TechTicker
educational technology, eLearning & emerging technology

Seesmic Video, Threaded Commenting now on TechTicker 

As mentioned previously, after a great deal of investigation and deliberation I’ve opted to move the TechTicker from WordPress.com to a commercial hosting provider. This was inspired largely by the various restrictions imposed by WP.com - not the least of which related to plugins and use of JavaScript. In some ways it was an unfortunate decision to have to make, because I like WordPress.com and didn’t want to have to pay for hosting, however ultimately WP’s restrictions were preventing me from taking this blog to the places I’d like to go.

With this in mind I’d like to announce the launch of a few new options.

Seesmic

First and foremost are the inclusions of the previously elusive Seesmic plugin and embed options. As described in the above clip, this enables readers to post video comments in addition to that of text-based. To post a video comment go to the unique page for the post and scroll to the bottom. As depicted in the following screenshot you’ll then see a link beneath the comment text field inviting you to “leave a Video Comment with Seesmic”.

Clicking on this will replace the text field with a video window, at which point you’ll be prompted to enter your Seesmic login credentials. If you do not have a Seesmic account you are given the option to create one without having to leave the page. Once logged in just record your video and assign it a title.

After you’ve submitted the video the page will refresh and you’ll see a thumbnail of your video included inline with the other comments - both video-based or text-based.

Threaded Commenting

The second important commenting option is that of threaded replies. You’ll now see a “Reply” link included beneath each comment. Clicking on reply will enable you to post a response directly beneath another comment as opposed to the traditional commenting convention of chronological order.

Both options have been included for distinct reasons rather than a tangential value-add, and I plan on trying to explore some new discursive territory in the coming weeks. In the meantime I encourage you to experiment with the new functionality and please let me know your thoughts.

I’m presently in the process of moving the TechTicker to a commercial hosting company. This process involves me changing the Domain Name Servers to point http://techticker.net to the new host and away from WordPress.com, however this change can take a couple of days to filter through the web. At some point during this time you may find the link starts to break and/or points to a bare blog with no content.

I’ll be porting all posts and content to the new location as soon as I’m able to, however during the interim the existing content will continue to be available on WordPress.com via the original URL:

http://mbogle.wordpress.com

Update: The domain seems to be resolving properly to the commercial host now and I’ve imported all the content. Previous URL references to specific posts should be resolving properly as well (if not please let me know). In the meantime I’ll be getting to work on the interface and tying up any other loose ends.

According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, this week’s Twitter controversy involving the deactivation of the Reply feature is resulting in people moving to FriendFeed.

“So why aren’t people screaming about the feature being gone? Because this time, they’re just heading over to Friendfeed to have those very same conversations. Friendfeed for most users was just a place to bookmarks all their activities on other social networks. Now, more and more, it’s a place that people start conversations. The early adopters got that a while ago. Now, the not so early adopters are using it as a Twitter replacement, too.”

I have to disagree with Mr. Arrington on this one - at least partially.  There are certainly those who have begun to sing FriendFeed’s praises - and no doubt use it as a substitute - but the reality is not nearly the seachange that Arrington quips.

For one thing FriendFeed is still largely only on the radar of the early adopter crowd - and even in this realm there isn’t complete agreement as to its utility or value.  Even amongst earlier adopters there are still those that swear against it as a source of comment fragmentation and excessive noise.  The rest of the internet has arguably not even heard of FriendFeed.

Importantly too it’s equally arguable that later adopters don’t rely on Twitter nearly as much as early adopters do and are therefore far more tolerant of the outages.  As I discovered during my Twitterless week, the implications of moving away from Twitter to something else are a virtually complete loss of one’s social network - unless of course you’re truly embedded in the early adopting tech crowd and can inspire people to follow you anywhere in the way Michael Arrington or Robert Scoble can.  For the rest of us the pricetag is just too high right now.

Furthermore dedicated Twitter users seem to prefer the minimalistic sensibilities that Twitter offers, in which content updates largely revolve arond 140 character posts and perhaps the occasional link.  FriendFeed’s tidal wave of content from a myriad different sources and formats is a far different kettle of fish that won’t necessarily be seen as a desireable substitute.

Consider this post a Hail Mary play in the hopes that the Tech Gods may be listening and sympathetic to my wishes.

Wordpress.com needs to start supporting use of the Seesmic plugin and embedded video clips.

As the several posts I’ve written here indicate, I’ve spent the last few months gaining a greater and greater appreciation for the potential and value that Seesmic has to offer - from both user and technical perspectives.  The Alpha video chat application is continuing to pick up speed, having launched a procession of valuable tools and functions that spread it’s capabilities farther and farther outside the confines of the main site.

In the wake of its continuing development, we are starting to see the emergence of a powerful new means of online communication that caters to rapid asynchronous discussion while retaining and in fact injecting the human and non-verbal communicative elements that make face-to-face discussion so much more engaging and immersive than text-based discussion.

Notably this includes the recently launched embed option, which enables users to view the entire thread worth of discussion on a topic as well as submit a response or even create a new Seesmic account - all within the embedded player.

Equally valuable is the plugin for WordPress that enables users to post inline comments that are embedded within the chronological flow of commenting discussion.

Online video is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous component of internet usage today.  However this option is noticeably absent in blogs hosted at WordPress.com

Seesmic Not Supported By WordPress.com

As of this post neither option is available to users of WordPress.com.  The commenting plugin is not an available option, and any attempts to embed Seesmic video clips results in the code snippet being stripped and therefore not playable.

The perhaps disconcerting part about all this is the fact this topic has come up before - amidst calls of support and agreement from the user community - but has thus far received no responses from WordPress of any kind.  Indeed at least on the surface it would seem that discussion of the topic is being actively discouraged.

A forum post called “Seesmic video support?” for example was opened by underleft on 23 February saying:

“Just wondering if it would be possible to request support for seesmic videos.
Seesmic is pretty much a video version of Twitter.”

However the topic was inexplicably closed to new replies with no response - formal or otherwise - from WordPress whatsoever.

A previous thread asking a similar question and which had received over a dozen replies of agreement is no longer returned in the search results.  This would suggest it too was closed and perhaps even deleted without reply.

Email to WP.com Support

Given the vacuum of available information on the fate of Seesmic at WP.com, I’ve just sent an email to WordPress Support seeking clarification.  In this email I stated the following:

Subject: Inquiry on Seesmic embedded clips and/or WP plugin for inline comments

Hi There,

I’ve been following the WP forums for some time now regarding discussion on the Seesmic plugin for WordPress in an attempt to determine when it will be supported, however it would seem the oldest thread has been removed completely - and the only other request closed to replies.

Therefore I wanted to email you directly to find out what the official situation is with respect to the plugin.

I am a passionate user of both WordPress.com and Seesmic and am greatly interested in seeing Seesmic supported on WP.com.  However at the moment I can’t even embed Seesmic clips - let alone use the inline commenting.

Are there plans to support either or both of these two activies?  If so can you tell me when this would be?

If support is not likely to occur ever I’m likely to move my blog to a self-hosted instance of WordPress.  I love the blogging platform and would ideally really like to stick with WP.com.  However my interest use of Seesmic is the main consideration driving the decision making.

Thanks for the assistance.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Mike Bogle

The Alternatives

In saying all this there are alternatives for users who wish to explore Seesmic in an embedded capacity.

A self-hosted Wordpress blog

First and foremost is a self-hosted instance of WordPress.  I’ve done just that with a testbed on my home server and truly amazed with what is possible in terms of extensibilty and customisation freedom.  The world is your oyster in self-hosted instances.

This comes at a price however, both in a dollar sense as well as that of time.  Getting your own hosted instance requires either paying hosting fees with a provider, or installing and maintaining an instance on a home server.

For many the latter option is perhaps too technical to swallow.  However for the interested users who would like to experiment with the possibilities, I’ve written up a post detailing how to set up your own hosted instance of WordPress - from installing and configuring the webserver itself all the way through the WordPress installation.

View this post here: “Setting up a self-hosted WordPress Blog”

Another blog provider

Unfortunately aside from the self-hosting option the only other possibility would seem to be going with another blog provider alltogether.

Blogger for example supports use of the Disqus 3rd party commenting tool, which includes the Seesmic plugin.  So you’re effectively able to take advantage of video commenting though a slightly different means.

Parting Thoughts

In my case, barring WordPress.com bringing in support for one or both Seesmic activities I’m likely to go with one of the first two options - self-hosting on my own server, or paid hosting through a provider.

My experiences with WordPress.com thus far have been fairly positive, and have served to whet my appetite for the customisation potential that is so ripe for WordPress users.  However I’ve reached the point where the widget, plugin and embedded media restrictions are becoming prohibitive and starting to stand in the way of where I want to go with this blog.

Update: A few hours after sending my inquiry to WordPress.com Support for an official line on Seesmic use I received the following response:

Howdy!
Unfortunately, there is nothing to announce at this time.

I have added your input to our user suggestion library, which is reviewed on a regular basis.

Best,
Anthony

Automattic | WordPress.com

Unfortunately there is little that can be gleamed from the wording of this email.  The one exception is the point about my input being added to their suggestion library.  This is what you tell a user when you have no real information or solution to provide and want to be seen as taking their thoughts seriously.  More often than not though, what this amounts to is a brush off.

When you have good news for a user you given them specifics; when you have bad news, you tell them they’ve been added to the suggestion library.

Realistically the silence here from WordPress speaks volumes.  Users interested in exploring Seesmic functionality on their blog will either need to go without, or go elsewhere.

Update 2: Just to drive this point home, I discussed this topic on Seesmic.  Click on the image for a link to the video, or click here: http://seesmic.com/videos/PZ0ciRaOB9

An ultra-portable version of Ubuntu is one step closer to fruition today with the release of a full developmental release of an Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) edition.

According to a post yesterday on the Canonical Blog, Ubuntu MID “has been built by the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded community that is sponsored by Canonical and in co-operation with Intel Moblin.org community…” and is based upon the highly successful desktop version.

In the product description, Canonical indicates this release is “redefining what can be done in mobile computing” with supported functionality including “Web browsing, email, media, camera, VoIP, instant messaging, GPS, blogging, digital TV, games, contacts, dates/calendar, simple software updates… and lots more.”

Given its beginnings in the Ubuntu Desktop framework and importantly within the FOSS community, the offering is going to be highly customisable, with the Canonical Blog indicating:

“Developers may want to hack their favorite application from Ubuntu Desktop Edition onto Ubuntu MID to match screen size and touchscreen requirements so that they and other owners can use it. Developers are encouraged to share and have their work reviewed within the UM&E and Moblin.org communities.”

Given its early status not much information is currently available on the realities of the project, however the Ubuntu wiki indicates the Preliminary Roadmap for the project includes:

• A focus on “mobile devices which tend to have a touch screen, generous amounts of flash storage and RAM, and wireless Internet connectivity.”
• Use of “existing open source applications where it is feasible to do so, packaging them for Ubuntu where necessary. We will fill in some of the gaps by developing new applications if nothing suitable exists.”
• Development of a suitable kernel build by the Ubuntu kernel team, with additional drivers incorporated “where necessary”

The Canonical blog post indicates there “are two installable images, and one runnable KVM image”, adding the easiest way to familiarise yourself with Ubuntu MID is via the KVM image.

I’m downloading the KVM image as we speak and will report back on anything interesting.  In the meantime I recommend visiting the following links for more information.

References:

• “Ubuntu MID Edition 8.04 achieves its first public release“, David Mandala, Canonical Blog, 24 June 2008
• Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition (Product description) - accessed 25 June 2008
• “Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded“, Ubuntu Wiki, accessed 25 June 2008

Seesmic seems to have ignited - or perhaps more appropriately re-ignited - a small controversy regarding distributed commenting with an update of their embeddable player. The player had already supported a video reply option (for recording directly within the embedded instance), as well as an ability to create a new Seesmic account directly from the player, however the new point of contention surrounds threaded video commenting.

In the case of the pre-existing plugin for WordPress (which I discussed here), as well as its inclusion in Disqus, video comments are posted inline along with text.  In effect users browsing through reader feedback and discussion will run across both text and video in the commenting convention of descending chronological order.

The embed update effectively eliminates this and instead displays video replies within the player itself.  As the Inquisitr points out, this has the effect of creating a self-contained and comprehensive account of the video discussion that can be embedded anywhere because “the entire conversation [is delivered] where ever the embed is shown.”

TechCrunch argues this amounts to nothing less than hijacking the discussion, saying:

“It is a pretty cool feature, but it creates a conflict with all the sites that have embedded Seesmic functionality, such as TechCrunch. We love it when people use Seesmic to comment on posts, and there is certainly something to say for threaded comments. Sometimes you want to respond to comment No. 15, but you are comment No. 74. But if these responses become swallowed within the Seesmic player itself, then it effectively gets taken out of the comment stream of that particular post.”

My two cents on this is that both options present enormous potential - particularly for users who wish to fully capitalise on the power of video rather than simply include the option as a value-add for commenters.  Video does so much more to convey the subtleties of conversation than text ever could - from conveying undertones (sarcasm, jest, humour) to cultural elements (bowing), and non-verbal communication (body language) - and this is exactly the sort of communication that Seesmic is designed for.

In the case of education I see the new threaded commenting feature in the embeddable player as enormously valuable as it would enable instructors and students to create a single reusable forum for a discussion topic that could be distributed across several blogs - if not an entire classroom.

Just imagine the example of a discussion exercise in a language class for students learning Japanese.  The embeddable player could be included in each student’s blog along with their personal thoughts on the topic in text - and thus harness a blog’s reflective potential - as well as provide a vehicle for an ongoing collaborative activity with their peers.

The Seesmic WordPress plugin just couldn’t do that as it’s designed to work within a single blog post.

Replies would of course be located and visible on the Seesmic site as well, however they’re not bundled in the way they are in the embeddable player.

The other advantage of the embeddable player is that it picks up responses to the clip that are posted from the Seesmic site as well as via the embeddable player (I’ve tested this successfully elsewhere).  The threads featured in the embeddable player would therefore be arguably more comprehensive than the WordPress Plugin.

Having said that though I do think the WordPress Plugin is valuable in it’s own right - particularly because it follows the traditional convention of inline, chronologically listed comments and replies.

There’s no reason why you need to choose between one or the other however.  For example you could include the WordPress plugin for more frequent usage on more site-specific content, and then include the embeddable player whenever you wanted to expand the pool of discussion to include off-site users as well.

Unfortunately due to the perhaps excessive restrictions of WordPress.com I’m not able to use either option here.  I hope this is a temporary issue that will be resolved in time, because I’m currently considering moving this blog to a self-hosted WordPress instance where I’ll be afforded more flexibility and opportunity to properly explore these options.

References:

• “New Seesmic Player with thread and recording!“, Jeremy Vaught, Seesmic Blog, 20 June 2008
• “Seesmic Gets Threaded Comments“, Duncan Riley, The Inquisitr, 19 June 2008
• “Seesmic Hijacks Comments With Threaded Replies“, Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, 19 June 2008
• “Seesmic’s WordPress Plugin” Mike Bogle, TechTicker, 13 June 2008

Wow.  I just downloaded and installed a new AIR client for Flickr called DestroyFlickr and this thing is seriously sweet.  Not only is the UI gorgeous, it’s got an incredible amount of power behind it and let’s you perform most - if not all - actions that the main Flickr site does.

As Lifehacker explains (”Top 10 Apps Worth Installing Adobe AIR For“):

“…DestroyFlickr (the name comes from a mind hack concept, not vengeance) shuttles quickly around Flickr streams, making downloads and uploads drag-and-drop “affAIRs,” and offering quick editing, commenting, and re-organization. The Darkroom-inspired black background focuses attention, and multi-account users can work in all their streams at once using workspaces. In other words, it’s simple for casual Flickr fans, but strong enough for power users. “

I’m still tinkering with it as we speak, but the initial impressions are “you have to try out this application.”  I don’t know how it will be received by serious Flickr users, but for Average Joe’s like me it’s a fantastic offering.

You can download the app here:  http://www.destroytoday.com/?p=Project&id=DestroyFlickr

Please note you’ll need to install the AIR framework first.  If you haven’t done this you can get it from here: http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

References:

• DestroyFlickr - http://www.destroytoday.com/?p=Project&id=DestroyFlickr
• Adobe AIR - http://www.adobe.com/products/air/
• “Top 10 Apps Worth Installing Adobe AIR For“, Lifehacker, 18 June 2008

One of the major advantages that Twitter has over its nearest competitors is the prevalence of 3rd party clients. These desktop applications enable you to interact with Twitter without visiting the web interface, and provide far greater functionality than the instant messaging option.

Jaiku is arguably Twitter’s closest competitor for the microblogging crown, and initially I had thought that no such clients were available. I’ve just discovered otherwise, and have been testing two of the available offerings - Jay-Q and Jaikuroo.

Unlike the most popular Twitter clients, which are built upon Adobe’s AIR framework, the Jaiku clients I’ve uncovered so far are based upon the Microsoft .Net platform. It’s unclear at this stage whether the framework difference has resulted in any functionality differences relatively speaking, however aesthetically the AIR clients look far, far nicer.

Tool-set Comparison

Functionality-wise Jaikuroo offers users far more options than Jay-Q.

• Most notably, Jaikuroo offers several different display options including Channel specific, Public, You and Your friends or Your Friends only - Jay-Q by contrast only lets you choose between Public, My Jaikus, and those of your contacts.
• When viewing the channel updates in Jaikuroo, only the updates sent to a specific channel will be displayed in the client
• Jaikuroo also provides options for showing Flickr thumbnails, and Last.FM Artist Thumbnails when included in updates.
• The only thing that Jay-Q seems to offer that Jaikuroo doesn’t is a spell-check option.
• Both let you designate the frequency with which the client checks for updates, as well as colour scheme.
• Both require login via your unique API as opposed to username and password.

Preliminary Thoughts

Despite having only spent about 15 minutes on this evaluation so far, it seems fairly clear that Jaikuroo is the better client of the two. That said, with competition for users in the client realm being what it is, and both clients fairly early on in their existence - Jaikuroo is currently on version 1.3 and Jay-Q on version 0.95 - I wouldn’t be surprised if Jay-Q rolled out similar functionality over time.

Jaiku as a Competitor to Twitter

Given the closed Beta status of Jaiku, it’s not surprising that there are not nearly as many available 3rd party clients as Twitter. However as the Jaiku blog indicated recently (”Making Progress“):

“…contrary to some voices out there, we DO have plans for future development and we will involve our developer community as much as we can. Just to reiterate, we are working very hard to ensure you have a useful and usable service.”

It would seem therefore that Jaiku is gathering steam and heading towards a full-scale open launch at some point in the future. And given it’s got the deep pockets and infrastructure of Google to support it you can be fairly certain that they won’t have Twitter-esque outages.

If Jaiku plays their cards right they could be in the exactly the right place to welcome a wave of disgruntled Twitter users into their fold. When that happens I think the market for third party clients will explode and we’ll begin to see some of the same sorts of AIR clients that have become so popular amidst the Twitter crowd.

References:

• “Making Progress” Jaikido Blog, 30 May 2008
• Jaikuroo - http://rareedge.com/jaikuroo/
• Jay-Q - http://jay-q.com/

Screenshots

In WordPress-related development news, mock-ups were release Thursday of BuddyPress, which is an impressive theme for WordPress Multi-User (WPMU) installations that adds a social networking layer to the existing functionality. This includes groups, direct messaging, friends, photo albums and of course a blogging component.

As the BuddyPress website explains:

“The idea of BuddyPress is to take a standard vanilla installation of WordPress MU and turn it into something that represents more of a community building tool, or niche social network.“

According to BuddyPress developer, Andy Peatling (”New BuddyPress Theme“):

“The theme has been designed so that colors and the logo can easily be changed. It has also been created to make use of every BuddyPress feature, theme designers can then cut and paste functionality they’d like in their own themes.

The theme will pass most of the admin area functionality through to the front end. However, all components can still be controlled within the admin area itself. This means simple BuddyPress compatible themes can be created, without having to create designs for each component.

There will be an option to set either the profile or the blog as the default screen for a user.”

I’ve been following these developments very closely and even installed a very early Alpha of the theme a few months ago. Unfortunately my time constraints have prevented close involvement with and evaluation of this project since then, so I haven’t managed to devote any hands-on testing of the development. Rest assured I will be taking the plunge as soon as I possible can.

Based on some of the comments on the post, I’m not the only one chomping at the bit for a play

Chris Pirillo indicated in the comments area of the post that “I’m still planning on deploying it on Lockergnome.com.”

Based on the mock-up screenshots, the functionality slated for inclusion in BuddyPress will make it a strong competitor for other open source projects like Drupal and ELGG, both of which are frequently used to establish the frameworks for online communities.

Furthermore given the fact it’s built upon the existing WordPress framework, use of the BuddyPress theme will offer users phenomenal depth and flexibility in functionality - not the least of which come from the myriad of available plugins.

There are 12 screenshots available on Peatling’s post, so be sure to take a look for a proper look.

References:

• “New BuddyPress Theme“, Andrew Peatling, 12 June 2008
• BuddyPress website - http://buddypress.org

It’s been one week - to the hour - since the start of my “Twitterless Week Experiment” and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that there are at least two powerful competitors in the microblogging realm - Jaiku and Pownce - either of which would be a very deserving recipient of Twitter’s teetering crown.

Both services are so solid in fact that I am hard pressed to decide between the two as to which is best. Each offers its own strengths and capabilities. Jaiku is very Twitter like, with the added bonus of threaded commenting and a groups tool. Pownce carries an incredible natively developed AIR application and phenomenal functionality offerings - including threaded commenting as well as the opportunity share massive files of up to 100 MB’s or 250 MB’s for paid accounts.

In terms of functionality and usability, both Jaiku and Pownce leave Twitter in the dust. However I’ve discovered that Twitter has something that neither of these two communities do, and which is singlehandedly responsible for powering its dominance over the market: users.

More than anything else, this last week has taught me that the value of Twitter has nothing to do with the service - there is a ridiculous amount to be desired there, and frankly Twitter should be ashamed of itself in that respect. No, the value of Twitter is in the user community that surrounds it.

The experiences I take from my evaluation of both Jaiku and Pownce were exactly the same. In both cases I spent the first two days exploring the tool suite and available functionality, feeling extremely satisfied and optimistic all the while. Then I would begin to seek out like-minded users only to discover there were not many to be found.

Let’s be clear about this though. There are definitely users to be found at both Jaiku and Pownce, however the magnitude of the overall population is orders less than Twitter, and the amount of usage seems equally smaller.

Basically I’ve found two fantastic alternatives to Twitter - both of which I would quite happily switch to - but very few users. It was like moving from an active, bustling metropolis plagued by dilapidated and decaying infrastructure and pathetic governance, and moving to a brand-new town with few residents.

It’s not the buildings that make the town, it’s the people. Likewise, without users a social network is neither social, nor a network - it’s just a web application left wanting for a voice.

So ultimately I will opt to remain with Twitter - for now. I have no loyalties for the application whatsoever; what I do have though is a tremendous desire to remain a part of my network. In the end the thought of losing my network on Twitter is far, far worse than the notion of having to deal with the unreliability of the framework that supports it.