Have Web Browser Have Web Server – Prediction Fulfilled

This week my confidence in predicting future trends on the web has taken a boost. For several years I have been suggesting that future web browsers will incorporate web servers, making every browser install a potential publisher of web pages and applications. This week we saw this prediction come true when Opera Unite was released in an alpha version.

We know that most versions of Windows for years have incorporated the Microsoft IIS web server which is trivial to switch on. Having to teach with web servers it have been continually frustrating that the default proxy setting at my university has always prevented browsers accessing the local web server at http://localhost. For years I have ranted that this will prevent local web servers sharing information, but no one has listened. Now Opera has vindicated my stance.

Yes I agree that a simple download and install of the free Apache for Windows is a good option for running a web server on every Windows box with other easy to use web server management software available as well. On the other hand we all know that running a web server from home raises the usual problems of domain names, dynamic IP addresses, firewalls, lack of SSL, and user authentication. I actually like the efforts of British company Ultidev that offer an upgrade of the tiny but powerful Cassini web server that solves these problems, and their upcoming HttpVPN product that promises even more. These and other Windows web servers all operate as separate software packages.

Now Opera Unite bundles a web server in the browser itself and solves all the problems listed above in just one 10 MB download – brilliant. Out of the box Opera Unite comes with a few Web 2.0 services in addition to the web server all controlled in the browser Unite panel.

the web server allows you to select a local machine folder to store the pages of your web site –use any web site publishing package to build these pages file sharing allows navigation of a chosen folder hierarchy on your local box and download any file the fridge is a simple sticky note notice board on which you and others can post the media player gives play access to any music folder containing MP3 files photo sharing builds photo albums and simple navigation between pages of photos the lounge is a simple, personal chat service you, your friends and other Opera Unite users can share You can also search and link to similar services offered by other Opera Unite friends and other users.

Overlaid on these services is a simple and consistent authentication mechanism. You basically choose between private services only the local machine user can access, shared services using a password you expose to other users, and public services open to the Internet.

As you would expect of Opera it is possible to create and add in your own services using a combination of XML configuration files, HTML/CSS documents and JavaScript. The developers’ manual shows how easy it is to build a simple blog service for example. No doubt we can expect a huge raft of third-party developed Opera Unite services soon.

I am confident this is the way of the future when every person browsing the web has the possibility, in a very convenient and straightforward way, to publish their own web pages and applications to share with the world.

Publish your Blog as a Book with Blurb

Like others before me I finally got round to downloading the free BookSmart desktop app from the Blurb self-publishing site. As well as the usual book publishing features BookSmart is able to download your blog posts so you can publish them as a book.

BookSmart was able to easily download my blog posts. However I immediately ran into my first disappointment as with one post per page I quickly exceeded the page limit. This meant looking at multiple book volumes, and working out with some difficulty how to delete large numbers of unwanted pages. BookSmart being a Java application suffers from the usual sluggishness of that ilk.

The next big disappointment came on the realisation that all the images in my blog posts are fine for web publishing but well below the high-resolution quality needed for professional publishing. BookSmart provides mechanisms to warn you of this but it required reformatting every page with an image and choosing page templates to properly compose the images and text – a lot of work.

With embedded URLs of no use on the printed page BookSmart does automatically extract the links and include them as footnotes at the end of the post. This was a very useful feature.

Uploading the edited book was also a long and tedious process which failed a couple of times before finally completing successfully. From there the ordering process was quick and easy. I ordered a soft cover edition. To see a preview of the book click on the image below. I made no attempt to add a table of contents or index so it is just a series of blog posts.

The well-packed book arrived within 10 days and I am really impressed with the quality of the soft cover, the paper and the graphics although the latter are on the small side. Although they could easily do so I don’t expect anyone else to order a copy!

Now I have my blog posts for posterity. That leaves open the question of whether this book would ever be accepted as evidence for a doctorate by publication – not in my lifetime I suspect.

Like Google Like Microsoft

I just had to respond to a question from a protected Twitter post by Kathryn asking for Microsoftish Web 2.0 apps. It seems to me the Google Web 2.0 ascendancy seems to have blinded users to the parallel Microsoft Web 2.0 world which, surprise, surprise, occasionally outshines Google believe it or not.

The best gateway into MS Web 2.0 is via http://home.live.com where you only need a free Windows Live ID. Then you have available Hotmail of course which everyone should know about (there are 500 million users after all) and the whole Windows Live wave 3.0 web apps:

• public/private Profiles to join with People (contacts) and Groups to form your social network and a Friendfeed like amalgam capability for other existing social networks
• Photos ( full photo albums)
• under the More tab we get to
  • Calendar and Events
  • Spaces blogs/web sites (as good as or better than Blogger)
  • Skydrive, the online storage standout – 25GB of free online space where you can store and retrieve any kind of folder/file hierarchy as long as each file is 50MB or less

All this stuff is accessible via any modern browser without plugins. As days go by the Bing branding will likely begin to take over from Live.

Although not pure Web 2.0 the free online synchronisation services are also free but require client apps to be downloaded. More details at http://dotdolfin.com/software-services/.

The Expert Learners of Tomorrow

In yet one more must-read post by Will Richardson he takes us back almost a decade to the writings of Tom Carroll speculating how we would design school buildings from scratch as learning spaces not classrooms. Will found many prescient ideas that are very relevant today. Will picked up this quote from Tom’s paper that also resonates strongly with me:

In the networked learning communities of the future, expert learners (we call them teachers, educators, scientists, and researchers today) are going to be recognized for their ability to learn and help others learn, as they continue to construct new knowledge and develop their own expertise. Their job will not be to teach – but to help others learn, as they model learning through collaboration to solve problems and achieve goals they have in common. (A significant part of the expert learner’s role will be organizing and managing the collaborative learning community.)

The only changes I would suggest is that we now know that is not only teachers, educators, scientists and researchers can change into expert learners. Just from those around me that I know well you can add librarians, social media strategists, bloggers and podcasters to the list. In fact, anyone in any discipline can become an expert learner. All they need is life experience, dedication and the communications skills to employ online social networking tools to encourage novice learners. Note that the dreaded work teacher drops from the lexicon and everyone is a learner, mirroring real life in the 21st Century.

Twitter Handle as Business Card

Des Walsh has a typically insightful discussion on the design and contents of a business card and its role in the new 21C connected society, a million miles from the 20C era of business cards.

My own view is that Des only needs one word in large font on his card, @DesWalsh, his Twitter handle. Most knowledgeable people will know to access http://twitter.com/deswalsh in a browser to find from his Twitter badge details:

• photo
• email address
• prime web site address which should show the email address
• short bio at efficient Tweet size

In fact this list is a large subset of what Des proposes for his new card and has benefits:

• Twitter badge contact details can be changed at any time – no business card reprints
• Des can ‘speak’ his card – people with mobiles can type it in quickly (more quickly perhaps than taking a photo of a QR code which needs another app to interpret it)

I firmly believe that Twitter handle as a business card is the way of the future.

[I typed a comment along these lines into Des’ blog, only to lose it all when my mobile broadband link dropped out on this train I am travelling on. I have reverted to reliable Windows Live Writer and a blog post so that I won’t lose this text a second time!]

Humourous Twitter Comic Strips

The comic strips about Twitter are coming thick and fast. Here are 30 of them thanks to the guys at Webdesigner Depot. One of my favourites is:

It is starting to feel strange to enter a blog post, and such a tame one at that.

I would like to thank bamboo fanatic @colwar for the original heads up.

Zotero 2.0 Brings Shared Group Libraries At Last

This post extends my blogknot of entries about online, shared Zotero libraries of references. Version 1.5 of Zotero brought us a personal shared, online reference library accessible at the Zotero site. Attached files were still a problem but I was able to use Live Mesh to sync these files across all of my machines. [Zotero recommends you use your own WebDAV service for this but I suspect not many users will have access to a WebDAV server.]

Zotero 2.0 in beta arrived a few days ago and despite the local Zotero database needing to be reformatted it is pleasing to see that my Live Mesh sync method is still working. However the exciting new feature in Zotero 2.0 is the addition of online group libraries. Now a group of Zotero users can share and update a group library of references. Now a research group can create and maintain a single collection of references – a feature for which I have been waiting for a number of years. Great work by the Zotero developers and another one in the eye for EndNote.

You may find yourself on a machine without the Zotero Firefox add-on (at work or on the road) or wish to use another browser. You can still access your personal and group libraries online via the Zotero site so your references are accessible anywhere on the Internet.

The one problem I found with Zotero 2.0b3 is that I couldn’t upload a Zotero profile picture using IE8. This probably points to other IE8 problems with Zotero. However normally you would be using Firefox for all your Zotero usage.

A New Q&A Resource on Twitter for Baby Boomers

I signed up at the BoomerAuthority site and found myself recruited as a founding member of a community of over 80 professional and organisations offering timely advice using Twitter.

The idea is that @BoomerAuthority becomes a free service on Twitter that advocates the rapid shift in the way marketers of products and professionals selling services reach the baby boomer consumer. As with all social media it is switch from one-way communication to that of listening and individual response. @BoomerAuthority attempts to connect boomers to qualified professionals who listen and then help with questions.

I am hoping the totally distracting repeating background of the @BoomerAuthority page as I write is corrected soon.

When you need help with an issue, have a question, seek an opinion, or simply want a recommendation, use Twitter in the normal way:

1. Send a public message to @BoomerAuthority.
2. The tweet is read by BoomerAuthority community members for questions related to their area expertise.
3. A knowledgeable member from the Boomer Authority community responds with an answer to the specific question via your preferred method of response.

Intended uses encompass these and many other questions:

• look for help with career choice options, beginning an encore career, or launching a new business venture
• need a recommendation from a professional service
• wanting advice on setting up social media tools like blogs, wikis and so on
• want an opinion about joining a particular social networking community
• travelling to a foreign country and want recommendations
• seek an answer that is related to health, wellness or fitness

I am looking forward to see how I do as a boomer agony aunt.

Joy – Computer Scientists Should Accelerate Social Networking Research

Well it was extremely uplifting to read the summary by Jeffrey Young of the outcomes of a meeting  led by Ben Sneiderman at the Uni of Maryland last week that resulted in a white paper resulting in a ‘National Initiative for Social Participation’ (NISP). [The full article by Jeffrey needs a subscription account.] The meeting argued that in the US:

… computer-science programs at universities and federal agencies need to move faster to support research into social-networking technology, which they see as the next frontier of innovation.

Needless to say this sentiment is music to my ears and is most welcome. I also think that it will also bring a smile to the face of my research project leader, Renato Iannella, who runs the Social and Professional Interoperable Networks (SPIN) project at NICTA.

Ben Sneiderman is leading the charge for NISP:

the challenges of creating useful social networks is precisely why more research should be done. "Coping with legitimate dangers such as privacy violations, misguided rumors, malicious vandalism, and infrastructure destruction or overload all demand careful planning and testing of potential solutions,"

Now we need to rally Australian computer scientists to the cause.

Move Aside Gartner we now have the Horrigan Tripe Cycle

John Connell has been fighting valiantly against yet more tosh from Baroness Greenfield in the Daily Mail. Sarah Horrigan writes in support of John’s ‘fantastic riposte’ and adds more fuel to the fire. I am firmly with John and Sarah but I was particularly taken with Sarah’s Horrigan Tripe Cycle about resistance to technological change summarised here:

1. Ignorance
2. Denial the new technology is important
3. Observation of adoption whilst feeling increasingly out of touch
4. Random accusations about the perilous consequences of adoption
5. Grudging acceptance / grumbling in a corner periodically

I seem to remember the Horrigan Tripe Cycle arguments being used about television in the ‘60s and ‘70s.