Rich's Random Thoughts

I’m happy to see that Microsoft is finally getting into the on line office market. There is nothing better for inovation than competition between two companies with a lot of money, and a lot of smart employees. I’ve been a heavy user of the Google Docs wordprocessor and spreadsheet apps since 2006.  The Google Docs apps are not as powerful as the desktop Microsoft Office programs, but now have enough features that I have almost stopped using Microsoft Office desktop products.  The thing that drew me to Google Docs in the first place was it’s excellent collaboration features, like real time multi-user document editing and a strong version control system – all essential features for college students.

Here are my thoughts on Microsoft Word Web App (live.office.com). Before you test drive it yourself, you’ll need an active hotmail.com or live.com account.

Word Web App Pros:

• The look and feel of the Word Web App is very similar to Word 2007.  Similar, but not as many features, which is to be expected at this point in it’s product development. If you use Word 2007 you have a very small learning curve.
• Sharing a document with others is easy to do.  Having the document on the internet makes collaboration simple… no more worrying about whether or not you have the most recent version in your email inbox or not.
• The built in version control looks solid.  It is now a trivial task to revert the document back to an earlier version if necessary, or see what was deleted by accident.
• 25GB of file storage is excellent. I’m not sure what the limite is in Google Docs to be honest.
• You can edit documents in any web browser, not just Internet Explorer.  I’ve been working in Google Chrome on a Mac, and the experience has been good.

Word Web App Cons:

• No printing.  This is huge.  You cannot print unless you open your document in the desktop version of Microsoft Word, or a compatible word processer like OpenOffice.  I can understand that they still want people to buy their desktop version of Office, but not being able to print makes Google Docs look very good.
• No footnotes or endnotes. For students this is a problem.  You can add footnotes and endnotes in the desktop version of Word, but you can’t edit them or even see them in the online version.  Hopefully this will change soon, as this is a big problem for students who need to cite their references.  Google Docs started out without footnotes, but added them in October of 2008.
• While you can edit documents just fine in any web browser, if you want to edit the file in your desktop version of Word you need to be on a Windows computer in Internet Explorer.  Not a huge deal, unless you need to add footnotes, or want an easy way to print.

Whether you end up using Microsoft Office Web Apps, or Google Docs, we’re all going to benefit from Microsoft getting into this market.  Overall this is a good first effort from Microsoft.  Hopefully they’ll quickly add printing and footnotes to their otherwise excellent product.

Here’s a short Google Apps video that shows how useful real time collaboration on a document can be… no more emailing a document back and forth between collaborators:

Do we all “Fake It” ?  I listended to a excellent Freakanomics podcast over lunch on “faking it” that makes a lot of sense.  No, I’m not talking about “faking it” in the bedroom (although I’m sure some faking does go on there), but “faking it” in our day to day lives.

I think we all “fake it” on a fairly regular basis.  Not only that, but we’re taught do so from an early age.  Just think of when a parent “encourages” their child to apologize to their sibling or play mate.  Do we really think that the apologizing child feels sorry for what they’ve done?  Most of the time they don’t, but they are being taught how to get along, and perform socially acceptable acts that help make up the civilized portion of our society.  Most people would agree that this sort of “faking it” is a good thing in that it reduces tension in groups, and helps them function more smoothly.

There are other kinds of faking it of course.  John Edwards (the american politician) faked it at the end of the US presidencial campaign, pretending that things were going well in his life and marriage, until it came out that the woman he was having an affair with was close to giving birth to their child. I think that is the kind of faking it that most people cringe at.

Faking it goes on in religion as well.  One example of this is in the Mormon religion I was raised in. As a teenager I was taught that if I told others that I “knew” certain religious “truths” were true, even when I didn’t actually know they were true or false, that I would come to know for myself that they were true. This could be described as the “fake it until you make it” method of learning.  While this may be a useful tool for learning to do certain tasks, I don’t believe that it is effective in determining truth.

So the next time my wife asks me how I like the new dress she bought, should I “fake it” or be completely honest no matter what the consequences?

Here’s a link to the outline of the Mobile Computing Discussion I’m leading today at the UVic Libraries.  Once I’ve cleaned up the notes, I’ll post them below:

Reading List for Mobile Computing and the iPad Discussion:

• Reminders From Out of the Blue [please take note of the location features] – David Pogue
• Urbanspoon iPhone App Adds Augmented Reality – Barb Bybwad
• QR codes for libraries – some thoughts – Aaron Tay
• Evernote for iPhone – Jeffery Battersby
• Looking at the iPad From Two Angles – David Pogue
• What are mobile friendly library sites offering? A survey. – Aaron Tay
• Amazon.com’s Kindle fails first college test – Amy Martinez

Read more…

William Li reviews promising research and studies that show Anti-Angiogenesis drugs and foods reducing cancer tumor size by cutting off their blood supply.  Eating the right foods can be helpful in reducing the probability of large tumor formation in people as they age.

Very, very interesting!  Here are some good foods to start with:

Here is the 20 Minute TED Talk where Dr. Li talks about his findings:

Sam Harris makes some interesting arguments for why science should be involved in evaluating moral arguments in his recent TED Talk. He argues that there is often not one “correct” position to take on an issue, but a range of position, some better, some worse than others, and that science can help us figure out which help people live more fulfilled lives.

For example, in looking at how societies portray the model of womanhood, there are probably a number of morally positive ways to do this in between the extremes of the Islamic Burka, and the overt sexuality on the covers of many western mens magazines.

Harris also addresses the issue of giving the same weight to all moral arguments, irregardless of their source.  He argues that some people are better at moral thinking that others, just like some people are better a physics than others, so why should we put the Dali Lama and Ted Bundy on the same footing when it comes to looking at moral arguments?

A thought provoking video even if you don’t agree with everything he says.

Today I ran across an link on the LifeHacker.com to a website that would have been very helpful when I was diagnosed with Leukemia almost 6 years ago. The site is called Information Is Beautiful, and the data visualization is called “Snake Oil? Scientific Evidence for Popular Health Supplements“

At the time of my diagnosis I was inundated with suggestions from friends about different supplements that I should try that would hopefully help my condition.  I’m happy to say that I’m still here to write this blog post!  I’m also here to tell you that I didn’t follow any of the suggestions.  It would have taken me a year or more to throughly research the dozens of “suggestions” I received (some of them plausible, and some outright crazy sounding – “wheat grass cures most cancers”?).  A visualization of supplements with an indication of the quality of the science backing up their claims, would have been an invaluable tool in helping to quickly sort out quackery from the truly helpful.

I am even more skeptical now than I was back then, so I would not accept this as the final word on any of the supplements they list, but would use it as a good starting point for doing some research if a particular supplement looked helpful.  One thing I really like is that they included a link to the underlying data was used to generate the visualization, including links to the studies they relied on, so you can do your own analysis if you wish.

Have fun researching!

Introduction to the Survey Results

In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic law students over the past seven years, we decided to ask some extra questions about the increasing important mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with.  One major change to the methodology of this survey compared to past years is that we sent the survey to all students at the law school, not just first year students.  The response rate was 25% this year rather than close to 100% in previous years.

[Note: if you have problems seeing any graphs on this page, please look at the underlying Google Doc's page for this blog post]

Executive Summary:

• 30% of students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet.
• 97% of students own laptops, and over 60% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 39% of student laptops are Mac’s.
• The average laptop price dropped to $1,200 from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
• All students now report having high speed internet in their homes.
• 82% of students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
• 86% of students own MP3 players capable of listening to recorded lectures.
• 54% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 18% use UVic email and 15% Hotmail.
• 58% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing.  27% chose Google Docs, 5% OpenOffice Writer & 10% “Other”.
• 100% of students now have access to high speed internet at their homes.
• 86% of students use Facebook and 65% of those students would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar of events.

Read more…

How much do law students spend on books and materials every semester?  CALI lessons are free at www.cali.org.  From the CALI website:

• Study using over 800 interactive tutorials in 33 law school subjects.
• Lessons are sritten and edited by law professors.
• Ask your librarian for the CALI authorization code to register at the CALI website.

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

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!