If there was ever a product needing a manual, frankly it’s Google Plus. It remains a rather obtuse beast — at least to my way of seeing things. Google Plus: The Missing Manual attempts to remedy this by providing a comprehensive review of all the possible interactions you’d have with the web service from a user perspective. So, do I feel like I know the service any better after reading the book. No, not really, unfortunately maybe it’s just the case that G+ doesn’t work the way I do. The book makes a valiant effort, but I have a sense that I personally would be better served by a pure cookbook approach. I would characterize this ‘manual’ as a hybrid approach. Although it structurally does follow a cookbook like structure, I found a tendency to words where graphics and images would better suit the purpose. This isn’t to say that the information isn’t there, I just found it harder to find. This is not to say that the book isn’t well illustrated. It’s full of great full-colour screen shots. I think what might improve it for me would be the addition of diagrams that represented the processes related to accomplishing tasks using pictures rather than words.

I am loathe to blame the author or the book overly for any failure as I really think that it’s the product itself that just doesn’t jive for me in terms of usability and this puts the judgement of the book in the negative column for me. So, in fairness this is a very thorough book that does attempt to deal with all the idiosyncrasies of the product and does it very well, it just seems to interracially suffer from the same defect of the product in how I like to work with information. It may well serve your needs admirably and if you are still confused about how and why to use Google Plus then this could well be the book for you. It is nicely self-paced and it provides copious side-info about the rationale behind the various features that I did find very illustrative and helpful. The prose here is lively and engaging, there just seems to be an overabundance of it.

It’s just that you really shouldn’t need a manual with a product such as Google Plus. If you do…then there is a problem with the product and as yet, it just doesn’t work for me…and I so want it to. I just spent the time to read a book to help me use it. I am making a commitment to it, but don’t feel it makes the same commitment to me.

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Head First by Jeff Siarto is one of a superb series of Head First books that adopt a visual approach to teaching. This particular volume is very well done and offers a deeply basic introduction to setting cup, configuring and managing a WordPress blog. It takes a new user through the basics and then provides a hands-on practical experience with all the appropriate skills to meet basic to intermediate user demands. It is well written and comprehensively delivered and if you are either a visual learner or a person who does not want to sit down with a stock manual than this is the approach for you. It combines exercises so you can pursue a self-directed and paced course while at the same time finding enough background information when demanded to make you a skilled blog administrator.

Not a criticism, but merely a guidance, this is a largely basic text as it advertises. Ten next topics are identified and given one-page treatments at the end of the volume and for me those where I would really have liked to explore further — but then that is the point. This volume gets you in and doing and thereby gain familiarity. It gets you and you blog up and running and runs through  some common avenues of customization taking you into the WordPress cycle and working with themes and plugins to meet your needs. It doesn’t deman familiarity with PHP, although there you go you’ll be working away modifying themes (in the approved fashion) to suit a variety of challenges. I was pleased to see it venture into security issues as this is something that inevitable emerges and the chapter on ‘Locking it down’ gives some great advice and identifies good practice and available plug-ins to accomplish this.

I really like the approach taken and it works for me. Siarto has a great style and this book will not disappoint those looking to gain an immediate and up to intermediate familiarity with how and what you can do with WordPress. Fun, fast, and deep where it needs to be, this is a recommended read.

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The subtitle ‘Bringing Location to Web Applications’ is particularly apt to this thorough and useful volume. In HTML5 Geolocation Anthony Holdener takes a programmatic approach through full cycle, exploring the nature of location, the technicalities of goelocation and definition of the JS W3C Geolocation API. It goes beyond this mere definition of accessing the API to exploring the ways in which this information can then be utilised using a variety of the Mapping and geolocation API’s available as webservices and ways in which the data produced can be shared using existing standards.

The book is concise, but thorough, well constructed and logically arranged. The linear treatment of demonstrating what is involved, how it is implemented and the following this with discussion of why and where it is of value for consumers of the data is beautifully delivered. This book is intended for a seasoned web developer looking to add locational-based services to web applications. However, this is an excellent reference manual and can be read, I believe in multiple ways ways. As an overview introduction to the principles of geolocation it provides an level of information for the novice to understand broad principles. On a deeper level it describes the programmatic approach in the larger context of how the data will be used which lends itself to a web developers new to geospatial data. A valuable contribution to libraries of geospatial practitioners as well as web developers.

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Gamestorming by Gray, Brown and Macanufo has the slugline ‘A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers’ and it lives up to its rather lofty ambitions by providing solid and systemised routines that can be implemented to create an environment for innovation. The book provides a recipe-like guide to a wide (100 or so) variety of exercises and scripts for groups of individuals to employ to open up the flood gates for the free flow of ideas, breaking through impasses and generally making great things happen.

The books starts with many of the standards — affinity diagrams implemented with stickynotes, to imagineering exercises such as forced rankings and storyboarding. The introduction discusses the general theory of how making play is how we can effectively accomplish serious business objectives. The process of moving from A (and identifying where one wants to go) is presented in a number of different ways so as to find the appropriate ways in which people can perceive a process for themselves. The techniques inherent in working with groups effectively in in presenting innovative of quirky exercises are treated thoroughly in order to provide the foundation for effective delivery and execution.

The treatment is as one might imagine light — there are a lot of exercises contained and the authors can only go into a limited amount of detail on each. The variety is quite diverse. The detail is sufficient to get you started and then letting leaders play them out as might suit the occassion. Diagrams are sprinkled throughout that enhance and certainly lighten the presentation. Having used many of these in the past I would wish for more discsussion and possible variations on some to really explore how particular exercises might be most effectively played and what issues might arise and how best to deal with these. The cases presented towards the end of the volume are good on-the ground examples of how games can be chained and combined and give some example of how gamestorming fits into the business environment.

Despite my personal desires for more discussion, I would heartily recommend this book. It is not a linear read, but is it very easily approachable and a very useful tool to add to the manager’s bookshelf.

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Am participating in the Day of Digital Humanities organised by Peter Organisciak, Geoffrey Rockwell, and Stan Rueker. Check it out.

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I made a few quick references to the mode by which I transfer my long and lat data to Google Earth for route display. I was asked whether I was capturing altitude information along with 2D position and the answer to this is yes. In fact, there are a variety of interesting ways of visualising this data. Although Google Earth does allow for some manipulation of this, I recently started using GPS Visualizer to play with this dimension. If you point it at your data file it can provide you with some interesting perspectives on your trips.

The weekend jaunt down country looks like this:

A second cool way of showing this same altitude mapping is to simply colour code the 2D route for altitude. This map was also generated at GPS Visualizer using the same dataset:

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Video on the other blog

As I read through my RSS feeds in Google Reader today, I was once again struck by the increasing number of familiar headlines. By this I don’t mean similar themes continue to be explored (although true — Hilary is clearly a bad, bad, bad woman and John McCain throws kittens into wells), but rather that I had already read the articles that were popping as new posts. My immediate thought was that Reader wasn’t catching my ‘mark as read’ flags, or that I had inadvertently created duplicate feeds. Alas, neither the case. These are the same posts…simply with different authorship claimed. Note that I am not even getting into the automated blog post piracy that is designed only to attract search engine attention.

When you try to stay on top of all your news feeds with a reader and attempt to strategically manage the multitude of feeds, the collapsing of feeds into headlines makes this phenomenon rather obvious. As I considered this, I realized that there is a certain tiering in the bloggosphere. Digg, Redit and other aggregators are at the lowest level and explicitly point to other’s posts. At the ‘highest’ level you have blogs that create absolutely original, thoughtful and unique posts. Between these there are all manners of variants. Review sites are somewhere in this milieu and they account for a substantial amount of this overlap. Some new gadget is released and the sites all tend to either hear about it or get their hands on it around the same time. Yet, it is interesting to note (when you have far too many RSS feeds coming in) post gravity and proliferation.

If you are subscribing to original source feeds, you might pickup on the press release. This follows the endless rumour posts from the industry watchers. The press release sparks a multitude of posts on how correct an industry site was and then comments on these. All of these posts get picked up at some point in the aggregators and you have substantial data ballooning.

An Historical Example

All of this is to say that things haven’t changed that much. In my studies of 19th Century hotels in a small rural entrepôt, I came across a charge in the newspaper in 1900 that this centre had more drinking spots per capita than any other place in the Province. A stiff charge, and one that I found echoed every decade or so in books, newspapers and in academic papers. Suddenly one could find many references to the rather intemperate characteristic of the city in question. As artefact, the charge went unexamined and reappeared with little additional embellishment, but was accepted simply for its proliferation. For whatever reason, I questioned this charge in 2003, and decided to challenge the evidence. The simple facts were that the original author used a business directory to compile a list of establishments. He was interested in unique statistics, but the business directory was designed to be very user friendly and direct readers to the address or proprietor os the business. As a result, they attempted to list as many permutations as people would know an establishment by. For example, The British Hotel was listed under that name as well as Jones’ Hotel (the proprietor), Smith’s Hotel (the guy that owned it two years ago), The Anglo-American (as it was known when Smith owned it) and often even others. As a result when the journalist sought to count hotels, he found four references to what was in fact the same establishment, but each seemed unique to him. What he didn’t seem to consider was that the business directory was not designed to provide the information he wanted — and this went unnoticed by every person revisiting his article for the next 100 years. Learned academics ended up overestimating the number of bars by 4x or more. This isn’t to point out that I am just a better sceptic, but simply to re-emphasize that a critical approach to journalism is required in a blog as much as any other media.

Post Proliferation = Truth

So what this have to do with post proliferation? Much I think. Just as an original post gains credibility, simply through proliferation, the evidence of the same happening today is amplified by the bloggosphere. And I sense all the more so as quantity seems to be the measure. Most of our metrics revolve around readership, hits, and references, not originality, veracity or such qualitative measures.

Getting back to our original point, I have a sense that one might be able to construct a tiered model to show the evolution of a post. There are originators who focus on actual creation, then there are the clear regurgitators, and then the aggregators. In between there are a variety of others, adding two cents to others posts, using an idea as a foundation and riffing off. This is what it’s all about. These are not all bad things. The study of the evolution is a glorious discipline itself.

Yet, in the back of my mind when I note the great repetition there’s a sense that people are participating, but not getting it. Maybe its all part of the flow, but I sense there is a flaw too, in the measures. If its about the collateral advertising with Google Adsense, then its about click thru. Get someone to the post and whether they read it or not, connect the headline to the adverts carefully selected by Google.

On Microblogging

Last year, I added the sideblog plug-in to my own blog, basically a spot where I could collect links and things of note without adding anything to them. While I could have left this in my mainstream of posts, somehow this degraded my sense of my own place in the bloggosphere. Now I am by no means the original contributor on the level of most of those whom I track, but I generally make a point of trying to indicate when I have seen a cool post and do have something to add and therefore include it in my stream.

Originally I did not publish my asides. They were posted in the top corner of my blog, but not included in my RSS feed. I flicked the switch on them yesterday morning — mainly as an exercise in microblogging. JoeResort, recently found that the twitter-like microblogging is something that really fit his mode. I have had a twitter account (there’s actually two — another story) for quite a while. I have installed widgets, blog and browser plugins, but its not quite something that has clicked for me. The asides have really been self-focussed, much like a parallel del.icio.us (I recently added my own collection as a tag cloud on my blog). Not that I was concerned at all with filtering and creating a public persona, but simply that I found delicious and asides the most convenient way to track things. The third ( and parallel means) I have been tracking ‘things’ of note is of course through Zotero in Firefox. Although Zotero is a smashing tool and offers great data interchange, that syncing not automatic, and I use a variety of machines, each of which has its own sqlite Zotero database. I am sure that I could create a syncing mechanism (probably overweening confidence on my part) but the local nature of the database is both positive (speed, functionality, standalone operation) and a roadblock (syncing). Additionally, I don’t use FireFox all the time. I like Safari quite often for its blazing speed, and more importantly, on the machine I am writing this on, Firefox has problems with the old G4 and is a CPU hog. But I am going off topic here.

Lessons

So where are we? Attribute stuff when you steal it. Much like the students to whom I try to explain that referencing is a good thing — it just demonstrates that you have been a good researcher — sharing information is a good thing. I may not have seen the post you did and it is through you I find it.

Try to add your own stamp of varying length or erudition. If you can. This is where we are able to demonstrate the real value of the media. Collaborative consideration and construction. The way you see something is different from my perspective, if only in some minute way. Share that perspective and watch the synergy happen.

Find the tool that works for you and maybe it’s something as simple as microblogging. You have to find a means if information sharing that suits your self. Not every one is going to sit in their basements and create video podcasts, nor is blogging something that appeals to all. But there are a wide variety of means in the online space to participate and the critical eye is often not blinded by the technology.

If you are watching this stuff, reflect on the way in which material is repurposed/mashed up/stolen or simply blindly passed along the chain. Maybe what we need is a qualification for noting the originality of a post and thereby allowing one to set your own thresholds for viewing. The challenge here of course is measuring relative originality and freshness. Maybe is you put a text through a tagging semanticizer and then compared the meta generated you could start to compile a genetic descriptor that could allow for determining overall originality. The downside of this is that information is original for me the first time I see it, not the first time someone else human or machine sees it.

Actually, this whole post is an apology for the drought of posts on my own blog as of late. It’s just that I am studiously attempting to keep all that I write scruptuously original, but also veracious ;-)

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Susan Nance, professor of US history at the University of Guelph, presented a fascinating paper “A Star is Born to Buck: On the Development of Rodeo Bulls in the 1990s” at the Rural History Roundtable today. Although Nance’s past work has touched on topics such as tourism under the Ottoman Empire and religious parades in interwar Chicago, her more recent work has focussed on accounting for the absence of animal’s stories in historical scholarship. The subject of her talk today is a transnational study of rodeo’s and performance with an emphasis on the contribution of the animal — most specifically ‘Bodacious’, the ‘World’s Most Dangerous Bull.

Nance explores the story of Bodacious and asks some probing questions of the nature of the role of the bull in the rodeo circuit.
Briefly, Bodacious was born in 1988. Although he didn’t demonstrate an immediate tendency to buck (we learn that bucking is a far from universal tendency amongst bulls — only 1 in ten will buck if ridden) after three years on the range he joined the professional circuit. He quickly gained the moniker ‘the Yellow Rail’ and a reputation for particularly fierce behavior. In rodeo parlance, he may have started as a ‘sweet’ bull, he became ‘rank’ and finally became an eliminator. Nance emphasizes that Bodacious was always referred to as a he and not an it, was seen as an athlete in the ring and was subject to a code of behaviour between the rider and the bull.
The ride is an equitable arrangement where each participant receives and individual score and has an opportunity to demonstrate dominance — the rider when mounted and the bull once he has thrown the cowboy. Bodacious was a tough ride early on, throwing riders with regularity, only eight times in his career were rider able to remain on his back for the full eight seconds necessary to gain points themselves. Nance focusses on notice of behaviour and whether the animal seems capable of making choices in this process. Its seems clear from Bodacious’ performance that he did change his behavior over time and in doping so violated this unwritten code. Bodacious was noted for his instinct to spring right out of the chute and to with a certain grace pitch from side to opposite side sensing the shift in the cowboy’s balance. However, within a few years, Bodacious also demonstrated a new move: a seemingly deliberate performance where he would sense the rider being tossed forward, and immediately throw his massive head back to collide with the rider. He did this on multiple occasions finding the rider’s face — crushing it horribly. When three-time world champion Tuff Hedeman refused to ride Bodacious after he having finished Hedeman in this way the previous year, the bull’s career quickly ended. When Bodacious died in 2001 at the Andrew’s Texas ranch, the event was covered widely in the world press. The bull was a star athlete and a commercial success. Incidently, I note that Bodacious’ notoriety has also sparked interest from those pointing to rodeo riding as animal abuse.
For Nance, the story of Bodacious touches on many fascinating aspects: How has animal behaviour shaped capitalism and performance? What is the nature of the negotiation between corporate sponsorship and traditional performance? How much of the notoriety was in fact a part of the animal’s behaviour and how much promotional mythology and marketing?
I was quite taken with Nance’s presentation and her ability to truly bring a Bodacious to life and to capture the sense of the animal having a career and developing as part of a perceived role. What a fascinating area of investigation.

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