Reading How to Make Your Speaking Easier and More Effective:
An old UCLA study of effective presentations analyzed 3 elements (verbal, vocal, visual). Here’s what it found was important in establishing credibility/believability:
* Verbal (words you say): 7%.
* Vocal (how you sound when you say them): 38%.
* Visual (how you look when you say them): 55%.
Some days ago I had to give a presentation for the 2K* symposium, a joint initiative of research groups from different IT institutions, based in Trento and in Genova. The 40 mins presentation was titled “Trust in Recommender Systems: an historical overview and recent developments” (check the source code!). It is heavily based on an old presentation, I just added some slides about microformats, a concept I wanted to convey to the audience.
Anyway, I took the occasion to try to create the presentation in HTML using S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System developed by Eric Meyer. I think I will create all my future presentation in S5 from now on. The advantages: it “forces” you to keep the slides simple (no unnatural flow of information) and short (however you can have animations, check this slide); it is easy to publish the presentation on the Web, anyone can link to a specific slide, search engines find the information and index them, it is highly standard, evolutionary and small-pieces-loosely-connected-philosophy-like (for exaple it would be possible to create a small piece of javascript code that collect slides from different presentations in some meaningful automatic way to create a new presentation, but the possibilities are endless of course, especially if using the S5 format based on XOXO microformat), I can create the presentation with whatever text editor (perfect if you are in text mode), it does not require the viewer to have some fancy program (openoffice for the freedom lovers, powerpoint for the others) but a browser suffices.
You can find many presentations in S5 format in the microformats wiki; I also liked this presentation of Firefox, with style vulpes-flagrans or with style greenery. Yes, I know the stile I used for my presentation is not that great, if someone with graphical skills would like to create a style for me, it will be very appreciated of course.
For starting playing with S5, I suggest you S5 primer (you need to download HTML code and edit it) or S5present, an open-source web-based slideshow application (you just create an identity there and then use the site for creating the presentation). Guess what? S5 Presents was written in under 10 hours and 500 lines of code using the fantastic Ruby on Rails framework.
Tag: s5
Very funny post: How I failed the Turing test. Actually, it raises a lot of metaphysical questions.
Some time around March, I started receiving a number of random instant messages from people I’ve never met before. Apparantly, my AIM alias had been added to at least two online lists and people all over the world were busy importing me as a buddy.
I say “at least two” because the people who contacted me fell into one of two camps: people who thought they were contacting a celebrity and people who thought they were contacting a robot. As I talked to more and more of these folks, I began to discover something really disturbing about myself:
I consistently fail to be perceived as human.
Since you are defined but what other people think of you, if the other people think you are not an human, what are you?
Read the entire post.
From Nature: Using satellite images from Google Maps and Google Earth, an Italian computer programmer has stumbled upon the remains of an ancient villa. (…)
Luca Mori reports his findings on this blog post. On Gmap you can see the discovered villa.
Luca then created CyberArchaeologist.net: In the world many places exist that deserve of being investigate to you. For this it is necessary collaboration with the persons of the place, with who it knows to recognize the places and with who it knows the history well.
An Italian television (La7) made a report about it. And you could possibily see the video at mms://videoteca.cdn…. I could NOT see it since I use GNU/Linux and MMS (the mms:// part in the previous URL) or ‘ Microsoft Media Server ‘ protocol is Microsoft’s proprietary network streaming protocol. Microsoft has never released a specification to describe how MMS actually works, yet it is extensively used by their Microsoft media player software. (info about MMS protocol taken from http://sdp.ppona.com/ and I didn’t check if they are still true). I could probably try to download the last codecs for my Free Software player that someone has retroengineered but this is not the point. Just as much as http:// is an open protocol that allows anyone to contribute (for example, Luca was able to contribute using the Web and providing info on the Web), mms:// is a closed protocol which does not allow evolution, contribution, freedom. Seeing videos on GNU/Linux is always a bit problematic, since there are no open protocols for streaming videos, or I’m missing something? Vorbis? How can we make an open protocol hugely adapted?
By the way, good spot Luca!
From absolutely nothing to a running rails app in under two minutes: 2 mins video. [Before I linked to a video on “how to build a blog engine in 15 minutes with Ruby on Rails”, You now save 13 minutes for your first jaw-dropping rails experience! ;-) ]
You might want to sign up the petition for Open Access to State-Collected Geospatial Data (in Italian).
We believe that state-collected geodata should be openly available to citizens. Please sign up below to support this manifesto.
All government-collected geodata should be open, that is, available for free distribution and re-use under a ShareAlike license.
Geodata is a public good. Open access to it, under a ‘Commons’ (ShareAlike) license, is the best way to see its full benefits realized by industry and citizens. At the same time such an arrangement, by requiring users to redistribute updates and improvements to the data, promises to deliver more and better data for less.
If 50% of what this Wired article says is true, your Web experience will never be the same again.
Flock advertises itself as a “social browser,” meaning that the application plays nicely with popular web services like Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Flock also features widely compliant WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop blogging tools. The browser even promises to detect and authenticate all those user accounts automatically. It’s a clear attempt to be the browser of choice for the Web 2.0 user.
Yes it is Free Software.
Marco Fabbri comments on my previous post about open standards and recommends me to check the Trusted Computing Video, since I’m interesting in Trust. The video overcame my attention threshold at least twice during this week but when I tried to watch it the site was always down. This time I was luckier and I must say the video is incredibly well done, and released under a Creative Commons licence!
Marco Fabbri (some initial pagerank for a new comer in the blogosphere) comments that I will find especially interesting the definition given: “Trust is the personal believe in correctness of s.th. . It is the deep conviction of truth and rightness, and can not be enforced. If you gain s.o. trust, you have estabilished an interpersonal relationship, based on communication, shared values and experiences. TRUST always depends on mutuality”.
Idea: since the video is under Creative Commons, shall we be a bit Creative and enrich the Commons? Shall we translate and dub it in Italian so that non-English-speakers can get an idea of what this is about? I could easily translate the text but I don’t have any device (trusted or not) for recording the audio.
And just in case you don’t have handy plugins for playing videos (as me), here we have some direct links to the high quality video: http://www.lafkon.net/tc/trusted-computing.torrent, http://yafc.net/TrustedComputing_LAFKON_HIGH.mov
Beppe Grillo Blog is currently 66th on the Technorati list of top blogs. Pretty impressive if you think he only writes in Italian. However I see some problems with this blog I’ll try to describe here.
Every daily post has around 1000 comments. This is not a problem per se, of course, if people want to write a lot of comments to every your post, this is good, you probably write something that is very interesting.
So today I wanted to alert Beppe (or who read all the comments) about this article on groklaw, so I went to beppegrillo.it and try to leave a comment and, surprise, you cannot leave as signature a link to your blog but only an email address! This is really against empowering communication in a decentralized manner! In this way, if I want to be heard on the Web I cannot write on my blog but I must come back to beppegrillo blog and leave a comment there. I cannot have a Web identity independently of beppegrillo.it domain!
I think Beppe speaks often of “Direct democracy” that is achieved through his blog. Well, this is not at all something new. Instead Beppe Grillo is becoming a leader of a face-less, identity-less crowd that exist only by commenting on his blog. It is not very different from a Prodi or Berlusconi leader whose followers are anonymous identities (you might even have doubts they exist at all).
So, enough criticisms and let start with the (hopefully) constructive part: Beppe, please, invite people who flock to your blog to have their Web presence. Let commenters leave a link to their Web identity (a blog). Place a very visible invitation (in the menubar and on top fo the right column) for visitors to open their own personal blog, with instructions on how to do it. The message could be something like this: (in Italian) “Sono molto contento di vedere cosi’ tanti commenti ai miei post. Ma credo che la forza del Web sia nel fatto che ognuno puo’ dire la sua. Ti invito quindi ad aprire un TUO blog e a postare in esso le TUE idee. Potrai ovviamente linkare i miei post quando lo ritieni opportuno o lasciare commenti con link alle TUE riflessioni sul TUO blog. Io ho tante cose da dire ma sono sicuro che anche tu hai tante cose da dire, e non e’ affatto detto che quelle che dico io siano piu’ interessanti di quelle che dici tu. Quindi ti consiglio di aprire un tuo blog. E’ semplicissimo. Le istruzioni per farlo sono qui di seguito. (e nel seguito alcune semplici istruzioni su come creare un blog in splinder.com, blogger.com, …)”
Another comment I wanted to leave on his blog was about GNU/Linux. He speakes a lot about the power of the new technologies and Internet but a search for linux on his blog returns zero results. I wanted to suggest to Beppe to speak about this alternative in the domain of software. Anyway I hope that in some decentralized way, he finds this post and comments here, here you can leave a link to your web presence.
And Beppe, since you are so intripped (yes, this is not English) with the power of the Web, I’m confident you’ll be able to understand why I (try to) write in English even if I’m Italian.
UPDATE: a comment by Matteo lets me know that Massimo already wrote about it: crea il tuo blog.
“Tutto quello che pensi e scrivi lo ha gia’ pensato e scritto qualcun altro” – Anonimo
However FEMA announced that online applications for Federal Disaster Assistance would only be accepted from victims who use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser.
On grokster you can find this great article When Open Standards Really Matter – The Katrina Factor. I really suggest you to read it and to pass it on to your friends (especially the non-tech-savvy ones!). Starting from post-Katrina communication efforts, it makes good points on why communication formats MUST be based on open standards.
Isn’t it time, after so much suffering, to recognize that keeping people alive is more important than allowing private companies to lock in customers into proprietary systems that don’t then work in an emergency? And why does the Internet always work, no matter who you are or what operating system you use? Because it was built, not on proprietary standards, but entirely on open standards. That’s why you can send an email to me, even if you are using Microsoft Outlook. I don’t run any Microsoft products currently, but because of open standards, I can still read your email, and in an emergency, we will not be disconnected because we are on “different communication systems.” (…)
I shudder to think what Microsoft would have done, if it had invented the Internet. Every bit of it would be patented, and we’d all be paying through the nose and would be restricted to whatever Microsoft chose to let us do. (…)
If Microsoft is successful in persuading the powers that be to establish emergency communications based on their proprietary XML, it will shut out millions of people. That is too big a price to pay. And there is no reason why Microsoft can’t follow the same XML standards as the rest of the world. They may feel it is in their best interest to have proprietary extensions on XML, patented to boot, but it isn’t in the public’s best interest to be forced to use it, and frankly, why would any government wish to reinforce a monopoly’s monopoly position? How is that good for the marketplace? For that matter, how does it build faith and respect for the law?
Anyone should really tell me a reason for which a closed, proprietary, secret format is better than a public, published, standard one. It is like someone telling you “it is better if you forget English, Italian, etc and communicate only using the language I inventend. You cannot understand how to utter words (the language is secret) but you can use our tools to do it (of course other people cannot create other tools for uttering words because, you know, it costed a lot to us to develop this language and, you know, we must get some money to buy food, you know). It will be much much better, for everyone”. By the way, Massachusetts is requiring open standards for all government documents. If your software does not save documents in open standards, Massachusetts’s agencies cannot buy it, as simple as that.