My travel for the 2007 Open Education conference in Logan, Utah was approved. I've never been to Open Education, but it sounds like an amazing event. And, to top it off, I get to present with Jim, hang out with Brian and Scott, and meet David in person.

I still need to figure out the logistics - there aren't any direct flights from Calgary to Logan, so I guess I'll fly to Salt Lake City and hitchhike the rest of the way.

I've been experimenting with a copy of BlogBridge Feed Library, to test it out for possible deployment for use by students and faculty here at UCalgary. It's not an official project, but I think it's important enough to warrant investigation. What is BlogBridge Feed Library (BBFL)? From their website:

Feed Library (FL) creates a flexible web based structure to showcase Feeds, Reading Lists and Podcasts to employees in your company, or members of your organization. It will be the 'store' where users can browse and search for recommendations of content to read with their Aggregators. And, here's the important point: these are recommendations by people in your organization for people in your organization.

It's a directory. Of feeds. That can be distributed across the internets, and organized in any fashion. It's been running the Expert Guides section of Blogbridge's website for several months, and has provided a pretty cool resource for finding and subscribing to feeds. It's very cool, in that it doesn't try to do too much. It doesn't pretend to be an aggregator. It's just a directory. It provides friendly ways to preview feeds right in the directory, and to subscribe to groups of feeds via OPML representing folders within the directory. Aggregation is left to the individual's taste in applications. Any feed reader that groks OPML will play nicely with the great directory OPML features. And any app can, of course, subscribe to the individual feeds.

It's a really great directory application, and has been running well in production on BlogBridge's server for some time now. But it needs some love if it's going to thrive in an academic environment.

Currently, there is a small group of trusted stewards, or "Experts" that are given folders of feeds to manage. That's fine when there may be a dozen or two contributing "Experts" - but how does that scale to a class with 20, 60, or 300 students? How does that scale to an institutional level with 30,000 students and hundreds of faculty playing in the pool? How do you refine control so that a student can add their feeds to the appropriate places, without having to go through a central gatekeeper?

I just went to renew my long-expired .Mac account. It's only $99.95, and with the new iLife'08 stuff, and syncing, I thought it might be time to re-up. Went to the .Mac website, where I was greeted by a "Welcome back! We missed you!" message. That's sweet. I see the $99.95 subscription, and click through to the .Mac Currency Table to see what the Canadian rate is. And, surprisingly, they're asking a $34 premium just because I'm in Canada.

I've been completely addicted to the Sharkrunners game hosted by The Discovery Channel. It's a promotional/educational tool, aligned with their "Shark Week" sweeps week ratings booster. It uses real shark data to position 6 sharks off the southwest coast of California. You are given a boat (not quite a ship) and a few crew members. You have to plot your course to meet up with the sharks, and decide how to collect data. You get dollars for collecting good research data, which can be used to improve the boat, acquire better gear, or to hire new crew members.

I just got a note from Pito Salas over at Blogbridge, and it looks like my Edublogs Guide was the most popular guide on the service for the month of July! That Guide is the snapshot of my Edublogs reading list in BlogBridge, so it's cool to see that it's coming in handy for someone.

Or, is someone just using it as a starting point for some Pipes/GoogleMashup/OPML automated coolness? Either way, Edublogs kicked ass and took names in July.

I got tagged. I'm taking the easy way out and recycling my responses to the "5 things meme" of 2006 (aren't blog archives handy? ;-) ) and adding 3 new ones.

1. I once "flew" a 747 when I was about 6 years old. The Captain invited me up to the cockpit, stuck some wings on me, and handed me the controls. He told me not to crash the plane, and the co-pilot was also on his controls, but to a 6 year old, that was pretty cool. Of course, now they'd have a sniper take me down if I got close to the cabin door, and TSA would accuse me of trying to bring the plane down with a BoogerBomb or something. The times, they are a'changin'.
2. I once shared a plane with an intoxicated Leslie Nielsen. Stop calling me Shirley!
3. I watched the Simpsons Movie, and laughed so hard I nearly sprayed coke all over the guy in front of me. My face hurt from laughing. OK, so I'm rather juvenile...

I'm not tagging anyone. This branch dies with me.

We went to the Zoo today, and I brought along the Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 USM MK II lens. I wanted to try getting up close and personal with some of the animals, which is something I hadn't really tried before. I've usually gone with the point-and-shoot, or just the kit 18-55mm lens on the XT. This was the first time I tried shooting animals at 300mm. I wound up taking 178 photographs. I kept 18, and I'm really quite happy with the shots that survived the cut.

I passed the 1500km mark on the way home today. At 26km/day, I'm hoping to add at least another 1000km before the riding season ends. Following Dave King's lead, I'm taking a photo at every 100km rollover. Here's what 1500km looked like:

I'm more than a little crazy for even thinking of doing this, but what the heck. I'm going to try submitting a photo to the inaugural contest. The rules are pretty strict with respect to model releases and any potentially copyrightable works included in photographs (models must provide signed releases, artists must provide copyright release for any sculptures, etc... shown in the photograph).

With those limitations in mind, I've selected 7 contenders from the last year. I can't decide which, if any, to actually submit.

I just stumbled across this on Kris Krug's blog. Not sure how many Famous Photographers are in the pool of options, but it pegged me as His Adamsness...

OK. I admit it. I'm watching American Inventor.

And I just can't stop wanting to scream at the TV "The solution to burning christmas trees isn't a fancy invention for fire suppression. STOP PUTTING FIRE HAZARDS IN YOUR HOUSE."

There. That's my invention. Leave the trees outside. Fires suppressed. I haven't had a real christmas tree inside the house for, what? A quarter century?

Now, where's my million dollars?

I listened to the podcast while riding home this afternoon, so I couldn't respond in real-time. Here's hoping my memory isn't completely jumbled, because there were several things I wanted to respond to. I couldn't find an entry for episode 28 on the ETS Talk site, so here goes...

iPhone - I agree that the iPhone is an amazingly compelling device. Even if it was just a wifi-enabled iPod that allowed web browsing and email, it would be worth the money. If I was in charge of a department, I would issue each staff/faculty member an iPhone (unactivated - they can activate or migrate their own cell phone plans if needed). It would be money well spent, in order to have everyone able to play with the various collaboration apps we all use, anytime/anywhere.