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WordCamp Developers recap
Work paid for this and I figured it might be worthwhile, since I’m really looking for ways to optimize the WordPress multi-user commons platform that I’m presently working on. In general I’d say the day was a success, with some interesting sessions, a few tidbits picked up and connections made or reinforced.
Expedia provides customer experience from hell
You couldn’t write this story if you tried. My experience with Expedia customer service was so wretchedly bad over the past year that I really do wonder how they’ve stayed in business. In behaviour that ranged from merely apathetic to rude and dishonest, Expedia demonstrates how to ensure a company doesn’t get (this customer’s) repeat business.
Samsung Canada support for Galaxy S Vibrant stinks
Before I get into the meat of this issue, I’ll say right upfront that I love my Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant. Since buying it shortly after it came out in the summer I’ve had almost no trouble with it. I say almost because I had to tweak the factory GPS settings and, for a while, [...]
Bad behaviour? Blame people, not social web tools
I can’t imagine too many things more degenerate than the behaviour of a group of people at a rave in Pitt Meadows a week ago. A 16 year old girl was drugged and gang-raped while a sicko took photographs. One of the rapists and the photographer have since been arrested after, in particular, the photos [...]
Customizing menus and widgets for my new WordPress theme
I have a history of somewhat routinely tweaking or fully redesigning my theme, but it’s usually just a matter of moving some elements around, changing a colour here and there and calling it a day. With the release of WordPress 3.0, I took a slightly different approach this time. This release brings with it some [...]
Getting to the thesis research
Here I am, about a third of the way through my thesis year and I’m finally getting to the fun stuff, in that I’m actually doing research interviews as we hit the Christmas season. I’ll admit that, from the end of summer when I was really beginning to finalize my thesis proposal until now, I’ve felt disconnected from most things while doing this.
Getting social media for CRM right
This issue has been percolating just under my skin for a while now. I often hear it said where I work that we still haven’t figured out how to use social media and I’d guess that’s probably true of many places. I think, though, that most folks who are charged with figuring out how to [...]
Is cloud computing still blue sky?
As I lurch through this summer trying to finalize the thesis proposal which will frame a large part of my life for the next year, collaborative tools for learning are never far from front of mind with me. A real interest of mine is the use of collaborative writing tools for learning in higher education. [...]
Anticipating intentions and meeting expectations
This week was a frustrating and interesting experience at work. At the end of the week prior, I finally launched the new design of our program catalogue. It’s a little hard to explain or show what this means. It’s a new interface for a specific kind of site that will blend two sources of program [...]
Grokking the literature review
I have to admit that I’m liking the literature review process, the more I understand the right approach. Having said that, I’ve not really done what could be classified as a real literature review yet. I did a very surface one (which could only really be called a minor literature summary) when I did my preliminary thesis proposal a couple months ago to get my topic approved …
Defining thesis research questions
Getting down to the right research topic and asking the right questions to address it is a pretty challenging process. About the only thing I can say for certain is that I’ll be looking at blogs at BCIT …
Pondering the thesis
So, now that I know I’m going to do a thesis for the second year of my Masters degree instead of more coursework and a smaller project, I’m facing a plethora of decisions. I’ve got a very basic concept of what I want to research, but over the course of the next twelve weeks I’ll turn a basic idea into a detailed project proposal …
Can you really design experience?
I don’t think so. I often think of the way we phrase things or the terms we use to refer to things. While ‘user experience design’ is actually in my own work title, I don’t think it applies to what I do. Oddly enough, I was reminded of this issue as I was congratulated for [...]
Poor experience takes away from nonprofits
A couple experiences I’ve had in the past week left me wondering whether a nonprofit would suffer from bad customer/user experience in the same way a business would. I figure that good causes can be cut a bit of slack because they usually operate on very small budgets and, if some process isn’t great, I [...]
Learning to write in a changing, digital world
A couple of things I read this past week really struck a chord. It occurs to me that we really don’t seem to be teaching people how to write for the emerging world. Over the past few months I’ve been exposed to academic writing …
Low Fi Concept Demos
Originally got this at Konigi. Very effective.
Avoiding social media spam
The web is chalk full of really good social software applications. Some help you connect with friends, share things you find on the web, create and share video, images or thoughts and many of the good ones are accessible from virtually any device, while letting you extend or build upon them through open APIs. The good services are good, usually because they do one thing really well …
Ridiculous rollovers add nothing
Sometimes a nifty CSS or Javascript trick to provide contextual information or a useful visual cue to your users adds a real touch. The web is full of good examples. Below are not three of them. Sure, Web Designer Wall has some good tutorials, the requisite colourful background, drop shadows and is a nice looking [...]
Reflection and philosophy
The course I’ve just started this week in my MA studies is focused primarily on community-building for online learning. We’ve been posting images that suggest facilitation and community and commenting on them. The literature reading thus far has been – and I’m admittedly only about half way through it – about philosophy of education and developing reflective practice. This got me thinking about a journal post …
The folly of free
I’ll admit that I’m really qualifying the title of this, specific to business critical applications, regardless of what sector that business is in. We now seem to be in pre-bubble-burst 2.0, big-time. How long before the social web balloon pops in favour of more realistic and sobering economics? The social part is clearly here to [...]
When delivery method and subject matter are the same
The MA I’m pursuing right now is an interesting beast. One thing that has been very engaging about it is that what I’m studying is actually how I’m studying too. That is to say, while the subject matter of many degrees delivered via distance has nothing to do with how they’re delivered, it’s the exact [...]
Grappling with the reality of always-on
With every issue for which the previous generation is ill-equipped to deal, the hand wringing begins anew. I recall only a few years ago, prior to the advent of the social media which now dominates the web, internet addiction was a serious issue in the late 90′s according to some. You’d think the sky was [...]
Understanding your audience and the power of social media
Since I’m not the target audience, I’m not going to wade into whether I find the ad below offensive or not. The interesting thing here in my mind is twofold: the makers of Motrin clearly didn’t do enough of the right kind of testing for proof of concept they didn’t understand how to do a [...]
A vision of students today
This isn’t new and doesn’t pretend to answer anything, but it’s got a solid, haunting quality and certainly gives you something to think about. Does information overload scare students today? Are too many things competing for their attention? Will their education deliver what they expect? I know what I’m doing right now can be ovewhelming [...]
Serious barriers to going open
While the title of this post sounds gloomy and might make it appear that I don’t favour opening up the web as much as humanly possible, in truth it’s the exact opposite. However, I like to think I’m also a realist and as I read and think about the move toward more open and accessible [...]
Writing collaboratively with Skype chat and Google Docs
I’d imagine most people find the benefit of Skype to be that of free long distance calls. As long as the person you’re calling is also on Skype you can save airtime or long distance charges. That’s great, but given I do very little long distance calling and use my cell mostly for family chatter, [...]
I’m a citation weakling
I’m getting my head around writing for graduate studies, but I don’t think I’m using citations the way I probably should be to really provide effective support for arguments I’m making. Maybe it’s my process. I just completed a paper that, while it didn’t have to be academic writing in the truest sense, still did [...]
Testing designs on non-functional prototypes
I find myself grappling with the odd project management and user feedback issue as I trundle through the big project that takes up the bulk of my working day at present (and likely will through to next summer). In particular one issue has been eating at me for a while. I find it challenging to [...]
Will post-sec embrace the open social?
The answer to this question seems to be largely dependent on what you read, and it probably also depends on what you want to use open, social software for. Based on some of the mailing lists and discussion forums I read, and post-sec sites I visit, social media concepts (whether built on open source or [...]
Residency wrap
I really could not think of much but getting a good night’s sleep for a couple days after my Royal Roads residency ended last Friday. Now that I have had time to get through the rest of one of my two textbooks and finished the first of my two post-residency assignments, I can look back [...]
The web as a research tool
The past couple weeks have been a real education when it comes to using the web for academic research. I am at different places on each of what I’ve identified (so far) as three primary knowledge streams of the MA I’m undertaking, research being the one I’ve got a middling amount of comfort with. I [...]
One gigantic learning cycle experiment
In my mind, there are two distinct ways of looking at what this group of great people has been through in the past two weeks. There’s the side that forces you to look at yourself, examine your own beliefs and theories and (hopefully) begin realizing some new possibilities. Then there’s the piece that RRU looks [...]
Online constructivism
As we all really begin looking at learning in the context of the web, it’s interesting to take a look at some of the research around the effectiveness of the medium. How some of this information affects you probably depends on how you feel about the web to begin with, how you’ve used it and [...]
Team dynamics
Now that our first assignment is all done, but the short presentation later today, I wanted to reflect on team dynamics. It’s fair to say that there was a challenge or two in this first project. I don’t consider that bad, as this week has been primarily about learning about one’s self. Part of this [...]
Taming an MBTI beast
I found what we covered today to be a pretty important thing and it’s left me struggling a bit to frame it in light of learning and working in a team environment. In our morning session with Hillary, the MBTI inventory was both reassuring and disturbing. At a surface level it wasn’t really surprising. I [...]
First impressions of Royal Roads University
More aptly, this post might be called, “What I crammed into my first day and a half.” Seriously, though, it’s been a bit busy and this post will not do it justice. This is not to suggest that I’ll be posting recaps of everything I do because there is more MA focused blogging to come. [...]
Masters blogging
A lot of my writing on this site will now chronicle the trials and tribulations of obtaining a graduate degree while working full-time, trying to maintain a marriage and family, and hopefully still getting a little exercise along the way. Something I’ve been pulling together for some time and which is finally happening, is the [...]
Digital rights and access under assault
It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of access you want, or what you want access to. You’re under assault, plain and simple. With the news last week that Bell and Telus customers will pay at both ends for text messages and the obscene Rogers iPhone rate packages, we just have two more issues to [...]
How important is social media?
(Pretty f**king important as it turns out …) While you have to get past the swears, the slideshow below from ParisLemon came to my attention via the Technology Liberation Front. Very good stuff. | View | Upload your own
Canned responses to C-61 letters
While I haven’t yet printed, signed and sent any of the copyright petitions, I did manage a bit of an email writing spree regarding this hideous proposed legislation. Would it surprise you to know that I haven’t had a real response from anyone yet? To be fair, our politicians might just be getting a tiny [...]
Does tech make us stupid, or just rude?
OK, so maybe not stupid, but apparently lazy. At least according to The Atlantic‘s Nicholas Carr it does. Based on the length of the piece, his writing chops are certainly still intact. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else [...]
The real reason for C-61
merican pressure is nothing if not intense. It starts with big business and media bending the ear of the Bush administration, who in turn, essentially forced Canada’s hand. Did we just become the 51st state? Sovereignty, anyone?
Help me understand C-61
I really don’t get this legislation, purely from a political standpoint. I completely understand that Harper will tend to swing between supporting a business agenda or toeing the American line, depending on who he’s pandering to at any given time …
The future of the web?
Found this at I Power, via UX Magazine. A scary thought to be sure, but certainly a plausable direction for big media and telecom to want to go. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2XPiqhN_Ns&rel=0&color1=0x000000&color2=0x222222] While there are some who ask what the future of the web looks like – and issues around accessible sites, semantic content, open source and [...]
Don’t help ACTA squash your rights
As often is the case when government either can’t control, or can’t understand something, the current drafting of ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is more about ensuring citizens have no right to privacy, than it is about addressing counterfeiting in any significant way. Unchallenged, this could spell trouble for the movement to data portability and open [...]
The scary side of social media
Would you like to be extricating yourself from a relationship with this woman? This came to my attention courtesy of Boing Boing. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx_WKxqQF2o&hl=en] The sad thing here is that it’s just more indication that we’ve lost our collective minds. And, as a divorce-wars survivor myself, I can tell you from first-hand experience that airing [...]
Twits shouldn’t twitter
People, use your heads when deciding what to ‘twitter’ about. At a basic level, I can certainly see the value of staying connected with your friends. However, when you start plugging twitter into social networks like Facebook, it’s a recipe for annoyance, plain and simple. Why do I care what you think as you watch [...]