NMC New Media Blogs

How many ways can one write something in 140 characters or less? It seems more and more these days. As Twitter flits into the lives of just about everyone online these days, the challenge has been how to manage, organize and keep track of all the short attention span chatter. Initially, there was really just your plain vanilla browser and the Twitter.com website. You created an account, you logged in and you began posting snippets about whatever you could in 140 characters or less. People followed and you followed others. It all quickly became something like managing your email InBox without a lot of order. But this has changed and now Twitter users have many options to manage the micro-blogging tool. These tools give you the ability to better visualize the tweets, search, flag favorites, retweet something, send direct tweets etc.

The wave. It paints a great image whether you are a surfer (real world, not web) or a football fanatic (you know, when everyone does the wave). The wave essentially forces you to participate, whether in a group or one on one. You wave and hopefully someone waves back. Today Google threw out their Wave at the I/O Conference in hopes of getting some developers waving back. And its unveiling has plenty of people talking about what this means for the evolution of online communication. So what is it?... Wave is basically a new Google service that allows users to combine email, IM, photo sharing and social networking into one seamless framework (and interface) integrating all the ways we mainly communicate online.

Sometimes if you can't do something in the real world, you just build it in the virtual world. Well, today an innovative Flash application arrived on the scene that allows one to virtually apply graffitti art to real world images. Built by Earthmine and using what looks like Google's StreetView (not sure where exactly they are getting this data) scenery from San Francisco, one can dive into neighboorhoods and apply graffitti art. Its one of those things that you need to see to fully appreciate. It is very cool and quite innovative. If you have ever had the urge to try you hand at some street art, now is your chance. Check it out at http://www.wildstylecity.com.

Keene

In today's interconnected world both the physical and digital worlds collide. There is no ignoring those on the the other side of the world. We share one place, this place called Earth and today's geospatial technology makes this so readily apparent and seamless that it is almost taken without notice. Its hard to imagine an age when we did not know what lay beyond the horizon, just as those ages ago would have a hard time believing in something called Google Earth. But the connectivity and the technology that makes it possible should be noticed. The new golden age of geography is upon us and its nothing like what you might have learned in grade school. This is all about connections, and seeing how those connections can send shockwaves around the world just like an insect caught in a spider's web. Move one part and we'll know you are there...

As the newspaper industry endures the pain of transition to the brave new digital world and the age old tradition of college textbooks is challenged by the Web and a slew of new electronic reading devices, Amazon is answering the call by providing digital outlets for the publishing world. The original Kindle was launched in November, 2007 and then this past February, Kindle 2 was released to great fanfare. Tomorrow, Amazon will unveil a new Kindle that is supposedly bigger and will be more appropriate for reading things like newspapers and textbooks. Should the new device be all it is trumped up to be, it could definitely shake things around further on campuses and newsrooms around the nation.

Study

As the media start to tell stories of 'twitter quitters' and imply that it is limited to celebrity gossip, isn't it time to provide some short case study examples of how it can actually be used effectively in educational and media contexts. Why not post your favourite effective practice?

An interesting first example  is that of colleagues at Sheffield Hallam University in England  who used it to get a better picture of student study habits as part of a study to plan and develop new learning spaces on campus.

I interviewed Liz Aspden who worked on the project for our podcast series earlier this week. Here it is , bit of echo on the skype call at one point, sorry about that. 

LiveScribe is a great tool that utilizes some great emerging technology in the form of audio capture and handwriting digitizing. Larry Johnson showed off LiveScribe at the NMC Director's meeting and everyone was quite impressed. I had seen this technology some time before but it was not yet Mac compatible and so I had left it in the back corner of my Delicious tags before Larry refocused my attention on it. Its is very cool technology for those who take lots of notes and also like to record the audio heard when taking these notes. It has impressive handwriting recognition too I might add. I have been surprised by how well it picks up words in my bad handwriting. Although it does seem to have issues with underlined words. It will recognize a word that is not underlined but the same word underlined is not found in searches.