January 17

Thursday January 17, 2008 5:30 am Lethbridge, Alberta

It is -3 C with a high forecast of +3 C. Sunrise 8:22 Sunset 17:01 Hours of daylight: 8:39

12:20 PM

A. Morning Musings

The beginning of another good day. I am rarin' to go.

Now to grab a cuppa and begin.

Adobe/Macromedia has upgraded their Dreamweaver 8 software to a new version called CS3. I have been avoiding this for the last month but as I am thinking of running a workshop on web site upgrading, it is time I had a look at it.

Learning Category	Planned Activities for Today	Time
Model Trains	Paint wheel stops	1 hr
Literature	Continue reading "The Pillars of the Earth" by Follett	1 hr
Technology	Download and install Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 trial version	2 hr
Technology	Make notes on "Wikinomics" by Tapscott	1 hr
Technology	Add a BookNotes link to all pages on this site	1 hr

B. Actual Learning Activities

8:15 am

As is often the case, downloading and installing a new version takes time. However I am now using Dreamweaver CS3. The download took about an hour, and my first two tries at installing it failed. I then tried moving a folder out of the Applications folder and onto the desktop. That was the trick. It appears to be working now. I have yet to play with some of the new features and new approaches.

I can see some guidelines for the web pages that suggest that I could cleanup some of my code. Done.

Model Trains: I have also painted all of the wheel stops that I bought on Tuesday. They will need two coats of yellow paint, but that should mean that I can place them on my layout tomorrow (assuming I can put a second coat on this evening).

12:30 PM

Now to make a few notes on Don Tapscott's book "Wikinomics".

Wikinomics (2006)

Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams

I finished reading this book a couple of days ago. I loved the positive, future-orientation of the book. The book is easy to read (i.e. non-technical) yet the reader is left with a genuine sense of realizing that the trend toward web-enabled collaboration is one that is going to have a substantial impact in the coming decade.

These notes are based on the quote of Richard Feynman that I noted a few days ago when making notes for the book "Feynman's Rainbow". Feynman asked Mlodinow, who had just read an article, "Learn anything?".

The answer to this, for me, can be discussed on at least two levels. One level is that of memory, rote learning and regurgitation. Creating these notes assists in this level. The second level is being able to discuss the book without referring to notes.

Let's start with the second level. Tapscott & Williams make a persuasive case for the shift from the earlier web, which was basically a static use of the web where someone creates a web site and others look at it, to Web 2.0, where the web sites are collaboratively created by the users. Wikipedia is the best known example of this, but Linux, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Second Life are recent additions to this approach. Amazon,com is a variation on this theme where users provide reviews of books that are for sale by Amazon.com.

The approach is fundamentally different from earlier approaches. Right from the outset, the end-users have a say in how the site develops. The content is created by the users, who are continually interacting with one another and viewing each others contribution.

As a result of reading this book I have learned that this idea of mass collaboration is much more pervasive than I had realized. The authors give many additional examples of such activity that does not involve online web sites but simply use the web as a communication vehicle for solving a real-world problem (e.g. finding gold, building a car or an airplane, developing new drugs).

Although I have seen Wikipedia, YouTube, and Flickr, I have not yet viewed del.icio.us, MySpace or Facebook, and have just begun to look at Second Life. I need to spend a few hours on each site in order to better appreciate the way they operate. The following set of links is information at the first level of learning. I would say that all of these names are now familiar to me.

I have now bookmarked (favorites) all of these web sites.

This book is a goldmine of Web 2.0 web sites!

Tags: non-fiction, computer, collaboration, peer, Web 2.0, open source, software.

2:50 PM

I have added a new link, BookNotes, to the left margin of every web page in this site. The link is just below the Introduction link at the top of the margin. The BookNotes page contains links to the web page containing the notes for each of the books listed. So far I have 6 books listed. Originally I was hoping to have a book for each day of the year, but this is proving to be a bit optimistic. A better strategy is simply to let this unfold and see how it goes.