Priority Inbox without GMail
GMail’s new Priority Inbox sounds interesting – a special inbox with just the messages that are important to you, likely from people you care about. There’s likely some magic special sauce in the Priority algorithm, but a simple facsimile can be created using a Smart Mailbox in a standard email app.
I have a group in my address book:
It currently has 96 people in it. People that I would stop what I’m doing to read a message from.
Then, in my mail app, I created a Smart Mailbox with a simple rule:
Done. A special Priority Inbox, without having to use GMail. There are probably some tweaks I could add, and some conditions to refine it, but it’s a pretty decent start. Any messages from the folks in my Extended Family & Friends group get popped in here automagically, without having to sort out the bacon and noise.
Notes: Vannevar Bush: As We May Think
Bush, V. (1945). As We May Think. The Atlantic Magazine. (12)
on overload:
There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.
on the shallows:
Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.
on the need for effective access and selection of information:
There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene.
The entire article is fascinating, as a look from 1945 toward a future of machines capable of typing for us, and of dry photography that would let a person take photos on a roll capable of holding 100 exposures.
Unlimited Magazine: The Wild World of Massively Open Online Courses
Unlimited Magazine just ran an article by Emily Senger on the massively open online course experience. It’s a good overview of open online learning, and is definitely worth reading – if only for the 6 paragraphs featuring yours truly… They also spent some of the article talking with people that actually taught the course.
George Siemens, along with colleague Stephen Downes, tried out the open course concept in fall 2008 through the University of Manitoba in a course called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, or CCK08 for short. The course would allow 25 students to register, pay and receive credit for the course. All of the course content, including discussion boards, course readings, podcasts and any other teaching materials, was open to anyone who had an internet connection and created a user profile.
and the closer, by your humble narrator:
“It comes down to the motivation,” Norman says. “Are you (an) intrinsically motivated person who does things because you’re interested? Or do you do things because you want the gold star. If you’re motivated by the gold star, then this probably isn’t interesting to you.”
The September 2010 issue of Unlimited Magazine is dedicated to education and learning, and the changing natures of both.
William Gibson – Google’s Earth
From William Gibson’s Op-Ed Contributor article – Google’s Earth – NYTimes.com:
Google is not ours. Which feels confusing, because we are its unpaid content-providers, in one way or another. We generate product for Google, our every search a minuscule contribution. Google is made of us, a sort of coral reef of human minds and their products. And still we balk at Mr. Schmidt’s claim that we want Google to tell us what to do next. Is he saying that when we search for dinner recommendations, Google might recommend a movie instead? If our genie recommended the movie, I imagine we’d go, intrigued. If Google did that, I imagine, we’d bridle, then begin our next search.
and
Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon prison design is a perennial metaphor in discussions of digital surveillance and data mining, but it doesn’t really suit an entity like Google. Bentham’s all-seeing eye looks down from a central viewpoint, the gaze of a Victorian warder. In Google, we are at once the surveilled and the individual retinal cells of the surveillant, however many millions of us, constantly if unconsciously participatory. We are part of a post-geographical, post-national super-state, one that handily says no to China. Or yes, depending on profit considerations and strategy. But we do not participate in Google on that level. We’re citizens, but without rights.
Read the whole article. A fascinating take on Google and cyberspace, from the guy that invented the word cyberspace.
Bruce Schneier on privacy, security, control, and google
Bruce Schneier speaks at the 2010 EWI Cybersecurity Summit.
Granular explicit control over privacy is unnatural…
Electronic commerce produces data. Everything we do produces data. (in ways traditional cash-based commerce did not)
Businesses and governments are forcibly changing social norms. Who gets to make the rules?
We are not Google’s customer. We are actually Google’s product, that they sell to their customer.
Data is the pollution problem of the 21st century.
Video: Sticky Concepts (introduction to) eLearning
I just found this introduction to eLearning and blended learning video, produced by the United Nations University Vice Rectorate in Europe (UNU-ViE). It’s very basic, but that’s the point of the video. Could come in handy in talking with faculty members – sometimes they have interesting concepts of what eLearning is (and isn’t)…
Sticky Concepts on E-learning from UNU-ViE on Vimeo.
on expensive canadian cell phone plans
I recently signed up for a cell phone plan. The cheapest deal I could manage was $50/month, plus taxes and fees, and involved a 3 year contract commitment. That’s $1800 over the term of the contract. And I got to pay a substantial chunk of the price of the phone, as well.
If I let myself be talked into the various bells and whistles offered as add-ons to the monthly plan, I’d be paying nearly $100/month. For a phone.
Wireless North took a look at cell phone plan rates in a few countries and it looks like the feeling of being taken for a ride is probably pretty common here in Canada.
Openness and Corporate Paywalls
George posted a quick note about how an interview he gave for an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education was published. Behind a paywall. The Chronicle took an interview, freely given by everyone (except, I assume, for the paid interviewer and editor?), on the topic of openness in education, and decided to lock it behind a mechanism constructed to block access to it.
I’m not going to link to The Chronicle article (or, more accurately, anything on The Chronicle, ever), so here’s a screenshot of the short snippet of the article that they publish “openly” – I love how they cut it off in mid-sentence… Taking the what? I must know! Here’s my credit card number! Please! Take it!
And just suppose you had no grade…
A physicist and a biochemist have a conversation about grades, decide that grades are dumb.
We were talking (and surprisingly agreeing) that grades were dumb. What would happen if we stopped grading? Wouldn’t that be awesome?
So, what would happen if there were no grades? Here are some thoughts.
Read the post for some of their thoughts. What’s interesting to me is that these aren’t long-haired lefty liberal hippies calling for The End of Education. They are scientists and educators, realizing that grades don’t do what we think they do, and how that negatively effects the education experience.
Jasper
We drove up to Jasper National Park for a few days of relaxation in the mountains. I played around with shooting video on the iPhone, and wound up with this (shot on the iPhone, and edited in Mobile iMovie):
and a few photos: