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Twirrific!

Some days the interconnectedness of the internet is mind-blowing.

A blog post at ResearchBuzz led me to an online Venn diagram (which illustrates the overlap in various sets of items) created by Jeff Clark called Twitter Venn.

Before I continue on my experience a bit of history is needed. I’ve been “using” Twitter for the last couple of months to evaluate whether or not it should be included in our Internet Information Retrieval and Personal Information Management course.

To continue, Twitter showed promise as an information retrieval tool – but it is too inconsistent. The good links posted by people I’m following seemed to drown in the more frequent and personal posts. I’m aware that there are many ways in which to find relevant information outside your twitter network, but Twitter Venn is by far the most entertaining.

Helen Zille joins Twitter

I must say that I am very impressed with the Democratic Alliance!

Their website is powered by WordPress – a blogging platform – which makes for very dynamic content. This allows the DA to keep their supporters up to date with what is happening at the DA and what they are doing for South Africans. It also means that instead of having to revisit the page everytime you want to check up on DA activities, you simply need to subscribe to the RSS feed (standard with blogs) and get the updates delivered straight to your feed-reader.

Although this is very impressive already – what really made my day was the news that Helen Zille (leader of the DA) joined Twitter! Not wasting a second I decided to follow her, amazingly, a minute or so afterwards Helen made a tweet. Now I get to be clued-up on the DA’s campaign and how their words are turned into actions – all in real-time.

Using social media in politics is surely not a new thing – but I believe the success of President Obama’s campaign and his extensive use of online social media has made waves – reaching all the way to South Africa. And what a great exhibition of how one can use social media in a “corporate” environment to reveal the human behind the organisation and make a connection with the with the client/consumer, who’s needs need addressing.  Allowing for transparency, feedback and input will not only provide insight into those needs, but once addressed can reinforce client/consumer-loyalty. Perfect for politics.

The DA might be the main example here – but the ANC has in fact broken the Twitter barrier in January already. The big difference between their respective approaches to using Twitter is representation.  Here is a little summary of both the ANC and the DA on Twitter:

The ANC

Joined Twitter: 8 January 2009

Followers: 86

Following: 81

Updates: 87

Find them at: http://twitter.com/ANC_info

The DA (Helen Zille)

Joined Twitter: 10 February 2009

Followers: 161

Following: 149

Updates: 6

Find them at: http://twitter/helenzille

I also found COPE – but there is nothing to report about their Twitter activity.

Let me Google that for you

Last night Click showcased a very “interesting” way to respond to questions asked online (in chat rooms or on discussion forums) that could easily have been answered by a quick search on the internet.

This is called “Let me Google that for you” – and here’s an example, say someone asks:

Are there any courses on retrieving information from the internet and managing my personal information in South Africa?

You can answer:

the following…. (heehee)

Just thought I’d share it!

Google Notebook gets the boot (cont.)

Last week Notebook users were shocked by the news that the “active” development on Notebook will be stopped this week.

In light of this some users have started to take matters in their own hands: Mashable reports several efforts that have been extended by users to save their beloved tools. Some of these are an online petition, a Facebook page and even a “Save Google Notebook” blog.

While these efforts are commendable, the original problem that caused Google’s decision – the “small” user base – is still the final nail in the coffin. But for those of us who refuse to stop trying here are some handy tips from Jason Dever on how to alert the decision makers:

1. Comment on Google Notebooks blog.  As of now there are over 600 comments. Add your own.  I’ve learned something in life – numbers count in business.
2. Sign the online petition.  It can’t hurt.
3. Visit other blogs dedicated to bringing it back.  The least you’ll do is arm yourself with info on where to go if Google doesn’t budge.
4. Blog, tweet, email about it!  Make some noise!
5. Keep using it! Just back it up, just in case…
   

Google Notebook gets the boot

This message goes out to all of my peers who enjoy using Google’s Notebook as much as I do.

Amidst the Global Financial Crisis many businesses have closed their doors and even more employees have lost their jobs – even corporate giants are feeling the pinch. Google announced two days ago that they will be discontinuing some of its less popular services, amongst which is Google Notebook.

Me, being an avid user of Google Notebook to keep my web-clippings in order, was quite shocked at this possible disruption in my information management efforts. And quickly headed over to the Official Google Notebook Blog to find out exactly what is happening. Turns out that Google is stopping development on Notebook from next week – which means that there will be no further feature additions to be expected in the future. The good news is that people that have already subscribed to the service will be able to continue their use of Notebook – but those who have not yet subscribed will have to choose from a list of alternatives:

• SearchWiki – We recently launched a feature on Search that will let you re-rank, comment, and personalize your search results. This is useful when you’ve found some results on Google Search that were really perfect for your query. You can read about how to use SearchWiki in this blog post.

• Google Docs – If you’re trying to jot down some quick notes, or create a document that you can share with others, check out Google Docs.

• Tasks in Gmail – For a lightweight way to generate a to-do list or keep track of things, we recently launched Tasks in Gmail Labs.

• Google Bookmarks – For a tool that can help you remember web pages that you liked and access them easily, take a look at Google Bookmarks. You can even add labels to your bookmarks to better organize and revisit them.

2009 Course Schedule

Internet Information Retrieval and Personal Information Management Tools and Techniques

Midrand: 4 -6 March 2009 – Bytes People Solutions

Stellenbosch: 6 – 8 April 2009 – HUMARGA, University of Stellenbosch

Fees: R4850.00 p.p. excl. VAT (7.5% discount for more than one registrations from the same organisation)

More Information: www.knowlead.co.za/course/retrieval

How to register: Online Registration Form

Registered and Certified!

Our redeveloped Internet Information Retrieval and Personal Information Management Tools and Techniques course has been registered with the University of Stellenbosch through its Centre for Knowledge Dynamics and Decision Making and graded on Level 5 – under graduate level – of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). After completion of the course all participants receive a certificate of attendance from Knowledge Leadership Associates. Participants who wish to do so may then complete and submit a voluntary practical assignment based on the course work. Upon successful completion of the assignment a certificate of competence will be issued by the university.

We have redeveloped the course

After 5 successful years of presenting the Internet Information Retrieval and Personal Information Management Tools and Techniques course to over 400 delegates we have revamped the course. Although we have always made sure that the course has up-to-date content – we decided that some structural changes was needed.

The original 2 day course developed and presented by Hilda Kruger has been extended to include a third day – finally satisfying one of the most recurrent course comments (besides the highly postive reviews ) forwarded by the delegates . With the addition of a day we made more time to discuss and practice our advanced topics and tools, as well as allowing for added tools originally omitted because of these exact reasons. The course now contains more content on Social Media – in particular using Web2.0 technologies for Personal Information Management.

We also have a new line-up presenting the course – Peter Underwood and yours truly. The two of us gave the redeveloped course (squeezed into 2 days) a test-run in Bloemfontein in September/October 2008 and we are glad to report back that it went very well!

The redeveloped course is geared for flexibility, greatly due to Peter’s experience in presenting his courses to different interest groups and of course the wide applicability of the techniques and tools discussed.

Needless to say – we are looking forward to next year when the three-day Internet Information Retrieval and Personal Information Management course officially rolls out!

Web2.0 Innovation – Wordle: An Example

Web2.0 technologies have created many new ways for people to use the web and it presents itself as a grand platform for innovation. One of these innovations that I’ve got stuck on lately (thanks again to Hilda) is Wordle.

While it is easy to get mesmerised by the visual aspect of Wordle’s results and spend hour upon hour playing with the different layouts, fonts and colours – there is a deeper function that should not be neglected. On Wordle’s homepage they humbly describe their application as a “toy for creating ‘word clouds’ from the text you provide”. This text may be from a bunch of text pasted or entered by the user, from a URL or Blog that has an Atom or a RSS feed or from your del.icio.us account. The result is the visual display of words collected from given source, with more frequently recurring words being displayed larger than less frequently recurring words.

The function that should not be neglected is right before your eyes – larger words can be indicative of content subject matter. If the text you entered covers, for example, an article on Web2.0 applications used by librarians and the word Blog appears larger than say the word RSS you get a sense of what the focus of the article is. Say you come across a good-looking web article and you’re in too much of a rush to read it through, you can enter the text in Wordle and get a basic idea of the topics the article focussed on.

This is but one of the (I would imagine) many functions that such a fun tool can host – but enough chit-chat here is for example the surprising result Wordle gave when I entered our blog as the text source:

And because it’s so much fun: here’s one of my del.icio.us tags: