Archive for October, 2008

WordPress — the open-source content management system that runs this site and millions of others around the world — is almost infinitely extensible, which was the intention of the development team from the beginning.

One of the core philosophies of WordPress is to keep the core code as light and fast as possible but to provide a rich framework for the huge community to expand what WordPress can do, limited only by their imagination. Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine…

But there are more than 3,000 WordPress plugins to choose from so if you’re new to this, where do you start? After building several dozen WordPress sites, from simple one-page blogs to complex web-zines, we’re finding these 10 plugins among the most useful:

Akismet	Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.
All-in-one SEO Pack	Automatically optimizes your page titles for search engines (SEO). Generates META tags automatically andavoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs.You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want, and can fine-tune everything to your hearts content.
Contact Form 7	Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Google XML Sitemaps	This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.
Lock-out	This plugin will allow you to put your website into Lock Out mode to prevent access while you preform upgrades or maintenance. Includes the ability to upload a pre-made html file for use as a placeholder page while in lock out mode or build your own online. The login page is still accessible and will allow only the user role you set to view the site normally while in lock out mode.
Reveal ID’s	With WordPress 2.5 and later the IDs on all admin pages have been removed, probably due to the fact that the common user don’t need them. However, for advanced WordPress Users/ developers those IDs are quite useful. This plugin makes them easy to find.
Stat Press	We love Google Analytics but their reports lag 24 hours and sometimes you want to see what’s happening right now. For that you need Stat Press. This real-time plugin is dedicated to the management of statistics about. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers etc. and reports them as they happen. Think your site is slow because traffic is spiking? Here’s how to find out.
WP Polls	What do your visitors think? Ask them with WP-Polls which is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.
WP Super Cache	This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
WP Automatic Upgrade	WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade their installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org in 5 steps that include complete site and database backups, deactivation and re-activation of plug-ins.

Don’t see what you need? Search the Plugins Directory or learn to write one yourself.

At the Dow Jones Media & Money conference last week, a panel of executives representing digital media developers, investors and advertisers debated whether it’s possible to start or grow an advertising-supported web service at a time when even huge corporations are challenged to survive. With the market down yet again today, some of their answers were refreshingly optimistic:

In a few weeks this blog will be coming to you live from Dust or Magic, the exclusive conference of interactive toy designers, developers, manufacturers and critics held each Fall in Lambertsville, NJ, under the auspices of Children’s Technology Review.

I’ll be videotaping all of the presentations for the Dust or Magic Wiki and will also try to steal a few minutes during the conference (November 2-3) to post live. It won’t be in real-time, but will be the next best thing if you follow children’s interactive media and aren’t able to attend. This year’s speakers include:

Christopher Byrne, President Byrne Communications, Inc. aka The Toy Guy. Chris is one of the leading experts on toys and play. Over the past 27 years (and he’s not even old), he has served in a variety of positions with toy companies covering marketing, media, operations and product development. In 1988, he formed New York-based Byrne Communications, where he has served as a researcher, analyst and consultant to a variety of Fortune 100 companies. He is widely quoted in the media and appears regularly on national television commenting on toys. Besides his own web sites (The Toy Guy and new online Time to Play Magazine (www.timetoplaymag.com) he writes for trade publications including Toys & Family Entertainment and Royalties. Currently thetoyguy.com attracts millions of visitors annually. Chris will help us critique the crop of 2008 technology toys on hand at this year’s Institute.

Jim Gray, Ed.D. is head of the LeapFrog Lab where he oversees all user experience and product development research. He is responsible for ensuring that LeapFrog products maximize children’s engagement, fun, and learning. Jim has a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Michigan State University. He was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies, and Instructor of Interactive Media Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has contributed to dozens of publications and published studies and has been a driving force behind LeapFrog’s new learning path.

Claire Green is the President of Parents’ Choice Foundation, the oldest not-for-profit organization dedicated to the evaluation of children’s books, videos, toys, computers software, videos, television and magazines. Parents’ Choice was founded in 1978 by Claire’s mother, Diana Huss Green. Fewer than 15% of the products submitted to Parents’ Choice Awards Program receive a commendation in one of six award categories. Claire is a long-time participant of Dust or Magic, and has a deep conviction for empowering children, with all forms of media. She’ll be in the Reviewer’s panel on Monday morning, to lend her view on this year’s toys and software throughtout the event.

Benjamin Grimley is the Senior Director of PBS Interactive Businesses. He founded and leads PBS’ new Interactive Businesses group, including licensing, product development, and online distribution. In March 2008, his team launched PBS KIDS PLAY! for ages 3-6 in collaboration with PBS content providers including HIT Entertainment, National Geographic, The Jim Henson Company and Universal Studios. Previously, as Vice President of Business Development for Exent Technologies, Ben built Internet distribution channels for interactive publishers such as Atari, Microsoft Game
Studios, Riverdeep, Scholastic, Take-Two and Ubisoft. Ben holds an MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

Mark William Hansen is the Director of Business Development for the LEGO Group, and is the project lead for LEGO Universe, a new social construction site coming early 2009. He was the original architect of LEGO Factory, an experience that that bridges virtual design with real world construction allowing anyone to design custom LEGO models online which can then be ordered as a set for assembly “offline.” Hansen spent 3 years researching Mass Customization and Agile Systems at Aalborg University and served twelve years in the United States Navy. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and a Masters of Engineering from Aalborg University.

Kathleen Kremer, Ph.D. is the Manager of Child Research at Fisher-Price. She oversees product research and testing for the Learning, Preschool, and Creative Activities Divisions. She advises these teams on child development, education, interface design, and game play and provides creative input. Products she has worked on include the Smart Cycle, the KidTough Digital Camera and FP3 Player, Digital Arts and Crafts Studio, Easy Link Internet Launch Pad, Pixter and Computer Cool School. Prior to joining Fisher-Price, Kathleen was a Development Scientist at Educational Testing Service. She also has worked on various product evaluations for media organizations such as Nickelodeon, WGBH, and Sesame Workshop and has published book chapters and journal articles on education and child development. She holds an M.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.

Debra Lieberman, Ph.D., is a communication researcher and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also directs the Health Games Research national program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to advance the design and effectiveness of digital interactive games used to improve health. Debra’s research focuses on processes of learning and behavior change with interactive media, with special interests in interactive games, health media, and children’s media. Debra has published widely and she consults for health organizations, education agencies, and media and technology companies to help design and evaluate interactive media for entertainment, learning, and health. Debra’s talk this year will be called Using Interactive Games to Improve Health Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviors.

Robin Raskin is a highly respected speaker, author, conference planner and blogger at YahooTech. Robin has been writing about raising kids in a digital world for nearly 30 years. The former editor of PC Magazine, and Editor-in-Chief of FamilyPC, she is the author of seven books on kids, including The Parents’ Guide to College Life (Random House, 2006) and consults on new media strategies for The Princeton Review. Robin is a long-time speaker at Dust or Magic. You can learn more about Robin at www.robinraskin.com

Scott Traylor, Chief KID and Founder, 360KID a kid-focused content and technology company dedicated to creating a love for learning through products that educate as well as entertain. 360KID provides turnkey development services to the broadcast, cable, textbook, and toy industries. Scott started his business over 16 years ago. His company has emerged as a recognized leader in the development of fun and engaging learning products. His clients include Sesame Workshop, LeapFrog, Discovery Channel, Hasbro, Highlights for Children, PBSkids, and many others. 360KID is a multi-award winning and three-time Emmy nominated company. Scott is continually reading, analyzing, and synthesizing research covering all aspects of kids and learning including new technologies, gaming, and different consumer-based delivery systems. He’s fascinated by electronic learning aids and technology instruction that is non-PC based. Scott believes nothing is impossible and so he pushes to make big dreams a reality, especially when it benefits children. See Scott’s 2006 Dust or Magic presentation here (on YouTube). You can see other presentations at http://dustormagic.wikispaces.com

Tanya Van Court is the General Manager Noggin and Sr. Vice President of Parents and Preschool Digital, Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group. She oversees strategy and operations, as well as creative and editorial content for Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group preschool and parents online businesses. Van Court assumed this position in the fall of 2006 and is responsible for the day-to-day management of Nick Jr.com (Playtime and Nick Jr. Parents), broadband offerings Nick Jr. Video and Nick Jr. Parents TV, NOGGIN.com, GoCityKids.com and the community site ParentsConnect.com. She is a graduate of Stanford University, where she received both her bachelors and masters degrees in Industrial Engineering.

Roger Wagner is the creator of HyperStudio — the number one selling educational software product in the world during the early ’90s. Roger was a witness to the beginning of personal computing, writing the first book on assembly language programming for the Apple II which included the the first published description of how to make a computer do bi-directional scrolling text. He was a magazine columnist prior to starting Roger Wagner Publishing, and he’s experienced the garage-startup, building a company with market leadership, the thrills and trauma of selling a company, and the aftermath of brand mismanagement. Join us for an after-dinner conversation with one of the first software developers in the age of personal computers, as he talks about the past, present and future of interactive publishing for schools.

Jennifer Wells is the Associate Director for PBS Interactive Businesses. A former student of Sandra Calvert, Jennifer leads interactive content development for PBS KIDS PLAY! Past projects include creating content for Bear in the Big Blue House, Curious George, Fisher-Price, Highlights Magazine, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Reading Rainbow, Schoolhouse Rock and many others. She holds an MA from Georgetown
University.

Institute Facilitators: Warren Buckleitner of Children’s Technology Review and Daren Carstens of Carstens Studios.

For more information about Dust or Magic visit their website and wiki.

What a difference a year makes in the life of a technology start-up.

Not that long ago I was singing the praises of Joost, a peer-to-peer video streaming technology that promised a huge boost in quality and performance. Actually, Joost did pretty well delivering on the promise. But what happens if you throw a party and… everyone else decides to throw a party on the same night?

Just as with Dan Ackroyd’s infamous Bass-o-Matic routine on Saturday Night Live which blenderized a hapless fish (warning, an actual fish was destroyed during the production of this sketch: http://www.hulu.com/watch/19046/saturday-night-live-bassomatic), so too Joost has blenderized itself and been reborn as a web video portal.

The lesson of this story for entrepreneurs is not that Joost had a bad idea or raised too much money or executed poorly - in fact quite the opposite - but that in business and technology as in life, change is the only constant. So being present and able to flow with it is often smarter than fighting the tide, and because they’ve survived we get to see what they do to differentiate themselves so they thrive.

Or as a venture investor friend of mine says when considering whether to fund a company, “I’m betting on the management because the business always faces unexpected challenges from competors, the technology or the economy, and it’s essential the people driving the company have the wisdom, experience and fortitude to adapt on the fly.”

The inspiration for my post Burning Down the TV came from Jen Simmons presentation at Wordcamp New York last Sunday. The other speakers that day included Matt Mullenweg, co-developer of Wordpress and a partner in Automatic, bloggers Aaron Brazell and Shay David, Jeremy Clarke on running a blog network, and Jen on Wordpress and video.

If you’re curious about where Wordpress is going in the next release (due out in November) and what else you can do with this CMS besides writing text-blogs you’re in luck: videos of Wordcamp NY are now online. Here’s the beginning of Matt Mullenweg’s introduction and below it, a link to videos of all of the presenters.

Click here to see the rest of Matt’s talk and the other presenters sharing the Wordcamp New York stage, with thanks to Jonathan Dingman for posting these videos and to Sun Microsystems for the generous use of their conference facility.

I confess that I came to loath Algebra class when I was in school, but times change and now kids are studying coordinate systems, irrational numbers (considering the swooning market aren’t all numbers irrational today?), logarithms, linear equations, fractional exponents and polynomials by playing video games.

Though some will always be skeptical that students are learning anything this way, the evidence is mounting that they can and do. The New York Times reports that in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn the eighth-grade math class is sounding like a video arcade, with students vanquishing virtual enemies and learning math in the process:

This fall, New York City is rolling out Dimension M — M stands for math — in 109 middle schools across the five boroughs after trying the game out in two dozen schools, including I.S. 30, last year. Like a modern twist on “Jeopardy!,” the fast-paced video game quizzes students on prealgebra and algebra topics ranging from prime numbers to fractions and complex equations. A correct answer brings 500 or more points, a wrong one as few as 25; the player with the most points wins.

“You have to be at the top of your game,” said Salma Nakhlawi, 13, who has been brushing up on her math skills along with her hand-eye coordination so that she can play the video game Dimension M with her friends. “I used to hate math, but I’ve started to like it. I actually understand it more.”

I’ve reported on Dimension M before, of course, and truth be told have been following Nt Etuks company since the first Serious Games Summit where he demonstrated an early prototype. But while there’s growing anecdotal evidence games are powerful tools for teaching and learning, hard evidence has been hard to come by. That’s about to change. According to THE Journal this week:

There’s a growing movement in academia and industry recognizing the value of this medium as an educational tool both inside and outside the classroom. This week, eight colleges and universities added their inertia to this movement, joining with Microsoft to launch a new alliance to study the benefits of gaming for math and science instruction and STEM equity.

The consortium, dubbed the “Games for Learning Institute,” is being led by New York University and includes Columbia University, City University of New York (CUNY), Dartmouth College, Parsons, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Teachers College. These members are matching an investment from Microsoft Research of $1.5 million to provide a total of $3 million in funding for the effort.

Adding to this tide, my colleague Lee Wilson of Headway Strategies is writing a white paper on the power of video games to teach, and we have a proposal pending for a panel to discuss the latest research findings at the 2009 Game Developers Conference’s Serious Games Summit in March.

Soon, when your kids ask for help with their Algebra 101 homework and your eyes glaze over, you’ll be able to tell them with confidence “go play a video game.” How cool is that?

I’m not really turning Japanese as this post’s title* suggests, but as a blogger and a Blogfather I was fascinated to learn that according to reports last year in Technorati and The Washington Post, Japanese has become the dominant language of the blogosphere.

Why Japanese? With a vast middle-class nearly everyone can afford an internet connection, and with daily commutes that can be hours long people have time to blog from their phones and assorted digital hand-held devices. Thought the subjects of personal blogs tend to be quite different in Japan than in the West, could this this video report from The Washington Post be a glimpse into our future?

Note: although these percentages date from 2006 and were quoted by the Post in late 2007, they’re still striking and the cultural spin in the video intrieguing, prompting this post. For the most current data see Technorati’s 2008 Report from the Blogosphere.

* Props to Max Praver for the translation.

David Byrne sang about burning down the house and now it’s time for burning down the TV thanks to Miro, the open source video player.

Think TIVO for web, but without buying any hardware or software (sorry AppleTV). Think millions of programs packaged as pre-programmed channels, or search the web and make a channel with the video you like — Grateful Dead TV? TED Presentations? Knitting for Dachshunds? You got it. Finally, think open source and open format — Miro plays MPEG, Quicktime, AVI, H.264, Divx, Windows Media, Flash Video, and almost every other major video format. And those are only some of Miro’s features and specs.

But don’t take my word, go and download it (free, fast, stable for PC, Mac, Linux) and you’ll see why Miro vision for the future of web video is so compelling. Want to hack it? Download the source code too. Want to program and brand your own channel? Miro converts any media RSS feed into a channel you can put your name on. Once you search the web for the content you want, Miro displays an iTunes like listing with program details and links to download, save, organize, or share the video.

Where did Miro come from? It’s the core project of the Participatory Culture Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit based in Worcester, MA and founded in 2005 with a mission to build tools and services that give people more ways to engage in their culture.

Television is the most popular medium in our culture. But broadcast and cable TV has always been controlled by a small number of big corporations. We believe that the internet provides an opportunity to open television in ways that have never been possible before. Miro is designed to eliminate gatekeepers. Viewers can connect to any video provider that they want. This frees creators to use the video hosting setup that works best for them– whether they choose to self-publish or use a service. It’s the kind of openness that the internet allows and that we should all demand.

Lastly, special shout outs to Jen Simmons of Milkweed Media Design who talked up Miro in her presentation on web video at last weekend’s Wordcamp in New York, to Bill Sobel of NY:MIEG and to Bob Sokol at Sun who promoted and hosted the event.

Narrative story telling has been part of the the human experience since we told tales of the days hunt around the fire, about what it was like to “be there” when this or that event happened. From that oral tradition, we learned to write them in pictures, then glyphs, and a succession of written languages and media from stone to paper, to the celuloid that captured Peter Sellers’ performance as Chance in Hal Ashby’s Being There, to the electrons (all recycled, I assure you) that are making this blog post possible.

As PJ Haarsma’s Orbis, Scholastic’s Rick Riordan (39 Clues) and so many game designers before them have learned, video games are a narrative form too. But how are they different, what makes them unique, how can we leverage those unique strategies for entertainment, learning, propaganda… or to motivate students? The NY Times reports today that authors and libraries are starting to use video games to lure new readers:

When PJ Haarsma wrote his first book, a science fiction novel for pre-teenagers, he didn’t think just about how to describe Orbis, the planetary system where the story takes place. He also thought about how it should look and feel in a video game. [...] The online game that Mr. Haarsma designed not only extends the fictional world of the novel, it also allows readers to play in it. At the same time, Mr. Haarsma very calculatedly gave gamers who might not otherwise pick up a book a clear incentive to read: one way that players advance is by answering questions with information from the novel. Story continues here…

And in July, game designer Steve Gaynor pondered similar questions in a thoughtful essay on his blog Fullbright:

In my estimation every medium has its primary strength. Literature excels at exploring the internal (psychological, subjective) aspects of a character’s personal experiences and memories. Film excels at conveying narrative via a precisely authored sequence of meaningful moments in time. And video games excel at fostering the experience of being in a particular place via direct inhabitation of an autonomous agent.

Video games are able to render a place and put the player into it. The meaning of the experience arises from what’s contained within the bounds of the gameworld, and the range of possible interactions the player may perform there– the nouns and the verbs. Just like in real life, where we are and what we can do dictates our present, and our possible futures. Video games provide an alternative to both the where and the what of existence, resulting in simulated alternate life experiences.

It’s a powerful thing, to be able to visit another place, to drive the drama onscreen yourself– not to receive a personal account of someone else’s experiences, or observe events as a detached spectator. A modern video game level is a navigable construction of three-dimensional geometry, populated with art and interactivity to convincingly lend it an identity as a believable, inhabitable, living place. At their best, video games transmit to the player the experience of actually being there. Post continues here…

I think that’s the crux of what sets games apart: “Video games are able to render a place and put the player into it [and] transmit to the player the experience of actually being there.”

True, a written story does that too, but in a well designed video game the player seemingly controls the world, progressing through the game’s levels (chapters) according to the strategies, tactics and myriad descret decisions made along the way. In that way the story becomes the players own, and particularly for today’s digital natives, more personal and meaningful and impactful than listening or reading alone.