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Posts tagged ‘Facebook’

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Mark McKeon has a fantastic series of images that demonstrate just how much Facebook information has become increasingly available to larger audiences over time.  Everyday I meet people who believe that THEIR information is private.  If it’s on the internet, don’t bet on it.  Just assume that everything is public and act accordingly and you’ll be alright…. for the most part.  Take a visit to the site and click through the images.

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5/16/2011 13 Comments Short URL
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A Browser Bag of Tricks

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Image by Daniel Pouliot via Flickr

While sharing my browser during a DEN webinar last night, I was surprised to see the hot topic of conversation wasn’t the public beta of the new DEN website that I was sharing…. rather it was the various bookmarklets and links that I have saved in my Bookmarks toolbar.

I guess I don’t really think about it much, but that really is a bag of tricks that I depend on daily, and there’s some fantastic tools there that I’ve gathered together over the years. SO, I thought that I’d share a brief glimpse into my ‘dashboard’, the view that surrounds my view, all the toys gadgets and gizmos that customize my browsing experience.

First of all, my browser of choice is still Firefox. I’m on the verge of switching to Chrome, as I think it’s faster and more stable, but for now I like the suite of plugins and utilities that I have set up in Firefox better. Since I often have more than 25 tabs open at a time, real estate is always at a premium. That’s why I go with the Classic Compact Firefox theme. It’s about as small as you can get while still having actual icons for the primary buttons. Clean and minimal, that’s how I like my browser themes. The only plugin I have that adds actual buttons to the browser is Delicious. And to be honest, that can probably go as I don’t use any more functionality than I would out of a bookmarklet. However… My space for bookmarklets is pretty limited as you’ll see shortly.

In the status bar (that bar along the bottom that displays what URL you’re about to click on when you hover over a link), I have five tools. The first is the MeasureIt plugin, which resides in the lower left. This is a simple tool, but I use it almost daily. Click on it and your screen goes grayish. Then, you can draw a box anywhere on your screen and it will tell you how many pixels each side is. Incredibly handy for measuring web elements, pictures, embedded objects and so on. Honestly, it’s pretty darn close to indispensable. On the right hand side I have the Delicious notifiers, and a Google Wave notifier, but to be honest I rarely look at those. They could go away and I wouldn’t notice. I also have an indicator letting me know that Greasemonkey is running, another that I don’t really even ‘see’ anymore. But then we come to the far lower right, which is reserved for something I check nearly every day: Woot Watcher. It displays what the deal of the day is for Woot, and during a Woot Off it displays roughly how many of an item is left before it switches. I’m a big fan of Woot, and yes, I do glance down at that daily.

This brings us to the heart and soul of my web based toolbox: the bookmarklets. For those that don’t know, a bookmarklet is basically a bookmark, but instead of taking you to a favorite web page, it performs a function. I actually wrote a post on bookmarklets a few years ago, but the info looks to still be valid. I have quite a few of them in my browser bar and use most of them pretty regularly. In that they appear in my browser bar, here’s my current list:

  • TinyURL - The mac daddy of URL shorteners. While there’s many that work well, this is my go-to standard. In particular, it’s reliable, simple, and I love that you can customize the shortened URL that you create.
  • URL.ie - Sometimes size matters. In particular for Twitter, you want URL’s as small as possible. They don’t come much smaller than URL.ie. So when even TinyURL is too large, I switch to this one.
  • EDIT any page - This one is interesting and to be honest, really deserves a blog post to itself. Basically it’s a Bookmarklet that makes any page…. editable. Yes, you can just double click on any text and change it to your liking. No, it doesn’t actually change the page, just your view of it. However, it’s incredible for grabbing screenshots for presentations. You can even remove images from the screen if you want! Try it, it’s fun. *disclaimer* I’m not responsible for evil or chaos that you cause with this.
  • X-Ray – This bookmarklet is invaluable for web developers. Click on it, and then click on any element on the page. It will show you detailed information about the element itself, as well as any thematic settings that may be affecting it. Very quick and incredibly powerful.
    Flickr2Facebook - Just a simple exporter that will help you move photos from Flickr to Facebook. Go to a Flickr page, click the bookmarklet, and choose what Facebook album you want it to go into. Easy!
  • Printliminator - This one helps to print nice clean versions of web pages, without the annoying adds and sidebars and such. Just click on the bookmarklet and you can then select any elements you want to remove. Poof, they’re gone. Then just send it to the printer!
  • TBuzz - This serves two purposes. 1) It allows me to tweet about something I’m looking at without leaving the page itself (it even adds in a shortened URL for you) and 2) It shows me any recent tweets that contain links to the same page. That way you can just choose to retweet someone else’s message instead of typing your own if you so choose.
  • KeepVid - This one is my YouTube downloader of choice right now. Go to a YouTube video, click on the bookmarklet, and you’ll have the option to download it. What I like tho is that it provides you the option of saving it in a variety of formats, and often in a variety of sizes. Saves a step or two.
  • Quietube - Ever need to share a YouTube video, but were nervous about what links and related videos might pop up? The Quietube bookmarklet takes that video and displays it on a plain white background. Very neat and clean. Perfect for presentations and staff meetings.

    • Since you can store folders on a Browser bar, I do actually have a couple of those as well. In side I have a slew of websites that I want easy access to. You can even put folders inside folders, to create a nice hierarchy of sites that you want to be able to access quickly. Nothing fancy, but it does work pretty well.

    So that’s my browser bag of tricks. Got any that I’m missing? Or something you think people ought to know about?

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    4/12/2010 26 Comments
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    Would you blog?

    Twitter Meta Moo! too far?
    Image by Josh Russell via Flickr

    Like many other bloggers that I consider to be colleagues, my blogging has tapered off quite a bit over the years, and while some of the fault lies in myself, I put most of the blame squarely on Twitter. Why take half an hour to write several paragraphs, hyperlink it up and find an appropriate image, when I can just spout off 140 characters and move on? It just makes sense, right? That’s why I’m rather looking forward to Flutter’s official launch.

    I jest, but it does bring out an obvious reason why blogging is becoming less and less of a ‘hot topic’ and Twitter keeps getting the buzz. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s accessible, and most of all it doesn’t require a significant commitment. While it’s very arguable whether that’s a good thing or not, it’s a reality.

    It used to be the standard, just an assumption that everybody would have a blog. Join a PLN, create a blog, set up your aggregator, be a part of the club. But now…. Well, I’m spending less and less time even using my aggregator. If it’s important enough to read, more than likely someone will tweet about it. And if they don’t… well, there’s a lot of good things to read that I miss. I can live with that. The library is full of them.

    So the question then becomes, with dozens of microblog options out there (and even nanoblogs!), would you recommend a newbie start a blog? If somebody who is just getting started with community building and personal learning networks wanted an avenue to share, would you even suggest that they start a blog or set up an aggregator? Or do you shuffle them straight to Twitter/Plurk and roll from there? Or a different option altogether?

    And don’t worry, I’m not missing the irony of posting this on a blog. I’ll be tweeting it out as well!

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    1/5/2010 16 Comments
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    Education will never be a trending topic

    The crowds at NECCAnybody who spends any significant time on Twitter is familiar with the concept of trending topics. They’re essentially a taste of what’s on people’s minds and typically revolve around recent news, television events, buzz generating blog posts and of course, memes.

    At large conferences like NECC, with hundreds of people using the #NECC09 hashtag in their tweets, some people speculated whether it would become a trending topic or not. The answer was a resounding No.

    It has always been a mystery to me as to just how many posts were required to make it into the trending topics list, and recently Buzzgain published their own research of the subject. The results?

    Between 12 (midnight) to 6 am PDT: approximately 1200 tweets and about 500 users to be trending

    Between 6 am to 12 Noon PDT: 1700 tweets and about 733 users

    Between 12 noon to 6 pm: 1500 tweets and about 812 users (this may be because there are more people during this time but they tweet a lot less)

    Between 6 pm to 12 midnight: 1900 tweets and about 922 users

    So at best, during the overnight hours when traffic is lowest, it would take about 1200 tweets using a given hashtag to become at trending topic. Not only that, considering that according to their research, a trending topic has an average shelf life of about 11 minutes, there would need to be more than 100 tweets per minute for it to attain the ‘weight’ needed.

    While there may be 139,665 people in the education directory of Twellow, you have to go several hundred deep just to wade past all the social media junkies obsessed with gaining the most followers.

    I don’t know how many ‘real’ educators there are on Twitter, but I do know that there just aren’t enough to make a dent in the Twitterverse on a mass scale. In fact, it’s futile to even put any efforts in trying to effect real change there. It’s wonderful for making connections and sharing ideas, but it’s just not the right place to effect any significant change. No matter how loud the choir sings, it’s just not going to be heard above the clamor about Harry Potter and Michael Jackson (no connection between the two implied).

    As popular as Twitter is, as popular as Facebook is, they are both still used by only a fraction of educators, and within that fraction, they only reach the niche audience you have. I’m grateful to have a fairly large audience on Twitter, but even so that’s still less than 5,000 people, and of those I know a large number likely registered and never logged in again.

    It isn’t that there isn’t value information being communicated via Twitter. It’s just a shame that it’s only causing small ripples and then disappearing into the ether.

    The reality is, ‘old school’ communications are still the most effective for dealing with the masses. Email and newsletters still carry quite a bit of weight, and from my own experience tend to reach much farther than a tweet or blog post.

    With that in mind I’m curious to hear your ideas for getting the ‘big ideas’ and key conversations out to the masses. Should we be aggregating them together and creating a “Tales from the Eduverse” mailing list? Sending out a newsletter in print or via email?

    The critical question being, if the ‘right’ ideas are being shared in the blogosphere/TwitterPlurkoverse, how do we communicate them out to the rest of the education community?

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    7/17/2009 29 Comments
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    Day 1: All about the “About” page

    I struggled a bit to figure out exactly where to start this challenge off, when I realized that the first step is to define your blog as well as yourself. Which of course leads us to the “About” page. The about page often gets overlooked as people tend to focus most of their time and efforts on the actual blog posts and keeping up the frequency of them. However, when you get right down to it, the About page is absolutely critical to a blog. It provides visitors insight into who the author is, what they can expect to see on the blog, and what sort of lenses the information is being viewed through.

    There are two key questions your about page should answer.

    • Who is the author of this blog?
    • What is this blog all about?


    Who are you?
    This seems like such a simple question, but it can get a little complicated. For example, how much info are you prepared to disclose? Transparency is a good thing, but some people prefer to keep their private life… well, private! Others are perfectly comfortable sharing every detail with their audience. This is where you draw that line. Your about page should at least share your name, whether it be real or a pseudonym, a brief bio, and at least one way to contact you. This should be the short version of your bio. If you’d like to post a full CV, that’s great. But don’t do it here. Think about making it one focused paragraph. Feel free to show off though! Include where you’ve presented, anywhere else you publish and so on…

    Personally, I would suggest including a photo. It personalizes the blog and gives people a visual image to keep in mind when they’re reading. However, if you are uncomfortable posting a photo, then put up some logo or avatar that will serve as your headshot for the blog.

    Just to clarify, while I’m pretty open with regards to my personal life, you don’t need to be. However, even if you do want to keep things private, you should still include information that defines who you are in the About page. For example, even if you don’t want to give away that you’re a first grade teacher in Springfield Illinois, you could still say something like “I teach primary students in the midwest”.

    There’s nothing wrong with having fun with the page either. But the end result is that by the time they leave it, they should have an idea who you are as a person.

    What’s your blog about?
    This tends to be a more complicated question than many people think. What are you trying to accomplish with your blog? Who are you writing it for? What kinds of articles do you try to post about and how is your perspective different than everybody else’s? Those are the sorts of things you should include in the second half of your About page. For example, you could say that you write about current trends in education. That’s all well and good, but that’s what EVERYONE does! How is your perspective different? Do you focus on special education? Is your primary interest in integration strategies? Are you lower school, middle school or secondary school based? Do you have any experience? Are you writing about your own personal thoughts, or just sharing things you think other people might be interested in?

    Think about some of these questions and write yourself a declaration of what your blog is all about. Don’t stress if you aren’t 100% satsified with it the first time around, thankfully you can go back and edit it later. This may be very challenging to do, but it can definitely help define yourself as a blogger and give you some focus.

    That doesn’t mean you need to pigeonhole yourself though. Keep in mind that many people BELIEVE their focus to be something entirely different than what it actually IS. If you’ve been blogging a while, go back through your last 20 posts and see what topics you’ve covered. Maybe create a wordle and see what words come up most frequently. Figure out what defines your blog at its core, and let visitors know what that is. It gives them a reason to tune in and subscribe.

    And the rest…
    A couple of last pieces of this challenge. Make sure that your About page has a way to contact you. It may be a link to your “Contact me” page, your email address or your IM information, that’s up to you. But make sure that if they visit your About page, they have a way to communicate with you directly BESIDES the comment form.

    Also, make sure your About page stands out. It should get a prominent link on your blog. Preferably in a top navigation bar, but if not, definitely towards the top of the sidebar. No matter what, it should always be above the fold.

    Finally, bear in mind that the about page should be in a state of flux. Whenever something significant happens, your about page should be updated. It should never be allowed to get stale, as it’s one of the first places that visitors often go. And while your posts will always be scrolling off the front page, it’s the one constant that defines your blog.

    Extra Credit
    Steve Lawson, someone I met at Nokia’s OpenLabs, had a very creative idea, which was to create custom About pages for specific sites that people generally arrive from. He makes his primary landing page be his general About page, but then he also has a different custom About page for people who are arriving from Twitter. I love that idea, so you can really tailor it to your audience. So if you’re already very happy with your About page, then consider making a couple of others, and tailoring them to the social sites that you frequent. Then, instead of linking to http://mysite.com from Facebook, link people to http://mysite.com/about-facebook. You get the idea.

    After you have finished updating your about page, leave a comment here with a link so people can check it out! Oh yeah, and also let your readers know so they can see the changes as well. And don’t forget to include the tag “30D2BBB”

    For more information, visit ProBlogger’s tips for creating an About Page.

    And now… I’m off to create my own (which has been missing for some time)!

    UPDATE: Finished!
    UPDATE 2: Had a question about how to create an about page on Blogger.com. While you can’t create static pages in Blogger, I did find a great post that walks you through a workaround for doing so.

    11/1/2008 75 Comments