The Inquirer describes Second Life as 'the premier destination for those lacking a first'.
It strikes me as a virtual world frequented by slightly daggy people who are a bit out of touch with technology but think they might just appear hip to their children, along with other, somewhat strange people who like to meet other somewhat strange people. To an online gaming whiz-kid, I imagine it would be a weird, slow and boring environment that older people seem to like. The technology looks old and out of date, and the world looks like it's built for old people. It doesn't nearly match up to the slick, graphically impressive games available in recent years. It is really slow, and it takes forever to do anything, and in order to do anything even remotely cool like make your character look like a Wizard, bodybuilder or your favourite cartoon character you need to pay money, and even once you pay for it it still looks lame. And you have to pay for lots of things. And there are losers in it that keep ruining it for everyone.
I truly think that attempts to use Second Life as a communication medium, or to reach a younger audience, are both misguided.
As a communication medium, it is unnecessarily complicated and overly restrictive. It requires a new, high powered computer. Most laptops or office desktop computers won't run it satisfactorily. It also requires a fast broadband internet connection, and uses a lot of bandwidth, making it unnecessarily expense, and for users in some areas, all but unusable. There are high costs involved in leasing 'virtual land' within Second Life in which to conduct your meetings. It also presents an unfamiliar user interface to everyone - more unfamiliar than they possibly could have imagined before. Suddenly, in order to conduct a meeting all of the participants will need to configure their avatar and wander around a 3D world, a complicated task not usually required for participating in a meeting.
As a way of reaching a young audience, there are problems. Firstly, if any of the people you are trying to reach are under 18, they won't have access to the same Second Life world as you, and you won't have access to theirs. They have their own separate 'teen' world which attempts to be safe from predators by barring access to adults. Some 'Second Life library' proponents apply a generation-Y stereotype that portrays young people as all being as comfortable in 3D virtual worlds as in any other medium. It's a stereotype that doesn't have basis in fact. 3D environments are used in certain genres of video game, and video games are by no means enjoyed by a majority of young people, nor do these people accomplish other tasks in 3D virtual worlds.
I have a Second Life account and I have stumbled through the overly long, complicated and poorly guided procedure of customising my character and wandering around various places. It didn't really appeal; it was just too frustratingly clunky to be enjoyable.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Podcasting
I could spend this whole post writing about how annoyed I am about the origins of the word 'podcast'. In its reference to the 'Ipod' it makes my hair stand on end. Contrary to its name, however, 'podcast' hasn't really been claimed as a trademark of Apple Corporation, nor was podcast technology invented or licensed by Apple, podcasts are not affected by DRM, and they are not restricted to playback on Apple hardware or via Apple Itunes or Apple Quicktime. In as much as the 'pod' in podcast is a brand-specific reference by fans of Apple Corporation, it is inaccurate and misleading.
Podcasts contain free audio files that are not restricted in any way. Because they use the popular MP3 file format, they are playable on virtually every device, from your computer to any MP3 player or modern phone. You can download them and save them and play them back whenever you want. In technical terms the podcast stream itself is just a web feed with MP3 attachments (enclosures), so you can subscribe to a podcast in any feed reader that can see attachments. Most can, including Google Reader.
Before podcasting, websites that wanted to produce audio shows often fiddled around with proprietary file formats like Real Media and Windows Media which needed a vendor plug-in and restricted users' ability to download the file and play it back later. Audio and video were streamed and as such they were low quality and unreliable. Anyone wishing to produce audio programs in the Real or Windows Media formats faced largish costs and a fair amount of hassle. Even though MP3 has been around for a while and certainly pre-dates podcasts, it had a bit of a stigma attached to it as the format used for illegal file sharing, and I believe many publishers avoided it as they didn't want their content stolen.
I like to believe that the idea of podcasting came about as a reaction to the restrictions and proprietary file formats of larger publishers. The concept brought the idea that any Joe, with a microphone plugged into the computer, could record anything he want and make it available to young fashionable people who had hard drives or portable devices full of MP3s.
Podcasts can be created with free software, and can be served from any website with normal web server software. The lack of any significant cost involved in producing them is both a blessing and a curse. One the one hand, it means that it is relatively easy for any poor student with a bit of technical know-how to start broadcasting their opinion to their blog readers, or whoever should happen by their website. On the other hand, this has led to a large amount of content made with low production value, a poor understanding of audio or broadcasting, or a very narrow appeal. Indexing all this content so people can find it is especially challenging.
Nobody seems to have made a search engine for podcasts that satisfies me. There's no way of previewing the content on-screen to get a feel of their quality and relevance; you have to listen to them. Even with online videos (think YouTube) you can get a feel for whether it is a professional video or a home video of someone's dog doing somersaults from the thumbnail, which isn't available in a podcast directory.
Incidentally, it's possible to include video in a feed instead of audio, and some publishers are now producing what they call video podcasts. MP4 (which, ironically, started life as an Apple invention) is fast becoming a de facto standard for free, portable video with the h.264 format, though AVI files using the older MPEG-4 ASP format (sometimes called Divx) are also relatively common. Neither format has achieved the ubitquity that MP3 has with audio, but the latest mobile phones and portable audio/video devices can play MP4, and free video players such as VLC can play both.
Personally, I was very happy when the ABC and BBC websites started offering podcasts as an alternative to their streaming media, which relied on Real Media or Windows Media. I have downloaded and played back many podcasts from ABC radio shows, where I wouldn't have been bothered if the audio was only available in streaming formats.
Podcasts contain free audio files that are not restricted in any way. Because they use the popular MP3 file format, they are playable on virtually every device, from your computer to any MP3 player or modern phone. You can download them and save them and play them back whenever you want. In technical terms the podcast stream itself is just a web feed with MP3 attachments (enclosures), so you can subscribe to a podcast in any feed reader that can see attachments. Most can, including Google Reader.
Before podcasting, websites that wanted to produce audio shows often fiddled around with proprietary file formats like Real Media and Windows Media which needed a vendor plug-in and restricted users' ability to download the file and play it back later. Audio and video were streamed and as such they were low quality and unreliable. Anyone wishing to produce audio programs in the Real or Windows Media formats faced largish costs and a fair amount of hassle. Even though MP3 has been around for a while and certainly pre-dates podcasts, it had a bit of a stigma attached to it as the format used for illegal file sharing, and I believe many publishers avoided it as they didn't want their content stolen.
I like to believe that the idea of podcasting came about as a reaction to the restrictions and proprietary file formats of larger publishers. The concept brought the idea that any Joe, with a microphone plugged into the computer, could record anything he want and make it available to young fashionable people who had hard drives or portable devices full of MP3s.
Podcasts can be created with free software, and can be served from any website with normal web server software. The lack of any significant cost involved in producing them is both a blessing and a curse. One the one hand, it means that it is relatively easy for any poor student with a bit of technical know-how to start broadcasting their opinion to their blog readers, or whoever should happen by their website. On the other hand, this has led to a large amount of content made with low production value, a poor understanding of audio or broadcasting, or a very narrow appeal. Indexing all this content so people can find it is especially challenging.
Nobody seems to have made a search engine for podcasts that satisfies me. There's no way of previewing the content on-screen to get a feel of their quality and relevance; you have to listen to them. Even with online videos (think YouTube) you can get a feel for whether it is a professional video or a home video of someone's dog doing somersaults from the thumbnail, which isn't available in a podcast directory.
Incidentally, it's possible to include video in a feed instead of audio, and some publishers are now producing what they call video podcasts. MP4 (which, ironically, started life as an Apple invention) is fast becoming a de facto standard for free, portable video with the h.264 format, though AVI files using the older MPEG-4 ASP format (sometimes called Divx) are also relatively common. Neither format has achieved the ubitquity that MP3 has with audio, but the latest mobile phones and portable audio/video devices can play MP4, and free video players such as VLC can play both.
Personally, I was very happy when the ABC and BBC websites started offering podcasts as an alternative to their streaming media, which relied on Real Media or Windows Media. I have downloaded and played back many podcasts from ABC radio shows, where I wouldn't have been bothered if the audio was only available in streaming formats.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
YouTube
Ah, YouTube. I could get stuck on it all day. There's always more to see.
It's owned by Google, contributing to the overall Google-bias of these 23 things. I must admit that I've been more fanatical about Google during the writing of these blog entries than my skeptical self would normally be.
While Google owns the company, it doesn't boast about YouTube as a Google product. There is no Google logo on top of the site, and no mention of YouTube in this list of Google products. It does, however, let you sign in to YouTube with your Google account, though that functionality is hidden, as if to discourage it. This is in contrast to Yahoo's aquisition of Flickr, where the fact that it is a Yahoo company is now readily apparent.
It probably has a lot to do with whatever plans Google has for Google Video's future, which is a long-time sort-of competitor to YouTube. I can't imagine that Google Video will now swallow up YouTube, though. The brand and interface are too well-established and well-tuned.
Amongst all this, I did manage to find some YouTube videos about libraries. I particularly enjoyed the quite famous Library Pacman video that Swinburne produced. I also enjoyed finding a Swinburne promo on YouTube, despite the mis-spelling of both 'university' and 'promo' within the video.
It's owned by Google, contributing to the overall Google-bias of these 23 things. I must admit that I've been more fanatical about Google during the writing of these blog entries than my skeptical self would normally be.
While Google owns the company, it doesn't boast about YouTube as a Google product. There is no Google logo on top of the site, and no mention of YouTube in this list of Google products. It does, however, let you sign in to YouTube with your Google account, though that functionality is hidden, as if to discourage it. This is in contrast to Yahoo's aquisition of Flickr, where the fact that it is a Yahoo company is now readily apparent.
It probably has a lot to do with whatever plans Google has for Google Video's future, which is a long-time sort-of competitor to YouTube. I can't imagine that Google Video will now swallow up YouTube, though. The brand and interface are too well-established and well-tuned.
Amongst all this, I did manage to find some YouTube videos about libraries. I particularly enjoyed the quite famous Library Pacman video that Swinburne produced. I also enjoyed finding a Swinburne promo on YouTube, despite the mis-spelling of both 'university' and 'promo' within the video.
Putting a pet on a wiki
This is the most difficult of the 23 Things tasks to explain. Resizing and saving images for the web is a complicated task, and it requires using software that many people, including me, had never used before. I chose to provide instructions for Macromedia Fireworks because everybody here has a license for it already, whereas we don't have any site license for Photoshop.
When creating images for the web you have to understand the inter-relationship of capture resolution, which is either the megapixels on your camera or the setting on your scanner, the resolution of the final image, and the relationship this has with how large the image is on screen when viewed in a web browser. Web browsers ignore resolution information (such as 300dpi) and instead size things according to the number of pixels, a concept which can also be difficult to understand.
It all makes for a pretty difficult task, and even if my step-by-step instructions did help I doubt that they gave any insight into why it was done like this or how it could be adapted to other situations where you need to create graphics for the web. While I told people to resample their image, I didn't explain what this was and I didn't cover how to crop the image, so it's the right shape, sharpen the image, but not too much, or do any sort of colour corrections or manipulations, which are often necessary with images direct from cameras.
The second part of this task wasn't too much easier. I am well aware that the wiki is new to most people, and along with this it also has a strange markup language and a not-too-intuitive method for uploading photos. If I had to think of a more difficult thing to do on a wiki I'd struggle - perhaps creating and formatting a table would be it.
The wiki's strange mark-up language was intended to be simple, though this simplicity only exists in comparison to HTML, and only in the minds of the technically literate. In comparison to modern, dare I say 'Web 2.0' tools which use WYSIWYG interfaces such as Blogger, Wordpress and GMail, formatting text in the wiki is horrendous. Inserting images is worse.
I'd much rather use a wiki that uses WYSIWYG editing, with a formatting toolbar instead of markup codes, for editing. I know that it's possible - I've worked on a similar thing myself. I've also used the wiki software Confluence, which comes close, though it imposes a heirarchical structure on the site that's just not wiki. There is one being developed called Ogham, and it seems to have an online demo, but it's either taking me to the wrong place or I just can't work out how to use it. Presumably one could also add a modification on to Mediawiki - what we use - to add this functionality, though I can't see that going very smoothly.
When creating images for the web you have to understand the inter-relationship of capture resolution, which is either the megapixels on your camera or the setting on your scanner, the resolution of the final image, and the relationship this has with how large the image is on screen when viewed in a web browser. Web browsers ignore resolution information (such as 300dpi) and instead size things according to the number of pixels, a concept which can also be difficult to understand.
It all makes for a pretty difficult task, and even if my step-by-step instructions did help I doubt that they gave any insight into why it was done like this or how it could be adapted to other situations where you need to create graphics for the web. While I told people to resample their image, I didn't explain what this was and I didn't cover how to crop the image, so it's the right shape, sharpen the image, but not too much, or do any sort of colour corrections or manipulations, which are often necessary with images direct from cameras.
The second part of this task wasn't too much easier. I am well aware that the wiki is new to most people, and along with this it also has a strange markup language and a not-too-intuitive method for uploading photos. If I had to think of a more difficult thing to do on a wiki I'd struggle - perhaps creating and formatting a table would be it.
The wiki's strange mark-up language was intended to be simple, though this simplicity only exists in comparison to HTML, and only in the minds of the technically literate. In comparison to modern, dare I say 'Web 2.0' tools which use WYSIWYG interfaces such as Blogger, Wordpress and GMail, formatting text in the wiki is horrendous. Inserting images is worse.
I'd much rather use a wiki that uses WYSIWYG editing, with a formatting toolbar instead of markup codes, for editing. I know that it's possible - I've worked on a similar thing myself. I've also used the wiki software Confluence, which comes close, though it imposes a heirarchical structure on the site that's just not wiki. There is one being developed called Ogham, and it seems to have an online demo, but it's either taking me to the wrong place or I just can't work out how to use it. Presumably one could also add a modification on to Mediawiki - what we use - to add this functionality, though I can't see that going very smoothly.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Library 2.0
23 Things has changed from a leisurely stroll through the wonders of the web into a mad sprint to the finish line, as I rush these last few blog posts to be eligible for a laptop prize draw - which after this whole thing I hope I am eligible for: I heard that I may have been volunteered to organise it.
A little under four years ago some clever person saw that there were still new things being done in web applications and they came up with the sarcastic term 'Web 2.0' to describe new ideas relating to web applications. Of course, there is no such physical thing as 'Web 2.0', except a concept or way of thinking. It isn't a new standard or new file format, or in many cases even new ideas. It's just a kinda geeky sounding name which has become quite trendy among those who like being trendy and selling sizzle to their clients, and in as much as it encourages people to develop better and more usable web applications I am happy to go along with it. 2pointno seems to sum up the story of Web 2.0 quite well - that it is a new name for a concept that isn't well defined and isn't all that original anyway.
Library 2.0 seems a bit like the same kind of concept applied to the library industry instead of the web industry, but to me it is quite different in its approach. Having been exposed to the shallow hype of Web 2.0 from my time in the web industry, the library industry's approach to Library 2.0 appears both more earnest and yet also more self-conscious. In contrast to Web 2.0, Library 2.0 seems to have its heart in the right place, genuinely aiming to engage more with users and make better use of technology in order to improve the library experience. At the same time, in its striving to consider users' needs more in delivering services to them, it seems to be fighting a perceived image problem or general deficiency of libraries. It seems to feel that the existence of Google, for example, shows how libraries have slipped behind or are struggling to be 'relevant' to their users. This kind of stopping and thinking about the bigger problems is rarely done in the web industry, which tends to move too fast to stop and think about what it may be doing wrong or who it is alienating, as there will always be more clients to pitch and buzzwords to invent.
In both, the '2.0' part is a bit lame to be as trendy as it's made out to be, and they both come surrounded with tag clouds full of associated buzzwords that mean nothing as a whole, rather than offering a clear definition of the concept and its scope. Indeed, both seem to have no end to their scope, associating themselves with every interesting new concept that comes along, whether technical or philosophical. They also both seem to generate 'gurus' - various industry figures who are idolised for their prophetic sounding blog posts boasting new levels of enlightenment about all that is right about the industry.
See
A little under four years ago some clever person saw that there were still new things being done in web applications and they came up with the sarcastic term 'Web 2.0' to describe new ideas relating to web applications. Of course, there is no such physical thing as 'Web 2.0', except a concept or way of thinking. It isn't a new standard or new file format, or in many cases even new ideas. It's just a kinda geeky sounding name which has become quite trendy among those who like being trendy and selling sizzle to their clients, and in as much as it encourages people to develop better and more usable web applications I am happy to go along with it. 2pointno seems to sum up the story of Web 2.0 quite well - that it is a new name for a concept that isn't well defined and isn't all that original anyway.
Library 2.0 seems a bit like the same kind of concept applied to the library industry instead of the web industry, but to me it is quite different in its approach. Having been exposed to the shallow hype of Web 2.0 from my time in the web industry, the library industry's approach to Library 2.0 appears both more earnest and yet also more self-conscious. In contrast to Web 2.0, Library 2.0 seems to have its heart in the right place, genuinely aiming to engage more with users and make better use of technology in order to improve the library experience. At the same time, in its striving to consider users' needs more in delivering services to them, it seems to be fighting a perceived image problem or general deficiency of libraries. It seems to feel that the existence of Google, for example, shows how libraries have slipped behind or are struggling to be 'relevant' to their users. This kind of stopping and thinking about the bigger problems is rarely done in the web industry, which tends to move too fast to stop and think about what it may be doing wrong or who it is alienating, as there will always be more clients to pitch and buzzwords to invent.
In both, the '2.0' part is a bit lame to be as trendy as it's made out to be, and they both come surrounded with tag clouds full of associated buzzwords that mean nothing as a whole, rather than offering a clear definition of the concept and its scope. Indeed, both seem to have no end to their scope, associating themselves with every interesting new concept that comes along, whether technical or philosophical. They also both seem to generate 'gurus' - various industry figures who are idolised for their prophetic sounding blog posts boasting new levels of enlightenment about all that is right about the industry.
See
- librarianinblack.net, "Library 2.0 Discussion: Michael Squared"
- blyberg.net, "11 reasons why Library 2.0 exists and matters"
- wikipedia.org, "Library 2.0"
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