The new Firefox 4 is out and I installed it now that most of my extensions work. There are a couple of things that I noticed:

• It looks very much like Chrome with the tabs on top and the context menu placing “Open in New Tab” in the pole position.
• The page loading icon is sometimes two different icons.

The latter is the one things that has been fascinating me for the entire day. So much so that I even recorded my screen to record the action. Normally, the page loading icon spins and spins and spins and you are happy when you finally get to the page, the flash movie etc. It usually spins clockwise. However, sometimes the page loading icon in Firefox spins counter clockwise. And on top of that, the graphics is a different one.

Now the big question is: Why? I’d love to hear a good explanation for these two different graphics. Is it essentially a different process, is it a bug that hasn’t been fixed, is it a feature to show a different loading process?

After a wonderful lunch and small talk at the lunch buffet, we had two more sessions at the EYC unConference today. You can read part 1 and part 2 before continuing if you haven’t already done so.

Low budget user testing

Courtney Johnston offered to facilitate a session on user testing and how to do that on a shoe-string budget.

A lot of user testing can be done by using paper and web site mockups. You also do not need hundreds of users, but can often already get an idea when you ask about 6 people to participate in a card-sorting activity or give them a task to complete on a web site. Some professional usability testers may bury their head in the sand when they read these lines, but here were are talking about testing web site for communities that operate on a very low till non-existent budget who cannot afford to have sessions in a usability lab and use awesome, but expensive software and setups to conduct their testing.

Often, even only with a few number of people, you can get an idea of whether a certain navigation works, whether menu items are named logically etc. However, when you only have access to a small number of people, you should be acutely aware of their ICT background to interpret their answers correctly and not make false assumptions and objectifying these.

Courtney Johnston provides tips of how to do low-budget user testing; CC shared by Kristina D.C. Hoeppner

Feeding back to software developers

Tim McNamara offered the last session that I went to for this day of learning more about community involvement online. It was on how to give useful feedback to software developers. That was a dear topic to me as I get frustrated sometimes when people write forum entries or send me emails from which I cannot really make out the problem and try to solve it. It always takes a lot of effort to figure out what the issue might be and how to solve it.

The Google Project Hosting issue tracker is a good example of how to guide users in providing constructive and useful bug reports. When you open a new issue, you don’t just get an empty text box, but depending on your bug report, you can choose a template which then gives a few suggestions of what to include in your bug report. The template for a “user defect report” has the following items:

What steps will reproduce the problem?
Step 1.
Step 2.
Step 3.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

What browser (or hg/svn client) are you using? On what operating system?

As these questions are written directly in the text box, people can’t overlook them.

I will have to check if we could also add such pre-populated text in Launchpad for people filing Mahara bugs. That would be very useful.

Now what?

Currently, I am still in the processing phase because there was a lot of information today, a number of web sites to check out, things to try out for myself and wrapping my head around. It was great to meet people who create web sites for non-profits and a lot of times use open source. Joomla was talked about quite a bit as a person ran two sessions on it whereas other CMS were hardly mentioned (we should remedy that next time). However, as was pointed out when the Wordle was shown: Drupal sits on top of Joomla and has “brain” right next to it.

EYC unConference in a Wordle; created by Wellington ICT

A big Thank You to the organizers and volunteers as well as the participants of the unConference who made that day a great learning experience.

As written in the previous post on the EYC unConference, everybody could propose a topic for a session and gather people to discuss it. After my initiated session on how to actually get people to use a community web site in which the attendees greatly participated and did not need a lot of facilitating, I went to a similar session. There the focus was on the use of social media, in particular Twitter and Facebook.

Online communities and social media

People saw the purpose of Twitter and Facebook differently and it always came down to finding where the people you want to reach hang out and picking them up from there.

Another important point that was raised was that not everybody is using social media and should not be forced to do so in order to join a community, but they should have alternative means for engagement. though that does not mean that the lowest common denominator should be chosen. It is worthwhile to educate community members about the possibilities of social media and offer them training so that they can become literate in its use.

Despite that, especially established community members should not be forced to go out of their way to continue engaging. Somebody came up with an analogy to a restaurant that was picked up by Joanna McCleod. When regular patrons come to a restaurant, they should not be made to go out again to find a flyer that is being distributed on Lambton Quay in order to be able to dine at that restaurant. They should still be able to just go inside without any detours.

The session attendees agreed that it is about the way of communicating and not necessarily the tool. Twitter and Facebook can change rather quickly in this day and age. So you may have to switch to another service. However, the idea of the social networking will persist. And you should not be afraid to pull the plug and discontinue using a tool when you realize that your community does not take to it. Your efforts can be used elsewhere more productively.

Never mind the nice weather outside. Community's social media use is as good. CC shared by Kristina D.C. Hoeppner

Web accessibility

Robyn Hunt talked about what everybody could do to improve their web sites to embrace accessibility. That does not only mean that people with disabilities can get more out of a web site, but it also means that the web site is improved for everybody as accessible web sites often also include looking at usability issues that might frustrate “regular” users as well.

I know that I have to improve the accessibility of my blog here, e.g. give meaningful alternative text and not just my picture caption and probably improve a whole bunch of other things that are normally hidden to the eye, but help people greatly who use screen readers.

Learning more about accessibility is a project on my ToDo list for which I will have to set aside a time and either participate in a workshop or read relevant texts.

One thing that particularly stuck in my head was that Facebook is not a good page in terms of accessibility because it is quite busy among things. However, when viewed on a smartphone, people with disabilities can participate as the content presented in the smartphone apps is basically clutterfree making it easier to use. Thus, though the service was not changed, a change of device suddenly enables a number of users to finally participate. And the internet offers independence and freedom to a great many people with disabilities as they can now get information that they had previously no access to and they can also engage in online conversations.

I cover the rest of the day in part 3 on the EYC Conference.

This is a true curiosity which caused some good laughter today. A colleague showed me his check marks in Firefox today. They were upside down and have been so for a long time. He does not have a clue why they are not the usual way. It does not matter on which web site he wants to place check marks. Be it Moodle, be it Doodle (as in the screenshot), they are always upside down. Should we now call them “hut marks”?

Check marks from down under in Firefox?

Today I needed to look up a text on Project Gutenberg. As I did not remember its address perfectly, I just searched it on Google. Nothing out of the extraordinary here. However, once the result list was in front of me, I saw another search field there just for the Gutenberg web site. That rocked.

The Project Gutenberg can be searched directly in a Google result list

Recently, Twitter launched its list feature which allows users to create lists of people one follows so that they are grouped and their updates can be viewed without the noise of others one follows. Some client applications have already done the same thing. Now the game changer is that lists are officially supported by Twitter. I guess, many hope that these lists can then be used in the clients as well.

Many people have already written about Twitter lists and how they are not quite sure how they will be used (Steve Wheeler), or how they think lists will change the social economy (Dave Troy), or where the dangers lie within public lists (Mark Trapp).

I know that categorizations help me. Heck, I do it every day by tagging resources in Diigo to be able to hopefully find them again when I need them, though the search is most often done in Delicious as I prefer their bookmark panel. Putting things in categories is neat and I know where something belongs. I don’t have a problem with it when I call it tagging because I can give the resources any number of tags / keywords.

Lists and groups, however, seem to have a different connotation. They are stronger categorizations and identifiers that can have lots of impact as Mark Trapp’s and Dave Troy’s blog posts indicate. I have not heard complaints about tagging resources with the “wrong” tag or a defamatory tag (maybe I haven’t looked close enough?). It always happens that people disagree on categorizations and be it only because they come from different backgrounds and contexts in which they encounter a thing or a person. Of course, it is not nice to be publicly be labeled “douchebag” list, but except for blocking this person on Twitter I couldn’t really do anything else.

Would the Twitter lists be as discussed if the lists were called tags? Is the list feature so hotly discussed because it categorizes people and not their blogs / websites / articles / videos etc.? Are the lists thus more personal?

I had set up groups when I checked out Mixero and ran into the problems of not being able to classify people in just one group. However, to avoid seeing tweets twice (the whole point of creating groups for me was to reduce the noise), I did put everybody in just one group which was hard. As these groups are entirely private, it did not matter and I couldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings publicly. Currently, I am still debating whether I should replicate these groups in Twitter itself or whether to find a different classification system and which groups I want to make public and which ones to keep private. I will keep an eye on the Twitter lists and see if I can get comfortable with them.

My groups in Mixero

Now I know for sure that the apps that are suggested in the iTunes app store are country-specific or how else could I explain the #1 app being www.wort.lu? Too bad that I don’t see a general Top Ten list.

Country-specific recommendations for June 14, 2009

Alec Couros and Dean Shareski dueled today at #tatc09. Each of them presented their favorite web tools in the Cool Tools Duel which was broadcast live on Ustream. The audience – in the room as well as online could even vote for their favorite presenter. Both Alec and Dean presented great tools and the audience loved their duel.

Alec presented Ustream and thus he was streaming a stream and everybody could watch the stream in the stream streamed in the stream.

Streaming a Stream

It was tough to decide whom to give my vote. In the end, Alec got it,but the irony is that I used two tools that Dean talked about to take the above picture. I took the screenshot with Skitch, a tool that I truely love to have on my Mac, and added the frame and the text with Picnik.

Thanx for sharing this presentation.

I just finished listening to a webinar on new features of the survey tool Qualtrics, whichwe use in our BA study program. As neither Elluminate nor Adobe Connect was used, I had hoped to get a good glimpse of what is possible with GoToWebinar / GoToMeeting. However, I cannot give a good overview as only a few features were unlocked for this webinar. Thus, I can write about the possibilities to restrict a meeting to a high degree which does not provide a fair image to what is possible with GoToWebinar. I guess, I will have to wait for another meeting using this service to see how the “regular” features work out. What I can say is that I did not encounter connection speed problems as sometimes with Adobe Connect and that the screen sharing was very smooth.

Anyway, this webinar showed to me clearly how I got used to the communication features generally available in online presentations, webinars, online meetings or whatever you may call them that I have attended in the context of educational technology.

Usually, a list of participants is displayed. I like to scroll through it so see if anybody I know is there as well. That is like in a face-to-face meeting when you check the room to look for familiar faces. In this meeting today I did not see a participants’ list. The organizers said that they had been asked to keep that information confidential. I was very amazed because in Elluminate and also Adobe Connect, you can choose any screen name and nobody will be the wiser who is behind that. Furthermore, I got the impression that those who asked for this confidentiality either did not want others to know that they were there,  what kind of questions they asked or they were not ready to communicate except with the presenter / support team. I guess, I will never find out because I do not know how many people participated and who they were.

Confidentiality and security over communication

In general, the chat / backchannel is important because people discuss the presentation, post questions and comments, share links and other resources etc. However, it can be highly distracting for me if the backchannel is very active. Then I have trouble concentrating on the presentation and I have to decide which to follow more closely: the presentation or the chat. Despite my own weakness in that area, others are great in handling the chat, the presentation and providing additional information. I am always amazed at presenters who can read chat questions and answer them while they are presenting. The chat enriches online seminars immensely because it draws in the participants and gives the presenter / moderator feedback on what people think about, what is important to them.

In today’s meeting there was no chat. I had a window for questions and answers (see screenshot above), but I only saw my questions and the answers I received. When I realized that I would not see the questions or comments of the other participants, I reached a very low point and was rather disappointed because I was not allowed to communicate with the others in the webinar. Sure, I could write comments and send questions, but I felt that I needed to write questions and not engage in small talk because my chat messages were only read by the support staff monitoring the chat and they surely only wanted to receive content questions. I felt very isolated like being in a box (“prison” would be too strong a word as I chose to be there on my own) with a screen on which I could follow the presentation, which was insightful by the way and nicely done, and only a small window to the outside through which a guard who was positioned in front of it kept watch of what I said and gave answers without allowing me to pass on and receive messages to / from other inmates in their individual soundproof boxes.

It was a rather lonely affair. I really missed the chat because when I read it, I get to know what other people are working on, how they relate to the content of the presentation, what kind of questions they ask etc. Ideas and solutions to problems are shared and it is not always necessary that the moderators answer all questions because often there are knowledgeable people in the chat who provide useful solutions.

As my experience with online seminars and presentations is mainly limited to the educational technology field, I do not know if the type of online presentation I participated in today is very common in other areas and I only had my webinar culture shock. The shock waves still ripple through me and it has nothing to do with the tool we used, which is most likely great when communication features are open to the participants, or the initial content of the presentation. Just the mode of delivery was not to my liking.

Since last Thursday I have picked up snippets of buzz around Google Wave and finished watching the demo video today (had kept it for my workout to have that pass more quickly ). I am just speechless and can’t wait for it to be publically available.

Wave is a new communication tool that is email, instant messenger, microblog, blog, collaborative writing tool, and some more all in one. It redefines the way online communication is done because you do not have to think about whether you want to write an email, send a Twitter message or start a chat. You just do it all in Wave.

The Wave team from Australia demonstrated so many features and extensions of Wave that your head spins (not in a particular order):

• email
• instant messenger
• embed waves into a blog
• wiki
• drag and drop photos and links
• embed videos
• spellchecker
• instant translator (I think that one got the biggest applause)
• add people to an ongoing conversation
• connect waves
• inline commenting
• collaborative gaming
• linking other services, e.g. Twitter, bug tracker, and be able to either update from within Wave or these other services
• federation: communication between different Wave installations
• playback of the development of a Wave conversation

I think the only things that are missing are audio and video chat. I could imagine audio comments to show up like text comments or have an audio conversation be recorded while working on a document.

Now, how can some of these features be used for learning and for research? The one point that jumps to mind instantly is the possibility of collaborative writing (including using visual media). You see instantly what the others type and do not have to wait until changes are committed. That is similar to EtherPad. You can add comments to a document which can be hidden or displayed which is easier to detect them and to deal with them than in Google Docs where you write them inline with the text. Parts of a current wave can be opened as a new wave to branch conversations.

When you want to research the flow of communication, for example how people interact when writing collaboratively on a document, all you have to do is hit “playback” and the wave unfolds in front of your eyes. I already liked the “playback” feature when I discovered it in the concept mapping software CmapTools. Even though I have not used it yet beyond testing purposes, it has a ton of potential if you are involved in that kind of research because you do not need an additional program to record what has been done, but you can have all actions recorded automatically.

Another great thing about Wave is that it can run on any server and does not have to sit on a Google server. The GUI is also changeable. This is great news because Google is often accused of listening in on conversations, using it all to their own benefit. When the Wave runs on a server different from the Google one, there is no information exchange. However, Wave communications can take place across different servers so that Wave users do not necessarily have to create accounts on all Waves. They then form a federation. According to the developers, only the content that is meant for the Wave users across the systems will be sent to the federation Waves. If a private comment is made between two users of one Wave, the other server does not see that comment at all. That makes Wave attractive to companies, institutions etc. that want to use it, but do not want to put their communication and documents out there on a Google server for confidentiality reasons.

The demo made it all look so simple, but the Wave team spent two years on getting this far and they have pooled resources from other Google programming teams. Google opened the code and invited programmers to get busy on extensions and gadgets for Google Wave to make it more powerful even before the official launch. Let’s see when the Wave will hit our keyboards.

Update: Mashable has a great resource page which they call “Google Wave: A Complete Guide”. There you get all the information that is currently available.