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Dave Briggs
An online notebook
Dave Briggs
An online notebook
Monday, 26 May, 2008
Saturday, 24 May, 2008
Some MacBook Questions
I do love my Macbook, I have to say, and it gets an awful lot more use than my Vista laptop, which you can see just in shot, shut as usual. Mine is a 2.2 GHz model – the middle range one. I need to get some stuff sorted out for it, and could do with a bit of help.
- I want to upgrade my memory to the maximum 4gb. How come it costs £240 from Apple but only £63.44 from Crucial? I mean, I know Apple probably charge a premium but that’s a huge difference!
- Photo editing software. I currently have Pixelmator, but it does my head in a lot. Now I have a DSLR I reckon I need something a little better for photo editing. I was thinking Photoshop Elements?
- I have a little Sony Handycam that records straight to hard disk. It lacks an external mic capability, which is a pain, but it makes up for that in cuteness. Anyway, it being a Sony, I can’t currently edit the .mpgs that the Handycam exports on the Mac, they just don’t like each other. I found this solution on the web, suggesting using Quicktime Pro (which I don’t yet have) and something called ‘MPEG_Streamclip_1.8.dmg’ to sort this out. Assuming this means I can edit the video on the Mac, should I stick with iMovie or is it worth investing in something like Final Cut Express? Does Adobe Premiere exist on the Mac? I can’t see it anywhere.
- Storage. As well as the MacBook and the Vista laptop, I can possibly see myself investing in an iMac at some point in the future. I’d like to have one drive which they all share, or through which they all sync up with. Is this what a Time Capsule could do? For instance, I’d like all my photos to be in one place, rather than spread over 3 different machines, or at least have the same photos on every computer.
- 5. How do I hook my MacBook up to an external monitor? It doesn’t seem to have the right shaped hole anywhere on it.
If anyone can help me out on any of these things, I’d be most grateful!
Tuesday, 20 May, 2008
European e-Inclusion Awards
From eGov monitor:
The European Commission has just launched the first ever European e-Inclusion Awards. As part of the European Commission’s e-Inclusion Initiative, the Awards will celebrate the best and most imaginative uses of Information and Communications Technology to reduce digital and social exclusion.
Better browsers, please
There has been a conversation going on in the forums of the Public Sector Social Media Community of Practice for little while now about the browsers made available to public sector workers. Most folk seem to be running something like internet explorer 6, but there is evidence that much older technology is being used.
This must be holding people back both in terms of being able to make the most of web 2.0 technology as part of the way we work, as well as using social web tools to better engage and increase participation.
To try and garner some more views on this, I have set up a simple survey using Google Docs to try and assess where we are with things, and to see if it is worth setting up a little campaign to get Firefox onto public sector workstations. We can dream…
If you are a public servant, or spend a significant amount of time using public sector IT, do please complete the survey – it won’t take five minutes, I promise.
Saturday, 17 May, 2008
links for 2008-05-16
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Roo Reynolds is looking for a Mac blog editor as good as Windows Live Writer. It doesn’t exist, frankly.
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Jeremy muses on where the responsibility lies for explaining about social web developments. The discussion in the comments is fascinating.
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Police in Leeds are hoping to prevent an outbreak of internet-enabled mayhem after thousands were invited to a public pillow fight through Facebook.
Friday, 16 May, 2008
Google Reader
Am using Google Reader at the moment as the new version of NetNewsWire, which I foolishly downloaded, seems to have problems doing anything.
There’s a number of new features that I need to investigate that weren’t around when I last used the service, like notes on shared items and friends lists. I tend to share the stuff I think worthy of comment via del.icio.us, which posts directly to this blog once a day, but in case I start sharing bits, the URL is http://www.google.com/reader/shared/08096379081421145011. As soon as I have shared something, I will stick it up on my FriendFeed too.
Healthy scepticism
One of the problems of being a new media fanboy like me is that we sometimes get a bit too excited about this stuff, and fail to see some of the downsides of web 2.0. That’s why I have a copy of Andrew Keen‘s Cult of the Amateur on my bookshelf – I like to pick it up now and again to remind myself of the other way of thinking about using the web to increase participation and engagement. I might not agree with Keen, but it’s important to take a regular dose of what he has to say, I think.
In all of the pro-web 2.0 literature (Here Comes Everybody, We-Think etc etc) Wikipedia is often cited as an example of mass-collaboration in action, which of course it is. But I often wonder about how relevant Wikipedia is as the poster-child of genuine distributed organisation. This comment from Andy Roberts puts it pretty succinctly:
It was set up and continues to be run by a multi-millionaire advocate of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism philosophy.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Wikipedia is a great thing, and it’s usually one of the first resources I turn to when I need to get the skinny on something. But I do have concerns about it being held up as being a model to follow for other online communities.
Part of this is because of the complicated relationship between Wikipedia and Wikia, the for-profit site which provides wiki spaces for groups to produce content together. Wikia is developing a search engine, using Wiki technology with various ties into Wikipedia. There has been much comment on the fact that Wikia seems to be using the freely provided work of volunteers to power a project intended to make money for Wikia.
A great source of information, opinion and gossip about Wikipedia, Wikia and the search project is Seth Finkelstein’s Infothought blog. You don’t have to agree with everything he says, but his dissident viewpoint is often refreshing. I recommend you subscribe.
Quick Question on Tagging
Just a quickie, this: when you are assigning tags to a piece of online content, how do you prefer to segregate different items on the list:
- with spaces – like del.icio.us
- with commas – like WordPress
- with spaces but with multi-word tags in speech marks, like Flickr?
Would be interesting to know people’s thoughts.
Thursday, 15 May, 2008
links for 2008-05-14
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Euan Semple on social media and language
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Open Tech 2008 is an informal, low cost one-day conference on technology, society and low-carbon living, featuring Open Source ways of working and technologies that anyone can have a go at.
Monday, 12 May, 2008
links for 2008-05-11
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David on his social reporting at the Shine 2008 conference, which I have been following this weekend. Almost as good as being there!