Transcript of the live chat session that took place Thursday, April 23, 1998. These sessions are normally scheduled for 12 noon-1 PM Eastern Time every Thursday. Please note that the US is now on Daylight Savings Time. So in international terms, we are on at GMT -4 instead of GMT -5.
These sessions are hosted by Richard Seltzer. If you would like to receive email reminders of our chat sessions, simply send a blank email message to businessonthewebchats-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/businessonthewebchats and sign up there.
For transcripts of previous sessions and a list of future topics, click here .
For an article on how to make "business chat" work (based on this experience), click here .
Since the chat itself happens at a rapid pace, it's often difficult to note interesting facts in particular URLs as they appear on-line. Here's a place to take a more leisurely look. I've rearranged some of the pieces to try to capture the various threads of discussion (which sometimes get lost in the rush of live chat).
Please send email with your follow-on questions and comments, and suggestions for topics we should focus on in future sessions. So long as the volume of email responses is manageable, I'll post the most pertinent ones here for all to see.
Carole Soule -- Richard, all we have to do is go to http://k2.altavista-software.com/forum/aca2/dispatch.exe and wait?
Richard Seltzer -- Carole -- if you want you can go ahead and explore at that demo site. I'd suggest keeping two windows open -- one with this chat and the other with the demo. We'll be bouncing back and forth, with most of the dialogue happening here. (It's an experiment. It will be interesting to see how this works.)
Richard Seltzer -- All -- we'll be starting in about three minutes. As you connect, please introduce yourselves and let us know your area of interest. That will help us get the discussion off to a fast start.
Nicolae Grosan -- Hi all from Nicolae ::)
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Hello everyone - Bob Zwick - independent consultant in Texas
Thomas Nielsen -- I am systems administrator and webmaster of a Business College in Denmark where we use AltaVista Forum for distance education.
Richard Seltzer -- Thomas -- at some point, I'd like to hear from you about your experience in using AV Forum for distance education -- and how the new features they are showing today might be useful to you.
hduggan -- Hi, I'm Heather Duggan. I run a regular discussion on virtual workspaces, and also host Host University over at Communityware
Dave Griffin -- Hi. Dave Griffin. I'm with the AltaVista Forum engineering team based in Littleton, Massachusetts.
Peter Hurley -- Greetings from Peter Hurley, AltaVista Forum engineering
Larry -- hi! Larry Augustus from Digital (AltaVista Forum engineering)
Nicolae Grosan -- All--Nicolae Grosan working in Arad Chamber of Commerce-Romania
Sudha Jamthe -- Hi Richard: I am an Internet Strategist and Web-Net User Group leader. Bob: Good to see you online again. Neat chat at DE chat on tuesday.
Madeleine Butschler -- Good morning/afternoon everyone, I'm a learning strategist & am interested in becoming conversant with as many Web based training (WBT )tools as possible as well as understanding their unique benefits. I will be developing a database of the tools as part of my business.
Sudha Jamthe -- Madeleine: Good morning. I-Goddess Ruth Levisky is teaching an online class about teaching online classes at web-net, starting on Apr 27th and has quite a collection of tools to share.
Tim Horgan -- Greetings, Tim Horgan, CIO Online here. Responsible for the web site et al.
Dan Kalikow -- Hi, Dan Kalikow here, Tech Marketing of MaxSol, database access via vanilla web-browsers.
Sudha Jamthe -- Dan: Hi, Good to see you. Howz maxsol and Tony doing? We heard from some folks mentioning maxsol even in our last web-net meeting.
Dan Kalikow -- Glad the presentation on DbLive@Web went over well. We're in head-down mode hacking the app...
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Dan, Madeleine, Thomas, Carol, Sudha, Bob, Niolae, Tim, Rasto, Lynn -- Is everyone okay with the two screen bit? Is everyone connected to the demo site?
tom dadakis -- Hi Tom Dadakis, web manager for learning technologies at an investment firm.
lynn lee -- Lynn Lee here. Trying to keep up with the action...
Kel -- Please ignore.. just testing to see where I am.. first time keying into this type chat.
Richard Seltzer -- Kel -- you came at a time when we're doing a live demo in a separate window. join us at http://k2.altavista-software.com/forum/aca2/dispatch.exe/protocase/chat/100011?
Kel -- Yes thank you Richard.. got in there and was also confused by the refresh rate problem and will wait like the other newbies.. very interesting
though.. what is the point of this over that?
Dave Griffin -- Sure Richard. In a separate window please head over to the URL Richard posted. Once there, you'll see our "entrance hall", called a summit.
Richard Seltzer -- Has everyone connected to the demo site? You can "register" if you wish. But you can also go in anonymously.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Ok w/ 2 screens - waiting for next instruction.
Richard Seltzer -- Dave -- okay, I'm at the summit. Do you want to explain some of the choices we see there? Or is it best to dive in? Where would you like us to click?
Dave Griffin -- We can go back to the summit page later and go over its features, but I'd rather concentrate on where people do most of their work. I hope y'all are now in the showcase forum.
Dave Griffin -- If you have registered before, you can click on the login button, and enter your username and password. If you haven't registered, that's O.K. too...
Tim Horgan -- I was logged in there using IE 3, but am getting too many Javascript errors, will be using Netscape instead.
Tim Horgan -- Works *much* better with Netscape.
Dan Kalikow -- I'm not seeing any errors on either window in MSIE4.72.2106.8
Dave Griffin -- Next please click on the "AltaVista Forum Prototype Showcase" --- this will bring you into the forum where we will attempt to do the simul-chat. Please note that we're not sure if this is all going to work 100%... We're learning too!
Dan Kalikow -- C'mon in, the cyber-water is fine. I *love* this app!
Dave Griffin -- What you see here is the table of contents for the forum. It is organized as a set of folders and documents, which can be nested. Full text search is also possible.
Richard Seltzer -- Dave -- I understand that the search that's built into this is AltaVista Search. That would come in handy if you built lots of content.
Dave Griffin -- "I understand that the search that's built into this is AltaVista Search"... Yes, this is true. We use the same search engine technology in the AVF product.
Dave Griffin -- There is also a toolbar menu which can let you add documents, folders, etc.
Richard Seltzer -- Dave or Larry -- re: adding documents. What does it take to add a Word document? Can you do a cut and paste and let the software convert to HTML for you? Can you upload large files?
Larry -- To upload a word document (or any other document), select add document in the Entry Tools menu. You can specify the name of the file, or use the browse button to locat the file. If you want to convert the word file to html, you need to use the facitity in word to do that. You can upload large files - we have experience uploading up to 10 mb files.
Dave Griffin -- If you were to click on topic 1, you would see the welcome message I posted a few days ago. There will also be replies to that people have made. This is the "standard" threaded dicussions that are our bread-and-butter in AVF.
Dave Griffin -- Now click on the showcase link near the top of the page, or back up a screen... (We want to be at the table of contents). Let's head over to topic 4...
Sudha Jamthe -- Richard: Its a good idea to open an additional window to see the Altavista demo. Folks should remember not to click and open a new netscap, but open a File new window from this same window.
lynn lee -- Sudha, I opened a new Netscape session. Should I close it and open a new window in this browser session? why?????
Dan Kalikow -- Hi Lynn, if you open a new window in an existing browser, that takes far less memory than a whole new instantiation of the browser.
Richard Seltzer -- Dan -- pardon my ignorance, but how do you "open a new window in an existing browser" as opposed to running a new one?
Tim Horgan -- Richard, the "new window" option under FIle.
Sudha Jamthe -- Richard: On this
window, click on File, New to open a new window.
Bookmarks can get messed up in you click on Netscape icon on your PC
and open a new instance of Netscape or IE.
Peter Hurley -- If you
want to go straight into the AVF chat session, open this url in a browser
window:
http://k2.altavista-software.com/forum/aca2/dispatch.exe/protocase/chat/100011?
Sudha Jamthe -- This is a message
from Peter in the Altavista Forum area:
"Hope this can help you get started at the demo chat: Go to the main
topic "4. Welcome Richard Seltzer's Business Chat participants" and click
on the "Entry Tools Menu". Click on the "Open for chat" option at the very
bottom of the list. If you are reading this as an anonymous visitor, you
will be prompted to enter your name so others in the session can see who
is there. Please join in on the discussion. "
Richard Seltzer -- Sudha -- Thanks for moving those instructions over to here. Good idea.
Dave Griffin -- I can see that some of you are ahead of me, but that's cool. You'll note on topic 4 that there is an attachment. This is the current chat transcript for this topic. We can go "live" with the chat by pulling down the Entry Tools Menu and selecting "Open for Chat" (at the bottom of the list)
Sudha Jamthe -- Richard, Peter: The Forum Chat looks great.
Dave Griffin -- As people have noted, our chat works a bit differently than this one (scrolling, etc.) We've also added a feature akin to threading within the chat. You can click on the entries and have the title copied to the submission form.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- I like the idea of replying to a specific message. Sure would make transcript easier.
Dave Griffin -- This feature isn't meant to replace the "ad hoc" IRC chat rooms that people use. We envisioned it to be when there is a focused meeting of the minds where some "real time" interaction would be beneficial. When you're done, you can seal off the chat and use the normal replies later. Also, we are indexing this chat in real time.
Sudha Jamthe -- Peter/Dave: Can you please explain how to move about in the Forum. What do the top buttons do? eg. summit
Dan Kalikow -- Most recent item is on TOP in this chat; I *thought* it was also on TOP in the AV Forum chat. Then I REFRESHED that window, now most recent is on BOTTOM...?
Richard Seltzer -- Dave et al. -- I'd make this new chat capability a very high priority -- takes the product to a new level of usefulness.
Tim Horgan -- The big plus for this over IRC is that the chats can be done in context, i.e. you can collect documents and other discussions here, and then break off to talk "real-time" here, and then blend it right back in. Becomes sort of a group memory mechanism.
Tim Horgan -- Besides using this for focused discussions with distributed groups, I'd love to have this for use here in our office where we have a team of 8 people who don't all sit near each other, so we send mail with little snippets in them all day. We could simply have a chat window going all day for the "hey, is this okay" or "check this change out" types of messages that everyone should be seeing. Cool!
Richard Seltzer -- All -- I find the chat environment at the demo site very good, and very familiar. The only reason I'm choosing to type here rather than there right now is the issue of zero refresh -- that's the way I have this one set up.
Tim Horgan -- As an AVF customer, and someone who is setting up distributed communities - I *love* and badly need this tool!
Richard Seltzer -- Dave and Larry and Peter -- I've never seen this kind of integration between forum and chat before. Is this unique (as far as you know)? And how long might it be before customers could start using this feature? Will there be a patch to download to upgrade the commercial product?
Dave Griffin -- I don't know how unique it is myself -- I can't say I've seen it elsewhere. We're only a week or two into development and we've got lots of feedback to incorporate.
Richard Seltzer -- Dave et al. -- Will that demo site continue to be available for these folks to go back and try it some more and show others?
Dave Griffin -- We'll keep it up and available for some time. We'll also be making improvements -- probably starting this afternoon.
Madeleine Butschler -- I hope you will keep the demo up for a few days. I've really enjoyed this experience, but I know I've missed quite a bit, being new at this and would like the opportunity to go back and retrace bits. To the organizers, thanks so much for arranging this!
Peter Hurley -- The AVF site is open to the public. The other site on our summit is a forum on how to customize AVF. Feel free to look at it.
Dan Kalikow -- time marker -- both submit & send buttons hit "simultaneously"
Richard Seltzer -- Dave -- could you give a quick description of your sub/pizza ordering demo? Looking at that made me think that it might easily be adapted for course registration and other business apps.
Dave Griffin -- "sub/pizza ordering demo" -- Well, briefly we have the ability to customize forums without writing any code (which continues to be a primary means of customization). Peter has built an "attribute-based search" document sharing forum which lets you mix structured data with unstructured stuff. This let us assemble simple applications in just a few minutes.
Peter Hurley -- The pizza
ordering system is an example of where we are going with AVF. We have a
completely tailorable forum working. The example was to set up a forum
to order sub-sandwiches. The forum makes full use of the search engine
to show specific cuts of the database.
Richard Seltzer -- Dave et al. -- Can there be separate registration/membership for separate areas? separate topics? etc.?
Peter Hurley -- Sure, You can each own a forum.
Dave Griffin -- "Can this software be partitioned?" -- Yes, it's possible. We have separate user databases and separate access controls on each forum. You can mix and match as needed. It can get complicated though...
Madeleine Butschler -- Just a bit of "data" for anyone overseeing this experiment. For future purposes, at least this participant admits to experiencing some "excitement" trying to keep track of both these chats. I have found myself mainly focused on the AltaVista one.
Sudha Jamthe -- I agree with Madeleine. I jumped from one to another. But it was fun.
Thomas Nielsen -- Richard: "How do others feel?"... Almost like being on some sort of illegal beverage. Cool, actually.
Dave Griffin -- Well, I don't know how well this went as a demo, but we sure appreciate you all visiting and trying it out!
hduggan -- I'd very much
like to try out a MOO site using this chat space as a guide.
Peter Hurley -- I expect to post this out in the customizations forum as soon as it is complete.
Dave Griffin -- However, it will be available as a "customization patch" for AVF98A -- which we all encourage you to go out and buy right away :-)
Sudha Jamthe -- Dave/ Peter: When you are ready we shd talk about your presenting this to web-net group in our monthly meeting at Sloan. We can talk offline. Email me at sudha@web-net.org
Richard Seltzer -- Dave et al. -- Can people download a trial version of AV Forum today (the current version without this HTML chat built in) and then add the patch later?
Dave Griffin -- Richard: You can download AVF today and when we have the customization patch available, just plug it in and go.
Larry -- You can download an evaluation copy (good for 30 days from the installation date) from http://altavista.software.digital.com
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Where can we see a white paper or description of all of the features of the AVF ?
Larry -- There is information on forum features at the web page: http://altavista.software.digital.com
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- I miss the feature of having the email & home page links in the AVF that are in the Web-Net chat.
Sudha Jamthe -- The most recent message is coming at the bottom of the page. Can it be reversed? Also, how can I thread messages of a single subject together?
Sudha Jamthe -- Dave: One small suggestion. Do you have an instant messaging product from AltaVista. It will be a great fit to link with this Forum chat. That way people can have a choice of unscheduled chat but can send an instant message to their pals online and quickly get the chat started.
Dave Griffin -- Sudha: "instant messaging" -- kinda, sorta... It probably needs to be tweaked to make it worthwhile for everyone.
Carole Soule -- I like the format of the Alta Vista chat. As with others I don't like the automatic refresh, unless it could be done less intrusively. I also would like to know if there is a way for real-time threading. Looks like the threading is only from one message to the next, not topic related at all.
Dave Griffin -- Please note that at 12 noon EDT we will be joined by a number of people from Richard Seltzer's weekly business chat. We're actually uncertain whether or not this type of simultaneous access will overload our system -- but that's part of the experiment. Please bear with us as we learn.
Dave Griffin -- Also note that for performance reasons, we are using a mode of operation which may not be compatible with some caching proxy servers. We are still learning to characterize all the interactions that surround this new feature.
Thomas Honoré Nielsen -- I think it is. I have windows all over the place now. :-)
Daniel Clar -- I use the netscape browser on a Digital Unix computer and the upper window is too small to see the link "Click here..." How is this window sized ?
Dave Griffin -- It's just a 30/70 proportion.
Dave Griffin -- Basically, that is what is happening. This is the first time we've had this many people talking at once -- so perhaps this feature isn't all that great as the number of people increase.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Looks like refresh is real-time, whenever someone enters a message. Is that correct ?
Peter Hurley -- Yes, it only refreshes when something new is added
Heather Duggan -- The refreshing is distracting (see this is being discussed below). Needs to be settable as it is in the other space.
Sudha Jamthe -- Can we set the refresh rate?
Peter Hurley -- What would you like to see as refresh options?
Richard Seltzer -- Peter -- I would like an option of zero refresh rate -- letting me click to see more. With lots of traffic, as we are seeing now, the screen refreshes right when I'm in the middle of reading something.
Gerry Fisher -- I like this idea! Give me more only when I'm ready.
Peter Hurley -- I thought I'd add a "pause" button like on your VCR.
Tim Horgan -- Refresh on request would be great...as the discussion heats up my window keeps bouncing back to the bottom.
Daniel Clar -- Even on this side of the ocean [in France] the refresh rate is terrific
Thomas Honoré Nielsen -- What I have come to miss the past few minutes is a separator between entries from before and after a refresh. It can be fairly difficult to scan back to what I was reading as the update came in.
Richard Seltzer -- Things are flying by so fast now, that it's very hard to read. That's why you need a zero refresh option.
Dan Kalikow -- Zero Refresh is for WIMPS!! (*major* grins!!)
Peter Hurley -- This is the first time we have had this in real use. I totally agree. Give me 5 minutes and I'll add it (just kidding).
lynn lee -- This wimp is checking out. It's a neat tool, but I'll come back when you've added more user control features! I'm going a bit bonkers. Have fun...I'll read about it later in the transcript!
Tom Dadakis -- This multiple windows with multiple threads is like trying to follow my son playing his video game. May be too much multi-tasking for a simpleton like me.
Gerry Fisher -- You obviously don't watch enough MTV! ;-)
Charles Reigeluth -- How do you change the refresh rate?
Tim Horgan -- Peter, why do you use the term plug-in? That implies (to me) software you need to download and install. Ugh
Peter Hurley -- I use this term to indicate "add-ons" that you can include in AVF. These are added from the administrator's menu. It is an easy way to configure AVF. It only gets done once.
Richard Seltzer -- Yes, Peter, what do you mean by "plug-in"? Does the user need to do something? Or do you just mean that you are building modularly on the base software?
Tim Horgan -- Our biggest requests for enhancements to AVF (we use it at http://www.cio.com) are notification when someone posts a reponse, html capability, and an easier way to customize the interface.
Gerry Fisher -- I was just about to respond to someone when it became a moot point. But there was no quick way to clear the "Title" area. A "Clear" button (to clear the response title) might be nice.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- I miss the feature of having the email & home page links in the AVF that are in the Web-Net chat.
Daniel Clar -- Is it possible to have some alphabetical arrangement in the "current chatterers" window with perhaps the number of people ?
Gerry Fisher -- I was just saying to a neighbor (we're parallel processing by chatting over the cubicle walls while we're typing), and I mentioned that it might be nice to be able to upload a file into this stream. For example, if I had that white paper on AVF features handy...
Peter Hurley -- The performance of the chat session is getting slower as the file gets bigger. Should we do something like the other chat window does to keep the size under some limit?
Tim Horgan -- Peter, not sure how URLs work here, but I'd like to have the ability to post a URL and have it come up in another window (as the default, so I can continue watching this discussion). Nice way to reference other material as you work.
Peter Hurley -- Yeah!! We were trying to think of how to do that. I was thinking of having a box to upload files. Then the appear on a list of attachments to view during the chat.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- I like the idea of replying to a specific message. Sure would make transcript easier.
Carole Soule -- The only thing is the participants have to select what they are responding to. Seems to me if they don't you still have to manually "thread" the chat later?
Sudha Jamthe -- How can I thread messages of a single subject together?
Richard Seltzer -- Dave and Peter -- is there an automated way for a message to appear as a reply to another message? That looks very neat and helpful. How can I do that?
Carole Soule -- Are the "threads" the first line of a message. If I want to reply to a reply I don't see how? I select a reply and the new response is displayed not the original. I guess I'm confused.
Richard Seltzer -- Are you just doing a cut and paste of the first line of the message you are answering and putting that in as the title? Or is there something fancier than that?
Carole Soule -- I too would like to know how to thread messages of a single subject together.
Peter Hurley -- Click on the title line of the entry you want to reply to. This builds a threaded list in the transcript.
Carole Soule -- Richard, I just select the user name and the title line of a comment appears in the box below.
Peter Hurley -- Is there something else you would like to see in this thread capability?
Madeleine Butschler -- I have looked at other threaded conferencing software like HyperNews and WebCSILE. They're based on a "knowledge building" pedagogy and have started building in options to indicate kind of message, e.g. inquiry, new info, comment. Some also allow for indicating "mood" or character. I think some of these features can be useful, but it depends on the context and objectives. They can also result in steeper learning curves and clutter...
Peter Hurley -- We'll have to take a look at those other products. One problem is screen real estate for all of the options.
Madeleine Butschler -- Yes,
I have some grasp of the intellectual property issues involved. In a former
life I practiced law. It was mainly family law, but then went on to provide
continuing professional education for lawyers which included sessions on
intellectual property. -- Deep waters.
Thanks again for the demo. I must be off to another meeting.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- I'm not sure what you mean by attached to the parent. Can you explain that ?
Peter Hurley -- I meant the document you were reading when you opened for chat (i.e., #4.) Just hit the close button and look for an attachment labeled chat_session.htm.
Daniel Clar -- For the transcript, does it mean that it's possible to find it later when all is quiet ?
Tim Horgan --Peter, could you explain that some more? On the forum page will there be a post for this chat, and then the transcript would be there? So we could have multiple chats over time, and simply add the transcripts as replies where appropriate?
Peter Hurley -- Yes, you can have multiple chat sessions. One for each reply. Or better yet, just add a new entry and have a chat about that entry.
Tim Horgan -- I like that the whole chat session is available here for viewing. Otherwise having discussions about detailed topics would be difficult.
Madeleine Butschler -- I assume the benefit for having the most recent message come at the bottom is for transcription purposes, now having experienced a little of that with the DE Chat line. This looks like heaven to me. I simply placed my second window with Altavista at the top after a couple of minutes of being on.
Dave Griffin -- Please note that when you close this session, you'll be on the base topic for this chat. Attached to it will be the FULL transcript (formatted in a slightly different way to navigate the threads)
Dan Kalikow -- Hi Richard -- I'm all for it -- as we've said for years, the Forum format is great for extended dialogs and the chat for immediacy. This way, you get "the best of both"
Tim Horgan -- With this enhanced AVF, we could post reference materials for people to review beforehand (the transcript as Richard suggests), which would make it much easier for people just joining the group. I *like* that as an operating style for some of the things we're considering.
Dan Kalikow -- Email notification, plasticity... plug-ins (prolly on the SERVER side) for expansibility -- super extensions! Kudos.
Heather Duggan -- OK, I'm in. Richard, I like the idea of extending the weekly chat into a discussion space
Dan Kalikow -- I think this is the more exciting environment, is why... especially when you consider the potential of integrating it with a longer-term discussion area.
Richard Seltzer -- For longer-term use -- as people use the forum space as an area to share documents and to carry on asynchronous discussions, and then use this chat capability for impromptu live conversations and scheduled meetings, you could build up quite a lot of content quickly. Then that built-in search capability would be very valuable.
Richard Seltzer -- Dave et al. -- How long before I'd be able to use this to run a regular chat session? And what are the system requirements? (NT? UNIX? any particular hardware?)
Peter Hurley -- We are running on a NT system (Pentium 300)
Peter Hurley -- AVF works on NT, NT Alpha, Dec UNIX, and Solaris.
Charles Reigeluth -- What about Mac?
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Where can we see a white paper or description of all of the features of the AVF ?
Larry Augustus There is information on forum features at the web page: http://altavista.software.digital.com
Peter Hurley -- We don't run AVF on Mac servers, but the clients work ok.
Tom Dadakis -- Richard. One of your more interesting experiments. This is why I like to keep up with your discussions even when I can't participate. You are always expanding the envelope/universe on how we can use this thing we call the net.
Peter Hurley -- This has been a real trip for me. This chat system is only one week old. Richard asked us to put it together last week. I have really enjoyed seeing it work under heavy load. I have lots of ideas on ways to fix the problems (such as the scroll rate). Thanks to you all for being such helpful participants.
Tim Horgan -- And now that we've seen it, and have started thinking of all these places we could use it --- when can we have it???
Larry Augustus -- Tim - George Pappas [the product marketing manager] is in my office. He would like you to give him a call once this session is over if you have time. His number is 978-506-2064
Richard Seltzer -- All -- I hope that you all continue to test this out and play around with the capabilities, including exploring some of those choices from the "Summit" after the hour is up. (We'll close up over in the Web-net area, but I believe this could continue open.)
Dan Kalikow -- Love this design-on-the-fly -- that sounds like a good hack to me, Peter!
Peter Hurley -- We'll keep this open as long as people like. Also, feel free to enter replies to the main entry or add new topics in this forum.
Richard Seltzer -- All -- as your imaginations keep going and you come up with more items to add to your wishlist, please post your ideas here or email them directly to the developers (Peter Hurley, Larry Augustus, and Dave Griffin)
Dan Kalikow -- (another commercial message) ... and for realtime
access to any database from a vanilla browser, check out http://www.maxsol.com
-- you can create queries, reports, charts & composite pages with no
additional client SW.
(sorry, couldn't resist -- the two products are conceptually related,
is my only excuse)
Thomas Honoré Nielsen -- For us I think the main benefit would be a simpler chat than iRC with small demands on client side technology combined with an existing user authentication scheme as well as a familiar user interface.
Tim Horgan -- This is very cool. I can see us using this to have focused discussions with our distributed teams, for example working on a document remotely. And I can see that our local team would love to have this to use throughout the day to post quick messages to each other rather than polluting our email system with them. This could become the basis for our team or group "memories" - which we very much need!
Richard Seltzer -- Peter, Dave, Larry -- Thanks very much for doing this demo for us. It's been great.
Phil Goodrich -- Thanks Peter, Looks like a real step forward. Keep up the great work. Life is not always a bowl of cherries, but lots of steps up the porch of life.
Dave Griffin -- Our pleasure. We learned a lot.
Dan Kalikow -- Thanks guys. The hour just flew by. Major kudos!
Sudha Jamthe -- Bye Nicole. Hope you can catch up with transcripts later.
Richard Seltzer -- All -- would you like to try this same kind of set up (two screens) for a MOO demo (next week, if I can arrange it)?
Madeleine Butschler -- Richard: Yes, please do make arranges for a MOO demo - I'm sure we won't be "cowed" by it... (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Yes, I'd like to try the split MOO demo.
tom dadakis -- Anybody else have a headache. I'm not complaining but wow what an experience trying to keep everything straight
Dave Griffin -- Re: headache -- yup. This was interesting, but really, really hard to take in all at once. I'd look forward to a MOO demo next week (my head should stop spinning by then)
Tim Horgan -- Richard, could you give us a quick description of the split MOO demo (the what?)
hduggan -- Richard, will we need any of the special MOO clients? Or have Telnet set up? Or is our web browser enough?
tom dadakis -- Got go. I'll catch the rest in the archive. Great experiment Richard. Keep expanding our horizons.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Richard - will you capture the AVF discussion for inclusion in this week's transcript ?
Richard Seltzer -- All -- please post your email address and URL here before you sign off. (Our time is running out already.)
Richard Seltzer -- All -- Thanks very much for joining us. Please come again next Thursday (and check out the Tuesday spin-off chat on Distance Education). Send me email with your followup comments and questions for inclusion with the transcript, which I'll post as soon as I can. Check http://www.samizdat.com/#chat
Madeleine Butschler -- I'm going to focus on playing on Altavista now. Again, thanks so very much for organizing this. It was great!
Thomas Nielsen -- Thomas Nielsen signing off - email is thn@ehs.dk It's been a fun experience.
Ron Rothenberg -- Homebase@world.std.com http://www.realprogress.com/
Dan Kalikow -- Dan Kalikow, drdan@kalikow.com and/or kalikow@maxsol.com, http://www.kalikow.com/~drdan/ or http://www.maxsol.com Thanks, Richard -- this was a TRIP!!!!
Richard Seltzer -- Please send me your feedback about this experience. seltzer@samizdat.com How did this work? Were you able to learn what you wanted to learn? ask what you needed to ask? Do you want to try this kind of thing again? (e.g., for MOOs)? Would you like to be able to use that AltaVista Forum software for our regular chat sessions? email me at seltzer@samizdat.com
Tim Horgan -- Anyone want to see AltaVista Forum in "action", we use it at CIO, http://www.cio.com/aforum/forums/aca/dispatch.cgi Thanks, Richard. Great stuff. Tim Horgan, VP/Technology, CIO Magazine, thorgan@cio.com
Richard Seltzer -- Dave, Peter, Larry -- Thanks very much for doing this for us. It's been great.
Dave Griffin -- Dave Griffin
- dave.griffin@digital.com, AltaVista Forum Engineering
http://www.ultranet.com/~dgriffin/dave.html
Peter Hurley -- Peter Hurley, AltaVista Forum engineering, peter.hurley@digital.com
Madeleine Butschler -- Just after I signed off, I saw your message on AVF about leaving our addresses. Mine: mmab@bc.sympatico.ca. Bye, everyone.
Larry -- Larry Augustus, AltaVista Forum engineering, larry.augustus@digital.com
Thomas Nielsen -- Bye, then. Thanks for a great hour.
Kel -- Bye. Thank you. Will be back.
Phil Goodrich -- Phil Goodrich, University of Minnesota, Dept. Of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, gqn6051@tc.umn.edu
Dave Griffin -- Richard: How you are going to stitch all this together is beyond me! Whew!
Marilyn Mansfield -- I have just joined you. I am working on the "Utah Electronic Community College" and am very interested in any advice I could get. Thanks.
Peter Hurley -- Marilyn, we are all over on http://k2.altavista-software.com/forum/aca2/dispatch.exe/protocase/chat/100011?
Dave Griffin -- Hi Marilyn. I think you missed the chat -- it just finished a few minutes ago.
Sudha Jamthe -- Bye folks. See you next week.
Richard, I have put up a new version of the AVF chat that we used in your chat session. This one has a "pause" and "resume" mode. It also has a mode where you can see only the last 20 entries (or see them all). This should help when the transcript gets really long. Feel free to take a look. There is a test area at the following url: http://k2.altavista-software.com/forum/aca2/dispatch.exe/protocase/chat/100025?
Peter
It was an incredible experience. I'm not used to chat at all but both systems performed wonderfully the "one-week-for-writing-this-app" bugs set aside on the AVF part. The Web-net experience in itself was more educating than I would have thought, so I will definitely be back. As for using AVF for chat sessions instead what you already have, I don't know. I must admit that I like the interface of AVF better but for my part I see the most benefits from AVF when used as a complete environment. We use it extensively, not just for remote education, but also internally for knowledgebases and as a collaborative tool. The major advantage over other systems is it's open architecture which has allowed us to write our own applications inside AVF. With the web chat facility it is becoming even better.
Kind regards, Thomas Nielsen, Esbjerg Handelsskole / IT Center, Sp.Kirkevej 103,dk-6700 Esbjerg, Denmark
We are currently dismantling our existing forum (AVF20a) to make way for a new installation based on AVF98A. We usually have 15 to 30 different courses running concurrently. Most students only attend a few. Most importantly a user is only registered in one ACA so that he has only one profile, one username and one password. All courses are created in the ACA as forums.
Only those in which a user has read rights are visible from the summit. Only showing those forums is apparently not widely accepted by AVF customers so we made it ourselves (with help from a great engineering team at AV, not to forget). The next part is the forums. Some folders within a forum are, as usually in AVF, open for all who have access to the forum. Others are moderated so that students can, invisibly to other students, upload their assignments or ask "stupid" questions. The teacher can then create a thread where he answers questions without revealing the identity of those who asked or compile notes on wrong answers in the assignments. The last type of folder is completely read-only to the students and used for the teacher to publicize notes and material. The tricky thing here, is to maintain access privileges on folder levels, which we made by overloading one of the classes in AVF. There are classes doing something similar but only on forum level.
We used the same technique. We are now building a user management system suitable to our specific needs. Some of these facilities we already had in the original forum but the upgrade to AVF98A made it necessary to completely rethink the concept. As a matter of fact, it has become increasingly easy to customize AVF at every new version. i would like to credit the AVF team in this respect, as they have been tremendously helpful in the process.
We can demonstrate some of the features already but in a very fragile environment. I think it would be best to wait for the completion sometime ultimo may or primo june. I can send you a notice when the time comes if you wish.
Kind regards, Thomas Nielsen, Esbjerg Handelsskole / IT Center
Thank you. If it is ok I will just "listen" until I start to have some idea of what is going on.
My school has developed a site to offer courses entirely on- line (http://www.relearning. com), with some very interesting interactive design and learning strategies to it.
While we have an instructor e-mail feature to the courses, I need to learn more about the ways we can conduct "class " chat sessions with multiple students on with an instructor. Your group looks like they understand this technology very well , I hope I can learn something from them.
Thanks again
Dan Sarrett
I liked the product. It seems to require some development work on the GUI and some features like refresh. It is key to differentiate it from Forum and chat. It can be particularly useful in an intranet setting. I think they'll need some tool to break the unscheduled vs scheduled chat feature to help build community around it, if not a messaging system, they need some kind of push tool.
The idea of opening multiple windows to see product demos is a simple but a cool thought. In future you can link to the new window as an HTML tag on your message that people can just click. Su
Yes, the MOO demo would be fine with me Thursday, May 7. The main link for the demo will be http://moo.du.org:8888
>Any words of introduction about MOOs (what to do in advance? what to expect?) for me to forward to my lists in preparation for this Thursday?
No, not much. The only thing that people could do would be to connect to the MOO prior to the meeting so that we don't have to wait until everybody is there. So ppl would do the following:
1. connect to http://moo.du.org:8888
2. click on the 'Connect using the integrated interface' button
3. go through the questions that pop up at the beginning
4. an entry line is at the bottom of the browser window, type @go #6490
5. this will take to the GNA Forum room
That's everything ;-)
No more diffcult than the setup process at Web-Net.
If people go through the process right at the beginning we would not have to spent too much time while people get connected to both systems.
ChristianF, Globewide Network Academy http://www.gnacademy.org/
I hear you're having a session on Moos. Just thought I'd share I've had two time-limited experiences in Moo communities - Cybercorp.net's Teaching Online course Moo, GymVMoo at http://www.cybercorp.net/GymVMOO/ and Grassroots Moo at http://rdz.stjohns.edu/grassroots/
I still have a number of rooms up at Grassroots Moo, in the Water environment (command Thal for Thalassa), as well as a picturesque Web page about my experience creating my own Moo environment as part of an online counseling group for psychotherapists sponsored by St. Johns University: http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/torrey.htm
Just visiting this web page will give you a sense of the therapeutic and educational possibilities of a Moo experience.
Here are some other useful Moo resources:
Subject: K12> Newby Night - Are you new to the MOO
From: Catherine G. Thwing [mailto:tep@azsunset.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 1998 10:04 AM
Are you new to the MOO? If so, please come to the Online Educators' Resource Group's Newby Night, where you'll meet teachers k-higher ed who use eduMOOs in their teaching and professional development. This is a night for introductory-level talk about using MOOs ion teaching and for professional development and help with basic MOOing.
Newby Night is this Sunday, 3 May, at 8pm EDT, 1am GMT, at Diversity University.
There are two ways to connect to DU:
1. If your browser supports Java (new versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer do), you can connect via the integrated web interface by going to http://moo.du.org:8000 Then, click on the CONNECT USING THE INTEGRATED INTERFACE BUTTON Once connected to DU, please type @go OERG
2. To connect via MOO client or raw telnet, telnet to 128.18.101.106 port 8888 If you don't have a DU character, type co guest oerg to connect.
--Catherine Thwing, Online Educators' Resource Group, tep@azsunset.com cthwing@tusd.k12.az.us
I will try to make next week's meeting. I have mixed responses to my Moo experiences (environment creation is too time-intensive and technically confusing to many people, but meeting in existing Moos is as simple as IRC, and certainly more stable, in terms of technical connectivity and community), and would like to hear how others have been using Moos.
Tracy Marks, tmar@tiac.net http://www.windweaver.com/
I added a list of DE related sites at http://www.cottagemicro.com/education/
The list is 3,000+ links. I have done some editing, but may need a volunteer(s) to help clean up the list.
I'd like to build a Tools that are being used list too. If you have any input or would like to volunteer to go through the past transcripts to extract them I'm listening.
Bob Zwick bob@cottagemicro.com, Cottage Micro Services, 103 Vinyard Drive, Waxahachie, TX 75167 http://www.cottagemicro.com
Previous transcripts and schedule of upcoming chats -- www.samizdat.com/chat.html
To connect to the chat room, go to www.samizdat.com/chat-intro.html
The full text of Richard Seltzer's books The Social Web,
Take
Charge of Your Web Site, Shop Online the Lazy Way, and
The
Way of the Web, plus more than a hundred related articles are available
on CD ROM My
Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities.
Web
Business Boot Camp: Hands-on Internet lessons for manager, entrepreneurs,
and professionals by Richard Seltzer (Wiley, 2002).
No-nonsense guide targets activities that anyone can perform to achieve
online business
success.
Reviews.
a
library for the price of a book.
This site is Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com
Return to B&R Samizdat Express
<
| Internet Business Showcase: | ||
|
|
|