Digital Technology

When the combination of WYSIWYG graphical user interfaces, scalable fonts, laser printers and desktop publishing software started to make its presence felt at the end of the 1980s it was a time of serious typeface abuse in newsletters, invitations and home-made greetings cards. It seems everyone wanted to go and put as many jarring and clashing typefaces on a page as they could. Some of my friends even when to far as to use things like Fontographer to create their own typeface variants, but then they tended to be over-zealous about things like that (and actually read up on things like kerning etc.) (Of course, all that came in useful when we had a couple of assignments in computer graphics class writing Postscript by hand to generate graphic objects and in order to understand how a Postscript laser printer or Sun’s NeWS GUI worked.)

(Equivalent things to this typeface abuse still happens today in Powerpoint presentations you encounter every now and then, along with the evil that is the blink tag in web pages.)

Anyway, the other day I saw this news article, F is for do-it-yourself fonts - Stuff.co.nz, which pointed over to FontStruct | Build, Share, Download Fonts. This is a web site that allows you to design your own typefaces and share them with the world. Suddenly it’s 1986 all over again.

Related link: At some point I want to see the film, Helvetica, as I’m always intrigued by the effort and history that lurks in the stories about things like typefaces.

The fusion of technology from Weta Digital’s work on animation technologies using human subjects finds an application in helping doctors understand children’s motion with a view to corrective surgery and other therapy. See Wellywood technology helps children to walk - NZ Herald: Technology News

An interesting article over at Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Designing Accessible Games. You see articles about making things like web sites usable or accessible, but not so much about making computer/video games accessible for people.

Something I didn’t know when making MP3 disks in iTunes - Macworld | Playlist | Creating navigable MP3 discs.

Ages ago (way back in 1990-91, I think) one of my flatmates had the game OIDS on his computer. It ran just fine on a Mac Plus and on the new Mac LC’s that had just come out. Good memories of the flat all taking turns to see who could get the highest score.

Any now I find that there’s a version for Mac OS X available from Xavagus Prime Software. I downloaded it and all the game playing memories came back. Unfortunately, the old game playing reflexes haven’t come back with the memories - can’t seem to fly anywhere near as well as I once did.

Related link: Oids - MobyGames

The iBook power adaptor died. After years of faithful service the cable that wrapped around the yo-yo adaptor broke, and I’ve spent a reasonable bit of time trying to find an old style iBook adaptor to plug in. However, I found one this morning and we’re up and charging. Luckily, backups had been made so no worries there mostly. I can’t belief how expensive both Apple and third-party adaptors are, though.

The G3 lives on - and is still fine for word processing, music and podcasts, email, blogging, DVDs, presentations and basic web browsing. Not so good for video play back (Flash or MP4) though - and web pages with lots of Flash items etc. tend to drag.

The screen may die in a little bit though, so it may become limited to a desk with a monitor and keyboard for chidren’s homework in the near future

Various learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle allow you to create online activities like quizzes and polls as part of the course content and engagement. But what do you do if you need something like that but you don’t have access to an LMS that does it or you need to put that content in an environment outside of the LMS.

I’ve been playing around with Hot Potatoes which gives you some of this functionality. It feels a bit clunky in places, but it will certainly get the job done if you want basic multi-choice quizzes, crosswords and matching exercises.

If course if you want to create a quiz that logs the results against the student (say for assessment purposes) then you’ll need to step up to something more like an LMS.

Useful Problogger article on different ways of getting a design for your blog - from the free through to the expensive. See Problogger: How Do I Get a Professionally Designed Blog?

Turning MS Word files into web pages can be a really painful experience - particularly if you have to go through them by hand looking to change or modify them. I’ve had some days when I’ve given up trying to get Word content into a nice web format and just gone and recoded the content from scratch. However, I might give some of these tools a trying in future - Convert Word Docs to Web Pages - Wired How-To Wiki.

Commenting on a couple of talks he did with groups of librarians, Henry Jenkins notes:

Across both conversations, it was clear that librarians are on the front lines, dealing with those who have been left behind by the participation gap, struggling to deal with those opposed to or frightened by the participatory turn in our culture, helping anxious academics understand the value and limits of wikipedia, and so forth.

It’s something I think is really important to remember. Our librarians (public, private, academic etc.) are often charged to both stay on top of and implement ‘cutting edge’ information technology, while at the same time having to make the library’s resources available to as many people as possible - and especially those for whom access to information and library resources are not technologically or informationally skilled. Raising the technological bar in the library makes new resources available, but also excludes those who don’t know how to or can’t access these new resources for a variety of reasons.

More on Jenkin’s comments at Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Librarians, YouTube, and the New Media Literacies.

Received The Mediated Spirit multimedia CD-ROM by Peter Horsfield in the mail the other day and I’m looking forward to having a moment in the next week or so to have a good look at it. Initial surveys look promising.

Here’s the blurb about “The Mediated Spirit” off the web site:

One of the first major studies to provide in digital format a systematic exploration of the important role played by media in the historical development and present ferment of Christianity. It places the changes brought by digital media in historical context, illustrating how Christianity has always been a mediated spirit, its different forms inextricably linked to the nature of its cultural mediation.

With more than 1,000 links and 300 pages providing the chance to follow a topic or follow your own interests, the CDRom is an essential resource for researchers, educators, planners or those just interested in understanding how media have influenced the past and are shaping the present.

To add to my mostly Mac OS X based list of writing tools -
Bean: An OS X Word Processor.

(Oh, and I think I left NeoOffice (based on OpenOffice) off the original list too.)

Adobe make a version of Photoshop - Photoshop Express - available as a free web-based application adding yet another application type to the burgeoning area of free web apps offered to allow companies like Microsoft, Google and Adobe carve out their own corner of the internet - and hence a source of consumers to manage and advertise to.

After being initially released (see Adobe’s Photoshop Express and the big picture | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com), the terms of use has quickly been updated in the face of criticism from potential users - Report: Complaints trigger rewrite of Photoshop Express terms | Tech news blog - CNET News.com.

Ernesto comments on using it over at Ernesto Burden | Photoshop Express — Sweet, Free Photo Editing Tool With Social Media Extensions.

I’ll be interested in checking it out - I don’t know how many times I’ve been away from home or the office and needed to edit an image and had an internet connection but no image editing application in the computer I’m using.

Love to share is a downloadable resource from the World Council of Churches that aims to give some direction and guidelines for churches when considering intellectual property rights and copyright and looking at alternatives to the current situation. At some point I’d like to have some students theologically investigate these ideas so I’ll be downloading it to see what it says. [Hat tip to Tensegrities]

On a related note I’ve also been reading the WCC booklet - Globalization of Communications - by Chris Arthur. It’s about 10 years old now, but there’s some interesting starting points for further discussion in it.

But wait, there’s more…

WCC and new and emerging technologies: Able-ism: A prerequisite for transhumanism is a discussion paper on new technologies by Gregor Wolbring, who blogs over at Nano, Bio, Info, Cogno, Synthetic bio, NBICS.

And there’s also the WCC report Science, Faith & New Technologies: Transforming Life, Volume 1 : Convergent Technologies, which has some stuff in it relating to transhumanism.

Not that I’m going to buy a MacBook Air in the near future, but this might make some people think twice - Wide Awake Developers: Steve Jobs Made Me Miss My Flight.

In the next few weeks we’ll be wanting to get a basic Windows notebook computer for home for Kim to use for the various things she does. Looking around the place there seem to be a plethora of low-end models selling from between $800-$1000 depending on the rebate given by the manufacturer.

I was wanting to know if anyone who reads this blog has had any advice to offer on minimum specifications or brands that worked (or didn’t work) for them. We’ve had good experiences with our Acer Aspire desktop (including very responsive servicing) in the past, but I know that different companies load a heap of third-party ‘rubbish’ on PCs which you end up having to cull off when you get the machine.

In a perfect world we’d find one running Windows XP Pro (which we quite like), though most seem to have Vista Home Basic (VHB) on them. Moving to Vista Home Premium (VHP) adds between $200-$300 to the price of the computer, and my understanding is that VHB runs find in 1GB RAM, but VHP really feels better in 2GB of RAM.

The notebook only needs to do this kind of thing: word processing, spreadsheet, Windows media player, web browsing. No real need for DVD authoring (though burning DVD backups would be very useful), nor will it be playing any recent games (so video requirements are low). Hard disk requirements are modest too, as it won’t have games or lots of media loaded on it.

Basically, we’re looking for a reasonably well-made, reliable budget notebook PC that can do the above. And preferably one we can see in person first at a store so we can check out the keyboard feel.

BTW - If you want to make a Vista PC look like XP (and reduce the processor requirements) then this video is useful: Quick Tips: Make Windows Vista look like XP video - CNET TV.

P.S. To all the Mac-heads out there (including myself ), a MacBook isn’t the right choice for this job. Firstly, cost-wise it’s $800-$1000 more expensive, Kim wants to use Windows (so bootcamp would require buying the OS on top of the PC), and we have an unused Office 2003 package so we don’t have to buy Office. Now if I was buying one for me, then I’d be keen on one of the new MacBooks with the extra RAM.

Kevin Kelly ponders the result of including a computer in the ’social space’ that is the kitchen over at Conceptual Trends and Current Topics - The Kitchen Computer. It’s something I’ve thought about as we think about rearranging things in the house as our what we need to do with the internal space changes.

A new documentary about Mac users and their love affair with the Apple brand. See Doco puts Macheads under the microscope - Stuff.co.nz. Trailer available here and movie web site at MacHEADS.

Related link: May the Force of the Operating System be with You: Macintosh Devotion as Implicit Religion | Sociology of Religion

PowerUp the Game is a venture into creating an engaging 3D world to allow people (particularly children) to engage with environmental images. Looks interesting, though the specs to run it may be beyond everyone’s PC (and there’s no Mac version either).

Hat tip to: Derek’s Blog: Gaming with an environmental focus

Related links at Greenflame · Serious Games, Digital Storytelling and Public Perceptions

A list (with pictures) of some of the times Apple didn’t get it right. Of course, the definition of not getting something right is often in the eye of the beholder (or user), and items like the Newton, Apple IIc and Lisa (all of which I’ve used) all contained elements that contributed to better designs in the future (for Apple and its competitors). I think the MacBook Air might be in this category of a niche-product that helps stimulate all sorts of developments down the line, independent of how successful a system it is in its own right.

See Learning From Failure: Apple’s Most Notorious Flops

Had a nice (but all to brief) lunch today with Tim (of SansBlogue fame), though I was thwarted in my efforts to find some soup to eat as I recovered from the gentle(?) ministrations of my dentist. Conversation ranged all over the place, but included whether or not the ASUSTek Eee Ultraportable , with Linux, OpenOffice and Zotero (or WinXP etc.), might make a nice small, robust machine for taking on sabbatical-type journeys.

Well, maybe not. But if the Japanese government can move to train experts to help the populace understand their phones, then maybe there’s a secret organization out there that helps people program their VCRs (or similar) as well. See Japanese to train experts to help puzzled mobile users - Stuff.co.nz.

Of course, maybe creating complicated and unusable technology should be a crime instead? Do remote control designers ever actually use their products?

Related link: consumer.org.nz: Home > Appliances > Video cassette recorders > Programming and tuning

Useful article (with AppleScript snippet) for adding some helpful functionality to Word 2008 for Mac for pasting plain text into a document. Pasting plain text is something I do fairly frequently, so I’ve filed this link away for the possible time I have to use Word 2008. See TidBITS Problem Solving: Word 2008 and the Paste Plain Text Dance.

Problogger, Darren Rowse, publishes his list of useful blogging tools for Mac OS X. I use (or have tried many of them) - Ecto (article editor which I have on both Mac and Windows), CyberDuck (FTP client), ImageWell (for quick manipulation and posting of images) and Firefox. I prefer TextWrangler over TextEdit though (I used BBEdit Lite from way back)

The full list is at 14 Essential Mac OS X Applications for Bloggers

There’s no standalone newsreader application in there though because he uses Google Reader to do that. See Greenflame · NetNewsWire (Free now!) for my preference there. I used the Sage plug-in for Firefox for ages, as well as Bloglines, but I really like having one app that does a single job well, but can talk to other apps if need be.

Both MS Word 2007 (Windows) and MS Word 2008 (Mac) claim to have citation and bibliographic features for writers who need that support - though with a limited set of bibliographic styles. Does anyone have any experience working with them or compared them to a third-party add-on like Endnote? If you only used the supplied styles could you do away with EndNote (and the perennial compatibility problems whenever the OS, word processor or EndNote gets updated)?

Links:

• Create a bibliography - Word - Microsoft Office Online (Word 2007).

• Microsoft Word Processing Software for Your Mac | Mactopia (Word:Mac 2008)
• AppleInsider | Road to Mac Office 2008: Word ‘08 vs Pages 3.0 [Page 3] (Some screenshots of the tools)

A couple of links relating to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office.

Firstly, a look at how the new versions of Office for Mac and Windows compare over at How Does MS Office for Mac Compare to Office for Windows?

And secondly, a link through to an article that notes that the recent Service Pack 3 for MS Office (for Windows) will disable Office’s ability to open a number of different legacy file formats. Not good if you have a set of older documents that you open occasionally or are maintaining for archive purposes. You can ‘undo’ the effects of this ‘upgrade’ but it involves Windows Registry hacking (yuck). Or you could install OpenOffice to access some of the older formats. See Microsoft Office Drops Support For Older File Formats | Compiler from Wired.com.

I can see an increasing need to have several different virtual machines on one’s computer that allow the booting into legacy operating systems and running of older versions of software - sort of like RLP here post-switch to Mac OS X.

I use NetNewsWire Lite to keep up with my blog feeds, though I’ve never felt the need to upgrade to the full version. Now, however, the full version of NetNewsWire is being released for free as its developer focuses upon growing their online services. So, if you you’re running Mac OS X 10.4 or later you can grab the latest version and take it for a spin.

More information at: RSS Reader for Mac - NetNewsWire

Hat tip to: TidBITS Networking: NewsGator Turns NetNewsWire Loose for Free

(Of course, I’m still stuck in 10.3.9 for the foreseeable future [anyone want to donate me a MacBook?:-)] and will be plodding along with the old Lite version just fine.)

After some initially using the PHPWebsite content management system way, way back as a proto-blog I shifted to using Blogger, and then over to Movable Type 2 because it afforded me more control over the blog (and added things like categories). And then Movable Type 3 arrived and the licencing became confusing and more restrictive so I just kept on chugging along using the functional, but now relatively obsolete, MT 2. Finally I came to WordPress (via some playing around with Drupal and Mambo/Joomla) and it works pretty well (especially with Ecto).

Now, in part in response to the success of WordPress, there’s an open-source version of Movable Type 4 available, which might just make me go back and have a look at it if I need to set up a new blog on my own server. I quite liked MT - and back when it was more widespread there were all sorts of interesting sites providing helpful tips and themes etc. (Just like for WordPress now).

More details at: Six Apart Reinvigorates Movable Type with New Open-Source Release | Compiler from Wired.com and Movable Type Open Source - MovableType.org - Home for the MT Community.

BTW - I see PHPWebsite continues to evolve. I liked using the early versions, and I might have a look at it again next time I need a CMS.

A couple of times I’ve found it useful to use Marc Prensky’s concepts of the digital native and digital immigrant to make points in things I’ve written. As one reviewer noted of one of these pieces, these are helpful concepts but can’t be realized as absolute categories, which I agree with entirely. The adoption or uptake of digital technologies is far more complicated than seeing people as either ‘natives’ or ‘immigrants’.

Prensky’s work was originally situated in discussions about education, and in particular, perceived differences between teachers and students in terms of familiarity with and use of digital technology. Now, several years on, Henry Jenkins has an interesting article on the relevance and helpfulness of the terminology. See Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: Reconsidering Digital Immigrants….

I was wondering yesterday, with the Wifi and Safari built into the iPod Touch, whether you could blog from it. It appears you can, and there’s a WordPress plugin to format posts for the iPod Touch/iPhone screen size. See Wordpress for Ipod Touch (iWPhone)

If you’re publishing stuff on your blog or web site and you’re concerned about other people misusing your content then ProBlogger has a useful little article on how a terms of service page can help with that. See: Nip Problems in the Bud with a TOS Page.

A couple of useful web development and design articles I came across the other day.

A List Apart: Articles: Understanding Web Design by Jeffrey Zeldman (Nov 20, 2007)

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

Some good points about thinking about how web content is both similar to and different from other forms of content creation.

A List Apart: Articles: How to Size Text in CSS >by Richard Rutter (Nov 20, 2007) contains some useful reminders that all browsers do not render text the same, even if you’re being careful with the CSS.

In what seems now like a lifetime ago, I took a fourth year computer science paper at the University of Canterbury in data encryption as part of the first year of my MSc studies. My memories of the course are a little blurry, though I do remember lots of math (yuck!) and bits of computer science history (yay!). It also included some of the hardest assignments I’ve ever done. I so enjoyed the history bits the best - I think best in terms of themes and events, not bit manipulations.

The history of data encryption (and codes and cyphers etc.) still intrigues me though, and not just that relating to digital computing. So I was interested to see this article - BBC NEWS | Technology | Colossus loses code-cracking race - about rebuilding the WWII Colossus computer, as well as simulating it in software, and recracking a message encoded on a Lorenz S42 machine.

You can find out more about the Colossus project and its history at AlanTuring.net - The Turing Archive for the History of Computing (co-directed by Professor of Philosophy, Jack Copeland, at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch). In particular, look under the section AlanTuring.net - Codebreaking Catalogue.

I like databases, which means that when I see that there’s a new iTunes-style interface database, Bento, coming out for the Mac (by the same developers as FileMaker (Thanks, Matt)) I’ll sit up and pay attention. See Bento: Mac’s New Database App Is iTunes for Control Freaks:

It’s only available for Mac OS X 10.5, but there’s a preview (Alpha? Beta?) available at Meet Bento

I really, really hope it works well, though the reviewer at TidBITS Home Macs: FileMaker’s Bento: Undercooked and Slightly Fishy is less convinced.

Now, if someone could bolt a Leopard interface on top of MySQL and make it as easy to use as iTunes then that’d be cool.

Matt also notes in the comments that SQLite is lurking as part of Mac OS X 10.4 (see here).

A really interesting segment on last weekend’s This Way Up on Radio New Zealand National looked at professional video gaming in South Korea and its public following.

You can listen to the audio here (MP3) or here (WMA).

The best way is probably through the podcast feed here though.

An article (useful mainly for the links) that talks about how to set up a default set of useful applications (Office, email, browser) to carry around on a flash disk should you need to borrow a computer and still have the tools you like to use. Web-based applications are okay, but if you only have dial-up (or no internet) then having tools that allow you to compose email or edit documents offline can be life-savers.

See: Carry Your Desktop Anywhere with Portable Apps / Wired How To’s.

In the past month or so I got rid of the old stereo turntable that broke and thought that it would never need to be replaced. I may have been premature in my assumption.

• Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD’s Coffin

• Testing Vinyl CDs: Groovy Up Top, Optical Down Below | Listening Post from Wired.com

And what’s the story with USB turntables (like this one)? Do they have both analogue and digital outputs or are they simply an easy way to get old LPs into MP3 format?

I’ve seen the ads, my daughter has mentioned them in passing, and I’ve suffered major “sticker shock” when I saw how much they sold for, but somewhere along the line I hadn’t picked up that they could serve as a mechanism for regulating who a person could chat to online (using the proprietary ‘Secret B Chat’).

Barbie Becomes an Authentication Device for Pre-Teen Friendship | Threat Level from Wired.com

Just wanted to note these links to various things relating to library information technology (including some open-source OPAC systems) for my own reference.

oss4lib | open source systems for libraries:
Infolibrarian

As a Protestant Mac user working part-time at a Catholic theological college where everyone uses Windows PCs I found last Thursday’s technology section on Radio New Zealand National : Nine to Noon (Thu, 25 October) fairly amusing.

You can find the full transcript over at it.gen.nz » The Cult of the Mac, and at the end of it Colin Jackson quotes a chunk of Umberto Eco’s 1994 article The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS in which Eco comments:

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can achieve salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: Far away from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

(Windows is, Eco argues, like the Anglican church, at times appearing Catholic but also in places deep down quite Protestant).

This is neat. The combination of the PS3’s parallel-processing capabilities with its ability to run Linux allows supercomputing tasks to be offloaded to clusters of games consoles. Doesn’t it just warm your geeky heart?

Astrophysicist Replaces Supercomputer with a Cluster of Eight PlayStation 3s

Looks interesting a motherboard the comes with embedded Linux/ Firefox / Skype. If you boot to that, instead of the OS on the hard disk (e.g. Windows), then you can be online in about 15 seconds from power on. The review below points out some of the problems with this first model, but for a quick book notebook that could access the net and save user data onto a flash disk or for an internet access kiosk computer then it looks useful.

See Hardware for Webware: A motherboard with embedded Firefox | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

CNET run a series of photos of microcomputers from the 1970s bringing back a flood of memories. I remember I desperately wanted an Atari 400 or 800 (images 19 & 20 respectively), but instead my folks bought a Texas Instruments TI-99/4a (the successor to image 21). The almost complete lack of software and support in NZ for the TI (along with not many programme listings in computer magazines) meant we actually had to learn to programme it! Some nice hardware marred by the world’s slowest ANSI (not Microsoft) BASIC interpreter.

See Photos: Dinosaur Sightings: 1970s computers | CNET News.com

There’s several TI-99/4a emulator floating around the internet. More information on this ‘classic’ at Texas Instruments TI-99/4A - Wikipedia.

Interesting article over at TidBITS Networking: An Electronic Book Giveaway: 2003, a Disaster; 2007, a Pittance which notes the decline in internet traffic costs over the past few year, and some things to be aware of if you’re going to make something available for download that might be (very) popular - in their case, a free eBook.

The Internet has often been touted as the vehicle to promote a more inclusive democratic process, allowing ordinary people to contribute to the wider decision processes of central or local government that are typically hard or costly to access.

While this is often talked about in general terms, the recent NZ Police Act Review might be a specific example of how this might work. Here the team working on reviewing the Police Act put the working draft up on a wiki and allowed anyone in the public to directly suggest/make edits to the wording of the document. The editing process is now complete and a list of suggested changes is available on the wiki. How far these changes are taken account of is yet to be seen, but it might be a step in the right direction.

See Police Act Review Wiki | Main / Home Page

News coverage of the process:

• BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | NZ police let public write laws
• Write your own laws - web - Technology - smh.com.au

The new daylight savings dates for New Zealand got missed out by Apple in their updates so here’s a link to a page with updates on it for the new DST information. DST starts this weekend in NZ. See New Zealand 2007 daylight savings update for Mac OS X.

Hat tip to: TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X: Daylight Saving Time Rules Fixed for New Zealand:

BTW - I’ve been reading TidBITS since it was available as Hypercard stacks way, way back in 1990. I admire their longevity and commitment in a field that has seen many come and go in that time.

A friend (Hi Rob!) emailed me this links about a (free) Microsoft product - SteadyState - that allows you to manage shared Windows PCs, such as kiosk PCs or ones used by children.

See Parents take control with SteadyState - Security - Technology - theage.com.au

I guess it’s the (great?) grandchild of something like Apple’s old At Ease interface.

Short but helpful article by Darren at ProBlogger on How I Produce Video Blog Posts.

The NZ Privacy Commissioner has a press release out on what she calls “privacy pollution” caused by individuals and wider society being permeated by digital media and transactions.

“Privacy pollution is about the small privacy incursions that are annoying rather than harmful in themselves, but can accumulate and have widespread impact that can ultimately amount to a significant level of intrusion”

See: Private Word Issue 63, August 2007 - The Office of the Privacy Commissioner, New Zealand

Related links:

• Commissioner hits out at “privacy pollution” - Yahoo!Xtra News:
• Scoop: ‘Privacy Pollution’ erodes choices:
• Call for restrictions on ‘privacy pollution’ - New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz:

Last week sometime my name-brand Windows anti-virus software beeped at me and said it wanted to upgrade itself to the new, bright and shiny version. ‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘it knows that the subscription is about to run out and it might be replaced with something else so it’s trying to coerce me into loathing it less.’

Anyway, I duly let it do its thing and, given the painful process of upgrading Windows software, got it running smoothly or so I thought. It turns out though that it seems to become more draconian about CDROMs being inserted into the computer. Before a CDROM would be inserted, be scanned briefly and then autorun. Now a CDROM is inserted and we can all go off and have dinner before the computer recognize it’s there and autoruns it. This *really* *really* annoys the kids running games off CDROM.

Options available

• Uninstall new version, reinstall previous version. May increase risk through not being able to update in future
• Stay with the current setup - grit teeth and bear it. At risk from irate offspring.
• Turn off the ’scan CDROM’ setting - increase risk
• Change anti-virus software to a new program - which may do a worse job at scanning etc.
• And so on…

The experience made me think about the church and how sometimes we run our own ‘anti-virus software’ at the door, in the service, in our small groups, in what we read, watch and listen to, and in who we befriend. It seeks to prevent ideas and people who might disrupt the community of faith from even breaching the doorway. In doing so though we may set our ’scanning’ options to be so aggressive that things that are normal and useful become hard to do for people in the community, and others from outside the community will not ever encounter Christ because of being ’scanned’ (and heaven forbid, ‘quarantined’ or ‘deleted’). Perhaps, we need to check what our settings are and take a risk at setting them to something less aggressive.

Seems to be a flurry of news articles in the past week or so about various organizations and institutions altering Wikipedia articles concerning themselves. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone really, should it? Anyone can edit Wikipedia articles and, indeed, is encouraged to, and that includes institutions. What might be more interesting would be some more analysis on what specific things are being modified. I’m with Russell Brown who notes that ‘it would be wise not to go off the deep end about it.’ (Public Address | Hard News | More Wikipedia Scanning | Aug 20, 2007 09:16).

Related links:

• Wikiscanner - System to identifying what organization or company is editing what on Wikipedia.
• CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits - Stuff.co.nz
• Howard’s staff edited Wikipedia - Stuff.co.nz
• Dark forces in the Wiki - FBI, CIA edits entries - 17 Aug 2007 - NZ Herald
• Erebus article censor found at Air NZ - Stuff.co.nz

As part of some part-time work I’m doing at the moment I’m doing some distance/flexible learning implementation using Moodle (a free, open source course management system for online learning). So here’s a few links I’ve found useful over the past couple of weeks.

• Moodle: Teacher’s manual 1.6 (Introduction) from Lappia - The Municipal Education and Training Consortium of Kemi and Tornionlaakso (Finland). An older version of Moodle but still helpful.
• Course: Moodle Features Demo from @berNET (Aberdeen)
• Course: Introduction to Blogging in the Classroom from @berNET (Aberdeen)
• Teaching FAQ - MoodleDocs on the Moodle web site
• Using Moodle book - MoodleDocs on the Moodle web site. Again, an older book but some good examples of what’s possible.
• Moodle: Moodle 1.8 Teacher Manual from Sweet Briar College, Virginia

In my wanderings around the net a while back I came across this issue of Theological Education which looks at the role/impact of digital technology upon theological education. Looks like a helpful selection of articles.

See Theological Education 41/1 (2005)

Related links:

• Greenflame · Technology and Theological Education
• Greenflame · New media literacies and collaborative work in academia and ministry

I’ve thought abo