Blog is moving

The we deliver elephants blog is on the move - away from blogspot.com and off to a much more natural home at Luzia Research.

the url for the web based blog is http://blog.luziaresearch.com.

RSS subscriptions are now handled by Feedburner - on the url : http://feeds.feedburner.com/WeDeliverElephants

This URL has been in use for a while so if you subscribe you may not need to update the address.

If you are seeing this post in your RSS reader then you need to subscribe though as it has not been posted via feedburner.

Why the move? mostly so that we can use WordPress which is much nicer to use than blogger.

Web 2.0 and language learning

In another Economist piece this week on learning languages (Mandarin 2.0) - they talk about how the internet and technology is really changing language learning.

Skype is a great tool at connecting people and very good at connecting a English speaking person wanting to know Mandarin with a Mandarin speaker who wants to learn English.

Podcasts and other technologies also get a mention - pity they overlooked the impact that memory training and learning a language with a mobile phone is also making.

Genetically I can't learn Mandarin*

There was an interesting article in last weeks Economist that states that native speaker of tonal languages have a genetic differences to those speakers of non-tonal languages.

I'm not sure what use the research is yet - apart from providing a good excuse for me to explain why picking up Mandarin* was so hard - but it is certainly interesting.

I would be interested to see if there are common differences in the language processing areas of the brains also - otherwise I am confused as to what the genetic difference means.

Anyway it is interesting research and I thought I'd make sure any current Mandarin* students could add it their list of reasons why it is so hard to learn, listen and talk tonal languages.

Linguistics | Words in code | Economist.com

*Other tonal languages exist

Neuroscience and education

Quick reference to an Economist article on neuroscience and education in the Economist :
The science of education | Experimental subjects.

I hope more of this happens it seems that this could get rid of some myths in teaching and parenting, but until the results are repeated and tested in alternate ways it could also create some new myths.

I have this picture that because of the research that rhythm has something to do with dyslexia is one of those newly proven links that if not researched and proven in more depth could result in the next generation in the UK all turning to percussion and drumming because of a well intentioned parents.

déjá-vu explained

Obviously it is all down our dentate gyrus not working correctly!

Research deciphers 'déjá-vu' brain mechanics - MIT News Office

The research seems to only cover spacial déjá-vu not the situation ones that I tend to suffer from a lot - but I guess it is a step forward.

"Whenever I go into class, I have to power down."

Great article on the Guardian website about how kids use technology - well worth the read.

Children's experiences of technology outside the classroom way ahead | eG weekly | EducationGuardian.co.uk

I'd love to find a way to get he classroom more interactive - but with my focus on the mobile phone I guess I'm going to have to stay out of the class room and just help with the powered up state.

Are social networks, texting and phones changing our brains?

An article over at CBC refers to some exciting research about how brains may be developing in new ways thanks to new on-line social interactions and dealing with "too much" information:

FTA : "Studies are beginning to show that cellphone-toting execs and Facebook-friendly teens may be multi-tasking their way into taking on even more, by rewiring their brains to handle it."

Now we have even more reasons to find new ways to support their learning - their brains are different to ours!

The Open Coffee Club Movement

A round-up of the new global phenomenon that is Open Coffee. Around the world, tech entrepreneurs and investors are meeting regularly to drink coffee, network and hopefully do deals. No more of the old-school "please send us your executive summary before we'll even talk to you". A place to find opportunities.



read more | digg story

Using twitter in education

In a meeting yesterday we were discussing the use of Twitter in education - not something I had thought of before - it was Guy who came up with it.

Guy was talking about using twitter as a notepad - sending ideas to a store on the internet - a use I hadn't considered it for.

We also discussed the ability to broadcast messages to people and how this could be used in group work - more applicable to adult or university education than schools, would be interesting for distance learners.

It seems that the idea without a business model (Twitter) seems to be able to potentially have lots of uses - but still none that are likely to make the current developers much money.

Talking of which I hope they get their infrastructure upgraded soon as these outages are not encouraging me to use the service at the moment.

Wordpress as a content management tool

Slightly off topic - but we just relaunched the Luzia Research website and chose Wordpress as the content management system.

What a dream to use - probably shouldn't say that on a blogger website - hopefully the overlords won't mind!

Just in case anyone is thinking of using it I can only recommend it!

One of the best things is the sitemaps plugin that pings google each time you publish a page and rebuilds the sitemap.

Mobile Gadget Form Factors

Found an interesting piece on Mobile Gadget Form Factors.

The idea that we can have one device to meet all of these needs is obviously far fetched - but I think still we will try - but if anything this goes to show why the mobile world will continue to have an range of devices and then a range of manufacturers.

Mobile devices are just much more personal and need to reflect the needs of the owner either in form and function or just in fashion.

More thoughts on Ecology

After my post yesterday on John Naughton's introduction to an Ecological viewpoint of the internet I've been reflecting on my interpretation through the day today.

I'm still struggling to understand the relevance of Ecology - apart from I can see the shape of something that should make sense.

I talked about the market yesterday and abundance of resources meaning the consumer holding all the power. John also brought up examples where consumer power was increasing off-line because of the increased information that consumers now have access to prior to making their purchase. None of this seems to contradict an economic viewpoint - if anything it create a more utopian marketplace where both supply and demand is balanced and competition is ripe.

So I'm wondering still what can be learnt from this idea of Ecology or if it is just a stretched analogy that served it's purpose on Monday and would do well not be taken any further.

The rise and fall of internet businesses and the trends that survive and those that fall by the wayside seem to still have as much basis in the ideas of Adam Smith and Charles Darwin as they did on Sunday for me.

I want to take something more from this - but I think this is more about the changing role of television and mass media than it is about economics and success on the internet.

Shame though as I liked my end of the stick!

I'll keep the phrase "survival of the smartest" to motivate me though and look out for any Ecologists who are winning on the stock markets.

Well I'm off to find another stick to pick up at the wrong end and slowly work my way up to the other end.

John Naughton - Media as an Ecological Study

I was lucky enough to attend a talk on Monday by John Naughton about The Totally Networked Society.

The talk was about how the media landscape is changing and how there is a lot of bewilderment about it - and why he thinks there shouldn't be.

I took a lot from his talk - but I'm not sure I completly picked up the right end of the stick John was throwing - here are my musings inspired by his talk though.

He proposed a idea that was new to me - that economics is struggling to cope with modelling and explaining how things succeed or fail in this totally connected world. His theory is that economics was created for and works with markets that have a scarcity of resources. The world of on-line applications and digital media means that there is a no longer a scarcity of resources, but in fact there is an abundance of resource - and economics struggles to cope with modelling this.

The proposition of abundance is true - internet sites such as google, flickr, myspace and youtube have all been started as small "bootstrapped" projects. They needed money and resources to get to where they are now - but by the point they looked for capital either the capital they needed was low - or they had taken out a lot of the risk of the investment by proving things worked. (OK OK I know that there are a lot of companies that have failed - but lets just put that down to bad investment decisions by idiots rather than ruin my whole flow here!).

So where an Economist would talk about supply and demand - we can see that the only big supply issue here is ideas. If demand is there - you have a nice model, if not - go get another of those cheap ideas and try again. Abundance of resource is confusing things - consumers are in the driving seat.

In this world though where the consumer calls the shots and resources are abundant - the idea that a competitor can copy what you are doing overnight (almost) means that things are harder for on-line businesses.

Take Microsoft for example - they have lived in a distorted marketplace for years, where they have all the power - I don't believe in the on-line world this will happen again (but they can probably look forward to another 5-10 years).

Google - the Internet's favourite new monopolist (and the Overloads of blogger.com), they have created their position by listening and reacting to the consumer - recognising the consumer has the power - and rarely disagreeing. Could it all change for them? yes I think so - their monopoly is not with consumers it is with advertisers. They now have the majority of the search market and therefore have considerable power with advertisers (there is no abundance of consumers - so supply and demand still work here). Onewrong step though (maybe 5) - stop listening to consumers - and that will be the end of that.

This is where Ecology comes into the picture - John's argument was that Ecology is used for studying complex interactions and symbiosis of many organisms. Our totally networked society is such a complex landscape of interacting people, organisations and applications that Ecologists already have the tools to start analysing it.

OK - I don't think John was suggesting we all go and get our stock tips from the nearest Ecologist quite yet - but what he was saying was that the fact that so many economists are baffled by the behaviour in this "new" world - is completely understandable - they have no way properly understand it.

What next then - how to use these ideas? I'm not sure I've emailed John for any links and papers he can give me on the subject.

His talk ended with a point that success on-line is less survival of the fittest (resource rich) but the smartest (listen, look and analyse) - a rallying call if ever I heard one - when you are a small company - let's hope it holds true.

I'm not sure if my piece here makes 100% on the subject - John has written about New Media Ecology previously and this could well be a good starting point for anyone interested.

I'd also suggest - reading the Wikipedia article on Media Ecology to see that the idea was first raised by Marshall McLuhan when looking at the dominance of television as "the" dominate media in 1977.

Finally launched getawayphrases

Well it has taken some time but we are finally there - getawayphrases our language tool for mobile phones has now been launched.

You can now learn German, French, Italian or Spanish - links in the sidebar!

Feedback welcome.