I just got a phone call out of the blue from a representative at the Royal Bank Visa credit centre, asking me to verify some recent suspicious purchases.
My visa was just used to purchase $4 worth of something in Czechoslovakia, then $1500 worth of diamonds in Spain. Holy crap. She said it’s nothing that I’ve done wrong, that the Evil Thieves are able to get credit card numbers from literally anywhere (like, for instance, the huge database theft that hit the parent company of HomeSense, where hundreds of thousands of visa billing records were stolen, likely a few of mine in there as well).
Cole posted something yesterday about rethinking how he handles photos of his family on Flickr. It sparked something (as his posts often do) that I’ve been rolling around in the back of my head for awhile. I’ve put a whole schwack of photos of Evan on Flickr. Nothing I’d worry about the Evil Internet People getting their furry little paws on, but lots of photos of him doing all kinds of fun stuff.
We’ve been running a copy of Mantis here in the Teaching & Learning Centre to track bugs and issues in our projects for a couple of years now. And over the last few months, there have been a couple of accounts created per day in an attempt to proliferate spam. They create an account, with the URL pointing somewhere spamworthy, and then never post any content.
Does anyone know why someone would try to target spam at Mantis? I can’t see how that would gain them Google juice, so I’m boggled that someone’s taken the time to tweak a bot to hit Mantis.
Twitter is essentially nanoblogging (I just made that word up) - stuff that is more of a quick “I’m doing this right now” kind of status update rather than a blog post. You create a set of “friends” and get to see updates in almost realtime of what they’re up to. Right now.
In a recent project meeting, we were tossing around ideas for workshops to conduct in 2007, and I’ve taken on a series of topics that could be loosely described as “new tools and strategies”. Here’s the current short list of workshops I’m planning to develop (and later conduct) through the TLC. Any glaring omissions?
Creative Commons (copyright and IP in general, and how they affect sharing and reusing available work)
Flickr. As a source of Creative Commons images for use, and as a potential tool for teaching and learning.
Google Earth. Basic overview, as well as an intro to some of the cool add-ons (geology, politics, etc…)
eXe - eLearning XML editor (for ePortfolios or personal websites)
WordPress.com (setting up a blog for free in seconds)
weblogs.ucalgary.ca (participating in the blog community on campus)
Drupal for websites and communities
Moodle (? this might be counterproductive, given Bb’s role on our campus…)
Social bookmarking (del.icio.us for distributed tagging of resources)
Google Docs
I’ve left off a couple of items on purpose because I want to be doing things that aren’t already running in full hype mode (podcasting and secondlife are fine on their own). I’m hoping to be showing stuff that might be flying under the radar (at least to most faculty on campus - many of the items on my list are completely taken for granted by tech types)
I should warn, though, that since I am not a geologist (I don’t even play one on TV) and since it’s first thing in the morning, I do get some stuff mixed up. Just cringe, push through it, and look at the bigger picture - an interactive 3D geology simulation powered by Google Earth and freely available information.
I want to preface this post by saying I’m not trying to attack SecondLife, nor any of its supporters. My sole intention is to identify what I see as some important issues that need to be addressed when individuals and organizations investigate moving into SecondLife. There are many people doing very cool work in SecondLife, and I respect them for it. I now pull on my asbestos underoos…
I’ve been following much of the SecondLife cheerleading over the last year, watching as it got hyped higher and higher as The Next Big Thing That Will Change Everything. And I’ve been getting more and more nervous about it. As a piece of technology, SecondLife is really amazing. It’s a seamless integration of multiple virtual realities, providing ways for individuals to come together and interact, create, and play in a pretty impressive 3D environment. My issues aren’t with SecondLife, per se, but its elevated status on top of the hype pyramid as something that will revolutionize business and education.
While Malcom Gladwell (and Howard Moscowitz) were describing the need for different varieties addressing different preferences, Barry Schwartz warns about the far side of that slippery slope. Having too much choice is paradoxically not a freedom-inspiring situation. Instead, an overabundance of choice does a couple things:
Brian wrote about about the EDUCAUSE ELI web seminar on net gen learners , and after reading that post and the great comments, I got to thinking about the overgeneralization of the mythical “Digital Native”. Fast forward to this morning’s bus ride, where I’m watching Malcom Gladwell’s presentation at TED2004. Now, Malcom is the author of The Tipping Point , so I was expecting some discussion of how small changes build up to affect large, even transformative effects. But, he wound up talking about something so much more interesting, and likely more important to my perception of students. Spaghetti sauce. No, really.
I picked up a new camera case backpack on the weekend. I’d been using a small LowePro Rezo TLZ 10, which was handy for carrying the XT with the kit lens, and a spare battery. But that was it. And Janice kept calling it my “purse”. It felt like a purse, too. I wound up using it most of the time without the strap, just to protect my camera when stuffing it inside my backpack. I bought the Canon Gadget Bag with the camera, which is a nice storage and transport case, but not really something you want to lug around for long.
