Open Networkers

"Inside this Media Literacy Digest: Future of The Social Web - Of course, the web is not social. Just like technology is not social. Or media is not social. We use these resources for social means, but that is a function of use, not of the characteristics inherent in the web or media. We compress "social uses of the web" to social web for convenience sake. But we really do not mean it like we say it; The Age of The Informavore - A good name is often as good as (or better than) a good idea. The age of the informavore displays both provocative thinking and a memorable term; Openness and The Future of Education - IRRODL just released a special issue on Openness and the Future of Education. Future of education is not an explicit focus in the articles, but can be anticipated as a result of the focus of the articles; Cannot Squeeze Knowledge From a Pixel - Meaning is found in associations. It is simple concept, but has substantial implications. To get an accurate picture of "something",... more... - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Twitter has quickly become the must-have channel for conference back-chat. Reading what other people tweet during a speech provides an extra dimension as you get a sense of what the audience is thinking. And just like passing notes in class, it’s also a lot more fun than simply sitting and listening. But watch out Twitter. Google Wave is going to take this digitally-enabled conference back-channel a step further." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

Tonido is an extensible personal web application platform, that offers an set of rich and powerful browser based applications. Since applications and data are always local, your private data never has to reside on a third-party server and is available to you anytime: both offline and online. Tonido applications are served right from your own computers by the built-in webserver and allows easy access from any device with a web browser. Tonido also connects to other Tonido instances directly via the Tonido Network. The Photos and Workspace apps use the Tonido network to directly synchronize photos and workspace data between members in a Tonido Group. - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Inside this Media Literacy Digest: Social Media Time - Nielsen's research states that 18% of time spent online is spent on social networking sites and services. Social Search - Google just announced Social Search. The service helps you "to find publicly available content from your social circle". The Web In 5 Years: More of Now - Interesting thoughts from Eric Schmidt - CEO, Google - on the web in five years. Go Grandpa! - By now, I think the view of innate generational differences in technology use has been sufficiently debunked (see Mark Bullen's Netgenskeptic site). NY Times highlights the appeal of technology among the elderly. Communicating Complexity - I have been following Indexed - a site that uses simple visuals to communicate complex relationships and interactions. For example: The relationship between information and confusion. Falling of The Cliff - When change happens in a networked environment, it is rapid. We have seen it in the financial markets, music industry, TV... more... - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"After the dust from the Snow Leopard and Windows 7 launch has settled, we have another important OS launch: the new version of one of the most popular Linux distributions, Ubuntu 9.10, is available for download. Named Karmic Koala, the new Ubuntu – as always – promises to be faster and easier to use, bringing version 2.6.31 of the Linuxkernel, latest version of GNOME, and Firefox 3.5. The biggest news, however, is Ubuntu One, a web sync service that gives you 2 GB of online disk space and lets you synchronize notes and contacts, as well as share files between several computers" - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"One of the greatest elements to Adobe Air is its cross platform capabilities allowing the apps run through its framework to be accessible on all three major operating systems (Windows, Linux & Mac). Not only did this open the door for app junkies everywhere to rejoice, but now this framework has given the productivity minded a few reasons to shout as well! This is a list of go to apps to keep you productive regardless of what OS you are beholden to." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Free video editing tools allow you to cut and edit video footage while being completely free and being quite simple to learn and use unlike their more expensive relatives like Adobe Premiere, Final Cut or the Avid Editing suite. As a matter of fact, most video users just want to do a quick trim to a video ending scene or add an overlay title to the beginning of their latest masterpiece. Now these once complicated and hardware intensive operations can be carried out on free software or web-based tools, at absolutely zero cost and with simple drag and drop actions." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"We’re talking about the amount of electricity it takes to to manage the infrastructure behind of all the emails, videos, documents, audio files sent online every day. It’s not something I’ve personally taken much time to consider but the team at US Infrastructure decided to examine the stats, and then designed a gorgeous diagram illustrating all the costs and electricity involved in managing the enormous number of servers scattered across the world, holding us all up. In Summary: * The electricity to run these servers cost $4.5 billion a year worldwide. * 1.5% of total US electricity consumption * More electricity than the total number of televisions in the US (in 2006)" - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Yesterday we wrote about Mary Meeker's annual overview of Internet trends at the Web 2.0 Summit. In this post we do a deeper dive into the Web themes that Meeker explored. In particular we'll analyze mobile social networking, compare 2009 to previous years and look at the impact of Apple and Facebook on current trends." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Inside this Media Literacy Digest: * Decentralized Work: The Final Frontier - Consider work. Many people are now involved in work that does not require physical presence at an office. Yet, how we define and value work still carries the views from 50+ years ago. * Value of Visual Thinking - Resources such as this - the value of visual thinking - are helpful in increasing my guilt and sense of inadequacy with visuals and increasing my desire to continue improving how I communicate. * A Few Web 2.0 Resources - Microsoft and web 2.0 resources (via Stephen Downes) I am not sure how Microsoft defines web 2.0 - not much in the list that fits my definition. However, still a number of useful resources. * The Chemistry of Information Addiction - The chemistry of information addiction indicates why many people find the internet (particularly under the banner of real-time tools) so rewarding: We crave information and we want it now. * Using Technology To Improve The Cost-Effectiveness of The... more... - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"I believe that people who don’t see what Google Wave is for are simply looking at it from the wrong angle. Wave is not a social tool. It’s not Twitter, it’s not GTalk, it’s not Facebook. It was never designed to appeal to the crowds of geeks who are currently trying it out. Wave is built for the corporate environment. It’s a tool for getting work done. And as far as those go, it’s an excellent tool, even at this very early stage. It will probably take years before Wave fully penetrates large corporations and replaces the email systems everyone is used to. But it solves so many thorny problems with email that it might well manage to do so, where so many other tentative “email fixes” have failed. In the meantime, we should stop judging it as a social tool and start looking at how we can use it for real work. Invite your colleagues to it, and get working." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Twitterfeed has grown pretty fast since its early side project days. There are now 350,000 publishers from the White House to CNN to John Cleese pumping out almost 600,000 feeds and generating around 5,500,000 clicks to your sites every day." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Several months ago, the federal government drafted definitions for cloud computing. They were generally recognized as doing some excellent work. The definitions are a work in progress. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) last updated the definitions on October 7. The latest version is available for download. It's free." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Do you need to convert your files to PDF? Are you looking for a free online solution to produce PDF documents wherever you are? Struggle no more. In this MasterNewMedia guide you can find the best free PDF conversion tools on the we" - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

So What Exactly Is Google Wave In a Nutshell Simply stated, Google Wave is a real-time communication and collaboration platform that incorporates several types of web technologies, including email, instant messaging (IM), wiki, online documents, and gadgets. In more technical terms, Google Wave is a platform based on hosted XML documents (called waves) supporting concurrent modifications and low-latency updates.1 Google Wave itself represents a new approach aimed at improving communication and collaboration through the use of a combination of established and emerging web technologies. Google generally describes Google Wave as a platform, and in a broader context, as a set of three interdependent layers: - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"A Forrester study reports that real-time collaboration has stalled in the enterprise due in most part to the lack of adoption in technologies such as web conferencing and instant messaging. That may be true with existing technologies but it is important to note the new generation of applications that extend real-time collaboration tools. The State Of Workforce Technology Adoption by Forrester is definitely comprehensive in its examination of how people use technology in the workforce. It's a mass market report, meaning this is how people use technology today. They surveyed 2,001 "information workers" at organizations with 100 or more employees. It is Forrester's first report in this realm. It covers devices, productivity, mobility, collaboration, intranet portals and Web 2.0. Forrester analyst Ted Schadler wrote the report. He makes the point that the purpose of the study is to walk a mile in the shoes of the information worker. These are information workers who: * Predominantly use... more... - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"How do organizations really use social networks? Is social media useful to acquire new customers or just to maintain strong relationships with existing clients? The answer to whether social media are good for customer engagement or relationship building is: "Social media is good for both". As long as you do not get too greedy or "salesy" in your business approach, social media proves to be very useful to connect with your audience. Social media is free to join, easy to use and, most importantly, it is "a way to supercharge the word of mouth", and as every marketer will tell you, a positive word of mouth is the best mean to convert prospects into sales." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

It's amazing to think we are already talking about the "history" of social media, but I've been collecting a few articles that demonstrate how in fact today's tools which might seem revolutionary are just evolutionary: - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Do you use online video for business? Do you know which is the best type of video to improve sales or boost traffic on your site?" - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Does Twitter have the potential for reaching business customers? Is Twitter an effective communication platform to create strong, long-lasting relationships in the corporate world?" - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"If you're not one of the 100,000 lucky users who gets an invitation to Google Wave today, don't fret. You can check out Google Wave right here." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"It’s not a skill that’s been widely understood until quite recently, however community management has begun to move to the forefront of discussions about enterprise social computing as the use of social tools begins to climb the maturity curve. Now community management is increasingly proving not just useful but a critical component of Enterprise 2.0 efforts despite an often vague understanding of what it is and where it should be situated in the org chart." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"This week a new nail was driven into the coffin of the notion of journalistic objectivity. The culprit? The Washington Post’s leaked social media policy. The policy is aimed at preserving the appearance of objectivity rather than its actual existence. It focuses on what journalists are perceived to be, rather than what they actually do. And in doing so, it hits upon the very reason why their attempt is doomed from the start: “Our online data trails reflect on our professional reputations and those of The Washington Post. Be sure that your pattern of use does not suggest, for example, that you are interested only in people with one particular view of a topic or issue.” Our behaviour as journalists is now measurable. And measurability gives the lie to the pretence that journalists behave like scientists, impartially observing the petri dish of society." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Are you looking for an on-demand video encoding service? Do you need a cloud-based alternative that works seamlessly across any type of hardware or operating system? Are you looking for an easy way to convert videos to publish on your web site or watch on your iPod?" - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"Inside this Media Literacy Digest: * Google - Chrome Frame is a service that runs Chrome directly in Internet Explorer. Next, Google announces Sidewiki. * What I Think Connectivism Is… - Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2009 is in full swing. The Daily is experiencing a bit of a delay as Stephen's website (and OLDaily) are recovering from a rather significant attack. * Trends and Issues In Open and Distance Learning In Africa - Dave Cormier and I are offering a bi-lingual (French / English) open online course on emerging technologies for learning starting Oct. 12. * Networked Learning 2010 Preconference Online Hot Seats - Networked Learning 2010 conference is hosting a series of online "hot seats" over the next few months. These online sessions are free to attend, but registration is required. * Corporate Learning: Trends and Implications - I am pleased to announce our third annual LearnTrends online(and free) conference on corporate learning, to be held November 17-19, 2009. *... more... - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"While there is no secret formula with which your business can benefit from social media, there are a number of facts that do point clearly at the increasing relevance of using social media to improve their business opportunities: * The use of social media is growing rapidly. eMarketer predicts that in just four years more than 50% of Internet users are going to be regular social media visitors. * Traditional marketing channels have become tricky venues to promote your product. Consumers are suspicious of marketing and relationships created ad hoc to sell a product do not work anymore. * Social media is focused on engagement, community and authority. Your marketing approach in the attention economy, should be to create a community of loyal visitors and "evangelists" for your brand, willingly spreading the word about what you do. * Social media is emerging as a reliable indicator of online advertising performances." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

* Ekiga * Wine Integration * Revamped Migration Assistant * A New Look For Network Manager * Social Network Integration * Computer Janitor * UbuntuOne * Wubi Migration * Empathy Vs. Pidgin. Still * XSplash for boot - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

"There has been a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding one of Google’s newest products, Google Wave. Essentially, it is a real-time communication platform that combines aspects of email, wiki, chat, app platform, and more into one tool. Some hail it as the replacement to email, while others believe it is too ambitious for its own good." - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet

Inside this Media Literacy Digest: * Untangling The Web - Why do two people share information with each other? What impact does a connection (social or conceptual) have on a learner's level of understanding a subject? * Microsoft and Google - For most of the late 80's and into early 2000, innovation on the desktop seemed slow or even non-existent. Microsoft dominated the personal computer experience. That has changed. * Identity, Memory, Death and The Internet - Dave Cormier offers an insightful (and touching) post on how identity and memory are preserved online. * Taming Digital Distractions - It is always been easy to find distractions (going for coffee with a colleague, chats around the water cooler), but even then, a bit of effort was required. I actually had to leave my office. * The Future of Work - Britannica is getting sloppy with their blog postings. Most posts - even ones I disagree with - are usually fairly well thought-out. Then, they post this: The Future World of Work:... more... - Evgeni Leshtanski from Bookmarklet