learnandteachonline.com

"Learning 2.0" is the 2nd highest-ranked Technorati search this morning. Huh!

Have you been following the blogosphere conversation about Techmeme, its new leaderboard, piling on, and groupthink?

Seems like everybody who's complaining also visits regularly. Me too, but I do agree it incents bloggers to behave like iron filings drawn to a magnet.

Maybe that's the trouble with relying on algorithms. They can seek out items like other items, but math has a harder time detecting something original and new (while also being important or consequential). You need human judgment for that, just like you need people to intervene in the social problem of juvenile and rude behavior in comments, even though the techies keep saying identity systems are the answer.

Human brains and machine brains dividing the labor in a smart way. Calacanis isn't all wrong when it comes to that part.

Robert Scoble is tweeting his wife's labor.

I think I recall his saying his reportage would be text-only. That's kind.

Hope everything goes well for mom and baby.

Update!! Friday morning. Birth announced via TwitterGram: mp3

Congrats to all.

Update, Sunday morning: Scoble explains how TwitterGram works.

The New York Times does a roundup of social sites catering to older netizens, remarking that "Some of the older users of the sites say the experience feels more comfortable to them than when they tried MySpace, Facebook or Friendster."

Stowe Boyd says he doesn't buy it, contending that "connection transcends demographics."

Yeah, I know... except I have to admit I really have enjoyed hanging out on message boards that discourage teenagers from posting. They're book discussion sites and don't specifically target boomers, just grownups. No YouTube- or Digg-flavored "she's hawt" comments. You know?

A discussion of Facebook and Moodle integration is going on in the Moodle forums. The thread. Registration is required, but painless. Then I think you have to join the "Moodle Lounge" course to read or post on the board.

I'll read it more carefully later and may have something to say.

Last time I visited my parents at their Florida place I had to get online with dialup. This year there's a nearby Rally gas station with wifi. So it's 9:40 p.m. and I'm online, outside, in a t-shirt and shorts. We Northerners need spring break. Also anyone whose blood has been thinned by living in warmer climates. Just three years in L.A. made me not really a Michigan person anymore.

By this time you must have seen the quiz that asks you to identity which terms are Star Wars character names and which are Web 2.0 cutsie business names.

I had an idea. It sounds too much like Odeo, but how about Oh-Ree-Oh for a name? You know, that chilling chant sung by the guards of the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West? You could use a guard as the logo/mascot.

That's me, after messing around with Adobe Audition filters.

Couple days ago, Dave Winer made friends with a bunch of women by saying he was tired of people talking about how their mother wouldn't understand something.

In Philadelphia (the movie), the Denzel Washington character said "Explain it to me like I'm a 4-year-old." That might be a substitute for using "your mother" as the lowest common denominator user.

Anyway, sometimes I think too much is made of dumbing things down. It may not be just women of a certain age who are not respected by some confident young purveyors of technology tools. If they're thinking "we have to make this idiot-proof," aren't they thinking that their audience is the hoi polloi, the great unwashed?

I've been around that attitude in companies and organizations, and it makes me uncomfortable to hear employees disrespecting customers -- the source of their income, and their ultimate boss. I worry that the attitude may subsciously creep into dealings with customers or tend to dictate disrespectful strategies in approaches to them.

People will rise to the level of expectations of them. You shouldn't drag the majority down to the level of the least aware. It's insulting.

Here's a post from almost a year ago that tells about dumbing down instructions on the web.

I'm not saying you shouldn't write carefully, and you shouldn't make things as clear as they can be. But too often you get one or two complaints and you are tempted to change things to make sure everybody gets it.

Take the person in the linked post who was all up in arms on receiving a mailing list subscription confirmation. She thought I was trying to trick her into buying a magazine subscription. In the end there were more than 2,000 people on that list of community planners of local National Safety Month events. I should use this one paranoid, irritated user as the model for dealing with all the others? I don't think so!

There's already a proposed new product for OPML reading lists. That didn't take long. Grazr.com. The site doesn't say who's behind it. Maybe there's a good reason since it hasn't launched, but I never like that. I found it on Adam Green's RSS Alley map.

I'm taking bets on how long it will be before there is a reference somewhere out in blogland to "the reading list space."

Check out today's post on 0xDECAFBAD.

This sort of thing warms my heart. I used to think I was born in the wrong century to thrive in a cottage industry culture, but if we burn down a bunch of 20th century effluvia, it's just the right time.

Les writes well for a programmer, doesn't he? And he reads OSC's Alvin Maker series! That shows some good taste, too.