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Knowledge Forum 4.8 update

This week marks my return to full-time work on Knowledge Forum 4.8. I have made a flurry of check-ins to the code to make the communications protocol far more robust. I have been unable to resist checking in several additional changes to improve the look, feel, and feature set.

The focus of the newer communications protocol is twofold: improved behaviour across firewalls, which have been the bane of our existence for a very long time, and improved performance across slow or otherwise poor network connections.

Parties who are interested in helping out by offering test sites should contact me directly.

On being cited

A couple of months ago I received email from Angelique Dimitracopoulou asking to use a couple of images from an article of mine from the CSCL 2007 proceedings in a forthcoming journal article of hers. Of course it's possible to use citation indices to see who's citing your stuff, but it's somehow more rewarding to hear from the author herself. Of course I make no pretense about the fact that I was contacted only for high-res versions of the images, but it's still pretty cool.

From Tork to Vis in 4 Steps

Via an RSS feed from Nathan Torkington's blog:

http://nathan.torkington.com/blog/2008/10/12/cybernetics-quotes/

to

http://www.well.com/user/abs/curriculum.html

then by URL shortening to

http://www.well.com/user/abs

to

http://aero.mindtel.com/~mindtel/Alan1/2004_NetworkViz/Experiments.html

Plurk: microblogging meets visualization

At a recent meeting of the Brett/Hewitt research group, Joan Touzet mentioned Plurk. I'm starting to get the notion that when Joan mentions a new technology it's best to perk up and take note. I like Plurk because it offers a new twist on microblogging: adding a timeline as an organizational or visualization tool.

Find me on Plurk here.

Literacy done right

DrEff and I went for a long walk today. It seems that good eats feature prominently on our Toronto Bucket List. We found ourselves on Baldwin St. where we had some delicious 2-bite snacks at Yung Sing Pastry Shop.



During our walk we happened -- quite unexpectedly -- upon Toronto's Word on the Street festival. As evidenced by this photo, this event seems to have a positive impact on literacy:

Signs

About two years ago Bob McLean, a dear friend and colleague, was in London and shot this photo. I liked the photo as soon as I saw it and have been looking for an opportunity to use it ever since. There have been many significant changes in my life over the past few months, and this photo sums up things quite well. The three signs in the photo are equally applicable. Some of you who know me know that I have set a deadline of December 31st, 2008 for completing a draft of my thesis. That's 14 weeks away. I'm working to a tight deadline based on a detailed outline but I keep losing time to diversions (some unavoidable). The new year holds promise of great opportunities and I must finish. Tempus fugit.