mi-am cumparat calculatorul acum mai bine de doi ani, in Italia. Imi doream mult un laptop si atunci a fost suficient sa lucrez acolo o luna si apoi sa merg la magazin sa mi-l aleg, cu o gramada de programe deja instalate. Cel mai mult mi-a placut seria Encarta, dictionar si enciclopedie, cu tot cu Encarta Kids, de care ma foloseam cu incredere, mai ales atunci cand nu aveam internet.  Stim cu totii ce inseamna o enciclopedie, nu are rost sa explic la ce multitudine de informatii aveam acces, repet, fara sa intru pe net. In plus, existau numeroase trimiteri la articole si pagini de internet, care completau, daca vreti, o enciclopedie deja completa.

Numai ca…de la data de 31 octombrie anul acesta, Encarta a fost inchisa. Cei de la Microsoft au considerat, poate, ca Encarta nu le mai aduce suficient profit si au hotarat sa renunte. Ca urmare, acum nici o pagina de net, la care se facea uneori trimitere, nu mai este disponibila. Apare doar un mesaj enervant, cum ca Microsoft a indepartat acel continut pe care il cauti si atata tot. Si asta in conditiile in care, fata de Wikipedia, Encarta prezenta doar informatii sigure, verificate.

In concluzie, am in continuare o enciclopedie, dar am senzatia ca as avea-o doar pe jumatate. Asta e, vreau nu vreau, o sa trec pe Treccani.

The potential: “Daddy, Miss America wont share her toys.”

Obama vision could be crippled

by rich, greedy US institutions

… and commercial interests who want an arm  and two legs.

1. Sharing knowledge – The Gronstedt Group begins tour  of the SLENZ birthing unit.

The more time I spend in Second Life and  other virtual worlds the more I become convinced  that  SLENZ  joint leader Dr Clare Atkins (SL: Arwenna Stardust) is right: Collaboration and sharing is the key to success in  world education in virtual worlds.

But its not just collaboration within the United States, or New Zealand. It’s collaboration around the world.

The rich, big universities of North America and Europe might be able to afford to go  it alone, but for the smaller and the often poorer tertiary institutions of  the United States,  countries like  New Zealand, and Third World countries – if they even have reliable, affordable Broadband services – don’t have the luxury of NOT collaborating and sharing,  both at an institutional level and at an academic level.

The creation of complex builds, huds, animations and all the other paraphernalia of teaching successfully in a virtual  world, as well as aquiring the skills/knowhow to use them  can cost megabucks: to not share them under OpenSource and Creative Commons license with institutions and academics around the world would seem to be me to be both profligate and selfish. It also could regarded by some , particularly when sold at a high price or with an exorbitant  license fee attached, as both  neo-colonialist and  greedy capitalism of the kind that brought about the most recent crash of world markets.

Second Life behind the firewall

The collaboration thoughts, although first ennunciated  for me by  Dr  Atkins, were brought to mind more recently by  five things: the move by the Lindens, admitted an avowedly commercial organisation,  to  promote Second Life behind the firewall, previously Nebraska, to  commercial, Government and educational institutions at US$55,000 a pop, a princely sum for many cash-strapped institutions around the world;  President Obama’s Cairo vision, proclaimed in June;  a visit by the KiwiEd group to the University of Western Australia, Second  Life site; a Train for Success Gronstedt Group  35-avatar tour of the SLENZ Project’s virtual birthing unit on the Second Life island of Kowhai; and  finally, but not least,  the one-hour keynote address on copyright  by  Harvard University  Professor of Law Lawrence Lessig to  EDUCAUSE09 in Denver earlier this month.

2. Sharing the knowledge: Lessig’s certificate of entitlement.

Obama told  the world,  “We will match promising Muslim students with internships in America and create a new online network … ” something  which  Second Life arguably has been  doing for sometime with  the collaboration already  occurring between individual academics and many smaller institutions creating an “online network, facilitating collaboration across geographic and cultural boundaries.”

The problem with his vision is that  US commercial – and often Government -  interests  have almost always  worked against  facilitating collaboration and sharing across geographic  and cultural boundaries. Look at Microsoft software. Look at Apple and ITunes licensing. Look at software regionalisation. Look at the record industry. Look at the book industry, where rich English language publishers in the UK and the US split the world into at least two markets.  Look at the way copyright law has moved into  education – and science.

But its not a new phenomenon. Look at banana republics, created out of Boston,  as a rather ironical and destructive facilitation of collaboration across geographic and cultural boundaries.

Triumphs of reason

On the other hand there are triumphs of reason over idiocy. Look at the rise of the ubiquitous PC, compared to the Apple computer, even though using a proprietary Operating System  the rise from the “underground” of  Moodle, compared to say Blackboard; the slow advance of bilateral free trade agreements, even if not the much desired mutilateral  free trade agreements, instead of the trade siege mentality,  which  affected most of the world in the 1930s (and still threatens); the growing popularity of Linux compared to proprietary Operating Systems; and finally the astounding growth of  Wikipedia compared to Encarta or Britannia.

Despite my misgivings I have been heartened over the years by the surprising degree of co-operation and collaboration that has been happening in virtual worlds. That is despite the actions of  those  few Scrooge McDuck-like educational institutions which have purely commercial interests at heart and appear to run closed shop operations, sharing with none.

I was even more cheered recently by a visit to the University of Western Australia when I found that  university, which is in the forefront  of Australian virtual world education, was entering into bi-lateral  virtual “free trade” and/or “free exchange”  agreements with  the likes of Stanford University and others. This mirrors the agreements put in place  by  Scott Diener (SL: Professor Noarlunga) at the University of Auckland with the University of Boise; and Judy Cockeram (SL: Judy-Arx Scribe) and  her work with architects around the world;  and those “handshake”   agreements  or informal sharing arrangements put in place by a myriad of other relatively smaller institutions who have already recognised the benefits of world-wide collaboration.

3.Sharing the knowledge – KiwiEd group tours University of Wester Australia site.

And then there is the SLENZ Project, which 18 months ago adopted as its ruling credo,  complete transparency, with OpenSource under Creative Commons license for all its virtual educational products, developments and knowledge in the hope that others would be able to build on the team’s work. Even though the adoption of this credo was probably due more to the persistence and bloody-mindedness of a then non-Second Life “immersed” and relatively sceptical SLENZ Learning Designer Leigh Blackall than anything else, it has worked and is working.

One has to  agree now that Blackall was right, even though  there is obviously a place for fair payment to commercial (virtual world creators, builders, developers etc) interests, something Linden Labs has recognised  with its protection of its own virtual world product lines (and  unfortunately those created and developed by its residents, even if Creative Commons, full permissions and OpenSource) behind  the walls of Second Life.

Linden Labs is not alone, however, in usurping user/creator rights.  The way  they have covered the issue in their rather draconian and very American Terms of Service is little different from other major US on-line social networking services: if you put it up on their service, they own it.

Virtual World Free Trade/Exchange Pact?

This is despite, or perhaps in spite of “renegades” like the  onetime Arcadia Asylum, making all her magnificent “builds” available to “anyone to use anywhere,  how they like, even blowing it up.”

Like  the tyrants behind the old Iron Curtain the Lindens realise that keeping  control of their residents’ creations inside  their world (and keeping them there), guarantees that they will have to stay there unless they want to pour their creativity, time and work down the drain and start a new virtual life elsewhere.

This leads  me to the thought that President Obama, although paying lip service to “collaboration across geographic and cultural boundaries,” needs to put his Government’s money  where his mouth is and promote a world-wide free trade/exchange agreement for  virtual world education if not for virtual worlds themselves, guaranteeing rights of both personal ownership of  individual products when created or bought in a real world sense,  but also opening up US educational institution virtual knowledge and creativity for the rest of the world to freely add to, and build on.

The President  has the vision  for a better on-line world – which could lead to greater understanding between peoples through education.

If he does nothing except talk. Nothing will happen.

And, I believe, we will find the major educational institutions moving more behind their Ivy Walls – if they are not already there – and American educational institutions (and others in UK, Germany, Brazil etc) adopting  a siege mentality   even though  virtual worlds (all virtual worlds, whether emanating out of the US or China or anywhere else) will only fulfill their true potential of levelling the playing field for all educationally if they are free and open to all.

That is something America can do for the world – all worlds.

]]> http://samvaknin.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/the-britannica-2010-victorious/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:49:02 +0000 samvaknin http://samvaknin.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/the-britannica-2010-victorious/

October, 2010

With the demise of Microsoft’s Encarta (it has been discontinued) and the tribulations of the Wikipedia (its rules have been revamped to resemble a traditional encyclopedia, alienating its contributors in the process), the Encyclopedia Britannica 2010 (established in 1768) may have won the battle of reference.

The Encyclopedia Britannica 2010 Ultimate Edition (formerly “Student and Home Edition”) builds on the success of its completely revamped previous editions in 2006-9. The rate of innovation in the last four versions was impressive and welcome. It continues apace in this rendition with Britannica Biographies (Great Minds, Heroes and Villains, and Leaders), Classical Music (500 audio files arranged by composer), and a great Workspace for Project Management (a kind of friendly digital den). Six months of free access to the myriad riches of the Britannica Online complete the package.

The Britannica comes bundled with an atlas (close to 1800 maps linked to articles and 287 World Data Profiles of individual countries and territories); the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus, augmented by a Spanish-English translation dictionary; classic articles from previous editions; twelve yearbooks (11,200 articles in total); an Interactive Timeline with 4000+ indexed timeline entries; a Research Organizer; and a Knowledge Navigator (called The Brain or BrainStormer). All told, it offers a directory of more than 166,000 reviewed and vetted links to online content.

In its new form the Britannica is user-friendly, with an A to Z Quick Search feature, monthly updates and the aforementioned 6 months of free access to its impressive powerhouse online Web site (more than 1 million additional articles and other items!).

The Britannica’s newest interface is even more intuitive and uncluttered than previously and is great fun to use. It offers morsels of knowledge, some of it date-specific, appetizingly presented through a ticker tape of visuals that leisurely scrolls across the bottom of the screen plus highly edifying interactive tours of articles and attendant media.

When you enter even the first few letters of a term in the search box, it offers various options and is persistent: no need to click on the toolbar’s “search” button every time you want to find something in this vast storehouse of knowledge. Moreover, the user can save search results onto handy “Virtual Notecards”. Whole articles can be copied onto the seemingly inexhaustible Workspace.

The new Britannica’s display is tab-based, avoiding the erstwhile confusing proliferation of windows with every move. Most importantly, articles appear in full, not in sections. This major improvement facilitates the finding of relevant keywords in and the printing of entire texts. These are only a few of the numerous alterations and enhancements.

Perhaps the most refreshing change is the Britannica’s Update Center. Dozens of monthly updates and new, timely articles are made available online (subject to free registration). A special button alerts the user when an entry in the base product has been updated.

Regrettably, the updates cannot be downloaded to the user’s computer or otherwise incorporated into the vast encyclopedia. Moreover, the product does not alert its user to the existence of completely new articles, only to updated ones. It takes a manual scan of the monthly lists to reveal newly added content.

Speaking of updates, one must not forget to dwell on the Britannica’s unequalled yearbooks. Each annual volume contains the year in events, scientific developments, and everything you wanted to know about the latest in any and every conceivable field of human endeavor, or Nature. About 11,200 articles culled from the last 12 editions buttress and update the Encyclopedia’s anyhow impressive offerings.

The Britannica provides considerably more text than any other extant traditional encyclopedia, print or digital (a total of 59 million words). But it has noticeably enhanced its non-textual content over the years (the 1994-7 editions had nothing or very little but words, words, and more words): it now boasts in excess of 30,000 images and illustrations (depending on the version) and 900 video and audio clips. This is not to mention the Britannica Classics: articles from Britannica’s most famous contributors: from Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein to Harry Houdini and from Marie Curie to Orville Wright.

The Britannica fully supports serious research. It is a sober assemblage of first-rate essays, up to date bibliographies, and relevant multimedia. It constitutes a desktop university library: thorough, well-researched, comprehensive, trustworthy.

The Britannica’s 84-107,000 articles (depending on the version) are long and thorough, supported by impressive bibliographies, and written by the best scholars in their respective fields. The company’s Editorial Board of Advisors reads like the who’s who of the global intellectual and scientific community.

The Britannica is an embarrassment of riches. Users often find the wealth and breadth of information daunting and data mining is fast becoming an art form. This is why the Britannica incorporated the BrainStormer to cope with this predicament. But an informal poll I conducted online shows that few know how to deploy it effectively.

The Britannica also sports Student and Elementary versions of its venerable flagship product, replete with a Homework Helpdesk, “how to” documents, and interactive games, activities, and math and science tutorials. Still, the Britannica is far better geared to tackle the information needs of adults and, even more so, professionals. It provides unequalled coverage of its topics.

Ironically, this is precisely why the market positioning of the Britannica’s Elementary and Student Encyclopedias is problematic: compared to the Wikipedia, the Britannica’s brand is distinctly adult and scholarly. The vacuum left by the Encarta (lamented) discontinuance, though, should make it easier to market the Student and Elementary versions (which are an integral part of the Ultimate Edition and not sold separately).

Still, the 2010 editions of both the Student and Elementary encyclopedias improve on the past in terms of both coverage and facilities: the Homework Helpdesk is a collection of useful homework resources including a video subject browse, online learning games and activities, online subject spotlights, and how-to documents on topics such as writing a book review. There are also Learning Games and Activities: hundreds of fun and interactive games and activities to help students with subjects like Math, Science, and Social Studies. Both versions are updated monthly with new online-only articles.

The current edition is fully integrated with the Internet. Apart from articles about new topics and personalities in the news, it offers additional and timely content and revisions on a dedicated Web site. The digital product includes a staggering number of links (165,808!) to third party content and articles on the Web. The GeoAnalyzer, which compares national statistical data and generates charts and graphs, is now Web-based and greatly enhanced.

The Britannica would do well to offer a browser add-on search bar and to integrate with desktop search tools from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others. Currently it offers search results through Google but this requires the user to install add-ons or plug-ins and to go through a convoluted rite of passage. A seamless experience is in the cards. Users must and will be able to ferret content from all over – their desktop, their encyclopedias, and the Web – using a single, intuitive interface.

Some minor gripes:

The atlas, dictionary, and thesaurus incorporated in the Britannica are still surprisingly outdated. Why not use a more current – and dynamically updated – offering? What about dictionaries for specialty terms (medical or computer glossaries, for instance)?

Despite considerable improvement over the previous edition, the Britannica still consumes (not to say hogs) computer resource far in excess of the official specifications. This makes it less suitable for installation on older PCs and on netbooks. If you own a machine with anything earlier than Pentium 4, less than 1 Gb RAM, and less than 10 Gb of really free space, the Britannica would be clunky at best.

But that’s it. Don’t think twice. Run to the closest retail outlet (or surf to the Britannica’s Web site) and purchase the 2010 edition now. It offers excellent value for money (less than $40, with a rebate). For less than the price of an antivirus software and for a fraction of the cost of Windows 7, you will significantly enhance your access to the sum total of human knowledge and wisdom.

DISCLOSURE The product was provided to the author at no cost.

The Britannica 2009

Microsoft’s Student with Encarta Premium 2009

Microsoft’s Encarta and MS Student 2008

The Britannica 2008

The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

Microsoft’s Encarta and MS Student 2007

The Britannica 2007 Opens to the Web

The Encyclopedia Britannica 2006

Interview with Tom Panelas

Battle of the Titans – Encarta vs. the Britannica

Microsoft Embraces the Web – Encarta and MS Student 2006

Old Reference Works Revived

Revolt of the Scholars

The Idea of Reference

The Future of the Book

The Kidnapping of Content

The Internet and the Library

The Future of Online Reference

Will Content Ever be Profitable?

The Disintermediation of Content

The Future of Electronic Publishing

Free Online Scholarship – Interview with Peter Suber

La notizia circolava già da qualche tempo ma oggi l’ho visto accadere: la famosa e, a mio dire, favolosa enciclopedia made by MS, Encarta, ha chiuso i battenti anche sul web. La data del congedo era fissata per il 31 ottobre ma solo ieri sera ho potuto constatare che è davvero finita un’era.
Ammetto di essere una discreta frequentatrice di Wikipedia ma, credetemi, quando cercavo una fonte certa, concisa e sintatticamente ineccepibile, prima lanciavo l’URL, oggi oscurato, quindi procedevo alla ricerca. Non mi ha quasi delusa.

E pensare che fino a qualche mese fa mi informavo sui forum se qualcuno fosse a conoscenza di un possibile porting per Mac della più grande enciclopedia desktop mai concepita ed oggi, invece…

Certo, i tempi saranno anche cambiati ma non per questo devono cambiare tutte le cose, anche se un po’ démodé. Mi mancherà profondamente.

Scopro solo adesso che lo scorso Marzo Microsoft ha smesso di produrre Encarta, la sua enciclopedia digitale dal 1993.

Motivazione?

Bhe, secondo una ricerca inglese Wikipedia si prendeva il 97% dell’utenza.

Per carità, Encarta era seconda. Con l’1,27 %.

Ora la Microsoft

” cerca il modo migliore per continuare a offrire la tecnologia più efficace, che aiuti a rendere l’insegnamento e l’apprendimento più stimolanti e adeguati al XXI secolo.”

[seeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! xD ]

Diciamo che Wikipedia va alla grande, va. Complimenti a tutta la comunità!

La pagina di Encarta su Wikipedia:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta

Professor Peter Greenfield notes that English majors may have reason to advise their families and friends to relax:   Being an English major can serve your pocketbook as well as your soul.

An MSN Encarta article puts English (and humanities) at #4 in its “Top Ten Most Versatile College Degrees.” As the article notes, “Nearly any job relies on a handful of transferable skills: oral and written communication, analytical reasoning, research, and problem solving ability.”

So, to paraphrase Suzan-Lori Parks in her lecture the other night, you can follow that inner voice that tells you to read and write, without fear that you’ll stuck in a job you don’t like until you’re 64.

http://encarta.degreesandtraining.com/articles.jsp?article=featured_top_ten_most_versatile_college_degrees&gt1=27001

Due to the dominance of Wikipedia online encyclopedia, giant software maker Microsoft will discontinue the release of Encarta–a multimedia encyclopedia that includes audio and video streaming and interactive graphics–on October 2009 and Japan on December 2009. Not only Wikipedia may be the reason of its dominance to web users, but the real reason is that Microsoft have wanted to phase out Encarta from being a purchasable learning software.

But I only wish if Microsoft would develop a successor of Encarta–the title of it is under pending–that would claimed to be a free software to download and install and update (new article and multimedia clips) online instantly.

Like Wikipedia, a new Microsoft-based freeware encyclopedia may consists of (direct-daily-update) new article coming from worldwide legitimate professional contributors (such as teachers, professors, engineers, scientists, historians, columnists, etc.) by only means of posting by a specialized online discussion and editing to Microsoft learning online space, with rigorous proofing and validity before posting to freeware learning space.

The future freeware encyclopedia can be downloaded for free, with premium version on online purchase to view in-depth article (such as based in Science, Philosophy, Arts, and Mathematics). When installed, the user around the world may set up a “continent mode” to view a desired general article on their area. For example, they would set to Philippines and view a Philippine-based article about cultural and media Philippine artists.

And that’s not all. Although it’s nearly open source, the future development of freeware encyclopedia under pending by Microsoft is also equipped with new features such as MS-Silverlight animated and interactive graphics (similar to Adobe Flash animated graphics) replacing an older Shockwave graphics, VC-1-based video clips, and WMA-based audio clips with smaller bandwidth and higher fidelity.

Time will tell if Microsoft would succeed a possible development as mentioned on this blog to compete with Wikipedia. Or else they would rather develop another purchasable encyclopedia software with new title.

http://rapidshare.com/files/154430508/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part01.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154442988/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part02.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154455413/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part03.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154466933/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part04.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154478066/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part05.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154520557/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part06.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154550175/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part07.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154676007/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part08.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154698551/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part09.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154715591/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part10.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/154726849/Microsoft.Student.Con.Encarta.2009.Premium.Espa_ol.part11.rar

CADA ENLACE DESCARGA 1 DE 11 PARTES, CADA UNA DE 200MB. AL TENER LAS 11 PARTES JUNTAS, LAS DESCOMPRIMES Y OBTENDRAS UNA IMAGEN .ISO LA CUAL ES EL INSTALADOR ENCARTA + MICROSOFT STUDENT EN ESPAÑOL 2009. LO QUEMAS EN UN DVD CON NERO O POWER ISO U OTROS COMPATIBLES CON LA EXTENSION .ISO, O PUEDES SOLAMENTE CARGARLO EN UNA UNIDAD VIRTUAL; POR EJEMPLO: DEAMON TOOLS. Y LISTO… SALUDOS.

I went downtown for an early dose of Ted this morning, and got an wake-up call about the danger of incentives, those carrots and sticks that supposedly make the world go round but actually are an affront to nature.

I have been aware of this Ted thing for a while; people give “the talk of their lives” on all sorts of topics for 18 minutes or less, but just last week I got hooked in a little. Our first talk was a short bit on the brains and genes of psycho killers – a nice cheery start to my day.

Then we heard from Janine Benyus about the importance of biomimicry, or learning design from nature. She pointed out numerous examples of how plants and animals solve problems, and what we can learn from them, and pitched a great web site at www.asknature.org. Its search function asks the question “How would nature…?” I plugged in “organize an economy” and got quite a few leads on my pet topic. I look forward to a bunch of reading on bees and ants and altruistic white-fronted bee eaters.

Finally, Daniel Pink told of a cognitive experiment that measured the impact of incentives on problem solving; it is called the candle problem. It requires the subject to find an obscure solution, to use creativity, to think outside the box. And it turns out that providing incentives for people to solve the problem quickly actually slows them down.

I’ve occasionally commented on the injustice of giving bonuses to some of the same people who nearly destroyed our entire economy last year. But as Pink pointed out, our entire system of bonuses and perks is actually counterproductive. This has been scientifically proven beyond much doubt, most clearly and ironically through a study commissioned by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank. This paper “observed that high reward levels can have detrimental effects on performance.”

Incentives work reasonably well for simple mechanical activities, but once even “rudimentary” cognition is required, rewards focus the mind at the expense of peripheral vision, which is where the flash of insight is born. It seems that the more complex the problem and the more incentive is offered, the greater the disruption to the creative abilities needed to solve the problem.

Bringing Benyus back into the picture, nature doesn’t have huge incentives. Leaders of a social group do sometimes get the best hunk of gnu, but they never get their own private herd (with lesser members doing the work of managing and harvesting from it). Some rewards certainly motivate animals to do specific complex actions in laboratory settings, but our unique nature (and tendency to live outside of laboratories) limits what we can learn from this.

Still, we’ve all been trained to respond to the little treats, so some evidence is in order that we can be trained otherwise. Pink provided several examples, the most striking of which is the battle of models that played out over the development of the world’s leading online encyclopedia: Microsoft assembled a well-managed team of well-paid professional writers to create Encarta, which I have never used nor been aware of anyone using (and which – get this – will be discontinued on Halloween!). Meanwhile, Wikipedia just sort of happened through a loose network of autonomous volunteers writers, and is utterly without competition.

The skewed system of rewards is not only rewarding the wrong things, but it is limiting our collective ability to solve complex problems. I recently noticed an alarming sign of this in the return of the collateralized debt obligation (CDO). Some overly-focused genius realized that the easiest way to get rid of all the toxic assets left over from bundling and slicing mortgages is to bundle and slice them all over again, magically yielding top-grade investments from crap.

We need to kill the bonus monster or it is going to eat us. We need NEW ideas, not bigger and yummier carrots.

Our survival depends on our ability to stop focusing our brightest minds (and our dimmest ones) on what’s in it for them. This is especially true in times when lack of previously expected compensation is not simply the absence of a good thing; it can also involve collection agencies, foreclosure notices, hunger, poor health, and general humiliation.

One of the best ways I know to do this is through employee ownership and control. Profit is allocated based mostly on hours worked, freeing workers from the need to be clever while giving them the space to be clever. Depending on management structure there may still be day-to-day hierarchy, but the managers at least know that they answer to a board made up of elected workers. The usual concept of boss breaks down, along with the need to please outside “investors” who often have no real investment in the company’s long-term survival.

In particular, the Mondragon cooperatives of Spain’s Basque country have placed relatively strict limits on executive compensation – no more than six times that of the lowest-paid new hire – and also created an elaborate system of profit sharing so that none of the 150+ cooperatives pay wages more than 110% or less than 90% of the overall average. They have never laid anyone off, and have had only a handful of business failures. Even during Spain’s grueling recession, the Mondragon cooperatives remained stable and avoided layoffs by reassigning workers as needed.

Meanwhile in the U.S., the severe overuse of incentives has badly warped our ability to work together, and created a problem that must be addressed quickly before it causes further damage to our wobbly economy and society. If we really want to practice biomimicry, we should look deeply at what animals do in groups. It sure doesn’t look like what we’ve been doing. I’m sure that whenever some group of critters started letting an elite eat all the best bits of wildebeest while others starved, natural selection nipped that in the bud. We’re smart enough to elude nature for a while, but it will eventually catch us too.

Dan Pink discusses the science of motivation in this talk, kindly shared by TED.

Traditionally, incentives (ie bonuses) have been the way that big, and small, businesses encourage their employees to develop, grow and produce more: work harder to get a bigger cheque at the end of the month.

Dan argues that this is no longer the case with several scientific studies, and that top-down management is a thing of the 20th century (a point on which I wholeheartedly agree).

He makes several really interesting points throughout, and I urge you to watch the full video (around 20 minutes), about the new (?) motivations for people at work.

He says that carrot and stick economics are no longer working, and that there are three things that are driving people to want to work better:

Autonomy – The ability to work how you want, when you want, as long as you get the job done

Mastery – To become the best at what it is you do

Purpose – To feel that you are contributing to something with a greater meaning for a greater good

The example which he gives, which has also been often cited by my colleague Jason Mical, to this is Wikipedia.

He says that Microsoft wanted to make an encyclopaedia, Encarta, and put management and budget into the project, creating the world’s most comprehensive resource.

Yet, Wikipedia was built by volunteers and is perhaps an even greater achievement because of the lack of management structure, lack of monetary reward and succeeded because the contributors wanted to be a part of something.

This is a fine point and something we should all consider when managing, or looking at different ways to motivate those below, around or above us, to work more productively and with a greater innovative streak.

requiescat in pace, Encarta Dictionary :’(

Encarta Dictionary, the best writing partner I’ve ever had, is discontinued by Microsoft. I really am sad, you know, because it had helped me a lot in my English improvement, I learnt too many from this brilliant thing. I just wanna say thank you for your help throughout this time, you were my favourite software programme in both my PC and my laptop; I always checked out on you each time I wanted to write anything. You were simply the best electronic dictionary + thesaurus + translator; you had the whole package :’)

And right now, I still cannot find the replacement for you, darling. I have OALD, but it’s not electronic. Therefore, you still the easiest, simplest to use dictionary I’ve ever got. Plus, your user interface was absolutely beyond sleek, the words were ordered neatly; I never got bored browsing them.

Bill Gates, please re-consider your decision to cease this blimey thing. You know what, it gave me tremendously huge influence in my English, especially my vocabularies. Or please, reproduce it sooner or later in days to come.

Like many people say, big things come in small packages.

Aldhin xx

p.s. I’m not saying that I always depended on it, but it was just very useful

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته…

VS

في حلقة جديدة من مسلسل وجها لوجه في موسمه الأول (يحسبه مسلسل تركي) نقوم بمقارنة بين موسوعتين من أكبر الموسوعات في العالم ويكيبيديا وأنكراتا.

انطلقت أنكارتا عام 1993 (يعني من الألفية الماضية) بتأسيس من شركة مايكروسوفت وتم تطويرها بواسطة مجموعة كبيرة من المحررين، تقدم حوالي 70.000 مقال باللغة الإنجليزية التي تحضى بحصة الأسد من عدد المقالات والآلاف من الصور ومقاطع صوت وفيديو تعليمية غاية في الروعة والدقة مما جعلها مرجعا قويا وموثقا للباحثين وبمبالغ ابتدأت في أول الأمر ب 999 دولار ثم بدأ السعر بالتقلص أمام عدم اقبال الناس عليها ليصل الى 99 دولار ثم ظهرت ويكيبيديا لتطيح بسعرها إلى الأرض 23 دولار، بالإضافة فقد تأخرت في دعمها للغة العربية وذلك لأسباب اقتصادية بحتة.

بالمثل اطلقت ويكيبيديا في 2001 واعتمدت على لغة الويكي وهي كلمة إنجليزية بمعنى السرعة، فلسفة الموسوعة تقوم على أنه لكل شخص الحق في قراءة، تغيير، تعديل، مسح وإضافة للمواد، يقول منشئ الموسوعة السيد ويلز: “إن ويكيبيديا هي بالأساس مجهود غايته إنتاج وتوزيع موسوعة حرة بأعلى درجة ممكنة من الجودة لكل فرد على سطح هذا الكوكب، وبلغته الأم” فاق عدد مقالات الموسوعة 2.000.000 مقالة نعم 2 مليون مقالة انجليزية نهاية عام 2007، و أكثر من 86.000 مقال باللغة العربية وقت كتابة هذه السطور،

وتجدر الإشارة إلى أن أول من اقترح على القائمين على الموسوعة تدشين نطاق للنسخة العربية هو الأكاديمي المصري الدكتور طارق قابيل، وكان ذلك عام 2001 حين كان يدرس لنيل درجة الدكتوراة في الوراثة الجزيئية بإحدى الجامعات الأمريكية. وقد رصد حينها في مقال لصفحة العلوم والتكنولوجيا بشبكة “إسلام أون لاين.نت” بدايات الموسوعة.

تكمن نقطة قوة ويكيبيديا في المجانية والحرية مما دفع أنكارتا الى فتح الباب أمام المتابعين لإضافة اقتراحاتهم لكنها كانت لا تنشر إلا بعد موافقة محرري الموسوعة.

وكما يؤكد ويلز فإن المقصود بكون ويكيبيديا “Free Encyclopedia” هو موسوعة حرة؛ أكثر مما يعني موسوعة مجانية. فالحرية في الاطلاع على مواد الموسوعة وتعديلها والإضافة عليها هي الفكرة المركزية. وذلك تأثر ظاهر بأفكار ريتشارد ستولمان رائد اتجاه المصدر المفتوح الذي ذاع في أوساط المبرمجين، حيث تتاح شيفرة البرامج بحرية للجميع للاطلاع عليها ودراستها وتعديلها وتحسينها كل حسب هواه، طالما أنه سيحفظ نفس الحقوق للآخرين. إضافة إلى أن  كل مواد الموسوعة متاحة مجانا وفقا لرخصة “الملكية العامة” (GPL) التي صممها ستولمان أساسا للتطبيق في مجال البرمجيات. وتسمح هذه الرخصة لأي فرد بحرية الاطلاع على مواد الموسوعة مجانا والتعديل والإضافة طالما أن ذلك لن يحول دون حق الآخرين في الاستفادة من هذه الإضافات، وأنه لن يدمجها في أي منتج تجاري. غير أن اليوم الخامس لويكيبيديا العربية الذي اختتم فعاليته قبل اسبوع أو اسبوعين صوت فيه المشاركون العرب لصالح تغيير ترخيص المقالات من رخصة جنو العمومية للمستندات الى رخصة CC-BY-SA

نقطة قوة ويكيبيديا قد تمثل نقطة ضعف كذلك فالمشاركات التطوعية للأفراد لكتابة مقالات حول موضوعات متخصصة ربما تؤدي إلى مستوى متدن في جودة وتوثيق بعض المواد بصورة قد تزهّد الباحثين الجادين في الاعتماد عليها. وكذلك فإن إتاحة التعديل والإضافة للجميع دون تمييز أدت أحيانا إلى ظهور ممارسات غير مسئولة من بعض الأفراد الذين شوهوا بعض المواد على الموسوعة، أو أفقدوها حياديتها لصالح مذهبهم أو اعتقادهم الخاص. لذلك فإن ويكيبيديا لا تعتبر مرجعا معترفا به في الأبحاث العلمية لكن تعتبر مرجعا هاما للزاد العلمي للأشخاص والمؤسسات كما أنها تركز كثيرا على ذكر المصادر الخارجية لكي يرجعها إليها الباحثون الأكاديميون.

لكن هذا لا يعني أن المقالات سيئة أو منحازة ففي دراسة بمعهد ماساتشوستس للتكنولوجيا وشركة (IBM) أوردتها دورية ذي نيو أتلانتس، قال باحثون إنه في المتوسط يتم تصحيح الأخطاء في اللغة أو المعلومات الواردة بالمواد خلال 5 دقائق من ظهورها. أما حالات محو أو تشويه المواد فتتم معالجتها خلال 1.7 – 2.8 دقائق، كما ذكرت مجلة “وايرد”.

وقد طورت إدارة الموسوعة برمجيات وخواصّ تمكن المشاركين أنفسهم من صد أو تخفيف آثار ما يقوم به المخربون. فثمة برنامج يمنع الحذف الكامل لأي مقال على الموسوعة يسمى (deletion bot) وتشرف عليه إحدى المتطوعات من بريطانيا. وهناك خاصية “Watch-list” (أو قائمة رصد) التي تتيح لكل مستخدم أن يرصد أي تغيير أو إضافة تتم على واحدة أو أكثر من مقالات أو مواد بالموسوعة.

وأهمية هذه الخاصية أنها تمكن المشاركين من الحفاظ على جودة وحيادية مواد الموسوعة، خاصة المواد المتعلقة بالأديان. وقد ذكرت مجلة “وايرد” أن مواد ويكيبيديا “إن لم تكن متقنة وتامة، فإنها ليست سيئة. وثمة عشرات الآلاف من مواد الموسوعة تفوق نظيراتها في كل من دائرة المعارف البريطانية ودائرة معارف “إنكارتا”.

وثمة مشروعات مستحدثة إلى جانب الموسوعة، كلها تعتمد على المشاركة التطوعية من عدد كبير من المستخدمين. من أمثلة ذلك “ويكشناري” (قاموس)، “ويكينيوز” (مواد إخبارية) و”ويكيبوكس” (كتب). وقد بدأ مشروع كتب “ويكيبوكس” في يوليو 2003 لإنتاج كتب مجانية يقوم على تأليفها عدد كبير من الأشخاص المهتمين بمجال معين.

هذا تعريف بسيط للموسوعتين ولك أن  تقارن بينهما. من ستختار منهما؟

لن أترك لك مجالا للاختيار. تعرف لماذا؟ بكل بساطة لأن أنكارتا أعلنت رفع الراية البيضاء والاستسلام للوحش ويكيبيديا حيث أن 31 أكتوبر 2009 سيكون آخر يوم من أيام توزيع أنكارتا بمختلف اللغات سوى انكارتا اليابانية التي ستمتد الى 31 ديسمبر 2009.

It was so good that, while we watched it, my wife and I cruised the internet. While “Death Defying Acts” played on, I looked up the true story of Houdini on-line and on MS Encarta, and then I researched lightning to find out whether it starts from the clouds or from the earth.  After the movie, my wife said it was interesting, besides the cheesy “we showed him how to love” thing at the end. Ha! She was looking up better movies to put in our Blockbust queue the whole time!  I guess it is better than admitting we wasted a rental and two hours of our time. At least I know a little bit more about the real Houdini’s life.

Durante varios años

La Enciclopedia Británica fue la más popular del mercado, contando con miles de artículos. Pasaron los años y llego el internet.

Encarta comenzó como el gran líder de las enciclopedias en línea pero el 15 de Enero del 2001.

Jimmy Wales lanza su “enciclopedia libre” al mercado, Wikipedia.

Wikipedia cuenta con más de 10 millones  de artículos y se actualiza diariamente por contribuidores en todo el mundo.

En los últimos años el mundo ha visto a Wikipedia como el líder indiscutible del mercado de las enciclopedias. Para este estudio se dejara a un lado la credibilidad y validez de cada Enciclopedia y se analizara el número de visitantes diarios para poder definir quién es el líder del mercado.

Britanica: 
Paginas Vistas Diariamente: 740000

Visitas Diarias: 570000

Wikipedia:
Páginas Vistas Diariamente: 590 millones
Visitas Diarias: 130 millones

Encarta: 
Páginas Vistas Diariamente: 350 millones
Visitas Diarias: 180 millones

Howstuffworks:
Páginas Vistas Diariamente: 4.6 millones
Visitas Diarias: 1.5 millones

Information Please: 
Páginas Vistas Diariamente: 420000
Visitas Diarias: 280000

Symbols:
Páginas Vistas Diariamente: 210000
Visitas Diarias: 18000

"Chaplin" Swims By, Showing Off. Shark Diving was One of the Greatest Experiences of My Life. Photo by VP

I was shocked and dismayed the other day when I saw the new commercials promoting Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Once again, the television network is misrepresenting this magnificent creature in the name of ratings.

Source by : http://rss.msn.com/

Because it’s from 2009/03/30. But I never read it until now.

Microsoft has announced that it is discontinuing its Encarta line of products. The software products will be gone by June 2009 and the website will go down October 31, 2009.

[...]

The software giant says that the “category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed” and that “people today seek and consume information in considerably different ways.” It doesn’t go into more detail, e.g., lack of sales or Wikipedia’s tremendous growth.

arstechnica.com

Woah! If you still wanna download some updates, you better do it right now, or…

Typical MS, they trash such a huge product line and give absolutely no explanation.

If they would be cool, they would simply put all of it on a new website. Maybe they wouldn’t make huge amounts of money with ads or whatever, but it’s better than to simply throw away all of their articles. Lots of them were really good, IIRC.

I wonder what people do, who just bought Encarta and can’t download their online parts anymore, because the site is taken offline.

If Valve will ever shut down Steam, people will die of shock!