More workplace tools: expenses and business cards

These are the sort of apps which are really useful when you are travelling….

 

 

 

 

This week I am continuing my new (academic) year's resolution, and getting systematic over using tools.

Latest hot app to join the ranks of workplace organisation is ExpenseMagic which does what is says. You take photos of your receipts (or upload them or mail them in) and once a month you get a spreadsheet with a summary of all your expenditure. You have to supply a small amount of metadata, but its a great way of systematising the records of what you spend, whether you are going to claim it back, or want to look at it for analysis.  You can pay for the service on a PAYG, monthly of quarterly fee, and for me, the peace of mind and delegated work is much appreciated!

 

As well as spending money and collecting receipts, travelling to conferences and workshops tends to lead to an accumulation of business cards. 

I already try to use evernote and take pics of people and places where possible; and I have a LinkedIn app to turn my business contacts into my online network. Now I also have a business card reader app (called BCReader!)which very nicely scans the card and lets me save the collected info into a contact in my address book.

Neat.

Tools and Tricks for a life online - the slow death of Twitter

I'm working hard at the moment juggling a whole load of different (but inter-related) papers which I am writing along with revising this semester's teaching and working on a radically different incarnation of some teaching which I have done in the past. When I have that many things on the go, I find Evernote invaluable, and Twitter is just part of the fabric.
When I wrote about workplace tools in a previous post, I neglected to mention twitter - probably because its use is just an intrinsic part of how I work. I use twitter to find stuff, to keep in touch with my (various and not necessarily inter-related communities of practice (web science; technology enhanced learning;  personal and educational development; workplace and remote friends and colleagues; running and cycling (think serious juggling plus work life balance here). I have Twitter tools on my various devices, and have been  using Twitter with IFTTT to help me build up an archive of useful stuff which I have spotted by saving it in Evernote.

Imagine my disappointment therefore to discover that twitter has decided to self harm to a disastrous extent - of which I learnt courtesy of the IFTTT twitter feed, and the ensuing storm of twitter discussion.

Upcoming changes to Twitter Triggers

We recently sent an email to everyone with a Recipe that uses a Twitter Trigger outlining some upcoming changes to the Twitter Channel. Here’s the full email:

In recent weeks, Twitter has announced policy changes* that will affect how applications and users like yourself can interact with Twitter’s data. As a result of these changes, on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email,Evernote and Facebook. All Personal and Shared Recipes using a Twitter Trigger will also be removed. Recipes using Twitter Actions and your ability to post new tweets via IFTTT will continue to work just fine. 

At IFTTT, first and foremost, we want to empower anyone to create connections between literally anything. We’ve still got a long way to go, and to get there we need to make sure that the types of connections that IFTTT enables are aligned with how the original creators want their tools and services to be used. 
We at IFTTT are big Twitter fans and, like yourself, we’ve gotten a lot of value out of the Recipes that use Twitter Triggers. We’re sad to see them go, but remain excited to build features that work within Twitter’s new policy. Thank you for your support and for understanding these upcoming changes. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at support@ifttt.com.
Linden Tibbets 
IFTTT CEO 
*These Twitter policy changes specifically disallow uploading Twitter Content to a “cloud based service” (Section 4A https://dev.twitter.com/terms/api-terms) and include stricter enforcement of the Developer Display Requirements (https://dev.twitter.com/terms/display-requirements)

This enlightened action of self mutilation comes hot on the heels of twitter announcing that it was ending its tweet syndication partnership with LinkedIn! However a few folk have pointed out that the writing has been on the wall for some time when API guidelines were revised in the spring (see AllThingsD and TechCrunch )

What it means for me, is back to the drawing board and work out another way of hanging on and archiving useful information.  

Women in Technology

Over the summer two female interns who are also undergrads studying in Electronics and Computer Science have been working on reviving ECS.Women as an action and support group for all female undergraduates and post graduates in our area.  

The basic idea is to establish a full programme of activities ready to roll at the beginning of the academic year and to use the internships as a means of creating some momentum to sustain the group's activities and  thus secure its future.

A fundamentatal problem when women are in a minority, is that relying on voluntary activities is inherently risky, because you are seeking a big contribution from a relatively small pool of individuals - a call which can be particularly challenging when those individuals are trying very hard at the same time to work on getting a good phd or a high quality degree.  

I will be pointing at outputs from the internship in future posts, but meantime I wanted to use this post as a pointer to a couple of links

Interesting Blog Post from Tim Chevallier a member of the Haskell community titled "How to exclude women from your technical community: a tutorial". 

The blog includes links to Geek Feminism's WIKI  - resources for Allies and Good sexism comebacks - many of the links in Geek Feminism are understandably US centric, but none the less many others are relevant and helpful to those coming from a European perspective.  

 

Web Science - what, why, where and how?

As hundreds of folk gather in Evanston, Illinois for the fourth web science conference, its time to ask once more a few defining questions about the topic.

On Wednesday 21st June, I was one of three academics leading a pre-conference workshop titled 'Teaching the Web'.

We had a good turn out for the workshop, although unfortunately it clashed with a meeting of the WSTNet so a few key people were not able to attend

Following on from the workshop I would like to set out a challenge. We discussed how we introduce people to web science and agreed there were a few questions which would like to have answered.

So, your challenge, should you choose to accept it….

• What is Web Science?
• Why would students follow web science, what future careers and employment might they follow?
• Where do you find web science? How is it practiced? and indeed, where is it taught
• How do we practice web science? What methods do we use?

you could try to answer any or all of the questions,

The answers to these questions can be used to consolidate our understanding of Web Science in a way which can allow us to better design and suggest a plausible model for the Web Science Curriculum.

In memorium Mark Brummell (1959-2012) RIP

Sad news last night transformed a relaxing evening into an unexpected wake...

 

Mark Brummell - a rather special cyclist, died when his bike was hit by a car at Ipley Cross on the Beaulieu Road on the edge of the New Forest. Mark regularly went for afternoon bike rides in the forest, so its some consolation to think that he would have had an enjoyable afternoon outing before his untimely death.

The accident happened at about 18.15 on Monday 28th May 2012.   The accident has been widely reported in the local media. The piece in the Southampton Daily Echo from May 30th includes a tribute from local cyclists.  The photo above shows Mark in an uncharacteristically 'smart cyclist' mode was a rickshaw driver when he took us to our wedding in 2004.

Mark was well known and liked amongst the local cycling community, a  long standing member of the Southampton Cycling Campaign. He was previously a popular, conscientious and well respected academic in the Physics Department at the University of Southampton. About 10 years ago he took early retirement from the University because of ill health.  

 

After that time he dedicated himself to all things bikes which included maintaining, re-building and restoring old cycles working from his home in Shirley. This included some project work refurbishing bikes for people without other means of transport. If you were lucky enough to have your bike handled by Mark it meant that you had passed his (rather opaque) admission interview, and your steed(s) details would be added to his database for future reference.  

 

His work was always meticulous, and the itemised account which you received after a detailed explanation of how and where all the parts had been sourced would inevitably be written on the back of an envelope.  Mark's afternoon rides were a regular feature and essential part of his working life and would be followed by evening relaxation in the Wellington Arms, in Freemantle where he could replace some well used calories with appropriate quantities of real ale. 

 

I knew Mark as a friend and very reliable bike mechanic/engineer who was always ready to sort out a problem, and whose rigorous physics background was just the thing when setting up a chain set or building or truing a wheel. He advised me, and cared for many of my bikes over the years, and everyone who I introduced to him agreed with me that he was a lovely and rather special person. One thing is for certain, among his many friends he will be most sorely missed. 

 

 Mark Brummell, cyclist, physicist 1959-2012. His is survived by an elderly mother and a brother, 

Something for my masters students

Survey Form:  MSc pre-dissertation survey COMP6029
 when I first meet my Masters project students I like them to complete a short survey which helps me understand their background and expectations of the dissertation.
I am keen to ensure that the practice runs as smoothly as possible and believe that starting from a clear understanding of current experience and expectations can be helpful in this process.
You can complete the survey by following the link  here

Workplace tools

Workplace tools are important, here is a  post about the tools I use and a few new tools which I came across over the easter break when I managed to find some time  to do a bit more reading that usual...
Tools I could not exist without
Dropbox

• I can get at all my files on any of my computers and any web based computers wherever I am.
• I can use it to share docs which otherwise live on my personal computers
• I want to have a seamless backup system

Thank you Janet Carter for introducing me to it :-)
Evernote

• there are lots of things going on, and I want to keep note of them.
• bookmarks, tools etc are distributed and Evernote is in one place.
• keeping a diary/journal should be as easy as possible.
• keep pics of info taken on your phone for instant diary/journal notes
• most importantly work on lots of different devices, be accessible from the web in a synched manner

I use this to keep running notes of my supervision meetings and as a one place for info being collated as I research info - particularly when writing.

Mars Edit

• lets me write my blogs offline
• organises my tagging

Online/Cloud tools which I use

 Doodle

• Online service set up a poll and get people to decide when they will come and meet you - no more hopeless negotiating over dates and times 

EventBrite

• Online service manage admin for small meetings - free if meeting is free

GoogleDocs

• Online service use the forms feature to run quick surveys, or collate info on who want's what from a menu when you are organising a social event
• Use the docs for a quick turnaround on a collaboratively authored piece of writing, there is a great example of that in Mike Wesch's lovely (if a little old now… video 'The vision of students today' (2006))

iSurvey

• Is the University of Southampton survey tool 

Mendeley

• install a client on your  desktop
• use as a reference manager
• use to share references and establish public citation collections 
• tool for crowd sourcing related publications

I use this with my project students so i an see how their background research is proceeding

E.ggtimer.com 

Online service, sets up times on your machine

•  good idea when you are trying to work on a deadline etc and need to prevent yourself getting distracted...
• it also has special times - e.g. the 25 mins plus 5 is ideal for half hour meetings

FetchEveryone

• An online training tool you can use to log your runs, play games, analyse training
• Website tools which I don't use, but which I might tell you about

750 words

• use this to help yourself get into the writing habit. 

Some that look like a good idea
http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock.html ' selectively block web site access
Tools which are not online
Scrivener
from the good folk at the fabulously named literature and latté (although I strictly take my coffee black) I am finding this tool a real winner...

• the thing to use to help turn notes or blogs into coherent form
• it lets me organise my writing collecting lots of bits from lots of places
• it can output to electronic format as well as various others such as PDF and RTF
• it handles word count, tracking 
• it have a visual interface to the organiser 

1Password
This is a desktop app, there are others with similar functionality

• everyone needs one secure place to keep lots of info
• not least to share with their nearest and dearest to ensure that things can be sorted out on your behalf if you are incapacitated, or even after your death (ultimate incapacity)
• because there is so much info in life