Disqus - Latest Comments for AJCann

Re: HootSuite have finally caught up with me

AJCann — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:53:06 -0000

Hootsuite is the best (and cheapest) of the options in this area that I'm aware of. Other than that, I guess it's down to password sharing, which is quite unsatisfactory. It all depends on your budget and priorities I suppose.

Re: Social is an emergent property

AJCann — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 10:31:33 -0000

I've never used facebook for any academic purpose where there is any compulsion (e.g. assessment) because of not wanting to merge the private/professional spheres. For that reason, we've deliberately stayed away from facebook of the PLE (now more properly described as PLN) module. I use facebook to augment and amplify existing services where users have a choice of where they would prefer to participate.

Re: Six month acting-up-iversary

AJCann — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 06:52:02 -0000

Isn't the point of GTD to prioritize? Why doesn't that apply to blogging?

Re: Six month acting-up-iversary

AJCann — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 06:28:35 -0000

Surely the "time to blog" issue is a question of priorities - is it more or less important than everything else?

Re: Social Media: A Guide for Researchers

AJCann — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:19:21 -0000

Thanks for your valuable input Chris, much appreciated that you chose to share with the wider academic community.

Re: Tweetdeck Chrome App

AJCann — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 04:45:13 -0000

Just don't get sucked into deck.ly! See: http://scienceoftheinvisibl...

Re: http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/AJCann/~Z9o7B

AJCann — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:37:56 -0000

OK, just here. That's bad. Won't be using deckly then as Just here then. That's bad. I won't be using deck.ly as it breaks the Twitter activity stream.

Re: http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/AJCann/~Z9o7B

AJCann — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:35:58 -0000

Where do comments appear? Here, or on twitter? Or both?

Re: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

AJCann — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 04:46:15 -0000

Yes, it was by me - I need to make the multiple authoring on SciReadr more transparent. I didn't particularly like this book, thought it was overblown, but the main problem is that it was not right for this particular project.

Re: Strong Stuff

AJCann — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:19:22 -0000

;-) http://www.ocado.com/websho...

Re: Strong Stuff

AJCann — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 05:52:32 -0000

I'll let you know what it tastes like :-) (and nice clock - What time is it? It's Marmite time!)

Re: BibSonony - delicious done right

AJCann — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 05:04:23 -0000

Clearly BibSonomy won't be able to scale up to the level of delicious, but I don't think they'll have to. That's a problem diigo may have (although I doubt it with the rate people are abandoning bookmarking services). BibSonony has a much more academic feel to it and won't attract such a big user group.

iPads - are iPads. Don't expect then to be laptops. Sill want one. My poxy-screened iPhone is growing on me more and more and at the rate specialist iPad apps and publications are appearing now, I'll need one soon.

Re: How do you solve a problem like delicious?

AJCann — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 09:41:39 -0000

I think there's a difference between the market for "professional" social citation tools such as CiteULike and Mendeley and "consumer" social bookmarking tools such as delicious and diigo. SNS and link sharing have killed the consumer sector.

Re: How do you solve a problem like delicious?

AJCann — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:03:47 -0000

Absolutely: http://scienceoftheinvisibl...

Re: How do you solve a problem like delicious?

AJCann — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 07:07:14 -0000

Maybe - I'm dubious. I was very "social" on delicious, using it for social discovery almost as much as bookmarking. And RSS everywhere was great for aggregation and republishing.

Re: How do you solve a problem like delicious?

AJCann — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 07:05:29 -0000

From Yahoo's pov delicious is an "underperforming service" since social recommendation has killed bookmarking just as it's hitting search. Yahoo is an "underperforming service" since it has not colonized the SNS space (but then, Google is struggling too). You're right to say that SMS has superseded rather than replace the functionality of bookmarking. Friendfeed (also on it's deathbed) is the only SNS to have any reasonable tagging ability (very poor compared to a proper bookmarking service).

Re: iPhone4

AJCann — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 05:40:06 -0000

I haven't used voice control extensively, but it's worked for phone calls when I've tried it and I am surprised at how accurate Dragon Dictation is, I can see using that quite a lot. As far as Carcassonne, Scrabble and Angry Birds are concerned, still not a gamer and the iPhone isn't likely to change that.

Re: Rocketboom Tech on QR codes

AJCann — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 04:55:16 -0000

I can see the point for advertising (although the current Waitrose TV ad seems particularly dumb), but I still can't see any significant educational value.

Re: Painful conversations

AJCann — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 23:35:49 -0000

Thanks for the input Neil. I'm aware of the social features which already existed on CiteULike, but the reasons I wanted Likes were twofold. Firstly, for whatever reasons, the previous features just didn't get used by the majority. It could be design faults (I think it is), or because most people are not interested in social discovery, only in bookmarking (I think this is also true). Second, the Like function of friendfeed is so significant that I hoped it could transform CiteULIke, but I agree, they way Likes are presently implemented there, it won't. So let me be as clear as I can. I would like to see a CiteULIke Like function which is a blatant rip-off of the friendfeed function, Then we'll see what users want form a service like this.

Re: Improving Postgraduate Scientific Writing

AJCann — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 04:47:40 -0000

My natural inclination is to go for a techie fix, but I deliberately stayed away from that in this programme. Based on my experience, I'm extremely dubious that an online-only solution would be effective in the area of writing development - the reiterated face to face input seems to be necessary for most students. And that's why such programmes are so cost-intensive. If anyone knows of any online-only writing programme with evidence of proven effectiveness, I'd be very interested to know more.

Re: Money doesn’t grow on trees

AJCann — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:10:08 -0000

In the case of AoB, we have two editorial staff employed full time here in Leicester. The University charges us rent for the space they occupy. Editors from all over the world travel to attend editorial board meetings. And although the publisher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... is a charity, it pays sales and other commercial taxes on its products. Income from AoB comes from subscriptions, but AoB Plants is completely free for all to read. The maths has to add up or the journal will cease to exist. However, I would agree that the OA fees charged by some journals are excessive.

I'll let the Chief Editor chip in at this point.

Re: Google Presentations in Lectures

AJCann — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:37:10 -0000

This was a rough and ready experiment into the practicalities of the whole thing rather than any more elaborate, so I used an existing presentation because I didn't know if it would work at all in the UoL environment. In the event, it worked OK (but not for everyone). That's where this reliance on self-owned tech differs from voting handsets. I'm not sure where I'd like to take this as I give so few lectures these days. It is much more suited to big cohort first year groups and small group years 3 lectures. The next stage would be to design specific learning activities around the chat box, bit I don't really have any opportunity to do this. If you make it more elaborate than asking questions, you'd definitely need tow people to run each session as Emma does (which is another problem).

Re: Google Presentations in Lectures

AJCann — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:31:51 -0000

The nice thing about Google Presentations is the integration of the chatstream into the presentation - on the same screen. Apart from the technicalities, once you split the presentation and the conversation around it - be that a twitter hashtag or a freestanding chat client - the problems (lack of dual projection, interface complexity, heads down) start.

Re: A rod for my own back

AJCann — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 04:16:47 -0000

Great, pleased it helped you. Always looking for suggestions for improvement though.

Re: Open SOAR

AJCann — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 08:05:05 -0000

All will be revealed ... next week ;-)