tech-ed collisions

one from (the?) left field

Not the usual sort of technology that I comment on but the stump jump plough would have been the iPhone of the 1800's (that's probably doing it a bit of a dis-service). Anyway, its nice to see the local Google team recognising this with a bit of a local flavour on their home page today. For a brief summary of it, see the Google blog. Cheers, Jerry.

Filed under  //   Google  

followup on 20% time

A while ago I blogged about companies providing time to their employees to innovate. Google do it, Atlassian are trialling it and being public about it. Here are some updates from the Atlassian blog on the trial so far. Cheers.

Filed under  //   Google   general  
Posted July 9, 2008

Google should buy Twitter

Well... not really but one of the biggest problems that I have with Twitter (which is a great idea) is its reliability. I just experienced not being able to get into it yet again. This follows closely from problems I had yesterday and on what seems like many previous occasions. So why do I mention Google? Basically Google is my Internet health check. It's just always there - fast and reliable. If I can't access Google I know I have network problems. Twitter could learn from this commitment to reliability and performance. Either that or someone with the financial might and commitment to performance/reliability should just buy them out and sort it out. Cheers, Jerry.

Filed under  //   Google   Twitter  
Posted May 21, 2008

Document Freedom Day update

In a previous post I mentioned that Google were hosting a local (Sydney) event to celebrate this day.  Unfortunately I don't live in Sydney so attending was not possible. However, Sarah Maddox, who was able to attend has posted a great article on her blog covering the event.  It is great to see the concentration on the broader challenges 'document freedom' presents rather than simply focussing on disputes over format specifications.  I encourage anyone interested in finding out more about document freedom to read Sarah's article.

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Filed under  //   Google  
Posted April 1, 2008

Document Freedom Day

Google, the Internet Society of Australia (ISOC-AU) and the Sydney Linux User's Group are hosting an event for the first annual Document Freedom day on Wednesday 26th March at the Sydney Google offices. From the document freedom site:

"The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for Document Liberation with grassroots action for promotion of Free Document Formats and Open Standards in general. The DFD was initiated and is supported by a group of organisations and companies, including, but not limited to the Free Software Foundation Europe, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe, IBM, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, Inc. On 26 March 2008, the Document Freedom Day will provide a global rallying point for Document Liberation and Open Standards. It will literally give teams around the world the chance to "hoist the flag":"
For more information about the event in Sydney, see here. At education.au we are keen to use, showcase and promote open standards in general, but we obviously have a specific interest in those that affect or can be utilised within education. This event in particular is well timed in terms of what is happening at the moment with open document formats and the standardisation process. Many will have heard about OOXML and possibly the fast tracking of the Draft International Standard 29500. However, if you are not, simply try googling OOXML. The debate over this issue is intense, to say the least. Trying to find an unbiased view can be challenging. Here are a couple of links that are worth reading but as with anything that is written, are written through the eyes of the writers/contributors. Cheers, Jerry

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Filed under  //   Google  

Google Sky in your browser

Here's another nice service from Google if for some reason you aren't able to run Google Earth on your desktop (not in the SOE or something like that) and would like to search and view some of images that 'Sky in Google Earth' offers. Google Sky puts all this into your browser. The Hubble Showcase alone is really worth checking out. Happy viewing!

Filed under  //   Google  

twenty percent time

It's always good to look at successful organisations and try to learn from some of their practices/experience. Some time ago we looked at Google and their '20% time' for engineers. Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their time free to work on what they are really passionate about. As well as hopefully making Google a better place to work for their engineers (not that it would have been that bad any way!) a number of successful Google products have emerged as a result of this initiative. I recently attended a 'breakfast seminar' where Mike Cannon-Brookes of Atlassian talked about his company. Atlassian have just started a 20% time trial of their own. On the Atlassian blog you can find out all the details of this trial, how it works, why they are doing it etc but what is really interesting is the open and very public approach they are taking with it. Atlassian staff are being encouraged to blog everything about the trial, what works, what doesn't, how they feel about it etc. While we know about Google's 20% time and what some of the products that have emerged from it are, Mike argues we don't really know much about how it works in practice. Atlassian are going to find out for themselves and let the world know through their blog. This will be very interesting to follow and I look forward to seeing the blog posts appearing in their developer blog. Atlassian estimate that their trial is going to cost US$1,000,000 - a serious investment given the size of their company. At education.au we have quite a number of software engineers and it would be great to adopt this sort of practice as well. In addition to software engineers we have quite a number of professionals from Education and Training who, if given 20% of their time to devote to something they are passionate about, would no doubt end up adding a lot of value to our company. The reality of course for us is that quite simply, this is not going to happen. We are not in a position to do something like this but what sort of organisations are? Take Google and Atlassian for example. Both are successful technology companies that have the financial capacity to implement such programs. One is publicly listed and one is private. Is it feasible or even acceptable for say, not for profit organisations or government departments to try similar programs? How about other professions and trades? Surely software engineers are not the only ones who can benefit from and add value back to their organisations and customers through such initiatives. Think about your job for a moment - what could you do if you were given a day a week to do something related to your work that you are passionate about and what sort of benefits would ultimately come back to your organisation and its customers? The 'catch 22' for me is that in order for us to be in a position to do this, we would already had to have done it successfully and be reaping the benefits to be in a position to do it!

Filed under  //   Google  

"Engineering a path for the future"

Heres an initiative worth following up for some (all) of our educational organisations and many others besides. An entry posted by Vint Cerf on the Google Blog about 'grand engineering challenges for the 21st century'. The National Academy of Engineering has assembled a panel of experts to figure out what these challenges may be and the result will be listed on the Web on February 15th, when we (the public) will get a chance to comment on this list. You can post your thoughts prior to that here. Having had a look at the people on the committee, it is being driven strongly from an engineering/science perspective (not surprising really). I hope they can think beyond the hard science to social, cultural and behavioural issues that are just as important. Cheers, Jerry.

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Filed under  //   Google  

Google does it again

Yet another interesting announcement from Google. It seems they are about to launch a new tool called knol. A knol is a 'unit of knowledge' and the service aims to encourage anyone who is 'expert' in something to write an article about it. According to Google the service aims to highlight authors and I guess help create or enhance their reputation. At the moment they are doing some limited trials by invitation only. From its description it sounds like it could be a great tool for educators and learners alike. It will be interesting to see how successful it becomes.

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Filed under  //   Google  

Google Street View: Where can it go from here?

Google Street view recently arrived in Australia and is already encountering interesting opinions on privacy in particular. Google Earth and Google Maps are great services already but it certainly does add an extra dimension when you are able to look at a location (360 degrees too) from street level. Of course at street level is where you will find all sorts of people engaged in all sorts of activity who may or may not want to be photographed. This is where privacy advocates are concerned. Do a Google search on Google Street View and you can find a number of articles discussing examples of where,how or when you might not want to be photographed for the world to see. What interests me though is not so much the discussion (interesting as it is) of Google Street View now but what it may look like and how it could be used in the future. Photos are a natural precursor to video so how long is it before Street View or something like it starts using video. There are countless numbers of webcams and video surveillance in our cities now. If you really want a street view to add an extra dimension to Google Earth/Maps why not integrate these into the service. What could you use such a service for? Obviously its great for real estate services, previewing where you might go on holidays etc and could be a great educational resource. How about some other uses? There should be some great mashup opportunities here. Since privacy has been raised as a concern where could this go? Well, a number of social networking services I use have presence awareness so they know when I am online. I can probably be tracked down to a general area using an IP address. So, if you know my identity, that I am online and where I am online at, if there is a webcam or some sort of accessible video surveillance nearby, theoretically it may be possible for you to do a search on me and then click to some sort of video where you can see me, without me knowing it or giving any sort of permission to do so. Is this a good or a bad thing? What if I am not online? I may be carrying my mobile phone with me. Mobiles can supposedly be located easily enough so its probably theoretically possible to track me down to a location using that technology. Of course there are other ways that I can be tracked down which I discussed briefly here. Its interesting to speculate just what sort of services could be available in the next 5 or 10 years and just how powerful and accessible technology is becoming. Cheers, Jerry.

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Filed under  //   Google