Social Networking

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NYSCATE 09 Housekeeping

November 23, 2009 in Social Networking | No comments

I just finished Day 2 at the NYSCATE Annual Conference in Rochester, NY. I had a great time presenting twice on topics that I am passionate about and enjoyed all our Keynote speakers. I’ve met some great folks and have had wonderful conversations.

Plan on an more active blog as I’ll be writing and reflecting more about the conference. Meanwhile, those interested in media, materials, resources, and links please click here, or hit the presentation tab above. Those who are interested in viewing an online edition of the NYSED State Tech Plan click here. This site allows you to comment on any portion of the document on a paragraph level. Please make constructive comments!

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Will NYSED Tweet?

July 27, 2009 in Policies, Social Networking, Technology | 3 comments

While I attended the NYSCATE Leadership Summit last week for a variety of reasons, the main motivation was to hear the New York State Education Department’s (NYSED) presentation on their proposed state technology plan. Beyond the presentation there were roundtable discussions to provide input and feedback followed by an opportunity to ask questions.

When the opportunity to ask questions arrived, I raised my hand. I told the them that I hadn’t heard about the proposed tech plan through regular channels, rather through Twitter. Then came the question: Would they consider setting up an account and using Twitter?

The answer: We’ll have to check with our counsel.

Let’s juxtapose this with Goal Two of the Statewide Technology Plan:

Learners, teachers, and administrators are proficient in the use of technology for learning.

Proficiency is defined, in large measure, by standards for desired levels of skills, knowledge and performance. Proficiency encompasses such areas as social networks and internet safety.

Apparently, while NYSED wants students, teachers, and administrators to use social networks, they fear doing so themselves. They seem flummoxed by the same issues that technology pioneering districts and practitioners have been wrestling with for years. The message is that NYSED regards the very activities in which they wish us to engage as legally questionable.

Educators know that good leadership involves modeling the desired behaviors. NYSED knows that and should do the same. Using social networking tools shows that they understand them. They could model what they regard as best practices.

To succeed NYSED needs to help cut through the systemic fear and uncertainty that runs from practitioner to district to BOCES and beyond. Hesitation is the enemy of change and innovation. We need some degree of guidance in what are acceptable practices.

Twitter is a simple tool. It’s a good place to start. The US Department of Education, Centers for Disease Control, and President Obama tweet. NYSED needs to tweet too.

I plan on a number of posts on aspects of the NYS Tech Plan soon. I’m eager to hear comments.

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BuddyPress installation somewhat simplified

May 4, 2009 in Social Networking, buddypress, open source | 1 comment

In honor of the release of BuddyPress 1.0, I trashed my previous installation and created a new one from scratch. The new version of BuddyPress requires WordPressMu 2.7.1 and bbPress 1.0 alpha. The process, while simplified, is still out of the reach of many who are accustomed to the standard, upload, create database, and browser based installation.

It process begins with a standard installation of WPMu. Once that is done, you can install the BuddyPress plugins through the backend: Plugins–>Install New. then activate the plugin. That’s not it though as the web based installer cannot place the BuddyPress themes in the correct directory. To do that, one needs to manually move the themes from the plugin directory to theme directory using ftp or a file manager, then activate the themes.

Integrating bbPress remains the hardest part although it too has been simplified to a 13 step process. You can ignore the warnings about salt this and that failing. Just follow the steps. Unlike my previous experiences trying to integrate bbPress, this all worked the first time through. It involves pasting a line of code into the config and moving a file from BuddyPress into bbpress.

Overall, this is a big step in the right direction. Now that the WPMu framework has been updated, I hope to see more progress with the project. There are a lot a capabilities under the hood that are not yet wired up, much as we saw with the initial release of Elgg. A real concern remains in that bbPress is still alpha. BuddyPress needs a solid stable forum.

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Werdmuller announces new project; keeps other quiet

April 30, 2009 in Social Networking, Technology | 1 comment

As promised, former Elgg developer Ben Werdmuller, has announced a new social networking project. He is working on a social mapping project called OutMap. In addition, he is beginning a web consulting service. He alluded to a third project that he is keeping under wraps.

OutMap appears to be a social geographic information system in which a user can create a map space and invite others to contribute. Initial release is slated for June. Meanwhile, you can leave your email address on the OutMap site if you are interested in participating in beta testing.

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Ben Werdmuller leaves Curverider

April 20, 2009 in Elgg, Social Networking, open source | 7 comments

Elgg co-founder Ben Werdmuller has left Curverider as of April 15.  On his blog he refers to Team Elgg positively calling them, “…a first-class team of brilliantly intelligent, creative peope.” When asked why he left Elgg, he replied, “I’ve got some other ideas I’d like to persue. Nothing sinister.”

Ben intimates that he has some exciting new projects and will have announcements later in the year. In fact Ben sent an interesting Tweet implying that he will have he has much to say when he is back from his travels. Hopefully it will be a hint of things to come.

I wish Ben well and look forward to hearing about his new projects. Additionally, I want to thank him for all the work and inspiration he has provided developing Elgg.

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WPMu 2.7.1 beta 1 released

April 6, 2009 in Blogging, Social Networking, buddypress, open source | 4 comments

WordPressMu version 2.7.1 beta1 is now available. Released on April 2, this marks an important landmark for its companion BuddyPress.

BuddyPress has rested on RC1 waiting for changes to the core WordPress Mu application. According to core developer Andy Peatling’s blog post of February 11, the release of BuddyPress stable has been predicated upon the release of a new version of WPMu that includes integrated site-wide plugin support.

Whether this version includes such a feature is not entirely clear, but a survey of the changes from trunk at r1648 to branches/2.7 at r1715 reveals six plug-in related files that have been created or changed. The inclusion of wp-admin/wpmu-sitewide-plugins.php makes me optimistic.

WPMu developer Donncha indicated that the current beta version is pretty stable. My experience with WPMu is that the time between beta and release is typically on the order of days or a couple weeks.

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Site Touts BuddyPress for K12

April 3, 2009 in Social Networking, Technology, buddypress | 4 comments

While visiting the BuddyPress site for fresh news, I encountered a blog post entitled BuddyPress in K12 Education. It appears that BuddyPress is being piloted by the Dearborn, Michigan school district. It’s always great to hear about Open Source adoptions by public K12 ! I could see deploying components of BuddyPress in our school’s existing WPMu installation.

I was disappointed, however, to see that two of the key plugins for making this possible are for pay: Site-wide Privacy Settings and Content Monitoring. It seems to me that privacy settings for blogs should be a basic functionality for Social Networking platforms. I hope that BuddyPress will integrate some form of access/privacy settings that will make it appropriate for K12 in the near term!

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Elgg 1.5 includes default widgets

March 22, 2009 in Elgg, Social Networking, Technology, open source | 8 comments

One feature I didn’t see when testing beta Elgg 1.5 is the admin’s ability to set default widgets in both user profiles and dashboards. These tools, included in the Elgg 1.5 “full” package. Elgg adopters have asked for this feature since the initial release and there have been plugins that provided such functionality, but had to be configured by code.

The new functionality gives admins the ability to place default widgets in one of three columns in a format nearly identical to that the users see when they configure their widgets.

widget_1

This feature allows administrators to provide new visitors with configured profiles and dashboards  rather than the blank pages that many thought were confusing and unfriendly to new users.

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Elgg 1.5 Released

March 13, 2009 in Elgg, Social Networking, Technology, open source | 2 comments

Elgg 1.5 has been released by Curverider. Over the past few days, Elgg’s revisions to their Subversion repository had slowed as they put the finishing touches on the new release. 

Elgg 1.5 is available as a package or from the subversion repository. This development means that I will return to my comparisons of Elgg and BuddyPress. It also signals developers, including myself, to update Elgg themes and plugins.

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Curverider Releases Elgg 1.5 RC2

March 9, 2009 in Elgg, Social Networking, Technology, open source | 2 comments

Curverider released a second release candidate for Elgg 1.5 today. It can be downloaded as a tarball from their site, or you can get it from the subversion library. Release Candidate 2 brings about 40 new revisions to Elgg code since the release of the first Release Candidate last week.

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Elgg 1.5 RC released

March 5, 2009 in Elgg, Social Networking, Technology, open source | 6 comments

A release candidate for Elgg 1.5 was unvealed by the Curverider team today. Release candidates have been tested and are generally very stable. Nonetheless, Curverider does not recommend its use for production sites.

The core Elgg team has been working feverishly to squash remaining bugs and enhance Elgg’s performance. They have committed over 100 commits to their Subversion repository since Saturday.

I have personally tested earler incarnations of Elgg 1.5 and am glad to report that it works well. I am sure that anybody has worked with earlier versions of Elgg will be pleased with the latest. Stay tuned for another post highlighting more enhancements to the software.

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Lesson learned from Ma.gnolia

March 1, 2009 in Social Networking, Technology | No comments

Social Bookmarking site Ma.gnolia experienced a disastrous database corruption which has brought the site down. On February 17, Ma.gnolia owner Larry Halff announced that the data could not be recovered. He answered some interesting questions about Ma.gnolia and cloud computing services in general in this interview. It is long, but I really think the video is worth watching.


Citizen Garden Episode 11: Whither Ma.gnolia? from Larry Halff on Vimeo.

I appreciate Mr. Halff’s candor. There are a lot of lessons to be learned here. The first of which is entities on the web might not be what they seem.

On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog. It is easy and tempting to project an image of being an being a greater entity than a company really is. I got started with working with the web in collaboration with an Australian tie-dyer who was obsessed with keeping the world from knowing that his apparel firm was a three person drop ship operation consisting of him, my wife, and me. It made me uncomfortable then and skeptical now. As pointed out in the interview, there are probably countless other web services that are as small and as shaky as Ma.gnolia.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion that our data in these cloud Social Networking Apps may be considerably more vulnerable than we can imagine. We need ways to backup our important data housed by these services. I have found some leads in this area and I am actively pursuing them. I hope to report some possible solutions in the near future.

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