That’s an interesting read. I also think that technology should not always be considered as secondary to how people learn. And I also think that they should not be looked at being mutually exclusive option but rather looking at a as a whole.

Oh no! I don't want Microsoft to get access to all my usage data, message, calls, etc. that I have made over the years.

On a different note, any company worth more than a billion dollars should not be allowed to purchase other companies. It just makes them too powerful and monopolistic.

A friend has suggested using vbuzzer, as a Canadian-owned alternative to Skype, for international calls. I'm not sure if they do video or just voice, though.

I'd be interested to hear of any vbuzzer stories. I've tried a few VOIP alternatives and been unimpressed - Skype quality and reliability is hard to beat. My big problem is that I make a lot of use of SkypeIn. SkypeOut is useful but is actually costlier than many alternative Canadian voice plans for most countries so it's not a compelling selling point. I really like having a UK number from my own home town that people there can call me on. On the other hand, although Skype did have a phase of having Canadian numbers in pre-eBay years, they don't have them now so it's a good time to seek an alternative. I'm tempted by the Magic Jack, sold in London Drugs, which is a VOIP solution, $50 for a year including the dongle which can take a standard landline phone, provides lots of Canadian codes (including Edmonton!), gives cheap calls, has a computer-only client for travel abroad and appears to be popular. Awful used-car website though. Anyone know anything about it? 

Great article. Very informative explanation of the new web in the 7 categories.

I don't feel so bad for not initially having a "definition" for social software.  Looking at the 34 definitions, and the various readings it seems like a moving target.  I guess in some ways it's good to not be held back by a definition. 

As for this link. You gotta love a good paywall :)

The search for a definition is *much* more important than finding one. It is not just a moving target but one that can be viewed through many valid lenses. Many moons ago I used to teach beginners about the Internet (because there were people that had not encountered it in those days) and asked a similar question of them, 'what is the Internet?' The definitive answer was actually to be found in RFC 1462 -

      * a network of networks based on the TCP/IP protocols,
      * a community of people who use and develop those networks,
      * a collection of resources that can be reached from those
        networks.

All are true, and all are indefinitely expandable and refinable. Which you choose, and which aspects you focus on, just depends on your current perspective and interests.

Nothing helps establish your geek cred more then being able to quote an RFC!  I remember in my undergrad we had to disect an IP packet using the RFC as a reference.  I was in my glory.

As for the definition of social software, its almost dynamic.  The definition is almost what it needs to be in the context that its being used.  The context establishes the definition, and the definition helps define the context.  Very circular.

Myself, I think the definition(s) are a little loose.  But it's that organic nature itself that helps move social media along.

Personally, I would concur that wordprocessing was office automation but there is another opportunity such as carrying personalized learning data (artifacts) which is really augmentation that is much more practical now. I am intrigued by the position that buzzwords have a tendency to interfere with communication. When I think about the difficulties in communicating the differences between Facebook and the Landing I can't help but wonder if marketing hype is drowning out actual communication because I consider the value generated by each of those systems to be quite different.

well...people are really always at the core of every technology and every decision about technology...would we let someone randomly walk into our homes when we're sitting around in our jammies...? Agency and choice are stil important - Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed might be of interest to jet-lagged Jon and Terry who can't let us see an article because it's behind a proceedings subscription wall.

Addendum: chapter 3 - limit situation and human praxis

"Those who are served by the present limit-situation regard the untested feasibility as a threatening limit-situation which must not be allowed to materialize, and act to maintain the status quo."

Chapter 4

The oppressors develop a series of methods precluding any presentation of the world as a problem and showing it rather as a fixed entity, as something given--something to which people, as mere spectators, must adapt."

For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority."

___

So...I guess if we think we are intrinsically inferior to hard technologies like automated credit card company telephone systems - they will stay hard perhaps?

We can happen to soft systems a lot more easily than we can to hard ones. Hard things reify historical choices and limit future choices: that's the point - it's how they achieve efficiency and freedom from error. Inevitably they therefore reduce agency - it's why Franklin talks of them as 'prescriptive' technologies.

No matter how rigid the process, you can always choose not to participate if that's what you really want to do but it is more than a simple matter of weighing up the costs. Under most circumstances, non-participation will contradict at least one other choice you have made (at least, to participate) which may involve ethical as well as pragmatic concerns. Contradictions always make decision-making complex at best because logic, by its own rules, fails utterly in the face of them. That's thankfully not a problem for me as, right now, calls from abroad could be much more important to me than money, which is why I happened to be purchasing expensive flights that I couldn't afford. The off switch wasn't an option.

well, humans are never good at logic anyway...ask any marketing or psychology professor (or billion-dollar-profit credit card company)

Hopefully, you'll have a nice spring weekend in Edmonton and get back on Alberta SleepTime for a few days before you head back home over the Big Pond again. 

If nothing else, you've got an excellent personal example of hard/soft for your MoodleMoot talk.