Jimmy Z

This is my last semester of school in the BYU Master of Information Systems Management program. Technology is revolutionizing the way we do things in everyday life as well as in the classroom. This semester is the second time I’ve been required to blog. Dr. Stephen Liddle has decided to require blogging for two classes, which I think is a good idea.

Blogging has landed me jobs and opened up many work opportunities. Blogging has pushed me to better organize concepts into complete thoughts and to think critically about new technologies. Blogging has also given me the chance to share some of my knowledge to help other people.

So, if it seems that the content of my blog changes during these next few months, it is because I will be blogging on Information Architecture and Web Analytics for those classes.

Today I got a sales call from the Salt Lake Tribune / Deseret News trying to sell me a subscription to the newspaper. When I told the guy that I read the newspaper online he said, “Well, the problem with getting it online is that the Internet’s got bugs. The only bugs you have to worry about with the paper are the bugs you smack with it.” Needless to say, I didn’t sign up.

Pretty funny. Had to share.

I’ve been tagged by Carolynn Duncan for the blog tag game that has been circulating the blogosphere lately. So, here are 5 things you don’t yet know about me:

1. I play four musical instruments.

Music has been an important part of my life. I learned to play the piano when I was young and took lessons until I was finishing middle school. In middle school, I began playing the drums and the trumpet. I only played trumpet for about a year in middle school, but I pull it out and play every summer in my parents’ neighborhood Labor Day breakfast band. I pursued drumming very seriously in high school and at one time was taking lessons from both Jay Lawrence, and Doug Wolfe. During my time at BYU, I’ve played steel drums in the Panoramic Steel band, and drum set for Syncopation, the BYU Jazz choir. Since returning from my LDS mission, I have picked up the guitar, but I’m not that good.

2. I ate dinner with an Iraqi governor.

In the summer of 2005, some Iraqi government officials came to Utah for a visit. My mother was invited to host a dinner for one of the governors. Our family was delighted to have him over, and we had a very pleasant dinner. Through an interpreter, he talked about how bad Saddam was, and how amazed he is that everything here just works. He was so amazed that people actually obeyed traffic laws.

3. I’m a Star Wars fanatic.

I love Star Wars, and have ever since I was little. I have a journal from when I was 2 years old, and my first entry was a crayon drawing of Darth Vader. Speaking of Darth Vader, I got to hang out with David Prowse, the actor who played in the Darth Vader suit for the classic trilogy. He was at the hotel that my friends and I were staying at while attending a Star Wars convention in Denver in 2000 before the launch of Episode I. I have a Jedi robe, and I dressed up for the launch of Episode I and III.

4. I like to ballroom dance.

I met my wife in a beginning social dance class at BYU (Dance 180). We were partners in a Cha-Cha competition. Since then, we’ve taken several other classes together, and we placed 2nd in a Rumba competition, and 5th in a Swing competition. We love to dance whenever we have the chance.

5. I’m a Piano technician.

My dad owns a little piano shop in which he restores used pianos. I worked for about 5 years as a piano technician for my dad. I tune, repair, regulate, refinish, and move pianos. Although I can tune pianos, I don’t like doing it much. It’s very tedious work. I have moved a couple hundred pianos in my life. Piano moving is all about having the right equipment. I have moved very large pianos up very large staircases with just a couple of guys and the right equipment. Piano moving is one of the more enjoyable things to do in the piano business.

Now it’s time to pass this along. I tag: Kevin Willeitner, Jordy Gunderson, Kory Hoopes, Brian Corrales, and Michael Eagar.

Wikia has unveiled Openserving.com, a new collaborative blogging platform based around Open Source principles. Anybody can start a new collaborative blogging site, centered on any topic, and the community contributes their expertise on that subject. The individual that initiates and sets up the site gets 100% of any Ad revenue that comes from visitors to the site.

I signed up for an Openserving site this afternoon. I’m still waiting for an email that will be sent when my site goes live. I’ll post an update when my new site is up.

Wiki Component: It appears from the tour that users will be able to edit pages. I’m not sure how this will work exactly, but the “discuss this page” and “edit” links seen at the top of the screen lead to believe that pages will will have wiki-style read/write.

Drupal Component: Openserving sites are built around community, much like drupal-powered sites. Openserving may be a good platform for college clubs and organizations.

Digg Component: Openserving has followed the Digg model for article and comment voting. Articles will be featured on the front page if they receive a lot of votes. This will hopefully motivate users to write quality content so that their content will be promoted to the front page.

The Openserving announcement was worthy of a mention on Techcrunch, which which has given a little more insight on Wikia’s business model behind Openserving.

“The main thing we’re looking for is that they drive traffic back to Wikia but we’re not just thinking of any link back to the home page, but a content-relevant link,” [Jimmy] Wales said.

One doubt I have for this project is that users might not contribute to a site’s content if they know someone else is going to be receiving adsense revenue for their content. Will anyone write quality content for someone else’s gains? Or would they rather publish it to their own blog?

Another doubt I have is that many of the sites will reach a critical mass to where an article voting model will become relevant. I hope the sites are able to get some traction and the world will benefit from high-quality content sites.

I’ll post an update as soon as I have access to my account, and have a site set up.

I recently got hooked on a site called Veotag.com. Veotag lets you click on text that describes what’s going on within a video clip and jump you right to that point in the video. Most videos are bookmarked in an outline fashion which makes them very easy to follow.
Veotag is ideal for educational videos such as panel discussions, interviews, and keynote speeches. Here are some videos I found fascinating and very worthwhile:

• In Search of the Valley: Steve Wozniak Out-takes
• Guy Kawasaki Interviews Steve Wozniak
• The Art of the Start
• Funding Your Dream

As I watch the videos I keep a Microsoft One Note window open and jot down as many notes as I can.

The great thing about Veotag is that you can see where you are in the video in relation to the outline presented and you can see where you are going next. If you want to replay a section, you just click on the bookmark and you are taken right there. Using Veotag is like having pdf bookmarks for video. Their search also returns very relevant results because there is good text that describes the entire video.

Warning: Once you start watching, you can’t stop. Be prepared for hours of great education.

Just a follow up on the SecondLife post. I was wondering, do you think there will be a Black Friday (crazy day after Thanksgiving shopping day) in Second Life?

I can just see it, there will be a half-million people waking up early on Friday to hop on their computers to buy virtual gear at a big discount. Forget waiting in long lines in the cold! They’re doing their shopping virtually!

Is anybody “in-world” who could comment on this?

I know I’m a little bit late, but this week is Windows PowerShell Week. Microsoft is doing a new webcast on the PowerShell everyday. They will be posting previous webcasts as well. I’ve had only two days’ journey into PowerShell and I have to say IT IS AWESOME! You can control EVERYTHING on a Windows box with PowerShell.

Linux has something to catch up on with this, because with PowerShell you can pipe objects, not just text. It has very good help tools, and is backed by the entire .NET Framework. In Windows PowerShell, you can instantiate any .NET, COM, or WMI object right at the command prompt. This is way powerful as you can do anything from managing Active Directory to creating Excel Spreadsheet files.

Today I was navigating the web in Internet Explorer right from the shell. I’m not a big fan of IE, but imagine the possibilities of being able to script browser behavior for website testing. Sadly, testing in IE is so important as the majority of the world still uses the blue e for web browsing.

Anyways, Windows PowerShell will replace the cmd.exe in Windows Vista. You can grab the beta and run it on XP or Server 2003 right now. Try it out! It really is cool!