Writing Research across Borders

WRAB '08 is in February:

Writing Research Across Borders
An Interdisciplinary Conference

February 22-24, 2008
University of California, Santa Barbara

The Writing Research Across Borders Conference will bring together 550
research presenters that represent over 30 nations.  Its 150 panels will
represent research on writing at all levels of development, employing
approaches from the social sciences, sciences and humanities.  The
conference will provide opportunities to share findings, seek common
agendas, and lay the groundwork for future communication and alliances.

For more information, please visit our conference website at
http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/wrconf08/
or email us at writing@education.ucsb.edu.

Early registration fees:
$195 Regular Registration
$120 Student/Adjunct/CA Educator

Fees After December 1:
$250 Regular Registration
$160 Student/Adjunct/CA Educator

*Conference Volume Included with Registration

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New browser versions

Opera Mini 4 is out. So is the Flock update.

Opera Mini™ - Free mobile Web browser for your phone

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Buzzword preview

UPDATE: Virtual Ubiquity informed me that Buzzword does allow exports to .doc, .rtf, and Word 2003 xml via the Save As dialog. Apparently there's a bug with the radio button being grayed out.

I've been hearing a lot of buzz about Buzzword, a basic word processor built in Flash to facilitate networked collaboration. Today, I was finally able to try out the preview. Here's a quick pros-cons list based on a five-minute test drive.

Pros:

• This thing is just beautiful. Fonts render nicely, although there's only seven of them. The page is WYSIWYG, of course, but you can zoom in and out via a slider. Animation is discreet and appropriate.
  
• The features are intuitive.
  
• Buzzword's functionality is available primarily via toolbars for fonts, paragraphs, lists, images, tables, and contents; they're rendered in roughly the "ribbon" configuration offered in the latest Office, but are much better done here.
  
• The scrollbar actually shows page numbers, which is incredibly smart.
• Hover over a page element and you'll get a little, unobtrusive Comment icon. Click it to add a comment immediately. These comments stay in the margins, like Word's, not embedded in the text the way GDocs' comments do.
• To add table rows or columns, you just have to click an unobtrusive plus sign in the table itself. No menus or key commands.
• Sharing is finer grained than in GDocs: You can designate someone as coauthor, commenter, or reader, with appropriate permissions given to each.
• The documents list is great, with various ways to sort the documents (alpha, by author, by your role, by date).
• It supports endnotes!
  

Cons:

• Apparently it doesn't support paragraph styles, which is a big drawback.
• Currently it doesn't seem to allow document uploading. The Save As feature indicates that you can save as Word format, but that choice is grayed out.
• The History is very basic, not nearly as full-featured as GDocs' or Word's.
  
• Oh, and it requires Flash.
  

On the balance, this product has some real potential for the online collaboration market. Some of the cons I've listed are clearly in the works, while others could potentially be added without much trouble. The UI, as I said, is really smart and does some things that would be clever even in an established desktop word processor.

My sense is that Buzzword isn't going to go head-to-head with Word -- the features are adequate for basic collaboration on short documents, but not for long documents or for more complex types of documents. That leaves GDocs, but I don't think they're competing head-to-head with GDocs either: GDocs' features are much more squarely aimed at intense collaboration (I'm thinking particularly of versioning) across multiple devices (especially mobile). But Buzzword would be very easy for students to use in writing classes, for instance, and its commenting features would be great for peer and instructor review -- better than GDocs' in that regard.

Virtual Ubiquity - Buzzword

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Things to remember as you apply for a tenure-track job

Generally sage advice. If you're finishing up your dissertation and going on the market this year, take a look.

An Open Letter to ABD Job Seekers | CultureCat

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The safest place to sit when you visit Austin

UT creates global security chair - Austin Business Journal:

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In Japan, PCs are losing market share

... to mobile phones, gaming consoles, etc.

Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » PCs being pushed aside in Japan

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Buy the electricity, get the car free

Based on the fact that in England, the average used car costs less than a year's worth of fuel for it.

The Long Tail: Next: Free Cars!

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