Phronesis

Netvibes or Pageflakes?

I've been playing with Netvibes and Pageflakes ... to see how I could make them into a shareable, usable, fun interface for collaborating in a project. I'm imagining that most people in the project don't know how to use RSS feeds etc. so I want to set up a page that we can share - and as they become more confident can add their own feeds, create their own pages, flakes, tabs etc.

I started playing with the Setúbal bloggers group - fun not work, but a smiliar principle. We are bloggers in Setúbal who meet up for dinners, walks etc. and have recently started a Google group. Among other things I want to put together the feeds of people's blogs, our shared tags in flickr, del.icio.us etc., share a calendar and see the messages from Google group.

Other people should be able to edit it. Ideally, I'd like to be able to add a Pageflakes tab to a Netvibes one and vice versa.

This is my Pageflakes experiment:

I found Pageflakes easy to use and it has a tidy layout, even if it is a bit square. It has three language interfaces - English, German and Portuguese. I couldn't find a flake for Technorati tags (which I like in Netvibes). But the absolute best thing about Pageflakes is the sharing options. I can make the link public or share it with certain people, and above all I can share the editing with selected people - in this case it would be fellow bloggers.  The big downside is that some feeds just did not add to the page, including some blogs and the feed from G-groups. I can't for the life of me think why. The public site has a nice, tidy URL: http://www.pageflakes.com/btrayner.ashx

 

And this is Netvibes:

Netvibes is what I use for my desktop, so I would prefer to use Netvibes. But I would love to be able to add a Pageflake to my Netvibes tabs rather than moving between different desktops for different groups/projects (which would rather defeat the objective). I prefer the visual aspect of Netvibes and like having Technorati blog search and Google maps, among other things. BTW Netvibes has interfaces in lots of languages, even distinguishing Portuguese (PT) and Portuguese (BR). But the problem is in sharing the editing of the page. I can make the page public in a URL of 166 characters (!!!!!) but I can't share the editing. And what's more, this shared link doesn't show all the content that I have on the Netvibes tab, nor does it have the photos or the google group. A_N_D the link takes you to a general tab for Netvibes and you have to notice the tab for SetubalNow to get the right page. But that's no good because people who aren't used to tools don't click about to find things. You have to send them directly to the exact place, otherwise they give up.

So neither Pageflakes or Netvibes is going to work? I can't get all the feeds I want on Pageflake  and I can't successfully share Netvibes, nor its editing. Any suggestions?

technorati tags:netvibes, pageflakes

Domain names - different prices

I've just been shopping around for a .pt domain name. And am suprised at the difference in price:

Uniweb - 39 euros

Dominios - 25 euros

Domain name shop - 168 pounds sterling for two years

European Domain Centre - 100 euros

Cgest - 15 euros

technorati tags:domain

Social communities as checklist items

In a post about "the habits of highly effective Web2.0 sites" Dion Hinchliffe writes about the essentials of leveraging Web2.0. One of those essentials is:

Don’t create social communities just to have them. They aren’t a checklist item.  But do empower inspired users to create them.

And that really rings home for me.

I often get asked the question: "Which platform should we use?"

Or someone says: "We want a community in our organisation. Tell us how to start one."

(And usually those questions come just before saying "And our deadline is next week ... " )

However, if they asked me: "how do we empower inspired people to create communities of practice?" or, if they said: "Hey Bev, how do we trigger inventive people to start creating with these new technologies?"  then I would know we were really onto something.

In the meantime I am beginning to realise that there is a space for bridges between those highly effective Web2.0 users and those people who have realised that social communities are more than a checklist item. And, as usual, I find myself thinking of how to architect those bridges.

Oh, what's that I hear someone say? Do I find myself navigating between two languages again?

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Too efficient for my own good

This is like a dream come true. A mail application with tags, project categories and one-click addition to my iCalendar. On both incoming and outgoing messages.

All that in MailTags 2.0 (for Macs)

Wow!

technorati tags:mac

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Warning - Powerpoint 2004 can make your files disappear

I have been working on a Powerpoint presentation for a couple of days. The first time it disappeared - after six hours work on it - I thought it must be something I had done. But it was extraordinary how it just completely disappeared from my computer. There was no trace of it anywhere at all. And I mean nowhere.

After some tears I recuperated. And have spent another six hours working on it. And now has disappeared again. And I mean disappeared. It is absolutely nowehere to be seen. A quick search and I find that I'm not the first. On cnet reviews - in November 2005 - they say that "It turns out Microsoft is aware of this bug, but has yet to post a fix."

I guess it was a bug and that it has a patch somewhere. But  how come I haven't been notified about it?  How come I recently bought a legal copy of Office through Amazon and I don't automatically get notified with updates?

I'm so furious. And so very tired. So much work for absolutely nothing.

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Lively remembering - not to be forgotten

This week has been busy so I'm still catching up on last week's thoughts. After the Prato Dialogue, we did a workshop at the Community Informatics Conference in Italy.

It didn't turn out as we expected. Our plan was to use photos and del.icio.us and the blog - during the workshop - as memories of what we were doing. We were doing "lively remembering" rather than talking about it - that's the CoP perspective bit.

The main desvio in the workshop came from taking photographs. We didn't ask for permission first. I kicked myself because I've always been very sensitive about taking photos. As a child living and traveling in sensitive African countries and with many Muslims, I was conditioned to think that taking photos would cause offence at best and get you beaten or arrested at worst.

Then there was the time when my mum built her website - around ten years ago. She put a photo of her and her four daughters on it. I was shocked that she could contemplate being so public and made her blank out my face!

But I've gone from feeling self-conscious about taking photos to treating it in the same way as I do taking written notes. And the issues and ethics around private and public have changed and become more complex.

Making artifacts private, including photos, often makes less them less accessible to the community they belong to. For example, you take photos of a group event and put them in flickr. If you mark the photos as private, then to access the photos people need a flickr account and be your contact or join a group. But most people I work with can't (don't) manage to work with flickr. Only if I make the photos public, or even embed them in a flickr badge on their site, can the community take ownership of their photos and the community experience.

In conclusion, I don't feel like I've come any closer to resolving an ongoing tension between reifying an experience (or not), where to locate the memory of a community that they can take ownership of it, and how to make it private without it becoming inaccessible or forgotten.

technorati tags:memory, Prato2006

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Women's talk

There was a time when women came together to exchange knitting patterns and and recipes. I would have greeted my female friends with homemade cookies and a tidy house. Or, perhaps we would have talked of sex, women's rights and politics.

As it is, I phone on my mobile to say I'm running late. She's waiting at the door when I arrive. Before there's time for the kettle to boil, our Macs are out and we're on the sofa sharing new sites and applications.

Lucy, as of the former Vitriolica Webb's Ite and now of Blogzira, shows me how to make podcasts with Garage Band (including music and pictures). Lucy gets excited by Flock, Moo and netvibes and I am amazed at the visuals and the design of the Etsy site ("your place to buy and sell all things hand made").

Time passes in an instant. Before we know it, two hours have passed and Lucy has to collect the kids from school. I pass on a great tip for never spending more than ten minutes in preparing del.icio.us ... I mean delicious.... dinners for the family.

Laptops back in shoulder bags and rucksacks ... and we hurry back to our respective lives. So much fun to be had on our computers - interrupted only by work and family and people!

technorati tags:learning, women

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A discussion forum mindset?

I've been observing how there is a "generation" of people who have become so used to using discussion forums that they have difficulty in seeing online interactions outside that lens.

A discussion forum is more organised, predictable and tidy than blogs and tags and feeds. Also a facilitator (or teacher) is still able to manage and direct the conversations - by approving members, setting permissions, deciding topics, moderating discussions etc.

Managing a discussion forum is also seen by many people as requiring quite a high level technology know-how. And there's a status from having that know-how.

That has got me wondering if those people who haven't even yet entered the world of discussion forums would find it easier  or less easy to enter the more messy, unpredictable and less controlable world of blogging and feeds.

These thoughts have been simmering away as I prepared the CIARIS Friends Meeting site using Drupal. The important place for interactions is through blogging and using feeds inside the site and from outside the site (outside in this case are del.icio.us and flickr feeds), and syndication of course. The discussion forums are the least interesting part of Drupal, but I've incorporated them because it's what some people will be expecting.

I was fascinated when an experienced online facilitator described his moves when he entered the CIAIRS site. His eye immediately ran down the left side of the screen to look for discussion topics. He dismissed  blogs as irrelevant (as who would be keeping a blog here?) He clicked on forums, saw there were no discussions and left the site.

Drupal can be used as a real hybrid genre. It incorporates (or can incorporate) blogs, wikis, tags and discussion forums. Among other things you can write book pages (that make a book) and have projects. It can also look like a website or a blog. It's this messy combination of technologies and genres that is Drupal's strength - but does that mean only people with messy mindsets who let go control can realise its potential?

Multi-channeling

I've  been waiting for  Swarm-it to be released and here it is.  I'm certain it's the way forward, especially when you have some people in communities who have easier access to a mobile phone than to internet connection. Ahem - like most people in the world.

It is a multi-channel mobile group messaging system, so you can send messages to and from mobile phones and/or email and/or IM. And it works with different mobile operators. I think this is a major leap forward and I can't wait to try it out with a group, or rather, what they call a swarm. There is a group message board for each swarm and with a logo option. It's very simple to set up. Lots of potential - and farewell stuffy message boards!

There is a free version and a Pro version and I wasn't clear if everyone in the "swarm" has to pay for the Pro version, or just the person who creates the swarm. It is something that really needs to have interfaces in other languages, because many of the people who could really benefit from it are people who don't (easily) operate in English.