Semana Grande de Gijón

Botellón en la playa San Lorenzo, concierto de Ana Torroja en la nueva playa y los fuegos de jueves por la noche.

The Upcoming Portlet Specification

In extension to a previous post, Distributed portals are around the corner, here is an introduction from JavaWorld to the upcoming Portlet Specification (JSR 168 – final version is planned for September 2003). This specification is broadly accepted and there is hope it will provide interoperability between portlets and portals. More than the life cycle and interface, the most interesting concepts at my taste are the use of a Portlet as controller (Model-View-Controller pattern, with an EJB as model and a JSP being the view) and the alignment with WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets).

Arquitectura en León

Gaudí (Casa de Botines), Catedral, Real Basilica de San Isidor

Workshop Organization Tool for PostNuke

I finally can announce the release of version 1.0 beta of the TECFA’s Workshop Tool (wTool). wTool is a workshop organization and management module built for PostNuke portals. The organization of a workshop can be considered as a learning event. We at TECFA grounds its orchestration on socio-constructivist principles and we designed wTool as a Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) tool. Its three-step organizational framework is inspired by Laurillard’s (1995) Conversational Framework which requires four steps (discursive, adaptive, interactive, reflexive) to turn learning into a shared information issue. The three sections (your answers, answers by question and answers by author) of the Workshop Tool allow the participants first to enter position statements to be reviewed, then comment and re-articulate them and eventually have a synthesis with a printer friendly output.

Internecine warfare on RSS

The market for a Web content syndication format is expanding (partly due to the success of weblogs). The developments of RSS alternatives that should clarify RSS ambiguities, consolidate its multiple versions have created a controversy (or “internecine warfare”). One of the possible problem is the fragmentation of format used would slow the adoption of Web logs and syndication by mainstream users.

This story reminds me the words of Donald A. Norman (Design of everday things, The invisible computer), “It doesn’t matter whether of not your technology is superior; it only matters that is being offered is good enough for the purpose”. Well, is RSS good enough for its purpose?

CNet has a coverage of this blog-based soap-opera in the article “battle of the blogs“.

Java 1.5 New Language Features Distilled

I did not have time to follow up-close all the new features of J2SE 1.5 but I stumbled on a new crash course Java 1.5 New Language Features Distilled on J2gEEk which saves my ass for the moment.

Videogame Virtue

In extension to a previous post (Importance of Video Games in Learning and Literacy), here is an article on the virtue of video gaming.

In this article it is also mentionned that many games make you think about the nature of the medium. We use computer games to exercise and enhance our information processing capabilities. They help us understand how to manage our perceptual and cognitive resources in what digital community builder Linda Stone characterizes as an age of continuous partial attention. There is a growing tendency for people to move through life, scanning their environments for signals, and shifting their attention from one problem to another. This process has definite downsides—we never give ourselves over fully to any one interaction. For older generation, this process feels highly stressful and socially disruptive. But for young men and women in their late teens or early twenties, it has become second nature.
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etoy.TALK-TANK

I had lost the happy lunatics of etoy from sight, but I stumbled on them once again today. Pleasant surprise they run the blog etoy.TALK-TANK now! My shareholder card is on its way

Una Noche en Gijón

Coopetition

“Competencia que no excluye la cooperación se llama “Coopetition”. Un model frecuentamente considerado como el más adecuado para la era de la information”