Textual Coordination: Blogging Writing Technologies & Processes

Ambiguous Hashtag (which, incidentally, will be the name of my next band)

2010-11-04T17:39:00.000-05:00

I got the meme wrong. A friend on Twitter used the #tweetyoursixteenyearoldself hashtag. Wanting to play along, I posted,

In basement, drumming along to tape 2, side 2 of Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. #tweetyoursixteenyearoldself

See, I read it as "tweetASyoursixteenyearoldsef" so there I am tweeting something I'd likely have been doing at the that age. Apparently the meme is more "tweetTOyoursixteenyearoldself" so I should have said something more along the lines of "Hey, you should listen to something other than classic and prog rock, there's a lot of other good music out there." Most of the posts are advice about lightening up, avoiding the mistakes of youth, etc. But I like my take on the meme better. :)

What it takes to complete a textbook request form...

2010-10-01T18:46:00.000-05:00

Well in advance of each new semester, faculty members are asked to indicate what textbooks students will be required to purchase. A surprising amount of texts need to be coordinated to fill in a textbook request form. For mine, just submitted, it was:

Email transmitting the new form
New textbook request form: the document I'm "writing"
Last semester's textbook request form: to copy/pasting textbook info
Publisher's website: to see if a new edition will be available
Amazon pages (3): to gauge cost to students
University Class Schedule: to check section numbers, course cap

Oh, and I ended up having to email the publisher rep to ask about the new edition's ISBN. To inform her of the spring semester start date, I had to look that up as well (USFP website). We had a few additional exchanges about an an electronic exam copy, which would require re-setting my password on the publisher's "for faculty" access. Then I emailed the admin assistant back.

So, in total, 16 documents were needed to write a little under 100 words in a new form and transmit that form back to the admin assistant.

4Cs Presentation

2009-03-10T19:23:00.004-05:00

Saturday, March 14, 2:00-3:15 p.m.

O.14 Plagiarism and Intellectual Property
Franciscan C, Ballroom Level

Chair: Gail Offen-Brown, University of California, Berkeley

Speakers: Patricia Ackerman, Kansas State at Salina, “Navigating the High Seas of Academic Integrity in College Writing Centers”

Frank Gaughan, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, “Cheat.com: Plagiarism, Technology, and the End(s) of Education”

Shaun Slattery, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, “Beyond Binaries: Teaching Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom”

IT wish

2008-12-15T18:00:00.002-05:00

I often find myself re-naming files, making them more meaningful to me to aid in retrieval later. Sometimes, this causes problems, especially when trying to coordinate work with others or because the file has effectively been given different names.

I'd like to be able to add a variety of meta-data to files, such as project name(s), participant names, importance level, and topic tags.

I've got a couple hacks to get at this functionality. Often I'll create shortcuts to files that live in various folders, effectively enabling the file to be invoked in varying project-based contexts.

Solutions, thoughts, additional hacks? Please comment...

A word for that

2008-10-07T15:25:00.003-05:00

Thanks to AWAD, I now know there's a word for the back-borrowing of design features. Their entry puts it best:

skeuomorph

PRONUNCIATION:
(SKYOO-uh-morf)

MEANING:
noun: A design feature copied from a similar artifact in another material, even when not functionally necessary. For example, the click sound of a shutter in an analog camera that is now reproduced in a digital camera by playing a sound clip.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek skeuos (vessel, implement) + -morph (form).

NOTES:
A skeuomorph can be employed for various purposes. Since people are used to the click sound of a camera as feedback that the picture has been taken, it is now artificially-produced in digital cameras. Other examples are copper cladding on a zinc penny (for familiarity) and wood finish on a plastic product (for a more expensive look).

As a word nerd, I particularly dig the etymology, but the W'pedia entry gives a more thorough description and several other examples.

I enjoy the tension between utility and familiarity. Sometimes the skeuomorph is superfluous, merely decorative -- a designerly harkening back to the design that informed it. Other times, there's a usability component -- the copper coat on a zinc penny, while not technically necessary, would seem to prevent a lot of errors. And I know some users who find it helpful to hear their digital camera "click".

And I am SO going to incorporate a skeuomorphs-hunt activity in my New Media Studies classes! If you think of any, please comment.

News on the Digital Divide

2008-06-25T16:44:00.003-05:00

From the press release reporting on a University of Minnesota study of Internet use among high school students:

First-of-its-kind study at the University of Minnesota uncovers the educational benefits of social networking sites

Study also finds that low-income students, contrary to recent studies, are in many ways just as technologically savvy as their counterparts

(But a brief Baltimore Sun article on broadband subscription is less optimistic.)

Narcissistic Text Analysis

2008-06-23T17:41:00.003-05:00

Here’s a word-frequency cloud of my dissertation courtesy of Wordle.net.

Tools of the Trade

2008-06-03T11:35:00.002-05:00

Love, love, loooove Chicago's Threadless Tee's. Like this one in particular:

http://www.threadless.com/product/805/Tools_Of_The_Trade

Podcast Interview

2008-05-30T16:59:00.002-05:00

I was interviewed by Craig Roth, Service Director for Collaboration and Content Strategies for Burton Group, about technology and writing processes. Check it out:

Content Authoring and Enterprise 2.0

I can see the handwriting on the... hand

2008-05-30T16:35:00.005-05:00

There are several Flickr groups dedicated to writing on one's body(and wrists!) temporarily or permanently. I'm always interested in notes, scribblings, lists, and temporary texts, though I've never been one to write on my hands. Here's an interesting product for those so inclined...

[via BoingBoing]

texting the video

2008-05-12T17:26:00.003-05:00

I'm geeked about this video:

From BoingBoing Gadget,

Digital filmmaker Dennis Liu has produced a video for the The Bird and the Bee's lovely single "Again and Again," in which the lyrics, melody and vocals unspool in surprising ways across his Mac's desktop in a beautiful visual harmony... ending in an artfully delightful pimping of the band in question that makes buying the track on iTunes almost hypnotically compulsory.

What amazes me is the seductive familiarity of the applications streaming across the screen. How it highlights the "you can do it"-ness of new media, plays with the many creation/editing/publishing tools we have, literally at our fingertips. I dig how it includes dialog boxes and mundane widgets like calendars, virtual post-its, and clocks along with text/image/video editing software. I like that includes drop-down menus, audio visualizations and screen savers. I like, I like, I like! (I'm also a sucker for the twee pop.)

Passive vs. Active Research

2008-04-21T20:16:00.003-05:00

I spend a lot of time thinking about how the presence of computers (& Internet access) can and ought to change classroom practices. I had not thought about how the Internet might change comedic invention. Reading this Newsweek interview with my favorite comic Eddie Izzard changed that:

You mentioned Wikipedia. Has technology made you a better or a different comic than you otherwise would have been?
I think a different comic. I never used to research anything. I used to let research come to me. I used to sit there watching telly, and a program about sharks came on and then I'd know about sharks. Now you can say, "Sharks, how do they work?" Then you go online and find out that they haven't evolved in 2 million years—which means they're very happy where they are just killing and killing. Also I can do gigs and just advertise on the Internet. In fact most of this tour was just put out on the Internet first.

Non sequitur

2008-04-17T14:12:00.003-05:00

I just got a catalog for Levenger. As someone with a penchant for office supplies, I enjoyed perusing the pages of fancy pens, desk accessories, and their analog-cool note cards-organization system (the FranklinCovey'esque descendant of the hipster pda). But it was their pads of specialized paper -- or more specifically, their argument for its benefits -- that was blog-worthy. Seems interruption (1, 2, 3, 4) is being invoked to shill paper.

Why Levenger paper may help you think better

How tempting it is online to switch from email to spreadsheet to Internet to document, each time interrupting your flow of thought. Paper, on the other hand, has a way of grounding you, even as your thoughts race across the page. Focusing on the paper in front of you—especially well-designed, high-quality stock—can give you more time to stay with your thoughts.

Try the paper method for at least some of your note-taking and see what—and how—you think. It may lead you in new direction.

The paper is cool; it's the argument I don't buy.

Cory Doctorow on Interruptive Media

2008-03-27T17:22:00.003-05:00

The Pleasures of Uninterrupted Communication

I love communicating too much to be interrupted. Whether I'm writing an essay or a novel, composing an email, or chattering with someone by voice, the last thing I want is to be given a jolt of useless adrenaline every time something new lands in my queue... The mature information worker is someone who can manage his queues effectively.

Would that I were so disciplined. But he's right. Effective information work does take some personal habits and intervention in default settings. In addition to shutting down auto-alerts, I like non-distracting streaming audio that helps the time pass as I write -- mostly innocuous techno.

Here's a link to Clay Spinuzzi's nice summary of work on fragmentation.

[via BoingBoing]

w00t!

2007-12-12T21:05:00.000-05:00

It's official. Gaming lexicon is becoming mainstream.

Merriam-Webster's word of '07: 'w00t' [M-W, NYT]

I've been using it in IMs for a while now, and if faculty are using it, it sure ain't street anymore.

2007-11-26T21:58:00.000-05:00

[Caveat: no info on how "reading level" is ascertained]

Personalized Sharpie Markers -- Want!

2007-11-26T19:37:00.000-05:00

Product page [via BoingBoing]

Before there was 1337 speak...

2007-09-18T18:43:00.000-05:00

An interesting post on the jargon of various trades at the Modern Mechanix blog, "OLD WORDS GET NEW MEANING IN Queer Trade Lingoes" from the February, 1933, Popular Science. The section on "Ham Jargon"bears some resemblance to 1337 speak, for similar reasons of efficiency.

Since his language is generally talked via the air in dots and dashes, he has been driven to cut everything clown to the “bones. “Old man” becomes OM; “young lady,” YL; “nothing doing,” XD; “see you later,” CUL; and “fine business,” FB.

I'm totally going to start using "FB" in my chats.

dudes, I need professor advice

2007-09-17T12:16:00.000-05:00

Question from friend via Facebook...

Are we confirming or ignoring friend requests from our students?

My response:

Because I teach about writing, new media, online culture, and professional communication, I see Facebook as an extension of my teaching. I accept student friend requests because participating online like this is part of my pedagogy. Therefore, I seek to model good, professional, ethical online participation and "friending" them and allowing them to see how I manage my online identity as *part* of my professional identity is in my teaching perview. For those who teach in other areas, the purpose and boundaries are less clear. It's up to you. If you do deny them, however, I'd include an explanatory note that you are using Facebook for personal reasons and I'd change my settings so only friends can see your content. I think we're either all in or we have to use social networking spaces privately.

WinTabber -- at long last

2007-07-20T15:41:00.000-05:00

My students frequently hear me rant about technologies I dislike. One of my longest-standing complaints is that Windows won't give me control over the order in which programs appear in the task bar at the bottom of the screen. For some reason, the order of that workspace is important to me, but I can't drag the tabs to order them as I would have them. To get the order I so desperately crave, I tend to open programs in a particular sequence -- but you're out of luck if you want to move anything.

A former student emailed me a Lifehacker post about WinTabber to let me know there was a solution.

Is it bad that my techno-rants are so vitriolic that former students send me emails about them?

Firefox's "Restore Session"

2007-06-10T18:48:00.000-05:00

I've known for some time that Firefox is a brilliant tool. They've proved it once again in their recent upgrade with the new "Restore Session" functionality. Turns out I'm not the only one who thinks so.

When Firefox crashed while trying to open a .PDF (fellow blogger Ben's problem too), it gave me the option of restarting with all the previous tabs I had open. How useful!

Reading the Knowledge Base description, I learned I can "Always restore sessions on start". Also useful. Because currently, each time I start Firefox, I open (in purposeful sequence):

A tab for streaming Internet radio (now playing: Digitally Imported / Chillout)
Gmail
Hotmail
Weather.com/Chicago
school stuff (usually, *ugh*, Blackboard)
a Google page for various searching
whatever task I'm currently doing (1-, like, 20 tabs)

That's each time I start Firefox. How smart to automate that process. Thanks F'Fox!

Automated Self-promotion

2007-02-13T18:49:00.000-05:00

The 4Cs conference is coming up... They wrote recently to tell me they had automatically generated this announcement to help me self-promote. So here we are...

Grammar

2007-01-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

Several recent discussions of grammar have highlighted for me people's concern for grammatical correctness. My Writing in the Professions class just read "The Politics of Grammar and Usage" in John Bean's Engaging Ideas. The recent CNN.com coverage of the Grammar Girl blog just came across the ATTW listserv. A short article in last month's Wired (scroll down) answers the question, "Chatting online is ruining my kids’ spelling and grammar. Should I stop them from doing it?" And I just learned that Purdue's Online Writing Lab is serving more pages than ever before.

8-bit Post It Fun

2006-12-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

As often as I use Post-It Notes, it never occurred to me to do this:

[*cough*cough* Need to clear the dust and cobwebs here. The diss is complete, so more posts soon!]

Ruled paper for writing Arabic

2006-09-20T17:51:00.001-05:00

Ruled paper for writing Arabic
Originally uploaded by kaleissin.

Learning to write on lined paper when we are very young tends to make those lines feel so Authoritative -- rigid, constant, unvarying.

Different writing systems require different kinds of lines. The lines come after the writing. But when they are given to us before we can write in order to help constrain our wobbly letters, they feel like they came before.

On a related note, I've experimented with writing of a variety of kinds of paper -- ruled, college ruled, graph, engineering graph, blank... None of them have any effect on my writing. I write all over the damn page, draw diagrams wherever I please, send arrows careening 'round the page to connect thoughts. And there hasn't been a line invented yet that can constrain my wobbly letters. My penmanship suggests mercury poisoning.

The Beauty of Ugly

2006-09-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

Ze Frank gets it right about the value of putting the means of production into the hands of the masses! His "I knows me some ugly Myspace showdown" contest prompted exchange below that was so damn good and spot-on, I just had to transcribe and post it. Rock on Ze!

S-s-s-something from the comments. Marion writes, "Having an ugly Myspace contest is like having a contest to see who can eat the most cheeseburgers in 24 hours. You're mocking people who, for the most part, have no taste or artistic training." Marion, thanks for telling me what I was doing. I didn't even know I was mocking people.

For a very long time "taste" and "artistic training" have been things that only a small number of people have been able to develop. Only a few people could afford to participate in the production of many types of media. Raw materials like pigments were expensive, same with tools like printing presses. Even as late as 1963, it cost Charles Peignot over $600,000 to create and cut a single font family.

The small number of people who had access to these tools and resources created rules about what was "good taste" or "bad taste". These designers started giving each other awards and the rules they followed became even more specific -- all sorts of stuff about grids and sizes and color combinations -- lots of stuff that the consumers of this media never consciously noticed.

Over the last 20 years, however, the cost of tools related to the authorship of media has plummeted. For very little money, anyone can create and distribute things like newsletters, or videos, or bad-ass tunes about Ugly. Suddenly, consumers are learning the language of these authorship tools. The fact that tons of people know names of fonts, like Helvetica, is weird!

And when people start learning something new, they perceive the world around them differently. If you start learning how to play the guitar, suddenly the guitar stands out in all the music you listen to. For example, throughout most of the history of movies, the audience didn't really understand what a craft editing was. Now, as more and more people have access to things like iMovie, they begin to understand the manipulative power of editing. Watching reality TV almost becomes like a game as you try to second guess how the editor is trying to manipulate you.

As people start learning and experimenting with these languages of authorship, they don't necessarily follow the rules of "good taste". This scares the shit out of designers. In Myspace, millions of people have opted-out of pre-made templates that "work" in exchange for Ugly. Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer, but Ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool.

Regardless of what you might think, the actions you take to make your Myspace page Ugly are pretty sophisticated. Over time, as consumer-created media engulfs the other kind, it's possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of "talent" and "artistic" ability.

Happy Ugly. This is Ze Frank thinking so you don't have to.

[Naturally, after transcribing, I found the wiki.]

Technology and the Scale of Interaction

2006-09-11T16:42:00.000-05:00

The announcement of The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Strategies for Campus Leadership" Technology Forum caught my eye today. Not that wee wonks like me have much voice at such things, but a sentence from the description of closing keynote speaker Peter Nicholson's (president and chief executive officer, Council of Canadian Academies) session disturbed me. It states,

Academics are accustomed to being regarded as the experts on any given topic. But with the arrival of blogs and Wikipedia, the Internet may be tearing down traditional structures of authority. Now everyone is an "expert." A prominent Canadian academic will discuss what this means for higher education.

Sentence one is fine, and I can even understand how sentence two may be valid, but sentence three strikes me as flat-out wrong. Information technology does not create new experts, rather, it merely changes the scale of interaction among existing participants. It increases access. So really, it just forces us to notice and acknowledge other experts who previously didn't have access to us, our classrooms, or our published conversations. And I think acknowledging that "other" experts existed prior to digital technology has important implications for "what this means for higher education".

My "scale of interaction" idea comes from McLuhen and my "different kinds of expertise" idea come from Robert Johnson (no, not that one). Which you, dear reader, now have easier access to because of the miracle hyperlinking.

Academic peer-review moves online

2006-09-06T10:57:00.000-05:00

"Get Wiki With It; Peer review – the unsung hero and convenient villain of science – gets an online makeover."

This interesting article in the current issue of Wired discusses a few recent examples of online peer-review for academic articles (article gets posted online and opened to comments from anyone) that differ from the traditional peer-review model (article gets sent out to review by a handful of peers).

The article points to a few examples of online peer review:

Nature is currently experimenting with online review.
arXiv (x = chi, thus archive) hosted by Cornell University Library, allows "Open access to 383,063 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology" and includes a nice statement of rationale.
Biology Direct, which according to Wired, "publishes any article for which the author can find three members of its editorial board to write reviews." [Biology Direct's self-description.]
PLoS ONE which describes itself as an "inclusive, peer-reviewed, open-access resource from the Public Library of Science"

As an example, the article states that in the Nature experiment, "While the work goes through the usual peer review drill, a preprint version gets posted on the Web. Anyone – even you – can comment, as long as you attach your name, affiliation, and email address."

The Wired article does a decent job glossing a few of the pros and cons of each model, including some interesting related issues ("Nature is an elite journal that accepts few submissions, a kind of exclusivity that lets universities use publication as a proxy for worth in hiring and promotion decisions"). But Nature's examination of the issues is more thorough.

Technology of the Mundane

2006-09-04T10:27:00.000-05:00

I think that after we use a technology for quite some time, we begin to take it for granted. (Though a broken washing machine, dishwasher, etc. is quick to change that situation.) But with mundane, everyday, "little" technologies, it's easy to forget what life was like before that technology existed and possibly even what situation or problem it was invented to overcome.

Thus my fascination with this post on the Modernmechanix blog about the "new" spiral bound notebook from the September 1934 Popular Science. A flexible memorandum book was an innovation, presumably because rigid notebooks were disadvantageous in some way. (Uncomfortable in the pocket? Can anyone think of other possible disadvantages to rigidity?)

So the next time you pick up a spiral-bound notebook, pause a moment to ponder what innovative soul wouldn't stand for the rigid ones. No, they introduced the innovation of spiral binding for flexibility. This goes for other mundane technologies: paper clips, office "binder" clips, ball point pens, etc., etc. Thank you noble innovators everywhere.

[via BoingBoing, image from Modernmechanix.com]

Slightly interesting video display

2006-09-01T08:48:00.000-05:00

I bookmarked this video a while ago because it caught my eye but needed further consideration. The Helio Display "mid-air projector" (video below) from io2Technologies projects images from a variety of possible sources onto a condensed plane of air created by a blower. One can interact with the image (click, rotate) as you would any computer with a pointing device. (I was curious how this works, but the product literature and FAQ don't say much.)

Once I moved past the "gee whiz" factor and seductive analogy to the Princess Leia projection scene in Star Wars, I'm less impressed. In terms of real-world utility, the system offers no real advantage over screens. The fact that the display must be projected means it's a two (three if you count the video source) part system that actually requires quite a bit of space. Rather, I most expect to find this display as foot-traffic bait at trade shows and Sharper Image. (This has trade show written all over it.)

Or maybe it's the utter awfulness of the local-news "technology segment" coverage of the invention that really soured me, beginning with "Check this out!" and going downhill from there ("how cool is this?" and "man!"). From me, the Helio Display gets a well-earned, "Huh!"

Oh and Google has additional video.

Beta Blogger Spell Check (and singing the Beta Blues -- wah, wah, wah)

2006-08-31T07:10:00.000-05:00

While I'm excited about Beta Blogger's new spell-check interface (ostensibly what I'm posting about here), I've got the beta blues. Apparently, Google has decided to revamp Blogger and re-release it in beta form [tour]. < .rant > I became aware of this in the typical force-it-on-the-end-user fashion. I went to log in to post one day with my Blogger login (that's fun to say! and sounds Swedish!) when some arcane constellation of cookies and "remember me" functionality, or some other "under the hood" hoodoo that I don't fully understand, notified me that I could now log in with my Google account. Not aware of the new release, I said, "Um, sure, whatever" and am apparently beta-testing the new version [I switched without realizing it]. What's got me a little miffed is this new version no longer plays nicely with Flickr, so I can't auto-post from there and don't know when I'll be able to again. Flickr Support answered my query with,

If you meant the beta for the new Blogger, we are waiting
for more things to be in place from Blogger before it will
work.

Um, ok. It's the same feeling I get when my bank gets eaten by a bigger bank and I get issued a new, uglier ATM card or my phone service gets swallowed by a bigger phone service and I loose track of just who the hell my phone company is. Yes, there's probably myriad documentation that would let me know what's going on, but this end-user just wants to post. < /rant >

One feature of the beta version is a new "holistic" spell check. Rather than walking the user sequentially from the first to last suspect word, all suspect words are highlighted and become clickable for a drop-down menu of replacement options. I was pleased. I found the new spell-check easier to manage and easier for quickly assessing "real" and false-positive misspellings. While MS Word's on-the-fly red underlining is similar, I find this "highlight it when I say so" less intrusive during writing and the highlighting is easier to scan visually (better contrast), so I find it easier to scan. I'd be happy if this became a new standard.

Just Start Playing with It

2006-08-30T10:07:00.000-05:00

Daily video-blogger Ze Frank, in a not-so-recent post (warning: Ze is a little NSFW), hits the nail on the head with how to learn software and the limits of the traditional academic approach to learning, two things I try to be mindful of. He's got a pithy little discussion of how the best way to learn something (software, guitar) is to just start playing with it and cautions against the academic tendency to over-theorize. That we don't necessarily have to grok the thing-to-be-learned in its entirety before proceeding. Now, as a good little academic, I believe there's nothing so useful as a good theory. But, I do strive to balance theory and praxis in my classes. Ze's comments remind me of Johndan's anecdote of his daughter "learning" how to play a game. From Datacloud...

I watched as my daughter, Carolyn, then 7, played a computer game... The interface sported almost no explanatory text or conventionally meaningful icons; the brief instructions were written in German... She was not intimidated, confused, or annoyed; she seemed to consider the lack of instructions part of the game. She merely started the game and began clicking on objects...
(p.2)

He includes a snippet of their conversation about the game:

J: How do you know which blocks to hit?
C: I just... hit them.
[...]
J: So how do you figure out what the rules are?
C: Just play.
J: Just play? And then what happens?
C: You just... play.
(p. 3)

Ze Frank is one of my favorite Internet Personalities. He's funny, very clever/innovative, and often provides something interesting to consider -- thinking so I don't have to.

A lot going on

2006-08-23T16:17:00.000-05:00

I glanced down at my task bar today and marveled at the variety of crap I had open. I don't claim this to be more than anyone else has open at any given time. Rather, I think this is the way many of us work all the time and this is why I study mediated writing processes.

Blitz Link!

2006-08-15T09:56:00.000-05:00

Classrooms, copyright, DRM, Wi-Fi -- Oh my!

The Problem with Wi-Fi in the Classroom (Digg)

Cory Doctorow's MS DRM Talk (G'video)

Cory Doctorow - Writing a Novel

2006-08-11T14:38:00.000-05:00


4 min 33 sec - Apr 24, 2006 G'Video: Novelist Cory Doctorow describes his writing process, lists the tools he uses, and provides advice to writers. Me: He has a very pragmatic approach to being a productive writer and how tools and processes affect productivity. Thanks, MIT Comparative Media Studies New Media Literacies Project!

Techno-criticism

2006-08-09T09:42:00.000-05:00

Watched most of Steamboy [W'pedia] last night, a fun film about the dangers of technological development motivated by greed rather than desire to help humanity. Naturally, this morality is a bit simplistic, but here's my favorite (translated subtitle) line in the movie so far:

An invention with no philosophy behind it is a curse. ~Dr. Lloyd Steam

I wonder if this applies to happy little accidental inventions?

William Gibson on Chat

2006-08-04T07:39:00.000-05:00

Just finished Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. Great read. The book is filled with numerous insightful metaphors. He has this to say about chat rooms:

And right now there are three people in Chat, but there's no way of knowing exactly who until you are in there, and the chat room she finds not so comforting. It's strange even with friends, like sitting in a pitch-dark cellar conversing with people at a distance of about fifteen feet.

The distance/dark metaphor (simile, technically) nails the problem of turn-taking in chat. With no non-verbal signals, turn-taking is problematic. (The same thing can happen in phone calls with significant time-delay.) One innovation that I’ve noticed helps turn taking is the relatively new “X is now typing” cues, though these exist primarily in instant messaging programs, not sure about chat rooms. Aim states it:

Google Talk gives an icon:

Both help reduce the “15 feet” effect.

Writing for later

2006-08-02T17:48:00.000-05:00

Here's a teaching life-hack I've implemented to help me make ongoing improvements to my class. For each class I teach, I keep a Notepad document called "0_change.txt" in the folder (the "0_" prefix keeps it at the top of the file structure). Each time something doesn't work quite right in class, I make a note in that file. I often don't have time to implement the change at the moment I think of it, so this note includes reminders of where information is or specifically what needs to change. When I prepare to run the class again, I use the file as a punch list of improvements to make.

The Information Machine

2006-08-02T14:52:00.000-05:00


The Information Machine: Man and the Data Processor cartoon by Charles and Ray Eames 1957 (public domain) Available at Archive.org "traces the history of storing and analyzing information from the days of the cavemen to today's age of electronic brains"

More Writing The Life Aquatic

2006-07-31T02:15:00.000-05:00

Finished the The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou DVD commentary by writers Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. In tonight’s segment we come to a section where Zissou shows his “son” Ned a letter he carries written by Ned long ago (we've seen earlier that Ned carries Zissou's reply). The scenes are intercut with closeups of the letters in the time and place they were written. Anderson mentions Pauline Kael (“she’s certainly what made me interested in [filmmaker Jean-Luc] Godard”) and seems to credit Godard with the significant role letters play in his work and with his use of text on the screen…

WA [discussing Kael on Godard]: And she talks about how Godard’s movies are filled with – they’re literary, they’re filled with words. There’s titles on the screen and there’s letters and there’s writing everywhere. And there’s people quoting – people just reciting from books, and I do that. And this movie, now we’re looking at another letter [from Ned to Zissou] – it’s filled with writing.

NB: And I like- again, something he might do, his- we see Ned reading a crumpled up letter that’s obviously been around a long time, but then when we go to the insert, we go to the original letter [when it was first written] in a very formal way, with the pencil above it.

WA: Yes. In fact, I think one of the letters is situated in this environment where Zissou would have written it and Ned’s is situated in this place where Ned would have written it – his desk, when he was 11, and a half.

NB: And it brings- we talked about how you use words and letter-writing – in a ???[filmmaker’s name], when people write letters they actually speak to the camera and they’re superimposed over images…

This exchange struck a cord with me as well. I’m doing a bit of spring cleaning, going through old papers and what I seem to be hanging on to is meaningful correspondence, just as we see in The Life Aquatic. I’m fascinated by the attention to detail Anderson brings (his trademark) to the close-up on the writing space. The kind, condition, and placement of the paper. Each character’s handwriting. Pencils and a ruler just so. These details reveal so much about the characters themselves, perhaps more than the words they speak.

Writing The Life Aquatic

2006-07-29T23:07:00.000-05:00

I’m always interested in people’s awareness of their own writing processes, particularly their attention to the tools they use and collaborative writing processes. This exchange on the subject comes from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou DVD commentary by writers Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. Anderson and Baumbach are recording the commentary in a restaurant where they’d meet and write together for several hours a day over the course of a few months. They reach a scene in which underwater explorer Zissou (Bill Murray) is reading from journalist Jane’s (Cate Blanchett) notebooks…

NB: And Bill’s reading one of your actual notebooks, it looks like.

WA: Yes, Jane’s notebooks are modeled on the notebooks these movies are written in. So The Life Aquatic is originally – while we would sit here talking, I would write everything down in longhand in notebooks like this and I’d take it home and type it up and then I’d bring in the pages the next day and we’d write more in the notebook and more on the pages – anyways, that’s what the notebook…

NB: Yeah, and it’s worth probably noting that the way we write these things are not – we don’t both do separate scenes and then bring them in together and try and edit them or anything. We actually come up with everything together in the room. I mean, stuff is done later, in rewriting or when you’re directing and stuff, but it is a…

WA: Yeah, we’d make the story sitting here together.

NB: Yeah in those- in Jane’s notebooks.

WA: Yeah, in Jane’s notebooks.

I love Anderson’s films and adore that the actual notebooks made their way into the film itself.

MS Office 2007 Interface Video -- Nice Intro to UI

2006-06-20T21:23:00.000-05:00

In addition to marketing the product and preparing users for what to expect, Microsoft's Office 2007 User Interface Intro Video does a nice job explaining the rationale behind their design decisions -- most of which seem sound. The video provides some insight into the mismatch between user goals and the old menu-driven interface and includes a good critique of the non-WYSIWYG aspect of dialog boxes (conceptual overview at 1:15 and example provided at 4:42 and other times throughout). Gizmodo bashes the interface as a ripoff of Mac's Aqua, but I don't know enough about Aqua to comment. What I like best about the video is that it provides a nice example of what "user experience" people do and how they think. It might be useful in my tech writing classes. [previous post]

Fact following fiction

2006-06-19T17:03:00.000-05:00

Had I the time, I'd create a blog to identify new technologies that seem to come straight off the pages or screens of my favorite sci-fi. Case in point -- the new "Science on a Sphere" 3-D projection system from the Earth System Research Lab of the U.S. DOC & NOAA [from Information Aesthetics].

[image from Information Aesthetics]

It looks suspiciously like the holographic plans of a certain space-based weapon retrieved by the Rebellion, no?

[image from theforce.net]

[Update]

The Cheat

2006-06-15T14:27:00.000-05:00

Also from Boing Boing today, an older post from Alex Halavais, "How to cheat good." Halavais shares some amusing insights into how instructors suspect/detect plagiarism. My personal fave? #8, Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted Text. Though he doesn't remark on my favorite small-detail tell, the sudden appearance of straight quotes (as opposed to smart-quotes) which makes me suspect the text originated online rather than in Word.

DIY micro-printing press

2006-06-15T13:56:00.000-05:00

I'm always in favor of putting the means of production into the hands of the masses. It's one of the great boons of digital technology, IMHO. But I always forget what resourceful, tool-building monkeys we are, and that innovation can be as easily found on your porch as on your laptop. To wit...

Michael Rosenblatt's folding chair stamp jig for stamp-printing business cards. Clever duck! And I recognize that weathered chair. I've got the same model myself. [via Boing Boing]

Writing systems vs. writing technologies

2006-06-13T18:26:00.000-05:00

This clever Worth1000 entry to the Vintage Products 4 contest by Gene got me thinking about the relationship between writing systems and whether/how they fit with various writing technologies. One phenomenon I need to learn more about is how various languages map to keyboards. I'm shooting blind here, but I suspect the design of our modern keyboards pretty heavily favors languages using the Latin alphabet (and let's sidestep the QWERTY/Dvorak/etc. debate for now). But how does the Cyrillic alphabet map to keyboards? And the Chinese language family or Arabic? And how about for phone-texting interfaces? (Which, let's face it, are pretty much crap for whatever language you speak/write -- well except for the language of texting which evolved in response to the interface.) Yes, I could look up the answers to these many questions, but mostly I wanted to post this funny picture.

When to update

2006-05-23T17:53:00.000-05:00

Notices of software product updates should not appear when I first launch the program, because I'm trying to enter a task at that moment and not too likely to interrupt it with some update that might require me to restart the program or worse, my system. Rather they should, as I go to close the program and thus signaling the end of my task, prompt me that updates are available and can be downloaded prior to closing, which I'm far more likely to do. I'm talkin' ta *you* Adobe Acrobat.

As we may work...

2006-05-11T17:17:00.000-05:00

Finally, here's a futuristic vision for document management GUI I can get behind. I'd have to interact with it to see if it really overcomes some of the multiple-document viewing problems of our current computer monitors, but this video demo of a multi-touch screen seems much more promising than those in Minority Report. It reminds me of a 2-D version of the library scene in Snowcrash.

Via: VideoSift

And I'll have to fly out of O'Hare soon to check out their "'Minority Report' Style Billboards."

Presenting at 4Cs

2006-03-16T22:33:00.002-05:00

A large percentage of the few readers of this humble little blog are fellow writing teachers, who might be at 4Cs in Chicago next week. I'll be presenting on this panel:

Bringing Techne Front and Center: Examining the Materials of the Art of Writing
J.13, Friday, 3:30–4:45 p.m., Salon 2, Third Floor

Chair: Janice Lauer, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Speakers:

Pender Kelly, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, “Writing inLate Postmodernity: Contradictions of the Art”
Shaun Slattery, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, “The Tool Side of Techne: ‘Habits of Mind’ vs. ‘Habits of Mediation’”
Karl Stolley, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, “A Techne for Artful Choices in Digital Writing”

Here's a sneak preview...

In a further investigation of the role of materials in an art of writing, I argue that most modern treatments of techne (usually translated as art or craft) focus solely on the writer’s “habits of mind.” Recent research into mediation, however, suggests a new approach to theorizing techne. Complex activity, such as writing, can also be influenced by immediate environmental conditions, such as the texts writers surround themselves with as they write. This researcher’s recent study of writers’ use of texts and technologies while composing suggest techne is as much a way of doing as a way of thinking. This view is consistent with classical articulations of techne, which included examples of such material production as shipbuilding. This view is also consistent with Activity Theory which undergirds recent studies of mediation and argues that internal ways of thinking and external tool-use are mutually constitutive. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this view suggests that teachers of writing should be attentive to mediated composing processes including the use of information technologies.

In particular, I'll focus on how techne offers some attempt at control over contingency in complex information environments.

Stickie Situations

2006-03-16T18:56:00.000-05:00

In discussing the announcement of cold fusion achieved at RPI, my friend Kevin Neal made an interesting movie reference/observation:

I thought of this conversation yesterday in that I watched some of The Saint again, and here is Elisabeth Shue’s character stuffing the 6 post-it note-sized slips of paper holding the “secret formula” for cold fusion into her bra for safekeeping... that seemed just a bit skimpy for cold fusion.

What an interesting point. Given that the RPI press release seems to describe a technological procedure, rather than “a formula,” I’m betting Kevin’s right. It could be a bit hard to describe that on a few yellow stickies. Seems my friends are much more critical movie watchers than I am.

Wiki Woes

2006-03-03T16:04:00.000-05:00

In a recent post to the ATTW listserv, Stephen Bernhardt nicely summarized some of the problems of using wikis for collaborative writing:

I coauthored an article on the rhetoric of clinical trial reports with two coauthors this past fall. We used a wiki that one of us ran off a home server to provide writing and commenting space and to control versions. It worked reasonably well, except for having to get used to missing Word tools--track changes, comments--and Word features, such as the stylesheet. It all had to be exported from the wiki and formatted according to editorial guidelines. I think the lack of format controls and markup language in the wiki was the primary limitation.

His comments show a nice awareness of the tradeoffs of various technologies. It sounds like his writing group encountered no major problems, but I've heard of writers new to wikis can be uncomfortable with having others edit their words. While this is often true of new collaborative writers in general, I believe wikis -- because the authority to edit is built into the software -- automate the subtle permission-getting that happens in face-to-face or pass-the-draft-around collaboration. To be comfortable with wikis, I suspect writers need to be comfortable with collaborative writing more generally and be aware of wiki protocol.

Speaking of many texts...

2006-02-17T16:51:00.000-05:00

Debbie Hawhee recently posted about finishing a chapter manuscript (congrats!). What I enjoyed about her post was the picture of her desk (re"printed" below). It's a great, familiar image of academic writing and it reveals a lot of details about familiar composing processes. Some of what I notice in such pictures are things like:

Post-It note bookmarks to help find key places in the text
Folders for grouping like/related info
Is it a Swingline? Also for keeping related texts together
The invevitable photocopied journal articles
Spiral notebook for creating new texts
Calendar, for coodinating the production of text over time
A buncha Burke
A folder organizer to help stage texts for later use (ditto the row of books)
Crumpled paper -- an unsuccessful text?
The Computer -- where it all comes together

About the creation of new texts... I think we often create "ancillary" texts when writing -- they're not the thing we're writing but something we have to create *toward* the thing we're writing.

What we can't see (here) is what all happened on-screen (like the "100+ footnotes" etc.). My desk is often relatively clean, because many of my texts are electronic. That's why I used screen-capture software when studying writing [example, 19M].

T.C. in the wild...

2006-02-17T16:39:00.000-05:00

My friend Carrie Gilbert, a user-experience designer for White Horse spotted a textual coordination problem in the wild! She shared it with me…

cowboyboo: oh hey, I witnessed *textual coordination* the other day… and then proposed improvements to an online app to decrease the number of texts the user was dependent upon. I was *very excited*
Shaun: no way!
cowboyboo: it was funny, too, she saw no problem with it…
cowboyboo: "well, the app only does x, so then I go into SQL and run a query, and size that window beside this spreadsheet, and ...
Shaun: lol. so, really, did you stop and go, "This is a problem of textual coordination and I bet there’s a way to co-locate the text" or something like that?
cowboyboo: well, not quite like that, because although I'm a nerd, I'm not as big of one as *you* ;) ...
Shaun: few are
cowboyboo: I think I said, "wow, you're juggling a lot there, it would be great if we could display more of that data you need right there in the app so that you don't have to rely on so much stuff" or something

What made me particularly excited was some verification that spotting such problems creates an opportunity for intervention. By seeing textual coordination as a “thing” people do, we can intervene strategically to improve composing processes. Although, the statement "she saw no problem with it" seems to indicate a high threshold for coordination. Is it something we just learn to cope with? Does coordinating many texts impact the task? (I suspect so, but...)

Anyway, it made my day.

Online Presentation

2006-02-16T08:59:00.000-05:00

I'm giving a virtual presentation for the 2006 Computers & Writing Conference. My project page has all the info, but here's a quick link to a quicktime movie (5.7M) I made of my powerpoint slides with a little help from Camtasia. Love that software.

Simple Instructions

2006-02-03T17:10:00.000-05:00

I teach technical writing (among other things). Creating a set of instructions is a pretty typical assignment and I've become fascinated with them. Here's two of my recent favorites...

The instructions for Pong, the first video game: "Avoid missing ball for high score."

And the two rules for sumo wrestling, according to Jason at Signal vs. Noise. [Update: How 'bout these from Nataliedee?]

Nifty

2006-02-03T16:38:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things about technology is people's ability to use it in unexpected ways. I admire the hacker ethos. It's what leads Johndan to use Google as a spelling checker and me to turn on all the cell borders in Excel to quickly print graph paper. Here's a nifty nifty solution to not having a ruler when you need one:

printable paper rulers

[link: swissmiss; image: vendian.org]

Oh, and there's online graph paper... much better than my Excel hack. Thanks cooltools.

Coordinating Reading Redux

2006-01-25T14:27:00.000-05:00

Behold The Thumb Thing... nifty gizmo for keeping books open. As a notorious perambulatory reader (a tendency that often requires one-handed reading), I for one could use one of these things. And a headlamp to facilitate reading during my walk home from the El after dark.

[image and link via Swissmiss]

Hot on the press

2006-01-25T13:59:00.000-05:00

Boing Boing informed me that famed tech-book publisher O'Reilly has launched Rough Cuts, a service granting access to books-in-production. Even more interesting (in my estimation) is the ability to shape the written product. From the Roughcuts page:

[Rough Cuts gives] access to an evolving PDF manuscript that you can read, download or print. Once you've purchased a Rough Cuts title, you will have a chance to shape the final product-you can send suggestions, bug fixes, and comments directly to the author and editors.

I don't know much about the publishing industry, but this seems a very smart response to encroachments on publishing from the web. It's a way to profit on time-sensitive content (not a bailiwick of print-publishing) and leverage a target-market that is used to being able to contribute its two cents. There's even a nice caveat emptor:

Rough Cuts titles live up to their name-they haven't been fully edited, subjected to final technical review, or formatted for print. In other words, they'll be very current, but they won't be pretty.

Coordinating Reading

2006-01-16T14:19:00.000-05:00

Dr. B recently blogged about nifty print-your own bookmarks. What I like best about them is the inclusion of a Note feature. I frequently just use small pieces of blank paper so I can jot down notes while I read (provided I don't own the book in which case I write all over the thing). For fiction, I sometimes need reminders of character names (especially when I've only got time to pick up the book twice a week and have forgotten everyone). For non fiction, well, I jot down things to blog or look up or just think about. I don't know if I'll use these things (the note space is a little cramped), but they sure are better looking than my usual scrap-paper bookmarks.

[Image from Fabiosirna.com]

On writing together

2006-01-13T12:05:00.001-05:00

Earlier this month the New York Times reviewed Aquamind's NoteShare. Fallows does a good job pinpointing the crux of the difficulty of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) -- simple interface usually means limited functionality while robustness usually means the need for an entire IT department. NoteShare sounds like a comfy balance. Looking forward to the PC version later this year. I'm getting tired of emailing documents and creating Yahoo groups for every conference panel proposal I'm on.

While asynchronous collaboration certainly works for most academic work, there are often times early in the process (identifying the unifying theme of several projects) and late in the process (close-editing of collaboratively-written documents) when synchronous collaboration would be nice.

I seldom sit down at a computer with another person, but in co-authoring an article with Jason Swarts when I was in Raleigh last year, we'd meet in a coffee shop with a laptop and pass it back and forth. Extreme writing, as it were. I found the process extremely rewarding. One of my main concerns about teaching composition is that by having students writing in isolation all the time, they can develop bad habits or at least never see other ways of writing that they themselves might benefit from. They develop a mere knack when learning a craft is the goal.

Happy Birthday Louis Braille

2006-01-04T12:41:00.000-05:00

Google honors Louis Braille, the inventor of a system of writing for the blind and visually impaired based on raised dots. The braille system represents a wonderful early example of accessibility well ahead of its time. Here's a great image of someone reading braille. In looking at images of braille, I've noticed that there are different modes of presenting it. This image shows raised-dot-only text. This, however, shows ink on the dots which might help different readers. And this image shows traditional writing printed with the braille text. Finally, there are numerous devices which output digital text into braille. (You can see one in action in one of my favorite movies, Sneakers.)

[image from Google]

Einstein sez...

2006-01-02T16:01:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Hetemeel's dynamic image generator.

Put the information where you need it (?) 1.4

2005-12-10T13:41:00.000-05:00

Two new gadgets limn the outer limits of putting information wherever you maybe, might *possibly* need it.

First, the rsstroom reader -- a gadget that prints rss feeds onto your toilet paper. [via everyone and their mom]

Next, the weather toaster -- a gadget that prints the days weather on your toast. Well, actually, it toasts the bread and singes a graphic of the day's forecast. [via information aesthetics]

[image from The Register]

Calculator Help

2005-12-08T14:54:00.000-05:00

C? CE? I can never remember what each one does. So when I need to clear the current calculation, I hit them both (a couple of times actually... you can never over-erase a current calculation as far as I'm concerned... same goes for crosswalk buttons, but that's a different story).

So today while calculating income from a the few little projects that I've patched together for the summer (ah, academia), I had to choose CE or C. On a hunch, I right mouse clicked over the buttons and was delighted to see, "What's this?" followed by an explanation.

The mouseover help not only tells me what each button does, but explains it in terms of other familiar computer functionality. (Well, who uses the ESC key? But it's a nice gesture.) Now I'll just have to tape that information on my manual calculator.

[Update: I'm not the only one on about minute levels of usability today.]

Wiki as Personal CMS?

2005-12-03T15:18:00.000-05:00

This Ask Ars installment features a question about using a wiki as a personal content management system (the discussion offers myriad solutions). The writer, who lives in a house with four roommates, asks about using one to manage mundane tasks:

We’ve all decided that a wiki would be an efficient way to communicate information to everyone in the house. For example, when is the water bill due? Check the wiki. Who do we contact about the trash pickup which never seems to come? Check the wiki.

This life-hack question reminds me of Cheryl Geisler's research into the use of technologies for managing home-life (here and here). It's my home-life texts that I have the most trouble tracking (especially due to nearly annual moves). Electronic banking and bill-pay has cut down on the negative effects of this, but remember how complicated it can be with multiple roommates.

Strikethrough Text as Paralipsis

2005-12-02T18:25:00.000-05:00

I’ve recently noticed the trend of using strikethrough text as a humorous device, as seen in this example from Stephen Bainbridge’s recent post about blogging during faculty meetings.

What started out as a useful way to update a document while leaving evidence of its original and new form became a device for ironic “correction”. Stephen Baker at Businessweek seems to think this is new, but as with most concepts and dramatic plots, the ancient Greeks came up with it first. It’s called paralipsis, meaning “to leave to one side”. Carolyn Miller once told me it was her favorite rhetorical trope, and I can see why. When used overtly, it can be wry. More often, it’s sneaky (as in, “I won’t be dragged in to discussing my opponent’s drinking problem.”).

But there’s precedence for print-based paralipsis too. The Hacker’s Dictionary describes pre-strikethrough “writing under erasure” thus:

There is also an accepted convention for ‘writing under erasure’; the text>

Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman, he's visiting from corporate HQ.

reads roughly as “Be nice to this fool, er, gentleman...”, with irony emphasized. The digraph ^H is often used as a print representation for a backspace, and was actually very visible on old-style printing terminals. As the text was being composed the characters would be echoed and printed immediately, and when a correction was made the backspace keystrokes would be echoed with the string ‘^H’. Of course, the final composed text would have no trace of the backspace characters (or the original erroneous text). Chapter 5. Hacker Writing Style

I also see similarity to a comedic technique I’ve seen two other places: Kevin Nealon’s SNL character Mr. Subliminal, who would make a statement and quickly interject its (usually politically incorrect) translation, sotto voce. Today, we can see the same effect on Comedy Central’s new Colbert Report in my favorite segment “The Word”, in which the politically incorrect translation appears beside Colbert. [Edit: On re-reading, I think this technique is merely similar to paralipsis... I might have to coin a new trope!]

Mostly, I see print-paralipsis as yet another clever playfulness with language that seems typical of hackers specifically and technophiles more generally. Clever word-play and retoolings of language and use is in their nature.

Artistic Proof 1.1: Maxims

2005-11-30T11:58:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like leather.

Paying so much attention to the role of tools in getting work done, I'm especially interested in sayings about tool use. This one's a bit older, but speaks to the tendency to derive one's nostrums from one's (usually limited) experience. It's a lot like a saying by Abraham "hierarchy of needs" Maslow, which is almost annoyingly popular today, especially among programmers:

If all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

It's true we get overly reliant on the tools we know how to use, especially when the learning curve for such specialized tools as software is so steep and their proliferation so tremendous that it's hard to keep learning new tools.

Oh, and this tidbit from Hal Fulton at Rubyhacker is just too good to leave out.

I don't mean to sound like a spammer,
But Ruby has such a neat grammar Â
When a task I assail
Starts to look like a nail
Then my code starts to look like a hammer!

One last one:

He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools. ~ Confucius

To me, it speaks to both the role of tools in getting things done and our tendency to futz about a good bit before settling in to get work done. ("Hmm... gotta mow the lawn... Wait! I think this mower blade needs sharpening!" Yep, that's me alright.)

Leapfrog Fly Pen/Computer: Friend or Foe?

2005-11-26T16:00:00.000-05:00

One of the most-touted kid-gifts this holiday season is Leapfrog’s FLY Pentop Computer (warning: slow, flash-heavy, chatty, youth-oriented website). In short, it’s a pen-based PDA with standard functionality (music, calendar, calculator, notepad, etc.), geared toward tweens, as opposed to Logitech’s io2 Digital Writing System (designtechnica review).

The FLY pen allows you to interact with your writing… you can draw a calculator, drum pad, date & time, etc. on special paper and interact with it. Actually, the concept is pretty cool – being able to draw a calculator and then use it – but I’m not convinced how useful it is to have to draw one’s tools every time one wants to use them.

Fly’s functionality is well described in this article from BusinessWeek Online. And it’s been featured in The New York Times [subscription required] and Gizmodo (twice). But the most interesting critique has come from Kristen Kidder of Bitch Magazine (“feminist response to pop culture” and a damn good read) about a functionality I’m particularly interested in: computerized interlocutor as aid to invention. To prompt journal-writing, the pen has pre-recorded questions it can ask. In theory, this is an excellent idea. Conversation (even in the form of leading questions) is a good way to prompt writing. It’s why all grade-school reading is followed by “discussion questions”. But the questions that are posed and how they are phrased can speak volumes, as Kidder reveals:

LeapFrog Enterprises, leading U.S, manufacturer of educational toys and longtime enthusiast of gender stereotypes, is poised to extend their reign this fall with the launch of Fly... Fly's accessories fall sharply along the boy/girl divide. The most notable program is the female-oriented Dear Me Diary (recently renamed the Fly journal), an interactive notebook full of more than 600 writing prompts designed to excite girls about writing and self-expression. The concept is simple: With just a touch of the pen, preteens suffering from writer's block can trigger questions designed to stimulate their creative impulses. A good idea, no? Sure, but there's a catch: A good portion of the topic suggestions reinforce the misconception that all middle-¬school-age female friendships are cemented through the sharing of petty gossip. “Ooh—dish alert! What's going on?” and “What are you so jealous about?” are just two examples of the questions designed to get Fly girls thinking.

I'm all for promoting female self-expression (and what writer doesn’t need a little inspiration from time to time?). I just wish LeapFrog was able to deliver it without aggressively channeling their inner mean girl. – Kristen Kidder
[“Poison Pen” November, p. 21]

I’ve come to see that one potential benefit of technology is using it to prompt social interaction. For example, what if, when creating a resume in MS Word, the task pane included a link, “Chat about this document with a buddy”? As a writing teacher, I’d be pleased as punch if technology suggested social interaction that should happen to improve the document or writing process, but when enacted in the social-norming ways Kidder describes, maybe those girls would be better off with traditional paper and pen and a real friend.

[Image from NY Times]

Magazine Usability 2.0

2005-11-23T13:06:00.000-05:00

ReadyMade is another magazine that understands how its readers use it. Primarily a how-to mag for hip, young DIYers, much of ReadyMade's contents are instructions for household projects. But they seem to know how people make decisions about what projects to do and how they use instructions.

For each project, they include this handy Project Card that outlines time, cost, difficulty, and materials in addition to the instructions. The card makes it easy to compare projects and to decide which to take on and which are beyond my skill-level (most). The evolutionary scale chart for project difficulty is clever an intuitive. The stopwatch, however, requires that you read the Project Card description at the front of each issue which explains:

Completion times range from one hour to two days depending on how many minutes have elapsed on the stopwatch. At the 5 minute mark, you'll spend less than an hour; at the 55 minute mark, you're skipping Reno 911.

The convention is consistent across issues, but they could just as easily write "3 hours". (Imagine if the cost were depicted as dollar bills where each bill represented $5.00.)

[Project Card from ReadyMade, 17, May/June 2005, p.78]

Usability Frogs

2005-11-19T18:37:00.000-05:00

Two frogs critique websites. What more can I say about that?

[Thanks Boing Boing!]

Projector fetish

2005-11-18T13:32:00.000-05:00

Farewell to overhead -- a tribute in lyric, image, and song to the lowly overhead projector.

As a writing teacher and research of writing technologies, I have a special place in my heart for the overhead projector. There's something about the flexibility of the overhead projector that PowerPoint, digital projectors, and whiteboards don't quite capture. It was crucial for one teaching stunt I pulled spontaneously one class period a few years ago.

I was trying to get my students to really understand the flexibility of language. They often know when they'd written something that doesn't sound right, but don't have revision strategies. I find it helpful to rewrite a bad sentence or phrase several times and pick the best version. I stole this method from Desiderius Erasmus who, in his Copia, wrote hundreds of versions of sentences such as "Your letter pleased me greatly." I had a picture of him on an overhead and, while we were trying a similar exercise, it occurred to me to turn the projector 90 degrees and project his picture on a blank wall to our side. At that distance, his bust covered the entire wall and there he stayed, looking over us, like the patron saint of linguistic flexibility. It really created a moment.

Nostalgia aside, I didn't have a projector in my class this quarter and seemed to get along fine without it, from a pragmatic standpoint.

[Ode link via Boing Boing]

Someone keeps moving my tools!

2005-11-17T13:32:00.000-05:00

Previews of the new Office 12 interface are available [see here and here] as is C-net's video review. While I understand this process is how we got from here to here, I still get tired of having to learn where particular functionality has been moved. Can you imagine typing if, every few years, the keyboard developers decided to swap and add new keys? How's a guy supposed to develop operational fluency?

Anyway, here's the new "ribbon" interface.

[via Digg, image from xBetas@PDC05, oh and title adapted from "Someone keeps stealing my letters..."]

Magazine Usability

2005-11-14T16:35:00.000-05:00

Cargo is a great example of the new magazine usability. Two innovative, non-content features reveal that the editors understand how people use magazines. First, as a "shopping" magazine, Cargo understands that its readers might want to flag a featured item for purchase, so they include stickers (little Post-it type affairs first used by their sister magazine, Lucky).

Next, knowing that readers might use product reviews to make purchasing decisions, they created little wallet-sized summaries of their reviews that bullet-point the products, pros, and cons (ooh! their website facilitates downloading the same info to a PDA!).

Nifty.

Text. Coord. in popular fiction

2005-11-10T17:06:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading, and enjoying, Erik Larson's Devil in the White City -- mandatory reading on Chicago's El (I see at least one person a week with it on the train). Besides being interesting historical non-fiction covering the drama of architects preparing for the 1893 World's Fair and a Category 5 mad-doctor/serial killer, there were two fun examples of textual coordination that caught my eye...

1) A wonderful example of textual intervention -- the strategic placement of text for changing action -- by the Fair's chief architect:

As a reminder to himself and anyone who visited his office in the shanty, Burnham posted a sign over his desk bearing a single word: RUSH. (121)

I know just how that feels.

2) In describing his research process in the book's notes, the author writes:

I do not employ researchers, nor did I conduct any primary research using the Internet. I need physical contact with my sources, and there's only one way to get it. To me every trip to a library or archive is like a small detective story. There are always little moments on such trips when the past flares to life, like a match in the darkness. On one visit to the Chicago Historical Society, I found the actual notes that Prendergast sent to Alfred Trude. I saw how deeply the pencil dug into the paper. (396)

Larson includes this finding in the book itself -- a kind of detail made impossible through Internet research. But Larson seems to pooh pooh an increasingly valuable resource (Google Print post coming soon). While I will be the first to agree with the limits of any particular technology, I get a little annoyed when technologies are written off uncritically and wholesale.

Typewriter Fetish

2005-11-08T13:56:00.000-05:00

The Classic Typewriter Page is a vast storehouse of information about early versions of a breakthrough writing technology. The site includes a brief illustrated history of typewriters, "typewriter collecting and care", and huge lists of early models complete with pictures.

The most interesting aspect of the site, from my perspective, is the glimpses it affords into the development of the technology. A variety of unusual arrangements can be seen, helping us to imagine what might have been had qwerty not become the standard.

[Image from The Classic Typewriter Page]

When not to automate

2005-11-07T13:45:00.000-05:00

One value of IT is that it can automate the more mundane, operational-level tasks of textual coordination. Where would I be without Copy/Paste? But there are occasions when it is beneficial to do things “by hand”.

Case in point -- this anecdote from today's 43 Folders post, “Productivity for the Practicing Musician”.

Personally, I don’t like automatic syncing between devices — it’s brain-dead. Manually transferring the information at least once allows it to tickle my brain a bit and stimulate new ideas. It’s sync with a built-in review.

Not only do I like the pithy descriptor “brain dead” but the awareness the writer has for the effect of the choice of processes on the activity. This is what I hope to teach my students.

PowerPoint Presenting Redux (Reduced...)

2005-11-06T19:25:00.000-05:00

Nevermind the Lessig, Kawasaki, or Takahashi methods, here's Lowtax. Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, owner and operator of Somethingawful.com (a humor site of questionable taste) recently "presented" at an ACM seminar. His style is yet another alternative for using PowerPoint in ways that overcome its weaknesses -- mostly by grossly overusing its weaknesses, to humorous effect. The result? A weird combination of cleverly lampooning the genre of conference talks and generally bad public speaking. Somethingawful hosts the talk (warning: not exactly "work-appropriate").

Pencil Revolution

2005-11-04T12:23:00.000-05:00

Our love of the tools of literacy... Where does it stem from? In some cases, it's nostalgia -- the deep-rooted connection we made to the smell of pencil shavings beginning at age 5, the intense relationship we had with paper ruled with pink & blue, solid & dashed lines and the struggle to get our wobbly letters to adhere to those lines.

In other cases, it's techno-philia in its true geek-guise. The rabid appreciation for the latest, sexiest technology. In both cases, it stems from the time we spend alone with these tools as we work with our ideas. It's why Ray Bradbury named characters Faber and Montag (a paper manufacturer) in what I consider to be his greatest work.

With this relationship in mind, I begin an ongoing series of entries entitled Writing Technologies Fetish. Today's installment -- Pencil Revolution, a blog/manifesto devoted to our little leaden friends (sorry, "graphite" didn't have the alliterative zing). There's a companions site in the form of the Pencil Revolution Flickr Group. [Image from Pencil Revolution]

[Update: Pencil Revolution brings us this piece of web-based zen: images and sounds of pencil writing.]

Happy World Usability Day!

2005-11-03T21:29:00.000-05:00

From BBC:

It's World Usability Day, the chance to celebrate the products and services that make our daily lives easier and more efficient.

Learn more!
http://www.worldusabilityday.org/

Gettin' ILL

2005-10-27T16:46:00.000-05:00

my desk
Originally uploaded by elevatedprimate.

InterLibrary Loan requests... textual coordination for a text that's not where you want it!

I can empathize with Elevatedprimate. I've spent this month requesting books from every corner of Illinois.

Rate my network diagram .com

2005-10-19T17:08:00.000-05:00

A nice change from the usual, more prurient "rate my" fare. Ratemynetworkdiagram.com offers a chance to get feedback on a challenging task -- creating a clear representation of complex network structures. Always good to see productive uses of the web -- peer (to peer?) review.

[From: Ratemynetworkdiagram.com]

Another critique of IT use as depicted in film...

2005-10-18T16:19:00.000-05:00

Minority Report had a pretty sexy view of future IT. Johndan mentions it in Datacloud, but OK/Cancel sees a problem.

[From: OK/Cancel]

There was also the climactic scene where, for some reason, a file had to be physically removed from one screen and walked over to another. Yeah right, all that futurism and still the climax relies on sneakerware.

Transparent Aluminium & Scotty @ 120 WPM

2005-10-18T16:05:00.000-05:00

A funny ciritique of technology use in film from a good friend...

From : john helsabeck
Sent : Tuesday, October 18, 2005 4:04 PM
To : Shaun Slattery
Subject : Transparent Aluminium!?

Remember the part in that God-Awful Star Trek movie - the one where they go back in time to save the whales - where Scotty reveals the molecular make up of transparent aluminium in return for a small batch of the stuff because it is needed to construct a holding tank for a soon-to-be-saved whale?

At first, Scotty tried talking to the computer. "Computer? Hello, Computer?" Then, when someone pointed to the mouse, he picked it up and spoke into it, "Computer?" Finally, realizing that he was going to have to use a keyboard, he proceeds to FLY over the keyboard, typing and switching between windows at alarming speed, until he finally reveals a picture of a transparent aluminium molecule.

What's up with that? If dude has never had to type before because, in his time, you can just talk to computers, why the hell would he be proficient with QWERTY? And why the hell would he know any of the programs they use?

Mr. Nimoy, you disappointed me.

Oh yeah, about that transparent aluminium.... Apparently it is time to move it to the 'Science Fact' category:
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123012131

Put the tools where you need 'em...

2005-10-15T17:40:00.000-05:00

While looking for images of pens, I found this ingenious hack...

[From Wake Forest U.]

Interruption Science

2005-10-14T15:09:00.000-05:00

From NPR today: 'Interruption Science': Costly Distractions at Work. Description from the NPR website:

Technology forces us to juggle competing demands on our attention over the course of our workdays. Alex Chadwick speaks with New York Times Magazine contributor Clive Thompson about "interruption science," the study of the effect of disruptions on job performance.

The research isn't as productivity-driven as it sounds. In fact, much of it echoes Johnson-Eilola's Datacloud which I'm re-reading. For example...

"Interruptions can turn out to be useful." Work is "interrupt driven... it's not merely that you get interrupted during your work, the interruptions are your work."

No link yet for article they're talking about. [Update: Ah, here it is, via 43 Folders.]

Over-attributing Causality

2005-10-14T13:29:00.000-05:00

One danger in research is the desire to interpret all findings as meaningful. Here’s an interesting example from our campus bookstore…

A colleague of mine, knowing my interest in such things, notified me of a change in the size of our blue exam books, from 8 3/8 x 6 3/4, 12-page to 8 1/2 x 11, 24-page:

“How interesting,” I thought. I began to hypothesize: “I wonder if they had complaints about the old smaller books. I wondered if students filled more than one during exams and faculty ran into problems grading multi-book responses. Or perhaps more exams were requiring more writing. Wouldn’t that be something!” So I wrote to our bookstore manager to inquire about the reason for the change. The answer?

We ran out. We will replentish (sic) and have both sizes.

Ah, of course. How silly of me to forget Occam’s razor: The simplest answer is usually preferable.

New Post-It Fiasco!

2005-10-12T14:14:00.000-05:00

My vision for Post-It's next product...

[New Post-It Fiasco!] [Fiasco in use]

Co-locating the Tools of Annotation

2005-10-12T13:45:00.000-05:00

"Post-it® Flag Highlighters and Pens" -- while innovative and perhaps useful, this company's product proliferation is getting as bad as Oreos'.

New Hope for PowerPoint

2005-10-12T12:49:00.000-05:00

Maybe Spinuzzi's got it right. I've been agonizing over his "Print Shop Moment" concept --

...the point at which a new technology gives the broad public access to tools once considered the domain of a specific profession, resulting in an explosion of artifacts. Most of these artifacts will be badly produced, but a few will be genuine innovations, and the artifacts will eventually regain regularity as the public acquires a more discriminating eye (and templates).

Are the bad artifacts the result of unskilled folks or bad technology? Probably both, but I think two recent changes to typical PowerPoint presentation styles are beginning to combat so-called Powerpointlessness -- the "Lessig Method" (from Presentation Zen) and the Kawasaki & Takahashi Methods (from Presentation Zen and 37 Signals).

These artistic flights from the typical PowerPoint fare work best for "sexy" high-profile presentations but may or may not be appropriate for the vast majority of situations that require presentations. For example, I wonder how it would impact a classroom -- more interesting, but less followable.

And while I'm banging on about reconceptualizations and critiques of PowerPoint, I might as well mention David Byrne's art (from Wired, Byrne's site, NPR, CNN, etc.) and the oldie-but-goody, Peter Norvig's Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation.

[Update: Beyond Bullet Points, "a book on understanding PowerPoint presentations as stories" -- as posted on Datacloud]

But here's my all-time favorite use by Boston-based band Bishop Allen.

Tracking your own changes

2005-09-23T13:42:00.000-05:00

I'm fascinated by people's writing processes and how they strategically mediate those processes. Here's a wonderful anecdote from Jenny's comment to Jason Swarts' interesting post on particle vs. stream views of text:

I even use Track Changes myself when writing a paper. I like to have the original draft embedded in even my sixth or seventh draft, since it is in essence the same document, just with lots of different colors.

In a sense, using Track Changes enables me to develop my thoughts more thoroughly and clearly. And days later, when I'm reading and re-working the paper again, I don't have to wonder where a thought was coming from. My entire thought process is right there embedded in the text. It doesn't seem static to me because I can see how things developed from my initial ideas.

[via: Coherent Fragments]

Tracking your mediated life

2005-09-23T11:26:00.000-05:00

Bill Hart-Davidson pointed me to Onlife, a new Mac-based software use tracking program.

[Onlife] observes your every interaction with software applications... and then creates a personal shoebox of all the web pages you visit, emails you read, documents you write and much more... then indexes the contents of your shoebox, makes it searchable and displays all the interactions between you and your favorite apps over time.

The idea isn't too far off from this project (from Bill, Clay Spinuzzi, and Mark Zachary), which seeks to reveal patterns of communication among people rather than an individual user's patterns of software use. And Onlife's visualization displays look quite similar to my own research data charts of writers' object use over time:

So naturally, just as I mis-used screen-capture software, I'm interested in Onlife as another possible tool for researching writing. ;-)

Cool on (Massively?) Multiple Levels: This Spartan Life

2005-08-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

The repurposing of video games to animate new content (machinima) first came to me in the form of Red vs. Blue. This Spartan Life is an innovative use of the same technique to reinvent the familiar genre of talk show. Billed as "a talk show in space", their interviewee list includes media pioneers like Bob Stein and Marty O'Donnell. Episodes also include DJ OCTOBIT and the Solid Gold Elite Dancers -- the funniest synchronized movement I've seen since the SNL men's synchro swimming skit.

Better yet is the intelligent discussion about the promises and challenges of new media. Here's a typical quote from the Bob Stein episode:

Imagine a company's manifesto written today and fast forward 150 years since it was written. You would have not just the 50-page essay, you'd have the comments of millions of people who would not only say 'yea' or 'nay' about various points, but they'd make links to other arguments etcetera, etcetera -- you know every few years, the authors -- Marks and Engles -- might come around and they might actually look at everything everyone had said and reissue a new version so that after 150 years you have a corpus that's literally millions of pages. So the problem becomes how does an editor make navigating through such a large data space useful?

All this and the Solid Gold Elite Dancers? Awesome.

Tune in and get fragged.

Screencap from thisspartanlife.com

Co-locating Text as Life-Hack

2005-08-30T10:43:00.000-05:00

Giles Turnbull over at O'reilly describes his attempt to "organise all my work, all my personal stuff, all my writing, in one huge text file?" -- the most extensive attempt at textual coordination I've heard to date. Read his post and the 43 Folders post that told me of the attempt to learn more about the rationale and pros and cons of the approach.

"The great-great-grandfather of the Hipster PDA"

2005-08-26T14:04:00.000-05:00

43 Folders links to a blurb about life-hacking forefather Thomas Jefferson's portable note-taking device.

Jefferson's hipster PDA [from monticello.org]

Speaking in Ignorance (of Audience and Context)

2005-08-26T12:09:00.000-05:00

I now know how my students feel. In my field, student writing is often criticized for being poorly thought out. I believe bad communication is more the fault of ignorance about the situation in which it will be used. And students, through the mere fault of being young and inexperienced, are often ignorant of the contexts in which writing occurs. This happened to me yesterday with my voicemail.

I'm a brand-new faculty member at DePaul University. Yesterday, I tried to set up my voice mail. It's been years since I had a real job, let alone voicemail; and setting it up is quite different from setting up one's answering machine at home. It was the task of making three separate recordings that put me in my students' place.

record your name
record a message for external calls (coming from outside of DePaul)
record a message for internal calls (coming from within DePaul)

The problem was, other than #1, I had no idea how these recordings *ought* to differ, because it's been so long since I used or experienced voicemail in this way, that I had no idea of audience expectations or contexts. I had to *guess* what would be useful for these two different audiences. And I don't know when my recorded name gets invoked either. So here were my best guesses:

"Shaun Slattery" (I had the option of also stating the extension number. I decided against it, but don't know if that was a good or bad decision.)
"This is Shaun Slattery at DePaul University; I can't take your call right now. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you."
"This is Shaun Slattery in the Department of English. Please leave a message and I'll call you back."

Are these sufficiently distinguished for internal and external calls? Do they provide information useful to those two audiences? No. Idea. Whatsoever.

CFP: TechComm special issue

2005-06-02T08:53:00.000-05:00

Clay Spinuzzi will be editing a special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly, "Technical Communication in the Age of Distributed Work." See the full call for papers; here's a taste:

It goes by many names: Distributed capitalism, the control society, the informatics of domination, the support economy. Whatever its name, the characteristics are the same: control over organizations is as distributed as ownership is in managerial capitalism; digital technologies play a vital enabling role; consumption is individuated, taking the form of the desire for unique identities and unique experiences; direct relationships between customers and businesses become more important; and customers look for stable beneficial relationships among consumers and producers that support these individual experiences. These needs are supplied not by large, vertically integrated companies but by temporary "federations" of suppliers for each individual transaction. These federations are endlessly recombinant. Work is fragmented temporally, geographically, and disciplinarily.

What does distributed work mean to us as technical communicators? How is it changing our field? Should we adapt to it, critique it, or resist it? In this special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly, we will discuss distributed work's implications for technical communication theory, methodology, pedagogy, ethics, and practice.

Schedule:

1-2 page proposal for paper: March 15, 2006
Full paper (if proposal is accepted): June 30, 2006
Scheduled publication of issue: Summer 2007

Contact information: Send proposals in .DOC, .RTF, or .HTML to
Clay Spinuzzi, clay.spinuzzi[at]mail.utexas.edu

Automated textual coordination 1.0

2005-05-23T20:58:00.000-05:00

Mostly, this is an excuse to play with a neat online toy, "Spell with flickr", by Kastner. But it also shows that by executing rules for coordinating texts, scripts can automate some processes that would take quite a bit of time to do by hand.

[Actually, I had to hand-paste the auto-generated HTML because Blogger wont allow Kastner's java. But it's still pretty nifty.]

Healthy Technological Criticism

2005-05-23T17:08:00.000-05:00

In his recent post "The right tool for the job", Jason Fried over at Signal vs. Noise shows the kind of critical thinking about technology that I'm hoping to teach my students. He does a great job ackowledging that any technology is only one of several possible solutions for a given situation and it's that situation or context that should drive one's choice of technologies.

Amen Jason!

Taking Notes

2005-05-20T16:04:00.000-05:00

Taking Notes
Originally uploaded by philgyford.

This blog serves as a sort of zoo where I can collect specimines of writing phenomena related to my research. Today's exhibit is a wonderful example of textual co-location and remediation found in the wild.

Phil Gyford has posted this Flickr image of his life-hack/notetaking system. He's got a carfully managed process of taking Post-It notes while reading, then transposing them to the web so that he (and others!) might use them.

STC Conference Presentation

2005-05-10T21:44:00.000-05:00

Whew -- just returned from Seattle and STC's 52nd Annual Convention where I presented "Experiencing Technical Writing as Textual Coordination"