydney .
  3. When I was 8 years old, I won the TV Times Sesame Street drawing contest. First prize was an above-ground swimming pool.
  4. I drove a cab in Sydney for three years, from 1987 to 1989. I also worked in the Taxis Combined radio room for 8 months calling taxi jobs on the air.
  5. I entered a rally car in the 1988 Wynns Safari (now known as the Australian Safari). It was one of the most incredibly hard but fun things I’ve ever done.
  6. I have two children; Alex, 15, and Kate, 12. They are fantastic kids and I love them heaps.
  7. This year I will run my first ever City to Surf event.
  8. And for the last 8 months, I still feel that Life Is Not Designed Accidentally.

So there you go. Eight things. Eight very random things. And I’m just noticing how many times the number 8 occurs within them. Weird huh?

So, now I believe it is my turn to tag some folk to see if they keep this going… Let’s see…

Simon O’Carroll, Neil D’Aguair, Jess McCulloch, Steve Madsen, Bryn Jones, John Pearce, Paul Wilkinson, James Farmer

There ya go guys and girls. Tag, you’re it. Have fun.

Oh yes, here are the rules, just in case you weren’t sure…

  • Post these rules before you give your facts (or after…)
  • List 8 random facts about yourself
  • At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
  • Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

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Blown away by Jing

I think I just experienced one of those “Oh my God” moments when you see a new technology that takes a task you potentially do often and simplifies in a way that you never thought possible. The reason I say that you “potentially” do it often is that these tasks are usually either difficult or time consuming or just plain inconvenient because they involve too many steps, so you tend to avoid them where possible. An example would be sharing what you see on your screen with someone else across a network. Still images aren’t too hard, but capturing an animated movie of what you are doing on your screen is tricky and usually requires special software, and then the task of sharing that movie over the Internet usually requires a few more steps, plus the issues of incompatable file formats, Mac/Windows issues, yaddah, yaddah… Too hard!

So when I just downloaded and installed Jing from the Jing Project, I was blown away by just how much they have simplified this process. I literally sat in front of the computer repeating “Oh my God!” several times. Perhaps I am just easily impressed, or perhaps this is just the sort of thing that I see very clear uses for, but I am amazed at what Jing does, and even moreso at how it does it. I can see tons of uses for this in a school… for example, teachers could create their own support pages for software the kids need to use so that they don’t have to answer the same questions over and over… students can be creating movies to document their software skills… you can make tutorials for teachers showing them how to do specific tasks… or an end-user could use it to show you exactly what is happening on their screen… and lots more. The finished out is a .swf Flash file.

The Jing Project website will explain more, so check it out or check out my little sample. Let me know if I’m just being easily impressed.

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Lists of Lists

My girlfriend Linda is the ultimate uber-listmaker. She always has a list or three going, which probably explains why she is so organised all the time. Of course, in her role as a consultant she HAS to be organised, so every time she starts to think about a project and how she’ll attack it, she starts with a list. And it works really well for her. I’m endlessly inpressed with how much she gets done and how effectively she does it, and I know that a lot of that is due to her ability to create (and use!) lists. I’ve also noticed that she gets a real sense of achievement as she checks each item off her list.

While I can see that lists would help me be better organised, my problem is that even when I write one for myself, I usually lose it before I finish ticking things off. What I need is a list, or better yet a collection of lists, that always reside in the one place, somewhere I won’t lose them, that I can get to from nearly anywhere. The web would be perfect.

And so when I heard productivity guru Merlin Mann talking about a cool website he uses called TadaList, I thought I’d check it out. After a quick play with it, I think I might have to give listmaking another chance. Made by a company called 37Signals, TadaList is a very simple, easy to use Web 2.0 site that lets you easily and simply create lists. You can create multiple lists, each with as many items as you like, and each item has a checkbox in front of it. Items are simple to add and even simpler to check off. It’s a good example of a really simple, well executed concept where usability is the most important feature. It even has RSS, so you can be remotely notified of changes to your lists.

I think I might give it a shot. Who knows, if making lists helps me get even half as organised as Linda, it’s sure to make a big difference!

PS: I was just taking a look at the other products made by 37Signals, and discovered Backpack. Backpack also manages lists just like Tada, but also lets you create notes, photo galleries, etc, to offer a more complete toolset for getting organised. Worth a look I think.