Review for CiteULike, a Web 2.0 application.

     CiteULike is a Web 2.0 application that enables users to bookmark and organize academic research for later use. While non-academic material can be put into the application, the makers are quick to point out that they prefer refereed articles and that non-scholarly articles will not be displayed in user searches, though they can be placed in the individual’s library. The application was developed with a specific purpose, and the developers are keen to make this distinction between refereed and non-refereed sources clear. I think the designers of the site were spot-on with the decision to disallow non-refereed articles on the site, while also allowing people to use them in their own libraries. This ensures that articles found when searching other peoples' libraries is also refereed. Many journals and databases have already been cleared with the site, including many of the articles I accessed through Google Scholar and Rowan’s databases. You can view the list of sites who’ve been cleared with CiteULike, and whose citations will fill in automatically with the addition of the url, on the front page. Also, CiteULike can be used by people who speak many different languages, using the UTF-8 Internet character encoding method.

The front page is a little busy, but not distractingly so. Most importantly, the site is easy to use. The ads aren't too obtrusive on the left side of the page. 

Also, CiteULike's FAQ page is very thorough and useful, including some information from the site's principal creator, Richard Cameron.

CiteULike's Journal Search page is clear and uncluttered, making its purpose recognizable. The Search function for the site works well though it's important to follow the "search syntax." After a few tries, I had no problems searching this way.



    According to its primary developer, Richard Cameron, CiteULike was created with the aim of taking some of the “drudgery” out of research. I think Cameron succeeded with his goal. While not all scholarly information can be found online as yet, this tool is certainly helpful in culling the parts of it that are. This is done by first copying the url from the page or pdf and pasting into CiteULike. CiteULike then stores the bibiographic info when you save the article on the site if it's a site that CiteULike has cleared. If CiteULike does not know the site used, the user can insert the article’s vital information, which doesn’t take very long.

    Like everything else about the site, tagging is very flexible in CiteULike. You can tag the articles any way you'd like, and add as many as you'd like. I tagged items by author and topic, and it proved useful for me. Other people may opt to tag things differently; and that’s fine too: The application is designed to be customizable and helpful to the individual. I believe the “folksonomy approach”, as Tim O’Reilly calls it, to categorizing information, allowing individuals to tag information at their discretion, works well for the site.
   
     A good way of looking at CiteULike might be to think of how Diigo or Delicious would be if they were designed primarily for storing scholarly information. Whereas those more common social bookmarking tools are designed to socially bookmark websites, CiteULike is designed to hold all the vital info about the source. The link, the title of the article, author, date of publication, and the journal in which it is found can all be easily added to an entry (if the information doesn’t pop up on its own).

     One of the coolest things about CiteULike is that it's social, in that you can look up what other people are reading who have similar interests to your own. Users can search for articles of interest, you can find who else has it in his or her library. Then, you can search that person's library to see if they have any other articles stored that could be of interest to you. Also, the site allows the user to join groups of people who have similar interests. It is possible to form new groups as well.
 

     CiteULike can be a valuable resource for anyone doing scholarly research. This would include graduate students primarily but some undergraduates as well. The site is well-designed and simple to use. I imagine anyone with just marginally better-than-novice web skills to be able to use CiteULike without much problem. If familiar with Google, and Diigo or Delicious, I imagine that should be all the training one would need to start using CiteULike. Actually the site looks a bit like Google with its search bar in the upper middle of the screen. While I think the home page could be little less busy, the primary navigational tools are well-implemented, easy to see and easy to use. Instead of adding the list of approved scholarly sources under the page where the urls are pasted, I would prefer that the list opens when the user hovers the mouse over it. I think the information is a little more cluttered than it needs to be, but it’s not such a sever problem that it affects the usability of the site. With this in mind, I can understand the designers' decision to put the names of all the approved journals on the front page. This is probably helpful for people who are new to the site and want to be sure their journal of choice is supported.

Here is a group I found on just a search I conducted with the terms "instructional & design." CiteULike implements a search syntax I was unfamiliar with previously, and may take a few tries to get accustomed to. One could complain about this, but I won't because there is a help box right on the page that explains how to get the best results when searching the site.




     This is one of the single most useful applications I have seen for my own purposes. The tool is invaluable for storing, collecting, and organizing research. While I've used Diigo before, and it's great, CiteULike works better for searching for academic information. It's great to have a virtual stop to collate and organize research. Whereas we once needed to trudge to the library and dig up stacks of books, much of that leg work is no longer needed with the advent of CiteULike. Cameron dreamed that his application would help make that a reality. While that reality isn’t here yet, that’s just because not all the world’s research is available online yet.  You can't fault CiteULike's creators for potentially making research more productive.

    CiteULike is an excellent tool for staying on top of recent literature in your field of choice. Again, you can't access all the articles that are published in journals, but you can access whatever is posted online. Building on the idea of "wisdom of the crowds", CiteULike allows users to tap into what other people are using. This is like having other people do the research for you. Searching out online research is much easier than it once was thanks in part to CiteULike. I fully expect to use the site heavily as I begin my work on my thesis work this semester. It would behoove anyone else in Information Architecture to check the site out who will be working their theses as well.

My CiteULike Library:

I was pretty proud of myself when I finished this map.  I really thought that for what I had drawn, it was pretty darn accurate.  That all changed on the day I grabbed my camera and went to take photos of all the places on my map.  I would snap a picture, then look around and think to myself, "Oh yea, I forgot that was right here.....how did I miss that?"

There is a great deal missing from this map, both big and small.  Part of this was intentional.  I wanted to fit my drawing all on one page, and so I chose which things at the perimeters would be omitted.  This is the first indicator of me as the creator.  My first choice was to decide which things were important in my eyes, then which things would actually make the cut as being absolutely pertinent.  I left out Lot D (which I believe I referred to as "Lot Q" in my video), as well as all of the sports fields.  I also skipped over the Rec Center and Edgewood.  To me, these weren't important to my map.  I work out at a gym near my house, so the Rec Center isn't that important.  I've never really had an interest in Rowan sports, so I cut the fields.  And now that I'm a grad student, I usually park in Lot A, and I have no more use for Lot D, so that was sacrificed.

But for as much as I purposely left on the cutting room floor, there was just as much that I simply forgot.  Bole Hall, Memorial Hall, and Bole Hall Annex completely slipped my mind, and I never even thought to draw in Hollybush.  I also forgot all about Rowan Hall, as well as Mansion Apartments and Chestnut, and didn't even realize until picture day that I never added in the bookstore.

 

 

View Larger Map

It seems that my map shows not only which buildings are important to me, but which buildings I think matter.  As a journalism major, I spent most of my time in the Bozorth area, so by now, I know that whole section of campus like the back of my hand.  A lot of the buildings where I had class as a freshman are also stuck in my mind, and I feel that the reason for this is that entering into college was such a big experience in my life, that they were burned in my brain forever.  You can also notice that the farther we move away from the Bozorth area, the less detailed my drawing is, showing once again that that specific section of campus is ingrained into my head much better than any other area.

My map is a prime example of an information ecology.  You can see that, as a student in the college of communications, most of my map knowledge is based in the area where communication classes are held.  This shows that my information ecology is wrapped up in that area.  For me, the passing of knowledge and information takes place primarily in that specific section.  As Chris posted earlier, Rowan is an information ecology and there are smaller ones within it. This is a great example; every major can be seen as an information ecology because they are given specific areas on campus where the majority of their learning takes place.

This project was a lot of work, but in the end it was fun, and I feel like I learned a lot about information ecologies by actually working with something in a hands-on manner.

     For the last few weeks, our Information Architecture class has been working on a project in which we have created maps of Rowan University. Anyone in my class already knows this, as they have been grappling with the challenge of completing the assignment under a deadline while also learning to use new technologies at the same time. It's been a frustrating, but rewarding experience.

    We drew the initial maps from memory, and thus, had no reference to ensure they were accurate. Naturally, then, my map was inaccurate to an extent, and missing some things. Notable omissions include: several administrative buildings, parking lots, and all of the dozen or so athletic fields or  courts. My map is also missing the full names of building in spots (or I have corrected them in the marker as I learned the correct names of a few buildings when I took their pictures). It is also missing the names of all roads not named Route 322.

    My memory map (the source from which my Google My Map is based) contains the things I deemed were most important in light of the small space and my less-than-spectacular cartographic skills. I started my map with Route 322 which I drew running vertically across the center of the page. I oriented everything in relation to what I call the main artery of the university. While I managed to include all of the academic buildings, I  forgot to map out several things.

    One of the first things someone familiar with Rowan's campus would notice is the lack of administrative buildings. There are several reasons for this. For one, I forgot some of the administrative buildings were there. This is understandable as I have never been to a few of them. Also, I was working under space constraints, and, for my purposes, administrative buildings are simply not as relevent as academic buildings. Also, even when I did remember some administrative buildings, I could not orient them to other buildings, so I just left them out.

    Along with the administrative buildings, I also left out several athletic fields and courts, and for similar reasons. I forgot some of them were there, I ran out of space, and I had trouble orienting them to other things. Another reason I omitted the athletic fields is because I don't think they're as important.

    I also ignored several of the roads that run through and around the campus. On one hand, this is a curious omission because roads are obviously essential for travel. How can we explain where things are if we cannot explain how we got there?

    When you consider the things I've omitted from the maps a few things will probably come to mind. For one, it's clear my maps aren't very accurate: they're missing a great deal of important items. Also, I privilege some  over other types: academic buildings above the others. Some people may feel differently, and may not agree with this cartographic decision. The fact that so many items were omitted from the map suggests that I may not be best person to ask to draw a map. It can also be assumed that I have trouble representing information visually. At best, one could merely say I can't draw; at worst, that I lack attention-to-detail.

    While adding roads would have been useful, I just didn’t think of it. And if I did, I probably wouldn’t have remembered many of the roads’ names. While this is understandable, it does not make my map any better: roads are essential in maps, and my map only has one.
   
    Deficiencies with my map aside, I did learn to view the campus in a new way: as a bundle of potential information ecologies. Administrative offices serve to make the work done in academic buildings and athletic fields possible. Work done in academic buildings by student-athletes allows the work on the athletic fields possible. The work of undergraduates makes it possible to gain acceptance to graduate programs. Computer labs serve students in completing assignments and printing assignments for all the academic buildings. In this instance, it can be said that academic buildings are a keystone species.

We can look at Savitz Hall, home of the admissions department as a more in-depth example of an information ecology at work. Savitz accepts thousands of applications from would-be students every year. From here, applications are accepted and rejected. When students are accepted, they are awarded a letter from the financial aid office which tells them how much money in scholarships, grants, and loans are available for their use. When the Financial Aid Office sends out award letters to students, they need to pay their bills with the Bursar Office. These offices work in concert to carry out the business of the university.

    We can also view the relationship between Savitz, the Student Health Center, and the various academic departments. After a student is accepted and has paid his or her bill to the Unversity, he or she will have to send in medical information to the student health center. If this person has a medical impairment that affects his or her academic performance, the student will have to provide professors with proof, that could be furnished by the Student Health Center.
   
    We can look at the campus as an information ecology academically, as well. When I graduated with my degree in history from Rowan, I asked some of my former professors to write me letters of recommendation. They did, and sent them the Graduate School Office. Partially based on these recommendations, and partly based on my academic record as an undergraduate, I was accepted in the MA in Writing Arts program.

    When we examine how we present information visually, we can draw connections to how we write. Presenting information in written form is not unlike presenting it in visual form, though we may not always see it that way. I hope my maps are helpful as guides to how we might better represent information visually.

This is my memory map, which was done, curiously enough, from memory.



   
    And, my remediated memory map created with Google's My Map feature.
   



View Larger Map

Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton was a very interesting and easy read.  I've found that thus far in Dr. Wolff's class, there are a fair amount of texts that make us, the reader, think critically about pieces and parts of technology, and everyday life for that matter, that we otherwise wouldn't pay very close attention to.  Metaphors We Live By is one great example of this, as is Maps of the Imagination and Beautiful Evidence.  Thinking With Type is the latest book to make me examine a simple concept, and see the importance and power of it.

The first part of the text, called Letter, threw me off a bit.  Not that I didn't understand it, but the format of sections like Size, Families, etc took some getting used to.  Initially, I felt like I had a mild case of ADD, as my eyes kept darting around the page scanning a variety of points and sentences, and constatnly feeling disorganized.  I suppose this fits into the thrust of the book, as it is an exercise in examining not only typography, but "how the texts used are becoming more important than what they mean," (pg 73) as well as the idea that reading is "a performance of the written word" (pg 73).

Once I was asccustomed to the style of this portion of the book, I actually found it fun to read, and was shocked at how quickly I was making my way through each section.

I must admit that a lot of the information presented felt familiar, especially when I hit the Text section.  This is due in large part to the "Publication Layout and Design" class that I took a year or two ago.  The concepts of alignments, hierarchy, and even web accessibility were all things that I had been exposed to beforehand.  But I felt that reading about them again now was a great advantage because Lupton gives such in-depth explanations and examples of the ideas and information, that I found myself gaining a much better understanding to the importance of properly executed type, text, and layout.

I especially liked the Grid section.  The example shown on page 123 is one that looks very familiar and is in use in magazines, newsletters, and even brochures.  It's very important to understand these grid layouts at be able to put them to use, especially now with websites.  Lupton acknowledges that "users of websites have different expectations than users of print; they expect to feel productive not contemplative."  Therefore, these layout grids are essential to giving web readers what they are seeking when they click around online.

I found it interesting that our old friend Edward Tufte was mentioned in the text.  While discussing "white space" on page 75, Lupton references his ideas by saying that, "Edward Tufte, a fierce advocate of visual density, argues for maximizing the amount of data conveyed on a single page or screen.  In order to help readers make connections and comparisons as well as to find information quickly, a single surface packed with well-organized information is sometimes better than multiple pages with a lot of blank space."  The key word, in my opinion, is sometimes.  I think that Tufte's concepts on the idea of relaying data cannot always directly correlate to type.  As I mentioned eariler, the introductory sections of this book packed a lot of information into each page, and sometimes it became a bit overwhelming and, at times, disorienting.  I feel that with type, it is important to be mindful of strategically placed white space, as it in itself can be just as powerful as the written word.

Overall, I really enjoyed Thinking With Type, and found it to be informative, and will no doubt be a useful handbook in the near future.  It got me to think very differently about the type I see on a regular basis.  Already, I'm looking at this page with a newly acquired critical eye.

What is Twitterlicious?  Is it somehow a delicious Twitter application?  Well, according to ejecutive.co.uk; “Twitterlicious is a Windows application that makes using Twitter more fun. It handles all the hard work, leaving you to read and write tweets with minimum fuss. Best of all, Twitterlicious is free!”  Free is a beautiful word to a broke college kid, so right off the bat, I'm liking how this Twitterlicious thing is shaping up.

            For anyone ready to get downloading, Ejecutive is a dependable site, and it’s where I downloaded my version of Twitterlicious, so I can vouch for it.

But it’s not quite that simple.  In order for Twitterlicious to work, you must first install Microsoft .NET, which is described on startvbdotnet.com as an “XML Web Services  platform which allows us to build rich .NET applications, which allows users to interact with the Internet using wide range of smart devices (tablet devices, pocket PC's, web phones etc), which allows to build and integrate Web Services and which comes with many rich set of tools like Visual Studio to fully develop and build those applications.”  Honestly, I’m not very familiar with this platform, so for a more detailed explanation, you can check out this link.

Now, where can we find Microsoft .NET?  The best place (and the site I was directed to by Ejecutive) is msdn.microsoft.com. 

 

All of these downloads are free, easy, and relatively quick, which makes this whole process pretty headache-free.

 

Ok, now on to more Twitterlicious information.  The main benefits of this application are cited as:

• Small and concise UI, shows maximum amount of information in a minimum amount of space.
• Hides itself in the system tray when not needed, and pops up a notification balloon when there’s a new tweet.
• Displays the read status of each tweet, so you know which tweets are new and can see any that you’ve missed.
• Automatically refreshes itself at user-defined intervals.
• Properly threaded so it won’t lock up if Twitter.com is unresponsive.
• Support for authenticated web proxies.

 

 

     It takes a little getting used to, but once you get rolling using the app, it does make things pretty easy.  The best way to describe it is to liken it to AIM.  It’s just a small box that sits in the upper left hand corner of your screen and can be minimized and maximized.  No log-in required, because after your initial setup, all you need to do to activate the app is double click the icon.  (As a quick side note, the prompt for Twitterlicious said that a shortcut to the app will appear on your desktop automatically.  This wasn't the case for me, and I had to go into the C Drive and manually put a shortcut onto my desktop.  I'm not saying it's a big deal, and I'm not too lazy to do it myself, but they said I was getting one automatically, and that didn't happen.  Therefore Twitterlicious is a liar.  Or it tells only "selective truths".  Either way, I wouldn't let this application borrow my car or any money.)

 

     Twitterlicious has a slew of options that make it very user-friendly and convenient.  First of all, it has an automatic tweet refresh.  You can change your automatic update time in the settings (accessible by clicking the little wrench icon in the lower left hand side) to refresh every 3, 5, 10, 30, or 60 minutes.  You can also manually update by clicking the refresh icon in the lower left hand corner of the box.

 

You can choose if you want to show the Twitterlicious icon in your Windows task bar.  The icon is a honey bee (I don’t really know why.  Maybe because honey is “delicious” and bees “twitter about”……don’t they….?), and by double clicking it you open the application.  It will stay displayed unless you click the X in the corner to minimize it.  To maximize it, you can double click the honey bee icon or right click and choose “show”.  You exit the application by right clicking the honey bee icon and choosing “exit”. 

 

 

In the settings section, you can access the “credential” section as a sign-in.  I haven’t yet figured out if you are constantly logged onto Twitter via this application, nor do I know if by clearing the credential queue, you are logged out.

 

You can also choose whether or not you want a bubble to display on your system tray every time it updates and new tweets come in.  I recommend leaving the alert on, because when I turned it off, I kept forgetting that Twitterlicious was running on my system tray, and so my three-minute auto refreshes became a waste.

 

            Now, on to the meat-and-potatoes.  The entire point of this app is to make Twitter more convenient, so how do all the Twitter nuances transfer to this condensed application?

 

            The first thing I wanted to know was how to @Reply.  To @Reply, you can right-click the person’s tweet and choose “reply”, or simply double click their tweet.  By right clicking, you also are given the options to:

o       Send direct text

o       Directly view the user’s website in Internet Explorer

o       View a page of the person’s last tweet in Internet Explorer

o       Mark a message as unread

o       Mark all messages as read

 

@Replies that are directed at you are highlighted blue, making them easily recognizable in the rather long list of tweets in the window.  This is a pretty drastic change from what you’re used to on the Twitter page, and it takes some getting used to.  In fact this is one of the only things I wasn’t crazy about with this application.  I felt that for all the neatness and organization they achieved, the @Reply concept hadn’t been totally ironed out yet.

 

 

You’ll also notice that nowhere on the page does it seem to show a character count for the tweet you are typing.  Rest easy, friends.  The “Go” button next to the text box begins a character count as soon as you start typing.  When you’re ready to post, just click that same button, and your tweet is off and running in the twittersphere.  Another cool feature is that, unlike the standard Twitter page, once you reach the character limit, you can’t type anymore.

 

Once you click a tweet, it becomes de-bolded.  (I’m assuming this is a way to notify you that you’ve read this tweet.)

 

Another thing that takes a little adjusting to is the fact that the display names are users real names (or whatever you’ve put in as your “real name”), as opposed to the Twitter website where tweets are shown next to your Twitter name.  So for example, on Twitter, my display name is “zachcaruso”, but my real name is Zach Caruso.  On Twitterlicious, I show up as Zach Caruso.

 

There aren’t any clickable hyperlinks in this application, which was another draw back that I felt needed some work.  In Twitterlicious, to see a link in a tweet, right click and choose “open link in browser”.

 

Twitterlicious is a great application for hardcore Twitter fans, or those who are looking for something a bit more convenient and compact, rather than a full browser screen worth of Twitter.  It has its pros and cons, but in the end I would definitely recommend this application to anyone interested in trying it.

 

"The history of typography is marked by the increasingly sophisticated use of space." Ellen Lupton, Thiking With Type.



    We read "Thinking About Type" by Ellen Lupton this week. Lupton's book fits in nicely with the other thing we've been talking about, most especially Tufte. The book is a quick read, and provide a brief history of typography and a run-down of how the discipline has transformed over the last 20 years.



     Few disciplines are as tied to technological advancements as typography. After all, the very discipline was born just 500 years ago with the advent of movable type. Fast-forward to today and it's easy to imagine how important typography has become to the dissemination of information. Whereas typographers needed to worry only about how type would look on a printed page, they now must consider how it'll look on a computer screen. Lupton explains some of the affordances- and constraints of early computer monitors- and how they influenced the design of type. Early computer monitors of the late 1970s and early 1980s could show many fewer lines of resolutions than their modern-day counterparts could. As a result, typographers were forced to create new types that would show up well on the screen. This technical constraint led to a whole new category of typography which made what was once a limitation into a quirky artistic artifact.

    Typography was once a vocation for the few, but this is no longer so; anyone who puts together information of any type- online or off, should understand at least some fundamental ideas of typography. Typography is really just one element of information architecture, or information design, or whichever term strikes your fancy. Typography is important for anyone presenting information because it is imperative to present information well. There is too much information to sift through to waste people's time with a poor lay-out.

     From typography we move to lay-out. I appreciated Lupton's explanation of the grid. The grid essentially, organizes the layout of particular book, magazine, newspaper, and now, website. The designer must use her time economically and logically. This skill is important to people presenting information online because I believe it is much easier to present information poorly than it is to present it well.

     Lupton shows how the concept of reader/writer have been, until recently, considered separate entities. No more, says Lupton, who points to the work Roland Barthe's concept of text in which all manner of written materials exist together, more as matrix than cohesive unit. Now that we see readers as active interpreters of information and no longer as passive consumers, we must adapt how we present this information. One convention to facilitate this active readership's capacity is to provide them with links for further reading. Some cites have allowed people to comment on things written for the same reason.
 
   Lupton shows how these developments, primarily the wide-spread use of the Web, are rekindling interest in "universal design principles". Instead of a set of design principles for printers, others for web designers, others for artists, others for scientists, and others for architects, Lupton sees designers of all types working together to create something that works, for everyone.

     I just read a quick news update from Wired indicating that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a newspaper whose history spans 146 years- will no longer be circulated. This news came after a report that the Hearst Corporation was unable to find someone willing to buy the company. Wired chalks the development up to a free-fall in advertising dollars for print media. The paper will transform into an online-only entity, something akin to a local newspaper 2.0, with blogs, photogalleries, and other similar content.   

     The Hearst Company, who owns UGO, recently bought one of my favorite websites- 1Up, and killed off my favorite childhood magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly. UGO saved the website (albeit with a much smaller staff) but could not make the magazine viable, despite a circulation of over 650,000 issues.

     While the news of a long-standing local fixture as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer isn't terribly shocking as we have seen a huge decrease in the circulation of newspapers in recent years, the big shocker may soon strike. Hearst, the company who owns the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, also owns the San Francisco Chronicle. With local Philadelphia papers The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily News filing for bankruptcy, it may be a matter of time before other long-standing local fixtures close.

     While these developments are certainly upsetting to anyone working in the journalism or affiliated businesses, perhaps some good can come from this. While newspapers have traditionally served to bring relatively homogenized information to people, perhaps this new-found diversity with websites and web blogs may serve to bring us a more nuanced and well-rounded take on world events. While we may have to look hard to find all the news one would traditionally find in a paper within a diaspora of various blogs, it may also make the process of finding new information sources more fun. Who's with me?

   The development reminds me of the "Blogs in Plain English" video by Lee LeFever.

I'm sure most of you know about State Sen. Vincent Fumo and his recent legal troubles (this article will give you some background if you're unfamiliar with the case.)

I was just watching Action News and saw a "breaking news" story which said the Fumo case may have to be declared a mistrial.  Why?  One of the jurors posted details of the trial on Facebook and Twitter.  (Yes, it's true.  Read more about it here.)

 

This raises the question; can these social networking tools be a hazard?  (I'm going to, for the sake of the question I posed, ignore the fact that this juror is a complete moron.  I think that goes without saying.)  The argument can now be made that these networking tools provide an outlet for jurors, or anyone involved in thse case for that matter, to spread inside information to people world-wide.

Nevermind that details of the case were leaked out to the public, but this in turn may cause a mistrial creating the possibility that Fumo will avoid punishment for his alleged actions. (I'm going to, for the sake of the being objective, call Fumo's actions "alleged".)

Could this kind of problem lead to jurors being banned from using social networking tools in the future out of fear that they may leak information to the public?

I wanted to write a quick post because when I logged onto Facebook this morning, I was shocked, confused, and a bit irked.

The Facebook homepage previously showed a list of all your "friends" updates (notice I put "friends" in quotes, ever since the article I last blogged about.)  This included who had recently become friends with who, new pictures, comments, etc.  Now the homepage is exclusively a "real-time stream of Facebook status updates."  Where I come from, that's called TWITTER! 

 

 

Has Twitter's popularity really reached a point that other social networking sites are trying to get in on the action?  It also seems like Facebook has been floundering a bit lately.  Their homepage has gone through repeated changes, the new Terms of Agreement caused a huge uproar, and now this.

     I just stumbled on an interesting page on the wired.com website.  It's not just any site actually; it's a wiki.  The purpose of the wiki is to help make relevant government documents more easily accessible for anyone who wishes to see them. 

     The goals of the wiki range from reasonable, such as converting the documents out of pdf and lotus files (which apparently, are terrible, from what I gathered), to pie-in-the-sky.  Wired's hopes on the possibility of making all government data available fall into the latter category.  The wiki says, "We agree with the Sunlight Foundation's Greg Elin that the single most important thing any government agency could do to make itself more transparent would be to create a data catalog of all its data streams."  Good luck with that. 

     Still, the wiki does promote some far-reaching and seemingly helpful changes.  For one, the site advocates making transparency "the rule, and not the exception." Along the same lines, these advocates are also suggesting that agencies that do make their data public for research be rewarded in some way for allowing their work to help others.  This is an especially pressing matter for scientists. 

     Wired hopes to use their wiki as a mediator between the government and citizens.  Also, based on research by the community, Wired hopes to get a feel for what types of data its users are more interested in accessing.  I did not pick up on whether the government is willing or able to work with the magazine, but the wiki is a valuable resources nonetheless.  Aside from serving as a useful primer for some of the issues related to accessing government data, the wiki also provides several links to companies such as Sunlight Foundation whose goal is to make government data usable. 

    This made me think of Communities of Practice by Ettiene Wenger.  We have several entities--the website, its users, and the various firms whose goal is make government data accessible-- working together for a common goal.  Drawing on the varied and dispersed expertise of journalists, experts, and the public, we are witness to a beneficial use of Web 2.0 technology.  May the folks at Wired be successful with their goals. 
    

I was surfing around The New York Times site, and a story about Facebook caught my eye.  For the full article, you can check out this link.

The main idea of the story was privacy on Facebook, and it dealt a lot with privacy settings on an individual's account, as well as what information is being given out to outside servers. 

For 15 of 19 information categories, Facebook sets a default setting of “share,” which means the information can be pulled out of Facebook and stored on servers outside its control. These 15 categories include activities, interests, photos and relationship status.

I don't know about you, but I feel pretty uncomfortable seeing that this info is being passed around without my knowledge, especially photos.  Further more, I'd like to know who exactly has this info, and what it's being used for.

The article pointed out other facts that I failed to even really take the time to think about:

For many members, “friends” now means a mish-mash of real friends, former friends, friends of friends, and non-friends; younger and older relatives; colleagues and, if cursed, a nosy boss or two. Everyone accepted as a “friend” gets the same access.

When the distinction blurs between one’s few close friends and the many who are not, it seems pointless to distinguish between private and public.

 

                                             

 

This article was featured last month, but it goes along well with what I've discussed so far.  We all remember the "New Terms of Agreement" debacle that happened a few weeks back.  In this article, Mark Zuckerberg (cheif exec. of Facebook) is trying to assure that the users have control over the content and how it's used.  Seems like a load of crap, Mark.

It is the users that make MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and the slew of other social networking tools go 'round.  So logically, shouldn't we be the ones who have the say over the information that is present on these sites? 

The more developments I see in social networking technologies, the more uneasy I become.  The fact is that we don't really know what is being done with information we post online, and that can be a scary thought.

We began Information Architecture this semester by looking at the construction of language through the use of metaphors. Earlier I posted about the metaphors we use during class discussion. Today on Twitter @DocMara pointed to an excellent documentary by Honda that investigates the idea of failure in the innovation process. It seems that Honda has a series of documentaries under the heading The Power of Dreams. One video, Kick out the Ladder, caught my attention because of how Honda has employed the metaphor both in their company and visually in the documentary:

Cross-posted at Composing Spaces.

I'm not sure if I properly translated that phrase from German, but that doesn't matter; it makes sense in English.  Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence discusses what makes good visual design, what makes bad visual design, and the importance of using various modes of evidence synergistically  to present information.  I appreciate the approach because I have in the past had a great deal of time understanding visual displays of data. The book is helpful as it shows numerous examples through the ages of how to present data visually, and how not to.  But when I look at data, I still have problems.   I don't know what it is; it's almost like a visual data dyslexia.  Maybe I should get that looked at. 

    Tufte follows a clear and practical formula: discuss a principle of visual design (which he says really should go for all types of design), show a picture that employs the design element in question, then explain why the picture or diagram or chart under discussion works so well.  Though some of the examples became tiresome, I took two things from the text: the principles inherent in good design, and an idea of how to visually deconstruct a piece of visual data just as I would a text. 

     Tufte backs up these assertions with sound principles.  The Fourth Principle of analysis and presentation of data is to, "Completely integrate words, numbers, inages, diagrams (131)."  Tufte elaborates: "Too often in scholarly research, in social science at least, there is a certain narrowness in the choice and use of evidence...Pre-specifying the mode of relevent information or the explantory method may produce a tendentious misalignment of evidence (131)."  This was relevant to me because I had always looked at charts and graphs as being an impediment to my understanding of a given text.  This may be my fault, but it may also have something to do with how scholars put graphs and charts (some well-designed, others not so much) at the back of the article or book, physically and intellectually, as far as Tufte is concerned, separate from the written text.  Data presented as such is without context and without merit. 

     I also found the discussion of how we need to use evidence of all types together to be particularly helpful.  I hope I can implement some of the sound principles Tufte discusses both in the projects in this class and next year when I complete my thesis work.  It's important to remember that data is our friend, not our enemy.  Data has taken on, I believe, a distant, almost out-of-reach guise.  The word Tufte uses to describe data, evidence, hits closer to home.  If you're not a scientist or a computer programmer, the word data probably doesn't mean very much to you.  Evidence, on the other hand, is the life-blood of all research, writing, and visual displays.  When we look at it that way, it becomes more plausible to use  it it all its modes and incarnations. 

     

I stumbled onto this article earlier today and thought I'd share it with all of you out there who are fellow Twitterers.

I'm still relatively new to the networking tool, so I'm trying to adjust to checking and "tweeting" every day.  This article from CNN.com was written by Chris Pirillo (president of the blogging network site lockergnome.com.  He also has a Twitter account, if you're in the mood to follow him.)

So check out this link to read the full article entitled 10 Tips on Being a Good Twitterer.

                                                                   

Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence was an interesting, albeit often times tough, read.  It was a great text to follow last week's Maps of the Imagination, as it did continue the idea of using the "mapping" metaphor.

I liked some of his thoughts on images and visuals, especially his discussion on arrows within a diagram.  His presentation on the progression of art (pg. 66) made a lot of sense.  Often times, diagrams have the intention of simplifying information so it is easier to comprehend, as well as more concise.  The trouble is that we are then forced to think in a linear sense, or at least to think in terms of a strict progression.  The truth is that nothing is truly "linear" in nature.  Tufte says that in the diagram, "Depicted by single-headed arrows, causality flows just one way without the back-and-forth possibilities of mutual influence in art.  Such arrows represent a major and sometimes false assumption about the allowable scope of causal mechanisms."

I think this is a very important portion of the book.  We have so many possibilities with the use of visuals that we must not impose a strict form of thinking onto the viewers, but rather encourage the possibility of ideas branching off of one another.

One section that I had a bit of a problem with was the section that dealt with PowerPoint.  Although I do understand what Tufte is asserting, I don't necessarily agree.  His argument against the bulleted list seemed a bit weak in the sense that his logic is being applied to only a very specific concept.  What I mean is that Tufte presents an argument that addresses PowerPoint slides as a free-standing entity, when in actuality, they are often a mere single spoke in a wheel.  PowerPoint slideshows are primarily used as a visual component in a larger presentation, often giving an audience an image or written document to be paired with auditory analyses or information of a topic.

Tufte says that it is "thoughtless and arrogant to replace the sentence as the basic unit for explaining something."  I wholeheartedly disagree.  As I mentioned, a bulleted list is a succinct way to present main points and topics as more of a preparation for a more in-depth analysis that will follow (whether that be in the form of an oral presentation, or more slides with detailed explanations of preceding topics.)

I have to say that Tufte's vehement disapproval of PowerPoint irked me and slightly changed my opinion of him and this book.  And after a bit of research, I found that his campaign against PowerPoint spans over the course of a few years (he published a pamphlet in 2003 entitled The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching out corrupts within.  The chapter Cognitive Style of PowerPoint in Beautiful Evidence is a re-print of much of the same information and ideas as this pamphlet.  He then wrote an article in September 2003 in Wired Magazine entitled PowerPoint is Evil.)

We get it, Ed.  You don't like PowerPoint.  Are we done here?

Overall, I found the text a little difficult to get through at times, and even if I don't agree 100% with every assertion made by Tufte, he did, at least, get my mind to analyze images and their potential power.