Print and Epub Versions of the Same Book: Socialnomics

Occasional mentions of downloadable books for electronic readers from my public libraries (GCCC Libraries) have passed in my tweet stream from one of my Twitter friends, librarian Kate Davis (@katiedavis). It was not until I received the email newsletter this week from the libraries that I realised how far the Overdrive service for ebooks (and audiobooks) had come (past services were limited in media types and range of devices). Effectively it heralds the start of a 24/7 library service for time-limited, electronic borrowings – the way of the future.

From the virtual library page we are told the range of media is the impressive:

• Adobe® EPUB eBooks
• Adobe® PDF eBooks
• Mobipocket® eBooks
• OverDrive WMA Audiobooks
• OverDrive MP3 Audiobooks
• OverDrive Music

I immediately searched the epub/PDF catalogue which is understandably limited as it to be expected. Neverthe less I discovered quickly that Qualman’s Socialnomics title was available in epub format. Only a week previously I had tweeted my thanks to the library for ordering this same title for me in print. [Eric Qualman also tweeted me back.] What a coincidence! Another less significant coincidence is I already had Adobe Digital Editions installed on my PC, the recommended reader for the epub format of the ebook. For many months the free Digital Editions software has been my reader of choice for all my PDF documents, reports, papers, manuals and so on. This meant the download of the Socialnomics ebook was seamless and within less than a minute the book was on my PC screen – really great.

In a first for me I now have both the print and epub versions of the same book available while I am reading it. I can directly compare the two reading processes to see which I prefer. Since I don’t yet have a dedicated ebook reader capable of displaying epub format the comparison is between reading on my PC and the print form.

On the PC the usual huge advantages of ebooks become quickly apparent:

• the links in the table of contents (always visible on the left in Digital Editions) take you straight to the major book sections
• search takes you immediately to information you require (the index is no longer needed)
• change the page and font size to suit you reading comfort
• links in the text, footnotes, endnotes and so on all work
• limited text copy allows for note taking

I quickly set up my netbooks and laptops to share the same ebook using the Adobe authorisation mechanism to its allowed limit of 5 devices. Netbooks extend the range of contexts for reading ebooks but of course are still not as convenient as dedicated ebook readers (and the printed book) in bed for example.

In the 48 hours of my print/ebook reading duality the ebook is winning. Both have to go back in 14 days when this first experiment will end and I will be able to report again.

I must give a big shoutout to Kate who I suspect had a really big part in bringing the beginnings of our local virtual 24/7 library to fruition. It will revolutionise reading habits.

Online Social Media Seminar on Nowism

Being at a social time, 11 am on a Saturday, I joined the latest online social media seminar from George Siemens and Dave Cormier who talked about the theme of nowism, which is essentially various forms of the realtime web. A paper on the nowism trend contains this exercise scenario that took my fancy:

The seminar audience topped out at about 85 from all over the world in many different time zones. The seminar series Ning site gives more details and links to the recordings of these seminars. Detailed notes are also available for this particular seminar via a public Google Docs link.

Of course Google Wave figured prominently but many in the audience had not yet experienced it. A good example given by George on how invaluable Wave might be is the development of a new curriculum for a course over, say, 3 months with a small team of 5 or so. Imagine how many emails would be needed over that timescale, probably over a hundred. Instead a single, shared Wave document would exist, no doubt highly threaded. Using the Play button the actual development of the document through time would be visible showing exactly how each part of the curriculum was derived. Wave is so much better provided we all learn to use it sensibly.

Other examples of realtime web and synchronised collaboration were discussed briefly. Google Social Search (see notes) also rated a mention. Mercifully mention of Second Life was short, with the consensus being that current virtual-worlds-without-a-purpose had been tried and found wanting in large part because of the huge up-front preparation time and effort that is needed.

All in all it was a most enjoyable hour with lots of electronic resources to follow up which are of use in the general education 2.0 space.

Students and Ebooks

I have been meaning to report on the outcomes of a question I set in the final theory exam of our CORE subject Information Technology 1 in our May 2009 semester. This subject is taken by virtually all students enrolled in my university at some stage in their degrees. The short answer question was:

There appears to be a trend for printed text books to be replaced by electronic books that must be read on digital devices. Indicate whether or not you are in favour of this trend. Give several reasons for your choice.

I was about 150 scripts into marking the total of 372 scripts and I happened to tweet my impression of the answers to that point:

This sparked a positive response from Peta who discussed it with her fellow librarians. Because of this interest a proper count of the students’ answers was in order to confirm if my first impressions were accurate. I decided to put each answer into 5 categories:

• For: answer and reasons given were wholly in favour of ebooks replacing printed books
• For-but: in favour overall but recognised some disadvantages that were described in the answer
• Neutral: neither for or against with reasons given on each side
• Against-but: not in favour but recognised some advantages to ebooks
• Against: answer and reasons given were wholly against the use of ebooks

In the end, my first impressions proved incorrect although the result was close. Combining both ‘for’ categories and both ‘against’ categories the numbers are 50% in favour and 44% against with 6% in the neutral category.

The more detailed results show that 17% of students recognised that the choice was not entirely clear cut and there were both advantages and disadvantages with ebooks.

So as far as this particular class of students is concerned ebooks are favoured by a small majority. Hopefully our librarians can take something useful from this result. For the record I place myself in the ‘For but’ category.

Postscript: I tried to use Twitter search on this day (27 October 2009) to find my original tweet to no avail – it turns out that 19 August 2009 is too far in the past for Twitter! Fortunately our institutional Yammer service was quickly able to find my tweet text (use of the #yam hashtag), but did not provide the unique link to the Twitter tweet. Using Google search with a phrase from the tweet returned a single result from dipity.com (maybe the recently heralded Google Social Search would have helped me). This dipity service keeps a timeline of chosen social network activity. I had all but forgotten about them except they emailed me about updated features this week. Going back to 19 August in my dipity timeline shows the tweet in all it glory together with the Twitter status link. Well done dipity.

PPS Update: Google just announced general availability of experimental Social Search

Will Network Services Take Over the Web?

I was taken by a slide in Sean Parker’s presentation to the Web 2.0 Summit where he predicts that network services will take over from information services. The two service types are:

This is a bold prediction, and although unique access trends are currently running in favour of social networks and network services my feeling is the thought is premature. I don’t think the trend has gone unnoticed at Google and Bing, and we are already seeing new social networking services being built on to the offerings of the information services providers. A good battle is in the offing.

Via a MG Siegler post at TechCrunch

Great Photos by Studio Promise at Barcamp Brisbane IV

I mentioned in my Barcamp Brisbane IV report that we were privileged to have our photos taken by DJ Paine of Studio Promise. DJ has now sent us the high definition versions for free use in any context. In return I am happy to give him a big shoutout.

The barcamp photo collection is available on Flickr at http://bit.ly/barcamp09.

Had I known in advance that DJ would do such a great job in taking these portrati photos I would have worn something more tidy than my Twitter t-shirt!

 

 

Delicious Home Page

In a previous post I mentioned me need to have a home page of important links to the cloud apps I use heavily on a regular basis. Managing this home page of bookmarks needs to be as efficient and convenient as possible. I decided to use the simple but effective techniques of Delicious bookmark caches for my main home page.

My bookmark collection on Delicious is public in order to leverage the full social sharing capabilities. For my home page I mark my bookmarks as private so as not to pollute my other bookmarks and because some personal cache bookmarks need authentication. This choice is entirely optional. I then chose to structure my bookmarks at two levels, the main list linking to a series of secondary lists. I use the tag mjr (my initials) for the top level list of bookmarks and I set my browser home page to delicious.com/mrees/mjr which currently looks like:

I chose a unique tag to act as as the key for bookmarks at the secondary level. For historical reasons I use mjrkeya but any meaningful tag will do. Each secondary bookmark uses this tag plus one other tag to signify the category such as cloudtool for my Cloud Tool List category. Thus delicious.com/mrees/mjrkeya+cloudtool is the URL for my list of cloud tools. I can use the Delicious browser tool to add a new bookmark into my caches very easily:

1. Acquire the link by positioning the browser at the page or using the right-click context menu item Bookmark this link in Delicious
2. In the Edit Bookmark dialog mark the link as Private
3. Enter the tags mjrkeya and the secondary category

Once the secondary level bookmarks are entered then the top level list can be created. For example the Cloud Tools List bookmark is:

An example of the Cloud Tool List at the secondary level is:

After some experimentation to keep the vertical spacing of these bookmarks to a minimum I add several formatting options for my Delicious Home Page in my browser. My current URL reduces each bookmark to 1 line, paginates 25 bookmarks at a time, and sorts them in alpha order:

    http://delicious.com/mrees/mjr?sort=alpha&order=asc&detail=1&setcount=25

This is difficult to remember when setting up a new browser so it is stored in a private bookmark delicious.com/mrees/mjrstart.

Only one problem remains. When viewing a second level list how do you quickly return to the top level? Answer, create a tag bundle and add the necessary bookmark for the top level delicious.com/mrees/mjr. One click on the mjr tag takes me back home. Tag bundles appear on the right of Delicious pages:

Note that every Delicious bookmark in the various lists has an Edit and Delete button which allows very quick, in-context editing to change title, URL and tags. Managing these two levels of caching is very, very easy.

I have been using these techniques for about a year and am extremely happy. Very minor gripes include the somewhat slow response for Delicious pages in Australia and the need to re-login to my account every 10 days or so. I recommend this approach to everyone.