“We may reject the contention that the ordering of institutions is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if the refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on a par with being unable to accept death. The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.”
Can you write a good book in two or three months? Maybe. But it takes planning and discipline. I’ve done it, and so have other authors I know. Many of us feel that we created our best work quickly. I wrote most of Groundswell in 11 weeks and Writing Without Bullshit in three months, and both are buttoned-down, … Continued
I’m noticing a new discussion both in private and public amongst Silicon Valley’s VCs and entrepreneurs. Last night’s CurveJump dinner was a great example, and shows a new kind of conference that’s on the scene now: one where entrepreneurs and VCs are encouraged to share their enterpreneurial pain and shame.
Things like how did you handle getting fired? Or facing immense corporate pain like being given only a few weeks to either save the company or shut it down, both of which required laying off people who you see as your friends and family?
CurveJump is an invite-only series of events culminating with its annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Started by Megan Beck and Alex Hillinger it promises to bring together the startup community around a dynamic of trust, openness, and exploration of ideas that matter.
Sorry for the bad audio in this conversation between Megan Beck, Anne Dwane, early stage VC at Village Global, and Christopher Michel, founder of Military.com.
Also, here’s some better videos, uploaded directly to Google Photos, sorry uploading to YouTube added some sort of weird video flicker that I didn’t notice in time:
So, what did I take away from the conversation? That on the road to building disruptive companies entrepreneurs often hit sizable bumps. Christopher laid it out in this conversation, talking about how he was fired, then came back to save the company.
“It was an incredibly difficult journey,” he said, as he detailed many mistakes he made starting his company. “It really hurts losing 90% of the patients.”
“It was almost all too easy,” Beck says, talking about the early days of getting $5 million in funding back in 1999 (they went on to raise $30 million, and had a burn rate of a million a month when the market blew up). That encouraged them to spend more, grow more, as VCs told them to do. They spent a ton on outdoor advertising and weren’t tracking the effectiveness of their marketing spend.
He detailed having to go through several rounds of layoffs, each one he thought would be the last round of layoffs and told employees that, which lost trust with them. He was replaced by someone who sat in his chair and told him when he returned from a meeting “I think it’s best if you don’t come in anymore.” He had been fired from his baby.
Then he detailed how he came back from that. Military.com was weeks from being totally shut down, so he offered to come back and shut it down, which was accepted because no one wants to be around to be the last to close down a company (I have lived through that, at one startup I laid myself off after I had laid everyone else off).
Beck talked about the pressure to get sales. She knew that every sales call she made meant either closing the company down or surviving another payroll. “I told Megan ‘you need to go sell $50,000’ and she came back with $50,000,” Michel said.
“I think we are all forged in adversity,” Beck said.
They had too much money, too quickly, Michel said, but the real problem was people. Namely himself. He was too insecure, he said, and had too many technical people who were becoming a real cultural problem at the company. He turned it around by learning to build a culture of trust and empathy.
“The challenge around leadership is clarity and alignment,” she said, as she laid out how she empowers her employees to act with good judgment today.
In the last half of the video they took on a bunch things roiling the tech industry today like the cultural problems at companies like Uber and elsewhere.
“A hero is someone who is doing the right things, taking care of their teams,” Michel says, while calling people like me to task for making people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk our entrepreneurial heroes.
Which is the whole point of these kinds of conversations: they help you look at your own situation in life and change. “I think we can do a better job,” Michel says.
In the inception stage of the community lifecycle, you promote the community to the fringe radicals, the true believers, and the people who know you best and are closest to you. These are the people with the passion to create something that doesn’t exist yet.
In the establishment stage, you promote the community to the topic enthusiasts.
These are the people who most love the unique niche you’re targeting within the broader space. They are the ultramarathon runners among the marathon runners and the bitcoin miners among the bitcoin investors.
You find them via referrals, on social media, and build close relationships with them.
In the early-maturity stage, you target the people struggling with problems, want to improve themselves, and need a better solution than what’s out there today. It’s only now that you should begin promoting the community en-masse.
There are exceptions, I’m sure, but they are the exceptions. If you’re getting lots of people joining but not sticking around, you’re probably confused about either a) where you are in the lifecycle or b) who you should be promoting the community to.
What: A photo reproduction on the wall at the Peterborough Museum and Archives display, possibly from 1885.
Where were the races held: Morrow Park adjacent to the Memorial Centre, where the Peterborough Pete's play.
When: The photo, likely from Peterborough's Roy Studio, is estimated to be taken some time between 1885 and 1905. The penny farthing races were reported on in the Peterborough Review.
Why we think it's dandy: Bicycle tourism is seeing a resurgence in popularity in the Peterborough region . It's great to see that the bicycle has always been part of the recreational culture in Peterborough and the Kawarthas.
We think this deserves further investigation, and so after doing more research we will report back on the historic bicycle archives and artifacts in Peterborough today. We will try to get a copy of the original photo too!
“We are forced to deal with a very uncomfortable fact: Great art is sometimes — perhaps often — made by very bad people, or people who harbor very ugly attitudes, or attitudes we now find abhorrent.”
I was on a cruise last month. I was using my camera quite a lot – over a thousand pictures in 19 days. And ashore I usually had my phone with me as well – searching for free wifi, cruise ship internet connections being both expensive and unreliable. The ship was docked in Corinto, Nicaragua and I had been ashore exploring the little town, but it was very hot and there was not a lot to see. So I had decided to go back on board, and see what I could find in the buffet. I did not have either phone or camera with me. But I had brought the new Samsung Galaxy Tab E tablet which I was using to read e-books I had downloaded before the cruise. I also made my own journal entries on it.
When I looked out of the window I saw this oil tanker passing us, and thought I should check out the tablet’s camera. I had seen quite a lot of people using tablets to take pictures – and in my experience with other tablets, that had been a bit awkward, and I was never very happy with the results. In fact I had never used the camera in this tablet. So this was indeed an Experimental picture. I am quite pleased with it, but it is still the only one on the tablet’s SD card.
And that strange UFO looking bright object over the headland is actually a reflection of one of the lights in the buffet. I think the window was pretty grubby too. I did not use any photo editing software in this image but it could certainly be improved by levelling the horizon and removing some of the artifacts, but then that would invalidate the experiment.
David Wiley says, "The question we must each ask ourselves is – what is the real goal of our OER advocacy?" In this he's right. It's time for us to be clear about what we're working for.
The goal of OER is access for all.
This is my goal, though I don't think it's just my goal. I think it's the goal of the vast majority of those working for open educational resources (OER).
UNESCO - "UNESCO believes that universal access to high quality education is key to the building of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue."
The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) - "We believe that students should have equal access to high quality instructional materials in order to achieve their academic goals."
Creative Commons - "With the internet, universal access to education is possible, but its potential is hindered by increasingly restrictive copyright laws and incompatible technologies..."
OER Commons - "The worldwide OER movement is rooted in the human right to access high-quality education."
NOLWAZI - "It was always intended as an easily accessible resource for use by schools, educators and the South African community."
SPARC - "The foundation of Open Education is Open Educational Resources (OER), which are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers."
OER Lebanon - "Our mission is to ensure that the benefits of open educational resources reach every school and university in Lebanon and to foster equal access to quality education through the adoption of OER."
Hewlett Foundation - "Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions."
Alberta Education - "By supporting the assessment, development, and use of open educational resources at post-secondary institutions, this initiative will encourage flexibility and access for all Alberta learners."
UNESCO (again) - "For students, OERs offer free access to some of the world’s best courses and even degree programs... For teachers, ministries of education and governments, OERs provide free and legal access to some of the world’s best courses."
University of Kansas - "OER is an approach to overcoming cost and reuse barriers to the benefit of students and instructors."
Ohio University - "The aim of Open Access (OA) is to disseminate scholarly research free of charge."OER ensures that students have access to all course material from the first day of class."
African Digital Library - "The objective of the ADL is to develop a digital library that is available free-of-charge, to residents and institutions of Africa, for academic and business use."
University of Cape Town - "an OER is a teaching and learning resource created and licensed in such a way that promotes some or all of the following: free and easy retention, redistribution, reuse, revision, and remixing."
eCampus Ontario - "OER (Open Educational Resources) are free, making them accessible for learners of all socioeconomic backgrounds"
OpenSource.com - "Proponents of open education believe everyone in the world should have access to high-quality educational experiences and resources, and they work to eliminate barriers to this goal."
Niagara College - "Open educational resources, or OER, are items free of licence or royalty fees for reuse in an educational context."
USC - "Education for all, no matter income level, remains an important tenet at USC. OER enables all learners to get involved in cultivating new skills, and further their career."
SAIDE - OER Africa - "Open Educational Resources (OER) refers to educational resources that are freely available for use by educators and learners, without the need to pay royalties or licence fees."
I could continue this list indefinitely but I think the point is clear that, in addition to just me, a great many, and probably a majority, of OER advocates do so for the purpose of ensuring access for all.
This is not Wiley's objective:
Personally, my goal is not to provide less expensive access to the same teaching and learning experience to more people – access and affordability have never been my end game.
This is probably something he could have said more clearly a bit earlier to the governments and foundations that funded his work. A lot of people who are working for access to all could have used the money.
2. The Influence of Publishers
David Wiley is concerned because of the publishers. He writes:
"In the new context of inclusive access models, arguments about 'reducing the cost of college' and providing students with 'day one access' are increasingly ineffective at persuading faculty to adopt OER because publishers have completely co-opted these messages."
I would suggest that faculty weren't interested in offering or using open access long before publishers changed their prices. This follows decades of work with academics in an effort to persuade them to support open access, work that led to the conclusion that academics would have to be mandated to use open access, or they wouldn't use it at all. And in the context of the current discussion, academics are least likely to support some model of commercial open access or access requiring the use of CC-by.
So the argument based on the need for "persuading faculty" is a red herring. A majority of faculty have always been indifferent to the benefits of open access, including open educational resources, and this has been true for decades.
And while discussing "inclusive access" policies (the program whereby students are charged for textbooks as part of their course registration and tuition costs) Wiley suggests that the work for OER advocates has been done for them by publishers:
"If improving access and affordability are your end goal, you may be starting to feel like your work is just about finished – inclusive access models are delivering day one access and drastically lowered costs to students."
First of all, as I noted in my previous post on this subject, any cost savings here are probably illusory. But even more to the point, these policies represent no cost savings at all to a person who cannot afford to pay university tuition in the first place. When OER advocates talk about "access for all" they are rarely, if ever, taking only about tuition-paying students.
Access for all means access for all.
And that, again, is why the 'faculty persuasion' argument is a red herring. For those people who cannot afford access to faculty - which by my count is somewhere around 97 percent of the population (225 million out of 7 billion) the decision of a faculty member one way or another is for the most part irrelevant.
Wiley says "Cost is no longer the most effective argument for adopting OER." But he has utterly no evidence to prove that. If anything, the evidence says the opposite, as I have shown.
3. Cost and Price
Wiley says,
Because Pearson has the exclusive rights to distribute this title (Campbell's Biology), there is no competition and you’ll pay over $200 for a new copy. On the other hand, the public domain title Pride and Prejudice is about $8 per new paperback copy
In fact, I can buy Campbell's Biology right now for about $CAD 97 (about $US 70) on Amazon. It will be used, of course. 10th edition. I can buy the 3rd edition for about $CAD 18. This brings us close to Pride and Prejudice territory. Campbell's Biology is still fully copyrighted (and will be until 2099). Pride and Prejudice, as noted, is a public domain work. These numbers strongly suggest that there is a lot more to textbook prices than licensing.
Price is based on willingness to pay. Exclusive rights over something nobody wants is worth nothing. The publisher (in cooperation with the universities) creates demand for the work by making it a required text (and then releasing edition after edition after edition of the work to discourage used book sales).
But none of this matters a whole lot, except to university students.
The real barrier here is the $8 cost per copy of Pride and Prejudice. Even at $8 per book, most people in the would cannot afford even a small fraction of the world's literature. That's why we (still) need libraries, and cost-free digital copies, and the rest of it. That's why access, over and above mere licensing, remains an issue.
The price matters, and for most people in the world the price matters more than the license. A free fully-copyrighted book in the hand is worth much more than an unaffordable open-licensed book any day. Unless, of course, the real benefit of open licenses is that the resources are free.
4. The Community Model
Wiley gives two reasons for eschewing the community-based model of sustaining open educational resources.
First, citing Linus Torvalds, he says, "Don’t EVER make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle." Of course, Torvalds is talking about software, not business models.
But in this context I will repeat something I've said many times to David Wiley around the issues of business models and licensing: you can do whatever you want with your work and your content. I don't care. But don't tell us what to do with ours.
This was the case for open licenses - I've been happy for people to choose whatever they want, whether it's CC-0, CC-by or CC-by-NC-SA. I choose the last, but whatever other people choose will work for me. Wiley, on the other hand, as consistently argues against CC-by-NC-SA.
He's doing the same thing with OER business models. Here's an excerpt from his earlier post on OER:
I’ve been shouting this from the rooftops for months now (most recently in July). And yet here we are again, with OER characterized as nothing more than a free textbook and, consequently, inclusive access held up as a reasonable alternative to OER. When we allow the false notion that OER are free textbooks to prevail, this is what we get.
Does that read like a pro-diversity sentiment? Or does that read like somebody who is convinced that he has designed something better than everybody else?
Second, Wiley is clear that he wants to focus on the three percent. "I continue to be interested in the formal learning that happens in accredited institutions that award recognized credentials," he writes.
He has some good reasons for this:
"Those credentials continue to be one of the best paths to achieving economic security for oneself and family," and
"These students are not roaming autodidacts who, left to their own (digital) devices, will thrive and succeed as 'free range learners'."
Fair enough. But my support for community-based learning is not the reason why I advocated community-based sustainability of open educational resources. I made clear in my OECD paper that I felt that none of the other models would sustainably provide access for all.
5. Open Pedagogy
Wiley writes,
"Stephen is also upset that I accuse people of “‘not talking about open pedagogy’ when they take a perspective that is not based in the precious 5 Rs.” Because no one knows what ‘open pedagogy’ means, I am very careful not to use that term and I made no such accusation in my post."
Sure, now. But it was a pretty constant refrain in the past.
From 2013, we have his post What is Open Pedagogy, where he says "the ultimate test of whether or not a particular approach or technique can rightly be called “open pedagogy” – is it possible without the free access and 4R permissions characteristic of open educational resources?"
From last April, when he asks, How is Open Pedagogy Different? he writes "open pedagogy is the set of teaching and learning practices only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions."
After discussion with proponents of open pedagogy, he said, "I need a completely empty phrase that I can fill with my specific meaning so that there can be no confusion about definitions when the term is used."
But, first, he still argues that this definition is still in play as part of open pedagogy. "For some definitions of 'open pedagogy,' OER-enabled pedagogy can be categorized as a form of open pedagogy (but not for other definitions)."
But more to the point, the term OER isn't completely empty. People have been using it for 15 years to mean something pretty specific, and which has during all that time been associated with a particular set of benefits.
He writes, "Exploring and leveraging the new ways of learning enabled by open licenses is the core of what OER-enabled pedagogy is all about." Most people would read that as meaning "exploring and leveraging the new ways of learning generated though access to all." I think it's pretty clear that Wiley means something different.
if you want Lumen staff to be responsible and accountable for running, managing, and supporting your OER-related infrastructure, yes, we charge for that
Through the partnership, Follett will make Lumen Learning’s OER courseware available to institutions through Follett’s IncludED™ program and Follett Discover™ infrastructure. The seamless integration makes it easy for faculty members to find and evaluate Lumen’s OER course materials, and through the IncludED™ program, students pay low-cost Lumen course support fees ranging from $10 to $25, far less than the average cost of a commercial textbook.
This read to me as though while it is being made to look like Lumen is charging only for running and managing an OER infrastructure, students are actually paying for the textbooks.
The Follett partnership is focused on two of Lumen’s offerings – Waymaker and OHM (Online Homework Manager). Both of these products wrap significant additional functionality around OER.
OK, then. So I should just be able to use the Waymaker software to download and use the OER materials in the same way the students paying the $10-$25 fee are using it. Right? So, OK, over to the previously mentioned GitHub repository. Hm. Not there. Perhaps on the Waymaker site? Nope, no download there either. Actually, if I want to see it at all, I have to request a demo.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Lumen isn't wrapping OERs around commercial software and then getting institutions to require that students pay a fee in order to access them.
But if you can imagine that I'm right, you can probably also imagine what my thoughts would be about the proprietor of such a model saying that we shouldn't talk cost and free access when we talk about the benefit of OER.
If you ever wanted to know what it was like to drive around Metro Vancouver 60 years ago, the BC Ministry of Transportation has put together a 3 minute video of a road trip from Horseshoe Bay to Vancouver to New Westminster in 1966.
It is fascinating to see what a sleepy city Vancouver was, with a lot of low-rise buildings, gas stations, parking lots, and motels (but also some pretty sweet cars). Some people probably wish it would have stayed that way. So far, the video has over 100,000 views and some interesting comments (e.g. “I want to go back in time and tell everyone to buy as much property as you can. You will be a millionaire by 2017.″)
I recently wrote a feature for the national edition of Spacing Magazine. It profiles efforts to revive Hogan’s Alley, the city’s first and only Black community that was destroyed by the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts. The City of Vancouver is preparing to tear them down under the Northeast False Creek Community plan, a project that according to the City, will result in one of Vancouver’s most significant city-building opportunities in a generation.
I was an original supporter of Firefox in 2004. At the time, the Internet was in desperate need of change. The web browser market was dominated by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which was clunky and becoming an increasingly closed, proprietary system. Firefox found immediate success because it was fast and had an extension system for extending its functionality. Over time though, Firefox lost its speed advantage and fell out of favor.
Now, Firefox is back with a new and improved version called Firefox Quantum that focuses on speed and a fresh design. According to the Mozilla Foundation:
Firefox Quantum is over twice as fast as Firefox from 6 months ago, built on a completely overhauled core engine with brand new technology stolen from our advanced research group, and graced with a beautiful new look designed to get out of the way and let you do what you do best: surf a ton of pages, open a zillion tabs, all guilt free because Firefox Quantum uses less memory than the competition.
I haven’t had an opportunity to thoroughly test Firefox on my Mac, but even after opening 50 tabs on a fresh install of the browser, many of which were notoriously heavy sites, Firefox remained responsive. In addition to being twice as fast as the previous version of the app, Mozilla says Firefox Quantum uses 30% less memory than Google Chrome.
The under-the-hood improvements are coupled with a refreshed user interface that’s designed to scale from mobile devices to large screens. The redesign includes the incorporation of Pocket article recommendations. When you open a new tab, you get three article recommendations from Pocket, which was acquired by Mozilla earlier this year, along with links to popular Pocket article categories.
The update to Firefox for macOS is coupled with a similar design refresh on iOS. Version 10.1 of Firefox brings Firefox’s new design to iOS, including Pocket recommendations. The iOS version of the browser also has a ‘no image’ mode that uses less data and loads faster.
With the iPad 2, back in early 2011, Apple brought Photo Booth to the iPad. I distinctly remember thinking that this was a no-brainer at the time. Growing up in Ghana, there weren’t that many Macs in my high school, but everybody that had one used Photo Booth. It was very regular to walk into the sixth form (senior year) common room and see groups of friends, myself included, behind a MacBook playing with the filters. Talking to several of my American friends, it sounds like it was the same deal here. I always thought that it was only a matter of time before Apple brought Photo Booth to the iPhone, but six years later it still just ships with Macs and iPads (and I don’t think that it’s been updated in that time).
Playing with the Selfie Scenes in Clips last week, I had the same feeling that I did playing with Photo Booth on my Mac many years ago. It was a little surreal, as someone with incredible front-camera shyness, to find myself having so much fun with it. The whole experience had me thinking: In a few years, once the Face ID technology has spread to the rest of the iOS line (and maybe even the Mac), could Clips be the successor to Photo Booth? Between Selfie Scenes, stickers, Live Titles, and fast sharing to social media, it seems the perfect fit.
I think the best modern equivalent of that Photo Booth social experience is Snapchat's lenses, which I've observed can consistently deliver laughter and interest among a group of friends or family members. While Clips' Selfie Scenes offer a similarly neat technical effect, if Apple is serious about being successful with the app, a couple big changes need to take place: the square orientation limit has to go, and Clips needs better hooks into apps like Instagram and Snapchat than the share sheet provides.
Photo Booth's prime was a very different era than where we are today, and without the aid of a true social network it will be hard for Apple to replicate its success. So far, Animoji seem much closer to meeting that goal than Clips.
Earlier this year, I reviewed RAW Power for macOS and was impressed by its power and flexibility. Yesterday, Gentlemen Coders released a no-compromises version of RAW Power for iOS that matches the macOS version’s features and adds the ability to manage your photo library and make Depth Effect edits to Portrait mode photographs. There are a few rough edges here and there, but by and large, the app delivers on its promise of desktop-class, non-destructive photo editing on iOS devices.
The starting point in RAW Power is its Album view. From here, you can also organize your photo library. Albums are divided into three groups. The first section includes recently viewed images and albums. Built-in system albums like Favorites, Panoramas, Bursts, and Screenshots are found in the second section. The remainder of the view includes every album you’ve ever created in your photo library. Buttons in the toolbar allow you to create and rename albums, select multiple albums to delete, and search for albums by name.
RAW Power for macOS (top) and iOS (bottom)
Changes made in RAW Power are synced back to Apple’s Photos app. If you use iCloud Photo Library syncing, edits are synced across iOS and macOS devices too. What isn’t synced though, is the state of the app itself. This means the Recents section of the Album view will be different on each iOS device on which you use RAW Power. This isn’t an issue on macOS because that version of the app doesn’t include library organization features.
When you open an album, the contents are arranged in a grid. Photos in the album can be sorted oldest to newest or the other way around. As you scroll, the date is overlaid to give you an idea where you are in an album containing lots of pictures, which is a nice touch.
RAW Power's Recently Viewed album.
The info button in the top left corner opens an inspector that can be moved from one side of the screen to the other by tapping and holding the tab bar and then dragging it. While browsing an album, the inspector provides quick access to your album library and basic information about the selected album like the number of each type of photo it contains. When a photo in an album is selected, the Info tab shows metadata, including a map if GPS information was recorded.
RAW Power's Info inspector including location data.
The album view also supports iOS 11’s drag and drop feature. You can pick up multiple images and drag them into an album in the inspector’s Library tab. Although you can navigate to another album while dragging several photos, you can’t drop them into the new album. Instead, you can only drop your photos onto the small album icons in the inspector. I hope Gentlemen Coders changes this behavior so you can drop images inside an open album because the current mechanic is confusing to anyone accustomed to the Files app where you can drag items, open a folder, and drop them in the new location.
The third tab in the inspector is the Adjust tab for editing images, which is only available when an image is open. Given the large number of editing tools in the app, I appreciate that RAW Power only displays the ones that work on the image I’ve opened. For example, tools for editing RAW images are not shown if a JPEG photo is open.
RAW image editing mode.
RAW Power includes the same tools for editing images as its macOS counterpart. At the top of the inspector is a histogram with circular indicators that indicate whether any color channels are clipped. For RAW format images, there are also controls to modify Boost, Black Boost, Black Point, Luma Noise, Color Noise, Detail, RAW Sharpen, and RAW Contrast. There is more detail on how the RAW image controls work in my review of the macOS version of the app. The bottom line though is that RAW Power provides access to tools to modify RAW images that aren’t available in most photo editing apps, including Apple’s Photos app. That gives users greater flexibility to fine-tune their photos.
RAW Power can also edit other file formats like JPEG and PNG and features a long list of editing tools that aren’t specific to the RAW format. Cropping, straightening, white balance, tone, brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpening, and many other variables can be tweaked. There is also a Curves tool for editing color channels visually and a Depth Effect tool that works with Portrait mode photos taken while using iOS 11.
Editing a Portrait mode photo's depth mask.
RAW Power is a Universal app, but I don’t recommend using it on the iPhone or in Split View, except for quick edits. RAW Power’s inspector and its broad array of controls require as much screen space as possible. There’s just too much crammed into too little space for the app to be regularly used on an iPhone or in Split View. Even when the app is in full screen on an iPad, the touch targets of some controls are smaller than I’d like.
Also, on an iPhone and in Split View on an iPad the sections of the inspector become a tab bar along the bottom of the screen. It’s a somewhat jarring difference from the full-screen iPad experience and makes me wonder whether Gentlemen Coders would have been better served by reimagining the Mac app’s UI to accommodate a more consistent mobile experience across size classes, with fewer custom controls and bigger touch targets. The iOS app will benefit from being familiar to macOS users, but the familiarity comes with usability costs.
Despite the tight quarters in the inspector and incomplete implementation of drag and drop, RAW Power is a solid tool if you want more control over your photographs. The iOS version is an especially welcome addition for anyone who already uses RAW Power on macOS. Now, those users can modify photos in the field on an iPad or iPhone and finish up later on a Mac as needed, adding flexibility.
RAW Power is free to download from the App Store, but the Curves, White Balance, and Depth Effect tools are only available as part of an In-App Purchase.
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At my conference presentations I have the option of using my own backchannel system to allow attendees to use my interface, or a Twitter interface, to post comments in real time. Here's an example of it at work. There are two key differences between my system and the system described in this article, where conference organizers show a Twitter stream behind the speaker. First, I can see the comments in real time, and respond to them directly. Second, I am in control; I can turn off Twitter, and I can turn off the system entirely. This is not to excuse the harassment of women speakers in conferences where Twitter is used. There's no excuse for it, and the attackers should be ashamed of themselves. Putting the speaker in charge of the response, though, goes at least some way toward redressing the power imbalance.
It's way too late for those who argued against the commercialization of the internet to say "I told you so." Though they could. We now need to ask the same questions about the education system. By way of context, here is Ttim Berners-Lee on the current state of the web: "“The system is failing. The way ad revenue works with clickbait is not fulfilling the goal of helping humanity promote truth and democracy... We have these dark ads that target and manipulate me and then vanish because I can’t bookmark them. This is not democracy – this is putting who gets selected into the hands of the most manipulative companies out there.”
I continue to debate David Wiley in this post (skip if you're not interested). I believe the goal of OER is access for all. This is my goal, though I don't think it's just my goal. But it's not David Wiley's goal, and it bothers me when he says we should reframe our advocacy of OER to de-emphasize cost and access.
CTV News Vancouver had a feature last night on the City of Vancouver’s proposal to test a separated bike lane on the west side of the Cambie Bridge using a temporary barrier. As well as a collection of Yea or Nay opinions from the street, the report features NPA councillor George Affleck providing his two cents on the city’s bike lane proposal.
Price Tags Vancouver has previously written about the “Fight For Beauty” art exhibition hosted by Westbank developments at a downtown hotel. The theme of this free exhibition is the “fight” it takes to create and build cities and communities as interpreted by the art. There’s sculpture and film, and there are also models of some of the projects that Westbank developments have undertaken in their work in Vancouver.
In a direct juxtaposition to this exhibition Vancouver Art Gallery’s “Offsite” space on West Georgia has artist Asim Waqif installing a work he calls “Salvage” made up of the items that Dorothy Woodend of the Tyee calls “the remains of obliterated houses and destroyed buildings, the refuse and discards of a city in the midst of wholesale change. The construction largely resembles a M.C. Escher drawing come to 3D life.”
The artist has created an intriguing and curious collection out of the ordinary stuff found at construction sites and the transfer station including “old doors, dead keyboards, the remains of a shingled bit of roofing, glass jars and bottles, a bicycle and what looks like a stuffed chicken. ” Somehow there is harmony out of the use of these objects that resemble interiors that are strangely familiar and somewhat comforting.
But the exhibit also talks to our trashing of materials in demolishing the old for the new, and has a direct allegory to the loss of our urban fabric and our acceptance of new shiny replacements for that which was at one time familiar. As Mr. Waqif observes in the City of Vancouver “residents, businesses and institutions threw away approximately 351,000 tonnes of garbage“. His exhibition hints at what we have lost, and what could be recycled. It’s an interesting allegory, in the face of buffed new buildings defining Vancouver’s “modern times”.
As reported in Metro News by Jen St. Denis, Vancouver’s city council has been considering how to regulate short-term rentals like Airbnb. While it is clear that short-term rentals can assist with the high cost of home ownership in Vancouver, it also takes away housing stock from the local rental market.
Short-term rentals (called STR by the City) are defined as a home or a room that is rented for less than thirty days. Starting April 2018, short-term rentals will be allowed based upon this report from the October 2017 public hearing. Prior to April, only hotels and bed and breakfast places that are in the correct zone and properly licensed are allowed to be in short-term rental situations.
Residents can only rent their houses or apartments if it is their primary home, and laneway houses or basement suites cannot be rented short-term. In order to gain compliance residents must obtain a $49 dollar annual business license, and that number must be disclosed in any advertising listing. Of course regulation of housing compliance will need to be in place with a budget of $256,000 expected for “enforcement, administration and a new communications hire to explain the new rules to Vancouverites.”
The City of Vancouver already has a page on their website where you report on “concerns” of alleged illegal short-term rentals that are not following the new rules, and you can also look up more information on the decision-making process that resulted in this new regulation which will be enacted for April 2018.
Folks are asking me about Firefox Quantum and CCK2. Here are the answers to the most common questions.
The CCK2 Wizard is not working on Firefox Quantum. When are you going to update it?
The CCK2 Wizard is a legacy extension and as such will not work beyond Firefox 56. In order to use it, you’ll need to keep a copy of the Firefox 52 ESR around. The CCK2 Wizard does lots of interesting things (reading prefs, reading search engines, reading files, writing files, etc.) that are not possible in a WebExtension. Because the wizard itself is something that is used rarely (only to setup or modify a configuration), I don’t foresee a problem with this decision.
My CCK2 configuration is not working on Firefox Quantum. I get the message “Failed to read the configuration file. Please contact your system administrator.”
I updated the CCK2 Wizard to support Firefox Quantum on October 12. Those changes require that you push out an update to the CCK2 to your clients. The only files that need to be updated are the files in the cck2/modules directory. I recommend pushing out an update to cck2.cfg as well because I record the version of the CCK2 Wizard used to generate the config in that file. This makes it easier to debug things.
Going forward, when I update the CCK2 Wizard, I will display a web page letting folks know that they need to update their client configurations. I will also put on the CCK2 Wizard’s main page.
Can I still generate an extension with the CCK2 Wizard?
Starting with Firefox Quantum, AutoConfig is the only mechanism that will work with Firefox since the CCK2 Wizard generates legacy extensions. I have been recommending AutoConfig as the preferred method for a while now. I do not plan to remove the ability to create an extension, but I will be putting a warning around it.
Are you going to continue to update the CCK2?
Yes. I will continue to update the CCK2 for the foreseeable future. There are a few small issues with Firefox Quantum that were found as well as issues with Firefox 58. I plan to release an update to address these in the next week.
Where do I report problems with CCK2?
If you are simply reporting bugs, use Github. If you have a general question or have paid support, you can use Freshdesk.
The short answer to this is "no". I work in a building full of academics who are not university professors and who are almost invisible on social media in any professional sense. I know hundreds of others in other government, corporate and private research facilities. Their careers are doing just fine. Joshua Kim argues that social media is pretty essential, though. "Alternative academics, lacking many of the traditional disciplinary-based assets that bind traditional academics (journals, conferences, professional organizations etc.), have seemingly adopted social media our medium of communication, collaboration, and exchange." The key word here is seemingly. You can't judge the world by what you see on Twitter. You just can't. Image: University Affairs.
Blimey, I nearly missed this. I've just discovered that it's #LoveTheatreDay and if there's one thing I do love, it's the theatre. I was even at the theatre last night to see Son of a Preacher Man in Wimbledon - great performances and music, the writing - not so much, enjoyable nevertheless. But I digress. What is this #LoveTheatreDay thing, I hear (some of) you ask?
This is an initiative run by Mar Dixon in association with The Stage newspaper according to this article. It's a social media initiative to encourage us to celebrate theatre around the world on Twitter and other social media platforms, hence the hashtag and it's happening today - Wednesday 15 November 2017.
There are three themes throughout the day:
1. #Backstage between 10am and midday to go behind the scenes and see parts of the theatre you would never normally get to see. I guess we've missed that one, but you can check the hashtag for what happened. I love backstage. There's a certain smell to it. It's very hard to describe. It's a nice smell and I'm guessing it's a mixture of wood, workshops and people, but it's unique to a theatre and unmistakable if you've ever experienced it.
2. #AskATheatre between 3pm and 5pm where you can talk direction to the creative teams about their shows and ask the questions you've always wanted to.
3. #Showtime between 7pm and 10pm when people will show what they're seeing at the theatre and what happens off stage during a show.
This campaign is for theatres, performing arts organisations and the general public to celebrate what they love about theatre and to encourage more people to go to the theatre. I think it's a great idea. And one that just wouldn't work without mobile phones. The ability to take pictures, write down our thoughts, record video and audio and distribute it easily and quickly to a wide audience is amazing. This certainly couldn't have happened 10 years ago. Technically, we could do all these things, but the uptake wasn't big enough to reach the mainstream. But today, it's a whole other story. One thing to be grateful for with the ubiquity of the technology.
There is something special about the theatre that keeps drawing me back and anything that encourages other people to enjoy that special something is a good thing in my book. So check out the hashtags, take pictures and share your stories from backstage, off-stage and in the audience and have a great #LoveTheatreDay.
The Safety Curtain from The Ashcroft Theatre in Croydon.
Mark Siegal@marksiegal
All these tweets about a daily podcast are making me really tempted to have mine be weekly instead of every other w… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…
Craft great software, and fix the bugs that really matter
You know, there was that team at Volkswagen that created software to cheat on emissions testing. And they probably checked off all the items on their to-do list. They probably even fixed most of the bugs that they were tracking. But if technology is actually negativelyaffecting the air that we breathe, then maybe we need to think bigger about the way we craft software these days.
At Fog Creek, we’re a company that was pretty much born to help squash bugs, whether it’s “this doesn’t look right in my browser!” or “we shouldn’t be secretly polluting the earth!” We launched FogBugz back in 2000 as one of the first and most influential bug-tracking systems around, and it evolved to be great at project management, issue tracking, and lots more. Since it launched, the platform has been used to fix over 50 million bugs, by tens of thousands of teams around the world. But recently, we’ve been thinking about “Big Bugs”, trying to imagine how we can address both the necessary parts of shipping software and the larger risks that too often get overlooked.
So today, we’re using that same engine to create something new: Manuscript. Manuscript helps any team craft great software. You should try it now!
The first thing to know is that Manuscript is for making software. Manuscript is not a generic project management tool; if you want an approval desk for your legal team, you should use JIRA. Instead, Manuscript is deeply opinionated about how to help a team make great software, and we’ve built on the insights of the thousands of teams that we’ve watched use our platforms over the last 17 years.
We knew Manuscript had to do all the essentials: task management, prioritization, scheduling, sprints, story points, and all that good stuff. And honestly, Manuscript is great at those fundamentals. But then we saw a chance to do something really new, based on a few simple ideas:
Let’s prevent email. We’ve been inspired by how Slack has done a great job of reducing email sent within teams (including ours!) and wanted to bring that same seamless experience to capturing bug reports or even answering customer questions. So Manuscript triages emails that come in from customers or even through your web contact form and files them right alongside automated bug reports and your team’s own tasks. This makes them easy to track in one place, so you don’t lose important decisions because they’re buried in email.
You’ve got enough issues. Manuscript has cases, not issues. Cases work better than the issues or tickets you might be used to in other systems — you aren’t forced to fill out a bunch of mandatory fields, and every case is assigned to just one person. That means you always know who’s accountable and no decision or task ever falls through the cracks because everybody thought it was somebody else’s problem. Even better: in Manuscript, search really works. Cases are easily searchable by anything you can remember about them, even if it’s just “I know I saw this thing last week and it was assigned to Bob”, Manuscript can help you find what you’re looking for.
Your tools can talk to each other. Let’s face it, a lot of project management tools are trying to up-sell you on their chat platform or their productivity suite. Manuscript works with the stuff your team already likes, like Slack or GitHub, and these integrations are free, customizable and open source, instead of being complicated, expensive and out of date. Since Manuscript has a great API, as well as example integrations that are easily remixable on Glitch, it’s simple to connect it to any proprietary tools you’re using, too.
Manuscript works with all the tools your team already uses
Get started!
We’ve got a lot more to say about Manuscript coming soon, including a sneak peek into how Manuscript doesn’t just track tasks, it helps your team learn to craft better software — whether that’s making things more accessible, more secure, or just more thoughtful.
But you don’t have to wait for us to tell you the story: Sign up for Manuscript for free and find out for yourself. (And if you’re already a FogBugz user? We’ll be upgrading you to Manuscript for free — we’ll be in touch with all the details.)
Introducing Manuscript was originally published in Fog Creek Software on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Mark Siegal @marksiegal
James Walker @walkah