is it just me

As you may have noticed the great service Wordle.net is offline.

If you want to create cool wordl clouds from your texts you’ll need some other tools in the meanwhile. I created a small list of tools that you can use and analyzed one of my papers on Artefact-Actor-Networks, so you can see how they will look like.

1. TagCrowd, http://www.tagcrowd.com/
2. WordItOut, http://worditout.com/
3. WordSift, http://wordsift.com/
4. Tagul, http://tagul.com
5. ABCya WordClouds, http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm

Popularity: 1% [?]

One of my favourite web services – Wordle.net – is down because of some weird legal reasons. If you are a laywer specialized in trademark affairs, please help to get Wordle back online.

Here is what the Wordle founder says on his page:

I am seeking pro bono legal advice, to evaluate a trademark claim against my use of the word “Wordle” for this web site. If you’re an intellectual property lawyer, with expertise in trademark law, and you wish to offer professional advice on this matter, please contact me.

Popularity: 2% [?]

At this week’s SSE 2010 workshop, Prof. Bernd Brügge from TUM gave the keynote entitled “Opportunities for Social Software in Large-Scale Project Courses”. The talk was really inspiring and introduced the DOLLI project to us. This project was a cooperation between TUM and the airport Munich during which more than 50 students worked on a real-life problem for the airport. Not only the engaging topic but also they way they did project management (starting with RUP and switching to XP after that) and used video during the whole project is worth the viewing.

Also check out the website of the DOLLI project.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Maybe you have already seen Recognizr, a TAT prototype of an augmented ID concept. If not here is the pretty stunning video.

Can you imagine the great impact on scientific conferences that tool could have? You just talked to someone pretty cool and want to stay in contact with him. Normally you would need to exchange analog or digital business cards or use tools like More! where you still need to know a name or use QR codes to identifiy your communication partner… With the Recognizr you’d only need to make a picture of his face and add the person to you network. How cool is that?

I am aware of the privacy issues that arise from such a tool and I am pretty sure many people would be frightend to use it, but for us technical geeks that live in the Social Semantic Web and use all new cool toys and tools it is simply awesome. Seems like I need to get me an Google Nexus somewhere…

Popularity: 1% [?]

Together with my colleague Benedikt Schmidt from TU Darmstadt I am conducting the Knowledge Worker Roles Study in the context of my Ph.D. studies.

In the focus of the study are knowledge workers, the multiple roles they take on during their regular work and the actions they perform during accomplishing their work. A knowledge worker is anyone who develops or uses knowledge in his or her daily working tasks. Furthermore we try to associate application types with the knowledge actions.

We would like to ask you for your participation in the study which will take approximately 25 minutes. Your participation is anonymous and all answers will be treated confidentially.

You can access the survey at http://bit.ly/KWRStudy

Please feel free to forward the link to the survey to your colleagues, retweet or blog about this call for participation.I count on the power of my social network…

We will keep you updated about the results of the study.

Popularity: 1% [?]

On wednesday our workshop Social Software Engineering takes place and we finished the program. You can see it online at the website for the workshop.

Presentation 1: Towards Social Information Systems

Presentation 2: weHelp: A Reference Architecture for Social Recommender Systems

Presentation 3: Towards Assisting Software Engineers in Switching Artifacts by using Personal and Shared Context

Presentation 4: Bringing Semantics into Social Software Engineering: Applying Ontologies to a Community-oriented Requirements Engineering Environment

Presentation 5: Diagnosing Inconsistent Requirements Preferences in Distributed Software Projects

Presentation 6: User-Driven Requirements Engineering for Mobile Social Software

Keynote: The use of social engineering in software projects

Popularity: 1% [?]

There is a logo competition going on for the 2010 EC-TEL conference in Barcelona. Here is my creation:

I took the some (Flickr-CC) pictures of the beautiful city and combined it with the sustainability theme of the conference. The recurring style element is an abstract wing that visualizes the TEL way from innovation to practice.

What do you think?

Popularity: 2% [?]

It is my pleasure to announce the call for paper for the first workshop on Using Microblogging to enhance communication within Communities of Practice (MicroECoP) which will take place at the WCC 2010 conference in Brisbane, Australia. I organize this workshop together with my colleagues Steve Wheeler, Graham Attwell and Johannes Magenheim. You’ll find all the necessary information at the workshop website.

Microblogging has become a very popular social networking activity in the recent years. The limitation of 140 characters constrains the user to send concise messages. Twitter and other popular microblogging tools have acted as catalysts for a flurry of new and fast exchange of thoughts and artefacts, and from these activities a new area of research has emerged. There are case studies for the application of microblogging in scientific conferences, educational courses, distributed software engineering teams and corporate project groups.

A number of questions are emerging from the early use of micro-blogs as social networking tools that connect communities of practice and interest. These include: How can microblogs support the development of professional communities of practice? How can microblogs be effectively incorporated into formalised professional learning? How can we measure the optimum levels of engagement necessary for microblogs to be successful social networking tools within professional communities of practice? How are communities of practice enhanced or enriched as a result of the application of microblogs? What about issues of security, privacy and intellectual property – how can these be protected? Do the filtering features on microblogs constitute semantic tools?

The workshop focuses on current research trends in the application of microblogging in various domains. The workshop seeks to attract quality research papers that propose solutions to the issues identified above. The workshop also seeks papers that comment how the application of micro-blogging can impact on real life experiences in diverse communities. It aims to bring together scientists and engineers who work on designing and/or developing the above mentioned solutions, as well as practitioners who use and evaluate them in diverse authentic environments.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Design and development of microblogging tools
• Application of micro-blogging in teaching scenarios
• Application of micro-blogging in software engineering scenarios
• Communication and interaction issues using microblogging
• Understanding the dynamics of microblogging communities
• Harnessing the semantic filtering capabilities of microblogging
• Visualization issues of microblogging
• Evaluation issues and case studies
• Smart devices for microblogging in education
• Using microblogging for enhancing creativity in education
• Digital identities and microblogging
• Ethical and safety issue
• Harshtagging and tweckling
• Developing pedagogies around the use of microblogging
• Live microblogging and micro-narratives
• Language Learning with microblogging
• Engagement analysis and microblogging

Papers up to 12 but no less than 8 pages are solicited. All submissions should be original and not published or under consideration elsewhere. Papers must correspond to the WCC 2010 conference format requirements, as they are described at the conference web site (http://www.wcc2010.com/call-for-papers/submission-instructions). All accepted papers must be presented at the conference by at least one of the authors. One of the authors of accepted paper needs to register for the workshop.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jana Herwig hat sich in den voestalpine digitalks in der dritten Ausgabe mit Microblogging, Video und Weak ties beschäftigt. Das sehr interessante Video findet sich auf YouTube, die Folien auf Slideshare und ein ausführlicher Beitrag in Jana’s Blog. Enjoy.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Yesterday at the JTEL WinterSchool in Innsbruck, Erik Duval asked me

If you only could follow one person on Twitter, who would that be?

I gave my answer (which I cannot tell you here…) and thought it would be a cool thing to explore with a wider public. That’s why I put up a really simple questionnaire over at Google Spreadsheets and would be really happy if you could distribute it to your fellow Tweeple.

Popularity: 2% [?]