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The power and confusion of online communities

A firestorm is brewing over this NYTimes op ed article, by Bill Lichtenstein about his daughter, a kindergartener being locked in a closet standing in her own pee in Lexington, MA.  I am a parent and have my own children in the Lexington Public School system. I participate in multiple online parent communities as well as the Lexington online communities. There are, as expected, a lot of "I am shocked" discussions. There are a few "let's wait for the facts" postings in the minority. I am not here to comment about what happened at that time, but to comment about how these online communities have responded. As comments are commented upon, the details of what we know from the article are slowly diluted and changed. Blog posts about the article started to be referenced as additional sources. Law and regulations around these issues are being discussed and I have no way to know whether those are correct.

From reading the article, I have many questions:

  • Was the child attending a Lexington Public Elementary School? Likely but the article never said that.
  • Was the child in a regular class or in a special ed class? We do not know.
  • Were other school families notified? Seems so.
  • Was there a settlement? Seems yes.
  • Were the schools allowed to respond in the public? Not sure.
  • Where people involved fired/disciplined/or more? Not sure.

So I am writing this post with the sole purpose to ask everyone to read the original article very carefully, picked out the facts as mentioned from the article first.

As a final note -- have you noticed the graphics used in the article? Do you think it accurately reflect the situation? Is there a window in the door? Would a five years old be that tall? Would a closet lit by a lightbulb be pitch dark?

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-09-09

Twitter Updates for 2012-09-09

Aperture stopped importing photo from Photostream

Did you find that suddenly Aperture stopped automatically import photos from your photostream? This is a bug in Aperture, as of version 3.3.1 I found. If you have more than 1000 photos in the Photostream imported into Aperture, Aperture will stopped importing any new photos. One more time: Aperture misunderstood the 1000 photo limits that Apple is suppose to have for Photostream. The correct way for this to work is that Apple will discard older photos and keep the most recent 1000 photos in the stream. But Aperture instead stopped importing after 1000.

Solution:

  1. Go to the photostream meta project on the side menu/explorer
  2. (Assuming you have already imported the older photostream pictures) select the older photos and delete them "from photostream" using either command-delete or right mouse click then select "delete from photostream".
  3. Then newer photos will automatically start being imported again.

Photo Stream "Album":

See Count at bottom:

Twitter Updates for 2012-09-07

Values, Vision and Life Experience

P090412PS-0695 Michelle Obama's speech at the DNC 2012 was amazing. No doubt about it. So many inspiring lines. So personal. So positive. Thinking through the speech and re-reading the transcript, if I have to pull out one line from the speech, this is the one:

But at the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as President, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

Not everyone is going to be President, but it is so truth that one is guided by one's values, vision and life experiences. So as parents, those are the things that we need to give our children.

Kindle is still better than the iPad, for reading

Instructions on Power Up I love my iPad. There, I said it. It is with me 50% of the time. I consume media on it, Zite, Hulu, Netflix, Safari . I connect with it, Facebook, Twitter, Hootsuite, Mail. I write on it: iThoughtHD, iA Writer, Notability. I even read Kindle books on it using the Amazon Kindle app. But when it come to reading books, I still like the real Kindle ereader better.

The Kindle is better for five very important reasons:

  1. The e-ink display is wonderfully usable even in sunlight. A person who like to read, like to read outside. iPad does not work.
  2. The Kindle is light. The iPad is not very heavy, but the weight difference is significant when you are holding it to read for a long period of time.
  3. The Kindle battery last a long time.
  4. The Kindle is cheap(er) than the iPad. I would feel much less annoyed if I damage or lost my $99 Kindle Touch than my $700 iPad.
  5. The Kindle is more robust. It is much less likely to damage the Kindle then the iPad, when taking places.

What prompted me to write this blog post? I just came back from a short cabin camping trip for four days. I took my iPad and my Kindle Touch with me. I never once took out my iPad. I carried my Kindle everywhere, and caught up with a lot of reading. Sitting under a tree reading from the Kindle. Much better than the iPad.

I look forward to the anticipated new Kindle announcement next week. I am pretty sure I am going to get one. But I hope they bring back the hardware "next page" button.

English Public School is American Private School

This used to confused me when I started living in the States. I went to an English public boarding school, which would have been called a private school in America. Why the opposites? I found a good answer while reading Jeff Jarvis' Public Parts, a book on the impact of sharing and being public in the age of the internet. The definition of Public, prior to the early modern period, was synonymous with the state. Only men of official stature were public. English non state run schools, usually for the privileged, are call public school. Similarly, the common soldiers, the ordinary man without rank, is a private.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-09-02

The fluffy product reviews - Jabra Solemate

I am sick of them. A company releases a new product. Major gadget sites get a review unit and write up a fluffy review that is pretty much useless. Copy a few talking points from the product release. Snap a few pictures, write a few generic paragraphs and push publish.

Case in point -- Jabra released the Solemate Bluetooth outdoor speakers today. Both gizmodo and Engadget has a "review". Anyone could have written them without even seeing the actual product. Do you the one thing that I wanted to know about this product? What is the power source. Is it rechargeable batteries? Is it proprietary built in rechargeable ? Does it have a DC in with a supplied adaptor? You won't find the answer in these is call reviews.

Oh, and I looked on t Jabra site. The battery information is not there either. It says something about charge via USB and that's it.

Other things a real review should tell us:

  • What is the power source?
  • Do a real life battery rundown test to see how long it last
  • Are the batteries replaceable?
  • What is the range of the bluetooth connection?
  • How much power drain is there for the source, iPhone, iPod?