cybergirls

This week I am in Melbourne at the VALA: Libraries, Technology and the Future conference (6-9 Feb 2012) and then Library Camp Australia on Friday 10 Feb 2012.

I am setting up CoverItLive windows to help me keep a record of what happened and adding each day as a separate post. You might find them useful too.

For the VALA CoverItLive windows, I am pulling in:

• tweets from my @libsmatter Twitter account
• any public tweets that mention “vala2012″ or “vala12″ (but not  ”vala” as it picks up totally irrelevant tweets in Spanish … although it took me until 4pm to work that one out, so there are a lot of bonus tweets in the CiL window for today)

For the Library Camp Australia CoverItLive Windows I am pulling in:

• tweets from my @libsmatter Twitter account
• any public tweets that mention “libcamp0z2012″ or “librarycampoz2012″ or “libcampoz” or “library camp oz” or “library camp” or “libcampoz12″ or “librarycampoz12″

UPDATE: Not sure why, but looks like a lot of tweets were not picked up today. Hope tomorrow will be more comprehensive.

A great post from WSJ via Yahoo on the changing nature of recruitment . . . Union Square Ventures recently posted an opening for an investment analyst. Instead of asking for résumés, the New York venture-capital firm—which has invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and other technology companies—asked applicants to send links representing their “Web presence,” [...]

A fairly standard question on quora: Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3? has sparked some discussion.

The best answer given was an extremely entertaining hiking analogy (it's the top-voted answer - go see), explaining the software development process in terms of the fractal-nature of a coastline, with unexpected delays along the way.

I think it's a great analogy as it goes and would be extremely helpful in getting the idea of unexpected scope-creep across to a complete IT-newbie.

The answer then spawned a plethora of comments and even a counter-post that is also really interesting: Why Software Development Estimations Are Regularly Off, which explains that the hiking analogy is way off, and that software estimation is more like inventing.

I agree... though I still see great value in the hiking analogy for explaining "what goes wrong" on the kind of project that encounters the problems described.

The counter-post has itself sparked a discussion on Y-combinator which goes into a lot more detail about estimation issues in general.

It's all provided me with an entertaining read on an otherwise well-picked-over subject.

For those of you are are totally into the foodie game, check out Melbourne City Rooftop Honey which has sprung up all over Melbourne town. You’ve heard of green roofs, well this is just as important and definitely more delicious. Vanessa Kwiatkowski and Mat Lumalasi launched Melbourne City Rooftop Honey after learning that beekeepers in [...]

So many posts in the pipeline, so little time, such a large title.

1. New York Public Library

I have a huge unfinished post about visiting the New York Public Library in December , seeing an amazing array of cultural treasures in the 100 years anniversary display and evaluating the reference collection in the reading room. The highlight for me, as an educator of librarians, was the exam for children’s librarians in 1944. It contains questions like:

You are in charge of a Children’s Room that formerly had a staff of four professional children’s librarians. You now have a war emergency staff consisting of yourself, the only professional person; an alert young woman, wife of an army officer, who is a college graduate and taught Junior High School five years ago; a full-time clerk; and a half-time Hunter College girl who is at the library all day Saturday and every afternoon from three to six.Indicate how you would allocate the work, which includes weekly story hours and picture book hours, three class visits a week within the library and a weekly visit to a neighborhood nursery school;

AND

In selecting stories to tell to children with a foreign inheritance what books would you choose for children from:

• Denmark
• Turkey
• Brazil
• Italy
• Czechoslovakia

In naming the source, give title, author or translator, illustrator and publisher.

Click image for large view

2. Espresso Book Machine at Darien Public Library

Visiting Darien Public Library in Connecticut I made the six minute movie below showing the process of printing and binding a complete book from selecting the item on screen to a finished object coming out of the chute. I love the kids in the background narrating every point.

Two things that stood out for me:

1. The machine was staffed as a “concession”, so in the same way as a library cafe may be in the United States. The person who staffed the machine did not work for the library, but was trained by the On Demands Books people.
2. Usage was not very high yet, but there were signs that it was being used not so much for delivery of otherwise out of print or out of stock books, but that the main interest was in library users who wanted to self-publish their own work. In other words, there was a real role for this to encourage creation of content instead of just consumption.

3. Amanda Palmer Ninja Gigs in Public Libraries

Congratulations to Aimee Rhodes from the Melbourne City Library service and Corin Haines from Auckland Libraries for putting their libraries forward to host Ninja Gigs for author Neil Gaiman and singer Amanda Palmer (Melbourne) , and then Amanda’s band, the Boston-based Cabaret-Punk outfit, the Dresden Dolls (Auckland). I blogged last year about the self-distribution model used by Amanda Palmer and why libraries should take notice of this (Who would feel OK asking libraries for money ? ) .

Aimee was very gracious and replied to my questions in an email interview. As soon as I have enough time, I will post it here. I was most interested in fitting this kind of activity into the library’s traditional/future purpose, as I think it is definitely the space we should occupy. In the mean time, here is an account of how it happened from Amanda Palmer’s blog (The most important thing I learned in 2011 by Amanda Fucking Palmer (starts about half way down) , from Aimee’s blog (Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman Ninja Gig at City Library )and from Corin’s blog (Dresden Dolls at Auckland Library ).

Added bonus, Mein Herr being performed at Auckland Libraries (uploaded by Kcajamos )

 4. State Library of Western Australia – filtering and adding value with video

A nice start to a project that I hope develops further. State Library of Western Australia staff create small digital stories using their collection of local content, for example the one below – The last tram in Perth .

 

 

ABUNDANCE from jason silva on Vimeo. RELATED ABUNDANCE book website Authors:  Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler Here is a quote from Jason Silva's website: "The adjacent...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

I keep meaning to send the link to individual people I know, but then encountering a crucial etiquette problem, being that one cannot say “here’s an advice column you might like” without being heard as “here’s an advice column YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO BECAUSE YOU OUGHT TO FIX YOUR LIFE DO YOU HEAR ME?”

A broadcast medium is obviously the solution. Captain Awkward. Blogger gives advice, mostly about boundries.

The videos below tell it all: "Watch and share "A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked," to see how Corning's highly engineered glass, with companion technologies, will help shape our world. Take a...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Razorfish Connected Retail Experience Platform (codename "5D") from Razorfish - Emerging Experiences on Vimeo. The above video is an overview of the "5D" connected retail experience platform by...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Flight of the Fireflies An interactive musical poem/game for the iPad: Flight of the Fireflies – Trailer from Woolly Robot on Vimeo. "The fireflies are leaving the city, looking for a new...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

I recently started a private blog, writing about things involved with running Software Testing Club and working towards my personal aims of running a flexible and sustainable business.  The highs, the lows, nitty gritty details that I normally wouldn’t write about online.  Perhaps an odd bit of Rosie humour in there too!

It’s not something I will publish immediately, but hopefully within the next year or two there will be enough information there to make it somewhat interesting.

Keep me motivated by registering your interest over on LeanPub - http://leanpub.com/rosiesherry

It often helps when planning to have a roadmap and when planning your IT infrastructure it helps to know the Microsoft product roadmap. If you want to know what our vision and roadmap is over the next while, then block off the morning of February 22 in your calendar and register using the links below. Please note that you will need to sign an non-disclosure agreement before attending or you won’t be allowed to sit in. We’d like to share some of our secrets with you!

The morning will start with a keynote of the all-up Microsoft vision and a showcase of some of the coolest Windows devices available. Then we’ll split into separate tracks:

REGISTER NOW for the Infrastructure Manager Track | REGISTER NOW for the Software Architect/Development Manager Track

There’s also a 3rd track, for the technical decision maker in your company. This would usually be a Senior VP or Executive. Pass along this registration link for the Technical Decision Maker Track.

Hope to see you there!

 

 

With any big change to your IT infrastructure comes risk, but of course you're hoping that the rewards will out weigh those risks. In fact, you're doing more than just hoping – you're planning, strategizing, and putting your organization in a good position to mitigate those risks.

Deploying a new operating system throughout a company can be disruptive and complex because so much is dependant on that OS – the applications running on top of the OS, the drivers that allow peripherals like printers to work, to name but a few. If all goes well, the operating system should be invisible to the end user but if all doesn't go well...well, we've all been there. It sucks.

A good plan that's well executed can result in an organization having use of technology that can help achieve higher productivity, better collaboration and more opportunities for innovative ideas. This episode of Manager Tech Talk is all about putting together a good plan for Windows deployment success.

On this episode of AlignIT Manager Tech Talk, Ruth, myself, and guest Dave Kawula, Senior Consultant with 1E, talk about the benefits and challenges of deploying Windows 7. We explore what tools are available and what "gotcha's" to watch out for. Plus: Dave shares tales from deployments past.

Watch Online

Resources

• Springboard - for all your deployment needs
• App Compat Toolkit
• Managing Shims
• Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)
• All about licensing

Featured Guest: Dave Kawula

Dave Kawula is an MCSE and CNE with over fifteen years of experience in the IT industry. His background includes data communications networks within multi-server LAN/WAN environments. He has experience with project management, network strategic planning, network design and integration. He has led the architecture for NT, SMS/SCCM, Exchange and Internet Gateways, including managing migration paths and issues as well as implementation. He has supported a variety of network infrastructures as well as architecting and defining technical standards.

Podcast

This episode is also available as a podcast.

Listen Now >>
Download as MP3 >>

Subscribe with Zune >>
Subscribe with RSS Feed >>
Subscribe with iTunes >>

About AlignIT Manager Tech Talk

The AlignIT Manager Talk is a monthly live streamed video series hosted by Ruth Morton (LinkedIn) and Jonathan Rozenblit (LinkedIn). Each Tech Talk episode airs on the 2nd Thursday of the month from 12:00pm to 12:30pm EST. The show focuses on a range of topics for both infrastructure and development managers and is interactive, taking questions via a live chat and providing answers on air.

About AlignIT

The AlignIT program is dedicated to keeping IT leaders informed about what really matters in business and technology. We do that through in-person events, web casts, our blog and of course, this podcast series. You can find more information about the Align IT program at www.alignit.ca. If you have comments, suggestions, and ideas for future topics please let us know by connecting with us via email, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Visit the AlignIT site >>
Follow AlignIT on Twitter >>
Join the conversation on LinkedIn >>

I’ve had this post open in my browser for days.  I read it, and then let it sit, and I just now went and read it again, and the comments.  I’ve written many, many times about how frustrating I find it that people think Computer Science = Teaching Excel or how to use the Internet.  Computer Science is a very, very broad field, and in fact, I would argue that it can encompass Digital Literacy.  The writer of the post I linked to is frustrated by the lack of distinction, too, which she argues takes away from the importance of Digital Literacy by focusing more on Computer Science.   So she’s on the other side of this issue from me:

It’s dismaying then, to see in a week where we are seeing a huge move forward in the promotion of technology and a fresh look at how ICT as a subject area is designed and implemented in schools, to see digital literacy being used as an interchangeable term for computer science skills.

Her focus is on the British Government’s announcement earlier in January to revamp the ICT curriculum so that its focus is more on computing and computer science, including coding.  That announcement left CS teachers here salivating as they’ve been fighting to get any kind of computing into the curriculum.  ICT or Educational Technology as it’s often called here in the states in “integrated” into the curriculum, sometimes fabulously, sometimes not.  In some schools, it’s specifically taught as a separate class, sometimes not so well.

Here’s my beef with her post and mostly the comments on the post.  Once again, the commenters imagine the lonely coder in a cubicle.  We don’t want that!  We want to teach collaboration via digital tools.  GitHub anyone?  Have they been to a startup?  Do they know about people using chat, skype, etc. to work together to roll out software?  Seriously?  And, it’s not all about coding.  There’s HCI–interface design.  Have you had to use poorly designed software lately?  Do you know that medical software needs to have certain interfaces to make it easier and faster for doctors and nurses?  The HCI person doesn’t usually do the coding, but instead knows how humans actually prefer to interact with computers.  Almost every field and profession could benefit from having its practitioners know how hardware and software works, to have had some experience uploading files to a server or tweaking some javascript or understanding the logic of an “if” statement.

Yes, I think being able to blog and tweet and build documents together online and skype is all good.  And if, as Josie says, it’s about critical thinking and lifelong learning, why is Computer Science not about those things, but Digital Literacy is?  There are people who think that things are done on computers because it would be too hard to do them some other way.  Facebook and Google are the way they are because someone programmed them to be that way, and if we don’t understand that, then we have a big problem.

Program or be Programmed, Rushkoff’s book, is an apt mantra for today’s world.  We don’t have enough Computer Scientists not just serving as programmers, but working in other fields.  And while I don’t believe that there’s such a thing as a Digital Native, and that we can just let the kids take care of their own digital literacy, I don’t think we can say that teaching DL is more or less important than teaching CS.  I’m watching us all latch onto devices that can’t be easily hacked.  Can you write a script for your iPad on your iPad?  We’re dependent on software developers to create tools just to allow us to view Flash on them.  We’re letting huge companies dictate what we can do with our tools.  We need more people who are, yes, digitally literate, but who can participate in the development of tools that allow us the freedom to work in the world in whatever way we need to.  That’s what attracted everyone to the Internet in the first place.  The Internet would not exist if we didn’t have coders.

/rant

Sorry, but I’ve grown increasingly frustrated by this focus on “21st Century Learning” and “Digital Literacy” without anyone recognizing that without Computer Scientists, we would not have those terms.  I’m watching fellow CS teachers being asked to teach digital literacy classes when they could be teaching Python or Java or helping a kid develop an app.  Many of us feel that we’re being shoved out by the call for “21st Century Learning”.  What’s more 21st Century than knowing how to code, or having a deep understanding of how computers work?  Or having people able to harness the power of computing to solve our biggest problems: cancer, global warming, famine, transportation.  That’s where we’re headed.  Those problems will be solved by people plus computing.

Related posts:

1. Random thoughts about learning and literacy
2. Faculty like digital? Really?
3. Skeptical of Digital Humanities

The SEO Chicks have big plans of expanding and actually regularly blogging in 2012 (yay) and have already welcommed Annabel Hodges to our team. After racking our brains for…well 2 seconds really (we knew who we wanted to approach really)..we decided to approach the querky, clever and generally awesome Hannah Smith to join our blogging team, and she said YES…

I would officially like to welcome Hannah to the SEO Chicks team. We are so excited to have you on board!

Follow Hannah Bo Banna on twitter. That’s an order.

ps: I challenge anyone to find a different picture of Hannah anywhere on the internet…..I tried, there is NO other…Are you camera shy Hannah? Just you wait, embaressing photos like this one is bound to be taken when we next see you (dear god that’s an awful picture….why in the toilet…and Julie wasn’t even there, she’s the toilet chick..ehm, now I should stop…that can be misunderstood)

I don’t know how many times I’ve used the RCDC documentation, but somehow never noticed the bit on Environment Variables. Today however I was looking for a way to restrict the scope of a UocListView or UocIdentityPicker based on properties of the user being edited – and it turns out that you can reference any properties of the object using %Attribute_AttributeName%, then use it in a filter!

My goal was to restrict available roles based on a user’s EmployeeType. My “Role” objects have an attribute called “SubType” which matches the EmployeeType.  All I have to do is filter with an xpath query that references ‘%Attribute_EmployeeType%’. The same filter works for a UocListView too.

<my:Control my:Name="Role" my:TypeName="UocIdentityPicker" my:Caption="{Binding Source=schema, Path=Role.DisplayName}" my:Description="{Binding Source=schema, Path=Role.Description}"> <my:Properties> <my:Property my:Name="Required" my:Value="false"/> <my:Property my:Name="Mode" my:Value="SingleResult"/> <my:Property my:Name="ObjectTypes" my:Value="Role"/> <my:Property my:Name="ColumnsToDisplay" my:Value="DisplayName"/> <my:Property my:Name="AttributesToSearch" my:Value="DisplayName"/> <my:Property my:Name="Filter" my:Value="/Role[SubType = '%Attribute_EmployeeType%']"/> <my:Property my:Name="ResultObjectType" my:Value="Role"/> <my:Property my:Name="Value" my:Value="{Binding Source=object, Path=Role, Mode=TwoWay}"/> <my:Property my:Name="ListViewTitle" my:Value="Available Roles"/> <my:Property my:Name="PreviewTitle" my:Value="Selected Roles"/> <my:Property my:Name="MainSearchScreenText" my:Value="Search"/> </my:Properties> </my:Control>

The other thing I figured out is that it is possible to pass an attribute value in the UsageKeywords property. This is an alternative method to the for UocIdentityPicker and displays the Search Scopes that have the specifed Usage Keyword.

<my:Property my:Name="UsageKeywords" my:Value="%Attribute_EmployeeType%"/>

I mentioned last Fall that we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Star Wars The Old Republic for Kinect. The game has no controller, so you actually use the force. {nerdgasm}
Anyway, we're still about 2 months away from receiving our pre-purchased copy and as the release date approaches, more and more hype is going to start coming out about the game. Like the ad below which is the perfect mix of awkwardness, quirk and fantasy. I'm just hoping all the good stuff doesn't get put into the ads.
We have high hopes for this game, especially after such a long wait. (Ok so it's no Duke Nukem Forever, but it was still previewed at last year's CES so it's been long enough)
Anyway, you have to check out the ad. I mean, C'mon. You know you could totally be that guy. We all could. ;)


(Source: The Awesomer)

I’ve been having a terrible time today updating one of my virtual machines ready for the next round of testing that I need to do. The darned thing was stuck on “preparing to install updates” for a good hour, with no discernable network traffic, and yes, the WU service was running as it should.

Thankfully I was able to fix the problem.  Here’s how, in hopes y’all may find useful:

1. Click Start, Run, type: cmd.  Right click the Program Menu entry that appear and select “Run as Administrator”.  Press Enter. Run the following command in the opened window:
    
   Net stop WuAuServ
   
2. Wait for the process to finish.
   
3. Click Start, Run, type: %windir% and press Enter.
   
4. In the opened folder, rename the folder SoftwareDistribution to SoftwareDistributionOLD
   
5. Click Start, Run, type: cmd.  Right click the Program Menu entry that appear and select “Run as Administrator”. Press Enter. Run the following command in the opened window: 
    
   Net start WuAuServ
   
6. Wait for the process to finish.
   
7. Reboot.

There is exactly one line of dialog in this, and it kinda is totally true.

However, they all have the same problem I do.. the laptop scrunch. Let’s all agree to go back to multi-screen-iverse land and make our backs happy.

Share with the interwebs!

Related posts:

1. Bassline Bassline – TB-303 Documentary Here’s a cool mini-documentary on the Roland TB-303, by...
2. Reformat the Planet: A Chiptune Documentary Reformat the Planet is a feature-length documentary that focuses...
3. Some amazing dance videos thanks, Glen Stefani! Genki Sudo / “World Order” ...

There’s a number of reasons a webmaster might want to markup structured content in a way that can render a data-type more clearly to search engines. Whilst this doesn’t have a causal effect on rank improvements, that more of your content can be “understood” more clearly, must be a positive right?  Whilst there is some concern that marking-up your page content with Microdata, Microformats or RDFa may in some cases permit search engines to know enough about your page content and comparative data elements to bypass your page entirely; serving comparative results in-SERP, in most cases this seems somewhat alarmist when there are significant benefits to be had. This isn’t a how-to post, as I wanted to focus more on quantifying the CTR benefits and also the difficulties inherent in trying to do so.

That said, if you are new to why and how to mark-up structured data, there’s plenty of resources available. Here’s an overview introduction from Google, which includes a video; then there’s Schema.org which is a single vocabulary syntax that all search engines support, meaning that going forward implementing Schema will render your rich snippets in search results for all the major search engines. (Prior to that there was some differentiation from engine to engine as to which format would render.) In addition, there’s a shed-load of walk-thru’s and implementation tips on SEO Gadget.

Microformats & CTR

That successfully implementing microformats that render in your search snippets increases CTR is largely common sense. It’s pretty much innate knowledge that anyone with any experience in SEO understands; make your search result more relevant and attractive versus in-SERP competition and you’re bound to attract more clicks. Making a solid case to a client however, can be very difficult based on experience and anecdotal references, particularly when working with large e-commerce sites with heavy development schedules and a hundred and one other things to work on. Sure visits may go up, post implementation but then there’s so many additional factors that contribute to visits and CTR increase it can be very difficult to quantify success at a granular level. There are some case studies around (some good examples collated here), but many of them are from enormous online retailers, sharing macro data (overall increase in search share). Finding tangible term-level data is almost impossible, probably least of all because when it comes to measuring CTR the only real primary data source is Webmaster Tools, which for obvious reasons doesn’t give exact values.

Whinging aside, we recently tried to quantify CTR uplift post implementation of hReview and thought it might be worth sharing for anyone that needs persuading. First off, let’s define CTR and and factors known to effect.

Click-through Rate

The rate at which searchers click your result when it appears in search results (a search impression), expressed as a percentage. So if my page is seen in the search results 5000 times in a month, and receives 100 clicks 100/5000X100 = 2%.

Many factors can positively or negatively impact CTR most clearly obvious being aggregate rank, or we wouldn’t have jobs right? In addition the relative attractiveness of your listing can be improved by optimising meta-title and description should that be the data the search engine is displaying in the listing. Then there are factors outside our control, such as brand recognition and trust of our listing and that of proximal competitors.

Step One

We implemented hReview on product level pages on an online bathroom retailer website, which showed up on all pages by December 25th. OOOOh, shiny!

 

Step Two

We took an export of the search query data for the month preceding and up to December 25th, and here’s where it gets tricky. First off, we all know that Webmaster Tools Data is inexact. Impression data is clearly rounded (off, up, down, sideways – who knows?) Then of course to calculate CTR as in the example above, you need a significant (relatively) volume of queries on a term in order to feature with enough impression data, to then get enough clicks, to then have a CTR value displayed. Most of the time (and dependent on query/sector) you need to be ranking on average around page one or top of two, to get enough data.

This is where is gets tricky with microdata, reason being you’re implementing such on product or detail level pages triggered by mid to long-tail queries. This meant that in our case, though we implemented on around a thousand product level pages, only a few hundred were at the impression level to generate enough reliable (or rather comparable) data.  Surprising there aren’t thousands of people searching for ceramic disc valves. Whodathunk?

Step Three

A full month post-implementation we took another export of data, compared all terms with the required data to the previous month and then of course, there’s another thing to rule out. A large amount of these had increased in “Average Position” (which is a relief, given it’s our job), however this meant these terms had to be discounted; as you can’t claim a CTR victory for microdata when there’s an increase in “Average Position”. Of course “Average Position” is in itself nice and vague, as this takes into account the average of the position(s) in which your result may appear.

Once we had stripped out all the rule-outs, we were left with only five terms that has stayed the same or decreased in average position month on month.

 

*Post Imp CTR = post implementation CTR and takes the month average CTR for the month after December 25th.

Results

So though there’s just a handful of results that still qualify for any meaningful month on month comparison the actual percentage increase in each case is quite substantial. Even on the term that decreased in position by 14 positions, CTR stayed at 2%, which is pretty darn strong. It’s worth pointing out that their primary listing for this term stayed in the same page one position, but a second result for the query fell, dragging down the average.)

Other Vagueries

In addition to the data constraints and additional factors affecting CTR there’s also seasonal impact to consider. Whilst seasonality (particularly when comparing December to January) will almost certainly impact intent-to-purchase, it shouldn’t impact too significantly on intent-to-research and therefore positively or negatively impact CTR too significantly.

In conclusion, all we can say is that this is imperfect research, with a handful of qualifying test-case terms; however CTR uplift on said handful of terms is extremely significant when other main driver of CTR are the same or decreased. Better than a poke in the eye with a shitty stick.