SWIFT: Another Ham Handed Attempt At Social Networking

April 3, 2008 – 9:11 am

All yesterday and this morning I’ve been seeing tweets about SWIFT, so I finally googled it to see what it was about. The service promises to help organize conferences in some new 2.0 way, but it looks to be about as preposterous a social network as WalMart’s aborted 2006 attempt at copying MySpace.
There are some [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (0)



Is Facebook Really The Point?

January 17, 2008 – 11:55 am

A post to Web4lib alerted me to this U Mich survey about libraries in social networks (blog post) that finds 77% of students don’t care for or want libraries in Facebook or MySpace.
the biggest reason being that they feel the current methods (in-person, email, IM) are more than sufficient. 14% said no because they [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (2)

Object-Based vs. Ego Based Social Networks vs. WoW and Second Life

November 7, 2007 – 11:50 am

There are so many cool things in Fred Stutzman’s recent post, but this point rang the bell for me just as I was considering the differences between World of Warcraft and Second Life. More on those games in a moment, first let’s get Stutzman’s description of ego vs. object networks:
An ego-centric social network places the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)

Internet Safety

November 6, 2007 – 12:25 pm

NPR : Back to School: Reading, Writing and Internet Safety
As students return to school in Virginia, there’s something new in their curriculum. Virginia is the first state to require public schools to teach Internet safety.

By Casey | Posted in Blink, Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (0)

The Sky Is Falling

June 21, 2007 – 1:35 am

MySpace, Second Life, and Twitter Are Doomed.
myspace, second life, twitter, social software

By Casey | Posted in Blink | Comments (0)



The Rules, 2007

June 20, 2007 – 12:01 pm

Contents:

Open Source
Built for Remixing
Well Behaved and Social

Web 2.0 has matured to the point where even those who endorse the moniker are beginning to cringe at its use. Still, it gave me pause the other day when Cliff (a sysop) began a sentence with ?Web 2.0 standards require….?
Web 2.0 is now coherent enough to have standards? [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (2)

Awkward Moments In Social Software

May 2, 2007 – 5:17 pm

We all know social networking may be a feature, not an application, but one person’s feature can become another’s bane.
So when Netflix offers a handy Friends feature that makes it easy to share your viewing history and recommendations, it opens itself up not only to the value of social interaction, but also the awkwardness it [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (16)

Twitter Twitter Anti-Twitter

April 11, 2007 – 12:17 am

My own feelings about Twitter have gone back and forth across indecision street for a while, and despite a moment of excitement it’s still not part of my life-kit.
So I was amused to see Blyberg pointing out Kathy Sierra’s poo-poo-ing of Twitter.
Ironically, services like Twitter are simultaneously leaving some people with a feeling of [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (5)

Second School?

November 15, 2006 – 2:14 pm

Rebecca Nesson, speaking via Skype and appearing before us as her avatar in Second Life, offered her experiences as a co-instructor of Harvard Law School’s CyberOne, a course being held jointly in a meatspace classroom and in Second Life, and open to students via Harvard Law, the Harvard Extension School, and to the public that [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (1)

Social Learning On The Cluetrain?

November 14, 2006 – 11:43 am

They don’t want to engage in chat with their professors in the classroom space, they want to chat with other students in their own space.
— from Eric Gordon’s presentation this morning.
Hey, isn’t that the lesson that smart folks have been offering for a while now: ?Nobody cares about you or your site. Really.? How [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (1)

Social Software In Learning Environments

November 14, 2006 – 8:49 am

It’s really titled Social Software for Teaching & Learning, and I’m here with John Martin, who’s deeply involved with our learning management system and portfolio efforts (especially as both of these are subject to change real soon now).
Aside: CMS = content management system, LMS = learning management system. Let’s please never call an LMS a [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (0)

Linkability Fertilizes Online Communities Redux

October 17, 2006 – 12:46 pm

I certainly don’t mean this to be as snarky as it’s about to come out, but I love the fact that Isaak questions my claim that linkability is essential to online discussions (and thus, communities) with a link:

Linkability Fertilizes Online Communities
I really don?t know how linkability will build communities. But we really need to work [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (6)

Inclusion Is Addictive

October 4, 2006 – 12:10 pm

Lichen, who’s had a great string of posts lately, pointed out Amy Campbell’s website, which opens with the following:
So I guess this myspace thing is going to catch on.
I resisted for a long time. These things make me nervous - myspace, messenger, emoticons… I can’t help but see it as some sinister forerunner of the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (0)

Workflow Goes Social

August 6, 2006 – 5:02 pm

I was amused this week to see two examples of workflow getting sexy. That’s not how the developers describe their efforts, but the departure from old groupware notions is clear.

In daring defiance of Zawinski’s proclamation, Jeffrey McManus, with Approver.com, and Karen Greenwood Henke, with Nimble Net, are tackling workflow and approval processes.

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (1)

The Social Software Over There

July 10, 2006 – 1:01 pm

Amusing. One one side of the world is Jenny Levine, the original library RSS bigot, pushing libraries to adopt new technologies from the bottom up, and here on the other side of the world is NewsGator offering their products for top-down adoption.
Why are law libraries interested in NewsGator? Could it be that social software increases [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (8)