the week that was
so... not much to post about today but here's a few reflections. My iPod Touch is getting better all the time - the release of the iPhone has resulted in a steady stream of new apps that can be installed on the iPod too and with its networking capability its just getting better and better. I like the Facebook app and have tried a couple of Twitter clients (Twittelator and Twitterific, both of which have some annoying features but Twittelator's annoyances are far less intrusive). I went corporate and setup access to the company email which was extremely simple to do and works great - I should have done that ages ago. The remote control app is also another great little program if you use Macs. Browsing through the list of available applications I found a Wordpress client which I immediately installed only to find out later that this blog uses an older version of Wordpress which isn't compatible with it (bummer!). The most impressive app that I have seen so far though is Shazam, which listens to a few seconds of a song and guesses the title and artist and is incredibly accurate. Pity it only works on the iPhone as the iPod just doesn't have the obvious essential hardware! I attended one of those free lunch time seminars the other day where you get an opportunity to see (hopefully) a really interesting presentation and for the privilege, then have to listen to a sales pitch on the company's products. The presentation was on innovation and some recent research into the adoption and impact of new technologies. There were plenty of interesting stats thrown in and on the whole, I walked away with the impression that education, while not leading the way in its adoption and adaptation of new technologies, isn't a complete laggard either. The organisations and industries that are early adopters though are just streaking away from the rest of the field. There was some interesting discussion on the social impact of technologies like the Web though. Perhaps the one that had the biggest impact from the audience was when the speaker mentioned that around two years ago, you probably wouldn't mention (in polite circles) that you used online dating services yet last year, one in eight couples who got married in the US met online. This is a radical shift in the mainstream acceptance of the Web in the way that we socialise and it is incredibly important for organisations to understand what is happening here. From recollection, about 15% of organisations use social networking tools as an important component of their business models, ie using them to drive business, not simply for their employees to communicate. On social networking every now and then I post to Twitter mainly just to try to get a deeper insight into what it's all about and how to get benefits from it. I find that I generally post something if I am doing something a little different or looking at a technology. It seems a good way of connecting randomly with others who might be looking at the same technology. For example, through Twitter I have been able to find out some really interesting stuff about virtual worlds, which we are interested in here at work. Once in a while though, I have posted a more personal comment (ie feeling good, annoyed etc) and what seems to be the case is that these posts attract much more attention than anything else. I am guessing this all comes back to the use of the Web as a social tool. The implications of this are very important in the design of systems that we develop and our use of social networking tools in teaching and learning environments. I'd like to explore this a lot more deeply but am running out of time. Cheers, Jerry
technorati tags: social networking, iPhone-iPod,Twitter
