http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/04/pew-pew-inter

Pew Internet & American Life Project Pew Internet Project’s Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users. So, what are you? I’m an omnivore; and, it seems a little older than your average omnivore!

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/06/sexual-harass

… No wonder women swap gender. The Guardian reports on a research project at Nottingham Trent showing that 70% of female online gamers select a male avatar. I’d be interested to know what the ratio is on SL. (And, what the number of male gamers selecting a female avatar is).

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/06/ginger-the-ne

Ginger: the new Netvibes. I’d looked at Netvibes (along with PageFlakes) etc., when I first started using iGoogle. At the time, the main reason for selecting iGoogle was the fact that I could integrate existing google services easily. There was no other real reason - and from what I’ve seen, most are pretty similar.

Ginger, however, with the possibility of sharing, does seem to have some extra benefits. Jason Wekler has some good ideas about how this might be incorporated into an eLearning environment. With the “Weblinks” component of WebCT Vista, it could just be added as a weblink.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/07/how-does-the-

Open Thinking & Digital Pedagogy » How Does the (US) News Shape the Way We See the World

Nice maps, but worrying information. I’m not sure, though, that a survey of UK news would produce anything different - and given the size differences between us…

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/07/and-in-the-ne

Christian Long links to a set of predictions made and published in the Lady’s Home Journal of 1900.

Some are surprisingly accurate (e.g. the ability to get a photo from China to a New York Newspaper in under an hour. Others have long been possible (e.g. the ability to get from New York to Liverpool in a mere 2 days); others still have not yet been achieved (free University education for all…)

Glad those peas haven’t arrived, though!

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/07/student-faces

Student faces Facebook consequences A student at Ryerson University (Toronto) is facing 147 charges of academic misconduct. 1 for setting up a Facebook group to discuss homework questions, and 1 more for each of the 146 students who contributed.

The homework itself contributed 10% to the final grade. The student who set it up originally got a B, but this was downgraded to an F, when his Professor discovered the site. It’s a little unclear as to whether the B was for the whole course, or just for the homework. (Even if it was just the homework, he’d still have to get good grades in the remaining 90% of the course to pass)

Via: Steven Downes. One of the comments is from another faculty member at Ryerson - who set up a group in Facebook for his students to share ideas…

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/10/web-app-chart

Top Ten WebApps. Several bloggers have pointed to this list of the top ten webapps. Carsonified did a straw poll of about 3,000 colleagues, friends and others round the world in order to create the list. While the top 4 are not in the least surprising; (Gmail, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook); the 5th was perhaps unexpected. It’s Ravelry - a knitting and crochet community. Looking at as much of the site as I can see without being a member (there’s a waiting list of almost 7,000), it seems that they do have a range of useful features, such as the ability to locate local wool shops (or, rather, yarn shops, as it’s a US based site), forums, pattern sharing facilities.

Their own stats would seem to suggest they’re a popular site - supporting the votes that Carsonified collected.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/10/the-worlds-50

The world’s 50 most powerful blogs Several I’ve not heard of, and, perhaps not surprisingly, no ed-tech ones. Oh well. One day!

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/11/i-think-ive-f

No, not to keep up with Educational Technology, but Plants that Twitter when they need to be watered!

Via: Alexs Krotoski

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/11/final-goodbye

Goodbye Netscape Navigator… like so many others, I used Netscape when I started out online. Now, I tend to use Flock, Firefox and IE on a fairly equal basis. I’ve rather drifted away from Opera though.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/11/6-adobe-air-a

ReadWriteWeb have a list of useful AIR applications. I’ve just tried the Google Analytics application - it’s useful. Perhaps a little fiddly to set up profiles, as it seems that I have to enter the username & password to set up each profile - even when I have several sites tied to a single login. It’s also not possible to edit a profile when I realised I’d got it a bit wrong.

However, those niggles aside, it presents the information in a very easy to digest way. I the map overlays seem to be a clearer than Google’s. (Am I really so popular in the middle east?)

I’ll have a look at some others later.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/12/many-eyes/

Another rather nifty visualisation tool. I’ve already pointed out Gapminder, and more recently, linked to maps representing a US view of news.

In the past, I’ve also looked at some of the sites that present visual maps of the results of searches. ( Kartoo, Quintura [and Quintura for kids] and Touchgraph [which now has a Facebook option]).

However, Manyeyes, (from IBM) on first glance seems to be rather more than any of these. It’s possible to Geographical based data, text based data (in this case comments on a blog), regular graphs, and family relationships (from Adam to Jesus)

Fascinating!

Via: Social Sim

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/13/periodic-tabl

Wellington Grey has developed a periodic table of the internet, with groupings such as “Search Engines”, “Blogs”, “Social Networking” etc.,

I like the navigation icons as well.