Turn blogs into e-publications

ZINEPAL

I have to write briefly about an emerging technology that I recently used and am just entranced with. Zinepal is a web-based service that allows the blogger to publish blogs as e-publications and in formats that can be read by a variety of e-pub readers.

As an experiment, I had Zinepal turn this blog into a publication and downloaded it in epub format to iBooks on my iPad. I could also have downloaded as a Kindle compatible file or as a pdf. The results were exciting. The Zinepal website offers some basic formatting features and the epub that I received was searchable with live weblinks. Here's an animation made with another great app, Hype, that shows what the e book looked like.

The service provides free, one-time without advertising, and full access at different prices for different periods of time. It's definitely worth taking a look.

The educational scenario that I envisioned after using it the first time involved having an elementary class studying an academic unit, each class member would produce a blog entry for the unit, then the blog could be turned into an e-publication for sharing with parents and for a class/school library of student work.

Here's the link to my Reflections on Emerging Technologies blog-epub...

Write better online posts

Guidelines for effective writing on blogs and websites

While not specifically an emerging technology, writing about emerging technologies is becoming more and more important. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, how you write conveys information just as surely as what you write.

Below are some of the main points from the article from ReadWriteWeb:

Best Practices For Writing For Online Readers

By Dave Copeland / March 16, 2012 1:00 PM

I have less than 30 seconds to capture your attention with this post, so here goes: if you read some, most or all of the next 750 words or so, you will know how to write Web copy that is more useful to readers of your blog or Web site.

I can talk for hours on the subject, but if asked for the most effective ways to get online readers to read what you write, I would offer these strategies as the most important, which are backed up by eye-track studies as being an effective way to get your message across to online readers:

1. Write compelling but clear headlines: Don't get cute. Online and in print, the headline is almost always the first thing readers look at. Make sure it is clear and gives a good idea of what the post is about, while still leaving the reader wanting more.


2. Write in the active voice: Effective online writing is all about getting to the point, and on a line-by-line basis, the most effective way to do that is to use the active voice, which naturally lends a sense of urgency to your writing. The easiest way to do that is to start each sentence with the subject, immediately follow that with a strong, active verb, and then follow that with the direct object. Avoid adverbs: they're a telling sign that you chose the wrong verb.


3. Online writing is visual: Long, dense paragraphs turn off online readers. Create white space in your copy by keeping paragraphs short and using bulleted lists when appropriate. Use bold text to accent key information and use block or pull quotes to draw readers into the copy.


4. One main idea per sentence: Keep sentences on point. Avoid multiple clauses and phrases, and lots of information stops and commas. Make sure each sentence has one idea, and not much more than that.


5. No sentence without a fact: Every line you write needs to move the story forward. If a sentence doesn't have a fact, cut it.

(read the entire article)

Apple - The next OS X and Ubuntu 11.10

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion - Developer Preview 2

Taking some time to work with the Developer Preview 2 of OS X 10.8. It is very quick, stable and reliable. It seems able to handle a number of activities without unduly taxing a late 2008 MacBook 13" with 4GB of RAM.

This preview is bringing a few of the features of IOS that I've found particularly useful such as reminders, FaceTime, notes, etc. The OS also works well with trackpad gestures. I (may be in a minority) like the Notification Center on IOS and I am enjoying it on Mountain Lion. It's becoming a timesaver on my IOS devices; helping me to filter what is important from what isn't. I imagine it will perform a similar function on my OS X devices too.
More information about features including iCloud Safari tabs and Twitter integration.
Read what Apple has to say...

(disclosure statement: I own a very few shares of APPL - I wish I'd never sold the ones I bought for $15 but I had to pay bills.)

---

Ubuntu - Linux 11.10 - Free, Easy, Useful Open-Source

Possibly paradoxically, I'm also working a fair amount with Ubuntu 11.10. Ubuntu is one of the most popular flavors of the open-source Linux operating system.

I find that Ubuntu does a lot of what any other OS needs to do. While it's not (to me) as attractive and polished as OS X, it's pretty smooth, fast, and not hardware resource intensive. It is a whole lot more pleasant to me to use Ubuntu than any flavor  of Windows. One of the great strengths of this OS is that one can breath new life into machines that might otherwise be destined for the recycling heap. 

I've tried installing Ubuntu 12.04 beta with the sometimes acclaimed, sometimes maligned heads-up display but since I'm running on a virtual machine, I've run into problems getting it working and may have to wait for a stable release.

Find out more about Ubuntu

---

Apple Rumor "Journalism"

Sources have revealed that iPad 3 may have an integrated espresso machine

There's a remarkable journalistic genre that has surfaced over the past few years. This phenomenon is the web, magazine, and newspaper article that deals with what the writer thinks that Apple (AAPL) might be doing, making, updating or releasing at some time in the near future.

I like the quote from this week's Macalope column:

"It’s quite a feat, writing a review of something you haven’t seeIn, but that doesn’t stop some people. In this dog-eat-dog world of Internet publishing, expectations are high. Almost as high as the people writing the stories. 

Still, this has been going on for a while. If you recall, people were declaring the iPhone a complete failure before it was announced, too. When you have no self respect and do not garner the respect of others, well, why not? Nothing to lose, really."

In fact, the Macalope goes on to provide a format for writing Apple future failure columns:

"Seriously, these pieces are like Mad Libs: 

Apple’s new _____ is a modest upgrade that has many who were hoping for more disappointed. Sure, the Apple fanbois will buy it, but Apple has failed to keep up with the state of the _____ market. For example, just the other day at the _____ conference, _____ unveiled a _____ with a _____-inch screen and _____ with _____ that come flying out of the sides and _____ with _____ and _____ the _____ by _____ing the _____ with _____s. And it has a stylus. While it doesn’t get good battery life, Apple will have to respond to this threat as _____ Analysts projects _____ will sell literally dozens of these devices."

---

True Lies -
Oh My! This goes beyond "What will Apple Do Next" Journalism and enters the realm of "Let's stick it to Apple by making up stuff about what they've already done." 

"What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue.

This American Life retracts hugely popular episode on Apple and China

By Nate Anderson | 

Well-loved radio show This American Life—spawned from station WBEZ right here in Chicago—has some "difficult news" about one its most popular shows, an episode on Apple and labor conditions in China. The episode "contained significant fabrications," writes TAL host Ira Glass today on the show's blog. He is devoting this week's entire episode, called "Retraction," to the story.

The original TAL episode, "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory," aired on January 6, 2012, and included portions of the one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" by Mike Daisey. (We attended a performance last year.) It proved hugely popular, but recently a reporter for another public radio show tracked down one of the interpreters Daisey used on his own visit to a Shenzhen factory that makes Apple gadgets, a visit recounted in his show.

Glass writes:

The interpreter disputed much of what Daisey has been saying on stage and on our show... Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast. That doesn't excuse the fact that we never should've put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake.

(read the entire story)

---

(I'm in the process of writing a post about that new genre of technology writing: Apple Rumor Journalism)

The Digital Landscape - Thoughts One

Some random thoughts on the digital landscape...

I'm currently taking a F/OSS course in my ETEC program. I've seen some very attractive solutions. I've also had PTSD flashbacks. (Richard Stallman reminds me too much of my days in Berkeley, right after the Summer of Love and I believe he really does mean "Free Beer.") 


What I see is very different from the "True Believers." I see a digital environment with a mix of F/OSS and Proprietary software. Open source pushes some of the frontiers and keeps Proprietary makers honest. If you can get something that's nominal cost or free like Zotero that's better at what it does than anything you can buy, why pay?


 Proprietary producers serve to remind the F/OSS community that software has to work for real people who do real work and need tools that they can really use; not exercises in creative coding. I just spent 12 hours trying to get the Ubuntu 12.04 beta to work in a virtual machine. It was painful. No way on earth I'd expect teachers in my school to grapple with this kind of stuff. They don't have time. They have real work to do.

Neat tool for making HTML5 animations

Oh hurrah! An actual emerging technologies post:

This is cool - Hype is an application  I've used before to do HTML5/Javascript keyframe animations. The update allows you to make animated content for iBooks Author projects. It's remarkably powerful and easy to use; especially if you've ever used Flash. HTML5/Javascript is compatible with newer browsers and with IOS devices.


If you want to see an how animation adds to the interest of a textbook, Apple iTunes is offering a free sample of E.O. Wilson's new text Life on Earth. It's really pretty spectacular. I passed my iPad around to my Advisory students last week and asked them to look at the book and comment. They were blown away and wanted me to get all of their textbooks in this format... yesterday.

"E. O. Wilson’s Life on Earth is a new digital biology textbook for high school students now under development by the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. This download includes a preview of the book and a sample chapter—“Introduction to Ecology" —that introduces students to how biologists think about the variety and patterns of life on Earth."   

Available on iTunes 

---

(Disclosure Statement: I am not employed by the company that makes Hype and I own no shares in it though I probably should. I do have a few shares of Apple and wish I had about ten thousand more at the moment.)

NIST draft security guidelines for federal networks

Security Guidelines for Federal Networks - draft revisions from the NIST

While this post doesn't describe an emerging technology, it does deal with the necessity for organizations to respond and adapt policies and procedures in light of new technologies.


This draft document is the first revision to the security guidelines for federal government networks since 2009. While less than three years may seem like a short time, in information technology development, it has been a period of rapid and profound change. 


In these few short years, we've seen the development and widespread adoption of a number of disruptive technologies such as pad devices, the almost ubiquitous adoption "smartphone" technologies and the broad use of "cloud-based" solutions both for storage and for productivity. The use of these technologies in organization, corporate, and government environments brings with it questions of security, network integrity, protection from external and internal threat, and privacy concerns.


Anyone who works in an administrative position in an organization would be well advised to, at the very least, be thinking about the security of those networks that provide the structure for the way we do business in the 21st century.

"The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a revised set of security guidelines for federal networks that takes into account evolving threats, as well as new technologies and trends such as cloud computing and bring-your-own-device. Among other things, the new agency-wide standards -- which were last updated in 2009 -- seek to bolster the government's effectiveness at addressing supply-chain risk and protecting against security breaches by insider personnel." (link to the Information Week article)

The NIST has provided a link to the entire document on its site:
(Link to the complete NIST document in pdf)

---

IT execs must shift security approaches

Mobile, cloud and social media technologies are making traditional security obsolete, industry leaders say

Similarly, here is a link to a discussion from Compterworld about the need to change security procedures in the enterprise arena as a result of emerging and adopted new technologies.