iPhone geo-data

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

I have been playing around with data available from the iPhone (and also separately visualizing Map data).

I came across a project, iPhoneTracker which was done to show iPhone users the kind of data that the iPhone collects about a users travel and whereabouts. I downloaded the app and ran it. Looks like about a complete history since I activated the phone… The interesting thing for me was that this app did not collect the data from my phone directly but rather from my computer.

iPhone location history from my iPhone

Associations with Quotes about the Bible

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

Becky and I were looking for some notable quotes about Bible translation and the importance of the Bible for our website – hughandbecky.org I was visiting WycliffeUSA’s website and I noticed a quote from Bishop Desmond Tutu.

If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There’s nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.

—Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Quote by Desmond Tutu on Wycliffe.org

I wasn’t quite sure who this fellow was – I mean he could have been Desmond from Lost for all I knew. But alas no, he was Desmond Tutu. A really influential activist who is generally well respected among world leaders.

But the thing with quotes is that they can mean what every the quoter wants them to mean when they are removed from their original context. In the context of the WycliffeUSA’s page where this quote was found, it makes sense as it is positioned as an appeal to people who might be interested in giving to Wycliffe through the Federal Government’s matching donation program.

However, I wonder does it make sense to use the quote at all? Here is the reason – Does using the quote in some way put the organization WycliffeUSA in a position where it equally is endorsing Desmond Tutu? This is an interesting situation given the reported position that Desmond Tutu, also a world recognized church elder, has on homosexuality. (Specifically, Desmond Tutu is pro gay rights by having an anti-discrimination of gays position, granted these two points of view not be the same thing depending on where in the world one is viewing the situation from and what the social/cultural attitudes are surrounding LGBT issues in the ego society.) The interesting position is that WycliffeUSA takes an anti-LGBT postion, as many christian conservative organizations do.

The question of inference I think is one where perhaps Desmond Tutu is a better diplomat and politician than conservative christian Bible expositor (as others from South Africa point out).

But in terms of orignal context, it is still interesting that WycliffeUSA, wants to be known by this quote, because it was not a reflection directly of or on them – the only connection is, well the Bible.

Some significant dates in social communication

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

Over the last few days I have been considering some of the impacts on the way (chosen mediums) people use to communicate. So I put together on a timeline. Continue reading →

One choice, two lists

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

I have been listing a bunch of stuff on Craig’s list this week. I have been fascinated by the screen below.

Should we just have a choice to list as owner or list as dealer?

Why is the list really long and include two apparent sub-categories for each category? Why not ask the question: Is the lister a dealer or an owner? Then ask the lister what category they are going to list the item in?

DOIs and URLs same or different?

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

A document’s DOI (http://www.doi.org/ or on Wikipedia under Digital Object Identifier) is an important part of the citation of a document ^[1] Chelsea Lee. 21 September 2009. A DOI Primer. APA Style Blog. http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/09/a-doi-primer.html [Accessed: 10 April 2011] [Link] . Many style sheets allow for just the DOI of a paper as the citation. Because DOIs are unique they can act as URIs which are resolvable and look like URLs ^[2] Dion Almaer. 23 November 2007. URI vs. URL: What’s the difference?. Ajaxian. http://ajaxian.com/archives/uri-vs-url-whats-the-difference. [Accessed: 10 April 2012] [Link] . However, a DOI is different than a URL for where a digital object might be located. It might be well argued that a DOI should be tracked in the metadata schemes of archives which collect language and linguistic data.
Continue reading →

References[+]

References
↑1	Chelsea Lee. 21 September 2009. A DOI Primer. APA Style Blog. http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/09/a-doi-primer.html [Accessed: 10 April 2011] [Link]
↑2	Dion Almaer. 23 November 2007. URI vs. URL: What’s the difference?. Ajaxian. http://ajaxian.com/archives/uri-vs-url-whats-the-difference. [Accessed: 10 April 2012] [Link]

Innovation and Missions

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

My father-in-law, who is in his 80’s started reading the recently released biography on Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson ^[1] Walter Isaacson. 2011. Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster. 656 pages. .

Steve Jobs - by Walter Isaacson - Image used from BigScreenAnimation

Continue reading →

References[+]

References
↑1	Walter Isaacson. 2011. Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster. 656 pages.

Presenting Audio and Video on the Web

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

I have been trying to find out what is the best way to present audio on the web. This led me to look at how to present video too. I do not have any conclusions on the matter. But I have been looking at HTML5 and not using javascript or Flash. Because my platform (CMS) is WordPress, Continue reading →

Jed’s Visit

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

This past week my brother Jedediah came and visited. It was a motivating visit. We got a bunch of things done. Did a lot of visiting. Luckily I had it all planned out…

Planning for Jed to come

Continue reading →

The Social Benefits of a Public Roadmap

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

Roadmap for development for the Advanced Custom Fields plugin for WordPress.

I am working with a team to redo a rather large NGOIt is worth noting that there are different flavors of NGOs. This particular NGO is also a non-profit charity and also a volunteer organization (most of the staff are volunteers). Not all NGOs fit this category, though I do make some assumptions in this post as if all NGOs do fit this characterization. website (both the NGO and the website are large). One of the questions through the process is How do we “dismantle a huge 1995 era website” and replace it with a “modern CMS system”? The new CMS of course is going to have to be phased in as its detailed features are built out. The social challenge is that if something which is not meeting the organizational (NGO’s) needs is replaced with something else which also appears to not meet the organizational needs then the people within the organization (the spectators, not the people directly involved with the website project) have a tendency to think that the newly launched product is a flop. The bottom line is that there is a general loss of confidence in the development and implementation team. In my particular context this often means that when people loose confidence in a development or implementation team that they stop expecting great things and start looking for other “more suitable” solutions. One way to combat this loss of confidence is to address the the people (and their concerns) who are watching the phased role-out. One part of that engagement strategy can be to do use a public Roadmap. Continue reading →

Providing Corporate Logos to Partners

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Hugh Paterson III

As I work with a particular NGO, one of the interesting questions which has come up in discussions is whither or not the NGO should put their logo on their web page with instructions for proper use. There were two main questions asked:

Is this something which needs to be on the web publicly (as apposed to privately on an intranet)?
Is this even a common practice?

I am listing a few use cases here to show some of the variety and breadth of the kinds of people who are sharing their logos and providing display and license guidelines to potential users of their logos.

I think there are two primary reasons for organizations to provide access to branding information in a public venue:

Help partners accurately visually display the offering organization’s brand.
Help staff have a visible, consistent and authoritative reference point when communicating with partners. Because this conversation with partners is about the partners displaying their affiliation with the NGO it is something which can be facilitated publicly.

I go through some of the use cases in the video below. The blog post in that video about teaching in Malaysia can be read here.

The use cases very with respect to the terms of use. For instance ManPower, a Human Resources company, completely restricts the use of its corporate logo from its website.

Manpower logo terms from section 10 on 26 October 2012

However, the IBM logo is text based and does not meet the threshold for copyright originalityThis information is what is provided on Wikipedia about the IBM icon used here.. However it is still a logo and covered under registered trade mark rules.

IBM Logo accessed through wikipedia.

Never-the-less IBM still wants people to use their logo in a respectful manner. To this end they have several pages dedicated to the various kinds of environments that their logos and trademarks might appear in.

Rules for the display of the IBM logo for IBM Business Partners from the IBM website.

Another organization with a rather popular logo among internal and external users is U.S. military. This would include logos like that of the U.S. Air Force. They also have specific guidelines posted for different uses of their logo. As well as a page explaining the symbology of the logo.

Apple is another popular company with several programs and logos specifically designed for use by business partners. One of the things which is required in these kinds of relationships is for the organization granting the logo’s use to be firm in their organizational identity. This means: defining the relationship – who is the NGO and who is not the NGO. For some organizations it means defining what items are trademarks, products and logos.

The next three brands have a particularly visual representation and presentation of their branding guidelines.
WordPress logos are made freely available under their about section. http://wordpress.org/about/logos While WordPress is an opensource product, it is also a community. About a year and a half ago one there was quite a stir made by Automatic about proper logo usage. The community had some who were less than thrilled with the emphasis Automatic brought on branding an open source project, but in the end even the controversy made the brand stronger. The consistent iconization of the product also made the brand more recognizable. Today the WordPress project has a lot of logo options which conform to established branding guidelines. This gives the community flexibility and continuity at the same time.

WordPress logo page visually displays good and bad logos for designers and fans to understand how to display the product’s brand.

Adobe is a company whose name is almost synonymous with the term digital art. It is well known for products like Photoshop and for files like PDFs. When we think of PDFs we often think of the Acrobat Logo on the image of a file.

Adobe Acrobat Reader Logo

Part of this visibility is due to Adobe Icons and Logos which it has made available.

Perhaps my favorite logo explanation is the simple (yet detailed) approach that Twitter has taken on its page Twitter.com/logo. Here are some screen shots.

Twitter Page on Logo use

“dos” and “don’ts” of using the Twitter logo

Proper positioning of Twitter logo

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The Journeyler

A walk through: Life, Leadership, Linguistics, Language Documentation, WordPress, and OS X (and a bit of Marketing & Business Administration)