OSG possibilities

At OSG, the "cybergoals" are,  among others,

Extending and adding to existing OSG web....portal additions......bookstore data integration

Webs for Media Studies and Churches,  TV/Movie Reviews, resources,  links,  discussions,  production of media study pieces.

Lab or "Cyberplace" developments

SmartMobs technologies ramp-up (ie. scheduling, contact infos,  blogging remotely, hall rental, group booking,  etc.)

Webs for Studies of/in Third Places

Webs for Discussion Forums (linked to Booktables,  linked to Bookstore data)

Webs with "Portal-ability" via DotNetNuke and .Net

Webs to aggregate and highlight Weblogs and their place in the OSG schema

Webs for Books/Book talks/Book Authors with Weblogs,  encouraging authjors to do Weblog extensions of their books (eg. SmartMobs.com)

Webs for Education (e-learning, e-seminary, online education)  (also using some of the above hybrids that create online community)

Webs for OSG Smart Mobs  (or is that "Great Good Smart Mobs" ala Smart Mobs and Great Good Places)

Webs for Online Community Studies;  Social Psychology of Online Community; CMC; Social Software

Webs for Churches;  extending Church groups into online groups; extending the reach;  Web hospitality and open discussion,  encouraging seekers,  highlighting the interests and gifts of your Church or theological community,  encouaging weblogs and web stories,  Smart Mobbing the Church

3:01:25 PM    

A 90-day trip of discovery and development

10:47:55 AM    

Web Development Notes for July 2-July 7

I have been up and about over these past 4 days since returning from Cincinnati,  anxiously setting up shop as "OSG cyber-engine south".  Larry gave me his scanner off his desk to bring home and experiment with ways of getting various printed materials into Web-publishable form,  so we can begin to put some of the content on the OSG site that they've long desired to have as part of their Christian Community Portal vision. 

The fact that they have ,  for years,  described themselves as "A Great Good Place for Community and Spiritual Renewal",   gives all my "Web history" and Web Skills immediate relevance and power.

When I went out to the bookstore yesterday,  I sat reading a book called something like "The Columbia University Guide to Electronic Publishing",  and turned to the section on e-book production,  formats,  and distribution.   I also looked at an issue of Business 2.0 where there were several articles on wireless and cellular's solutions to some of the WiFi offerings. 

I've also spent time looking at the Portable PC mag Larry gave me to read up on various features and models, in order to choose one that they will then go and acquire for me.  It was another instance of a great gap in the approaches taken by OSG and Larry vs prior experiences.  It is a matter of having developers in the organization who actually use and arer "intimate" with the technologies,  in order to develop the most appropriate applications and uses for PDA/Portable networked information.  Who but a person fluent in the use of and "feel for" the portable/handheld  features would be in the best position to conceive the most practical and popular uses for the data to be retrieved,  the connections to be made to contact data,  the ways in which to receive text messages,  email messages,  video messages,  forum message notifications,  and to feedback into the loop from what kinds of local device data? 

This relates closely to what I've been reading in Natural Born Cyborgs,  where Andy Clark is now (in what I'm reading this morning) exploring the possibilities for bio-techno implants (in the context of discussions about experiments with blind or deaf or paralyzed patients or animals),  and what these experiments tell us about the way our brain-networks send and receive neural operation messages and sensory information.  Clark's book is much more than studies of the brain.  He is exploring the way brains adapt to sensory input and surroundings, including the use of various "scaffolding" to help support the processing of information.  I am anxious to read further as it seems promising that he will address the kinds of fears I was discussing yesterday concerning the "Rise of the Machines",  and how the popular theme of machine vs human has conjured up a vast array of warnings and apocalytptic tales that urge caution and perhaps abandonment of the attempts to place too much human activity into the care of computational environments.

10:37:36 AM