It’s that time of year again. The TIES Conference starts this Saturday and runs through Tuesday. I’m doing a day-long workshop called Podcasting A–Z that should be a blast. We’re going to cover the full range of podcast production techniques including recording, editing, and publishing. I’m also doing an updated version of the Web 2.0 talk I did at NECC and a new one called “Open Source Tools You Can Use.”
For the record, I encourage all conference-goers to use the “ties2006″ Technorati tag.
Here’s a little gem I stumbled onto today. I really like OmniGraffle for doing flow charts and other diagrams. It’s sort of like Microsoft’s Visio, but it only runs on OS X and has a definite Mac feel. One of its weaknesses though is a general lack of high-quality “stencils.” Thanks to the Summer of Rails project, you can now visit Graffletopia and browse through 100 stencil sets. I especially like the Lego People set. 
I’m doing a talk at this year’s TIES Education Technology Conference called “Open Source Tools You Can Use.” Here’s the description:
From tech support systems to graphics applications, there are hundreds of free and open source applications that will fit easily into your school’s technology environment. Participants will learn about the open source software model and get a “top 10” list of open source applications.
Now I’ve got plenty of ideas in my head about what apps will constitute my top 10 list, but I’d like to hear from you. What open source applications would make it on your All-Star team?
Blake Ross is something of a wunderkind. He starting working for Netscape at age 15 and cofounded the Firefox project soon after. Not content to stop there, an article in IEEE Spectrum describes Ross’s latest project called Parakey. Parakey is an attempt to obviate the need for separate desktop and online applications. For example, I use iPhoto to manage and edit photos on my Mac and Flickr to share some of those photos with the world. According to the article:
Parakey is intended to be a platform for tools that can manipulate just about anything on your hard drive—e-mail, photos, videos, recipes, calendars. In fact, it looks like a fairly ordinary Web site, which you can edit. You can go online, click through your files and view the contents, even tweak them. You can also check off the stuff you want the rest of the world to be able to see.
Ross is the prototypical digital native. He says, “We all know people…who have all this content that they are not publishing stored on their computers. We’re trying to persuade them to live their lives online.” If this is how young people think, is it any wonder that their digital immigrant teachers don’t understand them?
This isn’t a political blog, and I don’t intend for it to become one. But I just can’t ignore the technology angle that’s brewing in our upcoming U.S. election. I’ve been concerned for some time about the potential for fraud and errors associated with the current state of electronic voting devices. Jon Stokes at Ars Technica has an excellent article summarizing the latest information about voting problems and potential problems with these machines.
Party affiliation is irrelevant here. It’s likely that thousands of voters next Tuesday will have their votes miscast or not accepted at all. While I don’t discount entirely the possibility of carefully planned attempts to manipulate the results of the vote, I’m also reminded of what Napolean said, “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.” My bigger concern is that large numbers of voters will be disenfranchised by simple technical glitches that won’t be properly handled by poorly trained (however well-intentioned) election judges.
Others have called for a government-sponsored project to develop open source voting software and hardware. I think that’s the only solution that has any hope of producing a secure, reliable, and trustworthy system. I would also recommend the Verified Voting Foundation as a good source of information on this topic.
Please read the Ars Technica article and be prepared to stand up for your right to vote next Tuesday.
I’ve posted before about how teenagers may be tempted to share a little too openly on social networking sites like MySpace. Today’s St. Paul Pioneer Press provides a good example in an article headlined Teen in fatal crash shuns cops in favor of MySpace. The 18-year-old woman being investigated made comments on her MySpace page that the police are now hoping to use against her. An excerpt (from the Pioneer Press article—her MySpace has since been removed):
I just want to let everyone know August 19 2006 Joe Renner and Joe Shafer died and me and Samatha were hurt. I’m sure a lot of you really don’t give a (expletive) about me. Fine whatever you have your reasons I don’t blame you but really think about it. Both of them knew what they were getting in to. Yes it’s my fault because I was the driver but think about how many of you did what I did. … Now don’t get me wrong I take full responsability (sic) for everything that happened, but when you sit and say everything your (sic) saying think about what you probley (sic) did the day before that or maybe that night. You all take that risk. I never though it was gonna happen to me and it did. I learned from that I lost two very good friends of mine and a lot of people did.
Whether the D.A. can make her online “confession” stick is anybody’s guess. If you need a case study to use when talking with students about posting online, this may be one to include.