<![CDATA[IS346 - Social Technologies : Activity]]> Elgg http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/ <![CDATA[test]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/3394.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/3394.html Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:47:29 GMT <![CDATA[The Thrill of Debugging ... Not]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2188.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2188.html Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:29:15 GMT Yesterday reminded me of the most frustrating of my days as a programmer. I was going through some activities on my test (WordPress) blog site in preparation for class, and twice I ran into frustrations. First, it was in trying to embed a video in a blog entry. Somehow, the code for embedding was corrupted after saving the post. It happened over and over. I finally came to the conclusion (which may be right or wrong) that if I just saved the post once, and did not edit it again, all would be well. This is unsatisfying because it is always nice to be able to edit a post when one desires to do so.

The second frustration came when I installed a plugin to create an administration menu at the top of the blog page. The menu is normally hidden in an administration panel. After following the instructions, I either got no menu or a menu represented as a bullet list. Eventually I tested it with Firefox (since I normally use IE7 because Firefox is not compatible with XP Tablet) and it worked. Then I tested it on another machine and it worked. I came to the conclusion that it must be something about XP Tablet. But, this morning, when I tried again on IE7, it worked. So, I have no explanation for what was happening.

Which reminded me of two days of hell when I was programming in the early 1980s. I was working via a terminal and writing code on an IBM 370 and was writing code in FORTRAN, BASIC and IBM’s EXEC 2 scripting language. I can’t recall which language I was using, but the code I had written would not execute properly. I went through it (what seemed like a million times) line by line, word by word and letter by letter, but could not explain why there was a bug. I am not the greatest programmer, and typically make silly coding errors, but no matter how hard I tried to see the apparent error, I could not. Eventually, late in day two, I decided to look at the bytemap of the code. Lo and behold, one of the characters that displayed as a normal character was represented by a different bit sequence than the one I had expected to be there! I was “that close” to giving up. In hindsight, another strategy would have been to literally retype the entire program.

By the way, I’ve realized that when playing with changes to WordPress, I should simply close the browser and reopen it after every change.

This post is cross-listed at http://lorne.sisatspace.com/2007/09/28/the-thrill-of-debugging-%e2%80%a6-not-2/. 

 

]]> <![CDATA[The search is on]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2166.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2166.html Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:32:38 GMT I found some websites, have a look at it.
 
1. It automatically creates tags for your websites 
 
http://www.jiglu.com/?gclid=CPbLzOaL4I4CFRm9hgodbXuQLA 
 
2. Found some social bookmarking websites:
 
http://www.rawsugar.com/
 
http://www.linkroll.com/
 
http://www.maple.nu/
 
http://www.linkagogo.com/go/Week
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
]]> <![CDATA[Interesting article]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2112.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2112.html Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:44:36 GMT Hope this works...Smile

interesting ariticle about potential of social networking sites.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1463

Keywords: article, social networking

]]> <![CDATA[Furl, simpy and NetVouz]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2111.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2111.html Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:41:56 GMT

I've never used a social networking (sn) site before and wasn't sure what to expect. I looked at three sites; Furl , Simpy , and Netvouz. According to Wikipedia Simpy, Furl and Netvouz followed closely on the heels of del.icio.us, the original social tagging service. All are described as social bookmarking sites, are free, and require registration to add bookmarks.

Furl is similar to del.icio.us, but is more structured. Furl allows users to tag, categorize, rate and add notes. This may take more time than del.icio.us, Simpy or Netvouz, but the user has more options and potentially an easier time of it when retrieving pages. Additionally, Furl provides 5 gigabytes of storage space to save the actual web pages rather than just the links, thus eliminating the frustrating problem of link rot.

The Furl homepage is simple though uninspiring. The user is presented with lists of the most recent additions, but no tag cloud. At the top of the page is a row of buttons. The button marked "Most Popular" takes the user to a list of sites color coded with a "heat index" to indicate popularity. Pink = hot (most popular), blue = cold. This seems to be in lieu of a tag cloud. Maybe they just want to be different. The headlines button takes the user from the homepage to a list of RSS feeds from various news agencies, also color coded.

I registered as a Furl user and found the process very easy. However, when I tried to use Furl on the CGU computer lab PC, that's when the trouble began. Furl requires the user to update the browser by adding a button (via a java executable) to the tool bar. It took me a while to figure out I didn't have the premissions to update the browser bar. Meantime, frustration was building. I opted to move on and found Simpy.

Simpy is one of the oldest sn sites and unlike Furl or del.icio.us remains independent. The Simpy homepage is bright and easy to manipulate. I was a little turned off when one of the first sites listed on the Simpy homepage was a porn site, but that's not been the case in subsequent visits. Unlike Furl, Simpy uses a tag cloud to indicate popularity of sites. I decided to register with Simpy hoping for a simpler interface. The registration process was simple. But...the dreaded browser button. I could not just "drag" the application into my browser bar for the same reasons I couldn't access Furl. Time to move on...

Last, but not least I came to Netvouz. Netvouz is a little newer than Simpy and Furl, but probably doesn't have the same following as the others, although it is considered one of the top 5 social bookmarking sites. The benefit of using Netvouz is that in addition to tagging, one uses folders to manage bookmarks. Groups of tags can be placed in a folder that shows up high on the list.

The homepage is okay, one difference between this site and others is the tags are visible right on the homepage making it easy to see a tag cloud without having to search the site. I registered with Netvouz and proceeded to try to upload a link. Netvouz turned out to be the easiest to use since I didn't need to add a button to the browser. A user imports bookmarks from web browsers, bookmark and other services via the IE Favorites list.

Although all three sites have their advantages, I chose to use Netvouz, because of the ease with which I was able to add bookmarks. One thing I don't like about these sites is the "shotgun" approach to tags and bookmarks. I prefer a site that is more focused in order to avoid the Britney Spears/Paris Hilton chit-chat and find blogs and newsfeeds that are interesting. In hindsight, I would search out a site like Connotea.

Keywords: del.icio.us, Furl, Netvouz, Simpy, Social bookmarking, tagging

]]> <![CDATA[voice blogging!!!]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2104.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2104.html Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:33:17 GMT While stumbling around in the dark (not much knowledge regarding social technology out there), I have found some incredible websites, who have put the use of technology in better way than others. Here is the one, I never thought of blogging using mobile or any phone. Belive it or not, you can do it, just dial 712-432-Mooo (6666) and utter. Unsurprisingly, the name of the website is www.utterz.com.  

 

Also, I found a good review of social technology tools at www. dlib.org. 

 

 

Tool                   Software                                                            Storage              Open Source                     API                      RSS

 

CiteULike          Tcl, Common Lisp, Perl, Erlang                 PostgresQL                No                                 No                  1.0 (DC, PRISM)

 

Connotea          mod_perl                                                          MySQL                        Yes                                 No                  1.0 (DC, PRISM)

 

del.icio.us         mod_perl, HTML::Mason                             MySQL                        No                                 Yes                  1.0 (DC)

 

Flickr                      -                                                                               -                               No                                 Yes                  2.0, Atom

 

Frassle               mod_perl, Apache::PageKit                      PostgreSQL                Yes                                   -                        -

 

Furl                    Java, JSP, Lucene                                            MySQL                        No                                 No                    2.0

 

Simpy                      -                                                                             -                              No                                Yes                    0.91, 1.0 (DC), 2.0, Atom

 

Spurl.net          PHP                                                                       MySQL                        No                                Yes                    2.0 (DC)

 

Unalog             Python (Quixote), PTL, PyLucene             ZODB                           Yes                               Yes                     1.0 (DC)

 

Source  <http://www.dlib.org/>

 

 

 

]]> <![CDATA[Stumbling on bharatstudent]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2100.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2100.html Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:11:25 GMT Like Lorne and Shantanu, I also stumbled but on bharatstudent!! I started my analysis with bhopu community website. When I came across an article titled “Social Networking with Career Tips”, I changed my focus to bharatstudent and decided to stumble with it – don’t ask why!! Would it be because the name “bharat” means spices in my home language and is pronounced exactly the same way, or, is there any relationship between students and spices that we are not aware of especially in social technology?!! Another thing is that the website name makes me think that it could be an Indian website as I have many Indian friends so that I am aware of some Indian idioms. Absolutely, the site is an Indian social community portal designed by Northgate Technology and mainly targeted to Indians (especially students) all over the world!! I played around with this website once as a visitor and once more as a subscriber, and here are my observations.

By reading “About>Press” overview of the site, you’ll quickly realize that it has a highly renowned profile. According to the website, that it has succeeded in registering 1.4 million users in less than four months after the site was launched. Keeping in mind that I am still an explorer for these kinds of services, playing around with this site provided me adequate practice with social technology software’s goals, purposes, and services.  The homepage is simple and neat but what stopped me is that someone’s name, “Ganesh Chaturthi,” is posted on the head banner of the site or it looks as if it is part of the design banner itself. I’m curios to know who he is as it is not normal to place someone’s name on a corporate website unless he is very special. So, I quickly googled the name and guess what I found?!! Ganesh Chaturthi is the day on the Hindu calendar month of Bhaadrapada on which Lord Ganesha was born!! “Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is widely worshipped as the supreme god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune.” This day is also known as Ganesh Festival (if you are interested you can read more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesh_Chaturthi or visit the festival website on http://www.theholidayspot.com/ganesh_chaturthi/). Interesting isn’t it?!

Beside Login and Sign up links, seven main categories are listed on the homepage: Friends, Study Abroad, Cafe Bharat, Earn Part Time, Campus TV, Blogs, and Campus Awards. I noticed that there are additional two services that are not included in the list: “Gangs” and “Girls Only”. If you are interested in building friendships or looking for friends you would go to “Friends”. If you are seeking an opportunity to study abroad then you would click on “Study Abroad”. Café Bharat is a movie and photo gallery where these galleries are categorized to present the Indians actors/actresses according to their culture such as Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam, and so on. Without signing in, you can only access the first level of some of these services like “Friends”, while you can do a lot more on others like “Study Abroad” and “Cafe Bharat”. The good thing is that you can navigate to any of these services from any page as they all have a link on the bar-menu on the top of each page.  I also realized that in order for me to access the Blog services I had to sign in, and so I did…

While signing in, I intentionally didn’t submit my date of birth before clicking “Register”. The page prompted me to provide this info but I couldn’t do so as the highlighted warning (* Please Select Year) covers the date fields. I refreshed the page and resubmitted my info including the date of birth and location. I found this step a bit confusing as all fields are mandatory but not identified and some of them are unclear as to what they mean: such as location (present location) if it is a country, zip code, or something else.

As you are registering, your profile homepage will be identified and you’ll be provided with its URL. After your first login, you’ll be prompted to set up your own profile. There is a Skip facility in case you are not yet ready to set up your profile and you want to view blogs right a way, however, Skip is not functioning. You can view/edit your profile only through “friends” and “blogs” pages by clicking on your homepage URL; however, it took me a long time to figure out how to do that. Unlike other pages, the blog page drained the energy out of me!! It is confusing!! There is no direct link to reach the blogs main page. I tried to use the search box, I typed “all” and I selected “Blogs” from the drop down menu. Still it didn’t work as the page considers “all” as a keyword search, so a few blogs which include the word “all” were listed. It seems that the keyword facility is also not working properly as other blog titles that didn’t have the keyword “all” were also listed. This is a real stumbling!! So, what to do?  I tried again; I clicked on the “Go” while I left the search box blank hopping that leaving it blank would list all blogs. I am not quite sure if this worked as the displayed list contained 15 titles only and it is non-scrollable!!

Unfortunately, I spent many hours trying to access the main blog page on this website without success. Okay – how about getting into some of the listed blogs. So, I clicked on “DollarsDreams.” On this page you can read the whole blog, post a new comment, read existing comments, and view the blog creator’s profile. In this profile, you can view all friends of the blog creator along with their comments and their other participations and activities, and you can view their profiles as well. Later, I tried to create a blog; I titled it, wrote it down, tagged it, created its URL, and selected the template, then I clicked “next” to post it. “You don't have owner [privilages] to perform this operation!” is displayed in bold, thus I failed to add my blog!!

In general, the bharatstudent website appears to be doing well on other services but not on blogs!! I especially found the blogging service is hard to deal with: navigating, browsing, commenting, and posting comments. But there are some cool features such as you can change your profile color theme, you can choose from five different colors: blue, red, gray, green, and purple.  Also, a “thumb up” and a “thumb down” feature is available to decide on your level of interest in a specific topic. I have seen this feature only once but didn’t know how to find it again!! As the site is running slow, I became frustrated and I gave up!!

 One last thing before I close, it also took me very long to find the help facility before I figured out that it is reachable by clicking on “Contact”!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

]]> <![CDATA[Claremont Conversation is my simple individual project?!]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2099.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2099.html Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:28:53 GMT Although I have heard, read, and seen many web blog communities, their features, benefits, and advantages, it is the first time for me to be a blogger!! I had practiced Sakai last Spring but it wasn’t an actual blogging, it was more of a forum communication for IS356 class.  This semester I am getting involved more as I am attending two blog-based classes: IS346 and IS328. It looks like I am going to have a hard time!!  

For the past two weeks, I have been playing around with Claremont Conversation; figuring out how it operates, and exploring its functionality and features. As I am still feeling uncomforted when navigating between the different pages and links, I am thinking what’s wrong?! 

Does Claremont Conversation have a puzzle in usability or is it because I have not been a blog user!! Getting to know all about its advantages, disadvantages, strengths, and weaknesses is time consuming and will require hard work. Such analysis would be very beneficial to CGU as it looks that the school is focusing on this application to be its key social community outlet. The results of this analysis can be used to enhance features and overcome deficiencies and drawbacks (if any) in the application. I am thinking wouldn’t it be interesting if I propose Claremont Conversation to be my simple individual project for assignment #1. 

About the complex part of this assignment, I am still enjoying my surf on the internet looking for social technology applications, and I have not yet decided where to land but will figure it out soon…..

]]> <![CDATA[Brief comparison between DIGG (digging digg) and DEL.ICIO.US (is it really yummy?)]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2075.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2075.html Sat, 15 Sep 2007 04:23:34 GMT   www.digg.com leaves me with the impression of untidy webpage, so does del.icio.us which obviously has less content but almost has similar design pattern. Page can be made little tidy by zeroing down on area of interest or preferences you select. Like other website they also allow you to create and manage your accounts. Organizations are also adding this kind of social networking tools or links on their websites like other commercial, entertainment, and many others websites. A survey found, Digg's presence around 24.4% and del.icious presence around  23.2% on websites (source: www.poynter.org). 

 

Digg

 

* Profile: Profile setting is pretty simple, and so do other settings. Regarding topic it had all the topics check-marked by default so you need to uncheck topics not of your interest. It allows to change your blog settings or if you are not into blogging you can even disable blogging. Also, If some one out there is pestering you, block him/her.  It might take up to an hour to block a person  orpeople whom you don't want to blog you. 

 

* It was strange I couldn't find any tags on this website.

 

Del.icio.us

 

I would like to start off with William Shakespeare's popular quote , "What's in the name?" But sometimes you find some names very intriguing and want to know more about it. Here I found something on del.icio.us, in this sort of address, "del." takes the place of the usual "www." and ".us" takes the place of ".com." Between those combinations of letters, "icio" was an obvious choice. Both delicious.com and delicio.us redirect you to the del.icio.us page.

Source: www.poynter.org

 

* Profile: Profile setting is easy to use.  Del.icio.us has some good features which I didn't see at www.digg.com settings option (I hope I haven't missed!), It allows you to transfer your existing bookmark(s) from your internet explorer (s) and given you an option of making it public or keeping it private. Also, it could be integrated with Facebook or your Facebook account.  Some of the features under settings were hard to understand especially related to blogging, and I don't see any option for disabling blogging or blocking troublesome  users.

 

* Del.icio.us allows you not only to add tags but to see it many ways. You can have a list view or cloud view. You can see at the tag cloud in two ways alphabetically and by size.

 

* Del.icio.us also has a hotlist which tracks the popular topics amongst users.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

]]> <![CDATA[social bookmarking - a virtual fridge?]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2074.html http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/weblog/2074.html Sat, 15 Sep 2007 01:19:56 GMT According to Wikipedia, Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share and search Internet bookmarks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking). To cut important articles, advertisements out of the newspapers, magazines, etc  and posting them on the refrigerator. Similarly, now "social bookmarking" sites serve as virtual refrigerators, empowers users to utilize the online space and allows them to store more than they could on their fridge (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=125705).

 

According to Ellyn Angelotti (www. poynter.org), "They (social bookmarking) also categorize their resources by the use of informally assigned, user-defined keywords or tags (see folksonomy). Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given "tags", and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. Many social bookmarking services also have implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to resources by examining the clustering of particular keywords, and the relation of keywords to one another."

 

]]> <![CDATA[]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/files/-1/774/untitled1.JPG Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:50:56 GMT <![CDATA[MaintenanceModePlugin]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/files/-1/742/IS346-MaintenanceMode.bmp Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:11:12 GMT <![CDATA[]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/files/-1/647/social+logo.JPG Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:26:45 GMT <![CDATA[]]> http://conversation.cgu.edu/is346/files/-1/646/social.gif Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:26:34 GMT