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Multitasking Mondays: Prioritize

 About  1 Response »
Apr 272009
 

Some of you may have been wondering where I’ve been. I am spending a lot of concentrated time right now on my dissertation, among other things, and as a result have not been able to publish as much as I would like on Nerdlets.org. More posts are coming, and I hope to return to my previous level of productivity soon.

one of my photos. Check out my flickr page for more

one of my photos. Check out my flickr page for more

In the mean time, you can find me in other areas of the internet. I’m on twitter, friendfeed, and flickr to name a few (friendfeed is my new favorite because it aggregates everything). It’s easier and quicker to interact with those sites than it is to write full-fledged blog posts, so I have been more active there lately. I would love to interact with you there, as well as here!

Next on tap for nerdlets.org (time permitting): new (open-domain) ebook for the Greek New Testament (Tischendorf or Westcott), keeping up your Greek over the summer, managing contacts, backing up your computer, securing your home from internet dangers, update on the OpenScriptures project and related sites (Ressurgence Greek, etc.).

Real Time Twitter Chatter and its Implications

 Christian Living, Christianity, Computing, Culture, Webapps and Websites  No Responses »
Feb 072009
 

A variety of applications (like TweetDeck) can monitor twitter chatter based on keywords and other filters. Imagine if you were monitoring this data during a certain important time period. You could put your finger on exactly what people were interested in at a certain place and time, and the difference between interests at different places.

The NYT has done just that with SuperBowl related tweets, organized along a time-line punctuated by various markers such as TD and FG.

Twitter Chatter

The implications are pretty staggering. Take advertising as a simple and obvious example. Advertisers could set up a Twitter filter using words tailored for their ad. The data provided could tell them what areas of the country responded most favorably (or at least most often), when, and possibly even why. Notice, for example, that at a particular point in the game, when the Steelers have the lead, Arizona is all a-twitter about the Cardinals, and presumably couldn’t care less about the Hulu commercial. By contrast, that’s the dominant topic of conversation in the NE.

Any thoughts on how to harness this kind of information for the church? There is a Sunday morning #rollcall hash-tag that could make this an interesting topic of conversation.

Politics and Technology

 Culture, Tech/Gadgets  No Responses »
Dec 122008
 

Obama was hailed by supporters and detractors alike for his tech-awareness (Twitter, Blackberry, a very well put-together web site, etc). It seems, however, that Obama has the same problems with technology that everyone else has. He may have to give up his Blackberry, for example, over security issues.

More interestingly, Obama’s “Open for Questions” website, a Digg-like system that allows interested parties to ask questions of Obama and vote on those of other users, has run into problems. Politico reports:

It was suggested when it launched that the tool would bring uncomfortable questions to the fore, but the results so far are the opposite: Obama’s supporters appear to be using — and abusing — a tool allowing them to “flag” questions as “inappropriate” to remove all questions mentioning Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich from the main pages of Obama’s website.

The Blagojevich questions — many of them polite and reasonable — can be found only by searching words in them, like “Blagojevich,” which produces 35 questions missing from the main page of the site. ….

Declaring a question “inappropriate” is different from merely voting it down; it’s calling foul on a question, not just disapproving of it.

Community reporting systems like this are often vulnerable to abuse from committed partisans — YouTube has wrestled with a parallel problem — and the only solution is conscious efforts to remedy it.

So far, Obama’s team does not seem to have stepped in to allow uncomfortable questions to rise to the top, and instead is allowing his supporters to sanitize the site.

Read the whole article.

The Blagojevich question is not the only politely inquiry question to be flagged. Justin Taylor posted a link to his question about the Freedom of Choice Act here, and according to the comments in this post (and my own visit to the site), it was flagged shortly thereafter as inappropriate.

Obama’s tech savvy is laudable, but it may be that in practice his administration will not differ all that much from what McCain’s might have been.

Gmail Adds To-do Lists

 Webapps and Websites  1 Response »
Dec 092008
 

Gmail finally has a built in to-do list, a much needed and requested feature. It’s pretty bare-bones, but its there, which is certainly an improvement. You have to enable it through Gmail Labs. From Webware:

Since e-mail is where and how many of us get things done, both in our personal and professional life, why not add a list of things that we may not be able to get done via e-mail, such as a reminder to make dinner reservations?

To enable Tasks, go to Settings in the upper right of the Gmail window and click the Labs tab. Click Enable next to the Tasks selection, click Save Changes. After refreshing Gmail, a Tasks link will appear under the Contacts link. Just click that Tasks link and you are ready to be productive.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Remember the Milk for to-do lists in a getting-things-done fashion. RTM has a Thunderbird plugin, interfaces for iGoogle, netvibes, and twitter, and even a Ubiquity command set. It also integrates perfectly into Gmail, which I posted about here.

Use Ubiquity to Listen to the Bible Online

 Bible and Hermeneutics, Software  14 Responses »
Dec 092008
 
Use Ubiquity to Read the Bible

Use Ubiquity to Read the Bible

It is now even easier to search, read, and even listen to the Bible online.

A much improved upgrade to Ubiquity has been released, making this ground-breaking Firefox plugin prettier, more robust, and exceedingly versatile. More to the point, the ESV command for this plugin has also been updated, and the update allows you to listen to the Bible as you browse. You can watch the video at the end of this post for a full demonstration and how-to instructions.

If you are already familiar with Ubiquity, then download the latest version and install the ESV command. If not, read on for a short introduction.

What is Ubiguity?

Ubiquity is a plugin for the Firefox browser. You can read the full introduction, complete with an excellent video demonstration, here. In a nutshell: it gives your browser a basic understanding of language. You can use Ubiquity to type in simple commands in order to make Firefox do things that it would normally require several clicks and minutes to do.

Check the weather with Ubiquity

Check the weather with Ubiquity

Take checking the weather as an example. The old way: (1) open up a new tab, (2) type in the URL of the weather site, (3) type in your zip code, (4) scroll past adds and other useless information. The Ubiquity way: (1) Type in “Weather”, (2) Wait while ubiquity does everything for you (it uses your IP address to automatically determine your location, check the weather site, and output todays weather in the same window).

Ubiquity Commands

Ubiquity includes a number of built in commands, such as “wikipedia” to search the site with that title, “calculate” to crunch numbers, “add-to-calendar” to add an event to your Google calendar, or “twitter” to change your twitter status. You can see all available ubiquity commands by using the command “command-list.”

The true awesomeness of Ubiquity, however, lies in the fact that any web page or service can generate a set of commands that allow you to interact with its services. You can add these commands to Ubiquity by “subscribing” to the page in question. You can find a large list of commands here, but be warned that these should all be considered beta-at-best.

How to Set Up Ubiquity and the ESV Plugin

The good folks in charge of the ESV Bible have provided a ubiquity command that allows readers to search, read, and even listen to the ESV Bible. I have written a small screen cast that shows you how to set this up and also demonstrates some of Ubiquity’s best features.

You will need to go to the following sites in order to set things up.

  1. Download the latest version of Ubiquity here.
  2. Subscribe to the ESV site here.

Below is a brief screencast demonstrating how to get Ubiquity set up, how to install the ESV plugin, and how to use both to do a number of interesting things while you browse the Internet.

Update:

Don’t miss the official video from ubiquity! It’s truly amazing:


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

New Feature at Nerdlets: Better Comments, Better Conversations

 About, Webapps and Websites  6 Responses »
Nov 262008
 

Your Nerdlets are now conversationally super-powered. Comments are now threaded (you can reply to other people’s comments), easier to manage, easier to subscribe to, and better all around.

This is a long post, so let me give you the bottom line: Nerdlets.org values your comments, and hopes that you will participate in the ongoing discussion that happens here. I want to know how you are using computing technology, particularly if you are using it for the direct benifit of Christ’s kingdom. The new commenting system is designed to facilitate community involvement. It also allows you to promote yourself and your own ideas: the more you participate in the discussion here the more you can draw positive attention to yourself, and to your blog, website, or social service. Read on to find out how!

Blogging is Supposed to be Social

Blogging is supposed to be a social medium. For a variety of reasons, the social aspect of blogging has dwindled in the last couple of years. Partly this is because of limitations in most blogging software, and these limitations are gradually being fixed (WordPress 2.7, for example, will feature basic threading of comments). Another factor is the rise of more directly social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.

Personally I think we can restore community to the Blog, and to that end I have installed IntenseDebate. Recently acquired by the folks at WordPress, IntenseDebate brings a variety of social features to any Blog.

Features of IntenseDebate

You will notice that the basic commenting interface is still simple to use and intuitive, and anybody can post regardless of whether or not you have an account with Nerdlets or IntenseDebate

Yet there are some interesting new features available to those willing to create an account with IntenseDebate (which is very easy to do: just click the box says create an accound).

  1. Reply to comments. You can now reply to someone else’s comment, or start a fresh thread. This essentially turns each Blog Post into a forum. No more “@username’ syntax. Because comments are now hierarchical they are now more conversational.
  2. Subscribe to comments. You can now easily subscribe to the comments for a particular post.
  3. Email Notification. If you post a comment and someone replies to your comment you can choose to be notified by email.
  4. Rate comments. Nerdlets is now a community. Anyone can rate the helpfulness of other people’s comments. The higher your rank the more prestigious you are, and the more prestigious you are the more people will trust what you have to say. This can help drive traffic to your own blog (I always notice a spike on Nerdlets after I post a comment on someone else’s blog) and increase your reputation in the online world.
  5. Comment across blogs. You can use your IntenseDebate account with any blog that has IntenseDebate installed. Your comments are recorded by IntenseDebate, and your rank is retained throughout, again promoting new conversations and helping you to increase your online reputation.
  6. OpenID. If you are worried about having yet another user name and password, IntenseDebate supports OpenID. The best part: you probably already have an OpenID account (go here to see why).  OpenID allows you to securely sign into a multitude of different online services by means of a unique URL and is supported by a number of internet companies, including Google (if you have a blogspot blog), Yahoo, Flickr, and Technorati.
  7. Better Nerdlets Navigation. IntenseDebate provide a couple of widgets that help increase the usefulness of this site. Most recent comments are show in the sidebar, for example, as are the most popular posts. If enough people sign up with IntenseDebate I can also add a widget that ranks readers by the helpfulness of their comments (which is determined by the aforementioned rating system). This is yet another way you can draw attention to yourself (and your own blog or website) by participating in Nerdlets.
  8. You can find more information here.

Conclusions

The bottom line: your participation on Nerdlets.org not only benifits this site, it now benifits you! I hope that this will increase our ability to dialog about the intersection of Christianity, theology, and computer technology.

Don’t Pay for Software

 Software, Webapps and Websites  3 Responses »
Oct 062008
 

I am still a little surprised that people are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars on computer software when there are often dozens of free alternatives available. Most of us use computers for pretty basic tasks: emailing friends, browsing the internet, editing photos, listening to music, writing letters, and maintaining blogs. All of these tasks—and many others—can be performed using excellent free software that is easily installable and maintainable.

Why you should not be afraid of “Free”

Consumer Reports recently ran an article instructing its readers to be suspicious of free software. There reasons were sound, but only apply to a certain kind of “free.” There is certainly a lot of “free” stuff on the internet that can cost you in the end, but there are also a lot of excellent resources as well; the trick is being able to tell the difference.

I think the other reason people are afraid of free software is that they assume it’s “second class.” Since it’s free, it can’t be very good. Again, this applies to some software, but not the kind I’m talking about. Think about it this way: who would you rather buy a car from? Do you pick the used car dealer, primarily interested in his bottom line? Or do you pick the enthusiastic hobbyist, the guy (or girl) who refurbishes old cars because he loves it? All things being equal, the second individual is probably the more trustworthy.

So what do you mean be “free”?

There are three kinds of free. The first type of free software is “free” software—notice the quotation marks. This includes malware (software that pretends to be useful, but actually damages your computer), shareware (software that pretends to be free at first, but then cuts you off after a certain amount of time, or holds back on you until you pay its premium), and crapware (software that really is free, but sucks). Of these, shareware is the only one worth talking about, and even here you should be careful. While I don’t particularly care for the shareware model, there are some useful programs in this group.

The second kind of free software is free in the sense of “free beer.” Many programmers and organizations develop software for their own personal use, and while they want to maintain absolute control over their creation, they nevertheless offer it to others out of kindness (or self-promotion, or for some other non-monetary motivation). So this includes all software that is “closed” (the programmer does not release the source code) but does not require payment.

The third kind of free software is free in the sense of “free speech.” Free-speech software is (almost) always also free-beer software. The difference here is that in addition to being free to use, those who produce the software also publish the “source,” the internal nuts-and-bolts that determines how the software functions. This is useful for other programmers—anyone can improve or add functionality to the software, without having to ask permission or pay a fee. Firefox is a good example here; it is free to use and also free to modify, which means there are plugins that can do almost anything right in the comfort of your browser. This is the best kind of free because, in addition to keeping money in your wallet, you are not ultimately dependent on any one individual or organization, and so your software is less likely to go out of date or be unusable.

The Recommendations: Free Software you Should Download or Bookmark

Over the course of the next few weeks I will be posting about free software to get you started, organized by function. All the software will be at the very least “free beer” software (unless otherwise noted). Most of it will also be “free speech” (open-source) software. I will also include a number of web-apps, which are generally “free beer” services.

The following is a list of the types of software I will discuss in the forthcoming posts. You can check back here, as I will edit this page when new posts are available, or you can always subscribe to the blog and get updated automatically!

Follow Me on Twitter

 Webapps and Websites  8 Responses »
Sep 252008
 

OK, I’m taking the plunge. Follow me on Twitter, especially if you want to keep up with this blog (and don’t want to subscribe).

If you haven’t heard of Twitter, it’s a “micro-blogging” (or “life-streaming”) service that allows you to post mini-updates about your current state of being. It has a variety of uses–from simply telling your friends where you’re at, to informing the world that you have a new blog post, to reporting news and current events. This flexibility is the result of its simplicity: posts have to be short and sweet, and the more abbreviations (lol, afk, .02, asaygt, awgthtgtta) the better, and you can post from anywhere (email, internet, cell-phone, etc.), and because it’s all so easy people post enormous amounts of material (which is both an advantage and a disadvantage).

Using twitter is easy. You simply create a (free) account, and then update at will (you can use any one of a number of twitter clients to make this easier, and plugins are available for almost every platform imaginable (from email clients to other social platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, and FriendFeed). Once you are set up and “tweeting” you can start following other Twitter-ers, and they start following you. It’s less headache than blogging, less social than Facebook/MySpace, but it lets you keep others easily and instantly informed about what you’re up to on your blog, at your work, and in your life.

To be honest, I resisted Twitter for awhile, especially because of a slew of problems they have had recently. But those problems have recently been fixed, and so I’m taking the plunge. Time will tell if its useful. In the mean time, I need the followers!.

Should the President Twitter: An Update

 Culture  1 Response »
Aug 132008
 

I asked the question here. The answer, perhaps, is available here. An excerpt:

Up until last night, the person with the most followers on the micro-messaging service was Digg founder and Web celeb Kevin Rose, with 56,482 other people following his every public mind burp. It took none other than Barack Obama (or, rather, Obama’s campaign machine) to take the Twitter crown away from Rose. Obama can now finally stand tall knowing that 56,791 people subscribe to his campaign Tweets.

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