We also want this information to flow across platforms and we expect all the functionalities such as instantaneous spell checking when typing, I even heard my nine years old daughter complaining recently how come the video wasn't automatically sub-titled if it's played in another language! If she only knew what a challenge that is but I simply told her that smart kids will find the solution sooner or later.
I personally don't like the term instant gratification society when referring to ubiquity. The term has a negative connotation and yes even though we have become more impatient our search for more and better content is evolving with very positive consequences. How we filter information and learn to organize content has resulted in data beautifully packaged providing users ability to navigate through enormous amount of information efficiently and dynamically. The wealth of human knowledge is growing at the fastest rate ever seen in history with a radical impact in our societies.
So how embedding plays a role in the information revolution? When it comes to content another important requirement is that information now needs to be added value. Those snippets displayed such as video better get to the point and explain in a concise, clear manner or the user will simply jump to the next available content. Most content nowadays come in snippets of less than a minute as it is proven that longer exposure results in users disengagement. Then the real big challenge is that we want lots of information but we want it in such a way to allow us the ability to deep dive into a specific subject and get as much information as we can get and when we are searching, exploring we want it fast feedback and interaction. That's why I believe embedding code is an excellent solution. It satisfies the two major requirements. It's value added content and is only available for the user to interact with when they want it. For example a video can be stopped, forward or reverse allowing the user to continue browsing the website.
Next I will use an example to illustrate my point. Imagine a young girl, she has just created her first great programming code; she is so proud that she wants to share it with her grandparents who live in another country. Can she do it? Without embedding your answer may that long winded answer and it may go something like this...It may not be possible because the program was meant to be made as a standalone program that can only run in a certain operating system that your grandparents don't have access to. So in order to create a plug in to make it work through a web browsers we will need to rewrite the code as a script. And for that one has to keep in mind the type of web browser and that the code needs to be able to manage multiple instances at the same time therefore the source file may need to reside in a server otherwise the logic code may be exposed or perhaps it will be confused as a virus resulting in a security threat that your firewall might stop. I don't think so.
Not only you will discourage the little girl to keep creating; she will think programming is so hard and will question why to continue pursuing it.
Yes all those considerations are true and they happen every time we search content in a web browser but we don't think about it any more. For example when you embed a YouTube video in Facebook we just copy the URL and the rest is taken care by the platform we happen to be in. It all happens behind the scene. It's not an easy thing to do by no means but sharing information is the higher goal so having platforms to share code are a brilliant solution and I will refer next a couple of those platforms.
Scratch a programming language for young kids has this nice future in the on-line version that makes it really easy to embed your kid's project by copying the generating embedded code that you can copy paste to any html embed code control so you can share it in a website or even in an email. A disadvantage it only works with the on-line version of Scratch nothing insurmountable. By converting the sb to sb2 files it can be imported to on-line Scratch and voilà. As the on-line version is the most advanced backwards compatibility is less of a concern.
I also discovered Skulpt that allows embedding of python code. I would highly recommend if you are learning python: http://www.skulpt.org. All you need to do is to literally just copy and paste the code, hit the run button and the simulated output will be displayed. You can also share the embedded code as well with an application call trinket. Also if you are more adventurous you can get into the html script, do it from scratch and fully control how it looks. Full credit to trinket and the many collaborators that make this free and readily available. This solution has some limitations, it won't allow for example to embed py-games or access Minecraft library. But it's a start; enough to get the interest going and perhaps later they will be ready to hear the long winded explanation of why we cannot simply copy paste certain code but in the mean time there is a lot that can be tested. Please check the interactive section to see some real examples.
In the past twenty years the developer community has made enormous strides on ubiquity access of data. What can be done today used to be daunting task that only the bravest of the bravest programmers will dare to embark. Simplifying the time to code not only leads to greater productivity but it allows to spend more time focusing on content, functionality and design. As new platforms evolve, it will become easier to share content across multiple languages and create snippets of functional code that can reside in any platform and will also allow code to talk to each other. But wait that's what a web service is.And I will have fun writing about it next time. As always please share your stories or it would be great to hear about more platforms that allow embedding of code.
Cheers for now,
Omar
I personally don't like the term instant gratification society when referring to ubiquity. The term has a negative connotation and yes even though we have become more impatient our search for more and better content is evolving with very positive consequences. How we filter information and learn to organize content has resulted in data beautifully packaged providing users ability to navigate through enormous amount of information efficiently and dynamically. The wealth of human knowledge is growing at the fastest rate ever seen in history with a radical impact in our societies.
So how embedding plays a role in the information revolution? When it comes to content another important requirement is that information now needs to be added value. Those snippets displayed such as video better get to the point and explain in a concise, clear manner or the user will simply jump to the next available content. Most content nowadays come in snippets of less than a minute as it is proven that longer exposure results in users disengagement. Then the real big challenge is that we want lots of information but we want it in such a way to allow us the ability to deep dive into a specific subject and get as much information as we can get and when we are searching, exploring we want it fast feedback and interaction. That's why I believe embedding code is an excellent solution. It satisfies the two major requirements. It's value added content and is only available for the user to interact with when they want it. For example a video can be stopped, forward or reverse allowing the user to continue browsing the website.
Next I will use an example to illustrate my point. Imagine a young girl, she has just created her first great programming code; she is so proud that she wants to share it with her grandparents who live in another country. Can she do it? Without embedding your answer may that long winded answer and it may go something like this...It may not be possible because the program was meant to be made as a standalone program that can only run in a certain operating system that your grandparents don't have access to. So in order to create a plug in to make it work through a web browsers we will need to rewrite the code as a script. And for that one has to keep in mind the type of web browser and that the code needs to be able to manage multiple instances at the same time therefore the source file may need to reside in a server otherwise the logic code may be exposed or perhaps it will be confused as a virus resulting in a security threat that your firewall might stop. I don't think so.
Not only you will discourage the little girl to keep creating; she will think programming is so hard and will question why to continue pursuing it.
Yes all those considerations are true and they happen every time we search content in a web browser but we don't think about it any more. For example when you embed a YouTube video in Facebook we just copy the URL and the rest is taken care by the platform we happen to be in. It all happens behind the scene. It's not an easy thing to do by no means but sharing information is the higher goal so having platforms to share code are a brilliant solution and I will refer next a couple of those platforms.
Scratch a programming language for young kids has this nice future in the on-line version that makes it really easy to embed your kid's project by copying the generating embedded code that you can copy paste to any html embed code control so you can share it in a website or even in an email. A disadvantage it only works with the on-line version of Scratch nothing insurmountable. By converting the sb to sb2 files it can be imported to on-line Scratch and voilà. As the on-line version is the most advanced backwards compatibility is less of a concern.
I also discovered Skulpt that allows embedding of python code. I would highly recommend if you are learning python: http://www.skulpt.org. All you need to do is to literally just copy and paste the code, hit the run button and the simulated output will be displayed. You can also share the embedded code as well with an application call trinket. Also if you are more adventurous you can get into the html script, do it from scratch and fully control how it looks. Full credit to trinket and the many collaborators that make this free and readily available. This solution has some limitations, it won't allow for example to embed py-games or access Minecraft library. But it's a start; enough to get the interest going and perhaps later they will be ready to hear the long winded explanation of why we cannot simply copy paste certain code but in the mean time there is a lot that can be tested. Please check the interactive section to see some real examples.
In the past twenty years the developer community has made enormous strides on ubiquity access of data. What can be done today used to be daunting task that only the bravest of the bravest programmers will dare to embark. Simplifying the time to code not only leads to greater productivity but it allows to spend more time focusing on content, functionality and design. As new platforms evolve, it will become easier to share content across multiple languages and create snippets of functional code that can reside in any platform and will also allow code to talk to each other. But wait that's what a web service is.And I will have fun writing about it next time. As always please share your stories or it would be great to hear about more platforms that allow embedding of code.
Cheers for now,
Omar