ProductReview Archives - Page 7 of 16

Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom

Skype is a free, ubiquitous peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet based telephone system that was created by the same company that developed kaZaa in 2003. Unlike other instant message applications such as Yahoo and MSN, Skype works seamlessly across firewalls and has more refined voice and video quality. It uses voice over Internet protocol technology (VoIP) which converts and encrypts voice signals into data streams that are sent over the internet and converted back into voice on the other end. Making record of the data streams for future reference through Skype is possible. With Skype, a person can communicate with anyone else across the globe without the need of expensive tele collaboration equipment. This is because the VoIP application has in-built capabilities to support instant messaging and teleconferencing.

Being relatively easy to use and to set up, Skype has provided students in the classroom with a wide range of opportunities with which to improve learner comprehension and engagement.

Meet With Other Classes

A tutor can provide his or her students with the experience of traveling overseas over the comfort of their chairs through Skype. The tutor can arrange for teleconferences through Skype with foreign students located in different parts of the globe. This provides the students with the opportunity of interacting with foreign nationals and exchange of ideas becomes possible. According to college paper experts at SolidEssay.com, discussions concerning mundane subjects and assignments can lead to cultural exchanges among students located in different parts of the world.

Practice Foreign Language

Language students benefit the most since they can easily initiate a live correspondence with a native speaker of the language that they are undertaking. A student can record his or her audio conversations with a foreign colleague who is native to the language. Replaying the conversation later can help the student improve his or her grammar and pronunciation skills. It goes without saying that the student acquires all these benefits without actually having to pay for airplane tickets whose cost can be quite prohibitive.

Debates

Holding debates through Skype saves the students and teachers a lot of time and money by minimizing physical movement. Being a computer based application, students can peruse for facts over the internet to strengthen their point of view. This way, students improve their communication and critical thinking skills quite fast.

Practice Job Interviews

Naturally, most students perform poorly when it comes to interviews. Technical skills and knowledge alone do not guarantee automatic acceptance into the market. Skype enables teachers to help their students with this crucial stage by providing them with mock job interviews. A teacher can make arrangements with a real life human resource manager to conduct interviews with his or her students over Skype. If that is not possible, then the teacher can make arrangements with an authority figure such as a counselor or fellow teachers to help with the mock interview process from their office.

The foregoing is not exhaustive of how Skype can help students improve their learning. Skype can indirectly support a student’s learning by enabling teachers to conduct conferences with parents via Skype. This saves the parents and teachers’ time, energy and costs associated with gas. The convenience of the application encourages parents to interact with teachers from time to time. Skype enables students to meet with mentors who can help them make appropriate career choices. Most important, Skype can be used as a reliable platform to share presentations, provide tutoring and conduct lessons. Skype recordings help students who are unable to attend classes for various reasons to catch up with their peers.

Author bio: Craig R. is an experienced college paper writing expert having worked for a number of educational companies, including SolidEssay.com where he helps students advance in their academic life.

Review: The Tao of Twitter

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[Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for this review. Opinions are my own. Links to Amazon are affiliate links. Here is my review policy.]

The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time is by Mark W. Schaefer, published by McGraw Hill (2012). The book’s intended audience is business owners who are new to Twitter. It’s a slim and inexpensive volume that explains the uses and benefits of Twitter from the perspective of growing business and networking.

I wouldn’t suggest that anyone who has been using Twitter for a while bother with it, but for the absolute newbie, it is full of things you need to know. Some of the information is out of date, but it remains a good guide for the business man or woman who wants to take on social media.

For current Twitter users, it may seem strange to imagine that there are still people out there who know nothing about Twitter. But I see such folks in my continuing education classes all the time. My classes are filled with people who are retraining with an eye to working on the web or people who want to do something to improve their business or business web site. Yet many of them are not using Twitter. I could suggest this book as a resource to those students with confidence.

I was put off by the glowing examples of the benefits of Twitter that the author provides. They were personal and anecdotal rather than based on statistics or any hard data. The results for others would certainly vary.

Summary: A very basic guide to Twitter for the new user.

A review by Virginia DeBolt of The Tao of Twitter (rating: 3 stars)

Rethinking transparent affiliate link disclosure as required by the FCC

I am an Amazon.com affiliate. When I review a book here that is available on Amazon, I normally link to it using an affiliate link that will earn me a few cents if readers buy the book using that link. I wrote about several suggestions for disclosing affiliate links per FCC requirements in Tips for Disclosing Affiliate Links back in 2010.

In the past, I’ve used a title attribute in the link to announce that the link is an affiliate link. I’ve been rethinking that practice since I read Using the HTML title attribute – updated at The Paciello Group Blog. Here are the findings the article discusses:

Situations in which the the title attribute is not useful due to lack of support:

Displaying information for web content viewed on mobile phone browsers. Typically in desktop browsers title attribute content is displayed as a tooltip. From what I could find, tooltip display is not supported in any mobile browser and alternative visual methods of accessing title attribute content are not supported.

Providing information for people who cannot use a mouse. Typically in desktop browsers, title attribute content is displayed as a tooltip. Although the tooltip behaviour has been supported for 10+ years, no browser as yet has implemented a practical method to display title attribute content using the keyboard.

Using it on most HTML elements to provide information for users of a variety of assistive technologies. Access to title attribute information is not supported uniformly by screen readers

It seems clear now that affiliate links must be disclosed in plain sight within the content of a post. There are two ways that can be done.

A sentence at the beginning or end of a product review stating that the link to the product is an affiliate link.
A notice in parentheses following the link that simply says affiliate link.

I may play with these two methods in the next few book reviews I write to see which feels most effective and transparent to me. I normally include a sentence at the end of a review disclosing that books were provided to me by publishers for review. An affiliate link statement could be included in that disclosure statement.

I have a book sitting on my desk waiting for a review, so I’ll get a chance to test this out very soon. Do you have other ideas about how this in-the-content disclosure could most effectively be accomplished?

Review: The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue

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The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue is by Shama Kabani, published by BenBella Books (2013). This is the 3rd edition of this popular book. The author is the CEO of The Marketing Zen Group – a successful marketing firm – and does a lot of speaking on TV and in training and conference talks. Kabani’s success as a marketer adds credibility to the tips and advice contained in the book.

I’ve never heard Sharma Kabani speak, but I can almost feel her voice reaching out of this book: an enthusiastic and very present voice that inspires listeners to make the leap into social media marketing. She’s full of encouraging quotes, examples of success, and tips to help marketers understand various social media sites and how to use them to best advantage. The book feels as if it was created from her speaking engagements and carries a vibe that feels like she’s right in front of you with a set of slides.

Kabani begins by explaining basics like the need for a website and/or a blog. She talks about SEO and what social media marketing is and is not. Then she goes through a series of chapters about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. These chapters about specific social media sites are all organized in the same way. She explains,

why the site is important
how to set up your presence on the site and how to use the site’s various features
how to build your presence on the site
dos and don’ts of marketing on the site

The chapters about individual sites provide both basic how-to information and tips on marketing that are valuable and specific.

The book also has chapters about using video, about creating a social media policy, social media case studies from real businesses and advertising on social media.

Kabani made occasional statements that seemed a bit arbitrary to me, for example, you should blog twice a week, or you should synchronize all your social media efforts with ping.fm. I think she would certainly be more nuanced than these statements appear if you could engage in a Q&A with her.

Summary: A helpful guide for marketers who are unfamiliar with social media marketing and strategy.

A review by Virginia DeBolt of The Zen of Social Media Marketing (rating: 4 stars)

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book, but my opinions are my own.

Review: Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg

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Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Ekaterina Walter is from McGraw Hill, 2013. The book was a surprise in many ways. The biggest reason was the way Ekaterina Walter explained all the things about Facebook that felt annoying over the years and painted them as part of Mark Zuckerberg’s brilliance. The book is about business, not technology, and talks about the vision, passion and principles that have driven Facebook’s growth. The lessons Walter learned from watching Zuckerberg she then discussed in relation to other businesses such as Zappos, Amazon, TOMS, Apple, Threadless, and College Humor.

Walter discusses the “Five P’s” of Zuckerberg’s business style and Facebook’s day to day operations. She organizes the book around these concepts and her examples explain them. They are:

Passion: Zuckerberg’s passion is to connect people through technology in a way that is authentic and transparent.
Purpose: Facebook’s purpose is “to make the world more open and connected.”
People: Zuck has found great people to execute his vision.
Product: You have to build something great.
Partnerships: No one person can make a dream into a reality.

We’ve seen the results of Zuck’s passion for using the Internet to connect people around the world – using real names. There are a billion people using Facebook, creating a worldwide web of relationships and conversations that gives new meaning to the term worldwide web. The web of connection facilitated by Facebook has created global change. That change is a revolution started by a college dropout who had a vision for how to connect people and executed it from his dorm room when he was 19 years old. It’s remarkable that Zuckerberg stuck to his vision through all the growth, through all the offers to sell, and through all the criticism from outside his burgeoning company.

Facebook’s purpose is “to make the world more open and connected.” To make that happen, the culture within Facebook encourages risk, hacking, and moving fast with boldness. This is all part of the dedication to give Facebook users more ways to connect with friends. Many of the things I’ve written about in complaining tones in the past about Facebook are explained by the the Facebook working culture: the constant changes, the frequent additions to the interface, e.g., the Wall, the News Feed, the Timeline. Much as I may have whined about each new change, I have to admit that they quickly became the thing about Facebook that I most depended on to stay connected.

Mark Zuckerberg is first to give credit to the team that builds Facebook. The people who work there have to believe in the value and importance of Zuck’s dream. They must be dedicated to the execution of that dream. People are hired for attitude rather than skills.

Facebook places people and their connections at the center of its product. Facebook is a technology company but it isn’t about technology or content – it’s about people and their social needs. The passion, the purpose, and the people combine into a product that became part of people’s everyday lives.

The partnership with Sheryl Sandberg explains much about Facebook’s success. Walter talked about how Sheryl Sandberg was a perfect business person to team with Zuckerberg. Walter calls them the Visionary and the Builder or the dream architect and the value architect. Walter pointed to teams at other companies with equally effective but differing skill sets. Examples from Warner Bros., Disney, Hewlett Packard and other businesses are included in the discussion.

I learned a great deal about Facebook from this book. I learned a lot about Mark Zuckerberg and why he’s a phenomenal success. More importantly, I learned about how business culture and attitude can make or break a company. You can read the book to learn about Zuckerberg in the same way that you read the biography of Steve Jobs, but I suggest you read the book to absorb the lessons about “the Five P’s” and apply them to your own business efforts.

Summary: Business owners, tech innovators and entrepreneurs of all stripes can learn valuable principles from this book.

A review by Virginia DeBolt of Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg (rating: 5 stars).

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book, but my opinions are my own.

Useful links: Flexbox, Top 20 Talks, Accessibility, Data Vis

Absolute must reading defines this excellent explanation of flexbox. Dive into Flexbox is from Greg Smith at bocoup. I think you’re going to read this more than once or at least refer to it often.

The Top 20 Conference Talks of 2012. This is at .net magazine. Twenty talks – only one by a woman. I think this reflects the fact that they mostly asked men to name great talks.

Learning about Section 508 for the first time? Demystifying Accessibility describes a first encounter with it and lessons learned.

data visualization is editorial is an interesting post about converting data to visual displays. Be sure to click through to the d3.js site for info on how you can get started with this.

Reading the book vs. hearing the speaker

Which book on web design or web standards or some related topic has been the most influential on your thinking? Or maybe it wasn’t a book at all, but a speaker at a tech conference?

I was thinking about reviewing Ekaterina Walter’s new book, Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It occurred to me that I was interested in what she had to say because I’ve seen her speak and thought she was a knowledgeable speaker. I’m predisposed to be interested in her book.

Back in the early days of web standards and efforts to achieve some sort of standardization in browser behavior, I attended talks at conferences by people like Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, and Molly Holzschlag. They convinced me to be a believer in web standards before I’d ever read any of their books. Designing with Web Standards, Zeldman’s book, now in it’s 3rd edition, is the foundational volume on the topic. It’s a book I’ve purchased 3 times and recommended to hundreds of other people. Does that reflect my early buy-in to the idea of web standards while at a conference, or does it reflect the power and message of the words on the pages of the book?

Are you buying and using and recommending tech books by people that you don’t find on the tech conference circuit? Or do you stick with books by people you’ve seen in person at an event? In my case, I can say that I read and recommend more books by people I’ve heard speak in person. The takeaway to me is that you can sell more books if you get yourself on the speaker’s platform at a tech event.