Offline this week I learned that there’s literally two types of people in the world (Dweck was correct!), that ‘female festive frenzy’ is now a term in general use, and that brandy hot chocolate is almost always better without the chocolate… :-p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW50

Technology

• If you go to the ‘Advanced Settings’ for Google search, you can now get readability guidance for each result. You’ll be glad to know that this blog comes up as ‘Basic reading level’. Clear writing FTW!
• Dropbox is now available for Teams. Looks like a good deal for small businesses, although I think they’ve missed a trick by not also targetting education. This would be awesome for educational institutions!
• Google have turned on desktop editor for Google Docs. GigaOM also has the best explanation ever of why I use Apple stuff.
• The GSMA Development Fund has published their mLearning report. Interesting reading! [PDF]
• Malcolm Gladwell discusses the ‘affordances’ of paper and why it’s an accident of history that we consider tech in any way superior to it.

Productivity, Inspiration & Motivation

• Here’s 7 things you should stop doing at work. I’m pretty good at avoiding them, but it’s always worth being reminded!
• Want to leave your soul-crushing day job? Here’s how.
• Jason Fried posted this quotation over at 37 Signals this week. Spot. On.

You probably only have to interrupt someone a couple times a day before they’re unable to work on hard problems at all. (Paul Graham)

• Do you feel like you do ‘fake work’? Here’s how to spot it and deal with it.
• Your job is a platform for what you do. So sayeth Seth Godin (with my blessing, obviously)

Education & Academic

• Really interesting stuff over at SmartMobs about ‘Lévy flights’. Also a useful link to the Cooperation Commons.

[T]here is a class of random walks called Lévy flights, which include occasional long-distance jumps. The distribution of step sizes is described by a power law, which means that there are steps of all sizes and no well-defined “average” step size, at least for one class of Lévy flights. They have been observed in various natural settings, most famously in the search strategy of certain animals when food is scarce. For example, hungry sharks will typically scour back and forth over small areas, but if the search is fruitless, they will intermittently “jump” to new, far-off areas [1]. “People have also [studied] Lévy flights in stock prices, epidemics, and small world networks,” says Ajay Gopinathan, from the University of California, Merced.

• Rueben Puentedura, he of SAMR model fame, has posted three recent presentations he’s given to his blog.
• Jim Groom is running a MOOC on Digital Storytelling.
• Stephen Downes links to Dave Cormier’s videos explaining what MOOCs are (nicely done!)
• UNESCO and EU publications. You’ve got to love them. The former have announced a policy framework around ICT compentency for teachers. Which will be ignored by Gove.

Data, Design & Infographics

• Google have announced their 2010 Zeitgeist of popular searches. What’s even more awesome is that Paul Lewis, a friend of mine helped code it!
• Lifehacker have rounded up their most popular photography tips, tricks and hacks of 2010. Which is very nice of them, really.
• Like retro travel posters? Like superheroes? Then you’ll love these:

• And whilst we’re on the topic of superheroes, this minimalist poster of well-known characters is just fantastic:

• I have issues with the relevance of their data, but MIT don’t half make some pretty visualisations. This one shows the strength of ties between areas of the UK based (I think) on landline phone calls. And who makes those any more?

Miscellaneous

• With the imminent arrival of Belshaw Junior Mk.2 this zero-to-ten year timelapse is begging to be replicated:

• Everyone’s got to have a business plan. Even a pimp.
• I think this may be the most important Wikileak of them all [context]
• Check out the Top 10 Weird New Animals according to National Geographic. These have all been discovered in 2010. The Sneezing Snub-nosed Monkey looks interesting. Shame the only known example was shot and eaten…
• Why did people stop wearing hats?

Quotations

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. (George Orwell)

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. (Albert Camus)

The people who matter will recognise who you are. (Alan Cohen)

Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun. (Mary Lou Cook)

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image CC BY auspices

Offline this week I learned to fly direct and take only carry-on luggage where possible, that the UK is ridiculously underprepared for snow compared to other European countries, and that thrash metal isn’t as bad as you’d think… :-p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW49

Tech.

• I’m far from the only one who found the Wikileaks ‘cablegate’ affair more than mildly disturbing. The US government were able to get the site shut down because ‘wikileaks.com’ is resolved via something called ‘DNS’ to a particular IP address of a computer connected to the internet. To prevent such shutdowns happening again, the bittorrent community is working on a decentralised .p2p top-level domain suffix. Awesome.
• In a world of quick tweets and retweets, it’s good to know where the facts are. Check out Channel 4′s FactCheck blog (it’s also on Twitter, appropriately)
• Don’t use Twitter’s version of retweets. It stops real conversation.
• Viber is an iPhone app (Android, etc. coming soon) that integrates your existing contacts, without signup, to allow for Skype-like Voice-over-IP goodness. Engadget has an overview.
• Concerned about people using things like Firesheep when you’re on an unsecured public network? Using a Mac? You need this.

Productivity & Inspiration

• Seth Godin reckons you – yes, you – are the worst manager in the world. Why? Because at the end of the day we’re all really self-employed:

If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talked to you, you’d quit. If you had a boss that wasted as much as your time as you do, they’d fire her. If an organization developed its employees as poorly as you are developing yourself, it would soon go under.

• Where and when are you most productive? For me, it’s leaning back slightly, coffee and water on-hand with music on. In other words, when I’m by myself. Granted, there’s times when I need to be with others for collaboration and the social element, but not 9am-5pm every day. Check out this TEDx video from Jason Fried, author of ReWork and this blog post. I really like his points about “trading in your work day for a series of work moments”  by going to the office and the relationship between sleep and work. More about this at Michael Hyatt’s blog.

• When I’ve got more information to synthesise than I can possibly handle, I print out stuff and let it ‘stew’ in my study. There’s a time when it all comes together. That’s why I really like this post which can be summed up as “don’t try too hard”. Strange, but true.
• I found this post on three types of procrastination really interesting – especially the third: “we procrastinate because at some level we can’t accept the larger meaning of our actions.”
• Getting people onboard, agreeing with you and motivated to do things on your behalf is an important life skill. Check out this post about the genius of Bill Clinton’s Reality Distortion Field (especially the video)

Education & Academic

• ALT is taking over Becta’s ICT in Education Research Network discussion list (in association with Naace). Scroll down to List 4 here to join (or rejoin).
• As a Philosophy graduate I do, of course, think that everyone should have some grounding in Philosophy. I’ll be using resources like this one with my children as they grow up.
• On the subject of my children (one soon to be born, one four next month) I’m really concerned about the education they’ll receive in England. And I speak as a former teacher and senior leader in secondary schools with a wife who’s still a primary school teacher. What should my four year-old know? asked one worried mother. Check out the response:

1. She should know that she is loved wholly and unconditionally, all of the time.
2. He should know that he is safe and he should know how to keep himself safe in public, with others, and in varied situations. He should know that he can trust his instincts about people and that he never has to do something that doesn’t feel right, no matter who is asking. He should know his personal rights and that his family will back them up.
3. She should know how to laugh, act silly, be goofy and use her imagination. She should know that it is always okay to paint the sky orange and give cats 6 legs.
4. He should know his own interests and be encouraged to follow them. If he could care less about learning his numbers, his parents should realize he’ll learn them accidentally soon enough and let him immerse himself instead in rocket ships, drawing, dinosaurs or playing in the mud.
5. She should know that the world is magical and that so is she. She should know that she’s wonderful, brilliant, creative, compassionate and marvelous. She should know that it’s just as worthy to spend the day outside making daisy chains, mud pies and fairy houses as it is to practice phonics. Scratch that– way more worthy.

• Tom Barrett has been using QR codes with in Early Years. Awesome.
• Simon Bostock is organising a group (including me) to produce a Learning Experience Digest. The idea? To make some of that ‘web-hating stuff’ (PDFs and the like) searchable and linkable. We’re all going to contribute something every month. Do join us. Oh, and I just have to repost one of the images that Simon used to illustrate that post (click here if you don’t get it!)

Bonus: via Simon, the Boyer model of scholarship (scroll down to colourful table at the bottom). I think I’d like to have my finger in all of those pies please.

Data, Design & Infographics

• It’s great when people do new things with webdesign. I’ve certainly not seen anything like this before! (scroll down)
• I’ve seen this before, but was reminded of it again this week: You Suck At Powerpoint! (best viewed fullscreen – click on ‘Menu’)

• David McCandless at Information is Beautiful posted a ‘thought piece’ this week on a potential hierarchy of visual understanding. What do you think? Is he onto something? I do.

• McCandless has also looked at the effectiveness of those recent ‘personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’. Wow!

Misc.

• Adam Curtis has an interesting BBC blog post on how the UK coalition government’s new ‘Behavioural Insights Unit’ is a return to Skinner’s behaviourism (and why that’s dangerous)
• What would happen if you got a bit of every element in the periodic table and rammed them together at 99.99% of the speed of light? Probably nothing very interesting, as it turns out.
• Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, reckons that what goes on in most financial centres such as Wall Street is ‘socially useless activity’. Great article in The New Yorker:

In effect, many of the big banks have turned themselves from businesses whose profits rose and fell with the capital-raising needs of their clients into immense trading houses whose fortunes depend on their ability to exploit day-to-day movements in the markets. Because trading has become so central to their business, the big banks are forever trying to invent new financial products that they can sell but that their competitors, at least for the moment, cannot. Some recent innovations, such as tradeable pollution rights and catastrophe bonds, have provided a public benefit. But it’s easy to point to other innovations that serve little purpose or that blew up and caused a lot of collateral damage, such as auction-rate securities and collateralized debt obligations.

• You can ‘beatbox’ with Google Translate. No, seriously.
• I love this collection of car-focused hack posts at Lifehacker. Especially the Nike+ central locking hack!

Quotations

You just can’t beat the person who won’t give up. (Babe Ruth)

Leap and the net will appear. (Julia Cameron)

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy. (Sir Isaac Newton)

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat. (Sartre)

The greatest motivational act one can do for another is to listen. (Roy E Moody)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image by me on Thursday in Berlin

Offline this week I learned to buy more bags of winter grit than I think I need, to do exercise even when it’s too slippery to go running outside, and that a bad seated posture can give you headaches.

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW48

Tech.

• Want to test out Ubuntu Server? Do it for free, paid for by Canonical, here!
• Wow. Rome ‘rebuilt in a day’ using Flickr photographs and a home PC (albeit with 4 graphics cards)
• Roll audio you find around the web into your own podcast using Huffduffer.
• Upgraded your iPad to 4.2? Missing the ability to lock your screen’s orientation? Here’s how to do it quickly and easily.
• Imagine a layer on top of websites that you could write on and leave notes at for friends. It’s here. It’s called Glass.

Productivity & Inspiration

• Recognising the situation you’re in is half-way to solving the problem. Are you a product of Digital Taylorism?
• Seth Godin tells us (some of the places) where ideas come from.
• Create then tweet.
• Gandhi’s ‘be the change you want to see’ is one of the quotations by which I try to live. That’s why I found these 5 life lessons from the great man so interesting. I especially liked number 5:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts.  Your thoughts become your words.  Your words become your actions.  Your actions become your habits.  Your habits become your values.  Your values become your destiny.”

• Want to be creative and productive. Abandon crap.

Education & Academic

• There’s lots of TED Talks. That’s why this list of some of them, divided by subject area, is pretty useful.
• I’m a bit sad that Joss Winn has decided to quit Twitter. But not only did he explain why, but he posted how he works on the web. Some really interesting stuff here, and some things to emulate.
• Summarity is a bookmarklet that auto-summarises text. Potentially useful in the classroom and for academic papers, although it didn’t do so well this this blog. Perhaps I write weirdly.
• McDonalds is launching a degree in business management, accredited by Manchester Metropolitan University. Unbelievable, but true.
• I wouldn’t bother reading Michael Gove’s Education White Paper. There’s a lot of hot air and propaganda and meaningless ‘we know that…’ statements. I’d just read the NASUWT’s response and this Guardian article instead. They tells you everything you need to know about this ‘assault on schools’.

Data, Design & Infographics

• The 4_21 polytype is, apparently, “most geometrically complex and aesthetically beautiful structure in mathematics” and “models all interactions and transformations between known and postulated sub-atomic particles.” It’s so complex that machines can’t draw it (because they can’t draw perfect circles). This is hand-drawn to a tolerance of 1/10,000:

• BBC News magazine has a really interesting article on diagrams that changed the world. I like their description of the power of a diagram being “to crystallise a new way of seeing the world”.
• I love the music of Tycho. But I had no idea that Scott Hansen, the man behind the moniker, was such a talented graphic designer as well! Blog here.
• Like many people, I’m super-excited and can’t wait for Tron Legacy to come out – especially as the music’s by Daft Punk. GeekDad did a post on the art of Tron Legacy. Un-frickin’-believable.

• Nathan Yau of Flowing Data has a handy tutorial on bubble charts. I tell you, a good bubble chart, á la Hans Rosling is all kinds of awesome.

Misc.

• How to count using only one hand:

• I know I should expect it having seen some of them before and watching Mad Men, but 48 ads that would never be allowed today does really make you realise how much society’s changed. The pig slicing himself into ham is disturbingly funny though.
• This VW advert never made it onto TV. As the father of a 3 year-old literally laughed out loud:

• A plaque found above a men’s urinal at a store selling diamond engagement rings. Is it reverse psychology or reverse-reverse psychology?

• Wow. Just wow. Ants imitate liquids – check this out!

Quotations

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. (Goethe)

I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed. (Shakespeare)

Success or failure is caused more by mental attitude than by mental capacity. (Sir Walter Scott)

A problem is a chance for you to do your best. (Duke Ellington)

The way to succeed is to double your failure rate. (Thomas Watson, founder of IBM)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image CC BY paul (dex)

Offline this week I learned that large beanbags offer the most comfortable typing position ever, not to drink cheap red wine, and that the seats by the Chinese books in Newcastle City Library are almost always vacant…

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW47

Tech.

• Not only have we in the UK got a complete muppet in charge of education policy, but Ed Vaizey, the communications minister, seems to be taking lessons from him. He’s not a fan of net neutrality, but at least the BBC are helping us fight back (a bit).
• Finally! You can now (or will be able to soon, when it’s rolled out to everyone) edit your Google Docs on mobile devices.
• If you have ever had to deal with metadata, you will laugh at this:

• Simply logging-off from Facebook isn’t good enough for some teenagers. The ‘super-logoff’ is where it’s at.
• 5 ways the mobile phone is changing the world.

Productivity & Inspiration

• Scott Adams, creator Dilbert has an excellent blog. It strikes a balance between plausible and very, very funny. I actually think his point about creativity flourishing when you’re slightly hungry is spot-on. I often forget to eat when ‘in the zone’ thesis-writing.
• Seth Godin talks about pressure and embracing fear:

James Bond is a hero because the tougher the world got, the cooler he got. Symphony conductors don’t endure the pressure of a performance, they thrive on it.

If being a little behind creates self-pressure that leads to stress and then errors, it’s no wonder you frequently end up a lot behind. If the way you manage your brand inevitably leads to a ceaseless race to the bottom, it’s no wonder that you’re struggling. A small bump gets magnified and repeated until it overwhelms.

• A while ago I linked to the Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘don’t break the chain’ method of productivity. Here it is on steroids.
• Here’s four ways mindmaps help you be more creative. (*note to self: write post on how I use mindmaps + wikis + Scrivener*)
• A great corrective to metrics and quantitative data is 5 Unusual Ways To Measure Your Online Reputation. Got me thinking.

Education & Academic

• The ‘Justice’ course at Harvard is its most popular. Now you can join in and debate where Jack Bauer should torture people.
• Love him or hate him, Stephen Downes knows his stuff:

The person whose voice is most respected in any group is not the person who leads, or is smartest, or is even right. It is the person perceived by the rest to have the least self-interest, the person who is there to help rather than the person who is there to pursue an agenda or toot their own horn. A minute spent helping the other person achieve their ends (which are often not even in conflict with yours) is far more productive than a minute spent arguing with them.

• I love the fact that social networks such as Twitter coupled with the blogs and random stuff people collect allow me to peer into their thoughts. Take Joss Winn’s things that stick, for example, which turned up this gem recently:

Historically regimes do undergo radical change. Succession tends to begin within a network of pioneering organisations, technologies and users that form a niche practice on the margins. Niche situations (e.g. unusual applications,demonstration programmes, social movements) provide space for new ideas, artefacts, and practices to develop without full exposure to the range of processes channeling regime development

…

Niche-based approaches explore problem framings (e.g.mobility, food, energy services) and search for solutions – in contrast to technology demonstration projects that begin with ‘technical solutions’ to tightly framed problems. Niche practices that resonate with widespread public concern sometimes catch on, get copied, become adapted and spread.

• Futurelab has a new report out about the use of console games in schools by the pioneers up at Learning and Teaching Scotland.
• I don’t usually post job opportunities, but Google are looking for a Head of Enterprise Apps for Education in London. I’d consider applying if it wasn’t in London! (let me know if you’d like me to highlight job posts people like you and me would want)

Data, Design & Infographics

• Web typography can be as simple as replacing the font of a website’s title (like Synechism). Smashing Magazine goes further with 100 educational resources, tools and techniques.
• Tilt-shift photography is fantastic:

• 20 Things I Learned is a wonderful example of what CSS3, the power of Google, and some design thinking can bring you.
• Animated gifs created from seminal films. Freaky. And here’ how to create your own.

• View your LinkedIn career history as a ‘tree’. Here’s mine:

Misc.

• Best. Autocorrect. Ever.

• Humans really do have ‘psychic powers’. Says magician turned psychologist.
• Yes, that’s a baby monkey riding on a pig’s back. Which inspired a song. That you can buy on iTunes. We live in crazy times.

• Security or security theatre? The below exchange is unbelievable, but funny. Unlike this.

So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the Soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers. The conversation went something like this:

TSA Guy: You can’t take those on the plane.

Soldier: What? I’ve had them since we left country.

TSA Guy: You’re not suppose to have them.

Soldier: Why?

TSA Guy: They can be used as a weapon.

Soldier: [touches butt stock of the rifle] But this actually is a weapon. And I’m allowed to take it on.

TSA Guy: Yeah but you can’t use it to take over the plane. You don’t have bullets.

Soldier: And I can take over the plane with nail clippers?

TSA Guy: [awkward silence]

Me: Dude, just give him your damn nail clippers so we can get the f**k out of here. I’ll buy you a new set.

Soldier: [hands nail clippers to TSA guy, makes it through security]

This might be a good time to remind everyone that approximately 233 people re-boarded that plane with assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns-but nothing that could have been used as a weapon.

• Pointless or profound? You decide. 4’33″ is silence ‘played’ by a full orcehstra:

Quotations

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. (Samuel Johnson)

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. (George Bernard Shaw)

Strength is a matter of a made up mind. (John Beecher)

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake. (P. D. Ouspensky)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image CC BY-SA joiseyshowaa

Offline this week I learned that Twitter is often a quicker and easier place to sell things than eBay, that eagerly pulling decals off a car will can also remove the paintwork, and more than I could ever summarize in one blog post (or indeed the introduction to one) at Interesting North…

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW46

Tech.

• Want a free, Open Source alternative to Garageband for audio editing? Try Jokosher!
• Just as the Wii remote was hacked to work with all sorts of stuff including rolling your own interactive whiteboard, so it looks like Microsoft’s Kinect is going to be more than just an Xbox phenomenon…
• Good news! TalkTalk and BT have forced a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act.
• It turns out I’m not the only one who sends ridiculous (but funny) messages due to my smartphone’s autocorrect.
• BBC’s iPlayer is going global.

Productivity & Inspiration

• I’ve always fancied the idea of having a ‘virtual assistant’ but didn’t really know what to expect. This guest post at Tim Ferriss’ blog is a goldmine for those considering hiring one!
• The secret of ‘great men’? Deliberate practice.
• Some browse-worthy productivity tips at the99percent.com/tips
• I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll be writing a post like this on my 30th birthday too.
• Seth Godin nails it about ‘organizational architects’ rather than ‘corporate chiropracters’:

Organizational architects know how to find suppliers, use the cloud (of people, of data, of resources), identify freelancers, tie together disparate resources and weave them into a business that scales. You either need to become one or hire one.

Education & Academic

• I found this Slideshare presentation by Tabetha Newman very helpful with my digital literacy research this week:

• Simon Schama sets out his stall for the teaching of History in UK schools.
• I came across this from Paul Andrews this week. A useful overview diagram of which edtech tool to use when (click to enlarge):

• Tom Barrett has, for the last few years, marshalled and encouraged the edtech community into producing an excellent ‘Interesting Ways’ series of collaborative presentations. Which is why an Australian company called Edsoft completely ignoring the Creative Commons license they’re released under and claiming them as their own is so wrong.
• Professor Keri Facer will be keynoting the JISC innovating e-learning online conference the week after next. Listen to her call for a debate about the purpose of Higher Education here.

Data, Design & Infographics

• Now this is an awesome idea. A table made out of tear-off paper sheets. Instant brainstorming and collaboration! (unfortunately the image isn’t CC-licensed…)
• Want to create an awesome kinetic typography video like the Stephen Fry one that’s been doing the rounds? Check out this tutorial.
• Talk about a labour of love. This artist meticulously rearranges newspapers so that they read alphabetically!
• Just because someone creates a good-looking infographic doesn’t mean that they’ve checked their facts nor that it’s true. In fact, many infographics are created as ‘linkbait’ to improve the SEO of sites. It’s especially important for those who disagree with an interpretation to engage and disprove it, I think. With that in mind, I give you Contradictions in the Bible.
• TIME magazine have released their yearly list of the 50 best inventions. The iPad, inevitably, features, but the ‘underwater kite’ to generate electricity is what fascinated me!

Misc.

• Dick Van Dyke was rescued by porpoises last week. Fact.
• Ever joked that it would be a good idea to tie a duster to a baby so that it can do the housework as it crawls around? The Japanese have invented baby clothes for that!

• At Interesting North yesterday we played Rock, Paper, Scissors. I prefer Cow, Lake, Bomb [MP3] as featured on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Hilarious!
• The Atlantic magazine has been going for over 150 years. Here’s some good advice about what makes for a good publication.
• Let me congratulate Microsoft on creating the wonderful Windows 7 phone. It’s much, much better than both the iPhone 4 and Android smarphones. At surviving a barbeque:

Quotations

A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake. (Confucius)

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. (Mark Twain)

As a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. (Schopenhauer)

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. (G. K. Chesterton)

The best way to teach people is by telling a story. (Kenneth Blanchard)

Main image CC BY-NC-SA Rafakoy

Offline this week I learned that fireworks displays involve a lot of standing around for brief moments of semi-pleasure, that iPads really are ‘magical’, and not to jinx yourself by stating that you’re “the only one in the family who hasn’t been ill”

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW45

Tech.

• There’s a new HTML5 Open Source framework for developing ebooks. As Mashable puts it:

The Baker E-book Framework allows designers and developers to turn fixed-width HTML5 pages into an e-book format and publish the finished product. After that, all you need to do is follow the App Store submission guidelines, and you’re on your way to e-book greatness.

• I like my mashups, and those by The White Panda in particular which is why I found their use of Bandcamp to promote a pay-what-you-like model for their latest album intriguing.
• Derek Powazek has a post entitled Twitter for Adults in which he dispenses advice. I like the point about turning off retweets from some people, I’d forgotten you could do that!
• I’m writing a mobile review for JISC at the moment, which will eventually lead to an infoKit. It will obviously need to be mobile-friendly, which is why Smashing Magazine’s guidance on how to build a mobile website is rather handy.
• Xmarks, the cross-browser, cross-platform browser sync utility has been saved from extinction.

Productivity & Inspiration

• Bob Pozen, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and seasoned traveller, has some great advice for travelling productivtly in this interview.
• Lifehacker asks Is Downtime Extinct? quoting Scott Belsky:

Why do we give up our sacred space so easily? Because space is scary. During these temporary voids of distraction, our minds return to the uncertainty and fears that plague all of us. To escape this chasm of self-doubt and unanswered questions, you tune into all of the activity and data for reassurance.

…

Our insatiable need to tune into information – at the expense of savoring our downtime – is a form of “work” (something I call “insecurity work”) that we do to reassure ourselves.

• Don’t spend forever uncluttering, says Unclutterer.
• Sometimes things don’t work for whatever reason. It’s important to have a mechanism to share these ‘failtures’ as well as the triumphs of projects you’re involved in. That’s why I smiled when I came across MobileActive.org (“a global network of people using mobile technology for social impact”) who organize FailFaires to do just that.
• One of the reasons I love Lifehacker is because they get the titles of their articles spot-on. Check out How to winterize your body to stay fit and healthy in the cold months ahead. Awesome.

Education & Academic

• Leigh Blackall’s decided to do a PhD. But not in the conventional way:

I will (and have already) publicly declared my commitment to understanding and attempting to apply the apparent rigor, depth and discipline required for recognition as a Doctor of Philosophy, but will do so informally. That is, without enrolling or submitting to an institution, faculty, discipline area or assigned supervisors. Instead, I will direct myself, using online social networks, professional contacts, all workshop and seminar opportunities that present themselves, and family and fiends to test my ideas, check the quality of my work, and help build its worthiness in line with the criteria I aim to discover. Through open documentation of our dialog, this network will play the role, and reflect an equivalence of traditional PhD supervisors. When I feel confident that I understand and have met the requirements of the PhD, I will submit a summative body of work to an assessing organisation, if there is one willing to play this role, and await their verdict.

• I’ve been learning about Embodied Cognition this week thanks to a conversation on Twitter with @gwoodill, author of The Mobile Learning Edge.
• A new report into Twitter in Higher Education purports to show that around a third of ‘higher education professionals’ use Twitter in their day-to-day role.
• Theory Into Practice (TIP) is a goldmine of learning theories.
• I could write a several-thousand-word rant on the wrong-headedness the UK government’s (and Michael Gove in particular’s) launch of the Education Endowment Fund (EEF). Instead, I’ll just point out this and this and quote, “The EEF draws on President Barack Obama and Secretary Duncan’s ‘Race to the Top’ programme.” Gah.

Data, Design & Infographics

• Fascinatingly, you can think at about 500 words per minute (wpm) but the fastest speaker only speaks at 300 wpm (usual speech is around 150 wpm). This leaves you with a 200-350 word ‘speech differential’. As someone pointed out on Twitter, I’d like to find the original research behind this!
• According to this infographic, a lot of people are just about to end a relationship:

• Worldometers provides ‘real-time world statistics’. Fascinating.
• Nathan Yau started an open thread at FlowingData on How do you start working on an infographic? Some interesting replies.
• An infographic about coffee (click for full version). Interesting to see how coffee production has stayed stable whilst the ‘value’ has increased recently:

Misc.

• Lots of people say they would ‘give it all away’ if they won the lottery, but this Canadian couple actually gave away 98% of their $10.2m jackpot. Inspirational!
• The middle pane looks familiar:

• This is sad. ‘Broken Britain’ indeed:

A drawing workshop was undertaken with a class of 27 school children between 5—7 years of age… When asked to illustrate their favourite activity outside of school, 66% drew television and computer games, many of which contained violent content.

• Did somebody just try to buy the UK government? No comment.
• Scott Adams at the Dilbert blog talks about why we don’t really need political parties any more. Amen.

I think political parties made sense in pre-Internet times. It was a good way to organize and to produce candidates who had a legitimate chance of getting elected. Now it’s easy to imagine the Internet being a better platform for electing the right people. The problem is that there’s no way to get to a different type of system from here. The major parties are too entrenched to give up power, and belonging to organizations is a fundamental freedom.

Quotations

Nothing is an obstacle unless you say it is. (Wally Amos)

The more reasons you have for achieving your goal, the more determined you will become. (Brian Tracy)

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who ets the credit. (Harry S. Truman)

If you’re digging a hole in the wrong place, making it deeper doesn’t help anything. (Seymour Chwast)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (Mark Twain)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image taken by me at fireworks display this weekend!

I’m off work ill today, having succumbed to the bugs brought by two separate sets of visitors in the last week. Fun.

When I’m ill, which is thankfully an occurrence seemingly less frequent that it used to be whilst I was in the classroom, I see it as an opportunity to ‘step outside of the stream’ and do something slightly different. I’m constrained, obviously, by a need to avoid overly exerting myself but, in a way that my parents didn’t understand when I was a teenager, there are as many and varied things one can do in the digital world as there are in that of the physical.

Today, then, I decided to continue the ongoing saga of the redesign of this blog. Whilst to some the design of their blog is merely a choice between pre-existing themes, to me it’s – perhaps slightly pretentiously – much more than that. Not only is it an opportunity to do some research in the field of webdesign and user experience (which I always enjoy) but it’s an chance to reflect upon my digital identity and the facets I deem important to present to other people.

Popular blogs

Whilst Technorati may have taken somewhat of a dive in popularity since the heady days of 2005, it’s nevertheless useful for ascertaining which blogs are the most popular. There is, of course, a problem with equating the most widely-read and visited blogs with effective design and user experience, but I’m going to assume that there must be at least a significant overlap. Those with a large readership are likely to be the most effectively monetised and therefore will have the ability to redesign to improve that monetisation. Or, at least that’s the theory.

After looking at some of the top blogs I came to realise that the functionality of a blog depends massively on the expectations of its audience. Most of the top 50 blogs are about either politics or technology. Whilst I blog about the latter (and occasionally about the former) the type of technology being talked about on the top blogs is the latest and greatest. This is reflected in the shiny shiny nature of the blogs and short, sharp updates. Take Engadget, for example, a blog that I, for one, read every day:

Good practice, is of course, contextual. That is to say that what works in one field doesn’t necessarily work in another. A blog is not a blog is not a blog.

Refocusing

Looking at Technorati’s categories for a better alignment, it was difficult to see a ‘natural fit’ for a blog like this one which ostensibly covers ‘education, technology and productivity’ but also delves occasionally into leadership, design and philosophy.

It turns out that the Technorati’s business directory looked to have the best fit. I should say that my aim in doing all of this is not to slavishly replicate an existing design, monetise this blog or become a dedicated follower of fashion. Instead, I’m looking at what works in practice, not just on the drawing board (and, to be honest, in my head).

Here’s thumbnails of the top 10 (fairly loosely-defined) ‘business’ blogs:

Notice anything?

• Sidebars on the right
• Coloured bar at the top
• Easily identified logo
• Coloured sections in sidebar for highlighted content
• People’s faces
• White backgrounds

Digging deeper

Looking at the top themes is all very well, but in my daily digital digressions I often come across sites which feature elements or an overall design that I find pleasing. I’ve attempted recently to start adding the tags ‘webdesign’ and ‘inspiration’ to my delicious links but it’s early days.

Here’s some sites I’ve come across recently that have pleased and/or inspired me:

1. TECHi – clean, clear with colour-coded categories and thoughtful typography.
2. Cennyd Bowles on user experience – very crisp and obvious functionality (as you’d expect from a UX guy) – nice used of ‘mulletised’ post structure.
3. Joe Hewitt – minimalist yet distinctive.
4. 37 Signals – colourful whilst still being predominantly white; simple.
5. Bryan Boyer – über-minimalist, stripped down to the bare essentials (Google cache as seems to be down)

Extrapolating from the above, it would appear that the things that appeal to me most are:

• Minimalism (or at least, stripped-down design)
• Innovative use of colour
• Appropriate typography

Finally…

Having come across Cameron Moll’s Good vs. Great(er) Design a couple of months back I felt I needed to go back through it. Awesome does not even begin to describe how good this slidedeck is! Check it out (I’d click on menu to go full-screen):

My favourite parts?

• Great design produces an emotional response
• “The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction” (John Maeda)
• Effective design is like good poetry

All of these considerations are why people pay people such as my friend Paul Lewis at Fi to do these things for them. Not me, I’m interested in the nuts and bolts.

SFW this week. Promise.

Offline this week I learned that exercise is a good preventer of illness, that charity workers and trick-or-treaters are glorified beggars, and that toddlers don’t get clocks going back to GMT. At all. :p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW44

Tech.

• I wouldn’t be accessing Facebook or Twitter accounts on public wifi networks for a while. Why? Firesheep.
• You know Livescribe, the paper-based system that allows you to create digital notes? You can now connect it with Evernote.
• Concerned about, or need to bypass fingerprint scanners? Buy some sweets.
• Life Macs but want to roll your own? Lifehacker’s got an 8-step guide.
• There is no excuse not to be a film director now (apart from talent). This was shot entirely on a Nokia N8 mobile phone:

Productivity & Inspiration

• Ah, I knew there was a posh-sounding reason I find using an iPhone makes me more productive. It’s for ‘social scaffolding’ and ‘outsourcing my brain’!
• Seth Godin on how ideas spread.
• You need to be touched to be happy. In appropriate places. By appropriate people.
• Are you allowing too much ‘inspiration’ kill your creativity?
• Great post by Scott Berkun on the creative process U2 and Brian Eno went through with the album The Joshua Tree. Ruthlessness and a quest for perfection personified.

Lorizzle ipsum da bomb sizzle amizzle, consectetuer adipiscing elizzle. Shiz sapien velizzle, tellivizzle ghetto, suscipit , get down get down vel, fo shizzle. Pellentesque eget tortizzle. Sed erizzle. Cool izzle dolizzle fo shizzle daahng dawg tempizzle bizzle. Maurizzle i saw beyonces tizzles and my pizzle went crizzle nibh izzle turpizzle. Stuff izzle tortizzle. Mammasay mammasa mamma oo sa shizznit rhoncizzle ghetto. In hizzle izzle platea dictumst. Bizzle dapibus. Curabitur tellus urna, pretizzle ma nizzle, mattizzle ac, eleifend check it out, nunc. Shizznit suscipit. Gangsta sempizzle velit sizzle .

I’m just going to place a slightly NSFW warning at the top of these posts every week now. Makes life easier.

Offline this week I learned that it pays to have (certain aspects of) your mid-life crisis early, the power of actually writing rather than typing, and how to ‘take afternoon tea’ like a gentleman. Kind of. :-p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW42

Tech.

• Unsurprising, I suppose, but a study by Stanford University has found that mobile phones touchscreens can easily transmit bacteria and viruses and that they hold 18 times dirtier than toilet handles. Ugh. Time to disinfect my iPhone!
• Greater Manchester Police tweeted out every phone call they received in a 24-hour period this week. Because of Twitter-imposed update limits they had to use three accounts. Favourites?

The calls… [included] someone who called to say there was a rat in the house, and that the cat may be responsible, and a woman reporting a man shouting “you’re gorgeous” at her.

• I’d love it if Thimbl took off as a free, Open Source microblogging Twitter replacement. Really I would. But seriously?
• You lucky, lucky Android and Nokia N900 owners can get Firefox Beta on your mobile devices. Gah.
• Never mind augmented reality, diminished reality is where it’s at:

Four out of five institutions—86.5 percent, compared with 73.6 percent last year—said they believed e-book content would play an important part in classroom instruction over the next five years. But only 4.5 percent of classes use e-books or electronic textbooks.

Offline this week I learned not to travel on CrossCountry trains if I want to be productive (no wifi and 3G blocked), that this gapingvoid cartoon is 99% true, and that my SAD begins in October. Gah.

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW41

Tech.

• Mozilla have released Firefox 4 (beta) for Android devices. If only iPhone users could get it! Skype’s also released an Android version of their software.
• I don’t use FourSquare, but FourScore looks useful for finding popular (and potentially geek-tastic) places.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer is now used by less than half of the people who access the internet. This is A Good Thing:

• Facebook now allows you to download your data. Which should give Diaspora some traction when it launches!
• I’ve been thinking about getting my 3 year-old son the new iPod Touch (think: learning apps, camera so he can record stuff, etc.) Trouble is, it’s all-too-breakable. That’s why Griffin Technology’s Woogie is so perfect (more at Mashable):

Productivity & Inspiration

• I still love Feedly, but I’m not sure how I missed Google Player, a fantastic front-end to Google Reader for RSS feeds!
• Beware the Nile perch, says Seth Godin. What an amazing metaphor for… well, lots of things!
• Quotations help motivate me, but one has to be careful not to misattribute them or perpetuate myths. Check out Louis Menand’s Notable Quotables article in the New Yorker. Interesting.
• David at 37 Signals stresses the importance of having big goals and sharing them publicly.
• I’ve been gently pulling a certain person’s leg about this recently: why say “I’m tired” all of the time? Either there’s something wrong with you, or you’re whinging. Either way, stop it!

Education & Academic

• Dan Sutch of Futurelab wrote a great blog post this week about the three roles of formative education. I’m still mulling it over…
• I haven’t played around with this yet but Cognician, a Clay Shirky-approved way to interact and be prompted by questions relating to texts, looks rather handy.
• I wish Johnny Depp had come to my school to support not-really-mutinous pupils.
• The K12 Online Conference starts soon (18th-29th October). I ‘attended’ it in the early days but haven’t for the last couple of years. The archived keynotes, however, are especially worth looking at.
• Second Life no longer offers an education discount. And of course, there’s no longer a Teen Grid. That’s the final nail in that coffin, then. Let’s move on, people.

Data, Design & Infographics

• If only my MacBook Pro didn’t belong to work I’d pimp it with this HAL-inspired decal:

• Some designs are awesome. Some are disturbing. This ‘umbilical iPhone cable’ falls disconcertingly into both:

• Axis Maps make typographic maps. I hope one day they do more than just American cities!

• Involved in business, marketing or branding in some way? Yep, we all are! So look and learn:

• David McCandless has created a visualization of quangos in the UK (‘quango‘?). Whilst it’s undeniably accurate, I do think it’s slightly misleading. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), for example, redistributes – and is told how to redistribute – money for UK Higher Education institutions (click to enlarge):

Misc.

• No friends? Why not rent one?(!)
• I should imagine that this Dilbert cartoon is a little close-to-the-bone for some organizations:

• I didn’t really eat chicken nuggets before, but I’m definitely not eating them now. This is what they’re made out of. Ugh.
• Birth control pills alter the structure of women’s brains. I can well believe that.
• I had to include this letter from Python (Monty) pictures to the censor about Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “I would like to retain ‘fart in your general direction’.” Awesome.

Quotations

Change before you have to. (Jack Welch)

Civilisation began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock. (Sigmund Freud)

Ability is of little account without opportunity. (Napoleon Bonaparte)

No pressure, no diamonds. (Mary Case)

What we have learned from others becomes our own reflection. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image CC BY-NC-SA EJP Photo