Hello World

5 Blogs for BlogDay

Space and Culture
Weblog for the International Journal of Social Space. I love this blog because it regularly shows me something new about the physical world. Edited by Rob Shields and Anne Galloway, beautifully presented with wonderful images.

if:book
A project of The Institute for the Future of the Book founded by Bob Stein, of that early pioneer company Voyager. Remember it? if:book is inspiring, providing informative and intelligent news and views about 21st century publishing.

Tipmonkies
Tips for better, more productive computing. Ok, I admit it, I am addicted. So many tips and so little time. My bulging downloads folder is the result of taking too much notice of Tipmonkies' ever-flowing stream of new applications and things to do with them.

BBC Radio 
Not really a blog, but certainly RSS from top to toe. I am so proud of the BBC for grasping the internet in the early days when it could just have easily have run scared. And now look at it! Podcasts, Listen Again, programme downloads - and soon, they say, streaming TV. Fantastic, and free to the entire world!

Writing and the Digital Life
Cheating, I know, since I originated this site, but we have launched today for BlogDay, and our 25 international writers are limbering up and ready to go.  This is a collaborative transdisciplinary blog about the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience. We talk about writing and reading in the context of 'new and old' media, transliteracy, craft, art, process and practice, social networks, cooperation and collaboration, narrative and memory, human computer interaction, imagination, nature, mind, body, and spirit. Read us!

technorati tag: BlogDay2005
also posted at Writing and the Digital Life

BlogDay: new blog Writing and the Digital Life

Today, for BlogDay 31 August 2005, I am launching a new blog for Writing and the Digital Life. This is the introductory post:

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Writing and the Digital Life began as an email list earlier this year, and quickly acquired a critical mass of around 250 users in many countries - currently Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA, United Kingdom & Zimbabwe.

We are interested in the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience within an interdisciplinary context. We talk about the relationship of writing and reading in the context of many subjects including 'new and old' media; craft, art, process and practice; social networks; cooperation and collaboration; narrative and memory; human computer interaction; imagination; nature; mind; body, and spirit. Contributions related to research, writing and teaching in the arts, sciences, and humanities are all welcome. The list is managed by Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media at De Montfort University, England.

This blog is an experiment. We discussed long and hard whether to switch to a blog, or stay as an email list, but when we voted on it the result was pretty well 50-50 so we have decided to try both at the same time. Some of us are old hands at blogging and some of us are completely new to it, so bear with us - there may be some small glitches as everyone gets up to speed. The luxurious Typepad software upon which we reside has been made available to us gratis by Alistair Shrimpton, the friendly UK Business Development Manager for Six Apart (thank you Alistair!).

Anyone is free to join us - just go to Participate at the top of the right-hand panel.

If you join, you get to discuss issues, share news and information, and vote each month to choose a discussion topic. But you don't need to join to read the list archives or this blog - although if you do join we guarantee a warm sense of togetherness and companionship ;)

Text, in whatever language or script, is the passport to digital life. Without it we cannot use email, web content, chat, discussion boards, or instant messaging. In the ecology of global connectedness it is vital we understand how writing and reading are being used, extended and changed.

We are 25 writers from several different countries including India, Africa, and South America - see the left-hand panel for details. We are interested in anything that addresses the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience, from vague, barely expressible notions to passionate manifestos. This is the place for conjecture, imaginings, mappings and propositions. With luck we will birth some inventive projects, successful collaborations, and unusual networks. We hope you enjoy what you find here.

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For more, visit Writing and the Digital Life

In the morning I will post here links to 5 blogs I want to recommend.

Technorati tag: BlogDay2005

The Power of Us

click image to enlarge

From Ross Mayfield at Many2Many

Mac chess suicide ... Dave.. my mind is going...

However frustrating I continue to find my new iBook (*why* won't the finder open multiple tree folders????) it can also be very endearing.

Apple have just recalled my battery and sent me a new one which is why, as I write this, the computer is slowly beating itself up. In the instructions with the new battery it tells me I must discharge the current one and I can do various operations to achieve this faster, one of which is set it to play itself at Chess. This apparently will tire it out until it goes to sleep, and once it is asleep I can gently remove the old battery and replace it with the new.

So I have done just that - it is currently playing chess with itself - I have put it to Losers setting - and as it plays a sad little female voice announces the moves - Pawn E4 takes E5 - ~Pawn D5 to D4 and on and on until it wins, and then I set it to go again.

It's like listening to Hal slowly running down in 2001 -- "Dave...my mind is going...I can feel it...I can feel it."

Pawn F7 to F8.... King H7 to G6.....

"Would you like to play a game of chess? I play very well."

A Whole New Internet

This post by Janice Fraser is attracting a lot of attention in the blogosphere. It almost takes you back to the early days - which for me means only ten years ago, for others it means a lot earlier than that. She writes:

Something is happening right now, and the developer community has an electric gleam in its eye. Curious, inventive people are making cool stuff again. There’s been a notable shift, and it’s incredibly exciting.

I found the link to that article via Dan Gillmore's piece for the FT Web 2.0? Try 3.0. where he says:

We are barely a decade and a half into the existence of the web, the network of networks intertwined around our ever-smaller planet. The elemental units haven’t changed much, but the web’s functions have evolved in a dramatic way.

After the agonies of the dot.com surge-and-crash it's starting to feel safe again to be excited about the future.

And maybe this time around we will be more sensible and understand that the economic power of the web, though enormous, is miniscule compared with its philosophical, political, and social energy.

iBook keyboard help

Many thanks to Ben Jackson for the following. It works!

Hi there

I just stumbled onto your website and read about your problems in finding keys on your new iBook. I am in the middle of teaching two complete computer virgins how to use their new iBook and so can sympathize with your problem.

The smaller keyboard on the iBook can be a problem but there is a really easy way to find out where any key is on the keyboard:

1. Go the the "International" preferences in the System Preferences Window

2. Choose the 3rd tab named "Input menu"

3. Somewhere near the top of the list is an entry called "Keyboard viewer"

4. Check its box so it is active.

5. In the bottom left hand corner of the same window make sure that the box labeled "Show input menu in menu bar is also checked.

Then when ever you're lost and can't find that key you desperately need it as easy as turning the Keyboard viewer on.

To add to this you will see in the top right hand corner of the screen in the menu bar there is a little flag referring to the keyboard layout you're using.

If you click on the that you'll be given the option to "Show the keyboard viewer"

When its open you can hold down "Shift", "Apple", "Option/Alt" and "Control" to see all the keys & symbols that they activate.

Hope that I've helped you with all that. Perhaps someone already told you about it...

Good luck with your new mac.

Ben

Keys for editing and moving text and graphics

After much frustration I have finally found in the Mac help system a document describing Keys for editing and moving text and graphics

In the spirit of sharing, I attach it here. At last, I can highlight to the end of a line again - life is suddenly easier.

My biggest problem remains the size of the type and the fact that it changes so much between applications. I've been looking for a setting which will make everything a default zoom of, say, 125%, but still haven't found it. The accessibility section hasn't helped. I guess I am probably missing something obvious.

I did however find out which one is the Option key. Why don't they write it on the keyboards?!

Download microsoft_office_help.pdf

My first week with an ibook

I can't say it has been easy and it has certainly been time-consuming. Even as I write this I am plagued by the annoying things which are different in the Mac.

Most infuriating is the apparent need to use a mouse when in Windows I would use keyboard shortcuts – highlighting a line, moving to the start or end of a line, just general navigation issues  all seem to be mouse based rather than keyboard based, and since I am trying very hard to stick to the pad rather than an external mouse, I find myself cackhanded and slow a lot of the time.

But – clever tip from Steve, one of the technicians at DMU – Macs are compatible with a  PC mouse and, furthermore, the rightclick on them works! Oh joy!

And then there is the hash key – I had to email someone to find out where the hash key is. And I couldn’t search for it in help because I couldn’t type it, and it didn’t know the word! Yesterday I had a meeting in a MOO, where hash is essential for getting around, and I really lost my temper when I couldn’t find it. Today I learn that hash is  ‘alt/3 together’ - # - there, I found it – but how ludicrous is that?

On the plus side, I love the physicality of this little machine, and of course the way it looks and the general interface is soft and beautiful. I have chosen ‘abstract’ for my background and it is truly a pleasure to gaze at. Eventually I will add one of my own homemade images but for the moment I am happy to enjoy ‘abstract’.

So, at the end of week one, my fingers are aching from the small keyboard which is much more closely spaced than I am used to, and I am constantly having to resize the fonts which seem to keep defaulting to tiny no matter how many times I change the preferences for each application, but despite the physical discomfort I am glad I made the change and still enjoying it.

• Visual pleasure 10/10 (no denying it is gorgeous)
• Physical pleasure 4/10 (box is nice to hold but keys and pad cause me actual pain)
• Usability 4/10 (give me back my keyboard shortcuts and a proper hash key)

Less wireless for your money with Wanadoo

Not especially related to my new Mac, is the fact that I recently discovered Wanadoo wireless only works with Wanadoo systems. Hard to believe but true. This meant that:

1. I must use the external wireless adaptor provided by Wanadoo - no others will work

2. My Wanadoo wireless setup will only work with other Wanadoo signals. So when I went to my sister's house, it could see her BT network but wouldn't connect to it. When I emailed Wanadoo to check, they confirmed that this will be the case everywhere. So don't imagine you can be wireless with Wanadoo in airports and coffee shops etc - nope - not unless they happen to be Wanadoo. Be warned!

3. and of course, Wanadoo wireless won't work at all with Macs, so I had to buy a new Netgear modem/router anyway.

So much for the freedom of being with Wanadoo.

Experimenting with a Mac

I've just seen a piece in Lifehacker about Michael Hyatt switching from PC to Mac, and since just yesterday I bought my first Mac - a little 12" ibook - I'm curious to read about his progress. I'd already decided to document the change so it will be interesting to compare my experience with his and that of many others who have walked this way.

I'm writing this on a PC because my ISP Wanadoo doesn't support Macs on its wireless Livebox and so I'm not connected yet on the Mac. A word of caution - what Wanadoo calls 'wireless' is only wireless on a PC and on a Wanadoo network -- I discovered last week that the Wanadoo wireless adaptor won't connect to any other wireless network!!! This makes the notion of "freedom" according to Wanadoo something less than desirable. You can't wander far with Wanadoo!! I will be changing ISPs as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, I am starting this thread in the section reserved for the last chapter of Hello World - Our Country - because I'm expecting my landscape to change with the Mac. In the next post I'll detail my expectations and in the future we'll see whether the Mac actually meets them.