Eloise's thoughts and fancies - Real life

The iPad - the downsides

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:02:09 -0600

There are three things I'm going to discuss here. Of these I'd expected one and half-expected another (that is I'd sort of expected it, but not quite the impact it would have) and the other is totally unexpected. I'm also not entirely sure it's a downside.

First the expected: The iPad screen gets greasy. Really greasy, really easily. If there is an oliophobic coating, either messieurs Jobs and Ives sweat differently to us mere mortals, or it would be incredibly bad without what is there. In fairness, the iPad's screen doesn't seem to degrade in performance or visibility whilst you are actually using it. But, in just over 48 hours, it's become a habit to turn it off and clean the screen already. It's not as bad as it could be of course - it just means packing a lens cloth or similar too, but it is a noticeable downside before you show it off.

Second the partially expected: The ancillary costs of owning an iPad are quite high. I've probably spent £60 (about $100) on apps since buying it, and I'm being deliberately restrained. Some of those costs were expected - I'd planned to buy Pages for example, so was expecting that cost. Some iPhone apps (TouchCalc for example, my favourite iPhone calculator) come with a universal version (iPad and iPhone, in this case both free) so those upgrades were easy. But quite a few apps for iPad don't have a free -lite version and the $0.99 pricepoint becomes a $2.99 or $5.99 pricepoint typically (69p, £1.75 and $3.50 ish). That was... acceptable. I knew there was going to be such a flurry of spending but I've spent a bit more and in different areas to what I expected. Which brings us neatly to -

Third the unexpected: I'm using the iPad in ways I didn't expect. Actually that's slightly misleading. I'm using it in all of the ways I expected, but in some more too. I'm now splitting RSS reading across my main machine and the iPad in a way I never did on the iPhone. That bigger screen makes it easy to read on the iPad and a pleasure. I've gone with Freeder because of the number of feeds I have, but the pro version adds functionality I want and use, so there's some money I hadn't expected to spend. I've changed my "read later" habits to Instapaper and reading on the iPad or the iMac. That's free, but the fully featured iPad Instapaper reader is a pay-for app. The story continues like this. In fact, it's not all about spending money - using the iPad from bed, from the armchair, wherever is very seductive. I'm looking at changing my email workflow from POP3 on the iMac to IMAP, and IMAP on the iPad too so I can work smoothly across both. The iPhone was always IMAPing email, but although I did check it most days I was working away from home, I find I'm likely to check the iPad whilst away from the iMac - cooking and having a 5 minute simmer... fire up the iPad, check email, RSS feeds etc. and having them not all previously downloaded to the iMac's mail sounds like a positive.

So beware - buying an iPad might just disrupt your working patterns. It's seductively, dangerously seductively, fun and easy to use. Tablet PCs, if they're as good as this, will become the future.

The iPad at rest/play

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:49:05 -0600

I'll stop frothing soon... maybe.

But since my last post I've used the iPad whilst unwinding and watching TV, reading, in bed and the like. I have to say it performs admirably in all those settings.

The fact that it's much lighter than the laptop and much, much more responsive makes it easy to use whilst watching TV to look up random stuff. There was a little niggle I identified although it turns out to be a silly one. I use Albert now, and formerly Google Buddy to fire up searches direct from the keyboard. Particularly with Albert which I also use to replace Quicksilver, I probably use it hundreds of times a day. I find my muscle memory reaching for that on the iPad, when it needs to learn to hit the Safari/Atom button and then type away. It's not hard, it's just different.

Both reading and watching video in the chair is very simple, although doing so whilst sitting in a more upright position might be less so - although sat in my computer chair which encourages a more upright position works nicely enough. If I take to eBooks in a big way I might have to consider moving the lamp I use, which is currently over my shoulder. The reflections aren't terrible, but are noticeable. At the moment, the solution is to turn the lamp off - the light of the screen is more than enough.

The same extends, for me, to bed. At the risk of giving you too much information, I tend to sleep and read in bed whilst lying on my side. A bit of shuffling of pillows and there's a convenient place to prop the iPad without any effort and it's easy enough to both watch a video and read an eBook. It's no strain to hold the iPad either, but there's something nicely decadent about not holding it - particularly to watch a video.

iBooks, so far, is a pleasure. I'm (re)reading Sun Zi from the Guttenberg collection. (Along with Lao Zi, Lieh Zi and Chang Zi it's pretty much required reading for a background for taijiquan I think.) I was thinking about what to say about the experience, and realised that all my comments were going to be about the choice of translation of the book and how awkward I find it compared to the translation to which I'm more accustomed. And really that says it all about the quality of the reading experience doesn't it? I'm not caught up thinking "this isn't right, that's not right, don't like that" not even "do like that" - I'm far more caught up in the material. I'm not sure I'd be so sanguine about reading in portrait mode, the landscape, slightly undersized for a paper-back presentation works nicely for me. The only real problem with iBooks isn't a process one, it's a content one. As Apple ramps up the UK iBooks store I'm sure this will improve, but currently it's content-light. Verging on content absent. But I've got a nice stack of paper books to read, so no complaints yet although it may be a while before I can fully evaluate the whole experience.

"School of Rock" should be compulsory trainee teacher viewing

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 16:57:09 -0600

School of Rock, if you haven't seen it, is a movie about school and rock music. It's a pretty light-weight comedy vehicle for Jack Black and his passion for heavy metal music. The plot is kind of important, but the film's been out for long enough to be shown on TV in the UK so there's not much chance of spoilers so here goes:

Jack Black plays a loser who has kept the rebellious dream of being in his own, breakthrough, band alive, when friends around him have settled down, become teachers and the like. He is about to be kicked out of the room he supposedly rents from a friend who is now a supply teacher when the phone rings, inviting said teacher friend to fill in as a teacher at a posh academy. Black takes the role, needing the cash, teaches them through his love of rock music (and engaging the children with his own enthusiasm), leading up to getting them to play in the local battle of the bands and, significantly for this post, stepping back and letting the children go and do their thing without him.

Obviously, in reality, there are all kinds of issues with this but forget that for the moment and look at what it has to say about the teaching process.

There was a blog post I read recently about a different model of learning - the affective context model - which at first sight isn't a different model at all, it's a restatement of the importance of engaging the students emotionally and making it relevant to them. Very reminiscent of Herzberg's Dual Structure Theory. School of Rock presents this too: Black engages the learners in his own passion and makes them passionate about it - he moves their learning into intrinsically motivated, emotionally engaged activities. No one has ever presented a case that I've seen that suggests this is a bad thing but this film might demonstrate both why it's a good thing and how it's possible even in unlikely areas.

But it also raises some interesting thoughts, possibly with a bit of prompting, about assessment. The students in the film are destined to fail the standard end of year exams, even in music. They've not covered the syllabus after all. However, they have certainly learnt a lot of useful life skills - with the possible exception of the musicians - because they've organised advertising, transport, managed their time, learnt about working in teams and so on. You could certainly make a case that what they've learnt will stand them in great stead for their future lives despite failing the exams - does that make the lessons unvaluable or invaluable? What does it say about the assessment tools and so on?

And finally, although not directly linked to the film, it can be used with many student teachers to make them think about asking questions and promoting discussion. For example, and here I admit I'm inspired by a bit of television I saw last night and the related series, you can start with "Who is the best singer?" This question could, all too easily, become a pure popularity contest - very battle of the bands tradition. So, probably, not a great question but still a perfectly legitimate one. How could you make it more useful? And, therein lies the fun of the discussion - there are many, many ways to go, most of which revolve around either narrowing the field of candidates or clarifying what you mean by best. Even if you start by limiting the field - for example "Who is the best singer in a rock band?" - you can still have some fun around what "best" means. Technically proficient? Showmanship? Sex appeal (part of the role of a rock band singer surely?), live performance skills, recording studio skills, etc. You can move nicely on into marking and assessment rubrics.

And all this from a silly film. Surely the final lesson is that even the most unlikely of sources can contain useful lessons and can be integrated into the wider context of teaching and assessment tools.

Is the app store a walled garden?

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:53:52 -0600

One of the on-going criticisms of the app store and of Apple in general is the accusation that they are making a walled garden for their products. AOL, infamously, tried this and went from essentially dominating the US ISP market to being, basically, an afterthought and laughing stock.

They still exist in other ways with an online presence, for example they are behind both TUAW and Massively amongst many other paid blogs and whilst they do offer the services of an ISP too (they do in the UK at least, I just checked) you have to search them out instead of finding "sign up to AOL" CDs on every computer magazine and most of the Sunday newspapers too.

The fun and confusion comes with defining a walled garden. You could argue, after all, that as soon as you choose an operating system for your computer you are entering a walled garden: choosing the Mac OS10.6 that I run stops me running any version of Microsoft Access, Internet Explorer and many other things. That's not said as a complaint by the way, I wouldn't use IE by choice on a Windows machine, and Access is a pretty poor excuse for a database too. However, that's not regarded as a walled garden for some reason - probably because the walls are so far back and so fundamental that it's not seen as restrictive. There is, after all, very little that you can do on a Mac, or on a PC, that you can't also do on the other one by some route or another. Even gaming these days, using wineskin or similar processes works moderately smoothly across all platforms and many of the big designers are designing in parallel these days.

The AOL walled garden arose because AOL made it easy to find information from other AOL-driven sites and users, and hard material to find from elsewhere. You had to scale the wall to peer out, even from an odd memory to such untrustworthy sites as the BBC News site - that might be a mistaken memory, a friend had AOL some years ago and I probably tried to browse through it once and memory can be fickle.

So does the app store fit closer to the OS or the AOL tough guardian model? Here it is less clear. I think the answer is, it fits somewhere between them. I don't cruise the app store, credit card in hand, thinking "I'll have one of them, two of them, one of them, ah five of those etc." but frankly the range of apps available covers a huge range of the kinds of things anyone might want to do. And, if you can't find what you want, there's the technology to relatively easily develop it for yourself. It costs a bit to release this to the world as a whole, but it's free to develop for yourself. In that sense it's far more like the OS choice model than the AOL model. You buy your mac and you can easily add on paid for, shareware or freeware applications to meet your specific needs, same for the iPad or iPhone - you can cruise the app store and find the app for your need.

There are odd holes in what you can do - Flash content for example, but others too. Many of these are limits built in to the OS, in just the same way that no one from Microsoft has successfully ported Access to the Mac because the fundamental tools of how files are organised as so different. Other limits are built in, because Apple has set itself up as a guardian of quality rather than access. The idea of getting approved and having your items on the app store is not so much about controlling what you can do (that's the AOL model), it's more about making sure that if you buy an app or get a free one, it doesn't crash your iPhone or iPad under at least most normal circumstances. (My iPhone that is mostly used for non-phone things these days, has crashed once in the 2+ years I've owned it, not bad!)

I'm not sure if there are alternative mail clients, but there are alternative browsers (Opera and Atomic Web at least), and a whole batch of tools that could replace all the rest of the pre-installed apps. So, the question becomes this: if faced with a choice between an unregulated market that would, almost certainly, do absolutely everything, including have pirate software that downloads my contacts list and credit card details to unscrupulous third parties, and which stands a good chance of containing stuff that crashes my iPhone/iPad or having a market that is regulated seemingly only at the point of sifting out the malware and the crashy, buggy code which would you prefer?

Whilst Apple stands back and lets me, if I should choose, download a strip poker app that is doubtless tacky but not buggy, and limits my choices to things that will do what they're meant to without malware and without significant bugs - limiting my choices only to those that pass their quality control measures and presumably the laws of the land and in no other ways, then I can't see those walls being a barrier - in fact I'll rather welcome that hurdle to access: I'm quite happy that I can't buy code that crashes my iPhone thanks, and will be happy I can't buy code that crashes my iPad too. There may be things that I look at and think "God, it would be great if there was an app to do THAT" but, some time learning Objective-C and who knows, I could be writing it for myself. If I can get it past the quality controls, you might even be buying it!

And given how new the iPad is, I suspect the range of apps is going to explode as developers start working out what they can do with it. It's already looking impressive if you scan the numbers.

Second Life shouldn’t be called a game - but why does that matter?

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Sun, 30 May 2010 01:10:29 -0600

There is a technique from Neuro-Linguistic Programming called reframing. It basically holds that if you take a problem and change the language that describes it (reframe it) you can easily spot a solution. Whilst I’m not in general an advocate of NLP nor of reframing, it does underlie an important idea: that the words that we use often matter.

English, in particular, has a large and varied vocabulary that allows us some wonderful shading of meaning and in that environment poets flourish but the choices of words we make can shape expectations and behaviour to a degree where it behooves us to choose them carefully.

The dictionary gives these definitions for game as a noun:

a form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.
- a complete episode or period of play, typically ending in a definite result : a baseball game.
- a single portion of play forming a scoring unit in a match, esp. in tennis.
- Bridge a score of 100 points for tricks bid and made (the best of three games constituting a rubber).
- a person's performance in a game; a person's standard or method of play : he will attempt to raise his game to another level.
- ( games) a meeting for sporting contests, esp. track and field : the Olympic Games.
- ( games) Brit. sports and athletic activities as organised in a school.
- the equipment for a game, esp. a board game or a computer game.
a type of activity or business, esp. when regarded as a game : this was a game of shuttle diplomacy at which I had become adept.
- a secret and clever plan or trick : I was on to his little game, but I didn't want him to know.
- [often with negative ] a thing that is frivolous or amusing : a Tarot reading is not a game or a stunt.
wild mammals or birds hunted for sport or food.
- the flesh of these mammals or birds, used as food.

“Second Life is a game” evokes the definition under meaning 1 - the most common usage too. Except Second Life isn’t a competitive thing, played according to rules and decided by skill, strength or luck and the other definitions are even more clearly wrong.

So calling Second Life a game, fails to really meet the standard definitions of a game - ergo it’s the wrong choice of word. In addition, the “trivial or frivolous” part of the definition under heading 2 lingers with the word game. Whilst Second Life can certainly be engaged with in a frivolous fashion, so can just about any human activity, labelling Second Life as a game implies that it can only be engaged in that way - and if you’re trying to make the case that Second Life can be used for business, education etc. (and a lot of people do, so you really should be making that case if you are an educator, business person or Linden Lab representative) surely you ought to choose words that reflect that it has serious purpose, not words that imply it is only trivial and frivolous.

You see the argument advanced that many people come to Second Life for fun, relaxation and play. That’s undoubtedly many of the people some of the time. There are serious, hard working developers, Lindens, educators, business people and others who play in Second Life some of the time too. They may choose to visit as alts or they may play under their main name, but they work and play in Second Life. And, even if you can find someone that only plays in Second Life, so what? That doesn’t make Second Life a game. We use play for a variety of things - for example I play a musical instrument. People play roles when acting. People play at things when they do as a hobby or for leisure things that others do as serious work. We even describe experimenting for work as play - “I’m playing around with some code to try and get it to work properly” for example. We use play to describe many things we do for leisure and fun that cannot be described as gaming. Sure, we may also play games for fun, but if we play Second Life, that doesn’t mean Second Life has to be a game, otherwise I should argue that when I play the saxophone, the saxophone must obviously be a game too.

So what is Second Life? There is an argument advanced by Richard Bartle that virtual worlds should be treated as a place. That’s certainly an interesting argument and one that might unpack at a later date. For the moment I will say that there are parts of the Second Life experience that are essentially identical to being in a place. But that, to my mind, doesn’t sum up all of the Second Life experience. Work, for example, particularly when you are building a place, isn’t about place, it’s about work. Shopping and clubbing are, to some extent, about place but are also about services and products. Second Life is also about relationships, everything from those you meet and despise, to those you meet and befriend, to those you may meet and love. As I have said before, I contend that the choice of the name Second Life is an excellent one. What you can do in Second Life is, quite clearly, create an additional life for you in world that is created from computer chips and defined by pixels rather than a world that is defined by atoms. People don’t have to delve into all parts of Second Life - they may choose to only use Second Life for leisure and play - but there is nothing in Second Life that prevents them from developing an entire life and even turning Second Life into their main means of earning their living in their atomic-world life too.

But why is this so important?

The words I use and you use about Second Life, you, the reader of this blog, will probably not make a difference to how I view Second Life, nor how you do. Face it, if you read my blog you are probably quite aware of Second Life, in fact you probably have an account in Second Life and may well work there, some of the time at least. You may be one of the small number of people that read my blog for the film reviews and skip the Second Life bits, but I suspect my readership bias is the other way somehow. Certainly the commenting fraternity is!

But the words we use out in the wild so to speak are the words that attract or repel potential new residents. It isn’t our formal role to be ambassadors for Second Life but in this day and age we are just as likely to be the person that makes that critical decision for someone as the official ambassadors.

So lets say you do describe Second Life as a game. Who do you attract? You attract the gamers who have the technology to connect to Second Life just as they do to WOW, WAR, Eve etc. They come in to Second Life looking for their intro quests, the character classes, their levelling guides, the “killer combo” to max out the end game and so on. Second Life, of course, has none of those features. Their expectations are disappointed and they leave claiming, quite wrongly, that “it’s boring and there’s nothing to do.” They could claim, quite legitimately, that “it failed to live up to my expectations and I decided I didn’t want to play there any more,” the problem being that YOU created those false expectations by calling Second Life a game.

What should you call it? Well I like “virtual world in which you have the chance to create as much or as little of a complete new life as you choose” to be honest. Maybe I should alter the title of this blog to reflect that... But it hardly trips smoothly off the tongue. Just “virtual world” or “freeform virtual world” are good bets. Freeform implies to the parts of the gamer community that might also be interested the idea of no rules, no classes, no levels. It prompts those not used to the term but interested after hearing the virtual world tag to ask more. It’s easy to explain freeform as meaning that you make your own choices, you can shop, club, chat, make friends, set up a business, take a class or whatever. It prompts those who have tried WOW or similar to ask why you aren’t calling it a game and to let you explain the differences, or at least explain what Second Life is like. This may or may not attract them - but it will give those it attracts a much better set of expectations about what to expect in Second Life.

And we know that churn in Second Life has been a big problem. How much of that is the old UI we might find out when Linden Lab start talking about retention since the release of Viewer 2.0. But even if the new viewer improves retention, surely it makes sense for each of us to additionally manage the expectations of those we talk to about Second Life, to do our bit to encourage more long term residents?

Welcome to Second Life. Come and explore this massive virtual world and create as much or as little of a complete new life as you like. The water’s warm, the people are friendly, and the rewards can be great too.

eShopping - a tale of two shops

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:18:00 -0600

I was recently spammed (in snail mail!) by Ocado.com, a UK-based eGrocery shopping service. Because, as some of you know, I suffer mobility problems with bad knees and back from time to time I thought I'd give it a try whilst I was fit and it wouldn't be a disaster if it went wrong.

The first-up shopping experience is pretty easy - the shop is divided into Cupboard, Fridge and Freezer sections and you can drill down in them to reach whatever you're after quite easily. You can, further, click on some shortcuts to, for example, display only kosher food if that's your wish. I believe that on return visits you can quickly select the things you've got in your earlier shopping trips, build up a favourites portfolio and fill it quickly with your routine shop items. There is a minimum fee - you've got to spend at least £40 and whilst that was a bit of a stretch for just me I quickly reached £30 and could top up the extra £10 with extra bits and bobs that I might not routinely buy but I had no objections to trying this time. Choosing delivery times is easy: there's a nicely colour-coded chart that shows when they'll be in your area anyway so you can share a delivery and save petrol, but there are a wide range of times so that you should be able to get a delivery at a time of day that's good for you.

The actual delivery process is also easy. Their delivery lorry obviously has freezer, cupboard and fridge sections because the appropriate goods arrived at the right temperatures. They're also packed in colour-coded bags so you know which ones to unpack and put away first. On their next delivery they'll collect the bags and reuse them.

Costs are... close to walking to the nearest mini-market thing (in my case a Sainsbury's local) and shopping there. When I say close, I can't actually get everything I bought to compare directly, but comparing near equivalents, within £1 in £46 (including delivery charge) is pretty close. The diversity of choice may not quite rival a main out-of-town supermarket (although at first glance I'd say it gets very close and does better than our big Tesco for vegetarian food options) and with no travel costs etc. the cost is lower via Ocado. That said, I couldn't find one or two staples for the bathroom so it won't entirely replace going to the shop (unless I wasn't looking in the right places).

The second one was Books etc. In case you haven't noticed, Amazon is playing hardball with a range of US Publishers about eBooks and that's spilling over into printed book territory. A book I pre-ordered was announced as "no longer available" because Amazon decided to delist ALL books by that publisher for 72 hours. (This was quickly confirmed when even books by different authors and already in print and delivered from Amazon in happier days no longer showed up.) Several British based authors I read, and whose blogs I read, have taken to linking to their books on Books etc. - and I got a "sign up now and get a 5% discount for life" sweetener - too good to miss! I have actually ordered a book by an American author who was not delisted from Amazon this time - not to punish Amazon nor to punish the authors, but because by the time I'd got really motivated to order from Books etc. Amazon had just notified me they would be delivering the book they'd cancelled 3 days earlier, and none of the authors who have recommended Books etc. have new paperbacks at the store at the moment.

Books etc. in some ways reminds me of the Amazon of 7 years ago or so. There are only books - you don't get random offers of electronic goods, lingerie and perfume, although you can choose eBooks of course. The particular book I was looking for came postage free and about 10% cheaper than Amazon before my 5% for life discount. On Amazon I'd have paid about 25% more by the time I'd paid postage too. Stocks of that super-cheap version were limited but I waited - the other choice was Amazon, which appears to be a default option on all books if no supplier for Books etc. has it in stock. One of my friends writes erotica and her books are available via Books etc. I don't know that everything is, but certainly everything I've looked for has shown up quite comfortably. If the low delivery charges remain (and delivery in a jiffy bag rather than 500g of cardboard too) then I think Books etc. will be getting more trade from me.

Asking for a favour

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:05:15 -0600

I recently watched a programme in which a TV presenter claimed that the internet has failed in one of its main goals - that of diversifying the places we go and where we obtain our news, do our shopping and the like.

Her statistic was that about 2/3 of the UK's web-traffic goes to one of a small number of sites: Facebook, Amazon, eBay and Google. Now, obviously, some proportion of that Google traffic is going through Google elsewhere so it's not clear why that's lumped as a "bad thing" but it also occurred to me whilst out shopping earlier that about 90% (I need to crunch the numbers finally) of the shops and food/drink outlets I see in our central shopping area are big chains. If I go to an out-of-town shopping centre that rises to 100%. If those figures are typical, then the internet is doing a good job of letting us reach a more diverse range of outlets.

So, the favour is this. Next time you go shopping, could you look around. Make a note of any single-outlet shops you see, plus any chains and tell me the numbers of each, and ideally the location (city, country, city-centre or out-of-town etc. If you don't want to tell me your home city, please give me at least the country and a rough size of the city).

If you want to go a bit further than that, you can split you chains down into small/local, medium/regional. large/national, international. Small is about 10 outlets or fewer, medium 100 outlets or fewer, national is what it says, as is international. For example, Boyes is local for us (there are actually 12 outlets it appears, but they're all within 30 miles of each other), we don't have an obvious regional chain any longer but Jackson's used to be just that, all over the North East of England but not really outside that region, Debenhams and Marks and Spencer are both national - they may have odd shops abroad, but they're basically UK based - and Starbucks, Costa Coffee and the like are international.

I'm just after enough to try and work out if where I live is unusual in this proportion of chains, or if 1/3 of the traffic NOT going to the big boys is a good thing.

The pain of changing browsers

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:59:47 -0600

I recently saw an advert for the new version of Opera, proclaiming it the fastest browser in the world.

Whilst speed isn't everything, I quite often have my browser start up and then tap fingers whilst tap reload, so a good browser that is faster at this could be of interest. I have, in a separate issue, been invited to a beta version of a browser based game that requires either IE or Firefox (neither of which are my core browser) for the game's tool bar.

This has made me start to think about browsers and also experiment a bit with swapping browsers around, and ultimately decide NOT to do this.

The fun and games start with exporting and transferring bookmarks around. All the browsers I can find have an "export" function, but not all browsers are good at importing them. In particular, in Opera all the sorting data is destroyed and whilst there are ways to get your order back (you can create nicknames for sorting) it is a major PITA. OPera is not helped by the fact that dragging bookmarks around into the "Bookmarks Bar" folder doesn't seem to actually put them there! By contrast, importing into Safari takes seconds and does retain the sorting order, dragging into the bookmarks bar area puts them there instantly and so on. Importing into Firefox from Safari is really easy too - that's the only one I tried though.

And then there's all the fun of the little differences. How big are the relevant buttons, folders, etc? Do the tabs hang down, pop-up, fill the space? How does the password system work with the existing password storage? Some of these are, obviously, completely aesthetic choices, the latter will depend on what password storage system you use. But it can, and for me does, make a difference. The layout of Opera, in my purely subjective opinion, was awkward to use. I never felt at home trying to use it and quite rapidly gave up. Both Opera and Firefox use their own password storage system. Whilst I don't have a problem with that per se, I can't seem to retrieve stored passwords from Firefox, and in both of them things like entering my server backend required re-entering passwords from the keychain, lots and lots of times! Their definition of the site I was entering seemed much tighter than keychain's so clicking on various stored links each required re-entering the password. Argh. And, if I changed it on one place, it wouldn't automatically update into Coda. Bad browser!

Both Firefox and Opera might test as faster browsers, Opera blindingly so in my case, but... in practise, looking at the pages I actually look at, I couldn't see the difference in general and for some of the sites I use they were noticeably slower than my browser of choice (Opera in particularly tended to only partly render pages and require the reload button to be pressed to fully load it on some of the sites that I use). That was, for me, the final nail in Opera's coffin - but of course your mileage may vary just as the sites you visit regularly will vary from mine.

Where have I ended up? Well I currently have no fewer than 3 browsers in my dock. Camino, still my browser of choice; Safari and Firefox. Safari using the web inspector is nice for checking how websites are generated and what changes javascript causes to the DOM. Firefox with Firebug might be better (a lot of people tell me it is) but Safari does it as native and does it perfectly well for what I want and need. Firefox is purely there for the game I'm playing (which I'll be reviewing soon). I might switch from Camino to Safari over time, although the Camino habit is still strong.

Just how much of a pain changing could be was a shock. I've recently largely turned away from Word and Open Office to using Bean, a free, lightweight word-processor package. Just about all of the keyboard short-cuts are different yet it has proven easier to make that switch than to change browsers where so much is so similar. And, whilst you might be addicted to your 10 million Firefox plug-ins I'm still very happily avoiding them and the architecture that gives them to you. Slimmer browsing, less options for bells and whistles, and no conflicts, no plug-ins helpfully doing things you don't want and so on. Bliss.

Sacking strangers over the internet is wrong...

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 22:11:55 -0700

If you read my review of Up In The Air you'll have noticed I thought replacing f2f meetings with video conferencing to fire people was wrong. I would go so far that I reacted to it as a gut level and thought it was morally indefensible.

And then I had to wonder why. I was trying to work out how to write a piece called "Sacking people over the internet is wrong" and I couldn't; I don't believe that sacking people over the internet, via video conferencing etc. is automatically wrong. It's not fun, nor easy, but sacking people rarely is. It's the sacking of strangers in that fashion that is wrong as far as I am concerned.

I fervently believe that "the internet" - Second Life, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, blogging and so on - allow you to create new relationships, develop new or existing ones and maintain relationships that started online or in the flesh. I have a number of friends that I have only met virtually who are close to me, know about as much about me as my close atomic space friends - a small number in both groups that I basically don't distinguish internally. I have a wider range of acquaintances, work contacts and the like, again some in atomic space and some in virtual space. They're relationships that I have created and do develop and maintain that way.

With a work contact, particularly a work contact from an online setting, being fired online seems eminently morally OK (well still very undesirable). It's the stranger part that makes it an outrage for me.

And that, I think, is because whilst relationships can be developed and maintained online, we are still set up to react to face-to-face meetings - we've got a few hundred thousand years of evolution and social expectations to help us there. The person that you've never met on the other side of the table telling you that you are fired might be a complete stranger but you are set up to react to them as if they are someone you have met, someone you know. In particular as you go through the process, which is pretty crappy after all, there is something in there that will help you believe that you are in a situation where someone can help you, can react to your pain and the like. Over the internet, over a video conference, that is not there UNLESS you have an existing relationship. And that's why it's morally wrong to sack a stranger that way - you have to cause them pain by sacking them (assuming you must sack them) so you owe it to them to make the process as painless and supported as possible.

The Bamboo Touch and Pen

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:01:48 -0700

I'm in love. For the first time in years, decades even, I've found something to surplant my former working pattern of the multi-button+scroll-wheel trackball for all the time and the Wacom art-pad for those times I need it.

The new bit of tech? It's still from Wacom, and it's the bamboo touch and pen. What is so brilliant about this bit of kit?

Well, firstly like my old flame the trackball, it doesn't move around. You put it somewhere comfortable to work on, and there it (mostly stays). For me, that's to the side of the keyboard most of the time, and between me and the keyboard for using the pen. In pen mode, I suspect it rather depends on how you draw. There's a big brother with 2048 levels of sensitivity, the Bamboo "only" has 512. But I don't find that really impedes me. I learnt to draw down a microscope in histology class and whilst I do use different levels of shading, 512 seems to work well enough for me. If you're an artist from a different background you might find the number of levels limiting.

And the multi-touch trackpad functionality. Bliss! If you're used to a multi-touch trackpad on a MacBook (as I am) it's not quite the same, but within 24 hours I'd been programming, writing and selecting blocks of text, hiding and moving windows and the like, building in Second Life and more. There are a couple of bits where it took me a little while to get used to it (although there are various buttons on the side that can help), in particular to "click and drag" on the mouse is click-click-and-hold-and-drag. It's not hard but it takes a little bit of getting used to. You can right-click with a second finger, scroll vertically and horizontally with two fingers and there's a rotate option too, pivoting your fingers around quite naturally. Rotating pictures in Photoshop is suddenly organic and I can comfortably line up sloppy horizons etc. by hand now. There's a nice zoom option too, although it doesn't work as universally as the zoom from a trackpad - but you can pinch and squeeze/stretch in Second Life and Photoshop very comfortably.

Downsides? None really. I've ended up with the configuration set up for left-handed usage despite using it on the right. That has let me flip the tablet over and have it about 5cm closer to the keyboard. It doesn't sound like much but it makes it just a little easier to use the 'outside' edge of the pad. Not normally an issue for most things, but whilst building in SL you might need that whole width for moving things around - there's no "roll on" option like on a trackball. (That probably isn't an issue if you're used to a mouse though). Being a sax player I have agile little fingers, so it doesn't bother me. There's a bit of a tendency still to tap the middle finger next to the index finger at the wrong time - although the switch to left-handed mode has fixed that and I'm still working out whether middle finger scrolling and index finger right click or index finger scrolling and thumb right click is better for me. I remember going through this with the trackpad on the MacBook too, and it's getting better already, I'm sure it will be gone soon.

OK, the only downside - it's rather expensive compared to a normal mouse. But it's quite cheap compared to a new art pad. It is well worth the money too. And, if you're not used to a multi-touch trackpad already it might take a little while. I remember it taking about 2-3 days to really get used to the trackpad on the MacBook and a day here. Call it 3 days from scratch and that's probably fair. Your efficiency won't be badly affected for long, but it will be. You might not want to swap just before you start marking mid-terms!

Oh, and the included tutorial sucks. Really, REALLY, REALLY sucks. It makes Microsoft help look helpful, and Help Island an inspired piece of training design. But once I'd decided to throw the tutorial away and just get on with it I've had no problems anyway.

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Addenda:

There is a "lock" option that lets you take your fingers off and move them and continue the "click and drag" which I am currently using. It makes click-and-drag a three touch operation rather than a one touch operation but it works nicely. I'm not sure if I will keep it, but it does work nicely.

I have been doing a fair bit of photoshop work of various sorts. The pen tool is very nice for everything I've used it for. It is interesting using the bamboo with pen in Photoshop - it reminds me of my distant memories of art class and working in clay. I switch between fingers and the pen in the way that I vaguely remember formerly switching between fingers and stylus/knife. In a very short period of time it became entirely intuitive.

If you use moisturiser cream or similar, make sure you clean your fingers before you touch the pad... it registers the lingering touch of the cream in a most confusing way!

If, like me, you end up left-handed, restarting your mac seems to flip that preference back. Since I rarely shut down and restart it's not too much of a pain.

Having used the tool in Photoshop a lot, I found I no longer move it. It sits snuggled up to the right of my keyboard and I twist slightly in my seat (or pivot the seat slightly in fact) but it stays over there very comfortably for everything.

The myth of information overload

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:48:50 -0600

I should say here that I'm not trying to say if you spend several hours thinking hard, taking in new concepts, stretching your mind you don't get tired. You do, most definitely. But you bounce back.

What I'm talking about more is the pervasive idea that because we now read blogs, wikis, books if you're old school, twitter/plurk if that's your thing and so on, we live in a world of information overload, or at risk of it.

Our brains have filters. Sometimes they're conscious ones, but usually not. Depending on your age and nationality, you may have answers to some of these questions that aren't "huh?" or "It happened before I was born!"

Where were you when you heard Kennedy had been shot? I wasn't born, I don't remember to be honest, because it wasn't important to me.
How late did you stay up in '97 as New Labour came to power and who was the last Tory grandee you saw/heard lose his seat? FAR too late given I had an interview the next morning in Liverpool for a post-doc (unsuccessful). Far past Portillo, but he was the last big name I remember
Where were you when you heard about 9/11? What was the first thing you did? I'd just got in from work, turned the TV on to watch something and all of the BBC was showing the news. I texted my American friend to check she'd seen the news.
Where were you when you heard that the Franco regime had gone and there was monarchy in Spain? Not a clue. I know it happened during my life time, but I couldn't guess how old I was even.

See, I have answers to some of these, most of you will have at least one (9/11 I imagine). What do you remember from a week before and a week after those news stories that you do remember? Me, I'm drawing a blank. That's filtering - they're all major, significant events. All of them probably qualify as life-changing, although some in far more tragic ways than others.

Reading blogs is similar for me. Actually, reading is a misnomer quite often. Skimming blogs is similar for me. I have about 300 blogs that cross my desk through RSS feeds. Probably there are about 200 posts per day that I skim over. Call it, in round numbers (and because weekends are a bit slower) 1,000 a week. I retain, for a while, some idea about them, but if you ask me in detail what blog posts I remember reading in the last week, out of that approximately 1,000 posts, I remember... um 4 in any detail. I stopped and read them carefully, I considered them, I posted replies to them (sometimes to the blog, sometimes an email or chat with the author), something like that. I have a vague impression of most of the rest. I use that in particular actually in a negative way - if my feeling is that I'm skimming and not reading postings from a particular blog for too long, then I'll cut the blog from my feeds. So it's probably fair to say all of the posts I skim have some impact (and I can tell you some general things, like there were several posts of new outfits from BareRose, but I didn't like any of them) but it's way less than 1% of the posts I read that pass my filters in any significant way.

We do this all the time by the way. Not just in what we read. If you've travelled today - from home to work, from home to the shops even, what do you actually remember? Lets ask an easy one - how many red lights did you see? How many dogs? How many prams? For your next journey you might suddenly notice red lights more, and dogs, and prams. You're sensitised all of a sudden. Yet, despite not remembering any of these details, and you probably don't remember the number of cars and may not remember ANY details about ANY of the cars unless there was someone driving erratically, you managed to negotiate that journey safely, so (pedestrian or driver) you must have noticed them at the time.

Going back to that pain of studying too hard... concentrating for several hours on any task is hard work. That's why we have coffee breaks, lunch breaks and the like. It's rarely because we need the calories, not in the UK nor the US at least, but we still have the breaks. They're there, more, because we need the time to let our brains unwind, our eyes to focus further away than the book or the screen.

But I also strongly suspect some of that strain is setting up the new filters. I can, now, skim a set of instructions about using Second Life and easily spot errors and new information. Five and bit years ago, it was hard work, because it was new. I can still, today (well earlier in the week actually) read an entry about a particular bacterial species in a medical microbiology textbook and easily extract the pertinent details. A couple of decades or so ago, that was a skill in my first year as an undergraduate that I was learning and I remember it being hard (but rewarding) work. Actually I'm not sure how precisely I remember it being hard work, and how much I've reinvented those memories as part of my learning support work - where I've had to go back and work out how to describe to others techniques for remembering large amounts of information. Go and pick a blog about something you know nothing about and read it - Medieval French romantic poetry perhaps, control of expression of genes in bacteria if Medieval French romantic poetry is your thing. For a while it will be hard work, but you'll get into the habit of it and find it easier after a while. Your filters will adjust and you won't remember much about it, unless it's suddenly a new passion for you.

Taking back control from Google

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:30:51 -0600

Much though I love, and use, Google and in particular gMail their pesky spam filters are often over-eager. People, let's call them potential or actual clients because that's usually the case, send me attachments describing what they're after. This is generally speaking something I want. An unacceptably high period of the time Google's over-eager spam filters decide it's not something I want.

The solution? Well after (ironically but inevitably I guess) hitting up Google for their "core function" of searching the internet I found a way out. You can set up a filter (in this case it's equivalent to a rule in most non-cloud email systems) that says, in effect, if you spot something you think is spam, DON'T move it to the spam folder. Mine checks for Matches: is: spam and Do this: Never send it to Spam. You have to tell it that yes, you really mean this (it doesn't like trying to match is: spam but will if you tell it you really mean it).

What's the impact? Well, the amount of spam I'm getting has gone up - although it's not bad. It's taken about two weeks for my spam filters in mail (that's the mac email client) to learn how to spot all the new spam but I only had about 1 or 2 of false negatives per day after day 1 (I had about 10 the first day) and I've had zero false positives in that time. It takes me about the same number of milliseconds to scan over the titles, hit cmd-A and delete to get rid of them as it did before. Interesting side effect? I've registered for a couple of new online services, or changed email addresses for one, in that time. They were usually terrible for being filtered by gMail. They've ALL come through successfully.

If gMail's hyperactive spam filters annoy you, it's well worth it.

The new literacy. Did Wired actually get it right?

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:03:28 -0600

Ok, it's not based on original thought by a Wired journalist and there are some very odd bits in there, but Clive Thompson wrote a piece on The New Literacy that is worth a read. He cites a couple of articles, one a book review for an academic piece about text language and the other a link to The Stanford Study of Writing on the Stanford website. There's a lot to read in the second one.

But the thrust of the argument is interesting. Neither piece claims that the youth of today are writing like the youth of yesterday - when you and I were those youths. They are arguing, however, that most students when we were youths ONLY wrote for academic work, and rarely wrote after that. There are obvious exceptions to this: authors, journalists etc. and they're mentioned, but most people might write a shopping list and Christmas cards and that's about it. Today's youth are texting, writing on Facebook, twittering and so on. The content is structurally often breaking the "rules." Spelling and grammar are changing, however, spelling and grammar always change. Don't believe me? Try looking at Shakespeare in the original Elizabethan English. The opening lines of Othello (which I didn't have to learn by heart but managed to anyway) go:

Tush, never tell me; I take much unkindly
That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse
As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.

You can probably work out what it means - it's not changed that much. But hast had, thine, Tush, shouldst do you use those words? I take it most unkindly surely? If you read the original Dracula. Yes, read it, and read a modern horror story you'd spot differences of style too. Some of them are due to Stoker being a different writer of course, but some of them are changes in the last hundred years.

We're just seeing a lot of changes in a short period of time. A revolution of literacy if you like.

And whilst the grammar is going to pot, and the spelling too. The youth of today write with the expectation that others will read their work. Lots of others. It makes them aware of writing for the audience, writing persuasively, debating ideas, even if they're trivial ideas like what's the best film to go and see today. Are these bad skills to have? Journalists need them, media people need, academics need them, fund raisers need them. Most people that actually write today need them. Granted they need to graft spelling and grammar in there too. But a part of me wonders which way round is it easiest to do it? It is easier to teach "formal" spelling and grammar to someone that already knows how to write convincingly, or to teach convincing writing to those that know the rules. There's no data so far but I'd guess it's far easier to teach someone who knows how to write and is motivated to write how to spell than it is to motivate someone to start writing.

The Tao of Linden is right?

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:49:45 -0600

The Tao of Linden is a document that occasionally gets discussed. It was Phillip's idea (I'm sure others had some input but Phillip has certainly claimed the rewards and taken the brickbats at Town Halls in Second Life over the years) of a radical new way to operate a company and it's remained the guiding force behind how Linden Lab operates after he's moved on.

It would be fair to say it's not 100% popular. I think most people would, if they were being honest, say it's not 100% successful. But then if we're being honest there's no management style that's 100% successful.

In a recent TED Talk Dan Pink presents a quick overview of some evidence that says if we're going to encourage working smart and working creatively the current traditional management structures tend to make things worse not better. Research by touch-feely institutions such as LSE and the Federal Bank support this quite strongly. Intrinsic motivation - working on what you want to work on, working in your own way rather than being forced to travel into the office and the like - is a much better system for working the way we want people to work in the twenty-first century.

You can watch the video here:

Final thought though - if a decade ago you were comparing business models for a new electronic encyclopaedia, would you go for something with no background, no payment, no experts, or a nicely managed project with well paid expert consultants and "traditional" management. If you're honest enough to think back to those days, you've have almost certainly gone for the expert encyclopaedia. Microsoft did. Does anyone remember Encarta? Does anyone still use it in preference to Wikipedia?

Journler review

nospam@example.com (Eloise Pasteur) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:55:08 -0600

Journler is a Mac specific piece of journaling software. If you’re used to journalling software you’ll probably want to skip the next paragraph and read on lower down.

So what is journalling software? Let’s pretend you’re more organised than me and you have a notebook (rather than scraps of paper, backs of envelopes etc.), like a reporters notebook or a lab journal, in which you make notes. Journalling software lets you do that - you can create notes and (hopefully easily) go back and find them. It might be someone’s phone number that you have to ring with or without a message. It might be a list of what you’ve done today for your boss. It might be a list of what you’ve got to do tomorrow. It might be scribbled notes on a meeting, a snippet of code, a design idea... you name it. Of course being software it also lets you stick in emails, attach documents, insert pictures, audio and video clips and more. So far, apart from the relative ease of reading back typed notes compared to hand-written ones, there’s nothing to persuade you to let go of your notebook of course. However, the software ALSO does indexing for you. In other words it makes it easy for you to find your notes again!

Now, I wasn’t a big user of journalling software before this, so I’m not 100% sure what’s a common feature and what’s unique to Journler, but I’m going to briefly list what I’ve seen so far.

First up for those of you that move between machines regularly, it’s got a small footprint and will run happily from a memory stick. That means you can stick it into your desktop machine, then into your laptop, and if necessary into your office machine and you won’t have to worry about syncing.

You can do all the usual things like set default fonts, play with background colours to some extent and the like. Cmd-N makes a new entry, Cmd-Shift-N makes a new entry using the contents of the clipboard - although there are menus and a tool bar that let you most of this of course. After this it starts to get fun. Journler tries hard NOT to force you into a particular way of working. You have the choice of setting meaningful titles (that’s pretty much recommended, but will default to today’s date if you leave it), categories (and you can edit the list and create your own easily), tags and the like. You can choose to set due dates as well - which might be important if you’re setting up “to do” items in your journal.

And this is where Journler starts to really score. You can create, and more importantly nest smart folders. If you’re not used to smart folders, they’re folders with some sort of filtering criteria applied. You can, I am, writing this in Journler, and it’s tagged with a got-to-do and a blog tag. It’s got a due date too of course. There’s a general “journal” folder that contains everything. This piece is really there all the time. But I have smart folders for got-to-do items and blog items. Smart folders mean that, because they file automatically, if I click on the blog items smart folder I can see this in there, along with anything else I’m thinking about blogging. Not that special so far, except of course it makes it easy to find.

The GTD folder is more interesting. Journler, I think uniquely, has layered smart folders. Inside my GTD folder there are three more, called Urgent, Done and Archived. Urgent finds anything with a due date in the next 3 days that’s not flagged or checked. Done finds anything that is flagged and checked. Archived is anything marked flagged or checked and more than a week old. But because it’s in the GTD folder it ALSO inherits the conditions for that - so it will only catch items tagged at got-to-do as well. Now that’s clever. And useful.

Another example of this, I have a smart folder called work. In work I have sub-folders for clients, and with clients with whom I have several projects, a sub-folder for each project under their name. I can, quickly and easily scan all my work items, or just the items for a specific client, or just the items for a specific project as I choose. Once I’ve got there, I can organise by title, date, category, tags, whatever I like. The indexing is fast and continuous so finding that important document is nice and easy. You can also search, and filter your searches so if you can’t find where you filed something you stand a good chance of finding it again that way.

Journler also interacts with your standard tools nicely. For example, if you drag an email over to keep a copy of it in the right place and you double-click on the attached mail you get it opening within Journler so you can read it. But you also get buttons at the top to allow you to show it Finder, open it in Mail, reply or start a new email to the sender. (I’m guessing it will use other programmes than Mail if they’re what you use.) If the attachment is a PDF then it will open then, and offer you the option to open in your default PDF reader. If it’s a hyperlink, it will open it, and offer you the chance to open in your default browser. This works for SLURLs too... you open the SLURL and it does all the Second Life things you’d expect of it.

And when all of that is done, you can print, export, and if you’re using an auto-blogging tool (I don’t, they don’t talk to my blogging software nicely) you can write here and then automatically export to your blog, or you can automatically export to iWeb (not tried this yet, but it’s there).

What it does, nicely, is the sorting out. It might make you more organised but it might not. But it might make the chaos of scraps of paper and notes all over the place a distant memory and make you appear more organised to the outside world.

Addenda

This one I should have spotted of course, but as you create entries the calendar is marked with their creation date, as well as the entry. If you click on a marked day in the calendar it shows you all the entries for that day. Whether this is a "what did you do last Tuesday?" or "Remember that meeting last month?" it gives you an addition quick sorting method that's very nice.