CoWeb(SWiki) 的所有使用者角色

CoWeb(SWiki) 是喬治亞理工學院在1997年便著手開發的一套教育 wiki 系統,它和傳統 wiki 最大的不同是在於,它就是以教學用途為主,因此, Mark Guzdial 在開發系統初期就特別注意到所有 SWiki 使用者的角色扮演問題。我們來看一看有哪些:

1) Authors: 增加、編纂、修訂、鏈結不同內容和頁面
2) Purposeful agents: 打手,作用為引介正確 wiki 語法和活絡頁面協同撰寫行為
3) Central users: 負責將頁面空間整理(編排版面)
4) Peripheral users: 多數參與的學生或是外來的瀏覽人仕
5) Site designers: 擔崗網頁設計的工作
6) Developers: 程式發展
7) Administrators: 大頭目
8) Support Stuff: 『課服』人員、教育訓練

在進行 e-Learning 教育平台開發和運用時, “role support" 可能是必須要一併考慮的面向。

要無障礙還是要親和力?

首先是來自 Jedi 的消息。今日下午的『無障礙網路空間研討會』於國立臺灣師範大學的教育大樓二樓演講廳舉行。我因未與會,無法作任何判斷,但從行政院研考會主責之『無障礙網路空間服務網』內容架構看來,顯然還需要用功一下。 延伸思考。淡江大學盲生資源中心之網頁標題為『無障礙全球資訊網』。很巧,與前者皆以『無障礙』訴求為出發點。不過,淡江大學的首頁mozilla 是看不到的。真正的頁面在這裡

看看另外一邊的發展。Mark PilgrimDive Into Accessibility 之中譯為『深入親和力』,是一本小冊子,開宗明義就說:

這本書回答了兩個問題:第一個問題是「為什麼該讓我的網站更具親和力?」如果你沒有網站的話,你並不是這本書的對象。第二個問題是「該如何讓我的網站更具親和力?」如果你沒有被第一個問題的回答所說服,那麼你也不會對第二個問題感興趣。

好的,先不管什麼無障礙還是親和力。從文字詞意給觀眾的第一印象來看,兩個 links 一個是『無障礙資訊』,另外是『深入親和力』。你們會想要點哪一個?

推一個類似的規範標準時,主其事的譯者,必須要想到譯名『親和力』的問題。這一連串在 blog.elixus.org 的無障礙與親和力之討論文章,頗有值得借鏡之處。

雜想:Mark Pilgrim 之前的那禪宗八隻牛,不是隨便放上去的。Zen 影響他的 philosophy of accessibility 頗大。有趣的是,這個從東方過去的東西(zen),又被西方人再次運用了。"Movable Type(活字印刷)" 不也是畢昇為先嗎?手有藏寶而不知運納為用,惜哉。

一起比對網站:中華民國無障礙環境推廣協會 || Usability Week 2003 || 香港『網頁易用無障礙‧共享數碼新年代』研討會 || IBM Accessibilit Center

Six Personas Gathers

Copyright 2003 The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times

All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles Times

February 27, 2003 Thursday Home Edition

SECTION: Calendar Weekend; Part 5; Page 14; Calendar Desk

LENGTH: 625 words

HEADLINE: INTERNET;
Into the blog;
The digerati gather to discuss life as seen through their laptops.

BYLINE: Gendy Alimurung, Special to The Times

BODY:
The “Live From the Blogosphere!" confab is equal parts literary salon, cyberpunk press conference and geek cocktail party. And before the party is over, strangers who’ve traded secrets but know each other only by code names will have met in the flesh for the first time, and a young hacker possibly will have become a millionaire.

Six of the biggest personas in blogging have converged on the Electronic Orphanage, a small black box of a gallery in Chinatown, to deconstruct the blog. (Blogs, or Web logs, are online journals with entries running in reverse chronological order, the last appearing first.) Onstage, gray-haired Doc Searls, senior editor of Linux Journal, is the tribe’s sage. Mark Frauenfelder, founder of bOingbOing and Wired Online, is the pro: He was in an Apple commercial. Tony Pierce — “not an IT genius, not a professional writer" — is the everyman. Susannah Breslin, who orchestrated the event (with moderator Xeni Jardin and electronic arts collective Rhizome.org), is the lady holding the virtual whip. She runs the racy Reverse Cowgirl’s Blog. Evan Williams, the cute guy in the Blogger T-shirt, is the boy who built the blogging software. To the digerati, he’s “the Blogfather." If Williams is the blogger every other blogger wants to be, then Heather Havrilesky, the author of the Rabbit Blog who is brainy and sexy in the manner of Agent Scully, is the blogger everyone wants to be with.

By a quarter to 8, a crowd of a hundred or so has gathered. Attendees scribble not their names but their blog addresses onto sticky badges — “Hello My Name Is … http://www.lablogs.com." They tote laptops, cell phones and Palm Pilots with miniature screens that glow blue in the darkened room. The super six answer questions: Are blogs a threat to conventional journalism? How has the blog phenomenon evolved? How are blogs changing our culture?

“Live From the Blogosphere!" is unprecedented: It is the first time the alpha bloggers onstage have been in the same place at the same time. Though in blogger parlance, “place" is a hazy concept. “If I’d known I was having guests," Pierce quips as his blog scrolls up live onto the giant overhead screen, “I’d have spruced it up a bit."

The blogosphere moves fast. Speed is its nature. People blog about the event at the event. Seconds after questions are posed, they go public online through a WiFi wireless connection.

A contradictory mix of anonymity and intimacy is also part of the blogosphere’s nature. You can, for example, know what Havrilesky’s fourth grade teacher told her about the Apocalypse but never know what makes her laugh. You can, as one blogger confides, be a vixen in the blogosphere but a wallflower in person. In the spirit of intimacy, Searls confesses why the line to the bathroom was so long — he was in there blogging.

The panelists also discuss physical interaction. “This guy came up to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Boogah,’ " says Frauenfelder, gesturing toward a large fellow dressed in black. “I recognized him from my blog, but he didn’t tell me his real name." Says Pierce: “Mark was nerdier than I expected, while Evan was cooler. And Doc, I was surprised at how down to earth he was."

As the discussion draws to a close, Williams suddenly gets hot news. In lieu of an explanation, he shakily brings up his blog on the giant screen: “Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time," it reads. Pyra Labs is the company Williams founded. It makes the Blogger software. Google, of course, is Big Money. “Everyone imaginable will be doing it this year," he’d replied earlier to the question of what this technology will mean to the mainstream. Tonight, a community. Tomorrow, an empire. But for now, boot up and read about it on a blog.

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: CONNECTIONS: Attendees at “Live From the Blogosphere!" blogged away on their laptops even as they talked about the young art and science of blogging. Blogs, or Web logs, are online journals. PHOTOGRAPHER: Mark Frauenfelder

地雷 Blog?

什麼樣的議題在 blog 上討論,會讓人有如踩地雷的感覺?政治嗎?還是信仰?或是 Microsoft 大戰 Linux? 在中文 Blog 界談論這些有如地雷般的議題,是不是會『污染』這塊新興的網路淨土?還是促起集(個)體無(有)意識的筆戰對抗?

期盼有一天能看到中文界有類似 talkleft.com 之 blog, 或是 euronews 的媒體。

Euronews

關於國內電視新聞所呈現的種種亂象與可能的改進之道,早已是老生常談,筆者無意再炒冷飯。而常為國內一般論者,視為他山之石的對象者,不外乎是英國的BBC、日本的NHK及美國的CNN等國內第四台可收看到的頻道,筆者(吳志光)在此要介紹的是國內無法收看,惟一旦收看絕對令人印象深刻的歐洲新聞網(EuroNews),這也是筆者個人心目中電視新聞的典範。

今日快寫

快寫這兩日在做的事:

1) 報名今年度大運會乙組田徑,參加項目為 100/200m
2) 開始使用 wiki. 目前裝好三個 clones, 正在加緊熟悉中,分別是 UseMod, WakkaWiki 還有 Chiqchaq Wiki, and Tavi‘s on the way. 主要是拿來當 knowledge base 使用,和 blogging 互輔互成. I will make very heavy use of wiki in the days to come
3) 與筆電奮鬥. 自己的 Hp Omniook 6100 電池完全無法續電,鍵盤也開始不聽話
4) 進行本學期的 LexisNexis Academic 資料庫教育訓練工作

疑問:Why Wiki is so unpopular in Taiwan?
疑問二:轉來轉去還是應該用 snipsnap?

建議續讀文章:Wiki/Wakka/Blog – 一点浅见 and Wiki of Trust

Muggle 麻瓜?

最近常聽到『麻瓜』一詞。為求慎見,我查了 wikipedia 上面的解釋

Muggle – term used in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series of books to refer to people with no magical abilities.

Interesting. 本意:不會魔法的人。

Magical abilities? Hmm….. 蠻可愛的一個詞。

Blog 成不成熟?

Blog 成不成熟,這大概不是我能回答的問題。

或許台灣剛接觸 blog 的 visitors, 會把 blog.elixus.org 的火車列表諸格,認為這大致就是 blog 目前的發展現況( Movable Type is the de facto?),或是, blog 就只能如此運用. Well, this is possible. 但以我一個非專職的 blogger 角度而言,我會建議看看主頁面右側的輪迴部落格。那裡有好一些發展成熟的例子。 舉例, 比如說 talkleft.com, iwalt.com, escobosa.com, 或是 Textism, 還有令人訝異的 GNUeconomy(yes, MT-powered).

目前 blog 的內容表現(are we talking about “content" or “content presentation"?)與內容分類(you mean taxonomy?)的瓶頸在哪裡?『不成熟』會不會是讓許多個人觀望的主要原因?

又黃牛了,本來要聊碧潭上游的故事。

能障‧人

Good morning! =)

相對於一般常說的身心障礙,上次跟 Jedi 在討論 disabled 議題時,突然想到『能障』一詞。這不是什麼機能障礙的簡寫,而是說我們是否容易『為己之所能而障』,卻常常忽視了一些不同領域中,非常基本的東西?比如說,運用科技的是誰?或是,知識管理的目標是 “enable knowledge creation, sharing, distribution, archiving, indexing, and…..", 可是到底是誰在『創造』知識的?

這是否包含了『人』這個因素?

建議閱讀 Ilya 的一篇文章

Blog is Conversation

OK, 以兩句話作為本週 blog 的 ending. 1) Glenn Reynolds, instapundit.com 的擁有者(他是 University of Tennessee 的法律所教授), 在本月19日接受英國 The Guardian(London) 的訪問中談到:

Blogs are now so powerful that the media are playing catch up.

Hmm..

2) James Lileks說:

A column is a lecture. A weblog is a conversation.

Hmm…你們是怎麼想的?

星期六是週末,不談部落格。所以明早(午)起床,我們來聊聊河邊的故事吧!

Klog 的連結

除了 blog 之外,走 KM(Knowledge Management, 知識管理)路線的人,也早已將 blog 運用在 KM 的體系之內。比如說已經有中文修改版Snipsnap, 或是我們可以直接運用 Movable Type架一個小的 KM Network.

撰寫 Snipsnap 的兩個德國人對於 blog 在 KM 上的運用,特有興趣。因此他們在 snipsnap.org 上另外開了一頁 wiki討論頁面

Blogroots討論區裡我們也可以嗅到, Google 之所以買下 Pyra Labs 的原因或許是因為看好 blog 在 KM 的商業潛力。

Technology Transparency(1)

最近看了 Joi Ito 在 blog 上寫了:

So, I’ve been told again that my weblog is really hard to understand. (By a non-blogger). The person said that if I could make it easier to understand, it would have so much more value.

大意是說, Joi Ito 屢次被告知自己網誌的內容『非常地難了解』。若能"在資訊的架構上(information architecture, 我說的)"多作一些處理,那他所寫的東西,絕對能夠在沒有使用 blog 的讀者之間,創造出更大的價值…

On the other hand, my blogging community network seems to be expanding and I generally get positive feedback. So what’s one to do?

但 Ito 又自問,為什麼他在英文氾濫的 blogsphere(部落格圈, 又是我說的)當中,又能夠漸漸獲得日益重要的影響力與許多正向的回饋呢?

這也許是牽涉到 technology transparency(技術透明度) 的問題. Schee 在寫了兩個月的 blog 之後,也開始懷疑自己所運用的語彙,是不是常常過於『想當然爾』,沒有考慮到接受資訊的另外一方?或是振筆沙沙急書之際,就忘了 transparency 這檔子事?

『賽得飛(Segway)』飛的起來嗎?

Segway 公司於 2001 年推出第一台 Segway, 經改良後,趕在於去年的聖誕購物高峰期間,在美國的 Amazon 推出 HT(Human Transporter) 新款式,接受預定。這個號稱會改變人類行動方式的機構,目前的銷售狀況是如何呢?

Segway Human Transporter gathers dust alongside lawn mower for which it was once mistaken: Dean Kamen’s Segway Human Transporter, unveiled amid much hoo-ha in December 2001, was supposed to change the world. But the device has gained little traction in the consumer space, despite the fact that they’re readily available on Amazon. Indeed, Segway officials tell Wired that their factory sat largely idle last year….
from John Paczkowski

我擔心的是我的雙腳會退化,我的脊椎會側彎,還有接近五千美金的開銷。五千美金足夠買一台不錯的 scooter 了。誰有電動(或是吃油)滑板車的照片?

傳統的魅力,由部落格開始

從今年一月開始,我就在想台灣的 blogger 族群可以如何走向世界的舞台。

正體中文是一個世界級的資產,台灣的網路環境(與中國比較)也是另外一個利多(so we have two here)。然後呢?當時我正在嘗試用 photolog 和 gallery, 但覺得那些對瀏覽者而言,太過複雜(其實是我搞不定),所以開始直接用 blog, 把 Taiwan 過年的照片壓縮成小圖,放在 blog 中,並且作一個 Chinese New Year 的新年專輯,常時放在主頁面右側,希望吸引國外的 blogger.

目前似乎有那麼一點點迴響了… 首先是,一個月前有人在 google 鍵入 “chinese new year blog" 直接找到這裡(現在的排名我已經不知道掉到哪裡啦),後來又有一位現居德國的 blogger 說,她非常喜歡這一個新年的專輯。 繼續翻查一月份的網站流量統計,發現不少訪客是來自全世界的其他地方。Why? Because google loves blogs.

這是一個方向,一個將部落格轉變為文化資產,讓世界各地的 blogger 更了解台灣的途徑。我還有其他目前在實作的小想法,比如說 meta site submission 的問題。另外可以確定的是,我會仿照 Joi Ito 的模式,架一個跟這裡中英文同步的 blog.

接下來要怎麼走呢?

最後還是要說聲,謝謝 Heiko Hebig(Thank you!).

Feeling Mortal

2001.08.23

感覺好累,好累,在我從碧潭渡船頭慢跑登坡回家的路上。

下半身推蹬的力量,完全不知道跑到哪裡去了。幾年前引以為傲的爆發力,現在只能拖著顢頇的腳步,左跨,右跨,兩吸一呼地搭配喘息。不,不是真的那麼慢,但我知道我慢了很多,我再也不能迅速彈走於跑道,如雷閃電騰,盡情在空間中劃出驚人的韻律線條… 跑步首重寓意於腰,腰為發起,四肢再運合, but I feel I was cut from my waist.

腰與下半身連繫似乎斷掉了,那一條貫穿 torso 的氣,若非已杳,也然游絲。你感覺雙腳不太聽你的使喚,記憶中的空間與速度體驗的認知鑿痕,與當下所經驗者相較,無法吻合。

It’s very strange. The gap is created between my cognition and what my body actually feels right now. 有點類似手掌被砍斷,但你還是可以感覺到它的存在,它的痛,與它的哀嚎。You still think you could make that sensational projection into the air, but you lag far swampy behind.

Being mortal.

亞洲與大洋洲主要平面傳媒對於 “blog” 的態度

上週,主要的亞洲與大洋洲平面傳播媒體,可能只有兩家在 headline(標題) 中提到 “blog":

1. The Age (Melbourne), February 13, 2003 Thursday, Green Guide; Livewire; Pg. 3, 312 words, Blogon, Jenny Sinclair

2. The Southland Times (New Zealand), February 13, 2003, Thursday, FEATURES; OPINION;, Pg. 13;, Online, 674 words, The phenomenon that is ‘blogging’, HARDY Glynn

如果將觀察的時間範圍提早到今日起的上個月內,那可以再加三份新聞來源…

3. The Age (Melbourne), February 6, 2003 Thursday, Green Guide; Livewire; Pg. 3, 553 words, BLOGON, Jenny Sinclair

4. ABIX: Australasian Business Intelligence, February 4, 2003 Tuesday, Pg. 36-40, 112 words, Blog on – the world of online diaries, Kevin Patrick

5. The Age (Melbourne), January 30, 2003 Thursday, Green Guide; Livewire; Pg. 3, 475 words, BLOGON, Jenny Sinclair

雖然 “blog" 一字在亞洲各語文間,或許有不同的譯名(如台灣的『部落格』或中國的『博客』),但能見度如此之低,這會是什麼原因所造成的?是這股 blogging 的風潮威脅到亞洲各傳統平面傳媒的『權威性』所致?

英國的兩大新聞來源在今日報導了 Google 收購 Pyra Labs 的消息:

1. Financial Times (London), February 18, 2003, Tuesday, COMPANIES & FINANCE THE AMERICAS;, Pg. 18, 265 words, Google buys up blogger pioneers NEWS DIGEST, By RICHARD WATERS, SAN FRANCISCO

2. The Guardian (London), February 18, 2003, Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 19, 287 words, Powerful pairing: A match made in bloggersphere heaven

非英語系國家在 blog 的發展上,有什麼別於英語系國家的特性?Ricebowl Journals 嘗試蒐錄部落格,並提供使用者登記自身國籍和現居地。除了這個還可稱為 meta site 的 community 之外, 位在台灣的 blog.elixus.org, 是否有機會引領部分潮流,創造新的 blogging sphere? 天充文化的倒閉(from zonble.idv.st),是否為 the creative commons(具有創意的公眾們) 指出另一個出發點?