Tom's 2¢

Moving my blog to tomcaswell.com/blog

2008-03-22T04:04:00.003-06:00

I have decided to move my main blog over to tomcaswell.com/blog. That means everyone who has been following my blog may want to change your feed readers to point the new blog location. All three of you. Part of the reason is because I want to use WordPress so I can have a bit more control over my blog. The other reason is that I was starting to get some Google pagerank on this blog and frankly, I would rather keep my blog obscure so I don't have to worry as much about anyone reading what I write :-)

Rapid web client development/deployment with Bungee Builder

2008-03-12T15:41:00.001-06:00

From the FamilySearch Conference:
(but it deserves its own post)
Matt Misbach (Bungee Labs): Rapid web client development/deployment

https://builder.bungeeconnect.com/
The buider IDE itself is a bungee application
No data management included, but this can plug into S3 (it runs on EC3).
The IDE will always be free to developers
Business model: it will eventually be billed based on a utility model (a combination of server memory footprint, bandwidth, and CPU). For this year (the beta period) it will be free.
Create an account and email your username to matt[at]bungeelabs[dot]com, then he'll invite you to his developer group with the bungee FamilySearch API.
treeseek.com is an example of what you can do with the FamilySearch API
WideLens is a more general example app that combines into a single calendar, SalesForce, GoogleCalendar, etc, etc.

FamilySearch Developer Conference Notes

2008-03-12T10:17:00.012-06:00

I'll be adding some notes throughout the day...

Keynote
Ransom Love: “Brave New Platform: Changing the World of Genealogy”
http://devnet.familysearch.org/support/roadmap-for-new-developers (It's nice to see that FamilySearch is using plone)

Duane Kuehne: API Overview
They do not yet have load metrics on any of the API calls they outlined. They expect to have an SLA (service level agreement) with this information at some point. One thing that surprised the API dev team was the large size of individual records once you combine all the duplicates into a central location. Some individuals can be on the order of a hundred MB or more.

Ryan Heaton: Family Tree Read
REST-enabled
Resource Types: XML, JSON, can be gzipped
Resource Locations: Via ID or Identifying parameters
You can read a person/place by ID, name, etc, etc, etc.

Data Definition
XML Schema Location:
"{module}/{version}/schema"
https://api.familysearch.org/familytree/v1/schema

persons - contains data about a person
searches - contains data about searches
users - contains data about users
matches - contains data about matches
personas - contains data about a persona

person (nested in familytree/persons)

information (ids, gender, etc)
assertions (the data that makes up the person (names, events, facts,relationships, etc)
summary (most relevant name, gender, birth, death, spouse, and parents)
values (grouping assertions by value)
composition (a view of what persona make up this person)

search (nested in familytree/search)

this is different from the person data above
score (relative to other search elements)
ref (the id of the person)
person/parent/spouse

authorities

places
dates
names

Testing it out (you need to have an API key first):
https://api.familysearch.org/identity/v1/login?key=TEST_KEY

Get all data on a particular person using their id:
https://api.familysearch.org/identity/v1/person/KWCD-QBC?sessionId=...

Query for values and summary:
https://api.familysearch.org/identity/v1/person/KWCD-QBC?view=values&view=summary&sessionId=...

Get user data on a particular person:
https://api.familysearch.org/identity/v1/user/KWCD-QBC&sessionId=...

Get summary view of 2 generations of ancestors for a particular person
https://api.familysearch.org/identity/v1/person/KWCD-QBC?view=summary&ancestors=2&sessionId=...

Get JSON data for a particular person (not sure if I got this one right):
https://api.familysearch.org/identity/v1/person/KWCD-QBC?view=summary&dataFormat=application=json&sessionId=...

Matt Misbach (Bungee Labs): Rapid web client development/deployment

https://builder.bungeeconnect.com/
The buider IDE itself is a bungee application
No data management included, but this can plug into S3 (it runs on EC3).
The IDE will always be free to developers
Business model: it will eventually be billed based on a utility model (a combination of server memory footprint, bandwidth, and CPU). For this year (the beta period) it will be free.
Create an account and email your username to matt[at]bungeelabs[dot]com, then he'll invite you to his developer group with the bungee FamilySearch API.
treeseek.com is an example of what you can do with the FamilySearch API
WideLens is a more general example app that combines into a single calendar, SalesForce, GoogleCalendar, etc, etc.

Rob Lyon: FamilyTree Combine/Separate
Tree cleaning (removing duplicates) - someone needs to develop an app to handle this better.

A pub and a baptism...

2008-03-02T18:58:00.002-07:00

This has been a great week! Earlier this week I got my first "pub." An article I wrote with Shelley Henson Johnson, Marion Jensen, and David Wiley was published in The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. It is called, "Open Educational Resources: Enabling Universal Education," and is available online. When the editor of the journal wrote me to tell me our article had been accepted, she called me Professor Caswell. That was weird! I think I'll just go by Tom, even after I graduate.

The other great thing that happened this weekend was my son Jordan's baptism. Even though the snowy weather made it hard for some family to come, it was a special day. I'll get some pics up on my flickr page soon.

I'm joining the Flickr Sheds Group!

2008-01-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

OK, I think this may be the most random email I have received. Ever. And I have received over 18,000 emails in the last couple years, according to Gmail. Apparently someone saw the picture of the 2 sheds I posted on a page meant to help me sell my house (tomcaswell.com/home), and now they want me to join their "shed club." I am pretty sure I will be the first Logan member of the "Flickr Sheds group." I may even enter the contest for the coolest shed photo. Some day I hope to have enough free time to start my own groups. Like the "Coolest paint stain on my pants" group. Anyway, here is the email I got...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: uncle Wilco (no reply) <DO-NOT-REPLY-FLICKR@yahoo.com>
Date: 19 Jan 2008 21:12:03 +0000
Subject: [Flickr] Your shed

You've been sent a Flickr Mail from unclewilco:

------------------------------

------------------------------

:: Your shed

Love your picture of the shed

If it's your own shed, do you fancy "sharing" it with our
sheddies on www.readersheds.co.uk

Basically you would put some information up about it and
maybe add a picture or two..

you can share your shed at

http://www.readersheds.co.uk/shedme.cfm

We are community mainly based in the UK, but we love to see
sheds from all round the world!

We also have a Group on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/groups/sheds/

We will be running a competition for the best shed photo
later in the year

thanks Wilco

Improving USU's Instructional Technology Department

2007-08-28T10:38:00.000-06:00

So far the USU Instructional Technology department has done a poor job convincing me that I matter as a PhD student within the department. (No, this has nothing to do with COSL or my choice of program chair.) I've been at it for a couple years, and I'm not even in the student directory on the INST web page. Other departments I have seen have walls with photos of their students, including their names, where they are from, and when they started the program. We have an online version, and it is completely outdated and boring. But I have a suggestion.

When I visit other departments I see photos of their grad students on their walls. It's cool to look at, and it sends a message. "Our students matter." Something like would help us put names with faces. I see the need for both an offline and an online version. And with our online version we could do much better. Why not add rich student profiles to the department's web page? Like personal blogs, LinkedIn profiles, flickr or Google image accounts, and other things we want to share as part of our online identity? Do you think this would be hard to build? It's already done. It's called Ozmozr, and it was built right here in the USU Instructional Technology department. But I bet not many people in the department even know about it.

Don't get me wrong, I will succeed at my goals regardless of my "headless" department. This is not about students wanting to see their own photos in the hall in front of the Instructional Technology office. It's about interacting with faculty and grad students and sharing ideas. So an important question for any new department chair should be, "How do we convince students that they are a major focus of this department?" Start with a major overhaul of the INST website. Make the new site compelling and interactive for current students as well as alumni, with rich member profiles that leverage existing (free) online services and encourage sharing and interacting. And, just for old time's sake, put some student pictures up in the hall as well.

Obey the Google Bot

2007-08-20T00:23:00.001-06:00

I wish I had a screenshot to prove it, but not long after I copied a recent geofacts article I wrote over to this blog my Google pagerank dropped from 6 to 2!

Lesson from Wise and All Powerful Google Bot: Never self-plagiarize!

Geocoding Family History

2007-08-20T00:03:00.000-06:00

For those of you who have been faithfully following my blog (both of you), I am now also posting stuff to techconsumer.com and geofacts.org. Here is a recent post on geofacts that I am also posting here, just to see what the Google bot does to my pagerank when I self-plagiarize...

This week I started using a site called MyFamily2.0 beta after a recently family get together. The site is free, and describes itself as “a place where you can share photos and narrated photo stories with your family and friends.” I am quite impressed with it so far, particularly the “stories” section of the site. It allows users to add audio stories to their part of the site. This is done using a regular telephone to record the story (they provide you with a unique PIN number when you call). You can also tie photos to the recorded story. All that is missing is a geocoding feature to allow users to tie these stories to specific locations.

I see great potential with this site, so I used their feedback link to make this plug for geocoding:

One suggestion I would make that could really bring the photos, videos, and audio stories to the next level would be to “geocode” or “geotag” these memories. By this I mean allowing users who add media to browse to a specific map location using a Google map or something similar and link them to a physical location. You could tie all this wonderful media to specific locations, such as a cemetery site or a childhood home. Panoramio.com is doing this with photos, but I don’t know of anyone else who allows users to geotag audio and video media. It won’t be long until we all carry GPS-enabled mobile devices that can search by location. The sooner we can tie media files to physical locations, the more likely MyFamily.com will lead the way in “on-site” family history.

I'm ready to move back to France

2007-08-07T01:53:00.000-06:00

I watched SiCKO online tonight, and I am ready to move back to France. There's a part in the middle of the movie where Michael Moore has a hard time understanding why the media hates the French so much. They have better health care (along with the rest of the planet), more vacation time, and a shorter work week. But it's more than that. It's just a better quality of life. And people actually care about other people -- not just their family and friends. It's hard to explain. Most Americans wouldn't understand.

I now twitter...

2007-06-27T18:43:00.000-06:00

Sign up for an account now. Ask questions later. (Questions like "what does this do, and what is it good for?) Like my friend Marion, I can't really answer the second question when it comes to Twitter. But I joined anyway, so I may as well announce it here. I now twitter.

"Give away the content and sell the object"

2007-06-27T14:37:00.000-06:00

Here's an interesting quote from artist Nathaniel Stern recently interviewed on iCommons: "I think we need to recognize that it’s not necessarily at odds to both give away the content and sell the object. Art that is in the public interest can be distributed widely, and the same art can be a luxury item for sale."

This applies equally well to books, movies, etc, etc. You can give it away and sell it too. The one is the content and the other is the object. Of course, someone else can come along and sell your content as an object too. But if I am given the choice as a consumer, I will buy the object from the original author, even if it costs a little more. Wouldn't you?

Criteria for Evaluating Social Bookmarking Tools

2007-06-13T19:44:00.000-06:00

I met Daniel Stanford at NMC last week, during Shelley's presentation on MOCSL tools. He mentioned that he had taken some time to create some criteria for evaluating social bookmarking tools. Daniel has started a new blog which could be a great place to discuss this further. Here it is for those who might be interested in his list....
Criteria for Evaluating Social Bookmarking Tools

The one thing I learned from ProSem...

2007-05-14T14:59:00.000-06:00

Several professors in the Instructional Technology department seem to have it out for me. But that's OK. I don't take it personally. They don't even really know who I am. You see, I work for the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning, or COSL. The feeling in my department is that people who work at COSL are arrogant and don't follow the rules. So I have tried to be extra nice to overcome this stigma, but so far no one has really noticed.

Two of the five papers I turned in for a class called ProSem did not meet the expected length requirements, and one of them was admittedly a poor effort. But rather than conclude that my papers were simply too short or just plain lousy, it was blamed it on my "COSL arrogance." I believe this is referred to as the halo effect, "a cognitive bias whereby the perception of a particular trait is influenced by the perception of the former traits in a sequence of interpretations." (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

So I got a C+ in the course. I'm sure I'm not the first person who had something come up and ended up having to turn in a paper that wasn't my best effort. After checking with several department people I finally figured out that the minimum grade for coursework within the school of Graduate Studies is a C. So I'm OK. But it sounds like some of the professors in my department feel I need a tougher consequence, and they are pushing for me to have to retake the last ProSem course. I am willing to take my C+ and move on, but unfortunately I seem to have become the scapegoat for those who dislike COSL. So this is a plea to the folks who have halo effect problems or COSL-envy issues: Please leave me alone. I'm just a guy who is trying to earn a degree and who happens to work at a place called COSL. Honestly, if there is one thing I learned in ProSem it is which professors I need to stay away from.

Vintage worms... my rant on social drinking

2007-04-28T20:21:00.000-06:00

The first days here in Europe have been mostly meetings and travel, but today we rented rode bikes and rode 55 km in Holland. Part of the time we could see Germany and Belgium, but we didn't cross over. Here are some photos of the trip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caswell_tom/sets/72157600150840734/

I have been offered more beer, wine, and liqueur than ever in the last couple days, so I have added a special "nobeer" tag for photos from places where I have disappointed the locals by ordering nothing more than a soda :-) This all reminds me of my dad's diplomatic drinking story. The same thing happens in the US, too. When my dad was in high school, some other kids held him down and chipped his tooth trying to force him to drink alcohol.

I have no problem with people drinking -- as long as they drink responsibly and don't run over my kids. But can we please get over this fixation with trying to get others to drink? Why is not drinking less acceptable than drinking? I don't drink because I have been asked not to by my church. I feel fine about my choice, and that's that. If this seems too strange or hard to understand, let's try a different example.

If as part of a certain church's beliefs the congregation was not supposed to eat worms, and if I wanted to be part of that church, I would stop eating worms just like that. Even if worm eating was trendy and hip. Even if people hired special worm selectors to find them the very best vintage worms for special occasions. And actually, when it comes to worms I really don't have much of a desire to eat them anyway, so it really isn't much of a loss for me. That's how I feel about drinking alcoholic drinks.

So you might be wondering how I know what I'm missing if I haven't tasted it? Well, not that I am too concerned about what I am missing, but I did taste beer by accident when I was 14 or 15. I got the cups mixed up at my friend Greg Pickett's house and accidentally grabbed his dad's beer and took a swig. It was so nasty! I ran to the bathroom and spat it out as fast as I could. Some people say beer and other drinks are an acquired taste. Sure, and so is eating worms. I also realize I haven't tasted every kind of alcoholic drink, so there might be a good one out there. I feel the same thing holds true with eating worms. Some will invariably taste better than others.

So if I offend someone by not drinking with them, perhaps I should be equally offended by their lack of respect for my choice. Maybe I have found something that is worth giving up drinking for. You may not care, and that's OK. Just don't try to impose your way of doing things on me and I won't impose my ways on you. I can still join in your toast, but I will toast with my soda.

I am a serial hobbyist...

2007-04-05T22:03:00.000-06:00

So just the other day a friend of mine called me a serial hobbyist, and even though he doesn't know me that well, he's right. To counter this accusation I am surrendering several hobbies -- at least for now...

Guitar playing - I haven't learned a new song for over 10 years. It's just fun to play the same stuff I already know. I'm not selling my guitar or anything; but I just won't claim it as an official hobby.
Photography - Yeah, I'm one of those guys who actually had his own darkroom for doing black and white photography. Those were cool times. I still have all the equipment, and I've been packing it around for 10 years now. I still like taking pictures, but I just do the point-and-shoot thing with a little Canon Elph. You tend to take less artsy stuff when you have 3 kids. So I'll enjoy all the great kiddie shots, but photography is no longer a true hobby.
Baseball card collecting - So I have 13,000 cards and I really don't know what to do with them at this point. This is an easy hobby to give up, because I haven't really done much with it for the last 15 years. Anyone want a ton of cool cards? You can have them as long as you promise to enjoy them.

There's plenty more where that came from, but I want to shed my hobbies a few at a time. And don't feel bad for me. There's plenty more where that came from. This year I plan to add paintballing to my hobby collection. Remember, I am a serial hobbyist.

Balancing Exploratory Testing With Scripted Testing

2007-03-15T16:36:00.000-06:00

This is the best explanation I have ever seen that deals with the balance testers must strike between scripted and exploratory testing:

"To the extent that the next test we do is influenced by the result of the last test we did, we are doing exploratory testing. We become more exploratory when we can't tell what tests should be run, in advance of the test cycle, or when we haven't yet had the opportunity to create those tests. If we are running scripted tests, and new information comes to light that suggests a better test strategy, we may switch to an exploratory mode (as in the case of discovering a new failure that requires investigation). Conversely, we take a more scripted approach when there is little uncertainty about how we want to test, new tests are relatively unimportant, the need for efficiency and reliability in executing those tests is worth the effort of scripting, and when we are prepared to pay the cost of documenting and maintaining tests. The results of exploratory testing aren't necessarily radically different than those of scripted testing, and the two approaches to testing are fully compatible."

This makes sense to me. The messing around I do as I am figuring out how new things work and how I should test them is really a form of exploratory testing. And this may be the only testing that is necessary for very small applications. But with a bigger app like eduCommons it is clearly impossible to keep everything organized without scripted (preferably automated) tests.

Testability

2007-03-15T16:23:00.000-06:00

Grig Gheorghiu presented at PyCon and then blogged about what makes software more testable? Here it is, shamelessly borrowed from his blog:

I mentioned a list put together by Michael Bolton, and summarized/enhanced by Adam Goucher in this blog post. Recommended reading, both for developers who want to add testing hooks into their software, and for testers who want to know what to ask for from developers so that their life gets easier (and if you're one of the unfortunate souls who have to deal with Java or .NET, this blog post by Roy Osherove talks about testability and pure OOP.)

Although our tutorial was focused on tools and techniques for implementing test automation, we also mentioned that you will never be able to get rid of manual testing. Even though the Google testing team says that 'Life is too short for manual testing' (and I couldn't agree more with them), they hasten to qualify this slogan by adding that automated testing frees you up to do more meaningful exploratory testing.

My experience as a tester shows that the nastiest bugs are often discovered by manual testing. But when you do discover them manually, the best strategy is to write automated tests for them, so that you'll check your application in that particular area from that moment on, via an automated test suite which runs in your continuous integration system.

You do have an automated test suite, right? And it does run periodically (daily or upon on every check-in) in a continuous integration system, right? And you have everything set up so that you're notified by email or RSS feeds when something fails, right? And you fix failures quickly so that everything turns back to green, because you know that too much red, too often, leads to broken windows and bit rot, right?

If you answered No to any of these questions, then you are not testing your application, period (but you already knew this if you took our tutorial -- it was on the last slide :-)

My first eBusiness

2007-02-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

I put together a little eBusiness with my wife back in 2002. AskADate.com was supposed to be a place to order themed gift packages for a loved one. If I remember right, the only person who ever ordered from the site was my mom. (Thanks, mom!) Anyway, it was a great excuse to buy a digital camera. In business terms it was a total loss, but I actually learned quite a bit about eCommerce, and I passed that on to my Computer Science students. If you count the advertising we bought through Google AdWords, I think the whole thing cost me about $250 ($200 of that was the digital camera). Even though the site is gone, it's great to be able to see it through Archive.org at http://web.archive.org/web/20030210140323/ask-a-date.com/.

Thanks for the memories, WayBack Machine!

Vision of an Open Library

2007-02-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

“I don’t know what it will be like to have books from our libraries injected into our culture again, but I’d like to see it.” --Brewster Kahle

http://www.openlibrary.org/details/openlibrary

I realize this isn't new news, but it's new to me. Here are the parts of the 2005 Open Library/Open Content Alliance announcement from Archive.org that really hit home:

3 to 4 billion of the 12 billion libraries spend every year goes to publishing.

Other projects: International Childres's Digital Library, Internet Archive Bookmobile (dollar a book!). BookShare will use this content for access for the blind. $100 laptop will include books from this project onto their laptops. Open Content Alliance will create protocols and formats.

Library of Alexandria 2.0

2007-02-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

The Microlibraries Project at the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning is off to a great start. They are figuring out how to format, print, cut and bind Gutenberg books in an attractive and cost-effective way. It's kind of like Brewster's Bookmobile -- except without the minivan. It turns out that for less than $2500 you can buy everything you need to print and bind paperback books. This has implications beyond the current goal of giving away 5000 books to elementary school students in rural northern Utah schools. But that's not a bad place to begin.

The trick is learning to share. Brewster Kahle points out in this excellent podcast that at it's peak, the Library of Alexandria in Egypt was able to collect and store most of the books of the world. An amazing achievement, but not very useful to folks who couldn't go there. So how do we share all these books and all this knowledge with more people? Many people think that the answer involves putting books online. I'm all for that, and it's an exciting to see it starting to happen.

But what then? Do you really want to read those books on your laptop? Me neither. There is something about printed books. So while thousands of people work on digitizing books all over the world, some of us should think about sensible ways to get books back into their original format. If this is all about making knowledge more accessible to people everywhere, then let's not limit it to folks with a computer and an Internet connection. Let's share books.

No Child Left Behind - The Basketball Version

2007-02-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

I have had this in Word format for a while -- someone sent it to me via email a few years ago. So *poof* now it's online. If I have stolen your idea, email me and I will either attribute it to you or remove it. Your choice.

EDIT: The same thing is available here: http://participation.blogspot.com/2005/05/if-no-child-gets-ahead-then-no-child.html

1. All teams must advance to the Sweet 16, and all will win
the championship. If a team does not win the championship,
they will be on probation until they are the champions, and
coaches will be held accountable.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same basketball
skills at the same time and in the same conditions. No
exceptions will be made for interest in basketball, a
desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or
disabilities. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY BASKETBALL AT A PROFICIENT
LEVEL.

3. Talented players will be asked to practice on their own,
without instruction. This is because the coaches will be
using all their instructional time with the athletes who
aren't interested in basketball, have limited athletic
ability or whose parents don't like basketball.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will
only be kept in the 4th, 8th and 11th games.

5. This will create a New Age of sports where every school
is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams
will reach the same minimal goals. If no child gets ahead,
then no child will be left behind.

How much emotional space do you really need?

2007-02-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that some people are much more emotionally needy than others? They need to share everything with you. All the stuff you really can't do anything about. But it's more than a need to share. The way I think of it is that these folks take up more emotional space.

The way I see it, there is only so much space out there. Eventually people start to bump into each other. That is when there are problems.

I want to teach at a university. So I have to go to school. Lots of school. I am around PhD people and wannabe PhD people. Some of these folks take up a lot of emotional space. Egos, stress, jealousy, and more egos. And it's not like personal space. Most folks will leave you with at least a few inches of that. But I've been in classrooms with zero emotional space. Zip. Nada. It's like the place is vacuum sealed.

If you are someone who takes up a lot of unnecessary emotional space, there is one cure for this problem. But I'll warn you, it's rather extreme. Have kids. It's like emotional space liposuction. I can guarantee that you will no longer feel like the center of the universe once you have children to occupy that space for you. But then you'll be where I am. Suffocating in everyone else's emotions.

So here's my plea: If you are taking up more emotional space than you really need, try to voluntarily cut back. There are those of us out there who don't need much of this type of space, and we try not to impose on others. But we still need to breathe.

Is anyone else nervous about Google?

2006-12-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a little while since I last posted to this blog. I am now maintaining our OpenUp! blog at work, plus I have been distracted on another blog-ish project I'm doing with my brother, computers.net. Anyway, so I login here only to find that now everyone needs to have a Gmail account to use the new Blogger. If that were an isolated occurence I would be a happy camper. But Google has been snapping up smaller web 2.0 companies like... um... well... a lot. Here's an interesting timeline of Google's acquisitions (viewable in anything but Internet Exploder). I guess I should be excited about the shiny, new, AJAX-y feel of the new Blogger site, but right now I feel like there is less and less elbow room on the World Wide Web. Google keeps hogging it up. All of a sudden Google feels like Wal-Mart.

Don't get me wrong. I really enjoy using Gmail and many other Google products, but lately I've been getting a little nervous about where Google is headed. Let me explain why. Fast forward five years. As you run your weekend errands, talking on your cell phone, Google is tracking you. (Currently Google requires a cell phone number to activate a Gmail account. Ever wonder why?) Your cell phone position can be determined with reasonable accuracy by triangulating three or more cell phone towers. (Cell phone tracking is already a service in some countries.) Maybe you don't care if Google tracks where you happen to be on a Saturday morning, but maybe you should. Remember, Google also knows where all the stores are thanks to Google Maps. So now Google knows where you shop and where you spend your time. Google knows if you go to church on Sunday or if you prefer to play golf. And you'd better believe all this information is very valuable to advertisers.

But I signed up for Gmail before they were collecting cell numbers, so I am safe. Or at least I thought I was until I did a quick search of my Gmail and realized that I have included my cell phone number in ten different emails. But at least they don't have my credit card information. Well, they didn't until last week, when my wife signed us up for Google Checkout and used it to save $10 on a purchase.

Let's review: Google either knows or soon will know where I live, where I work, where I shop, how I spend my time, and anything I happen to write in Gmail. It's all tied to my email address and it's all very trackable. So where do we draw the line when it comes to privacy? Or is everything fair game when it comes to marketing? And what happens when the subpoenas arrive at Google's front door? Yes, Big Brother is watching (or will be soon). It's just not the Big Brother you expected.

Bookmooch: Web 2.0 in paperback

2006-11-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, the Internet makes a great idea possible. This is the case with Bookmooch and sharing used books.

What is Bookmooch?
This article from icommons.org explains the basics: "Bookmooch is an online community for exchanging used books. If you join as a member, you can ask someone in the community to send you a second-hand book. In exchange, when someone asks you for a used book of yours, you send it to him or her." Memberships are free, and all you have to do is post the titles of 10 of your "available" books to get started. You get one point for every book you share, and it "costs" a point to request a book from someone. All you pay is the shipping for the books you request. And you can leave feedback, similar to eBay, so every "bookmoocher" develops a reputation that can be tracked.

Getting authors involved
"Bookmooch is now planning to introduce another feature to invite authors to jump into the value-chain of the ’sharing’ community. The trick is to reward authors when their book is traded, that is ’shared’." Here's how it works: "[A] credit is given to an author each time his or her book is traded. The more the author’s books are passed along, the more credits the author gets. A ‘credit’ means free books in Bookmooch so that new feature might be translated as ‘authors get free books for life’. John added that he would like to work on ways to be able to help independent authors."

Off to a great start
"After only 7 weeks after the site launch, there have been 20 000 books exchanged, 100 000 different books are available in the site, and 10 000 people have joined from 67 different countries. The site is translated into 5 different languages, with a soon to be added Japanese version. From statistics John noticed that when people share 10 books for free, they then seem buy a new book [from the site's Amazon.com links]. Who knows this might be a magic number to link ’sharing’ and ‘purchasing’?"

Depressed about democracy

2006-09-23T00:50:00.000-06:00

In the US, representative democracy just means that the more money you have, the more your special interest get represented. Is there still room for regular people to have a say?

UPDATE: I understand that voting is important. But the problem goes beyond people not voting. At what point do we realize that the 2-party system is broken. This post by a friend pretty much sums it up.

Here we go again...

2006-09-01T21:34:00.000-06:00

It's time to put at little oil into the ol' blogging machine, pull the cord a few times, and hope she starts up again. I've gotten so rusty at this I really don't have anything to say. We released eduCommons 2.1.0 at work, and since then my brain has pretty much been fried. [insert witty closing comment here] G'night.

Putting the "Pay" in PayPal

2006-06-05T14:12:00.001-06:00

Have you ever stopped and wondered about how PayPal makes their money? Let's review: With PayPal Personal you can send and receive money electronically to and from other PayPal accounts for free. You can also transfer money to and from your regular bank account at no charge. Sign me up! The other account type is PayPal Premier. With this this type of account PayPal charges a fee, $0.30 plus 2.9% of each and every dollar received. So why would anyone sign up for a PayPal Premier account when they can have a PayPal Personal account which can send and receive funds for free? This is where they have done something clever. It's actually kind of boring, really, which is why few people have noticed the fact that since buying PayPal, eBay has nearly doubled it's revenue for each auction that uses PayPal.

Here's an example scenario: Joe Blow puts his old laptop up for auction on eBay. The high bid is $450, which costs Joe around $18 in eBay fees. But Joe has taken eBay's advice and listed his laptop auction as PayPal preferred. So when the high bidder pays for the item, she of course transfers money through PayPal. Well, because PayPal encourages its users to pay through PayPal using a credit card, that is what most people do. (That is the dafault funding source, if you've noticed. You even get a warning if you try to change it to a bank transfer.)

Well, guess what? You have to pay a fee to receive credit card transfers through PayPal. Actually, if it was just a question of paying a fee for that one transaction I could live with that. No such luck. You can't receive credit card funds at all unless you "upgrade" your free, PayPal Personal account to a Premier account. And once you switch to Premier you have to pay that same fee ($0.30 + 2.9%) for ANY type of transfer into your PayPal account. Oh, and by the way, you can't go back to the free PayPal Personal account.

I told you it was boring. Billions of dollars worth of boring. And the only people who seem to notice are the eBay sellers who are forced into PayPal Premier. Someone in their marketing department deserves a big raise for putting the "pay" in PayPal.

Why I like my job...

2006-04-22T22:32:00.000-06:00

I work as a quality assurance analyst for the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL ) and as an instructional designer for the Faculty Assistance Center for Teaching (FACT). In the afternoons I am at COSL, and I test software that is used to publish university courses online for all to see and use. Being part of the OpenCourseWare movement and getting paid to do it is a pretty sweet deal by itself, but last week something happened that was cool enough to make me want to stop and blog about why I like my job.

One of the features in our eduCommons software is the ability to track whether or not course content has been cleared for copyright. It’s just a check box that you can click as you create course content. The only problem is until last week there was no easy way to view this for all your content at once. You had to click on each item to check copyright. So on Thursday I suggested displaying a copyright symbol or a check mark next to each item when viewing the contents of a course. And Friday morning Brent shows me the new version of eduCommons with the copyright symbol idea implemented. He had also added an “M” flag as well to show which course content items had metadata entered. This is the kind of software development you don’t see every day. A suggestion for the QA guy gets implemented in less than 24 hours. Sweet.

Video iPods and Blockbuster

2006-02-17T20:38:00.001-07:00

iPod video rentals at Blockbuster? It's not as crazy as it sounds. As Bob Cringley explains his idea in a recent PBS article, Blockbuster's chain of neighborhood video stores is just what Apple needs to reach millions of new customers who don't have high-speed Internet (or iPods, for that matter). Since they can't rent movies online, these folks will show up at their local Blockbuster, dock their shiny new video iPods, select their movies, and swipe their credit card. Then they can take their rentals home, plug into a TV, and enjoy them for a week or 5 days or until they expire. No returns. No late fees. Beautiful. And Apple gets to push it's music and video distribution empire beyond the limits of the high-speed Internet world. Don't forget that Blockbuster is taking a pounding from NetFlix. They need a new business model to survive. They'll do it. And we'll all go home, happily ever after...

Kids, movies, and norms

2005-12-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

Last night my wife and I went to see Narnia at a movie theater in Logan, Utah. I know it's based on a children's novel so I expected kids to be in the audience, especially at a 4:00 PM matinee. It ended up being one of my all-time worst movie experiences. Several parents brought their 2-year-old kids and let them run around the theater during the movie making all kinds of noise. It's been a while since I lived in Utah, so I need to ask, "Is this normal?"

At this point I should probably mention that I have three kids, and at one time we tried the "Let's all go to the movies together" idea. We went to see Polar Express, and I ended up walking around the theater lobby for an hour and a half with my restless baby. Lesson learned. Last night I watched two parents looking on as their toddlers ran right under the silver screen, yelping and squeaking. The parents finally scooped up their kids and stood in the lower aisle, determined to keep watching the movie. The kids eventually broke free and ran a few more laps around the theater. As a parent with young kids I am used to plenty of ambient noise, and I certainly don't expect any theater to be totally silent, but this was different. There seemed to be several parents who had come to the movie with the intention of letting their small children run and play while they watched a movie. Unbelievable.

I should also mention that I am not normally the type who makes a big deal about these kinds of situations. I usually wait until someone else says something, but the fact that no one was doing anything finally got to me. (Frankly, this little situation was more interesting to me than the movie anyway.) I ended up leaving the movie to talk to the management and ask for my money back. Even though that made me feel a bit better, I was still bothered by what happened. The theater manager said he would send someone to talk to the couple that was allowing their kids to run wild (I didn't see if that really happened). I went back in and watched the second half of the movie, partly just to see what would happen with this situation. The end of the movie wound up being just as noisy as the first half. Kids were still running under the screen with no parent anywhere in sight.

So the main thing I learned from this experience is that a majority Utah/LDS crowd will tolerate kids ANYWHERE. As far as I could tell I was the only one who was bothered enough to request a refund. I also learned that it's NOT a good idea to go to the last matinee of the day. There seem to be quite a few people who want to save a couple bucks on tickets this way. These are apparently the same ones who are too cheap to spend money on a babysitter, even if it means ruining the experience for a few hundred people. Hopefully this wouldn't have happened at a later showing. I don't think it would have been tolerated for an entire movie in any other state. In any event, I found another reason to be confused by "Utah Mormon" culture last night. (I know I am generalizing here, so if this happens in other places/cultures I would like to hear about it. If so, please ignore this last paragraph.)

7150 Project: School IT Security Wiki

2005-12-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

Well, the commercial blogging thing wasn't really working out. Then, a few weeks ago, I wrote some content for a CURI grant Brett Shelton is doing on IT security, or the lack of it, in our public schools. I kept thinking about school IT security, and finally decided to make it the topic of my 7150 (Learning Objects) class project. I've been working on it alot over the past few days, and right now I am wishing I was sitting in a more comfortable chair. Anyway, here's the link to my wiki.

Blogging to help pay for college?

2005-11-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

This week I signed a contract to blog for www.computers.net. While I have only written two articles ("Choosing Your Next USB Flash Drive" and "How to Fight Phishing & Spoof Email Scams"), I am encouraged by the fact that a big jump in hits yesterday. This may just be a fluke or a spike, but I would love to think my articles had something to do with the jump in traffic. While few people really understand the exact details of Google's magic formula for page ranking, it is clear to me that popularity can grow quickly and exponentially. I would love to be able to pay for part of college through blogging. We'll have to see if the increased traffic (and revenue) can be sustained over time. For now I will sleep with visions of sugarplums and Google Ads dancing in my head.

Commercial Blogs Project is up

2005-11-18T00:53:00.000-07:00

I started my Commercial Blogs project here. Let me know if you think the theme is two hard on the eyes, or any other thoughts on this blog. This blog will be about making money with blogs. I'll be adding more content soon.

7870 commercial blog project

2005-11-11T09:21:00.000-07:00

At Cafe Sabor Dr. Wiley said that the 7870 class wiki could serve as an example of a suitable class project. I am just wondering about copyright issues. I have narrowed my project topic to focus on commercial blogs (I may expand it if I find the topic is too narrow). I was planning on putting these together in a series of posts on a blog, organized categorically. Since 90% of my learning objects need to come from sources other than myself, how do I do this with out violating copyright? I know I can link to other sites like Wiley did in his 7870 wiki, but is that enough? I don't want to be a copycat, but the only idea that seems to fit is some sort of narrative peppered with relevant outside links.

One more thing that has been on my mind is that I want people to be able to find what they need quickly and efficiently. I need to look into this more, but has anyone found a way to organize blogs (other that just broad categories or chronologically)? Perhaps carefully selected categories are enough. Any thoughts?

Caswell Family History Blog Project

2005-11-09T01:34:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with my 7150 project, but I have created a Caswell Family Stories blog here http://www.tomcaswell.com/blog/ I grew up in a family of eight, and we had some fun times. This blog is a place to share fun family stories from when we were younger and lived overseas. We had some unique experience growing up in the Foreign Service, and I don’t want to forget them.

This blog also gave me a reason to try out WordPress, and I am sold! I've been getting excited about how WordPress makes blogging more organizeable. This will be important for my learning objects project when I need to categorize different types of basic computer FAQs. David, if you are reading this, do you know of a WordPress plugin that can generate crossreference links automatically within different articles?

Marathon Blog

2005-11-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

Maybe I am just new to blogs, but I am used to the kind where someone vents their extreme feelings about some political issue and maybe in a few days they get a comment or two. And then there's my brother, Bob, who creates a post that generates enough traffic to slow the Internet down to the point that people notice. Sheesh! His one thread is bigger than my whole blog!

*regains composure*

OK, I'm back. I think that was my first time ever experiencing "blog-envy." All I can say is, "Way to go, bro. Google Ads was built just for you."

iterating toward openness » Great Screencast on Screen/Podcasts in Education

2005-10-31T08:39:00.000-07:00

This was borrowed from David Wiley's site, iterating toward openness » Great Screencast on Screen/Podcasts in Education: "I never thought I’d see a screencast in a screencast, but that is just what I got watching this fabulous presentation about using screencasts, podcasts, blogs, etc. in support of education. Any time you come away with brand new ideas about how to be a better teacher, more efficiently, you have to share…"

I had to throw this on my blog for the hundreds of fellow teachers who are subscribed... the silent, lurking masses that do not register on any of my counters.... Anyway, this screencast is a must-see for anone who is new to this stuff, especially for teachers seeking new ways to reach students. I loved that the podcast of the quantum physics lecture ended up on the top 100 podcasts list. People are curious. One more thing: this screencast didn’t work for me in Firefox, so you may have to use something else.

Beware! Spoof emails are getting trickier!

2005-10-29T10:56:00.000-06:00

It is more important than ever for Internet consumers to make sure they are on secure (https://), verified connections before doing any kind of business online.

I received a spoof email yesterday from “PayPal” that was so convincing that I almost fell for it. I am concerned that many other people will fall for this particular scam because it is so similar to a genuine PayPal email. Here is what is makes this spoof trickier:

It didn’t ask for personal information in the email itself. These kinds of emails are a more obvious form of what is called “phishing.”

The email, which didn’t have my name on it (another clue I missed), told me that my PayPal account been accessed from a foreign IP address and that I needed to verify my account.

The site it took me to when I clicked the link looked EXACTLY like www.paypal.com’s log in screen. Most of the links on the page still linked to PayPal to make it even more convincing.

Everything it the website asked me for seemed legitimate EXCEPT it also asked for my credit card’s ATM PIN. This was very suspicious, and I stopped filling out the form. I don’t know for sure if my PayPal account info or credit card number were compromised, but I decided to play it safe and close both accounts.

After looking more closely, I also noticed that I was not on a secure connection (https://), even though the spoofers had cleverly inserted the same yellow lock graphic that is on PayPal's secure site. Although the web address contained the name paypal.com, it was preceded by this combination of numbers: 61.109.176.5 (an alternate IP address).

I looked up the spoofer’s IP address (61.109.176.5) using WhoIs, and it belongs to Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, located in Australia! Sound “phishy” enough?

In the past I have received legitimate emails from PayPal asking me to go through a similar verification process, so I was fooled by this copy-cat spoof email and website. Beware that spoofers are getting trickier!

Above is a screenshot of the fake PayPal log in. It looks and works just like the real one, except you are not on a secure connection. (It's hard to see in the screenshot, but the address starts with "http://" and not "https://")

Once you "log in" (and they get your PayPal password), you are prompted to update your credit card. The only thing that has been added here is a space at the bottom for you to enter your ATM PIN number. Once they have this information, they can go to town on your credit card!

Cheese stick overdose?

2005-10-26T14:11:00.000-06:00

My two-year-old just ate his 5th cheese stick in about 15 minutes. He seems fine, but is there a legal limit? Last week it was the same thing with apples. So much for moderation in all things...

"Pork Chop" in Logan, UT and again at Laguna Beach, CA

Am I an instructional designer?

2005-10-26T13:25:00.000-06:00

I am about to print some business cards (you know, the do-it-yourself kind), and I am trying to figure out what titles to give myself. “Student” just doesn’t sound worthy of a business card. Maybe “PhD student,” but I am not officially in the PhD program, so it that lying? And if I’m going to stretch the truth a bit then I’m on that slippery slope that leads to falsified Microsoft certifications and the like. If I’m going to do that then I may as well photoshop my name on someone else’s diploma and be done with it!

So I’m back to nothing for a title. But I taught French and Computer Science in the public schools for seven years! Doesn’t that count for anything? Still, if I just wanted “Teacher” under my name I would have stayed at Redlands High School. So what else can I put on my Office Depot brand, premium matte, ivory business cards? I got a master’s in instructional technology while I was a school teacher. Does that make me an instructional designer? I don’t think so. I need job experience. Maybe I can get a $6/hour job at USU doing instructional design work to feel worthy of the title. Nah, I’d rather have extra time to go fly fishing. Besides, the one job I’ve had at USU only lasted a day…

<sidenote>
I got one of those $6/hr computer jobs at the start of Fall semester because I felt guilty about not working. (In the past I have almost always worked at least part-time as a student.) That night I was at the used CD store and couldn’t bring myself to buy anything because I knew buying a $6 used CD represented an hour’s worth of work. So I quit my job the next day. I haven’t felt guilty about spending money ever since.
</sidenote>

OK, time to make a decision. Here are my top three idea for my business card:

Tom Caswell
Instruction Designer Wannabe

Tom Caswell
Nearly-matriculated PhD Student

Tom Caswell
Unemployed by choice

Forget it. I’ll make business cards later.

An idea for my learning objects project

2005-10-26T00:05:00.000-06:00

I've been following some of my classmates blogs, and it looks like most INST 7150 folks are starting to get serious about final project ideas. Here is some background on my project and the quickie version of what I want to do: I used to enjoy helping friends and family with various computer questions and issues. This included everything from saving a file to starting a new website. It didn't take long before I started getting the same questions over and over again, kind of like Groudhog Day. So I want to put together a collection of resources to answer some common computer questions that I keep getting. I am not sure anyone will ever look at them, but it will make me feel better to have something to refer people to when I am too busy to help. Here are some examples of the questions I want to include in my collection (I realize that many are specific to the PC):

What is System Restore and how do I use it?
What is spyware and how do I get rid of it and then prevent it from coming back?
What is the difference between XP Home and XP Professional?
What are cookies?
What are Windows updates?

Would you consider answers to these types of questions reuseable learning objects (RLOs)? Is this too generic an idea? I know sites similar to what I am describing already exist (www.pchell.com, www.computerhope.com), so is there something I can do to improve on what has already been done? OK, enough for now; it's bedtime.

"What time is your name?"

2005-10-19T15:01:00.000-06:00

This is the all-time best question to ask people (especially children) who don't speak English very well. It's great for when you are in a foreign country and someone is trying to practice their 3 sentences of English on you... especially if you are in a hurry to get somewhere. This question produces some of the best puzzled looks I have ever seen.

If I had a nickel for every blog...

2005-10-18T23:37:00.000-06:00

If I had a nickel for every blog I've started, I'd have about 25¢. I closed down my other blog because it had RSS issues. I tried "untweaking" the tweaks, but it was quicker to start a new one. Besides, blogs are cheap.