September 2007 Archives

This past summer, I started a hot team (PDF link) along with Emily Rimland and Binky Lush from The University Libraries, and Yvonne Clark and Chris Stubbs of ETS to look at facebook apps. As part of the exploration of the facebook platform, Stubbs whipped up a small app for the libraries. This past friday we took the lid off the app and opened it up. I know the app is being promoted at the Library Open house that is going on today and tomorrow.

If you have a facebook account, you can add the Penn State University Libraries Search.

This is really just the very first step of can be done with facebook apps. There are opportunities here to build online social spaces while leveraging the existing social networks students, faculty, and staff have created in facebook. The hot team white paper on facebook applications is almost ready to be released. It will contain several case studies for further development of facebook apps. I'll be sure to post it here once it is ready.

Earlier this week we opened up a new feature of the Blogs at Penn State Community, the blogs directory. You can add a blog to the directory by filling out a short form that contains the blog's title, url, and author's name. You can add tags when filling out the form. These tags can allow blogs to be grouped based on organization, topics, projects, or whatever else may be useful. For example, the "ITS" tag is being used to create a directory of bloggers from Information Technology Services.

This is really just the first iteration of something that has the potential to grow as time goes on.

Does it make sense to force a user to manually submit their blog to a directory? What if we automatically generated a directory that contained every blog from blogs.psu.edu? I think there is some merit to auto-generating a list. It would come in handy if you were looking for a blog from a specific person. At the same time, I think the opt-in directory allows people more control over their digital identity. They can only include the blog(s) they wish to be included. They can add tags to group their blogs with others. I also have noticed at least one psu blogger using a solution other than blogs.psu.edu. I think it is a bonus for his blog to be included in the directory.

Perhaps ideally we would want to create a blog directory that integrates both approaches.

What do you think about any of these blog directory approach? Am I completely daft?

I wrote a hastily formed comment over on Stubb's blog. For some reason, sitting at home, thinking of something else, I suddenly realize that I forgot to make my actual point in the comment. So, I decide to clarify here on my blog. I get to use the trackback feature, which I really like, especially when used in a community of blogs. (But that is a topic for another post). Posting here also allows me to beef up my own blog. And who doesn't want a beefy blog?

Anyway, to the point:

Over at Stubb's place there was a bunch of discussion of the LOLcat phenomenon. Gary comments:

For me LOLcats are only funny after I've seen a bunch of them in a row. It's one of those jokes that's kind of funny (or odd)the first time, but after seeing it 100 times it becomes funny again. Also, after you've viewed a couple dozen, you actually do start to develop an appreciation for some of the more original ones. The "invisible" LOLcat variations (invisible bicycle, etc) are great, because they're creative and an extension on the originals.

I think this hits on something important. One lolcat image macro may be somewhat amusing or curiously odd. After you see dozens or hundreds of them they all become funnier, because the humor is dependent on the context all of the images provide, and the jokes contained in some of the images may be built off previous images. It was the participation of many individual together that produced the humor. A great case study in how content can be generated by the crowd and how it can take a form very different from content created by a single person or small team working on a finite project.

see also: Wikipedia entry on LOLcats

In his latest post, Cole ponders the inbox-zero concept. I have been trying to work with an inbox of zero since around January, mostly with success. I think the more email heavy your life is, the more important it is to practice some kind of inbox-zero system.

Intranet collaboration tools can help get archival information out of our inboxes where they cry for attention they don't need while providing a common, shared repository. But I don't know if communication tools like blogs/wikis/etc can save us totally from information overload. We need to develop personal strategies for dealing with the information flow intelligently. Merlin Mann calls his inbox-zero presentation "advanced common sense", but it is worth a look. It is basically a boiled down version of GTD.