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…And I do mean that literally. W00t is the word of the year according to Merriam-Webster. In addition to being profoundly amusing, that has some interesting implications for the link between language and technology. It’s not just “geek speak” anymore.
Hey, guys. I woke up early this morning with a massive headache, fell asleep again, and suddenly it was noon. Can anyone be so kind as to let me know what I missed?
Also, I changed the theme because the previous one didn’t display tags or usernames.
One of the points made in the Bump article is that holding class discussions online rather than out loud encourages more people to participate. I completely agree with this — I personally found it much easier to speak up when there was no actual speaking involved, and I didn’t seem to be the only one. I think that there are a few reasons for this. First of all, I found it a lot easier to organize my thoughts in writing than while speaking, because in the chat I could stop in the middle of typing, think about it, and then resume. Theoretically, you could pause and gather your thoughts while speaking, but it just results in awkward gaps in the conversation and you run the risk of being interrupted and not getting a chance to go back and complete your thought. Secondly, communicating online allows you to focus more on what you’re saying than on how it’s being perceived, because you don’t see other people’s immediate reactions the way you do in face to face conversation. This encourages people to be more blunt and to say what they think without worrying about peer rejection, although as the Bump article points out, it’s possible to take this too far and become completely apathetic towards the feelings of the people you’re chatting with. I can’t imagine a class discussion getting that heated, but it’s something to keep in mind. A third advantage of online chats is that everyone has a voice. In normal class discussions, only a handful of people are willing to volunteer, or else there simply isn’t enough time to hear from everyone. In the chat, everyone was able to type at once without interrupting each other or losing track of what the other people were saying. Although there were still people who remained relatively quiet, for the most part the discussion was far more inclusive than what we normally experience. For these reasons, I feel a chat session could be a valuable addition to most classes, although I don’t think that I would want one as often as the students in the Bump article voted for. I don’t think it will or should ever replace face to face discussion, but they could work very well as complementery components of a course.
I know at some point we were discussing the difficulty of placing ads on YouTube to cover the cost of legitimate networks and labels uploading shows and music. I just came across an example of that, and they seem to have solved the problem pretty well. There’s still the usual stationary ad that we’re all used to seeing (and ignoring), but rather than making users sit through 30-second clips before starting the video, there’s a banner ad at the bottom of the screen that can easily be exited. After that, the only obstruction to the video itself is a small “Ad” button that, if clicked, brings the banner back. I don’t know how satisfactory this will be to advertisers in the long run, because most people will probably just exit the ad within a second of its popping up without even taking notice of what’s being advertised (this is the same problem posed by stationary ads, which people usually just read around) but from a viewer’s perspective it’s a great solution.
It’s really kind of amazing how the internet is enabling people to give back to charity without any real effort. I’m sure by now most of you have heard of FreeRice.com, the vocabulary game in which for every word you correctly define, twenty grains of rice (paid for by ads placed discreetly at the bottom of the page) are donated to the UN World Food Program. You’ve probably also seen various buttons floating around that promise to fun a whole host of different things as long as you click once a day. I just found out about something that doesn’t even require that minimal extra effort, so I thought I’d pass it along.
GoodSearch is a search engine powered by Yahoo that donates $.01 to the participating nonprofit of your choice every time you use it. I’ve been playing around with it for a few days, and while it isn’t quite as good as Google, it’s definitely sufficient for what I usually use Google for. A penny might not seem like much, but it really does add up. The nonprofit I’ve selected, The Office Of Letters and Light (which runs NaNoWriMo, which you’ve seen me mention in previous entries), has already raised $30.11 for the month of December — that’s the past two days alone. Since June, when the program started, it’s raised $773.84, which is quite a chunk of change for something that takes absolutely no effort at all.
Here’s a list of all the participating nonprofit organizations that you can raise money for just by using a different search engine. I really think it’s worth checking out.
…I just had to brag a little, since my last post on the subject was centered around how hopelessly behind I was. Amazing how much can get done in one weekend — although I think my wrists preferred being lazy (in other words: ow). Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.
In the past day, there have been three seperate items in my Facebook newsfeed related to applications — specifically, demanding that people stop sending out mass invites Or Else — and since this is a technology module I thought I’d ask: Can there be too much customization? Relating specifically to Facebook, I can’t write on half my friends’ walls anymore because I don’t have the patience to scroll through their many applications. I’ve seen several people denounce applications as the beginning of the end for Facebook, and though the same was said about news feeds and we’ve all gotten over that, I have to wonder if the ability to add so many features to your profile is going to be a help or a hindrance once the novelty wears off. Any thoughts? And will someone please explain to me the point of these werewolf/vampire/zombie requests I keep getting?
This is pretty much the best thing I’ve seen all week.
In a way, it reminds me of the transition from Professor Tweedie’s module to this one. This laptop has the look and feel of something antiquated that we would only see in a history class, like the portable typewriter from the last module, but in actuality it contains a very modern computer that probably isn’t much different from the one I’m using right now. I think it’s interesting that someone would go to so much trouble to make something as technologically advanced as a computer appear as though it belongs in the Victorian era. I guess it just goes to show that for all our culture’s emphasis on the future of technology, it’s still worth it to explore the past and even bring it into the present, even if only for aesthetics.
Why I’m not working Black Friday, reason #492:
Click on the picture to see more comics.
I’m on hiatus from my job until winter break, but I still like to read this strip because there’s rarely one that I can’t look at and recall a time when I’ve been in that exact situation. Take today’s, for example. I once had a woman make me get her a specific type and size of men’s undershirts… then go back and get her another pack… then put back the one she’d grabbed by mistake… all while she was browsing the clearance racks a mere five feet from the Men’s Basics wall. Being relatively new to my job at the time, I was pretty eager to please and so I carried out each request without complaint. This is a typical rookie mistake. I’ve sinced learned that it’s much better to simply point the customer in the direction of the desired item and make a quick getaway, lest I get trapped helping one person for hours while the rest of my department gets trashed.
I could easily name a dozen or more stories of customers who feel similarly entitled to special treatment, but I think the blog would implode from the sheer size of an entry that went into detail about all of my crazy-customer anecdotes. For those of you braving the crowds on Black Friday especially, remember to be nice to your local retail employees, if for no other reason than to avoid ending up in one of their blogs someday.
So it’s halfway through November, and if you’ve read Hannah’s group’s blog, or the latest edition of The Whit, or had at least one conversation with me, then you probably know what that means. For those of you still in the dark, I can sum it up in four words (that unfortunately can’t be added to my woefully lacking wordcount): National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo.
The basic premise is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Really it amounts to a novella, but “novel” has a much more impressive ring to it so we’ll stick with that. At any rate, the idea is specifically to avoid nitpicking over which word is best or even whether what you’re writing is any good; it’s designed to motivate participants to eschew their Inner Editors and simply let the words flow.
That’s not always as easy as it sounds. As some of you may have heard, I’ve been a bit of a slacker this year. I think I’ve hit the seven-year slump a year early — but at least that puts me ahead in something. Regardless, I’m not throwing in the towel just yet. I’ve hit the 50k goal every year but my first, and I fully intend to continue that winning streak. Plus I’ve told too many people to end the month less than halfway to my goal. Fear of public humiliation is one of the greatest motivators to your average NaNo participant.
In that vein, here’s a handy widget that keeps track of my progress. It lags a bit sometimes, but it’s never more than a day off. If you want to know how behind I am, take the current day and multiply it by 1,667 to see where I should be. For example, today’s the 18 — 18 x 1667 = 30006. Um, yeah, that’s not quite what I have…
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