Wed
May
6
Ah, what a sence of accomplishment. I gave my CIT499 presentation today, and I feel like it went well. It was very interesting to me to watch everyone else’s presentations as well (and see how in some ways they related to mine). I uploaded my presentation to sladeshare.com they can be found here. Overall I think the presentation wen well and I learned a lot about emerging technologies. I was excited about this course when I first registered for it, but then when I realized the focus was on web technologies I was slightly disapointed (the web has not been a major focus for me), but as the semester went on I really began to enjoy this course and the tools that were being introduced. I certianly hope that future students have an oportunity to take this course in one way or another. One sugestion I would have is for the start of the semester. When students are setting up their blog & commenting it would be benificial to walk them through this in class (and friend everyone) so that everyone can see everything from the get go. Thanks for a great semester Dr. Ho!
Mon
May
4
I spent all day after work today trying to get caught up on my project. I finished writing my paper 2 days ago, but I’m still getting my slides together for the presentation. I am excited about it, but also nervious since I’m not sure who will be there (Dr. Ho invited IUPUI faculty). I’m sure all will go well. Anyway It’s all coming together nicely and I’m ready for the week to be over.
Wed
Apr
29
Today we began with current events and I am very glad to hear that IUPUI UITS is confronting accessing content mobily. I have long wanted to access Oncourse from my iTouch, and I can only hope that by the time my brother graduates they have fully implemented this.
After current events Dustin presented his course project on mashups. I really like the way he was able to aggregate all the information he would need as a database administrator.
Mon
Apr
27
Today we began with current events including a new policy of facebook to alow vendors access to user posted data. This will allow 3rd part vendors to create apps that interact with facebook (and twitter). Also Dr. Ho recomended ____ (sycronize desktop?)
We then moved on to a reading from John Freedmans ____ and how technology can bring people together, but also seperate them. He covered chapter 4: What happens when we all have dogs hearing?
Dr. Ho referenced an artical posted at readwriteweb.com titled: Attention Economy: All You Need To Know (www.readwriteweb.com/archives/attention_economy_primer.php)
How is one piece of content going to keep your attention when there is so much out there cometing for you to read it? One example used in class was the dreaded Swine Flu. It is easy to blow things out of proportion on the web. Another way of determining what will catch my attention are things that I am already interested in. There is so much material out there now that it is not a question of “Is it there?” but a question of “Where is it?”
How is a profesional journalist posts diffrent from anyone else? Many journalists defend their writings by stating that they are more reliable (because they are edited)
We ended class with a descussion on Keith John Sampson’s racial harassment case. This is a perfect example of how easily things can be misinterpreted on the web. If you google Keith John Sampson it is not difficult to see that he was involved in a racial harassment case that took place on the IUPUI campus, but it is hard to tell that he was inoccent.
Thu
Apr
23
We began class with current events including earth day, and information about an audio blog in the next class.
Next we heard about Google Profiler, and the ideology that everyone will leave an internet trail that develops an online identity. The only choice you have is what content will be in abundance.
Tim Burnace Lee’s idea of linked data has been consumed by concepts that hare not as apparent. This is refered to as the symantic web. The idea here is that we have a lot of data, but we have no idea what that data is or what it means. Algrithmic searches can only do so much for us. In order to have truley meaning full results you need to possess and be able to query metadata. The technology pushing ahead here is XML. This language allows us to track metadata through tagging data in a structured method. An XML based search would have the ability to search not only the text, but also the metadata behind that text string.
I would like to take a moment and thank James Cochran for introducting me to selective twitter, a wonder tool that allows facebook updates through twitter my ending with the hashtag #fb.
Mon
Apr
20
I missed class today, but after listening to the podcasts I have a few comments to make. First off it was mentioned that there is a judge in Mississippi who has sentenced a criminal to tweet (http://preview.tinyurl.com/ddvoo4). I think this is a little stupid, but not quite sure how posting what he is doing every 10 minutes tells his parole officer where he is.
Also the Lijit search was mentioned, though I am sad to report that no one clicked any content that was searched for (lol). That’s ok through; the tool itself is still really cool and has a lot of potential.
I watched the Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity video and I think he has a great point. We are not all the same and should not be molded to a particular educational methodology. The big question is how we will apply the ideas he mentioned and how do we efficiently move from our current educational processes to a dynamic one. He mentioned a lot of interesting things in the video, I particularly liked that he pointed out that all public educational processes evolved to meet the needs of the industrial revolution. It’s a great fact that I never knew.
Sat
Apr
18
On Monday this week Dr. Ho showed us a new tool called Lijit. Its placed on your blog (similar to disqus comments) and allows viewers to search not only your blog, but also any other rss string you tied to the Lijit tools. We applied this to our lifestream so that anyone viewing my blog and also search my personal brand. Only problem was the Lijit tool was not returning any results. I thought this might be typical shortly after ceating the tool so did not worry about it for the fist couple days, but when it wasn’t working 2 days later I decided to tweet to @lijit (after Dr. Ho) sugested it. They emailed me back explaining that since my blog was new google had not indexed my posting yet. Since google hadn’t indexed it Lijit didn’t see it. Now my Lijit tool is working on the blog, but not the comment. I’m thinking this means that the postings in my lifestream have also not yet been indexed by google. We will see what happens over the next couple days!
I’ve been at my new job for about a week now, and I’m very excited about it. They are reorganizing their entire support structure so that it is scalable. Their old model only worked until they reached a certain number of customers, but they have been growing quickly and have outgrown it. They hired me on just before they switched structures so I spent the majority of the is week “shadowing” people to see what kind of trouble tickets they get. I loved it because its all troubleshooting. Anyways, next week is the first week they are switching work-flow to the new model, so they are anticipating some bumps in the road and I will probably spend more time at my desk playing with the application. Before next week, however, I’ll be working more on my course project. Dr. Ho suggested I look over his delicious account at delicious.com/drthomasho/microsoft for some help on finding more direct resources on where Microsoft specifically is taking software + services.
Wed
Apr
15
This posting has less to do with my CIT499 project than most my posting, but there is a little relation. My time has been cut very short recently after I accepted a new job as a software analyst working for a company based in Indy, Angel Learning. Angel has been around for about 10 years now and has received “Best Place to Work in Indiana” the last two years in a row. I am so excited about this opportunity, but at the same time the shift my schedule driving me crazy. At my old job I would work Monday and Tuesday night at 11pm until 7am the next day, so an 8-5 is a bit of a switch by itself. Add school and a couple family emergencies on top of that life seems to never slow down. But anyway, Angel Learning…. seems is a great place to work, the people are cool (and they left a wagon of candy at my desk for people to take from when they come by and see me…. i might have taken a little). I also think its cool that they make software for schools. I would love for things to slow down a little (maybe then I can get some hw done), but graduation is on the way so good things are a coming. (sorry if i seem a bit sporadic, just trying to post more!)
Wed
Apr
8
Early on in the project phase I was searching for sources and people to follow using twitter and used and RSS feed to watch “software as a service” and “software + services” and it is remarkable how well this worked out for me. I have found several blogs and a lot of usefull information. I reciently went back to this because I felt like I was still missing A LOT of information. This time I noticed the advanced search feature and was able to get ONE rss feed for #saas OR #s+s OR #softwareplusservices OR #softwareasaservice which is pulling SO many more tweets than before. Turns out a lot of people use diffrent tags for these subjects. Now all I have to do is keep track of all these sources. Diigo is really helpful here, but it is still getting dfficult for me to keep track of where I saw certian information. I am thinking now it would have been a good idea to add a description to each bookmark as I added it telling MYSELF why I bookmarked it. Oh well, learn from experience I guess. There are a lot of new tools that I’m really trying to take advantage of, I just hope it pays off in the end.
