Review: Ubiquity - a grand project from firefox (for educators and students too)
I started seeing the buzz about Ubiquity last week after the anouncement my slice of the twitterverse seemed to be making comments about it - so I finally got around to installing it. It is an amazingly ambitious idea, but here is a quick review of the potential of Ubiquity for desktop and mobile learners - and a projection for the future.
The Idea
The idea behind Ubiquity is that natural language can be used to get the browser to do some tasks in a browser that are beyond a few normal keystrokes. For example you can select an address with your mouse and then press Ctrl-Space and then type map this and a map will be displayed - click on the map and you can then send this map as an email.
Ubiquity is a platform that allows people to write and share new commands (scripts or macros we would have previously thought of them).
The final idea is that all of these commands can be linked together - so that a user can input some quite complex instructions. An example given on the documentation site is “book a flight to Chicago next Monday to Thursday, no red-eyes, the cheapest. Then email my Chicago friends the itinerary and add it to my calendar.”.
Lets be clear this is very ambitious stuff.
The Potential for Education
How does this relate to education? Well the open nature of the commands means that commands for anything can be written.
When proficiently used it is possible to quickly pull data together from multiple sources which can be quickly combined. In some ways this can be thought of as cut and paste for the web.
It can also make data come to mean much more - highlight a word then Ctrl-Space define this and the definition is there on the page. Highlight a piece of text and then Ctrl-Space email this to xxx and an email will be drafted which can then be added to with other sources.
One very powerful feature is that you can edit a page with a couple of commands - for example select some text and say delete it is no longer in the page, select some text and say bold it can become bold. You can also say edit-page and the page becomes editable and you can type where you want, delete what you want and insert as you want. This means that students can edit any page on the web (BBC NEWS, Downing Street etc) although the edits only exist in the browser these can be printed off - so a custom BBC News page can easily be created and screen grabbed or printed.
There are already commands to grab something and quickly twitter it - there is no reason why text on a page could not be grabbed and sent to a mobile device for later reading.
The Problems to overcome
In all the analysis it should be remembered that this is just version 0.1 and clearly shows the power of the idea with some very simple commands.
However looking at people who are trying to write new scripts and combine them together it seems that there are still a lot of fundamentals to get working. For example - the email command supports Google Mail only and then only the vanilla version. Customising support to include Google Apps has proved to be quite hard and this has highlighted that something like email relies on the application knowing quite a lot about the user.
Then there is the problem of the natural language - as a programmer I am comfortable that I have to use exactly the required command - but to appeal to a wider audience there is going to have to be some flexibility.
The “Elephant in the Room” here is security - this is a very powerful scripting capability that is installed in firefox - an untrusted script will have the ability to do all sorts of nasty things to your data (files, bank account etc). To go back to the original vision of a sentance that should be supported :
“book a flight to Chicago next Monday to Thursday, no red-eyes, the cheapest. Then email my Chicago friends the itinerary and add it to my calendar.”
This is going to need at least access to my payment details and my address book - it will take a great amount of convincing me to give Ubiqutity this information.
For the moment I’ll be sticking with Dopplr and Skyscanner.net to solve this problem.
Tags: education, learning, ubiquity
05.Sep.08 
education, off-topic 
Comments (0)
Fennec (Mobile Firefox) - not very impressive
I was delighted this morning to see that Fennec the project from Mozilla to put firefox on mobile devices has reached M7 (Milestone 7) and was ready for testing on my Nokia N810.
The N810 comes with a version of Firefox that is cut down and customised for the N810 so I figured that Fennec must be better than that for them to target the N810 - wrong very wrong!
If this Milestone is an indication of the way the project is going it is clear the project has some big problems.
Startup time was awful - mobile users have less time than desktop users and fast startup is essential - I got to the point I was questioning if I had started the browser or if it had crashed while loading - my estimate would be 20 seconds - 5 seconds is what I would want.
Once the app started it was no responsive and took a further 5 seconds to load the mozilla homepage (no search engine page yet). With a lack of a search page I needed to type in the url to find the site I wanted to visit - not so easy - to be innovative the UI is unlike any other browser - no address bar - the only thing in the UI I recognised was a reload button to the right of the page title.
I touched the upper window bar for that is the standard place to get an application menu on the N810 - nothing - so I opened the keyboard and pressed the menu button - suddenly the screen changed. I got a list of tabs on the left and some buttons on the right - not clear what the buttons did. One of the buttons was a plus sign - that looked interesting - I clicked and that then took me to the add-ons pages! So the most prominent button in the UI with a plus takes you to the add-ons pages - surely add-ons isn’t something people will want to do everyday? The add-ons locked up the system - I had to quit and restart. Eventually I found that if I clicked on the page title in the right way it would turn into an address bar - but the application became unresponsive again.
So I now have two versions of firefox on my N810 - one that has been stripped down, is fast and does everything I want (including support for Flash). This new one is bloated, slow and unresponsive - to the point that I never managed to get to a page I wanted.
OK it is a Milestone release - but my gut feeling is that they have taken the wrong approach to bring firefox to mobile devices and that it won’t get fixed until they review their goals. Mobile users need add-ons - but don’t have the memory, or processing power to just take desktop add-ons - they should have a cut down XUL for add-ons. I hope they look to the Maemo version of Firefox for inspriration - it has been around for at least two years and works very well - they need to better that - and they should do that by questioning why it works so well.
In most people’s minds there is already an open source mobile browser that is deployed on millions of phones and that is WebKit - it is on Nokia S60 phones, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android phones and it is available for Windows Mobile already.
Tags: browser, iphone, Mozilla, n810, WebKit
29.Aug.08 devices, mobile phones, off-topic Comment (1)
Follow up on educational startups
Last week I wrote a guest post on TechCrunch UK questioning the lack of start-ups in the UK that are focused on Education. This article started a nice debate about what exactly the problems are and why both entreprenuers and investors steer clear of solving the problems in education in the UK.
In addition to the comments on TechCrunch a link was also pointed to the article in a post on the handheldlearning.co.uk forum - which started another debate.
In the article I point out that the UK education market is dominated by schools, universities and further education colleges but also that there are also segments in this market for informal education - workplace training, language learning etc.
Structural Problems
The discussion however focused very much on the schools market place and there was discussion around who the actual customer is (schools or local education authorities or central government). The confusion seems to have been created because a headteacher has control over their own budgets and makes the purchasing decision, but local and central government heavily influence these decisions. The picture is not as simple as that because in addition to the local and central government there are other quangos that also influence the decisions - BECTA being the largest.
Can anything be done about this “structural problem”? not easily, but if start-ups were given support and encouragement from the the influencers (BECTA, central and local government) then products and services would be more appealing to schools. This support does not have to come as funding - recognition and support of an idea with appropriate feedback would be good enough to help encourage funding from angel and VC sources.
Niches and content
Another point raised in the discussion was from Paul Sweeney:
There are existing billion dollar players (education publishers), and early successful niche players don’t tend to get bought out for high multiples.
The point about the existing players is true and in my opinion this is what makes the market place prime for disruption - as those existing players are not innovating. The second part talks of niche players and points out that they are not so attractive for venture capital becuase their value never increases enough to pay back at the levels that are needed.
So niches should be avoided - start-ups looking to help with very narrow areas of education may find problems when scaling esepcially when what they offer is mostly based on content. The Open University proclaimed that “Content is no longer king” when starting their OpenLearn initiative - and this is an astute move which will will have a large effect for university level education over the next ten years. How will open content affect publishers? Well that is the key question here.
Products and services that solve real problems in education that are neither niche or content focused - should receive funding (if they really do solve the problem and have a good business model behind them).
Why the focus on languages?
It seems the answer to this question is quite easy - start-ups avoid formal education because they don’t understand how purchasing works. So they turn to informal learning and look at the biggest consumer sector and realise that language teaching is not niche and that content for language learning is open. Also language teaching is global and means that companies do not have to focus on a UK only market.
This market is very crowded though for this reason - which brings its own problems when looking for funding - but this competition is certainly bringing innovation to the market (for example our own getawayphrases).
So many areas that are missing out
What is clear is that within education there are so many market sectors that are not getting any focus from start-ups whilst all the focus in on language learning and to some extent schools.
Hopefully the debate is starting to get people thinking - next I would like to talk to BECTA about how they can help.
Tags: education business, learning 2.0, start-ups
28.Aug.08 education, handy education, m-learning, mLearning, off-topic Comments (0)
iPhones in education? A US university is taking the initiative
I came across an initiative last week from from Freed-Hardeman University which is planning to give their students a uniform collection of technology including a macbook and either an iPod Touch or iPhone.
I think this is an interesting approach, because most other approaches focus on either a laptop or a PDA when looking to give equipement to students. When the focus is on just handheld computers then a lot of work must go into helping students create content using handhelds with creative tools. The small screen may be OK for creating small pieces of work - but is not suitable for essay writing or creating presentations (I know it is possible and is used for this - but my argument is that it is not really suitable).
As mentioned before we think the Mobile Phone or Handlheld is suitable for delivery of some content, revision, planning and a group of things we call Handy Education.
So to provide students with both devices seems to me to make a lot of sense - I am keen to find out the results of this initiative. One thing that concerns me is the lack of useful tools for the iPhone - iPod Touch platform - especially that synchronise data with a laptop (be it PC or mac).
Tags: handy education, iphone, mLearning, mobile-learning
20.Aug.08 devices, education, handy education, m-learning, mLearning, mobile phones, off-topic, tools Comment (1)
Where are the other educational startups?
I’ve just written an article for TechCrunch UK about the lack of educational startups in the UK - you can find more details here : http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/08/20/please-sir-where-are-the-education-start-ups.
From the article:
“The market for Education in the UK is massive - there are 26,562 different schools in the UK, and 157 universities and classroom based learning is only part of the picture. There is also adult education, distance learning, workplace training and many qualifications that could be thought of as niche, but have high enrolments each year. On top of formal education there is informal education that is best represented by language learning and the “Dummies guide to” range of books……”
Please follow the link and join the discussion.
20.Aug.08 education, off-topic Comments (2)
More on the iPhone and iPod Touch in Education
If Apple hit their sale goals (and there is every indication they will) there will be another 10 million iPhones in circulation by the end of 2008. This will bring the total number worldwide to close to 14 million iPhones.
I can’t find detailed figures on the iPod Touch - but I have found references saying that the touch is now outselling the iPod Classic, and others saying that Apple is downgrading sales figures for the iPod Touch this year. (If someone can contact me with better figures I’d be grateful!). For the sake of this article let’s assume there are already 6 million iPod Touch devices and that these numbers will continue to increase at a pace similar to the iPhone.
This means that by the end of this year there will be at least 20 million iPhone/iPod Touch devices in the hand of real people.
The really important question is who are these people? I would like to get an idea of the demographics of iPhone and iPod Touch users. It would seem to me that the iPod Touch is more likely to be a school or university student from 15-21 and the iPhone is more likely to be a professional 25-35 - but that is purely gut feeling. At this high level it is clear to see that educational software would be different for those two audiences and gives an indication about what types of sftware would be useful to them.
Can anyone help me get better figures for the iPod Touch sales? I know that it has none of the country constraints of the iPhone and is available world-wide. Also how can we get to better understand the demographic - has anyone seen any research in this area?
The lack of a good input mechanism make both of these devices of less use in education for classroom work, but the multi-media capabilities are great. The Touch could do with a microphone and camera though so that in can capture in addition to play multi-media (lets hope both of these get announced with GPS for the iPod Touch in September).
Tags: education, handy education, iphone, mLearning, mobile-learning
18.Aug.08 devices, education, handy education, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, mobile phones, off-topic, tools, uHavePassed Comments (0)
Yawning to stay awake
Interesting BBC article on some research into yawning:
BBC NEWS | Health | Yawning may keep us ‘on the ball’
Apparently yawning cools down the brain - to help keep us awake and it may be infectious because it is a survival instinct to yawn when you see others yawning - i.e. staying awake and alert.
Tags: off-topic
04.Jul.07 memory, off-topic, science Comments (0)
mobile phones, business and fish in India
I have often quoted this story but found it hard to find a reference - having been given it anecdotally myself but The Economist have an article that discusses how fishermen in India have found that mobile phones can change their businesses.
To do with the price of fish | Economist.com
I have used the story because it shows how the most unexpected of consequences can arise from the introduction of a technology. In this case the introduction of better communications has meant that a marketplace has operated more efficiently. this could never have been seen as a consequence of creating SMS or introducing SMS to India.
When looking at mobile education in schools a similar surprise seems to come from the trials in Wolverhampton. An unexpected consequence of introducing hand-held devices to the classroom and giving one to each student has been better communication about school between students and parents. As far as I understand it this has been as a result of the fact that students have been easily able to show parents what they have created that day at school - because it is in their pockets.
This could never have been foreseen by the Dave Whyley and the team - but what a great outcome.
Tags: mobile-learning, off-topic
15.Jun.07 education, mLearning, off-topic Comments (0)
Genetically I can’t learn Mandarin*
There was an interesting article in last weeks Economist that states that native speaker of tonal languages have a genetic differences to those speakers of non-tonal languages.
I’m not sure what use the research is yet - apart from providing a good excuse for me to explain why picking up Mandarin* was so hard - but it is certainly interesting.
I would be interested to see if there are common differences in the language processing areas of the brains also - otherwise I am confused as to what the genetic difference means.
Anyway it is interesting research and I thought I’d make sure any current Mandarin* students could add it their list of reasons why it is so hard to learn, listen and talk tonal languages.
Linguistics | Words in code | Economist.com
*Other tonal languages exist
Tags: education, getawayphrases, languages, luzia research
09.Jun.07 languages, off-topic Comments (0)
The Open Coffee Club Movement
A round-up of the new global phenomenon that is Open Coffee. Around the world, tech entrepreneurs and investors are meeting regularly to drink coffee, network and hopefully do deals. No more of the old-school “please send us your executive summary before we’ll even talk to you”. A place to find opportunities.
24.May.07 Uncategorized, off-topic Comments (0)