Rich's Random Thoughts

Prezi.com is a web application that allows you to create a map of your presentation in a mind map like style, and then when you present, you zoom around the map with ease.  For those who do not like the linear strait jacket that Power Point forces their presentation into, Prezi will be a breath of fresh air.

Converting an existing presentation, or creating a new one from scratch is not difficult after watching Prezi’s tutorial for new users.  I ended up converting a presentation I am giving next week on “Backing Up for Disaster” from PowerPoint to Prezi, and the results I think are impressive.

Not only is the navigation engaging, but it also allows the presenter to give the audience a better overview of the presentation up front (if he or she wants to), and allows the presenter to skip to different parts of the presentation with ease.  No more paging between slides to find the right one, you just have to zoom out, find the area you want to speak to, and then zoom in to it.

Here is a Google Apps version of my “Backup” presentation, and here is the Prezi version.  You be the judge of which one you’d rather sit through.

I saw a great faux news article on the Onion News Network titled, “Google Responds to Privacy Concerns With Unsettlingly Specific Apology“.  For starters the article is very funny.  What makes it even better, is that it addresses problems that Google will need to address in the not to distant future.

We know that their motto is “Do no Evil”, but now that they are a public company, their only real duty as a corporation is to enhance shareholder value.  If down the road Google falls on leaner times, and they have to choose between enhancing shareholder value and protecting the public’s privacy, I’m not sure how well our privacy will be protected.  I hope that they’ll do the right thing, but without strong regulation and threat of serious penalties, I’m not sure that who ever is in charge of running Google at that point in time will do the right thing.

Here’s a couple of great lines from the article:

Responding to recent public outcries over its handling of private data, search giant Google offered a wide-ranging and eerily well-informed apology to its millions of users Monday.

“We would like to extend our deepest apologies to each and every one of you,” announced CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking from the company’s Googleplex headquarters. “Clearly there have been some privacy concerns as of late, and judging by some of the search terms we’ve seen, along with the tens of thousands of personal e-mail exchanges and Google Chat conversations we’ve carefully examined, it looks as though it might be a while before we regain your trust.”

Google expressed regret to some of its third-generation Irish-American users on Smithwood between Barlow and Lake.

Added Schmidt, “Whether you’re Michael Paulson who lives at 3425 Longview Terrace and makes $86,400 a year, or Jessica Goldblatt from Lynnwood, WA, who already has well-established trust issues, we at Google would just like to say how very, truly sorry we are.”

-http://www.theonion.com/content/news/google_responds_to_privacy

I spoke to a local Rotary club recently on topic of - Google vs. the Library: Research & Collaboration in the 21st Century. The group wanted to know if Google and the Internet would be putting our libraries out of business.  My answer?  Yes and No (see the link above for more details).

Yes, Google and the internet (specifically Wikipedia) have already put libraries out of the business of providing basic reference material.

No, Google and the internet will not put libraries out of the business of lending books in the short run.  More importantly, Libraries for the foreseeable future will the the primary conduit for most people to access high quality and expensive research databases like Pub Med and other walled off online journals.

One interesting factoid from the presentation: The Encyclopedia Britannica contains about 100,000 articles and costs over $1,000 for a set of books. Wikipedia has over 3,000,000 articles and is completely free.  Wikipedia is 30 times larger than Britannica, and is widening it’s lead on a daily basis.

For now the Goliath vs. David battle is a draw

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?  I’ll start with the good news: Google Voice is the best thing that has happened to phones (including cell phones) and voice mail in decades… and it’s another free Google service!  The bad news: It is only available if you live in the United States.  So that means I cannot use it here in Canada where I live.

So for those of you living in the US, feel free to go to the Google Voice “Invite” website, and request an invite.  If not, take a seat on the bench beside me and wait for Google to roll out the service here in Canada.  Google has publicly stated that they will make Google Voice available in other countries, but have not given a time-table. So what are we missing?

Here are a couple more videos that talk more about specific benefits, and I’ll copy some text from the Google website outlining the features of Google Voice that explain why I think it is so revolutionary:

Use Google Voice with your existing number and get:

• Google voicemail: voicemail like email
• Voicemail transcription: read what your voicemail says
• Custom greetings: vary voicemail greetings by caller
• International calling: low-cost calls to the world
• Notifications: read voicemail messages via email or SMS
• Share voicemails: forward, embed, or download voicemails

Add a Google number to get these additional features:

• One number: a single phone number that rings all your phones
• Free SMS: send, receive & store text messages online
• Block calls: send unwanted callers straight to voicemail
• Record calls: record phone calls and store them online
• Conference calls: join several people into a single call
• Screen callers: hear who is calling before you pick up

A little bit sacrilegious, and extremely funny…  Finally Mr. Deity provides an answer that makes sense of evil in this world:

The British Museum and the BBC have teamed up to create a website that presents the world’s history via objects (in digital form of course) contained in the British Museum.  The site is called: A History of the World.  BBC Raido will be broadcasting shows that discuss items on the website and point people to the site in case they would like to explore further.  There will also be a CBBC 13 part series that will looks at relics that are part of the collection.

I’ve always thought that a big part of the future of both libraries and museums will be in digitizing the unique portions of their collections and then make those digital object available to the world.  What the BBC and the British museum have done, is create an excellent interface for people to browse their collection online, which make it much more accessible than it could ever be in a brick and mortar building.

I should probably get more involved in the digitization projects going on at the University of Victoria Libraries where I work!

A great interview by Stuart Kauffman where he talks about reinventing the sacred as a shared space across cultures and religious traditions so the sacred can bring us together rather than be a point of division.  

Stuart has also written a book called, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion.  

Enjoy!

What follows is an email I sent to a friend hopefully helping him to better understand how Google’s Page Rank system works, and how he can get his website on the first page of Google search resluts:

I’m glad that the Google stats for your site are looking up.  There is one thing that I tried to explain to you on the phone before Christmas that I don’t think I explained very well.  Let me try explaining Google Page Rank again:

Q1. What determines which websites are put on the 1st page of Google search results?

• The relevancy of the title and text on your web page to the search query.
• The number and quality of other people’s websites linking to your website.  You can think of other websites linking to your site as a vote… The more votes your site has, the higher your websites ranking will be.
• The best way to influence your page rank is to make sure you have good key words in the title of your page, the URL, and in the text on your page.  The other thing is to encourage quality websites to link to your site… These are the key things in your control (more info from Google).

Q2. What else can you do to monitor your website and find ways to improve it?

• Update you  website with current relevant content.
• Get a Gmail account so that you can access other Google resources to help your website.  http://gmail.com
• You can use Google Webmaster Tools to see how your site is viewed by Google, so you can modify it to make it more “Googlefriendly”.
• Use Google Analytics to see how much traffic is coming to your site, where the traffic is coming from geographically, and what other sites are forwarding users to your site.

I hope this helps!

Twice in the past two weeks, I’ve gone to stores in order to purchase specific items, but was been shocked at how high the in store prices were.  Both times I quickly pulled out my iPhone and checked the price of the item I needed to purchase at Amazon.ca, and then purchased it online while still in the store.

On my first shopping trip I was looking for toner for my Lexmark 250DN.  At Staples, the toner I needed cost $150!  Can you believe that!  I only paid $250 for the printer, and now they want to charge me $150 for the toner.  A quick check at Amazon.ca showed the exact same toner costing $105.  I ended up saving $45 dollars. If I had just purchased it directly from Amazon in the first place, I would have saved  another $5 or more in gas for the trip to the store.

The second “in store, online purchase” incident took place last night.  Our son had asked us to purchase Assassin’s Creed 2 for the xBox 360 for him.  At EB Games in our local shopping mall, they were asking $70 for the game.  My iPhone informed me that Amazon.ca was selling the game for $57.  The kicker was that they didn’t even have the game in stock, so I simply purchased it from Amazon.ca as we walked away from the store.  I later learned that if you purchased the game from the EB Games online store you would only have to pay $60 (plus shipping… no shipping charges with the Amazon purchase).

New iPhone programs are making this type of comparison shopping easier and easier. RedLaser for example lets you scan bar codes and look up pricing (american pricing only for the time being).  SnapTell is another program that allows you to take pictures of products and get Amazon.com pricing for them, along with product reviews.  The product review can be very helpful, especially if you are not very familiar with the product you are trying to purchase.

There is real value in being able to go to a store and consult with someone about the purchase you are going to make.  There is also real value in being able to take something home right a way, if you need it in a hurry.  If I’m not in a hurry, and I feel that the price difference is too great, I for one am not afraid to walk away from a store and make my purchase online.