Comments (7)

By TaiTran, August 22, 2008 3:29 am

The blog craze started in 2004, MySpace came out in 2002. From then till now, Web 2.0 has penetrated deeply into our lives.

You may have heard the buzz: it’s all about communications, exchange information and expressing the ego.

Have you thought of utilizing all those things for learning?

Recently I’ve been very aggressive on the net to see how we can use the applications for learning, and here I am with my key findings:

The requirements

Let’s imagine a very familiar study scenario: you’re assigned into a group to do a research on topic X.

Traditionally, the group would rely on emails, phone calls and IM to communicate and collaborate. Have you found these media difficult to classify your information?

This is how I would use Web 2.0 for learning

1. Search for information with Search EngineS

Obviously, information searching starts with search engines.

I have some hints for this:

1. Don’t just use Google. Try Yahoo! search, Live search, Ask search and other engines. They give different results and thus, relevant information might be found from ones other than Google
2. Try Google on different region settings. google.com/ncr (international version) yields different results from google.com.vn
3. Try different keywords and keyword combination. Also, exploit the operators
4. Also search for images. At least Google, Yahoo! and Live support this. Images are useful for illustrating your ideas and, in some cases, give you additional information.

Watch a slide show on Google services:

2. Ask your questions

Use Q&A service such as LinkedIn Answers to ask questions and receive information from professionals.

Watch a video explaining LinkedIn

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/RXVcq7Xg6JU"][/gv]

3. Make information comes to you with RSS

Normally you go out for information. Think about making information come to you?

Use RSS for this.

Watch a video explaining RSS

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/AwtmOPdrEL8"][/gv]

For example, if I’m looking for “globalization”, I would take these steps

1. Go to wordpress.com/tags/globalization
2. Get the RSS of this tag
3. Subscribe the RSS into a feed reader like Google Reader

Then check with the feed reader everyday to see if relevant information comes in.

You can also use Yahoo! Pipes to aggregate the feeds. Click here to view videos on Yahoo! Pipes

Try exploring different sources of information you can use this trick.

4. Share links with bookmark-sharing sites

If I encounter useful webpages, I would want to share it with my group mates.

Using email would bury the link under heaps of other information. Sharing through IM stands the risk of losing the message when the program lags.

So I would bookmark the site using del.icio.us and use the function “links for friend” to share the link.

Watch a video explaining del.icio.us

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/r9s5hc3MJZo"][/gv]

5. Blog your group’s findings on group-blog powered platform

WordPress supports multiple-author. I would want our group members to blog our research everyday on our blog. This is not superficial. It helps us

1. Collect information, thoughts, findings, analysis and intermediate conclusions
2. Track each member’s progress
3. Present to the lecturer our growth

5b. Share micro details

This is optional though. Some information might be very detailed and we want quick sharing methods. I would connect my mobile phone to Twitter and quickly update my thoughts on the way.

Watch a video explaining Twitter

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/ctXq1mKL7tk"][/gv]

6. Schedule activities with Calendars

Schedule activities such as meetings, field trips with Google Calendar

7. Watch and learn

Go to Youtube, not to entertain, but to learn from podcasters on the topic.

For example, this video is useful to understand Web 2.0

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/5nN-U0sDZNc"][/gv]

8. Compose Collaboratively

Use Google Docs to compose the documents. This is very convenient in such that

1. No email chain flying around
2. Single repository of document
3. Better version control
4. Many collaborators do the job concurrently

Watch a video explaining Google Docs

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/eRqUE6IHTEA"][/gv]

9. Build wiki to store develop information knowledge

Wiki is great to understand new concepts and link the information to get the big picture.

Watch a video explaining Wiki

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/hczDZXPfYn8"][/gv]

10. Relationship building

Facebook is good to build relationship with your work mates.

11. Publish your research

Publish your research as presentations on slideshare or documents on scribd to share your knowledge engage in discussion on the topic.

12. Consolidate them all into one page

There are just so much!

How’re you gonna navigate around them all?

Well, one solution is to use a homepage service like netvibes to put all these services together.

Why all these?

Too complicated? Well here are the reasons why I would do it this way

1. Better organization of information. No email confusion
2. Exhaustive analysis. You write on the way so no information is missed
3. Better collaboration
4. Man, isn’t it fun?

I know it would be much easier for you just to email. But how much time have you spent searching for information later on? I’d rather spend the time to get things organized first, then make it easier later to focus more on creating contents.

And I’m pretty sure of one thing: just next year, this entry will be outdated because many new services will come out. Semantic web, mobile apps are just a few to predict.

It’s not a fashionable fad or a time-killer, it’s a shift in the way we can be more effective. Do you want to miss the train trend?

Digital Divide

But you know, all these will never happen if digital divide hasn’t been closed.

Technology proficiency and more importantly, community habit is a big gap. I want my team to do so, but other teams may not, so some of my team members may argue “why do we have to!”

With the internet connection speed in Vietnam, using Google Docs et al is insane.

Today, a world that is flat is till a romantic dream for me.

Resources

I’ve already tried out these services. Kindly see mine as example of how things may end up evolve: taitran.com/blog/resources

Comments (5)

By TaiTran, July 23, 2008 3:29 am

The blog craze started in 2004, MySpace came out in 2002. From then till now, Web 2.0 has penetrated deeply into our lives.

You may have heard the buzz: it’s all about communications, exchange information and expressing the ego.

Have you thought of utilizing all those things for learning?

Recently I’ve been very aggressive on the net to see how we can use the applications for learning, and here I am with my key findings:

The requirements

Let’s imagine a very familiar study scenario: you’re assigned into a group to do a research on topic X.

Traditionally, the group would rely on emails, phone calls and IM to communicate and collaborate. Have you found these media difficult to classify your information?

This is how I would use Web 2.0 for learning

1. Search for information with Search EngineS

Obviously, information searching starts with search engines.

I have some hints for this:

1. Don’t just use Google. Try Yahoo! search, Live search, Ask search and other engines. They give different results and thus, relevant information might be found from ones other than Google
2. Try Google on different region settings. google.com/ncr (international version) yields different results from google.com.vn
3. Try different keywords and keyword combination. Also, exploit the operators
4. Also search for images. At least Google, Yahoo! and Live support this. Images are useful for illustrating your ideas and, in some cases, give you additional information.

2. Ask your questions

Use Q&A service such as LinkedIn Answers to ask questions and receive information from professionals.

3. Make information comes to you with RSS

You go out for information. Think about making information come to you?

Use RSS for this.

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/AwtmOPdrEL8"][/gv]

For example, if I’m looking for “globalization”, I would do this steps

1. Go to wordpress.com/tags/globalization
2. Get the RSS of this tag
3. Subscribe the RSS into a feed reader like Google Reader

Then check with the feed reader everyday to see if relevant information comes in.

You can also use Yahoo! Pipes to aggregate the feeds. Click here to view videos on Yahoo! Pipes

Try exploring different sources of information you can use this trick.

4. Share links with bookmark-sharing sites

If I encounter useful webpages, I would want to share it with my group mates.

Using email would bury the link under heaps of other information. Sharing through IM stands the risk of losing the message when the program lags.

So I would bookmark the site using del.icio.us and use the function “links for friend” to share the link.

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/r9s5hc3MJZo"][/gv]

5. Blog your group’s findings on group-blog powered platform

WordPress supports multiple-author. I would want our group members to blog our research everyday on our blog. This is not superficial. It helps us

1. Collect information, thoughts, findings, analysis and intermediate conclusions
2. Track each member’s progress
3. Present to the lecturer our growth

5b. Share micro details

This is optional though. Some information might be very detailed and we want quick sharing methods. I would connect my mobile phone to Twitter and quickly update my thoughts on the way.

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/ctXq1mKL7tk"][/gv]

6. Schedule activities with Calendars

Schedule activities such as meetings, field trips with Google Calendar

7. Watch and learn

Go to Youtube, not to entertain, but to learn from podcasters on the topic.

For example, this this video
[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/5nN-U0sDZNc"][/gv]

8. Compose Collaboratively

Use Google Docs to compose the documents. This is very convenient in such that

1. No email chain flying around
2. Single repository of document
3. Better version control
4. Many collaborators do the job concurrently

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/eRqUE6IHTEA"][/gv]

9. Build wiki to store develop information knowledge

Wiki is great to understand new concepts and link the information to get the big picture.

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/hczDZXPfYn8"][/gv]

10. Relationship building

Facebook is good to build relationship with your work mates.

11. Publish your research

Publish your research as presentations on slideshare or documents on scribd to share your knowledge engage in discussion on the topic.

12. Consolidate them all into one page

There are just so much!

How’re you gonna navigate around them all?

Well, one solution is to use a homepage service like netvibes to put all these services together.

Why all these?

Too complicated? Well here are the reasons why I would do it this way

1. Better organization of information. No email confusion
2. Exhaustive analysis. You write on the way so no information is missed
3. Better collaboration
4. Man, isn’t it fun?

I know it would be much easier for you just to email. But how much time have you spent searching for information later on? I’d rather spend the time to get things organized first, then make it easier later to focus more on creating contents.

And I’m pretty sure of one thing: just next year, this entry will be outdated because many new services will come out. Semantic web, mobile apps are just a few to predict.

It’s not a fashionable fad or a time-killer, it’s a shift in the way we can be more effective. Do you want to miss the train trend?

Digital Divide

But you know, all these will never happen if digital divide hasn’t been closed.

Technology proficiency and more importantly, community habit is a big gap. I want my team to do so, but other teams may not, so some of my team members may argue “why do we have to!”

With the internet connection speed in Vietnam, using Google Docs et al is insane.

Today, a world that is flat is till a romantic dream for me.

Resources

I’ve already tried out these services. Kindly see mine as example of how things may end up evolve: taitran.com/blog/resources

Comments (2)

By TaiTran, July 12, 2008 2:13 am

Introduction

Six Thinking Hats is an important and powerful technique used to look at decisions from a number of important perspectives. This forces you to move outside your habitual thinking style, and helps you to get a more rounded view of a situation. This tool was created by Edward de Bono.

Motivation

Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint. This is part of the reason that they are successful. Often, though, they may fail to look at a problem from an emotional, intuitive, creative or negative viewpoint. This can mean that they underestimate public resistance to plans, fail to make creative leaps, and do not make essential contingency plans.

Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive. Emotional people may fail to look at decisions calmly and rationally.

If you look at a problem with the Six Thinking Hats technique, then you will solve it using
all approaches. Your decisions and plans will mix ambition, skill in execution, public
sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning.

You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings, it has the benefit
of blocking the confrontations that happen when people with different thinking styles
discuss the same problem.

Technique

Each “Thinking Hat” is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

White Hat

With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you
have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and
either try to fill them or take account of them.

This is where you analyse past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.

Red Hat

“Wearing” the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and
emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand
the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.

Black Hat

Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it
cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important
because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter
them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them. Black Hat thinking helps to
make your plans tougher and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws
and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance. This leaves them underprepared or difficulties.

Yellow Hat

The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps
you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking
helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

Green Hat

The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative
solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little
criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools (see Module 1) can help you
here.

Blue Hat

The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing
meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may
direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will
ask for Black Hat thinking, etc.

A variant of this technique is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (e.g. doctors, architects, sales directors, etc.) or different customers.

Example

The directors of a property company are looking at whether they should construct a new
office building. The economy is doing well, and the amount of vacant office space is
reducing sharply. As part of their decision, they decide to use the 6 Thinking Hats
technique during a planning meeting.

1. Looking at the problem with the White Hat, they analyze the data they have. They
   examine the trend in vacant office space, which shows a sharp reduction. They anticipate
   that by the time the office block would be completed, there will be a severe shortage of
   office space. Current government projections show steady economic growth for at least
   the construction period.
2. With Red Hat thinking, some of the directors think the proposed building looks quite ugly.
   While it would be highly cost-effective, they worry that people would not like to work in it.
3. When they think with the Black Hat, they worry that government projections may be
   wrong. The economy may be about to enter a “cyclical down-turn”, in which case the
   office building may be empty for a long time. If the building is not attractive, then
   companies will choose to work in another better-looking building at the same rent.
4. With the Yellow Hat, however, if the economy holds up and their projections are correct,
   the company stands to make a great deal of money. If they are lucky, maybe they could sell the building before the next downturn, or rent to tenants on long-term leases that will
   last through any recession.
5. With Green Hat thinking, they consider whether they should change the design to make
   the building more pleasant. Perhaps they could build prestige offices that people would
   want to rent in any economic climate. Alternatively, maybe they should invest the money
   in the short term to buy up property at a low cost when a recession comes.
6. The Blue Hat has been used by the meeting’s Chair to move between the different
   thinking styles. He or she may have needed to keep other members of the team from
   switching styles, or from criticizing other peoples’ points.

Key points

Six Thinking Hats is a good technique for looking at the effects of a decision from a
number of different points of view.

It allows necessary emotion and skepticism to be brought into what would otherwise be
purely rational decisions. It opens up the opportunity for creativity within decision-making. The technique also helps, for example, persistently pessimistic people to be positive and
creative.

Plans developed using the 6 Thinking Hats technique will be sounder and more resilient
than would otherwise be the case. It may also help you to avoid public relations mistakes,
and spot good reasons not to follow a course of action before you have committed to it.

Previous volumes of the series

1. Introduction
2. Reversal
3. Appreciation
4. Drill Down
5. SWOT Analysis
6. Risk Analysis

Comments (0)

By TaiTran, July 3, 2008 12:54 am

I hereby model a message delivery as an article. If a conversation/talk/speech were an article, how differently would people communicate?

The sample article

Let’s take a random article as an example.

The Heading-only style

The communication from this style only conveys the headings of the article. The communicator possibly either doesn’t want to spend more time explaining in details or expects the audience to understand upon hearing the titles.

Advantages

• Time-saving

Disadvantages

• Huh? What next?

The Wiki style

Lambrusco

Some of you may have heard me preach of lambrusco, the foaming, almost purple sparkling wine from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

No, not the semi-sweet fizzy stuff that was so popular in the 1970s, but the real, dry, earthy lambrusco, from producers like Medici Ermete, Vini, Vittorio Graziano and Villa di Carlo. Served icy cold, it’s wonderful with just about any simple dish, be it fried chicken or pizza or burgers.

But you say you want a real wine (as if lambrusco weren’t real enough)? You say you want an American wine because it is, after all, practically the Fourth of July?

Description

This style is exactly like a wiki page. The communicator mentions keywords of the article, with or without priority order. Each of the keyword then links to a whole concept from other sources.

For example, when the speaker mentions “organizational behavior”, s/he could point to a book on the topic and recommend her/his audience to read the book.

Advantages

• Inter-connections of information
• From the spoken conversation, the receivers can then search for the more details with the keywords from the message

Disadvantages

• Some audience who have not known the concepts might lose track of the information mid-way

The Ad-hoc style

The communicator randomly picks paragraphs from the article and give full details of the paragraphs without or with limited conclusion.

Next time: full details of another random paragraph.

Advantages

• The audience might extract the right information in details if asking the right question.

Disadvantages

• Very hard to assemble the comprehensive but scattered information into a complete article.

The Bottom-up style

Throw the conclusion on first, then explain if questioned.

Advantages

• Just straight to the point. Exceeding time doesn’t impact much as the audience has already caught (if so) what they need.

Disadvantages

• Surprise for unprepared audience

The Full-article style

Section by section, paragraph by paragraph, word by word till the end.

Advantages

• Every full details

Disadvantages

• Time consumption

Conclusion

What is your style?

What other styles do you add to this list?

What style do you choose for which situation?

Reference

The sample article is taken from The New York Times’ Reds on Ice? It’s Not Heresy

Comments (0)

By TaiTran, April 19, 2008 6:51 pm

Previously MediaMax had provided 25Gb of free storage. One constraint was that only files under 10Mb can be downloaded.

However, even with files less than 10Mb, I always had errors with downloading.

Furthermore, the MediaMax uploader was heavy with .NET 2.0 platform and very slow in response to file management functions.

***

I have quit using MediaMax for a while. In 19/4/2008, they announced a new line of service: The Linkup. While scanning the site, I could see that it has not been complete.

Meanwhile, all free MediaMax accounts will be removed.

***

So I’m facing a major issue: I’m having some Gbs of data which can’t be downloaded, and they’re gonna be removed by 25/4/2008 unless I pay for using the service.

Monetization with advertising is quite okay for me, but upgrade enforcement doesn’t look very nice.

So find me on megaupload, box and mediafire next

Full Update from MediaMax

Comments (4)

By TaiTran, December 22, 2007 1:50 am

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/5nN-U0sDZNc"][/gv]

Comments (0)

By TaiTran, December 19, 2007 11:25 pm

Preparing to Knol

Encouraging people to contribute knowledge

Udi Manber, VP Engineering, Google

The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily discoverable. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal.

Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.

Once testing is completed, participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality. Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.

We do not want to build a walled garden of content; we want to disseminate it as widely as possible. Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine.

As always, a picture is worth a thousands words, so an example of a knol is below (double-click on the image to see the page in full). The main content is real, and we encourage you to read it (you may sleep better afterwards!), but most of the meta-data — like reviews, ratings, and comments — are not real, because, of course, this has not been in the public eye as yet. Again, this is a preliminary version.

Source: Google Official Blog

Click on the image for the full-sized screenshot

Comments (0)

By TaiTran, December 6, 2007 12:15 am

Simply Wiki

Wiki is a platform that allow anyone to quickly edit web pages. Repeat after me: anyone & quick.

I doubt that you don’t know Wikipedia. Yes, it is the most successful Wiki instance today.

To know more of Wiki, please see the following video:

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/awxYqXI3x1A"][/gv]

Potential problems with Wikis

Disorder

The fact that information can be quickly edited by anyone is the primary reason why wikis grow like weeds instead of carefully tended gardens.

Large scale wikis become chaotic and disorganized

Multiple collaboration means no one owns anything — organization comes from someone having a vested interest to organize and maintain.

Information is hard to navigate consistently because there is no unifying vision to the structure.

Large scale wikis turn into a flat hierarchy of documents with no hierarchy.

Information transfer

It is hard to import information into a wiki from other sources.

It is hard to export information out of wikis (eg: RSS feeds).

5 ways to build effective Wikis

1. Make it Search-intelligent

Make URLs human-readable permalinks

Navigation clues

2. Manage Version Control

Version control for every change

Rollbacks of edits

Notifications, watch lists and logs

Discussions of changes

3. Enable Information Management

Refactor and maintain information

Document management: attachments (documents, images, media…) should be treated the same as pages when it comes to search and version control.

Provide import/export functionalities to standard-compliant format (XML).

4. Build an Organization that best supports

Wikis are not built to be used in top-down organizational hierarchy. However, all-are-equal model lurks serious problems. Click here to read more of the story…

We shall see if Larry Sanger’s experiment of Citizendium will make it more effective.

5. Develop a Process

Building Wikis is one activity of knowledge management. Knowledge management process should be developed, especially in tightly-organized groups, to support this.

Conclusion

Wikis are effective if built and managed the right way, and let’s.

Comments (0)

By TaiTran, November 29, 2007 12:03 pm

CyVee cares about security of information by providing security options and regularly reminding its users of setting security issues. This is what I applaud.

However, this concern of security conflicts with its Account levels.

Currently CyVee offers 3 levels of account: Personal, PersonalPlus and Premium. Details can be viewed here

To upgrade to PersonalPlus for free, user needs to complete 100% profile. I have filled in most information about my portfolio and career, and I am very cautious about these fields:

1. Birthday in Personal Information
2. Email in Contact Information
3. Cellphone in Contact Information

I eventually decided to fill in Email field with a little tweak so as only human can get it correctly, and left the other 2 blank. Since I leave 2 fields out, my profile is 60% complete, which means I am not able to upgrade my account to PersonalPlus.

So in order to upgrade the account, one has to violate basic security practice by revealing his/her crucial information.

My suggestions

1. Provide built-in email image-generator like that of Facebook
2. Make these 3 fields non-required

Thanks,

Tai Tran