Neowin:

One might still ask, what is Web 2.0? It is something better described by marketing than by reality. Somebody (O’Reilly Media actually) decided that as of 2004, the internet had entered the second revolution where Google and other online mainstays replaced the original tools of the first generation internet. The kids in the virtual trenches are probably aware that the internet is actually an ever-evolving beast rather than something that is neatly packaged every few years into a new edition (like traditional software). Still, services like YouTube and MySpace have come to define Web 2.0

I italisied the bits that I liked. This whole business of Web 2.0 and all the other 2.0 bandwagons ignores one fundamentally important point: the people who are driving it are not talking about it, they are just getting on and doing what they need to do.

Most of the people uploading photos to Flickr are not talking about how they are now Web 2.0-ing it. When they send email via Gmail or message via Windows Live / AIM / Meebo they don’t consciously think that they are striking another blow for this wild Web 2.0.

It’s the rest of us who are creating lots of noise about what the tools are that are creating all of the static that disguises the signal.

Related posts:

1. Joining the Discussion

When it comes to music files, Bill Gates simply had this to say in summary; “People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.”

Except, of course, if you live in New Zealand.
Full story

Related posts:

1. Legal March
2. Licenced
3. Digital Content Strategy

Will we be able to legaly copy that brand new CD so that we can listen on that lovely new teacher laptop so thoughtfully subsidised by the Ministry of Education? Possibly. Sort of.

Clause (e) is the condition that I can see causing the most confusion and potential grief. Its not at all clear that you can play your music on a work computer, and if you do you probably are required to do so in a private office or with headphones. No listening to your co-workers music allowed! This very limited interpretation is supported by clause (f) which suggests that you have to own any computer you play music on, i.e. no using one provided by your employer. Why do I think we’ve just changed one stupid, unenforceable law for another that will see some workplaces continue to ban digital music… Link

What about copy that DVD for the computer or the media player (generous fellow that Santa bloke)? Possibly. Sort of. We we be allowed to videotape Sunday night’s Christmas movie and watch it next Christmas Eve? Possibly. Sort of. Lend it to a friend? Possibly. Sort of.

The other type of format shifting allowed under the bill is time shifting. This is the provision that makes VCRs legal while simultaneously making that collection of carefully recorded video cassettes on your shelf illegal. Yes, you can record “solely for the purpose of viewing or listening to the recording at a more convenient time” but only if you can’t access it from an on-demand service (and yes that might require a payment). However, you only get to keep that copy for as long as is “reasonably necessary for viewing or listening to the recording at a more convenient time.” Link

As presented in Parliament the bill offers little more than half measures. Whilst there has been some discussion on the web, no one in the ‘mainstream’ media has even approached some of the apparent contradictions and sops offered by this piece of legislation. There is a lot more to the whole thing than just being able to watch a DVD on a phone or video iPod. The bill is about rights of ownership of information and ideas. It’s about whether this country follows other nations into implementing draconian protection measures that may end up being used against innocent consumers and lining the purses of those whose pockets are already deep and full.

It’s time to read and think for ourselves. Some local and overseas blogs have picked up what’s happening and attempted to get the discussion going.
Today’s Hard News (guest Green MP Nandor Tanczos), earlier Russell Brown post and some well thought out background from Stephen Marshall.

Also

Synthetic Thoughts

Gadgetophile

Kim Weatherall

Related posts:

1. Ripper
2. Format Shifting
3. Linkeracy – 13th March 2008

This morning’s Sunday Star Times had a spend-up-before -Christmas glossy about some of the exciting new technologies available to consumers at the moment. Apart from giving some computer buying advice that was well out of date (60-80GB hard drive anyone?), the mag had some information about digital audio and video players – MP3 players to most of us.

To most people, you buy your iPod / MP3 player and copy your CDs onto the large empty space. Then you copy all of your friends’ CDs. At some point, people over 40 contemplate copying their entire vinyl collection to their computers and iPods. Most give up when they remember they haven’t got a turntable or find out what a new needle costs.

The problem is that under existing New Zealand law it’s illegal to copy your CDs onto the music player that you just (legally) bought. I’m often asked in professional development sessions about how to do this and teachers are incredulous when I explain what the law says and talk about the implications. Then they’ll ask about downloading music. When I point them to Coketunes or Ampifier they look at me even more incredulously – music is supposed to be free right?

One evening last week I took a cruise around the web and found myself at Sarah McLachlan’s website. I discovered that she had a new album out and decided to listen to a few tracks. I liked what I heard so headed to a couple of NZ sites to see if I could get the CD. $50 to bring it in. I headed back to Sarah’s own site and disovered that I could downlaod the entire album for $9.99 – Canadian dollars of course. Furthermore,

“All audio downloads are available in the popular MP3 format, encoded at 192kbps. The files are not encrypted with digital rights management or copy protection software. Offering this format puts no obstacles in the way of you enjoying your music on your computer, transferring it to your media player, or burning it to CD. This format puts an amount of trust in you to obey copyright laws and not share your files. ” link

Of course I paid my money and downloaded the MP3s. I have the songs on my computer and will pop them onto my MP3 palyer for when I’m away from my computer.

I like this trusted copyright model. The artist (label?) has entrusted me with the right to play her music as and when I choose. I’m perfectly happy to comply with the request to keep the files to myself. Ten bucks Canadian – less than $14 in our currency. What could be better?

Could musicians and their labels in New Zealand do a similar thing? Of course they could. Would New Zealand consumers respect the model? With realistic pricing models like this one and with more information I think that they world. Someone just has to make a start.

Related posts:

1. Ripper
2. Legal March
3. A New Voice

“The draft New Zealand Digital Content Strategy is a sub-strategy of the Digital Strategy, and is the government’s five-year vision for unlocking New Zealand’s stock of content and providing all New Zealanders with seamless, easy access to the information that is important to their lives, businesses and cultural identity.”

This is an important document for digital citizens to read. It seeks to address the debate about the ownership and management of digital information. A bit like the draft curriculum, this is a document that is out there for public consumption and comment.
The draft categories three types of content – formal, informal and commercial. Russell Brown (who has been part of the development of the strategy) has already developed this threefold categorisation further. Russell says,

“…you can spend years strategising and still be stuck with a basically top-down model that institutionalises all decisions and fails to capture the dynamism that drives the Internet community. The emphasis here remains on the institutional capture of both content and decisions about content.”

And further (as may interest Artichoke)

“I’d like to know how a New Zealand Creative Commons licence will interact with the generally obstructive practice of Crown Copyright, for one thing.” (italics added by me)

New Zealand has not yet adopted a localised Creative Commons license. Those of us that do slap a Creative Commons license on our blogs, photos or other works are doing so in hope that at some point the license will have some formal standing in New Zealand. There is a group that is working towards the New Zealand “jurisdiction-specific” license. It’s possible to follow some of the work being done by subscribing to the Creative Commons – New Zealand Mailing List.
I hope that the Draft Digital Content document gets people thinking and talking about digital content and ownership and all of the surrounding issues.

Related posts:

1. The Digital Strategy
2. Content Sharing
3. Licenced

Although Camryn is just two years old and a little more reserved, she too is also learning about the way the world works. At the moment every second sentence is a question – usually, “What doing?” – as she participates in the life of the family. last year Camryn didn’t like strawberries. Yesterday I discovered that this year she does.

When these two treasures enter the education system will they be entering the same kind of classroom that their mothers entered? That I as their grandmother entered? I hope not.

These two know already that a pencil or marker pen will make a picture and so will a camera or a phone. They know that to get a message to someone you can use a phone or a computer or a pen or you can wave a sparkler. The technology is ubiquitous. They don’t care about all of that they just want to get their message across.

Related posts:

1. Flattened

“She said that she’s not going to sacrifice the other things that she already does in her life to spend more time on the Internet.”

I meet and work with lots of people who are just like this teacher. In fact I think that possibly a large proportion of the teaching workforce is just like that. Rightly or wrongly, they don’t see the need to get out onto the web and join in the discussion. In fact in the vast majority of the cases, they don’t even know that the discussion is taking place.
Will’s post follows a recent flurry about whether educators should be blogging. This too was an interesting and revealing discussion and one that thankfully wasn’t ‘won’ by the YES brigade.

The interweb has developed alongside the best, the biggest, the most challenging, the most absorbing, the most amazing, the deepest (and yet the most shallow) change that education has faced for decades. It hasn’t been the cause of that change though and we must not forget that.

Those of us who are using the tools and toys that we find out there on the web need to stop talking about the end product and start talking about the reasoning beghind why we are using them. We need to do this for our our own practice as much as we need to do it to show other people.

Related posts:

1. Points For Discussion
2. Virtually Speaking
3. Directions

I can listen to the music on my tablet (or my desktop, Mac, iPod, MP3 player, phone – gosh stereo even).

I can read about the composer on my tablet (or my desktop, Mac, PDA, phone – book maybe?).

I can engage via email – and I can do that on a variety of devices too. I can make my own music using a PC (tablet or not) or a Mac. I can share my music via …
I’m probably getting very boring.

No related posts.

Last week I absolutely needed a way to import a lot of records into a database. My database skills are legendary – because I have none. I created the tables in Excel and did what I should and tried to import it all into the database. It didn’t work. I tried again. I tried several different ways. Then I decided that I needed some extra help. I emailed the database programme author and over the course of a few emails and a couple of hours he updated the programme so that the data would import properly. Job done.

I was talking to a sounding board about this experience and she said to me that she would have given up at the point where the data didn’t import. I couldn’t afford to give up because I needed to import the data and I needed to get it done efficiently. Time is money and all that.

So what was the difference (tipping point?) – I needed to get the job done.

When I work with teachers and they say … I want to make a movie … I want to make a PowerPoint … I want to do Keynote … I want to learn to make a webpage … sometimes I get just a teensy bit difficult. Because if they want to learn to make a webpage, a movie, a presentation on the off chance that they might use it next term it’s not going to work. They won’t remember how to do it. Framing it inside an existing piece of work or a absolutely have to may just work but that’s not always guarranteed. To learn how to do something – to actually be able to engage with the process and really want to be able to do? it – requires a need. Is this where authenticity steps in?

People often say to me that they envy the ease with which I get around my computer. They should see me with a guitar.

About 35 years ago I asked begged my parents for my first guitar. They got me one of those plywood half size jobs that you give to kids. I think we left it behind when we moved to New Zealand. Shift forward about six or seven years and I remember buying an ancient nylon stringed guitar through an advert in the Hawkes bay Herald Tribune. I read every book in the Hastings Library and attempted to teach myself to play the thing. I got to a D and and A7 but I could change between the two. Not with any degree of accuracy or speed anyway.

Move forward another few years and I had another el cheapo second hand guitar. I took some lessons and actually mastered a 12 bar blues progression. I could even do a B7. But those damned barre chords threw me.

I managed to get a beautiful steel stringed guitar and some of the elusive barre chords fell into place. My guitar teacher gave me quite a bit of help to get my head and fingers around some other guitar sounds and I could throw out some passable renditions of some of my favourite music.
After that beautiful guitar disappeared from my life a few years ago (left in a classroom, lifted by a stranger – I will probably never know ) I occasionaly stummed an old cheapie that floated around the house.

I bought a new acoustic electric last year and took some more lessons but I’ve never really got back to being able to play like I used to. Now I stumble my way through a set playlist, occasionally scouring the interweb for the chords for the latest radio tune. I can play just enough to amuse my self but not enough to satisfy myself.

Half baked post about Just in Time? I don’t even think this one made any where near the oven!

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1. Doing It
2. Tablet Apostasy
3. Shopping Lists

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