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« June 2008 | Main | August 2008 »
The latest tweets from the Write Technology Twitter Feed:
cross-posted from bub.blicio.us
Yahoo! has launched the redesigned, speedier delicious, the original (and probably still the best) social bookmarking site. For me, perhaps the best thing to come out of this re-launch is the new URL: delicious.com. I can't even explain how often I got the old del.icio.us wrong. (The old URL, and your old login, still work.)
Easy typing aside, there are definitely some other upgrades to the site:
Speed: We’ve moved to a new infrastructure that makes every page faster. This new platform will enable us to keep up with traffic growth while ensuring Delicious is responsive and reliable. You may not have noticed, but the old backend was getting creaky under the load of five million users.
Search: We’ve completely overhauled our search engine to make it faster and more powerful. Searches used to take ages to return results; now they’re very quick. The new search engine is also smarter, and more social: you can search within one of your tags, another public user’s bookmarks, or your social network. Now it’s easier to take advantage of the expertise and interests of your friends, not to mention the Delicious community at large.
Design: Finally, we’ve updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our
goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we’re hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn.
When you visit the new Delicious, you'll need to log in again to reset your cookie.
Cheers!
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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, Pownce, and FriendFeed.
I'm usually not a big fan of outsourcing. In a previous job, my husband was paid to fix the code that was written by the outsourced team. Yep, they paid to outsource it and then paid to have my husband fix it. That's certainly not the first time I've come across outsourcing where the quality suffered.
But this is a little different. An article in today's NY Times talks about Serebra Connect. The task-auction site is an offshoot of Serebra Learning, an eLearning company based in Canada.
SerebraConnect is sort of an eBay for your task outsourcing. But here's the feel-good catch: Most of the work on SerebraConnect is being completed by students in developing countries who have taken courses from Serebra. SerebraConnect was launched in October 2007 to give these students a chance to use and develop their new skills.
Need a PowerPoint revised? How about a logo designed? This is a great idea for small businesses. The article mentions "a Madison, Wis., company posted a PowerPoint project that would have cost $2,000 in Madison, a woman in the Philippines offered to do it for $200, 10 times her $22-a-month pay as a teacher." Great experience, and cash, for the seller; great value for the buyer.
How does it work?
Sample tasks posted on the site: creating a logo for a dental practice, translating e-books from Arabic to English and building a Web site with Flash. The average price is $200. It is free to post or bid on a task. The buyer sends the payment to Serebra to hold until the task is completed. Serebra then takes a 10 percent to 15 percent cut and sends the money to the seller via PayPal or MasterCard’s Payoneer. Sellers on the site are rated on a five-star scale based on reviews from buyers as well as how many Serebra courses they have completed.
How can these folks afford SerebraConnect classes? It sounds like they run anywhere from free to $12 for students located in developing nations.
As much as I dislike outsourcing, I find this to be a great idea. I like how it is actually working to help people, to provide learning and experience, as well as money.
What do you think of this concept for outsourcing?
Cheers!
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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, Pownce, and FriendFeed.
The latest tweets from the Write Technology Twitter Feed:
Intel has a child-proof laptop. I love that concept. Originally created for use in developing countries, Intel is now focusing on slightly "more mature" markets, according to this article from the BBC. The Intel deal provides laptops to school children between the ages of 6 and 10 years old.
The deal will change the way education works in Portugal, according to Paulo Campos, the Portuguese government's secretary of state assistant for public works.
"It will change the educational system, change the way that students look upon school and how we communicate with parents," he said.
They want to take a "holistic approach," admitting that the hardware is just one part of the puzzle, which includes a relatively low use of broadband in the country. The biggest hurdle they expect, however, is how to train the teachers.
According to Intel, they have "already trained five million teachers to make better use of technology and aimed to train millions more in the coming years."
As stated in the article, thsi will change the educational system. How would you approach the problem of teacher training?
Cheers!
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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, Pownce, and FriendFeed.
(cross-posted from bub.blicio.us)
Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor whose “Last Lecture” inspired millions last year passed away this morning at the age of 47. You can read about his life here. Pausch was a techie - he oversaw the development of Alice.org, a free educational software that teaches kids about computer programming in a Second Life-style 3D environment.
If you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to watch “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” his part of the CMU Last Lecture series. It’s inspiring. “If you lead your life the right way, the karma will come to you.”
The latest tweets from the Write Technology Twitter Feed:
The Social Media Breakfast, originally created in Boston by Bryan Person, is coming back to Cincinnati. We had our first in the spring, when Albert Maruggi was in town. But it's time for a regular breakfast meeting and the first has been organized by Kevin Dugan. I'll just paste in the entire announcement.
There's only room for 40, so if you're interested, RSVP soon!
Come to the second Cincinnati Social Media Breakfast to listen, share, network and learn along with other area marketing and new media professionals.
Making communications more effective with multimedia is the theme of the free morning event as the definition of content continues to morph and include everything from 140-character Twitter bursts and Flickr images to Flip videos pushed to YouTube and of course the social media news release.
It’s a FREE event thanks to Marketwire’s sponsorship, but we do need you to RSVP as space is limited! You can RSVP here: http://cincysmb2.eventbrite.com.
Our special guest is PimpMyNews CEO John Atkinson. PimpMyNews is a free service bringing you news in audio format. Anyone with Internet access or an MP3 player can listen to thousands of breaking text news and blog stories. Users create podcasts pushed to them daily based on their customized profiles.
Attendees will also be registered to win a copy of Pete Blackshaw’s new book “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today’s Consumer-Driven World.”
Date: Tuesday, August 12, 2008, from 7:30 to 9:30 am
Location: Rookwood Pavilion First Watch on 2692 Madison Road, Cincinnati, OH 45208.
Cost: Free thanks to our sponsor, Marketwire.
RSVP: http://cincysmb2.eventbrite.com
The latest tweets from the Write Technology Twitter Feed:
I'm reposting a post from May 31 of this year. Yeah, I know it's a bit soon, but there's a reason. I don't know if it's because of my increased visibility from bub.blicio.us, from public speaking, or from GCASTD, but in the last two weeks I've been slammed by LinkedIn invites. I don't know all the people who invited me but most of them just used the default invite. This tells me nothing about them - no contact information, no reference to where we met, nothing. So I thought it might be time to re-post this. I figure I'll post it every two months if I have to.
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Because I have started doing a lot more speaking and more public blogging, I get a lot more LinkedIn invites.In many cases, these folks feel they have a personal connection and don't realize that I have a heck of a time remembering names without a memory jog.
Would you send out an invitation to a party without thinking through the invitation and considering the wording? Probably not. I wish more people applied that same logic to LinkedIn invites.
Michelle:
I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.
- John Doe
Now, I probably do want to connect with John Doe. He's probably a great guy and might even have some great contacts. But because I need a memory jog sometimes, I'm not sure who he is. I also question how seriously he takes connecting because he didn't bother to personalize his LinkedIn invite and just sent the default.
Now, I admit to having done this myself once or twice. I get lazy and send the default invite, especially when I'm connecting with good friends. But if you're reaching out to someone you met via Twitter, briefly at a conference, or someone who you know because of their blog, go ahead and personalize your invite. Not only will it jog your connection's memory, it will make you stand out a little more as well.
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Find Michelle Lentz here at Write Technology, on bub.blicio.us, on Twitter, or Pownce.
Get Plugged In to Social Networking
Panelist focusing on Social Netiquette
The METS Center, Northern Kentucky, June 4, 7:30 am
eLearning Guild's Using Media to Engage the Learner Online Conference, 6/4-5/09: Closing General Session:Cool Tools: Free Web 2.0 Tools to Legally Spice Up Your Training
June 5, noon-1:15
