tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91516712419911050992024-03-14T22:47:29.361+10:00Cloud ScholarLinking the crowd with the cloudMichael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-69383185201139163382018-03-20T17:28:00.004+10:002018-03-20T17:28:51.878+10:00F1 App - Worst user interface ever?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMdtd0tpbis8MuXg-DXQ04vKzQn3GZczEdOqMAH-LgGrexnwtYJWwwCCTS_dc13MsVhJpHwl4UyVDP0RxPkJ9_ue172VyjK3A0PQ5bh1Fmo_D5JSgQxbs6-7vW3rmSsrcSvHF18E0DVLI/s1600/F1+app+logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="287" data-original-width="585" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMdtd0tpbis8MuXg-DXQ04vKzQn3GZczEdOqMAH-LgGrexnwtYJWwwCCTS_dc13MsVhJpHwl4UyVDP0RxPkJ9_ue172VyjK3A0PQ5bh1Fmo_D5JSgQxbs6-7vW3rmSsrcSvHF18E0DVLI/s320/F1+app+logo.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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With the 2018 F1 season about to start I signed up with the F1 Access account for a monthly fee of AUD 4.49. I then looked forward to downloading the new F1 app on my Android tablet which went smoothly.<br />
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On launching the F1 app it asked for more details as well as the login name and password. The Date of Birth field seemed easy as it showed a calendar interface to help enter the date and showed the current month. How many new F1 subscribers are likely to be born in the current month you might well ask?<br />
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Then the interface design fell apart. The only way to reach a birth date is to tap on the previous month arrow. Being almost 72 years of age I had to press the previous arrow<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihkoBxs-JxOjP5i8TaMIFGDqg6KDR-crkGfnZevz3v_JvdlUN2NMgbG3PG1Mt0cBeMhkNbBS5h6TqM7DwOAwoY-ZukYn9xZe_T9qUJy4HlPmBDYPzNz-L3aSD1jcFoA8UnhGGwo8MUliQ/s1600/859+times.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="672" height="92" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihkoBxs-JxOjP5i8TaMIFGDqg6KDR-crkGfnZevz3v_JvdlUN2NMgbG3PG1Mt0cBeMhkNbBS5h6TqM7DwOAwoY-ZukYn9xZe_T9qUJy4HlPmBDYPzNz-L3aSD1jcFoA8UnhGGwo8MUliQ/s320/859+times.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Even a 20-year old interface designer would have to press it at least 240 times. It is obvious no sensible user testing was carried out.</div>
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The new F1 management should be ashamed and some user interface designer should be out of a job.</div>
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<br />Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-84367816847616954572017-11-02T09:57:00.000+10:002017-11-02T12:36:08.622+10:00Forced to buy the ebook of 'The Black Swan'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unhappy with my long-standing financial advisers (low return, very high fees) I have been thrust into the role of chief investment officer of my own self-managed super fund. Fellow independent investors advised joining the <a href="http://www.investors.asn.au/" target="_blank">Australian Investors Association</a> (AIA), a great choice as it turned out. Felicity Cooper of <a href="http://www.cooperwealthmanagement.com.au/" target="_blank">Cooper Wealth Management</a> was an excellent speaker at a local AIA event. She praised the books by Nassim Taleb and in particular <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable-ebook/dp/B002RI99IM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1509577831&sr=1-1&keywords=black+swan" target="_blank">The Black Swan</a></i> about highly improbable events.<br />
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Used to only buying Kindle ebooks well below $10 I baulked at the price of $14.99. I was kindly 'lent' an audiobook version, but it's a genre with which I still struggle to appreciate. The Black Swan has a vast amount of facts, names, places and events that I would like to follow up. It is so hard to stop listening, type in the often-misremembered search terms, and make notes, then return to the audiobook.<br />
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Next I resorted to putting a hold on the printed book from my local library - the first time I had used this service in maybe 5 years. For a start the hardback book is heavier than I remember and it was difficult to find space on the tables next to my favourite reading locations (mostly easy chair and bed). As I have commented before, I soon found myself tapping the right margin of the book to turn to the next page! It was when I subconsciously found I was double tapping a word to find its definition I thought 'enough is enough'. By then I had already lamented the inability to highlight notable passages for later follow-up. As well I had become irritated by the destructive behaviour of previous readers turning over the corner of pages to act as bookmarks, an anti-social trait I had forgotten.<br />
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So I have admitted defeat and purchased the Kindle ebook. I am back into my reading wonderland being able to flit about the book, search for terms online, mark highlights, make notes, and generally feel I am getting value for money.<br />
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The take-away: it's hard not be a skinflint in your retirement.Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-30018336292342819892016-08-08T17:00:00.000+10:002016-08-11T15:00:29.321+10:00Rainbow Umpires - Crowdsourcing Improved AFL Umpires<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0FRuMRXKRNYizr0fr04G4aHzqxB1v8rfH7AelZWXsLBGxw0FQcnlGDEO2d2S3KZQOiDgrHP3IQ69FzRh0W-EcbnxNIlvjNp2DvKm3h0W3NQojm3SbE7YJyxdtEg58rVLqdbVNh9oYWtg/s1600/aflrainbowumpires.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0FRuMRXKRNYizr0fr04G4aHzqxB1v8rfH7AelZWXsLBGxw0FQcnlGDEO2d2S3KZQOiDgrHP3IQ69FzRh0W-EcbnxNIlvjNp2DvKm3h0W3NQojm3SbE7YJyxdtEg58rVLqdbVNh9oYWtg/s400/aflrainbowumpires.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rainbow Umpires app</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This AFL season to date some kind friends and neighbours have allowed my wife and I the use of season tickets for two of our local AFL sides. There have been 8 games so far and in 6 of them runs of 2 or 3 exceedingly poor umpiring decisions during the first 2 quarters have ruined the games for spectators. Our local sides are weak and would undoubtedly lost the games overall. But the bad decisions of the umpires handed the momentum unfairly to the opposing side killing the chance of a much closer game, and leaving the spectators short-changed.<br />
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Forty years ago I was an international squash referee and know what a difficult job it is as an official to follow the rules and maintain balance between the competing sides. But the AFL manages a huge sport that apart from the players needs the spectators to feel the rules are applied fairly in every game. After all it is the fans that make the AFL possible.<br />
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No doubt the AFL puts a great deal of effort into training umpires and arranging their professional development. Players have their tribunal to determine disciplinary action where needed, and the operation of the tribunal is transparent and public. With umpires able to have such potential devastating effect on the outcome of a game, where is their tribunal and how does that operate? It is a nonsense to suggest umpires are above criticism and any disciplinary action be hidden behind closed doors. There needs to be a mechanism whereby AFL spectators can provide feedback on umpire performance.<br />
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I am suggesting the spectator crowds be allowed to vote on the performance of umpires in real-time during the game. We need an easy way to identify the different umpires and I suggest they wear brightly coloured shirts in primary rainbow colours. It is easy to put an app like Rainbow Umpires on the mobile phones of spectators and allow them within 10 seconds of any decision to vote their support using simple up and down buttons. This data can easily be gathered in the cloud and a rating for each umpire displayed in real time. Spectators at the ground and live TV viewers could participate. With many tens of thousands of live TV fans voting there will be no home-team advantage.<br />
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It is my experience that AFL fans on the whole are particularly fair-minded and accept adverse umpire decisions against their own side. Only on rare occasions do they become enraged at really bad decisions since poor decisions tend to balance out over the course of the game. However with close up TV coverage and also displayed to all via huge displays at the ground it is no longer the case that umpires have a better view of the play.<br />
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With the large amount of crowd reaction data available to them the AFL can publish league tables of umpires performance. Those with substandard performance can be 'reported' to a transparent umpiring 'tribunal' with disciplinary action involving retraining and further professional development. High performances could put umpires in line for an end-of-season 'Brownlow' medal equivalent. Note that the voting system potentially allows all umpires to achieve high scores.<br />
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Come on AFL it is time to use available technology to introduce a truly professional umpiring group honed by exposure to crowd feedback and a transparent tribunal. Bring the AFL fans more directly into the game.Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-59704864039348718662016-07-30T12:45:00.002+10:002016-07-30T12:45:35.461+10:00Switched from Evernote to OneNote, happy so far<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOvwJGqXFag1YqcFcDbAVLNTzDdUgP2oMZHrwki6yZJj4a99mlnToVJX5eUSRRmlE2f_BInLkzWwZuffsVJYqYKZipAmiYuvaBaqFIH2Xc7WZcLa1158xvxO_-cdU0TOoN1Ld0RZbdgAA/s1600/evernote+to+onenote.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="119" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOvwJGqXFag1YqcFcDbAVLNTzDdUgP2oMZHrwki6yZJj4a99mlnToVJX5eUSRRmlE2f_BInLkzWwZuffsVJYqYKZipAmiYuvaBaqFIH2Xc7WZcLa1158xvxO_-cdU0TOoN1Ld0RZbdgAA/s320/evernote+to+onenote.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<h2>
Evernote since 2008</h2>
I have been an Evernote user since 2008 and a paying premium member for almost as long. Recent sharp price rises have forced me to adopt OneNote. These are my experiences so far.<br />
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Prior to 2008 I was a really early adopter of OneNote and my short profile even appeared on the OneNote site as a supporter. However Evernote soon became my main note taking app especially as it became universal, although it came grudgingly to Windows and Android, my main platforms.<br />
<h2>
The Price Rise</h2>
As an Australian when our AUD dollar was near parity with the USD dollar paying around $40/annum for Evernote Premium was good value. The price edged up slowly but the AUD gradually dropped to 70 cents. Now Evernote Premium will soon be AUD90/annum and Evernote Plus AUD50. Bear in mind Office 365 Home costs only AUD119/annum. Evernote has priced itself out of the Australian market.<br />
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Switching out of Evernote is no small step as other users know. The powerful note taking and sharing features integrate throughout typical daily IT tasks such as messaging, email, social media, cloud apps and information processing generally. Fortunately for us Microsoft always targeted OneNote for these same scenarios but took time to match the ease of use and general availability of Evernote. As well OneNote is free.<br />
<h2>
The Switch to OneNote</h2>
I have several years of curated notes organised in Evernote. It amounted to about 80 notebooks and about 750 notes, each note varying from a few hundred characters to some megabytes holding documents and images. The obvious first step was to download and install the free <a href="https://www.onenote.com/import-evernote-to-onenote" target="_blank">Microsoft Evernote to OneNote Importer</a>. The download page also gives Microsoft's view of why free OneNote is better.<br />
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Choosing literally all my Evernote notebooks to import the process appeared to go smoothly and took about 15 minutes or so. Each Evernote notebook became an equivalently named .one file in the Documents folder on my OneDrive. Not every note was imported and a short report showed that 4 notes could not be imported:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7OwGnrWCi1PDB5E3YhCNphXwMEjQxzBQFCnKCqdhTmAxNIlMcOUnhRMhCiboiqNMyygaFFn6qsijCJxuKWTWVe1r-5vyGkcIq4dxxJAObB2kLwh9ZOBQbA20kguppowItiqhWPzhncL4/s1600/Evernote+importer+fails.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7OwGnrWCi1PDB5E3YhCNphXwMEjQxzBQFCnKCqdhTmAxNIlMcOUnhRMhCiboiqNMyygaFFn6qsijCJxuKWTWVe1r-5vyGkcIq4dxxJAObB2kLwh9ZOBQbA20kguppowItiqhWPzhncL4/s1600/Evernote+importer+fails.jpg" /></a></div>
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No obvious reasons for this failure were apparent as the 4 note seemed very similar to the hundreds of others that did come across successfully.</div>
<h2>
Next the Notes Re-org</h2>
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Of course the Evernote notebook/notes structure is never optimal, as one is always meaning to reorganise the notes more sensibly. Here now in OneNote was the chance to start afresh. It is important to note first up that the note structures differ between Evernote and OneNote.</div>
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Evernote uses a very simple three-level structure:</div>
<ul>
<li>Each notebook holds a list of notes</li>
<li>Notebooks can be gathered in notebook stacks</li>
<li>More structure is possible by tagging each note; all notes with the same tags can be listed easily</li>
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It should be noted that Evernote notebook stacks are ignored when imported into OneNote.</div>
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OneNote has a four-level structure with nesting allowed in some levels to allow complex hierarchies:</div>
<ul>
<li>Each notebook document holds sections optionally collected into section groups</li>
<li>Each section group hold next level section groups and sections, and so on</li>
<li>Each section holds a list of pages (notes)</li>
<li>Optionally each page can have subpages</li>
</ul>
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An additional much-heralded feature of each page (note) is that it is a 2-dimensional canvas with note box components placed anywhere vertically and horizontally.</div>
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With the increased structuring possibilities I opted to have a small number, around half a dozen, OneNote notebooks (documents). Then I allocated notes in my 80 Evernote notebooks across section groups and sections in these smaller number of OneNote notebooks. The procedure is simple:</div>
<ul>
<li>Open each .one document imported from Evernote; all the notes are listed as pages in one section</li>
<li>Decide into which section/section group in which OneNote notebook to put the list of Evernote notes</li>
</ul>
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My first problems appeared at this point.</div>
<h2>
The Annoyances</h2>
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Many imported .one documents opened quickly in desktop OneNote from my OneDrive. It seemed sensible to simply move the section containing the Evernote notes to the new OneNote notebooks. For notes containing mainly text this worked well. However for Evernote notebooks where the notes contained many images this was hugely problematic. Examples are my list of business cards and photos of bits of gear along with pictures of serial numbers and so forth. </div>
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Firstly the .one documents opened very slowly indeed, and moving the section to its new home was even slower. Even when the move seemed to have worked several error messages warning of Misplaced Sections appeared and these sections appeared at the end of the Notebooks list with ominous red question marks attached. There appears to be synchronisation conflict between OneNote itself and the background OneDrive upload/downloads.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwlnomULStbytFVibvQA3n8HahXVtLW2vL7t_6Q7zjVRzbniiYNUdETOzZjXz7ypwFiEbDzClSK5L1zu-LGz8LpxYIwMLBEmnbFOMdkRzEG-pIecO73B3lI1SmJt_fg8_vML66W4XbSA4/s1600/bitofbusinesscard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwlnomULStbytFVibvQA3n8HahXVtLW2vL7t_6Q7zjVRzbniiYNUdETOzZjXz7ypwFiEbDzClSK5L1zu-LGz8LpxYIwMLBEmnbFOMdkRzEG-pIecO73B3lI1SmJt_fg8_vML66W4XbSA4/s1600/bitofbusinesscard.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Business card<br /> at full screen</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The worst annoyance of all is with images imported from Evernote notes. Within OneNote the images show at full resolution instead of being resized for display at a sensible page width. For example all my business cards contain the card image at around 4,000 pixels wide. With no feature to help I challenge anyone to find an easy way to manually resize the images without inconvenient scrolling left and up while dragging the corner of the image to resize it. With more than 100 such notes like this the process of tidying up images was the pits. To make matters even worse still when the resized images are accessed via OneNote Online on the web they revert to full size! We can but hope the Evernote Importer app developers fix this in the fully released version. This might be a deal breaker for some people.</div>
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After many frustrations I discovered the only reliable method was to make copies of all imported sections to newly-created OneNote notebooks. If I had previously moved a section into a OneNote notebook then even copying further sections still caused problems. These problems extended into the Android OneNote app. I had spent a couple of hours moving/copying sections into a new OneNote notebook only to have it flagged with errors in Android.</div>
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My advice is clear. Always copy sections from notebooks imported from Evernote into new OneNote notebooks.</div>
<h2>
The Upside</h2>
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After 2 or 3 days of trials I had my new collection of OneNote notebooks organised to my satisfaction. Next began the trials of how OneNote would perform in the daily processes of gathering, organising and searching of information.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH17bSQuxNCwHfrt8FQYrbMmJwJh-ICdUJH92Bb7vs_TLfgPoYGfNHqbfd9m9t55-dZUOVqSAfkm-Srq8Siy4iczIsvW3Ji6lc1xWt6VJvM1742-vcq26oQUh9mTTI5hQTkF6A6ltgrEE/s1600/onenote+clipper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH17bSQuxNCwHfrt8FQYrbMmJwJh-ICdUJH92Bb7vs_TLfgPoYGfNHqbfd9m9t55-dZUOVqSAfkm-Srq8Siy4iczIsvW3Ji6lc1xWt6VJvM1742-vcq26oQUh9mTTI5hQTkF6A6ltgrEE/s1600/onenote+clipper.jpg" /></a></div>
Of course the Evernote Clipper on Windows has developed over the years into a very powerful information gathering mechanism both within the major browsers and the desktop app. The OneNote clipper equivalents are available but lag in some features. This has not been a problem for me to date. Because of its superior speed Microsoft Edge has become my favourite browser except for when I need extensions like the Evernote and OneNote clippers when I have to switch to Chrome or IE. This is about 5% of my browser use.</div>
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On Android the playing field is more level with Evernote and OneNote being very similar in capability. Both Evernote and OneNote are beautifully integrated into the powerful OS-wide sharing mechanism that Android has enjoyed for some years. There is no Android Evernote clipper as such but here OneNote has stolen a march by introducing the OneNote Badge that appears on all screens of all apps plus desktop to allow instant copy-and-paste/screen capture from the app to OneNote - a huge benefit over Evernote.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAUjUq4GzNXIt-Kkqrpga1DG_mAekXgsXeD8ZSZupGXAij1bFECXtqg9BysQUBn5y0ongOKwLpJi8Fh_LdN67con3jxyfcbGnaCXZHzNv49x21UOasjHllbnJVipJJc12ZfGpUWTLgTY0/s1600/officelens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAUjUq4GzNXIt-Kkqrpga1DG_mAekXgsXeD8ZSZupGXAij1bFECXtqg9BysQUBn5y0ongOKwLpJi8Fh_LdN67con3jxyfcbGnaCXZHzNv49x21UOasjHllbnJVipJJc12ZfGpUWTLgTY0/s1600/officelens.jpg" /></a></div>
Even before I switched to OneNote the Microsoft Office Lens app on Android is one of my all time favourites. After intelligent processing the image capture for whiteboards, business cards, images, and documents Office lens can save the image to many locations including OneNote and OneDrive in image and PDF formats. I only wish Office Lens could generate multi-page PDF documents to become a genuine scanner replacement.<br />
<h2>
The Outcome</h2>
<div>
The switch was a journey of ups and downs but I have been using OneNote alone for coming up to one month. My note taking productivity is back to where it was with Evernote. I am liking the improved note editing with desktop OneNote and find the note search results much better organised and informative. OneNote tags are still somewhat confusing and more difficult to manage but do have colour coding and informative image icons. The one Evernote feature I still miss is the list of favourite notes - Shopping List for example. Also secure access via pin code or password to confidential notes in OneNote does not seem to be cross-platform as yet.</div>
<div>
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<div>
I score my switching process at 85% and look forward to growing into OneNote for the ever more important note taking tasks.</div>
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<br />Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-64802236966213111502016-07-10T15:55:00.001+10:002018-11-26T12:22:48.636+10:00Wrote my first computer program 50 years ago this week<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigozCKK3m5h26RM_8QHt7MP9PeAEJtTC2fpkI0gwngkUNPvtjT24T3CbDbttvXapK2pUCAGQE-lC2YYQR1WrhCCzxrDROQNvBxeJadgew6L3L982zJxoaTdIGHpmanmBmt6sMUvOtwTFg/s1600/punched-tape-5-hole-pd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigozCKK3m5h26RM_8QHt7MP9PeAEJtTC2fpkI0gwngkUNPvtjT24T3CbDbttvXapK2pUCAGQE-lC2YYQR1WrhCCzxrDROQNvBxeJadgew6L3L982zJxoaTdIGHpmanmBmt6sMUvOtwTFg/s320/punched-tape-5-hole-pd.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">From europeforum.freeforums.net/thread/754/remember-when?q=tape</span></td></tr>
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Now that July 2016 is here it is time to celebrate my half century as a computer programmer. Back in 1966 I was a 19-year old second year undergraduate at Birmingham University studying applied maths. In order to be close to my soon to be wife I took a summer vacation job in the maths department of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Industries" target="_blank">Lucas Industries</a>, then a major supply of automotive components for the British car making industry. The office was located in Shirley, Birmingham in England.<br />
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At the time Lucas had purchased an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_803" target="_blank">Elliott 803</a> computer housed in a specialised raised-floor computer room which occupied more than half of the space of the maths office itself. As the lowliest 'office boy' I was given the task of running a routine series of tests of the Elliott 803 every morning between 9 and 10 to ensure the computer was working as it should. This introduction to computers changed my life and eventual career in just a few short weeks. As the tester I became very familiar with the quirky computer and its peripherals and was soon punching programs written in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL" target="_blank">Algol 60</a> on 5-hole paper tape.<br />
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The Elliott Algol compiler was written by a very famous British computer scientist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare" target="_blank">Sir Tony Hoare</a>. Code for the compiler was held in the last blocks of the amazing mass storage device being a magnetic tape system based on oxidised 35 mm film stock made by Kodak.This tape reader/writer which was the only equivalent to today's hard disk drives. To load the Algol compiler required winding the tape forward to near its end, loading the compiler, then winding back to the beginning again to use the first storage blocks to store the compiled machine code. You can imagine this process took many minutes, perhaps only to reveal a syntax error in your program! Patience was definitely needed to be a programmer in those days, and the skill of editing paper tape programs - imagine the process of changing, inserting, and deleting characters as you copy from the old tape to the new version. The tiny discs of paper from punching tape made great confetti.<br />
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I had the honour to meet Sir Tony on a couple of occasions at Queens Belfast where he was Professor of Computer Science and briefly at the University of Oxford <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Research_Group" target="_blank">Programming Research Group</a> (PRG) where I was one of the first intake of 5 postgraduate students in 1967. The PRG was founded by Christopher Strachey in 1965 and his lectures to these 5 students on programming in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPL_(programming_language)" target="_blank">CPL language</a>, designed by himself at Cambridge University and others from the University of London, became the cornerstone of my computer science career. I left the PRG to pursue my PhD at the University of Southampton in 1968 so missed working with Sir Tony when he became the PRG head in 1977.<br />
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In another coincidence 50 years ago in September 1966 Birmingham University introduced their very first programming course teaching the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran" target="_blank">FORTRAN</a> language. The students used 80-column punched card machines to write FORTRAN and the cards were processed on an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_KDF9" target="_blank">English Electric KDF9</a> computer. Output was printed on huge <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_printer" target="_blank">line printers</a> that rocked the computer room as they worked. Of course with a couple of hundred users sharing the same computer we were lucky to achieve one run of our program every 24 hours. Software engineers of today would be totally shocked but it meant every programmer needed to learn how to spend hours each day desk checking the program code in order to maximise throughput. Programmers today have their code checked as they type - a huge convenience. Despite these very substantial advances the number of programming errors never seems to decrease!<br />
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The Elliott 803 I used 50 years ago had the equivalent of 40 kilobytes of main memory. The smartphone in your hand today holds one hundred thousand times more memory. An Elliott 803 would cost the equivalent of 600,000 pounds today, the cost of 1,000 smartphones. Quick arithmetic shows the cost of computer memory has reduced by a factor of 100 million in 50 years. Amazing. Just imagine what the next 50 years will bring.<br />
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Despite the paltry power of the Elliott 803 in today's terms the computer greatly increased the calculating power of the Lucas Industries maths team in 1966 leading to improved products particularly in battery design. It is sad to see that Lucas was part of the demise of the British car industry only a decade later. I owe my whole satisfying career in computer science to Lucas and will be forever in their debt. My wife and I married in 1967 and will celebrate our own half century next year.<br />
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July 2016<br />
Gold Coast, AustraliaMichael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-33054625789652081712015-06-01T17:58:00.000+10:002015-06-01T21:32:23.780+10:00 An embarrassing surfeit of forward<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I celebrate 50 years of computer use this year. In all that time of dealing with computer character sets I and my fellow computer users have been using the word 'slash' for the '/' character, technically <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_(punctuation)" target="_blank">a solidus</a>, and a very ancient character from ancient Rome. We can blame Microsoft for widening the use of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash" target="_blank">backslash character</a> '\' in the 1980s for DOS file paths although backslash itself dates from the 1960s.<br />
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For a couple of decades happy computer users in the main used slash and backslash as the common names for the two characters. Then in the late 1990s, as web page addresses that use slashes became popular, TV announcers took it upon themselves to start using the term 'forward slash' for '/' much to my extreme annoyance. I would dearly love to know who in the TV industry perpetrated this calumny that sadly persists to this day showing no sign of lessening.<br />
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How many millions nay billions of surplus uses of 'forward' have been forced on TV viewers in the last two decades? Let us all agree to ban 'forward slashes' and drop the 'forward'.Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-58828080133135453432015-03-21T13:58:00.001+10:002015-03-21T13:58:16.029+10:00Liquid foods <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUIezujlmFh1PBl8AAb5xoW1z-0OGTilNNuJ-8e1rDFMIs96aXl4qaT8u_nTYkgp9YJcMrhRal6aA38j7aZ6hitl9x-er6wFI2c6PrHXaZr4qX0Yb5Ed7qgtv2bO8V0vIruqeaMyjtbpM/s1600/Studio_20150321_135154.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUIezujlmFh1PBl8AAb5xoW1z-0OGTilNNuJ-8e1rDFMIs96aXl4qaT8u_nTYkgp9YJcMrhRal6aA38j7aZ6hitl9x-er6wFI2c6PrHXaZr4qX0Yb5Ed7qgtv2bO8V0vIruqeaMyjtbpM/s1600/Studio_20150321_135154.jpg" height="231" width="320" /></a></div>
At Barcamp Gold Coast this morning I attended a talk about liquid food typified by the well-known solvent. When your nutrition is in balance there is a perceptible increase in your physical feeling of wellbeing which leads to a more contented life.<br />
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The speaker Mike Ando freely admitted though that the number one benefit of liquid foods is the saving of time. Giving the example of two liquid meals a day this can amount to almost a month of full-time work each year.<br />
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This was definitely food for thought!<br />
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I later tried a liquid food prepared by the speaker with a chocolate flavour. The base taste of liquid fibre was improved by the chocolate. I found the very small cup remarkably filling, although I had just consumed a large cookie. I will definitely be checking out the recipes for liquid foods at <a href="http://diy.soylent.me/">http://diy.soylent.me/</a>Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-29758518595802893552015-02-14T16:04:00.000+10:002015-02-14T16:14:25.495+10:00Breaking the Apple/Telstra NexusLike many of my friends and colleagues over the last 7 years I used iPhones 3, 4 and 5 on Telstra 24-month plans with varying upfront payments. iPhones 3 and 4 suffered from the barely tolerable intermittent home button problem and iPhone 5 from the increasingly intolerable battery fail problem.<br />
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During my iPhone 5 ownership it became clear that Android and Android phones can match and sometimes exceed the iPhone performance. As well my average of 50 minutes of calls and 20 SMS messages per month meant I was significantly overpaying in my $55-70/month Telstra plans, and had to live with a meagre 1 GB of monthly data - very restricting. When Telstra's hugely expensive iPhone 6 plans were announced it was time to search for much better value for money. I was also determined never to be manacled to a 24-month contract again which meant the upfront purchase of an unlocked phone.<br />
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I researched iPhone 6 Plus equivalents (from among Samsung, Google, HTC, Sony, Motorola) and eventually settled on a 16 GB LG G3 which has equal or superior hardware specifications. The screen resolution, SD card and camera are the standouts for me. Since I keep the vast majority of my content in the cloud I always choose the phone with the lowest memory (and lowest price). With iPhones 3 and 4 this worked well but the Apple faux pas with the memory-hungry iOS 8 upgrade meant I had to delete some stuff from the iPhone 5 - really annoying.<br />
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The outright purchase price of my LG G3 was $499 as opposed to $969 for the iPhone 6 Plus (Kogan prices). Then it needed a shop around for pay-as-you-go bring your own phone plans which can be cancelled in any month. All major carriers and MVNOs offer prepaid plans. I looked at Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, Amaysim (used for my mobile hotspots), Aldimobile and others. My phone usage is data heavy and voice/SMS light. I effectively use it as a handheld device for accessing Internet services like email, web, news, social media, Skype and a big range of other services. Most prepaid plans emphasize voice/SMS with pitiable data allowances.<br />
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I eventually settled on the 4G Spintel service (uses Optus) shown on the left where you can choose the mix of voice, text and data to suit your needs. Compare the $86/month Telstra iPhone 6 Plus plan which, had I followed the herd, I might be using now. It allows $550 voice, unlimited text and 1 GB data - unsuitable for my needs. The relative costs over 24 months are:<br />
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After 9 months I will be ahead in expenditure with the option to switch to a new phone and/or a new carrier. The phone came with Android 4.4 but was updated over the air just after Christmas to Android 5.0 Lollipop which was welcome.<br />
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I am 3 months along this trajectory, very much enjoying the phone and thinking of lowering my monthly cost as I predicted I am using only about 15% of my voice minutes and about 10% of my SMS. Typically using the phone's hotspot from other devices in the last days of the month I have been consuming just over 90% of my data. I would like more data but after 2.5 GB Spintel charges $15/GB or part thereof. I prefer to wait until later in the year when my second choice carrier Amaysim will have 4G and their $44/month includes 5 GB data with unlimited voice and SMS.</div>
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Yes, there are downsides. Five weeks of my trial have been in Tasmania where Optus signal very occasionally is absent (that can also happen with Telstra although rarely). The G3 has no fingerprint reader but I find the knock code feature a great substitute.</div>
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I am extremely happy and my initial nervousness with adopting Spintel has been completely dispelled. Therefore I thoroughly recommend my LG G3/Spintel combination.</div>
Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0Beauty Point TAS 7270, Australia-41.149102 146.81835980000005-41.197179999999996 146.73733580000004 -41.101024 146.89938380000007tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-58711061171712037112014-10-11T18:55:00.002+10:002014-10-16T17:03:51.482+10:00A logo updateThis is part of my personal history with only a small connection to the Cloud, but readers might find some interest if only to parallel their own experiences of logo creation.<br />
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In the early 90s I created a personal logo with a drawing program whose name is lost to me. I subsequently named it Dotdolfin as it was intended to be my rendering of indigenous dot art. The dolphin foundation was suggested as we had just named an innovative system of networked workstations from DEC as Kowande. This is the name of the dolphin spirit of Kowande an elder of the local Kombumerri tribe who reside here on the Gold Coast. A colleague, Renato Iannella, had just created a dolphin logo for our Kowande system and I rendered a dot art version of it. At the time I was proud I did not use circles for the dots but rather drew out a an irregular outline to simulate the end of a real stick used by the genuine dot artists. I remember the Mac struggled to refresh the display qjuickly after I had placed the first hundred of the dot shapes! Designing after that was difficult.<br />
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I even had a WordPress web site based on the logo called dotdolfin.com which is no more, but the out of date contents live on at <a href="http://dotdolfin.wordpress.com/">dotdolfin.wordpress.com</a>. As is the way of software the drawing program and its format are long gone and all I have are .jpg and .gif versions of my dotdolfin logo. A few weeks ago I was taken with a post entitled '<a href="http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/create-illustrated-characters-powerpoint/" target="_blank">How to Create Illustrated Characters in PowerPoint</a>' and eventually tried the technique myself. The smooth curve tool in PowerPoint turned out to be so simple and productive it has become my creative medium of choice. In less than an hour I have created my new logo suitably named Cloud Dolfin. You can see the new and the old:<br />
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I am hoping the PowerPoint format will survive much longer into the future so that I don't have to worry about updating again now that I am retired.</div>
Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-22346916679596702952014-08-05T18:29:00.001+10:002014-08-05T18:30:21.169+10:00Vitam in nubemFor many computer users living in the cloud has been possible for some time. Academic Jeff Jervis is a regular on one of my favourite podcasts, <a href="http://twit.tv/twig" target="_blank">This Week in Google</a>. In a recent post <a href="http://buzzmachine.com/2014/08/04/la-vita-cloudy/" target="_blank">La Vita Cloudy</a> on his Buzzmachine blog Jeff proudly announces he has moved entirely into the cloud. As a fellow academic now retired, but from the computer science discipline, I commend his move and predict the cloud will meet all his computing needs.<br />
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What I find puzzling are the doubts expressed by Jeff's podcast colleagues (Leo and the talented Gina). As a computer scientist I deemed it very clear that the cloud would become the obvious work environment for the big majority of computer users. More than 5 years ago in 2006 at a local Barcamp (<a href="http://mrees.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/working-in-the-cloud-update/" target="_blank">Working in the Cloud Update</a>) I was voicing this view. When the Chromebook was announced in May 2011 it was clear to me that I could recommend it as the all-purpose machine for most people wanting a computer keyboard. At that time I predicted <a href="http://mrees.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/chromebooks-take-us-closest-so-far-to-a-post-pc-era/" target="_blank">Chromebooks Take Us Closest So Far to a Post-PC Era</a>. I couldn't buy a Chromebook in Australia until early 2013 but in July 2011 I was very annoyed at the many blinkered reviews, <a href="http://mrees.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/many-chromebook-reviews-so-short-sighted/" target="_blank">Many Chromebook Reviews So Short-Sighted</a>. At the time I listed the Chromebook shortcomings as:<br />
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<li>No Bluetooth</li>
<li>Difficult printing</li>
<li>No Skype</li>
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Even then the positives far outweighed this list. As of today only the last remains and Google+ Hangouts is a good substitute.</div>
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I do have to admit to Jeff that I am yet to go the whole hog myself. In hindsight I could have published my first Kindle book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J64LVJK" target="_blank">The Cloud and You</a> entirely on my Chromebook but chickened out as I explained in <a href="http://blog.cloudscholar.com/2014/03/publishing-in-cloud.html" target="_blank">Publishing in the Cloud</a>. At this point too I have to agree with Leo that creating and editing the videos for my first MOOC also called <a href="https://www.udemy.com/the-cloud-and-you/" target="_blank">The Cloud and You</a> can not currently be done productively in the cloud. Even allowing for Internet bandwidth limitations I strongly believe such a task will be possible in the cloud very soon as video cloud editing apps do already exist.</div>
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With a Chromebook Jeff believes he is free of Microsoft and Apple. I think he will find this will not be such a clean break. Microsoft Office Online for example runs just great on a Chromebook and will likely handle a publisher's weird Word book template much better than Google Docs. An Office 365 subscription might still brings benefits and, who knows, Office might even become available as a set of dedicated Chrome apps!</div>
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So good luck Jeff. I am close behind you but not an absolutely pure cloudy just yet.</div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-709960028970393882014-06-01T10:10:00.000+10:002014-06-01T10:10:35.142+10:00Sad tale of a promising City of Gold Coast mobile app<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl1bdvemphlsODyGNwdVAICpIkUtffTPuj1slXYUHkZSPjW2XxtWgRqHFcTcsDaHZxBCz1hjHVzlreD950bAoqXtkJsuD-CBwr5jdDipHSurjsBoVXDcpjIWnQXYNyVCNSLJja_537qOE/s1600/App+announcement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl1bdvemphlsODyGNwdVAICpIkUtffTPuj1slXYUHkZSPjW2XxtWgRqHFcTcsDaHZxBCz1hjHVzlreD950bAoqXtkJsuD-CBwr5jdDipHSurjsBoVXDcpjIWnQXYNyVCNSLJja_537qOE/s1600/App+announcement.jpg" height="400" width="225" /></a></div>
Looks like the app I need to report trees obstructing view of road crossing from a footpath.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXcJ-_i-WsOPX73LsBAm3qlJa7tp3rnKA_u1_clNnRgUCLAV14gBkaX-JvoiUX6mVxpVyQQtbtyD9wmsUaulVkoNR92K6CUpFMbLkM8KIRiF8XUvtRN9fxSgsCDI9aIzbYI06qVoTc0nE/s1600/snapsolve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9LEfI2RxatgGMAXBBNQZS_sDO4Q_foqYud1lE5_l0Dk68JU1Ni2WtmCyEzl7wp5qNnMoJfovN0r1CnEsrJtgJH8HYrlSwG5om8fyY63oi8uO-k8-AgWKtt93sRGUjSZbRexfP3iZCKG8/s1600/CoGC+app.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9LEfI2RxatgGMAXBBNQZS_sDO4Q_foqYud1lE5_l0Dk68JU1Ni2WtmCyEzl7wp5qNnMoJfovN0r1CnEsrJtgJH8HYrlSwG5om8fyY63oi8uO-k8-AgWKtt93sRGUjSZbRexfP3iZCKG8/s1600/CoGC+app.jpg" height="400" width="225" /></a></div>
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Pretty app and a simple big button to submit a report.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDmPZIaYtqr8c4cC1ZBSwtVBFcnZwA1AaOADPsQE6ySCNuYa0EFL1Ni9O6VwOI_BERyZBan2RnmDx5OFttRBbV7ipQiAm9YyKyGx1AAjulFpXC2U7UY9Gux00Epzbils8dt38Q9CFaZns/s1600/report+submitted.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDmPZIaYtqr8c4cC1ZBSwtVBFcnZwA1AaOADPsQE6ySCNuYa0EFL1Ni9O6VwOI_BERyZBan2RnmDx5OFttRBbV7ipQiAm9YyKyGx1AAjulFpXC2U7UY9Gux00Epzbils8dt38Q9CFaZns/s1600/report+submitted.jpg" height="400" width="225" /></a></div>
Take a photo, type a simple description and touch submit. The app adds the detailed location and sends it to the council. Great!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB21tTUjqmdehGbcwM8NOzKty1iv9eM6Uw7DH-f3IW5mgesgpXaRyniQ3J8xm1lA2GLqJ8xN2xLnpgH0ixbt0I2zBECO-hgo_qVIUz4q8-M1tHbnNP1oEPsbQ0W_HmnJxDguAltLRhJa4/s1600/Council+reply.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB21tTUjqmdehGbcwM8NOzKty1iv9eM6Uw7DH-f3IW5mgesgpXaRyniQ3J8xm1lA2GLqJ8xN2xLnpgH0ixbt0I2zBECO-hgo_qVIUz4q8-M1tHbnNP1oEPsbQ0W_HmnJxDguAltLRhJa4/s1600/Council+reply.jpg" height="400" width="225" /></a></div>
Next day the council replies - impressive response.<br />
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The bad news is this app doesn't cover this very common issue.<br />
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The good news is they have passed on the issue to the 'relevant area'.<br />
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#partialfail<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLcUA3gXUkPlK3iEKPFW-tVIr7cjl1MhLDE_XFy9aW6_OhCnvwd3n3KlSInzUEb5MdHpDdcdzrZHOTW3Odhmp-4QykEIN8N1lSHdU-KwGTilMjFiWPtD-r_KMbqoqzUHHMAjeCiB6fdo/s1600/snapsolve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLcUA3gXUkPlK3iEKPFW-tVIr7cjl1MhLDE_XFy9aW6_OhCnvwd3n3KlSInzUEb5MdHpDdcdzrZHOTW3Odhmp-4QykEIN8N1lSHdU-KwGTilMjFiWPtD-r_KMbqoqzUHHMAjeCiB6fdo/s1600/snapsolve.jpg" height="400" width="225" /></a></div>
I have used this SnapSendSolve app all over Australia to report issues to councils, <a href="http://mrees.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/first-snapsendsolve-experiment-a-success/" target="_blank">even a few times here on the Gold Coast</a>. The app creates the report email and knows where to send it by the current location.<br />
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A couple of times I have used this app to report overhanging trees on footpaths/cycle paths to the GCCC and they have responded well every time.<br />
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Come on GCCC, surely your own app can come to the party!Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-22535992426339302072014-05-31T17:01:00.000+10:002014-05-31T17:01:21.886+10:00Unwanted NineMSN Logo intrudes on OneDrive in AustraliaI have been frequent user and supporter of OneDrive in Australia. A practical workshop appears in my first online course (MOOC) called <a href="https://www.udemy.com/the-cloud-and-you" target="_blank">The Cloud and You</a> on <a href="http://udemy.com/">Udemy.com</a>. I had thought to create a more in-depth coverage of OneDrive in my second online course currently in planning.<br />
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Today I started experimenting with Camtasia screencasts of OneDrive to discover to my absolute dismay that the NineMSN logo/links appear at the top of the OneDrive, Outlook, People and Calendar components - definitely not something my international online students will want to see.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj15TOF7ESpXb3TdBTOncdlWZD1ALJBTiz5y6VEZqRPQhpmeFKVfSaUYtGgUnKYFG3_g3y_E1CJOFEf-FRzO1c0W-O3DPR-cAQEHtkxkCN_vU5HQ4Cno1owK2KR92VBVt-1E5LJAFGqfdo/s1600/2014-05-31+SNAG-00.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj15TOF7ESpXb3TdBTOncdlWZD1ALJBTiz5y6VEZqRPQhpmeFKVfSaUYtGgUnKYFG3_g3y_E1CJOFEf-FRzO1c0W-O3DPR-cAQEHtkxkCN_vU5HQ4Cno1owK2KR92VBVt-1E5LJAFGqfdo/s1600/2014-05-31+SNAG-00.png" /></a></div>
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My first thought was that surely this display was optional but a short period of research showed these unwanted links are permanent when accessing OneDrive in Australia in any browser. This appears to be confirmed in the Microsoft community forum in the post '<a href="http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/osettings-oemailset/remove-ninemsn-logo-australia/ffbec748-ce2f-4eab-9679-938875e13f73?rtAction=1401516763632" target="_blank">Remove NineMSN Logo - Australia</a>'. So disappointing. I have to hand it to Microsoft in the subtle positioning as it has taken me many months to spot it!</div>
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While the NineMSN logo is mercifully absent in the online apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote I won't be rushing to create my online course about OneDrive. So Google Apps/Drive here I come.</div>
<br />Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-55672433035926068462014-05-31T09:52:00.001+10:002014-05-31T09:52:39.002+10:00Unnecessary user pain on sites that fail to strip spaces<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFRLvWpLp5lfFtOpkVcN1mKIK2k-sZjtMCEpgALSIRJZSkt4sBoKZSWw_ta3hSh43QXF6_kUzAJj-zVPFm8_Znk8LPjFsBmbKjkm4AL2gZTyTVoJ39QpqbbiOPP3cgLwBFOgsTSm-LShk/s1600/emailwithspace.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFRLvWpLp5lfFtOpkVcN1mKIK2k-sZjtMCEpgALSIRJZSkt4sBoKZSWw_ta3hSh43QXF6_kUzAJj-zVPFm8_Znk8LPjFsBmbKjkm4AL2gZTyTVoJ39QpqbbiOPP3cgLwBFOgsTSm-LShk/s1600/emailwithspace.png" /></a></div>
I just have to vent my intense anger with sites that fail to strip spaces when entering simple information like email addresses, user ids and similar. Surely it is universally accepted that spaces cannot be part of login names, email addresses, web page links and such. Indeed this is used by the vast majority of auto-completion tools on smartphone, tablet/laptop to terminate the insert action. You start typing an oft-entered text sequence and the platform prompts with the suggested complete text, and you accept by typing a space. Any other character kills the autocomplete action.<br />
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Annoyingly I am seeing more and more sites returning the unhelpful message<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Not a valid email address/login name/...</blockquote>
when a trailing space appears after the text entry. Every person who claims to be a web developer should know the scripting/coding language they use to accept the user's input has a built-in library function akin to trim() which stips spaces and other invalid characters. Every site should do this.<br />
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This exasperated post was triggered by trying my hand at the tempting article entitled '<a href="http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2014/05/could-you-win-national-spelling-bee.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freetech4teachers%2FcGEY+%28Free+Technology+for+Teachers%29" target="_blank">Could You Win the National Spelling Bee? - Test Yourself With These Winning Words</a>'. I accidentally (yeah!) typed an answer ending with a space and was incensed at receiving an 'incorrect' answer. Of course it was my trusty <a href="http://www.swiftkey.net/en/" target="_blank">Swiftkey keyboard app</a> on the Nexus 7 that actually entered the correct answer but added a space.<br />
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Please, all sites accepting atomic text input should be stripping leading and trailing spaces. It shows sloppy coding otherwise and lowers the trustworthiness of the site.Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-17325799730404446562014-05-25T10:00:00.000+10:002014-05-25T16:51:44.635+10:00Padlet walls URLs improveIt is good to see Padlet (once Wallwisher) continuing to add features. Padlet converts web pages into 'walls' where you can create and share information snippets such as links, files and photos. Today we see the ability to adopt a suitable user name and have that appear in the URL used to share your walls in your social media. So my small collection of cloud information gems can be found at:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://padlet.com/MichaelRees/cloudgallimaufry">http://padlet.com/MichaelRees/cloudgallimaufry</a></blockquote>
Padlet can generate your wall in a number of formats like PDf, Excel and CSV. Another generated format is a snapshot image:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdLE-7uUfs2kGEXbzpSOV3XyqM0JNnpQ372KafPyHwzbRSQLoIOHpCCKoNlYLud_-LTMz-yleAk1O3VY9_DhZzDSbL6AUP9J98WzzftFc_EXlrGS65kHx-rPBZo2ebVF3m8o30E945Htg/s1600/cloudpadlet.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdLE-7uUfs2kGEXbzpSOV3XyqM0JNnpQ372KafPyHwzbRSQLoIOHpCCKoNlYLud_-LTMz-yleAk1O3VY9_DhZzDSbL6AUP9J98WzzftFc_EXlrGS65kHx-rPBZo2ebVF3m8o30E945Htg/s1600/cloudpadlet.png" height="398" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-2748219632414731082014-05-23T15:38:00.000+10:002014-05-24T10:29:12.883+10:00Buffer overflows and collapses<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg29M-M7GBEN-_C88LfcFXkIt_ajYm_wO6J47ZJu0R47UctPFevBvj51n9tp3H-RQhA8bbhAB7PxrViJJjem7UhvPfkPKxPY4In2fU3iD7e7oyzbKt70dTsSrK7_2ngb9c4VQElabW8ZZQ/s1600/buffer.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg29M-M7GBEN-_C88LfcFXkIt_ajYm_wO6J47ZJu0R47UctPFevBvj51n9tp3H-RQhA8bbhAB7PxrViJJjem7UhvPfkPKxPY4In2fU3iD7e7oyzbKt70dTsSrK7_2ngb9c4VQElabW8ZZQ/s1600/buffer.png" /></a></div>
As a keen social media citizen I have been using social sharing <a href="https://bufferapp.com/" target="_blank">Buffer service</a> free account quite happily for many months. I routed information gems to Buffer mainly from my preferred <a href="https://feedly.com/" target="_blank">Feedly RSS aggregator</a> and news reading service. At convenient scheduled times Buffer releases these updates to my Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ <a href="http://google.com/+Cloudscholar" target="_blank">CloudScholar page</a>. My tweets are automatically repeated on my Facebook news stream for my diminishing friends list on that service.<br />
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Suddenly last week Buffer started sending unsubtle messages:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You've completely filled the buffer for the individual plan, nice work! Upgrading to Awesome gets you more space...</blockquote>
So no more buffering for me as I can't possibly justify paying US$102/year for their 'awesome' service. I realise they operate a freemium business model but just terminating the free service after a fixed number of updates seems severe. I won't have started using Buffer had I known this limitation at the start.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcYRS7YO2qS9OsLs5v2owHx5dzDIzdknYi76Q_ioejZU9-AlKLIBLZo1_mCC0vqw8uq4b-EwVjeqLcnWRjs1EU91fcn7msOHHAWH94LLxc3E47WwxCKVy-rNI36pX3a_KQDPlO-cRvkCU/s1600/ifttt.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcYRS7YO2qS9OsLs5v2owHx5dzDIzdknYi76Q_ioejZU9-AlKLIBLZo1_mCC0vqw8uq4b-EwVjeqLcnWRjs1EU91fcn7msOHHAWH94LLxc3E47WwxCKVy-rNI36pX3a_KQDPlO-cRvkCU/s1600/ifttt.png" /></a></div>
Fortunately the currently free <a href="https://ifttt.com/" target="_blank">IFTTT </a>service glues together much of the world's social media services. As it has done for several of my acquaintances IFTTT has provided a reasonably smooth equivalent to my lost Buffer service. Using an IFTTT recipe that repeats any of my tweets with a chosen hashtag, #cast in my case, to LinkedIn. I now have Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook covered. Feedly provides the same quick link to generate tweets as it did for Buffer so convenience is not sacrificed.<br />
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I have admit that so far IFTTT has not been able to send a tweet to my Google+ Cloudscholar page. If anyone knows how to achieve this please comment below.<br />
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Overall I am quite happy with my switch to IFTTT.Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-64736977381312850512014-05-21T10:02:00.000+10:002014-05-24T10:29:43.028+10:00Telstra to crowdsource Wi-Fi across Australia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/fonera79.jpg?w=300&h=200&crop=1" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/fonera79.jpg?w=300&h=200&crop=1" /></a></div>
In a game-changer for users of the Cloud in Australia we see plans from Telstra for a nationwide and international Wi-Fi network. While not a free service, users are charged on their own broadband plan provided they opt to share part of their own Wi-Fi service in a secure way.<br />
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The Telstra service incorporates technology from Spain's <a href="https://corp.fon.com/en" target="_blank">Fon</a> who offer a global Wi-Fi sharing network. It appears that Telstra will add about 8,000 new Wi-Fi hotspots in high usage locations across the country.<br />
For Cloud users this is very good news as in principle it frees users from relying solely on mobile phone networks hotspots to access the Internet while away from home or work. Read more details in the <a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/05/20/fons-crowdsourced-wi-fi-network-spreads-down-under-with-telstra-deal/" target="_blank">post from GigaOM</a>. Because of the lack of copper in the ground for my landline service I am forced to use the Telstra cable internet service. I can't wait to sign up.Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-48336137201716576042014-03-29T11:19:00.000+10:002014-03-29T11:19:46.283+10:00Publishing in the Cloud<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J64LVJK" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvpDUZjBJYEfg-t5wco_0uJFv2uyWTTnm-bBNjDn_cWomkHhNjpif33-dIVhy5j3_-dFiMkRx-_GjgsI8A0jHe9HnQQBtEco6RViLXjYJo18zuxnzXadmCNDJgtUKCn9p8a5jFsNyRfmM/s1600/cloudandyoucover.png.png" /></a></div>
In October 2013 I created a short MOOC called <a href="https://www.udemy.com/the-cloud-and-you/" target="_blank">The Cloud and You</a> on Udemy.com. I scripted the dozen or so 3-4 minute video lectures and there are a couple of Cloud workshops in downloadable text documents. It seemed a good idea to turn these texts into my first venture into a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J64LVJK" target="_blank">Kindle book</a> - another Cloud-based format. This finally came to fruition a week ago.<br />
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Those who have self-published on Amazon will know they recommend you create the text in Word and save in filtered HTML format before uploading to Amazon. Sadly initial experiments showed the filtering still left huge quantities of extraneous Word HTML and lists and images weren't treated well. I soon turned to editing in pure HTML to achieve a clean layout on Kindle.<br />
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When I therefore needed an HTML editor at this point my thoughts naturally turned to a Cloud-based text solution. The editor obviously needed to be aware of HTML and CSS syntax highlighted sensibly and provide some auto-completion to avoid mismatched tags. An HTML pretty printer would also be useful.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBesVstlu3qvj3vwSBNaKZ87DX3Fgt5ydHJfxcbrrNBFGeW4cBGtxR6upBrxC4NnF9Kr_hwygDYBCISGZuS8BsVqXLHI_aQhSz7p0BpiBAwb-qr36QnxddajWUoKIfSdxK7BlnoA06frY/s1600/htmlprettyprint.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBesVstlu3qvj3vwSBNaKZ87DX3Fgt5ydHJfxcbrrNBFGeW4cBGtxR6upBrxC4NnF9Kr_hwygDYBCISGZuS8BsVqXLHI_aQhSz7p0BpiBAwb-qr36QnxddajWUoKIfSdxK7BlnoA06frY/s1600/htmlprettyprint.png" height="264" width="320" /></a></div>
Having some small experience with the <a href="https://c9.io/" target="_blank">Cloud9 IDE</a> I turned to it, and since it supports <a href="https://github.com/" target="_blank">Github repositories</a> this again was a natural choice. And so it was these two free Cloud services allowed me to create my first Kindle book. The HTML pretty print feature of Cloud9, triggered with a single key combination, was particularly useful in spotting tag start/end errors and keeping the whole text easy to manage as shown to the right where the generated overall structure is shown rather than the detail of the text itself.<br />
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There was a lot of fiddly but simple copy and pasting of the script text out of PowerPoint presentations into the book text then adding some HTML tags. Little of the text changed as I adopted the more casual style of the online course lecture scripts for the book itself. The versioning of every text file on Cloud9 came into its own when I suddenly noticed half the text was missing due to an Internet connection interruption. Reverting to a version of a few minutes before was very easy. However it forced me to increase the frequency of Git syncs to my Github repo which of course acts as the backup.<br />
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Even the final proof reading and the actual layout of the book the Kindle can be done from the <a href="https://kdp.amazon.com/" target="_blank">Kindle Direct Publishing</a> web site via a Kindle emulator running in a browser window.<br />
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It was my hope that I could actually create and publish my ebook just using my Chromebook, ie completely within a browser. As it turned out I did cheat in this regard doing most of the authoring in Cloud9 using Chrome on a Windows 8 machine to exploit the excellent text expansion capabilities of the much praised <a href="http://www.autohotkey.com/" target="_blank">AutoHotKey app</a> - it's so much easier to type cay[ instead of The Cloud and You! I wish we had an workable equivalent of AutoHotKey on Chrome OS. As well there is a much more comprehensive Kindle converter and emulator on Windows which allows you to see how the book will look on a wide range of Kindle devices and apps.<br />
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One downside of editing your Kindle book text directly in HTML is you miss out on the automated Table of Contents (TOC) features of Word. You need to insert <a name="..."> tags on the headings and build the TOC entries with <a href="..."> tags. In my short how-to book of only about 70 pages and a couple of dozen TOC entries the extra work is small. However in a longer volume that also requires an index this would soon become tedious.<br />
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I enjoyed putting together my first simple Kindle book and found the self-publishing learning curve relatively short and painless. Being able to do it with Cloud apps was even more satisfying.<br />
<br />Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-74340221451219008722014-03-08T12:19:00.000+10:002014-03-08T12:19:33.206+10:00Bond uses my Cloud and You MOOC againFor the second semester running business students at Bond taking the Information Systems in Business subject INFT11-120 have been given free access to my Cloud and You MOOC offered on the Udemy platform.<br />
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This MOOC is available to all at:<br />
<a href="https://www.udemy.com/the-cloud-and-you/">https://www.udemy.com/the-cloud-and-you/</a>Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-61993736178394212272013-10-11T12:50:00.004+10:002013-10-11T12:50:55.560+10:0050 years on my Computer Science School voted #1Great to see my alma mater University of Birmingham <a href="http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/university/fact/league-tables/ukleague.aspx" target="_blank">School of Computer Science and IT</a> coming #1 in the Guardian University Guide 2014.<br />
<br />
Reading for an applied maths degree I took the first ever FORTRAN course offered in September 1963 exactly 50 years ago. Overnight this single course changed my career and I have been studying, teaching and researching computer science every since.Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-39037710993416177782013-05-05T10:43:00.000+10:002013-05-05T10:43:02.727+10:00My GrannyBook Raspberry Pi EmergesAt the first <a href="http://gctechspace.org/2013/03/great-turnout-for-gold-coast-makercamp-1/" target="_blank">MakerCamp</a> on the Gold Coast we were asked to suggest a project we were working on. I suggested I would like to make a GrannyBook based on the <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/" target="_blank">Raspberry Pi</a>, the $35 computer I estimated would do the job. Loosely defined, my idea is for a very cheap device, under $100, that would allow your granny to turn her old Windows XP box into something akin to a <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/features.html" target="_blank">Chromebook</a>. In other words any person with an obsolete PC that still works could throw out their old processor box and replace it with a small device that would boot straight to a browser within which all normal use of a computer could be conducted - a very cheap and easy cloud computer.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1qR_-guHtCtywZUA-C5QPKHkbOFO9WEakzHpwhEgg65tbeqi7dQMnsaslCvrRjZ19Nh8PHSoklLVFidXaUNmtoNo6RyA-AzfH3XA0Fs56laMUyTMVTSTmscvjH1eiYgOu8rwSiNc1ayA/s1600/IMG_2397.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1qR_-guHtCtywZUA-C5QPKHkbOFO9WEakzHpwhEgg65tbeqi7dQMnsaslCvrRjZ19Nh8PHSoklLVFidXaUNmtoNo6RyA-AzfH3XA0Fs56laMUyTMVTSTmscvjH1eiYgOu8rwSiNc1ayA/s400/IMG_2397.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
I duly purchased a $60 the Raspberry Pi kit from Steve at <a href="http://gctechspace.org/" target="_blank">Gold Coast Techspace</a> which included the Raspberry Pi board, an SD card completely configured with the OS and an HDMI cable. On eBay Australia I bought a clear acrylic case for less than $10. To use my existing monitor I had to add a $5 HDMI to DVI adapter. Finally with another eBay purchase from the shop that supplied the case I added a $10 Comfast Wi-Fi adapter rather than use the built-in Ethernet port. In total this amounted to a $85 investment.<br />
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After plugging in a USB keyboard I added a standard non-powered USB adapter to take a USB mouse and the Comfast Wi-Fi adapter. Then came the big moment of the first boot and true to form the RPi within about 15 seconds opened in the desktop having determined the monitor resolution perfectly. To my surprise and delight there were drivers present for the Comfast Wi-Fi adapter and I simply had to login to my home Wi-Fi network.<br />
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The on-board Midori browser fired up perfectly and I logged in to my Google account. Thereafter I was in the usual Google wonderland with access to email, calendar, sites, blog, and all the other goodies - in other words a good approximation to a Chromebook.<br />
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The inevitable downsides are present:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>the less than lightning speed of the boot sequence compared to a real Chromebook</li>
<li>the pauses as web pages are loaded in the browser although performance overall is very adequate</li>
<li>the lack of Google Chrome and associated plugins, but further investigation might solve this</li>
</ul>
<div>
Nevertheless for a very small investment and an hour of my time I am well on the way to a viable GrannyBook. More anon.</div>
Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-1601447249511451242013-04-30T18:19:00.001+10:002013-04-30T18:19:11.261+10:00Activity 24 Considering open learner literacies #h817openThe list of literacies provided by Jenkins et al in their occasional paper on digital media and learning is duplicated here. I have marked in bold those literacies I feel are particularly appropriate to open online learning, although it seems obvious all literacies in the list are beneficial at one level or another.<br />
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<br />
<ol>
<li>Play – the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem solving</li>
<li>Performance – the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery</li>
<li>Simulation – the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes</li>
<li><b>Appropriation </b>– the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content</li>
<li>Multitasking – the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details</li>
<li><b>Distributed cognition</b> – the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities</li>
<li><b>Collective intelligence</b> – the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal</li>
<li><b>Judgement </b>– the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources</li>
<li>Transmedia navigation – the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities</li>
<li><b>Networking </b>– the ability to search for, synthesise and disseminate information</li>
<li><b>Negotiation </b>– the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.</li>
</ol>
<div>
I note that in previous posts in this series I have referred to Judgement as significance and Collective Intelligence as curation, but the intent of my terms exactly aligns with Jenkins et al. In my <a href="http://blog.cloudscholar.com/2013/04/activity-22-open-education-technology.html" target="_blank">post for activity 22</a> I addressed at length the need for PINC tools and literacy to support collective intelligence. Judgement is much more difficult and complex. Advanced search skills allow sophisticated discovery of resources, but determining reliability and credibility is highly specific to the unit of study being undertaken. Obviously the skill and experience of instructors plays a major role but they must be able to codify these measures that I collectively call significance. A set of rules and guidelines must be produced that students can follow to produce consistently a degree of judgement to be relied upon.</div>
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Appropriation has a degree of overlap with transmedia navigation in my view as following story flow gives the necessary context to the media content being appropriated. Significant media literacies are needed to take an assumed finished product, itself the result of potentially many hours of production, and make meaningful changes so as to reuse the product in a new context. Skills might include rewriting, diagramming and charting, image manipulation and animation, and audio and video editing. It is no wonder that media courses for these skills are in high demand. It is also not strange that a typical university teacher lacks this valuable combination of skills.</div>
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Distributed cognition requires the use of outliners, mind maps and other topic association tools. Even if the tools are well designed and straightforward to use a significant trail of experience is needed to extract benefit from these tools. If lecture notes and academic journal papers are any indication then much more experience is needed.</div>
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I would think that networking skills are best acquired by judicious use of a variety of social networks used with a degree of focus. Careful selection of 'friends' depending on your perceived quality of their information flow must be acquired over time. This same strategy can be employed on the ubiquitous forums that are usually present for all MOOCs.</div>
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Negotiation defined here as the ability to cross disciplines and appreciate different perspectives is a necessary and underrated literacy. Little attempt at teaching this in the walled gardens of university disciplines means there is a definite niche for open education to fill.</div>
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This activity has caused me to think and reflect as much as any previous activity in this course. My thanks go the instructor for setting this task.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. and Weigel, M. (2009) </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">, Chicago, IL, The MacArthur Foundation. Also available online at </span><span class="oucontent-linkwithtip" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;"><a class="oucontent-hyperlink" href="http://www8.open.ac.uk/externallink.php?url=http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF" style="border: 0px; color: #0f5f7f; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;" title="The Open University is not responsible for external site content">http://digitallearning.macfound.org/<span class="oucontent-hidespace" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>atf/<span class="oucontent-hidespace" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>cf/<span class="oucontent-hidespace" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/<span class="oucontent-hidespace" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF<span class="externallink" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; display: inline-block !important; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 6px !important; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; white-space: nowrap; width: 10px !important;"><img alt="External link" class="externallink" src="http://www.open.edu/openlearn/sites/all/themes/ole/images/external_link.png" style="background-color: inherit; border: 0px; color: inherit; display: inline; float: none !important; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px !important; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 10px !important;" /> </span></a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"> (accessed 15 November 2012).</span></div>
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Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-39767862660391226902013-04-30T14:08:00.000+10:002013-04-30T14:08:00.276+10:00Activity 22 An open education technology #h817openI have mentioned before in this series (<a href="http://blog.cloudscholar.com/2013/04/activity-19-implementing-connectivism.html" target="_blank">activity 19</a>) the need for students to be able to collect together links to the resources given to them on a course merged with those resources discovered by themselves. Let's refer to this tool category as PINC (PLN Information Node Curation). A PINC tool, most usefully a cloud app, will have these features:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>a central repository of information nodes (links and documents) culled over a lifetime of learning; by definition this should be capable of:</li>
<ul>
<li>information node insertion/edit/deletion</li>
<li>convenient searching</li>
<li>export in convenient formats</li>
</ul>
<li>a personal tagging/labeling system to structure what is likely to be a very large collection</li>
<li>the ability to share any or all information nodes (make public and maybe more targeted sharing)</li>
<li>quickly accessible over the Internet from a wide variety of devices to include smartphones, tablets, laptops, even wearable devices; some devices will allow local storage for off-net access</li>
<li>automatic backup and ability to download all information for archiving purposes</li>
</ol>
<div>
In my experience some existing apps come close to these PINC requirements although none meets them completely:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.evernote.com/" target="_blank">Evernote</a>: a widely used app/service that can store a very large range of information types and now has easy sharing</li>
<li><a href="http://www.diigo.com/" target="_blank">Diigo</a>: primarily a link repository that took over and expanded upon the early now reincarnated <a href="https://delicious.com/" target="_blank">Delicious service</a>; this repository is only useful if all information nodes are resource links</li>
<li><a href="http://www.mendeley.com/" target="_blank">Mendeley</a>: primarily a citation repository which is widely used to share academic references as well as links; PDF and data files are also handled well; the recent takeover by Elsevier casts doubt on its long term survival</li>
</ul>
<div>
All the suggested PINC apps come with free versions although the paid service offers not only more features but also promises more longevity, a major requirement for a service that will be needed over many years.</div>
</div>
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<div>
It was pleasing to see the early creation of a <a href="https://www.diigo.com/list/moocskills/h817open-bookmarks" target="_blank">shared Diigo list of reference</a>s for this Open Education MOOC but it appears not to have survived week 1. The excellent list of references provided for us on #h817open are currently scattered over several OpenLearn pages. It would be more useful if all references were gathered together in a public repository of some sort that will survive the end of the Open Education MOOC.</div>
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I would be very happy to hear of alternative PINC tools that other people are using. Please comment below.</div>
Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-13456923947562652332013-04-30T12:21:00.000+10:002013-04-30T12:39:54.698+10:00Activity 21 How technology and pedagogy inter-relate #h817openMy own experience is coloured by my 40 years of teaching computer science and always seeking to employ the latest computer and networking technology to improve my teaching. I spent over half of this time in my last institution and notched up a number of firsts that include:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>first online test (Macintosh 1991)</li>
<li>first web site (1995)</li>
<li>first web forum (1996)</li>
<li>first 'LMS' (SharePoint, 2000)</li>
<li>first student assessed blogs (2005)</li>
<li>first pilot with BlackBoard (2006)</li>
<li>first virtual teaching laboratory (<a href="http://www.bond.edu.au/vittl" target="_blank">VITTL</a>, 2008)</li>
<li>first lecture screencasts (2009)</li>
</ul>
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Throughout this process I faced uphill battles to co-opt my colleagues and have ploughed a reasonably lonely but exhilarating furrow. Nevertheless I venture to suggest all these technological advances are now recognised as bringing significant improvements to the teaching process. At the same time it is realised all bring concomitant changes, sometimes very substantial, to teaching preparation and presentation.</div>
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Looking back over the years I estimate I spent between 15% and 20% of my time keeping abreast of advances in technology. A small proportion of the outcomes of this effort found its way into the curriculum of the subjects I taught. The larger proportion of the technological changes affected society as a whole, and, of course, the students coming on campus. Thus the major pressure comes from changes in the way society communicates and that inevitably cause a change to education itself. I firmly believe that all activate educators must spend of the order of 10% to 15% of their own time keeping abreast of technological advances if they are to remain effective educators, not to mention staying in step with the society in which they live.</div>
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A couple of years ago just before retirement I was pleased to find the smartphone and tablet revolution was being recognised by a much larger group of colleagues including myself. In my last year of full-time work I did not feel alone in the pursuit of applying new technology to better higher education.</div>
Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-79584683205207165842013-04-30T10:37:00.004+10:002013-04-30T10:37:55.548+10:00Activity 20 Exploring rhizomatic learning #h817openI watched Dave Cormier's <a href="http://youtu.be/VJIWyiLyBpQ" target="_blank">video on rhizomatic learning</a> with enthusiasm and found myself sympathetic to the ideas put forward. The actual metaphor of the rhizome does convey some of the ad hoc nature of the information nodes gathered from a personal learning network and how an individual approaches learning a collection of topics. I somewhat doubt the community at large is familiar with rhizomes. As a computer scientist I would rather think rather in terms of information nodes in meshes or nets, particularly sparsely populated ones. So I would be tempted to use the concept of a <i>personal learning mesh</i>.<br />
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That said I wholeheartedly agree with the notion that the best teaching prepares people for dealing with uncertainty. In teaching computer science over 40 years I have always spent a great deal of time on the leading edge technological changes and urged students to look ahead. However influences by colleagues I have always been persuaded to teach the set of basic computer science concepts which we all know have evolved in significant ways over the decades.<br />
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Only in the last 5 years or so of my teaching did I introduce any part of the idea that the community (students) can help modify the curriculum. Usually half way through a subject I would map out some choices of study and invite other contributions from interested students. [Note this meant breaking the 'contract' set by the subject outline set 6 months or so in advance and containing the topics taught in each week of the subject.]<br />
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A recent email from a Masters student I taught just 15 years ago contained an admission he was no longer an expert in ICT and was seeking work in office management instead. I believe if he had a stronger personal learning mesh along with the habit of continual update he would be better served. He has obviously not taken enough responsibility for maintaining his own learning (in ICT).<br />
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While I again agree strongly that learning cannot be measured accurately this goes counter to the attempts to ensure so-called measurable 'graduate attributes' that my previous institution now insists be done.<br />
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So I find myself in general agreement with the precepts of rhizomatic learning but feel traditional higher education finds itself at odds them.Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9151671241991105099.post-43440027286785772862013-04-29T18:40:00.001+10:002013-04-29T18:52:38.896+10:00Activity 19 Implementing Connectivism #h817open[Note: connectivism principles are highlighted in italics.]<br />
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I described the main topics in my Digital Literacies subject in the <a href="http://blog.cloudscholar.com/2013/04/activity-8-oer-course-h817open.html" target="_blank">post for activity 8</a>. In common with other instructors I would provide a set of 'prime' sources for each topic, deliberately limiting them in number. For each topic, essentially one facet of network and computer technology, I would take a definitive stance on the effectiveness of that technology - I would state an opinion. Students would be invited to pose different opinions to encourage a <i>diversity of opinions</i>.<br />
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Students would need to search and discover additional resources to support these opinions and be shown how to connect all resource links using shared repository tools such as Mendeley. This would introduce the process of <i>connecting specialised nodes of information sources</i>. As per my comment on activity 17 I would develop with class input a series of significance measures to judge the quality of the resource links (nodes) developed for the information sources. These measures would include <i>currency</i> and a determination if the resource is <i>more critical than what is currently known</i>. Much guidance on the authority of authors and the place of blogs, tweets and other social media status updates needs to be given and a set of guidelines established that evolve as the course progresses.<br />
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Most of the aspects of modern digital literacies are strongly interlinked and assessments for the students would encourage them in their <i>ability to see connections between</i> literacies. The course would strongly suggest that they continually evolve this refinement of the connection mechanism to <i>nurture and maintain connections to facilitate their continual learning</i> beyond the end of the course. Indeed this should become a habit for the remainder of their lives.Michael Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16297135692223640263noreply@blogger.com0