Welcome, Google Buzz! Now...where do I comment?

When your engineers have 20% of their time to use on projects of their choosing, you get a lot of interesting product ideas. If nothing else, Google is amazingly unshy about pushing these products and services to their users, even if some start out somewhat incomplete and poorly integrated. Enter Google's newest offering, Google Buzz. Unlike some previous Google attempts at social media, this one is going to work in a big way.

First, Google integrated Buzz right into Gmail, the reason most of us have Google accounts in the first place. There are plenty of seats at the Google Labs table, but not many projects get to sit at the front with Gmail. Second, your contact list pre-establishes a social network. Third, if you use Google Profile, you already had established information about yourself and the content you create. Fourth, if you create content with Blogger or Reader, your Buzz account is pre-primed with content. Who else could have done this? Nobody. (Even though Buzz is more like FriendFeed than anything else, Buzz will succeed where FriendFeed didn't because of these things I've just mentioned. Honestly, though, life might have been easier if the world would have just used FriendFeed from the beginning and forgotten about Twitter and Facebook.)

Posting content is easier than ever, and (thankfully!) sharing that content between services is relatively easy. I can post to Twitter and my tweet automatically shows up in Facebook, FriendFeed, and Buzz. I can take upload a picture from my phone and Flickr automatically sends a tweet, spreading the photo everywhere. (Unfortunately, Facebook, FriendFeed, and now Buzz also monitor Flickr separately, so that photo comes twice.) Social networks almost appear effortless, except for one major thing: COMMENTS.

The interaction of users and content is what makes this social media, but with every new service that interaction gets increasingly fractured. Let's look at my last scenario: posting a picture from my phone to Flickr. If you want to make a comment about that picture, where should you put it? Let's count the choices:

1. You can comment on Flickr.
2. You can reply to the tweet generated by Flickr.
3. You can comment on the photo on Facebook (which pulls the photo from Flickr).
4. You can comment on the Flickr-generated tweet on Facebook (which pulls the tweet from Twitter).
5. You can comment on the photo on FriendFeed (which pulls the photo from Flickr).
6. You can comment on the Flickr-generated tweet on FriendFeed (which pulls the tweet from Twitter).
7. You can comment on the photo on Buzz (which pulls the photo from Flickr).
8. You can comment on the Flickr-generated tweet on Buzz (which pulls the tweet from Twitter).

With my current setup, comments could appear in eight different places. I could reduce that if I don't tell Facebook, FriendFeed, or Buzz to watch my Flickr photos (they'd still get the tweets), but those services do a much better job of displaying photos if they know they're from Flickr and not just a URL-shortened link in a tweet. There will be no less than four places to comment on this blog post, and probably double that if I send a tweet announcing the post.

As my friend @jamurra replied to me tonight, "We need a federated comment system on the web." The only service I've seen really attempting to address this problem is Disqus, but it appears they've only been able to partially solve the problem. (I'm not a Disqus user, and if I had more comments on my blog I think I'd be more serious about signing up.) I'm sure people are working on this, but it seems like a technical nightmare. It's easy for data to get copied and distributed; in fact, the internet does exactly that better than any invention known to man. But how to "undistribute" the comments and get them back to one place? Let's hope some smart people at Google are using their 20% time wisely on this one.

Feel free to comment on this post. I'll leave it to you to decide where.

Y2K + 10

How's this for an amusing trip down memory lane? Ten years ago, on the eve of the millennium, the big "Y2K," I was reporting for work in the basement of Gilchrist Hall at the University of Northern Iowa. I was to staff the university's "Y2K Command Center," the strategic hub of UNI's efforts to thwart any disasters due to Y2K.

As we now know, very little happened due to Y2K. The fear was that any digital device that recorded dates with only two digits wouldn't know how to properly handle a year "00" and would behave unpredictably. This was a valid concern, but not a surprise so almost all such problems were fixed months ahead of time.

Midnight came and went, and things were pretty quiet around UNI. One of our maintenance staff discovered a ventilation fan not working properly (for non-Y2K reasons) and that was it. All the professional staff went home a couple hours after midnight, but Robert Shontz (great student, individual, and co-worker) and I stayed on until morning. Even though it was pretty evident that nothing bad was going to happen, we and some other ITS associates worked in shifts to keep the command center open for a couple days. All we did was watch TV, surf the net, play video games, and eat on the university's dime, but it was nice that the university stuck to their schedule and gave us the hours we had been promised.

It would have been a more exciting story if we had somehow actively warded off a disaster, but I'm still glad I was there. What's your story? Out partying? How dull. You'll get another chance to be the hero for Y10K. Five digit years are going to require software updates. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I should have asked for ski karma for Christmas

Talk about your epic fail today. I decided several days ago that I wanted to ski Christmas day. I got close, but never made a single turn. Let's look at what turned out to be a waste of a day:

I was up before 7, checking the weather and road reports, and it's not exactly great. Chain restrictions at the tunnel and Vail Pass make me think twice about going. All I have is my car, as I don't trust my truck with its bad clutch and oil leak. At about 8:45 I get a positive road report from Lubin, who is headed to Vail from the west. I check some more reports and leave about 9:15. Way too late, but I've left late before and had great afternoons.

The roads are certainly passable, but I take it slow and arrive at Vail just after noon. I've heard from some that free parking is hard to find in Vail, but others have assured me that it exists and a bus will take you to the lifts. I explored all of Vail's three exits, and none have signs that clearly point to free parking. My GPS is no help. I check out a few of the pay areas, and each would cost me $25 just for the afternoon.

I stop in a 15-minute parking area and try to search for parking information on my phone. Vail's website clearly has parking information, but they've formatted their site in a way where it's not readable on my mobile browser. Phone crashes and reboots. I go to another site and it says parking is free at the golf course, if spots are available.

I get to the golf course lot about 1:00 and put on my boots, grab my skis, and walk to the bus stop. Ugh. The bus schedule is posted at the stop, and during midday the buses only run once an hour. The last one was leaving as I arrived. I seriously don't want to wait another hour for the next bus, the bus ride, the walk to the lifts, and the ride on the chair before I can actually ski. It would probably be 2:30 by then. There's gotta be something else.

I explore other parking lots along the bus route and all are either pass-only or pay-to-park. With snow (and travel back to Boulder) getting worse, I decided that it's not worth using one of my 10 precious Vail/Beaver Creek days to ski less than two hours. Upset at myself that I didn't do proper parking research beforehand and left so late, I turn the car east and go home.

In hindsight, pancakes at my sister's house probably would have been a better plan. I'll just have to make up for today with some really good days at Vail later in the season, assuming I get parking figured out by then.

Iowa-to-Colorado Translation Guide

It's not difficult to find Iowans in Colorado. We're everywhere. Even more, I'm sure more Iowans are getting ready to move to Colorado right now. As an Iowan-turned-Coloradoan myself, I thought I should provide this translation guide.

Coloradoan says...	Iowan hears...
Denver	Des Moines
Boulder/University of Colorado	Iowa City/University of Iowa
Ames/Iowa State University	Fort Collins/Colorado State University
Durango	Decorah
Skiing	Wrestling
Olathe Sweet Corn	Any sweet corn you can buy at a street corner from a couple of kids in the back of a pickup
The Post	The Register
The Gazette	The Courier
"I spent a winter as a ski bum in Leadville."	"I spent a summer as a detasseler in Osage."
Denver Broncos Football	Aplington-Parkersburg Football (based on fan loyalty and news coverage)
Pueblo Chile Frijoles Fest	Ackley Sauerkraut Days
Mt. Elbert	Hawkeye Hill
Castle Rock	Story City
Park Meadows	Jordan Creek
Vail	Okoboji
Royal Gorge Bridge	Kate Shelley Bridge
John Elway	Dan Gable
Pueblo	Fort Dodge
Alfred Packer	Cardiff Giant
Colorado Springs	Cedar Rapids
Red Coats	Ski Patrol (not the British army)
Black Canyon of the Gunnison	Ledges
1040	850
Cherry Creek High School	Valley High School
mine tailings	confinement lagoons
Taos	The Dells
Moab	Branson
Blackhawk/Central City	Tama/Toledo
Canon City	Anamosa

I'm certainly open to comments, additions, and revisions!

Why Teachers Should Require Students to Use Wikipedia

I've always been a fan of Wikipedia, and often I'm happy to see a Wikipedia entry as my top search result. As a math teacher, I never had many opportunities to direct students in the ways of research, including how to choose appropriate sources. Several of my colleagues who do teach research, however, not only discouraged Wikipedia use, but banned it outright. Why? The most common answer: "Because anybody can edit Wikipedia, students won't know if the information is true." It wasn't until tonight that I saw how shortsighted this reasoning really is, and how it gives students wrong ideas about research.

Let's assume we not only encourage, but require students to use Wikipedia. If a student only finds factual information, then we've preserved the status quo, and nothing really changes. But what if the student finds a mistake? (Or, more likely, you find it for them.) This isn't a crisis, this is an opportunity! First, students see this as a powerful example of why we cite our sources, an idea with which many students struggle. Without the citation the student looks like they're wrong; with the citation to Wikipedia, we can see the student is not really at fault. Second, if a student finds an error in Wikipedia, don't ignore it, FIX IT! The same reason you cite as Wikipedia's weakness is also its greatest strength. Everyone can be an editor. Even if you just find a Wikipedia claim to be in question, and aren't sure if it's false, teach your students how to use the discussion page so they can truly take part in the Wikipedia experience.

If having your students participate as Wikipedia contributors sounds too scary, too involved, or not worth your time and effort, think of this absurdity you have created for yourself - You are a teacher, someone who dedicates themselves to helping students learn and share information, but you don't want your students to use your instruction in a way that contributes to the world's body of knowledge in one of the internet's biggest projects.

Like it or not, this is the world we live in, so put down your guard and teach your students (and yourself, if necessary) what digital citizenry can and should be about. In fact, you should hope all your students find mistakes in Wikipedia. Teach them how to fix those mistakes, and you can be sure "research" will mean more to them than churning out double-spaced papers.