Salesman, Salesman... Why don't you sell me something...

Multiply's being annoying again. I tried posting a link to a Multiply.com "photo album" on my Facebook account. Multiply placed a misleading advert in my post as a subtitle.

Here's the back story.

Brian Kelly's been hosting an off and on discussion about the use of "walled gardens" like Facebook over on his UK Web Focus (most recently here and here). "Walled gardens" refers to internet services which require users to join up and/or log-in before they can access hosted content. So, for example, some content on users' Facebook accounts is accessible only to viewers/readers who are signed into their own Fb accounts.

Brian is an advocate of creative problem solving and making things work. He suggested a work-around which would allow users to harness Fb's tremendous networking capabilities while still providing maximum access to content: host the content elsewhere, and then provide a link or feed into Fb.

I decided to try it out. I created a 20 picture photo display ("album") on Multiply, and then, instead of posting the same 20 pictures to Fb, I simply posted the link.

Here's the result:



As you can see, Multiply is offering to sell "a beautiful photo calendar" incorporating my photos: this in a blue, clickable (hot-linked) subtitle inserted without my consent or involvement.

Now, in fact, they probably wouldn't sell you a "Wendell's Beaver Pond Pictures" calendar. At least, I hope not. The reason I think this has to do with Multiply's somewhat complicated services structure.

Multiply has two categories of users: paying or "premium" users and freeloaders like me. They allow premium users higher quality pictures which, when downloaded, make better quality prints. They also allow users - all users, as far as I can see - to purchase specialty products like calendars making use of premium users' high quality prints. As a freeloader I'm only allowed poor quality pictures, and so I can't offer high quality downloads.

Now, if I choose, I can "upgrade", paying Multiply to host high quality pics on my site. And you could pay Multiply to download these, or maybe buy "a beautiful photo calendar" featuring them. In any case, Multiply gets paid twice: once by me and once by you. Needless to say, you and I don't get paid at all.

As part of this fantasy world, each time I upload pics to Multiply, I'm presented with the check-box option to "Allow premium users to download high quality prints." As I've said, checking that box does no good, because I don't have the necessary premium account. Still, the box is always there, and I always uncheck it (the default is "checked") because otherwise Multiply's offer to sell these photos always appears at the bottom of my album page.

So, to sum up: a) I didn't check the box allowing premium users to download or buy prints, calendars and whatnot; and b) I'm not a premium user, so there are no high quality prints to be had on my site. Yet, there was that ad inserted as a subtitle in my Fb post.

Multiply's Terms of Service (like most other such sites) spells out their rights to re-package and/or cash in on any content I post:

You retain all ownership rights in your Member Content. However, by posting Content to the Web site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Multiply (and its successors) an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, distribute and to prepare derivative works of such Content in connection with the Website and the Service, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

The ToS do not give Multiply the "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license" to scam my Fb contacts by claiming there are calendars and such to be had featuring my photos. Nor to imply that I was consenting to, or even advocating, such a sale.

This is the same... well, "smarmy" really... behaviour I've posted about thrice before (here, here and here). It's the behaviour that warned me off from setting up any more learners or friends on Multiply.

I understand that there's no free lunch. The web isn't really so much a "cloud" as a series of privately owned parking lots. I don't begrudge Multiply making money off my content. But they've crossed a line here. By putting their ad (for content that doesn't exist) in my post title, they've misrepresented me and interfered with how I want to represent myself on another website.

So, the search goes on. I still want a non-Facebook, real-world social networking site where learners I and can connect. Multiply's too scammy. Yahoo's lost at sea. This spring, I guess, I need to take another look at Orkut.

By the way, I got around today's challenge by posting a "note" on Fb containing nothing but an invitation (written by me, thanks) and the link to the my multiply photo album.

But, you know... It's just all so Herb Tarlek out there!

The Christmas Lay-Offs

The last week before Christmas.

I went to the corner store and spent $20 on cheap decorations so the learners could help me decorate. We did up a blue and gold theme this year, with a fir wreath and home-made snowflakes.



We took time during our last class to play Upwords and S'math (a scrabble-type math game), eat chocolates and drink water. (Not fancy, but the company was lovely.)


Some of us traded cards. (I'd brought three packs of Christmas cards in a couple of weeks back so I could help anyone who wasn't sure about spelling or addressing or any of those other conventions.)


We listened to Christmas music streamed in from multiply.com. (From some guy's site in Hungary. I thanked him in English. He replied in Hungarian. It was all a bit mysterious, but the music was nice.)

Then we said our goodbyes for the holidays.

And then I picked up my lay-off slip and went home.




(Stopping by the Credit Union on the way to see how much I had in savings to get me through the next four weeks.)



*snivel*

Dave, I Have Updates for You. Dave?

After yesterday's excitement, I decided to ensure my computer software was updated. That meant visiting MS's Windows Update site, and also - label me a team player - turning on the automatic update function in my XP security center.

This morning, Windows has been relentless in pressing me to install automatically downloaded updates which, each time, fail miserably to install.


Worse, each time they fail, I'm called over to my PC to click "ok" or "cancel" or some such "yes I am listening to you" button.



Working through the custom install system, declining the failed updates, and clicking the "don't remind me again" box does nothing. Automatic Updates cheerfully reaches elsewhere and "discovers" another dozen or so crucial updates.


The program apparently has nothing better to do than constantly download MS Office 2003 updates, and then demand my acknowledgment when they fail to install.

This, dear friends, is why I keep automatic updates Turned Off.

Anyway, I'm not just complaining for complaining's sake here.

Well, I am.

But I'm also thinking about this stuff because over on the Alphaplus blog they're highlighting a report called "The Digital Divide, Computer Use, Basic Skills and Employment" on the value of including computer or digital literacy within basic adult upgrading.

The study shows that lack of access to and low levels of use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) combined with literacy need can have a negative effect on employability . The study suggests that literacy and basic skills provision alone does not appear to enhance employability but that programming that combines building digital skills and basic skills is more likely to lead to enhanced employment opportunities.

I'm a believer in this. Just last night I helped another learner create a Gmail account, set up a Facebook account (with proper security settings), and log into Yahoo long enough to create an avatar to use until she's more comfortable putting pictures of herself online.

Good for her, I say. Good for me. And, good for Google and Facebook and even them crazy Yahoo folks.

But what's she to do if and when she catches this MS Windows Automatic Update Virus? How are learners with lower reading levels to defend themselves against XP's self-generated spam?

Yes, I believe computer literacy is an important part of employability. Increasingly, in this province, where so many services are only available via the web, digital literacy is a life skill. But I also believe PCs are poorly designed machines that employ poorly configured software. Core programs typically stress hardware, conflict with one another and promise more than they deliver.

(Sortta brings back fond memories of Win95, doesn't it.)

If we are going to provide "programming that combines building digital skills and basic skills," we need to do so in a way that deals with the reality of poor computer performance, of web insecurities, and of the persistent gap between software promises and hard experience.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there are updates awaiting my gentle attention.

Antivirus 360 - ha!

Yahoo was having troubles this morning. My email wouldn't come up. Curious, I did a quick advanced-search on Google, looking for posts put up in the past 24 hrs. I tabbed open a couple of sites and then whoops! Firefox went all small and snaky. The above pictured warning window popped up.

Antivirus 360 to the rescue? Not likely!

I wouldn't have been fooled in any case, but it just so happens Bill Mullins was on about this very pest over on his Tech Thoughts weblog. Bill provides my main go-to site for web security news. I probably check in a couple of times a month, just to stay current. (And, yes, I'm saying you should to.)

So, I pressed alt-ctrl-dlt to close Firefox, and immediately ran a Spybot S&D scan. Then I cleaned my cookies and temp files (from everywhere - not just Firefox), ran an AVG system scan over likely directories, and re-booted.

That was probably overkill, and the virus probably hadn't gotten beyond the browser cache yet. Still, I've seen this virus up close on two other PCs, and I don't want it on mine.

By the way, you can see by the similarities in the two pics below why some trusting souls might get fooled by this malware. The top one comes from the winXP Security Centre located on everybody's hard-drive. the other one comes from... well, Bill says Russia.





Anyway, while one PC was getting cleaned, I retraced my steps on another to see if I could find where it came from. Here's the culprit.


I don't know who Mr. 7.gppwgy is, but I'll not be calling on him again anytime soon.

And, if I can keep my wits about me, I'll make sure he never comes calling on me.

Descartes' Dilemma

Descartes' dilemma was that it might all be an illusion.

What's the point of the scientific method, he said, if our senses might be overcome by illness or wishful thinking or some science-chick's really great looks? It was all good and fine for Rog or Frankie Bacon to ramble on about scientia experimentalis. But what if we can't believe our experiments because we can't believe our eyes?

Descartes decided to get at the truth by discarding any doubtable facts, including those presented by our frail human senses. The problem, it turned out, was that all the facts were doubtable. The only thing he couldn't doubt was that there was some "he" in existence doing the doubting.

This was what led him to his famous cogito ergo sum meaning "I think, therefore I am".

In another time and place, he might have stopped there, but this was 17th century Europe; definitely not the time and place to publicly express doubts. So, smart man that he was, Descartes played some games with words and pretended that he could also prove God's existence and goodness, as well as the right of powerful men to own property, collect taxes and generally run the world in whatever way they wished. ("I think, therefore I survive?")

Descartes chickened out on skepticism (wisely), and Western thought and culture pottered on until it reached the point in the 1980s when I read - in a university textbook no less! - that Descartes had come up with his fabulous theory while living in a stove. Living in a stove! Turns out, that was just a bad translation. But the fact of it, the fact that people could read this in a university and not laugh out loud, shows how far we are from embracing Descartes' notions of radical doubt.

Which may explain all the bunking and debunking and rebunking that passes for most science news these days.

One problem in the communication of uncertain science is that university research officers and journalists overwhelmingly define what's news in science as the release of a new scientific study. Everyone benefits from this negotiation of newsworthiness, as universities compete for prestige and future funding dollars while journalists file dramatic narratives on deadline.... [Yet] "true today, not true tomorrow" reporting on new health studies leads to the easy interpretation that something is wrong with the institution of science, rather than addressing a systematic bias in how research is communicated and then reported by journalists.

That's Matt Nisbet posting on Framing Science, part of the ScienceBlogs network.

It's a decent rejoinder to yet another "science news" story that's sure to twist lots of knickers. There are lots of versions out there. My current favourite is the story in today's Guardian, not least for its utter "We've been mislead, but now we know beyond any doubt" tone.




The article asks commenters to recall other "myths debunked." That yielded to some comments that suggest the paper's readers are a good deal more skeptical and light-hearted than its science columnist:

• The old chestnuts "smoking causes cancer" and "human activity is partly responsible for global warming" are always good for a laugh - who comes up with em I say?!

• Okay so let me get this straight -
1) A headless chicken will live on without a hangover, therefore decapitation is the only definite cure for one.
2) Lightening causes global warming (this makes sense).
3) If you stand on the great wall of China, the only thing you can see is the moon.

"Finding the truth is difficult," wrote Ibn al-Haytham (writing in ancient Iraq and exploring scientific methods some 500 years before Descartes), "and the road to it is rough."

Tell me about it. It's like living in a stove.

P.s. More on journalists and bloggers (me!) having trouble with the facts This Winter's First Real Storm - Take 2.

The One and The Many

Geek and Poke poking gentle fun at Robert Scoble et al.

So, what would a "literacy field" version look like?

Yahoo? Are They Still Afloat?

This just in from that sinking-ship Yahoo!

Instead of going to a specific social networking page, social at Yahoo! means taking your activity and identity with you. This means that when you leave a comment on Buzz, Local, or even third party sites (after you grant them permission, of course), your activity can be shared on many of the Yahoo! “starting points”, such as Mail or the home page.

So, there it is. Yahoo is preparing to sink it's last two reliable and popular products - Y!Mail and Y!Messenger - in it's quest to become Facebook II.

A few weeks ago, I read that Jerry Yang, one of Yahoo's founders, had stepped down as CEO. Tech news stories noted that he was still guiding the company, and that Yahoo had not yet turned itself around. What surprised me most about this story was how little I cared. Once upon a time, what Yahoo did mattered to me. But this past year, Yahoo has slid off my mental list of dependable or exciting tool providers. This Fall I've helped two learners set up email accounts. In both cases we went with Gmail instead of Yahoo. This was a change for me - I suspect a permanent one. Yahoo is just too flaky for me to recommend it to learners.

Out in the wider world, Yahoo's troubles mostly have to do with a declining stock price (coming after Microsoft's springtime bid for the company was turned down for being too low). There was also a bungled flirtation with Google over ad placement and revenue sharing. And then the U.S. economic contraction came.

Among Yahoo's users, frustrations have piled up in recent months over the abandonment of Y!Mash, and the creation of a new Y! user-profile page that (so far) adds nothing but newness. Continued tinkering with MyBlogLog designed to move it ever closer to the Facebook model, changes to Flickr, and a lack of movement on Y!360 (where a year ago site maintenance was halted on the promise of something new and better in 2008) have also been sources of discontent.

I haven't seen signs of Yahoo users rushing to close their Y!mail accounts or drop Y!messenger. In fact, the number of complaints Y! gets every time it fouls another established tool - there have been several thousand posted this year on just the Y!Profiles and Y!360 product blogs - suggest a large, angry but oddly loyal user-base. Unless they get pushed overboard, as was the case with those Y!360 users who swam ashore at multiply.com, Yahoo'rs seem remarkably committed to the company. Still, I suspect, fewer new users are going to come aboard such a publicly unseaworthy ship.

Like me, they're more apt to take a second look at MSN products or some of the junior social networking systems like multiply, ning or orkut. Like me, they're going to look to Google as the better source of reliable free email and blogging or photo-sharing tools. Like me, they're going to greet news of more "social at Yahoo" tinkering with a shrug.

And when the tinkering finally makes Y!mail unreadable - as it surely will - I'll be done with Yahoo altogether. Though, by then, I might not even notice.

Breathe

An economic stimulus package for adult literacy? That's what the folks at ProLiteracy are demanding of the U.S. Congress. They're running a letter writing campaign and such.

Neat idea, but.... Well, I wouldn't hold my breath.

In related news, adult literacy programming in New York City has seen its funding dry up; partly because it was tied to endowments that played the stock markets, partly because private, state and federal money is being spent on other priorities. See, for example the NY DailyNews story Budget cuts spell trouble for New York City literacy groups

Skyrocketing unemployment has city high school dropouts scrambling to get diplomas - only to find massive waiting lists for classes and cuts to vital literacy programs.

About 28% of city residents who are 25 years and older don't have high school diplomas, Census data show, and they are among the most vulnerable victims of the economic meltdown.

"We're all collectively holding our breath, hoping that we can make it through the fiscal year," said Elyse Barbell, executive director of the Literacy Assistance Center.

Literacy Partners, which serves 2,000 students annually, is expecting its usual half-million dollars in foundation money to drop by half.

Hmmm... More breath-holding. I notice that among those taking a hit is Literacy Partners, which is an outfit that did everything right in terms of partnering with business and government, being transparent and accountable, earning national accreditation, yada, yada, yada. None of that saved them when the economy turned sour. We're told "City-run programs have fared better" for now, but "planned 5% budget cuts to city agencies next year, combined with the massive state budget deficit, could force tough choices."

Tough choices. There's a euphemism for you. Tough choices. Tough on who, exactly?

Forget those buzzwords "accountable" and "accredited". Funding for literacy is an optional strand of social spending that will always be cut off when the economy contracts and private profits are threatened. Funding for pure adult literacy, as opposed to GED prep classes or workplace essential skills and other publicly-subsidized employee training packages, is even more whimsical.

Personally, I think the economy is going to get worse (we haven't even started dealing with global warming - this "crisis" was just a fall in housing prices), and there probably isn't going to be some kind of restorative salvation from a national or provincial capital, or the OECD, or outer space.

But that doesn't mean we should all give up and go home.

There's an Alice Walker (I think) quote that goes something like this "We need to become the people we are waiting for." My colleague was at a meeting a while back where representatives from various literacy groups were talking about shutting their doors because of the dearth of funding. She thought it would be rude to point out that we do literacy work for months at a stretch without funding.

It's not ideal. It's not "right" or "just" or "fair". It's just what we do.

Instead of holding our breath, we breathe. And then we do whatever we have to do to build the world we want to live in.

Fight for more funding, by all means. But don't hold your breath.

And don't let the bastards grind you down.

Big Science con't

I was forced to repeat the experiment for yet another non-believer.

The scribblings behind me are the more polished results of a long afternoon search for acceleration. I was struck, yet again, by how difficult science and math concepts can be before you "get it". We - the collective we - do a really bad job of translating and communicating even basic science.

Which, I suppose, explains why I'm up on a stool showing twenty-somethings that, no, heavy objects don't fall faster than light objects.

By the way, I'm no scientist or mathematician, and I wouldn't put too much faith in my version of how formulas for acceleration work. Thank goodness for books like this:

Adult / Youth Fantasy Titles

I've a reluctant reader among my adult learners (don't we all). But she burned through the first eight volumes of the graphic soap-opera called Bone. Now she and I are waiting for the ninth and final volume, due out in January.

I don't know if she'd be interested in the Twilight series. Well, I never know what people might be interested in when it comes to those fantasy-related youth / adult crossover titles.

[Edit: I have to throw in that famous quote from Albert Einstein: "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." There's a truth in that for anyone scaffolding imaginative learning. But - and this is a huge 'but' - Saturday morning cartoons are still no substitute for science and math. Note the posts immediately above and below this one.]

For younger readers, the Independent (UK) is recommending Dominic Barker's Blart: The Boy Who Didn't Want To Save the World. They also recommend Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go), Jonathanv Stroud (the Bartimaeus trilogy), and Catherine Fisher (Sapphique). I don't know any of those books, and am not likely to. The write-ups sounded... young.

But then, my reading tastes remain quietly old. Lately, I've been scouring used bookstores for anything written by Ray Bradbury; not least his sci-fi planetary stories that so describe our weather of late:

The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shoved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men's hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped.

Meanwhile, in our community library, the Harry Potter books (once so anticipated, see curbside) sit growing dusty on the shelves. We've stopped taking them around in the bookwagon (though, of course, we must have High School Musical and Goosebumps - groan).

Big Science

We were doing some math. He was figuring out some two-step word problems in geometry. I was trying to recreate the formula for acceleration.

"Twenty-seven feet per second," I says aloud.

"What's twenty-seven feet per second?"

"The speed things fall. But maybe only for the first twenty-seven feet."

"Doesn't it depend on how heavy they are?"

"Oh, no. Big rocks and small rocks fall at the same speed."

"No way!"

"Yes way!"

"No!"

Seeing that he wasn't going to by moved by mere assertions of fact, I gathered a tennis ball and the small plastic cap from a water bottle.

"Different weights, right?" I asked, handing them to him. He agreed, and I took them back.

I closed our classroom door, so as not to disturb the neighbours. Then I climbed up on to a two-foot stool, and dropped the objects from a height of about nine feet. Thwack! They hit the floor at the same time (presumably one-third of a second after I released them).

"What!?!" He was amazed. "How... So, everything falls the same no matter how heavy it is?"

"Weight doesn't matter," I said, sounding very professorial, "but shape does."

And knowing his empiricistic tendencies, I demonstrated what happened when you drop a tennis ball and a sheet of paper at the same time.

"Ahhh...", he said. "Well. I learned something today."

Then we went back to our maths.

A few minutes later, he observed, "You can't really trust the science in Saturday morning cartoons."

No, you can't.

They're more about context, inference and main idea.

Knitting Therapy

I was puzzled to see an article in the Independent (UK) displaying the ten best men's scarves. I was puzzled because mine wasn't there. That seemed like an odd oversight. The Independent is a pretty good newspaper. Don't they know I have the best scarf in the world?

My scarf is 80% wool and hand knitted. The colour is a conservative blue that goes equally well with my red and black checked hunting coat, my azure blue parka, and my black leather jacket. It's long enough for double-wrapping, but not so long that it drags on the wet floor when I'm untying my snow boots. And yesterday, it worked with my hat to keep me happy, safe and warm even when the wind chill forced temperatures down to minus 24 c.

My good friend who knitted the hat and scarf also runs a "knitting therapy" group on Monday mornings. She's a Choice Theory (Rt/Ct) counselor, adult literacy specialist, and a bunch of other things - besides being an avid knitter. I don't really know what goes on in her group. I'm not there. (I encouraged one of my adult learners join, with wonderful results.) I guess they sit and knit and talk. I do see and hear about the fun and funky scarves and mittens, hats and dish-cloths they produce. I also see the positive impact knitting has on people's mental and physical health.

Google associates "Knitting Therapy" most closely with Betsan Corkhill (Sticklinks) who may be from the U.K. I lost patience trying to navigate her site, which I found long on enthusiasm and commercials, and short on basic info. A better short read is this U.K. hand-knitting site (with a dedicated therapy page). Closer to home is Karen Zila Hayes' Knit Magic, part of the Brainwaves School of Creative Arts in Toronto, Canada.

I don't know if my friend Cheryl heard of any of these people, or if she just thought up knitting therapy on her own. I'll find out because we're going to have to write it up sometime soon.

Anyway, we were talking about the group last night. She said they women were sharing how knitting at home helped them get through the day or week. She said, "I talked about how, when I'm working, sometimes I just stop and knit for a little while. Then, when I go back to it, whatever I'm working on seems a little clearer. We all agreed that knitting gives your brain a break from things. It's great."

It sounds great. Women together, talking, healing, learning a skill and craft they can practice at home - maybe even make a little money from.

Who knows? Eventually, they may learn to knit the best scarves in the world.

Around the World in 80 Minutes

The sun never sets on the English language.

Which may be unfortunate. But, in any case, a learner and I used it as an excuse to search for online English-language newspapers from around the world. We lamented the violence and poverty. We remarked upon the architecture and odd looking animals. We read weather forecasts with envious eyes. Then we flagged each newspaper location on the big wall map in our classroom.

The whole trip took about eighty minutes, spread out over two classes.

Was it geography? Computer literacy? Blended learning? The acquisition of crucial background knowledge?

I dunno. We just thought it was fun.

Think Pop

So, um. Yeah.

Well, I never did get back to that "important and useful books" widget on account of how I found out about Grooveshark.com.

That's the cowbell-ugly widget over in the sidebar that plays music - streams it in, actually, all free and legal like. It can be re-sized and re-coloured.

The only hitch - besides the need for a rigorous internet connection and updated flash-shockwave stuff - is that the Grooveshark site itself is well nigh impossible to navigate. That's why I'm not including a link, though you can get there, sorta, from the widget itself. (Thank goodness for browser history buttons and bookmarks!)

Also, you can only make one multi-song and one single-song widget per account (email address).



Obviously, there's no place for some kind of pop-ridden tune-widget on a sober-minded adult literacy blog like this.

But a Laurie Anderson widget. Now that's liticious.