For Every Flickr there's a Drivl

Web 2.0's most ridiculous sites
This cheered me up.

The Virtual & the Real

Primary school homework is online. Well, at this stage it's a case of: find your class page, click on the links, do the interactive page from the BBC or whoever. Look, it's a start! And congrats to the chalkies for being so brave. I mean that.

What interested me was the Integrated Studies link, learn to play Mah Jongg. Mah Jongg is an ancient Chinese solitaire game??? My only proof this is total nonsense is a Chinese friend seeing the computer game & not linking it in any way to true Mah Jong - which is in fact a 4-handed game, similar in many ways to poker & rummy, & played everywhere there are 4 Chinese in one spot. Here's a discussion of computer Mah Jong, which goes back to the "ancient" days of the early 80s! It finds no good evidence of an old, real, version.

And what started this? A long time ago I played Mah Jong against my sister, over many years. It sort of works 2-handed, but with fewer chance throw-ins. So by checking my own age (don't ask), I know I pre-date any personal computer toy. Ah, I remember my dad starting up his "Macintosh" 128K, like it was yesterday. 1984 I think? The Happy Mac. The piece of paper, corner folded, on the desk. The little dustbin "under" the desk, that bulged. I distinctly recall the thought, "This is the future, from now on, all computers will work like this..."

Sorry, where was I.

There are two lessons here: internet is often mistaken, or plain wrong; it's strength (& weakness) is the ease any old stuff goes up there. And don't confuse computer-based, virtual & real: computers can do things nothing else can; but real is real, and "virtual reality" is in fact "imitation reality".

LibraryBytes: Transparency

LibraryBytes: One more L2 Thought ...

A quick thought on transparency: we are all newbies. Get used to it. Everything is so new, so get used to being surprised. Get used to saying, "that's cool - I didn't know you could do that!" Get used to SHARING.

Free your Mind (+ some great tools)

One of my favourite programs (yes, you're allowed to use tha word!) is Freemind. Freemind lets you put thoughts down as you think of them, and showing the connections to your earlier thoughts. Forget about the outdated Word-Processed shopping list style of note-taking, this one is seriously mind-expanding. & one of the best ways to publish is with Freemindshare.

Here's a public mindmap I put up to illustrate the Read/Write Web's scope: it's more than podcasts, blogs & Youtube:
Web Tools & Games
Instructions: drag the diagram around to get a better view. If a thought-bubble has a little dot at the end, click to show more connected thoughts. Cool, huh?

The only downer is, I can't edit the shared diagram (easy with the original software). C'mon V.2!

The Web always was interactive...

The Phrase Web 2.0 is rubbish. It was invented as a promotional gimmick, trying to sound advanced, mysterious, "in". But the concepts behind it (interactivity, community, ease of sharing, etc.) are as old as the Internet. The Internet was invented in order to share information, remember?

The difference now is, we can share so much more easily, and share more things. And that IS exciting, and worth a new name. Hence: The Read/Write Web.

Sounds a bit like World-Wide Web? That's OK; we understand the global village now, we know deep down we're in it. And when we know deep down we're in the Read/Write Web, we won't need the phrase so much.

And by then the spin-doctors will have come up with a totally new (improved!) gimmick...

You read it here first!