Digital Media

2007-02-26T01:16:00.000-08:00

The more I learn about the importance of testing, the more frustrated I get when I come across a site or an application that obviously has not been tested thoroughly enough. Phase 4: Build and Integrate of Web Redesign 2.0 by Kelly Goto, focuses on the technical hurdles of the build phase of the Web site and the importance of quality assurance testing before the site launches.

Goto gives the optimal formula for QA testing, though she does admit that companies with smaller budgets can still make use of testing with less formality and with less money. The recommended 10 percent to 20 percent of project cost for formal testing for projects with budgets over $70,000 seemed a little unreal to me. But I suppose there are sites out there that have those sorts of budgets. I guess I'm just used to working at companies where the online staff consists of two or three people who put the entire site together, so when Goto starts talking about a staff for QA testing my brain doesn't have the capacity to fathom such a thing. The sort of testing I usually see is launch the site and fix it later. It works I guess. But the entire online staff of two or three is usually stressed beyond belief.

I think a lot of this chapter would make more sense to me if I had more of a background in HTML and CSS. The more I get into this book, the more I think that I should be learning some basic coding skills. One of the things I do like about this book is that there are a lot of additional resources where Goto points to where to get more information about HTML or javascript or browser specs. These are very helpful for trying to implement some of the steps that Goto recommends.

Government genre Web sites

2007-02-20T02:50:00.000-08:00

The most obvious indicator of a government genre Web site is the .gov ending. Most government Web sites are information portals that are designed to provide users with more information. They provide a public service function by linking to resources that visitors may want to use. For example, the Library of Congress Web page, www.loc.gov, in addition to having links to news and events at the library, has resource links broken down into several categories, including links for librarians or categorical links such as braille and audio materials. There is also a link to legislative information where you can search for bills using key words or sponsors.

Because government Web sites must be accessible to a broad audience, including those with disabilities, they are more likely to have pages that will load quickly on slow browsers and make the site easy to access. When I looked at www.house.gov, I noticed that there was a button for people to make the text larger and another icon that said the site was speech enabled with a BrowseAloud plug-in. Because I have never had to use a site reader, I'm not sure if the site is easy for someone who is blind to scan, but it seems like they have at least taken people with disabilities into account on this site. There is also a hand with a pen icon next to the "Write your representative" link that I assume is for people who don't know much English.

The Access Washington site, http://access.wa.gov/, includes a list of "How do I" topics with links to sites that will allow the visitor to take the action they want. This is a great way of helping people who don't use the Internet much to find everything they are looking for in one place. The site also includes information in six foreign languages.

While looking for some state legislature sites I found out that many do not match the .gov characteristic. In fact there does not seem to be a standardized naming convention for state legislatures at all. While the Washington Legislature is www.leg.wa.gov, the Louisiana Legislature site is www.legis.state.la.us and the Texas Legislature site is www.capitol.state.tx.us. These aren't intuitive or consistent at all!

When I got to the county level, the sites were even more diverse. King County, www.metrokc.gov, had a lot of current press releases and links to local sources of news and transportation tools in addition to public records. The Whatcom County site, www.co.whatcom.wa.us, didn't look like it had been updated in awhile and included mostly links to county agencies and public records and PDFs of reports such as the budget and comprehensive plan.

Most government sites do seem to be sincerely trying to make information accessible to as many people as possible, though clearly some do a much better job than others. It would help if government Web site naming conventions were a little bit more standardized, though that's not something that is likely to happen anytime soon.

Aesthetic experience

2007-02-18T02:05:00.000-08:00

Give customers short paths to what they want
Mistaking the forest for the trees?
Aesthetic Experience and the Importance of Visual Composition in Information Design

"Give customers short paths to what they want" focuses on keeping site menu structure flat by having desired content within two or three clicks. Some of this seemed to contradict Steve Krug a little bit at first, because Krug says that it's not so much how many clicks one must go through, but how easy it is to click on. As I continued through the essay, however, I realized that the study was less about clicks and more about smart usability practices.

For instance, the essay talks about devoting home page space to navigation, not decoration. At first I was worried this meant put so much on the home page that the user no longer knew what the main purpose of the site is. I'm not a big fan of overcrowded home pages. However, the essay goes on to say that the designer should prioritize and group content so that users can skip over entire lists of links they don't need. By grouping content users may not realize that there is so much on the home page, especially if two or three most important things on the home page are highest in the hierarchy.

As a musician I am familiar with ABA form. I'm trying to figure out how that would translate into Web site design as explained in "Aesthetic Experience." Would the user go from the home page to a different page and then to a page that's like the home page again? I'm curious how that would work in practice. I do understand, however, the need to maintain consistency within the site so that variations of the site do stand out and cause the user to recognize what's different.

Seeing the forest through the trees is important when designing a Web site. A designer must keep the big picture in mind, and must always be thinking about what the site is to accomplish. It's also becoming more important to realize how people are using the site in relation to the Web as a whole. One interesting site I came across recently is answers.com, which doesn't really use original content, but draws from wikipedia, google and other sources to provide a definition or information when a user double-clicks on a word. The site even has a download that allows users to use a key combination (mine is ctrl+alt+click) to have a bubble pop up in any application on the computer. I've tried it in word, QuarkXPress - it works in all of them. I love it because it means I don't actually have to leave the document I am in to quickly check the definition of a word or the spelling of a famous person's name online. I'm able to use this Web application without ever having to go to the answers.com site.

Don't Make Me Think, second edition, by Steve Krug

2007-02-18T01:58:00.000-08:00

In Don’t Make Me Think, second edition, Steve Krug follows his own usability guidelines to create a book that is practical and approachable. The title of the book is also Krug’s first law of usability. The purpose of Web pages should be evident without spending a lot of effort trying to determine what it’s about.

One of the most enjoyable parts of Don’t Make Me Think is Krug’s sense of humor. With cartoons and humorous quotes to help him make his point, I never felt like reading this book was a chore. The illustrations and humor help to reinforce the concepts of the book in my memory and apply them to other sites I visit.

Krug says the reality of Web pages is that people will scan to find something that seems to match what they are looking for and simply hit the back button if it doesn’t work. For this reason, he says Web sites should be designed like billboards by: having a clear visual hierarchy, making use of conventions, having clearly defined areas, making it obvious what’s clickable and minimizing noise. Krug also says that users don’t mind clicking — as long as they don’t have to think about what they are clicking.

Another rule that Krug emphasizes is to omit needless words. He advises removing half of the words on each page and then getting rid of half of what’s left. As an editor and as a Web site visitor I appreciate having concise information that directs me to where I want to go without a lot of unnecessary noise.

Krug’s book is ideal for both beginners and experts. While the book offers an easy-to-follow overview of Web usability for the novice, it helps veterans to look at Web pages from the point of view of the user and offers common-sense approaches to such daunting tasks as usability testing and designing for people with disabilities.

Information architecture

2007-02-04T02:11:00.000-08:00

Cognitive Psychology and IA: From Theory to Practice by Jason Withrow
Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization by Luke Wroblewski
Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus by Curt Cloninger

There were several themes in the group 3 readings that seemed to repeat:

1. Readers like categories: Different people will categorize things differently but generally people categorize things by visual similarity, shared purpose or proximity.
2. To create site hierarchy, there must be visual contrast. This can be created by differing colors, textures, shapes, directions and sizes. A hierarchy allows readers to see visually what the most important element on the page is and to navigate through the page without wondering where to look next.

One of my responsibilities is designing newspaper pages so I deal with page hierarchy often. When readers pick up the paper, they (theoretically) look at the largest, boldest headline first and the lead photo on the page. At that point they may read the article if they find the headline interesting or they may scan the rest of the headlines to determine what they want to spend their time reading. If they like a photo, they may look at the cutline to see what is going on. This may lead them to read the story that goes with the photo. By organizing content so not everything is visually the same, readers have cues as to what they should look at first. This is important because readers don't want to think when they are trying to figure out where to go in a Web site. Having a hierarchy leaves readers with fewer options to mentally sort through.

Curt Cloninger gives us insight on the misunderstood graphic designer and how usability experts have gotten all the publicity while the inarticulate, right-brain graphic designer has not gotten enough credit. The main thing that stood out for me in this article was the emphasis on branding. While Web site usability may be the top priority for content sites, corporate sites that have branding as their primary goal may do better with a site with more creativity that advances the brand of the product. A brand tries to convey a certain tone and emotion - something that designers are likely to be better at than information architects. The article emphasizes the important role that both usability experts and graphic designers play in the creation of a Web site.

Imaginary Forces Web site analysis

2007-01-30T19:14:00.000-08:00

1. Download plugin to view site
2. Click on projects
3. Clicked on "Our Reel" but firefox wouldn't open pop-up box
4. Looked for search button
5. Clicked interactive
6. Box disappeared because mouse went off of brown area
7. Clicked interactive again
8. Clicked honda element
9. Saw "Web video"
10. Moved mouse over page trying to find something clickable
11. click view honda air
12. Close honda air pop-up window
13. Click back to project index
14. Move mouse to icon
15. click Contacts
16. Click map and driving directions to N.Y. office
17. Page links to mapquest that says no address exists
18. tried to go back to contacts to double check address but it was in a new window so I couldn't
19. Went back to map page and clicked suggested address

Interface experience: I felt lost when I got to the homepage of this site. I was annoyed that I had to download something before I was even able to view the Web site. When I couldn't use the back button I became frustrated. There should have been a place to enter search words or at the very least a site map - clearly labeled on the home page to tell me where I was and the different options for where I could go.

I should know when I open the page what the site's purpose is. After going through the site, I still don't know what Imaginary Forces is. Are they a production company? An ad agency? I'm not sure who the audience is for this site either. Is it people who are interested in movies? People who are interested in creating movies?

I finally found a page on what the company is, but I can't read the entire text because the page does not allow me to scroll down. I had to physically restrain myself from hitting the back button. There wasn't a very easy way to get back to the home page.

The featured projects on the home page don't have anything to do with the rest of the site. The actual categories for the site are small in the right-hand corner. I wanted to click on something that was big - not something small in the corner. The categories should have been more prominent than the featured projects so I knew that they were categories. I still don't know what "Our Reel" is because I couldn't open it with my browser.

Gestalt Principles of Perception and Human-Computer Interface

2007-01-28T01:40:00.000-08:00

Most of the conventions for using a computer are solidly engrained in our minds. We don't think about scrolling up and down in a Web site; we know when we can click on a link for a number of reasons: our mouse turns from an arrow to a hand, the word is or becomes underlined, sometimes the color of the text changes, maybe a button lights up. These conventions give us feedback as users so that we feel confident when clicking that we will be transported to a new location.

These Web conventions offer continuity. One of Gestalt's principles of perception, people prefer continuity in their interactions. People want a Web site to feel seamless and effortless. They should be able to flow from one part of the Web site to another without thinking about it. One way to improve continuity is through consistency, one of Shneiderman's principles of human-computer interface. Menus, colors and fonts should be consistent throughout the site as should the navigation of the site.

It will also help the human-computer interface to design items into related groups of items. Using the similarity principle, we can suppose that people will see the groups as a whole rather than as individual items - this will make the material seem more manageable. This also helps to give users control of their experience by allowing them to see where they want to go.

It is also important to make sure that items that are close together really are related as items that are close in proximity will be perceived as being related.

A consistent site map on the site can help to ground the site and make people feel in control. The site map becomes the ground and the information on each individual page then becomes the figure that people pay attention to. This also allows users to feel less overwhelmed, because rather than a new page of material every time they click, only the individual content changes and they can still see where they are at in the context of the site as a whole.

It's possible to reduce short-term memory load by having reminders on each page of other pages that they may want to navigate to next. This would be an example of symmetry or closure I believe since users don't need a full explanation of the page to understand where it will go - just a word, or an icon perhaps, will suffice.

Interaction Design

2007-01-23T17:22:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, when I had more free time than I do today, I tried playing The Sims on my computer. As many of you probably already know, The Sims allows you to create characters and build houses and then command them to act in certain ways. The results attempt to simulate life and the consequences that come with actions. I became addicted to the game for a time and now try to stay away from it unless I really have a lot of time to kill. In "Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design," Nathan Shedroff says that "Creative products and experiences require that others participate by creating or manipulating instead of merely watching and consuming." I think one of the reasons The Sims was so successful, and why similar products have been successful, is because of the creativity and exploration that can go into the game. What will the Sims do if I put two toilets in the bathroom? (just makes two toilets you have to clean later) What happens if Sims doesn't go to work? (They lose their jobs) What happens if the Sims kiss a lot? (They have a baby and get really tired!)

The game relies on good design to make it easy for people with no construction or design experience to build a house to their own specifications. The adaptive nature of the game, I think, is what makes the game so enjoyable to play. People can do as much or as little as they want with the interactivity components of the game. They can design a whole neighborhood or use the houses that have already been built. They can design new Sims or play with preprogrammed Sims. Time goes as fast or as slow as you want it to. In my experience Shedroff's assertion that the best interactivity involves high levels ofcontrol, feedback and adaptivity is very accurate.

Group project idea

2007-01-20T23:46:00.000-08:00

I would love to create a site that focuses on entertainment, food and cultural events in the U district. Two different approaches to something like this are www.flavorpill.net and www.vita.mn.

www.flavorpill.net is basically a weekly e-mail newsletter that lists different events going on the area depending on which city you choose (Seattle is not an option). You can navigate by date or by genre. There are also links to other cool sites and original features material. The site also includes cd and book reviews, as well as videos. It's well organized and the content is pretty good.

An approach I like better, however, is www.vita.mn. While flavorpill's content is mostly staff written, vita.mn gives readers control over the site by relying on user-generated content and wiki models. Vita.mn is an entertainment and food site for the Minnesota Twin Cities metropolitan area. It strives to be everything that young people in the Twin Cities area could want. Users can personalize their page, save material, create profiles and network with other users, in addition to writing reviews and rating movies, restaurants and other venues in the region. Users can even read and edit Minnesota guides. Users can also tag items, though that doesn't seem to be quite as popular. I think this model would be a great starting point for an entertainment site in the UW area.

A question for all you Seattleites (especially UW grads): What are the entertainment sites that people already use? Are there any specifically focused on the U district? I did a google search and the only Seattle calendar I found remotely navigable and interesting was The Stranger's www.thestranger.com/seattle/Calendar. Though it doesn't look like there is any user-generated content there either.

Interoperability of IM
For instant messaging to be useful to an individual, friends of that individual must use a compatible instant messaging service. It's interesting that Windows Live Messenger (previously MSN Messenger) now allows e-mails from hotmail, msn, yahoo and even gmail. Maybe there's more I'm missing. I'm not sure. Because it allows more people to participate it is likely more useful and will be adopted more quickly. It's certainly more convenient to only need one messenger. Though it may be more difficult for improvements in the technology to be adopted if there is not competition from other services. On the other hand, having more resources could push the company to continue to improve its messaging technology.

IMs can occasionally be more confusing than e-mails. Sometimes two different conversations are going on at once. You're trying to answer a question one person asked while the other person is starting to go on to another topic and all of a sudden - you have two different conversations going on! Also, people tend to be less thorough when explaining topics via IM so it could take longer to get the information across after three or four clarifying questions have been asked.

Goals and roles

2007-01-16T19:39:00.000-08:00

Now, rethink your goals in the light of what has been expressed by the class. Post to your blog three personal goals (design, group dynamics, whatever) for our next five months of working together. Also list two team roles that you are willing to take on and two that you would prefer not to be assigned. Try to express this as a story (narrative) rather than a bulleted list.

3 goals
One of my goals is to be a better communicator by sending regular updates of where I am at with my work with enough time that other people have time to respond to it.

I have also been told that I am not assertive enough. While I have gotten much better, I think, I'm sure I still have room to improve. I'm not sure where this fits into the group yet.

By the time I complete this class I want to have acquired the tools to be able to build my own Web site. For my undergrad senior project I built a site using Dreamweaver for the music department at PLU, but I know there are a lot of things about Web sites that I can still learn. Especially since that was a few years ago and I think I have forgotten a lot since then.

Team roles:
Since I am already an editor at work, I would feel comfortable in this role. I also usually like working with technology and would like to be able to do something with the implementation of the site. What I don't want to do, though, is determine how the site looks. While I can tell when a site is well designed, I don't like designing. Especially when it comes to trying to figure out what color palette to use. I'm completely lost when it comes to choosing colors.

Virtual group project

2007-01-16T19:01:00.000-08:00

It's difficult to form group cohesion with a virtual group. It is difficult to trust people who you have never worked with before and don’t personally know. This would be one drawback of having everyone in different locations. If at all possible it would be helpful for everyone to meet personally at least once before or shortly after work on the project began to learn what roles each person might play in the group. If this was not possible, then it might be helpful to have everyone fill out a questionnaire that included questions such as interests, what role they play in the company and how they see themselves as contributors to the group. Group members should also ask what their goals for the site are and how they envision reaching those goals.

On teams in general it is important to have clearly defined roles and assignments or responsibilities. It’s also important to have a timeline of when tasks will be completed. It is important to discuss progress regularly to make sure assignments will be completed on time. One way to do this in a virtual setting would be through teleconferencing. As long as the group isn’t more than about six people this would work well and people won’t likely be talking over each other. In this type of environment it does help to identify yourself before speaking. Updates could be sent via e-mail and attachments.

Web team roles by Thomas J. Shelford and Gregory A. Remillard

2007-01-15T01:00:00.000-08:00

Did anyone else get the feeling they were reading a fortune cookie or a horoscope while reading this?

The developer: "Thrives on mental challenges, brainteasers, and puzzles - the more difficult and convoluted the better."
"The tech lead is your savior and friend. Cherish this person always and keep him or her close."

But seriously, this chapter was insightful. The number of roles listed far exceeds anything that my company has. I think everyone wears two or three hats as far as our Web site goes.

I appreciated the emphasis on communication placed on the project manager. Communication is so important, but it's hard to realize how important until it breaks down. Problems get exponentially larger and can prevent the project from being completed. It's also important to check in with members of the team to make sure things are going smoothly so that if they are not, there is time to deal with it. This is especially true in my newspaper job because deadlines that are so tight. I tend to procrastinate a lot, but I have found that procrastination is not an option when you're trying to keep track of 20 different stories and seven different pages at once. If I don't do something now, it won't get done.

On the receiving end of communications, I know how frustrating it is to feel like you're not quite in the loop because an editor didn't retransmit all of the information you need to know to do your work. If you don't know what you're supposed to be doing, how can you do it? I have had to learn to be very proactive when it comes to understanding the processes of my work.

This chapter also reflects the likelihood of team members requesting multiple tweaks and other favors from designers and developers without going through the project manager. While this is probably fine once in awhile, it should not become a habit because, as the author says, the designer and developer become distracted from the work they are doing and might not be able to meet their own deadlines. If the project manager is informed of the requests, it helps the designers and developers out because the project manager knows they have additional work to do and may be able to shift the schedule to accommodate those changes.

I can also see the importance of including members of the team early on in the process so everyone understands the expectations for the project and is not surprised by anything later on.

This quarter I would like to get experience that will help me to be a project manager. This chapter really makes it apparent that so much of the project manager's responsibilities include communicating with the team. To be able to do that, the project manager must know what is going on herself. This requires good organizational skills, something that I could definitely improve upon. So hopefully I will get better at that this quarter as well. I am also interested in the techniques for planning a project such as the white board session and diagrams mentioned in the chapter. I would also like to have a better sense of the roles of others on the team. While this chapter was a good introduction I feel like I could still learn a lot more.

2006-11-28T22:35:00.000-08:00

A snow day in the Internet age

Since the snow started falling, I've just been glad to have electricity. We lost power at our house Sunday for about seven hours, but luckily I was at work at the time. But seven hours is much better than the 2 1/2 days that the power was out a couple weeks ago. I felt very isolated when I was at home and not at work during those days. Luckily I could still use my cell phone, but I couldn't get on the computer. Or take a hot shower. Or even get drinking water after day 2.

I mostly heard about all the accidents that were going on Sunday over the newsroom scanner. My editor had also called me in the morning to ask me to come in early because of the snow. I also checked weather.com and the temperature displayed at the copy place across the street. Traffic cams were also helpful to see how badly the snow was tying up traffic. But when I was trying to decide how difficult it was going to be to go home I didn't rely on secondhand information I was hearing or seeing online. I went outside and walked around a bit to see firsthand how slick the roads were and how much snow had piled up on top of my car during the day. My co-worker's account of coming into work later in the day was more relevant to me than the cars in the ditches that kept coming over the scanner. I spoke with my husband and my neighbor about their experiences driving on the roads leading down to my house.

Even though there is abundant information online, when it comes to weather, I still trust the least technical of information: my personal observations. If I have a choice about leaving the house though, like today, I noticed that I kept an eye on the weather by watching the news on TV and checking the newspaper's Web site online. Based on this information, I decided the farthest I was going to go today was to my mailbox (where there was no mail waiting for me - probably because the mailman was running late in the snow).

Radios and TVs used to be the primary ways that schools would get closure information out. But now parents don't have to wait for a sequence to go by before they can access the information. They can get the information they want when they want it.

2006-11-28T20:38:00.000-08:00

Recent technology adoption experience

When I became a UW student I started using Ctrax Media Player. The subscription is free for UW students and the service offers an extensive music library that students can listen to for free. To download the song to a portable device, subscribers pay 89 cents per song. The primary reasons I adopted this technology were (1) I wanted to listen to music that I did not own already and (2) It was free. This would be a content gratification. I wanted to listen to music. There might be some process gratifications as well. The site allows users to look through top picks and featured artists as well as recently added songs. But I usually search for a specific artist and then listen that way. The site also has videos, but I haven't explored that feature yet. Usually I have music on while I'm doing something else.

Ctrax recently updated its site so instead of streaming music directly from the site, the user must now download a ctrax player. The process is quick and simple and while it means one extra step for users, it means that once the player is downloaded you just click on the icon on your desktop and it opens up the ctrax site. Or if you're not connected to the internet you can still play your playlists or burn cds - though I haven't used these features. This allows users more ways to interact with the player - they're targeting a process gratification with the cd burning technologies and building of playlists. The download also helps lock in users to the technology. They've taken the time to download the player so now they might as well use it.

I think Ctrax is also working on some social networking applications. This would be a social gratification.

Ctrax relies on contracts with universities. The diffusion of the technology was reliant on the university contracting with the company. Through contracts, the technology can be diffused fairly rapidly because the university itself does much of the marketing for the device. The cost (free) also increases diffusion rates.

2006-11-21T01:25:00.000-08:00

We the Media
Dan Gillmor
Chapter Six: Professional Journalists Join the Conversation

Professional journalists, and in effect their employers, rely on their credibility to do good work. Because the nature of their work requires them to be fair and even-handed, it is not surprising that some newspapers are hesitant to allow journalists to maintain blogs. If a political reporter writes her opinions on a candidate in a blog it would obviously be inappropriate for her to cover that candidate. However, if a political reporter keeps a blog with the latest developments in a candidate's campaign (assuming she isn't only writing about one candidate) such as campaign contributions of fundraising stops, these are details that might not necessarily make it into the paper, but which some people might be interested in knowing about. When I worked at The Spokesman-Review the newspaper had several blogs from writers who did not even work at the newspaper. The site has since expanded and includes blogs by reporters, editors and anyone else who might have something interesting to say. When one of my fellow copy editors went to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to volunteer (she is from Baton Rouge) she kept a blog so those of us in the Northwest could know a little bit about the chaos going on there from someone who we actually knew.

Blogs are an excellent source of news and information. But newspapers have a fear of releasing their editorial control. I think this is one of the reasons why newspapers have been slow to include blogs, discussion boards and other reader-produced content that they don't have the resources to monitor it.

What Dan Gillmor makes clear in his book, however, is that the point of having an interactive media is to allow the readers to contribute, and help monitor, the sites. As we learned with Communities in Cyberspace, users are more than willing to take on responsibilities for user-driven sites. If newspapers included a way to alert editors of inappropriate content with the click of a button, I think users would report the content - probably more efficiently than the newspaper is able to monitor the site. I'm not saying editors can leave interactive features of their Web sites unmaintained. It's important for readers to see that the sites are active with both reader content and editors' oversight.

When bloggers or people on discussion boards get it wrong who is at fault and what should newspapers do about it? This is a real concern for newspapers. Hopefully, the same open process that allowed the content in the first place will allow it to be quickly corrected. However, should newspapers take responsibility for fact-checking assertions made by readers? Even if they are not legally obligated to (which I don't think they are judging from this article I saw today http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/20/internet.libel.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories) newspapers may fear that incorrect information from readers could hurt their credibility. Hopefully, the more familiar people become with blogs, the more they will understand that information must be questioned. Also, as we saw with Newsvine, even nonjournalists can earn credibility with readers. Regular contributors and readers of blogs will be able to judge for themselves after several posts whether a person is credible or not. Newspapers may also consider a ranking system like Newsvine uses, in which regular contributors gradually earn more control over the site.

This view of citizen journalism could be a very empowering thing for people. If people feel they have some ownership over the news they are consuming, they will probably be more faithful readers as well, which is good for newspapers in the long run. The BBC experiment iCan, in which citizens were given the tools for local activism, was inspiring in the way it helped to focus a small community on a pressing issue for that community. They found they could uncover the problems without the need for a professional to do it for them.

2006-11-13T00:40:00.000-08:00

The Tragedy of the Commons
Garrett Hardin

By failing to regulate the commons, Hardin seems to say, the public will inevitably exhaust its resources. The Internet could be considered a commons. It is largely unregulated and anyone can set up an e-mail address or blog or even their own Web site. In fact, there are so many people online and so much information on the Web that it can sometimes be overwhelming if you don't know exactly what you're loooking for. I have learned about so many Web sites in class and from friends that I would not have even known existed on my own. How are we supposed to keep up with the latest and greatest sites? Will we eventually be bombarded with so much information that we won't be able to keep up with all the sites we want to visit (I think I'm already there). Actually, I don't think this is the problem so much as when certain sites become so enmeshed in the culture that newer sites will have a harder time finding an audience.

This is the real threat to democracy on the Internet. If only a few "channels" have the majority of the audience, then it will be difficult to get out divergent viewpoints. This is not something that I see happening in the near future, but something that could happen with the right conditions. Now, however, there seem to be plenty of outlets for individuals to communicate and plenty of people willing to read their thoughts, which never ceases to amaze me. I think some people have way too much time on their hands.

I think having so much information available to the public online is good for the democratic process. The public can access many public records without leaving their home computer. I'm not sure where Hardin's "tragedy" of the commons fits into eDemocracy. Perhaps if people are seeking to maximize their own benefit they will create sites online that are not useful, and even harmful, to the public good. For instance, a common complaint among e-mail recipients is the amount on unsolicited e-mail, or "spam," that they have in their inbox. Often this spam is advertising porn sites or viagra or something else that society at large may not approve of. Without any regulation, spam could make e-mail nearly useless. Government regulations now require all e-mail mass-mailed messages to include instructions for unsubscribing. There have also been a number of prosecutions of spammers, which have likely made some would-be spammers more wary. E-mail providers also help with spam filters and junk-mail boxes for sorting through spam.

2006-11-13T00:18:00.000-08:00

I attended the PSAMA luncheon Wednesday with Karen Crow from Google. It was on "The Changing Media Landscape," and it gave me some ideas about what the future of online news might look like.

Crow emphasized that the PC is losing its hold on the Internet and that mobile devices are the platform of the future. Newspapers should take this to heart and begin to explore ways to communicate across a mobile medium such as cell phones. Advertisers in Japan use a standard code that mobile users can access with a push of the button to download advertisers' games and win points toward purchases. Newspapers could use this technology to provide spots in which mobile users could access the daily newspaper to their phones or other devices. Subscribers would be able to download the news for free and nonsubscribers could pay a fee using their phone, much like they do now at newspaper boxes. Crow explained that unlike in Japan, where mobile technology is more popular, the U.S. does not have mobile standards yet, which would make this technology difficult to use right now.

2006-11-06T17:16:00.000-08:00

I became familiar with flickr through some friends of mine who post photos to the site. Flickr is a site where serious photographers, both amateur and professional, share their photos. The site allows registered users to comment on other users' photos and and even to highlight certain parts of a photo and comment specifically on that part as you can see in the example below. Most comments on flickr are encouraging rather than critical. I imagine this is because users must be registered to comment and negative comments could reflect on their own profiles and photos. Also, photographers tend to visit their favorite photographers' sites regularly so there seems to be a real community between photographers. The photo below shows how extensive the comments can be. Also note the boxed part of the photo that shows notes when you roll your mouse over it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hkvam/222443490/in/photostream/

Principles of New Media
From The Language of New Media
Lev Manovich

Differences between old media and new media:

1. Numerical representation: New media object can be described mathematically; new media object is subject to algorithmic manipulation

Terms:
Digitization – converting continuous data into a numerical representation; consists of sampling and quantization
Resolution – frequency of sampling
Discrete data – data occurring in distinct units, i.e. pixels
Quantified – sample assigned numerical value drawn from a defined range

2. Modularity: Because all elements are stored independently, they can be modified at any time.

Examples: HTML, separate objects such as images, media clips are all stored independently so they can be modified.

3. Automation: Human intentionality at least partially removed from creative process

Examples: Low-level automation – Photoshop autocorrect, filters, Artificial Life software
High-level automation (computer must understand meanings embedded in objects generated) – artificial intelligence, computer games

4. Variability: A new media object is not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions.

Media database
Different interfaces can be created from the same data
Information about the user can be used by a computer program to customize automatically the media composition as well as to create elements themselves.
Branching-type interactivity (menu-based)
Hypermedia – multimedia elements connected through hyperlinks
Periodic updates
Scalability – different versions of the same media object can be generated at various sizes or levels of detail
Old media follows logic of a factory – division of labor, level of material organization; new media – values individuality over conformity. Language of text, contents, ads can all be customized. Companies that place ads track movements across the Net, "remembering" which ads you’ve seen, exactly when you saw them, whether you clicked on them, where you were at the time, and the site you have visited just before.

Making a choice involves a moral responsibility. Passing choice to user also passes on responsibility to represent the world and the human condition in it.

5. Transcoding: Translate into another format

When computerization turns media into computer data, its structure now follows the established conventions of the computer’s organization of data. Because new media is created on computers, distributed via computers, and stored and archived on computers, the logic of a computer can be expected to significantly influence the traditional cultural logic of media; that is, we may expect that the computer layer will affect the cultural layer: "The computerization of culture."

Programmability has no historical precedent. Therefore, to understand logic of new media we turn to computer science to find terms, categories and operations that characterize media. From media studies, we move to something that can be called "software studies" – from media theory to software theory.

What new media is not

Discrete representation of media, random access and multimedia were already contained in cinema – these were not unique to digital media.

Digital duplication involves loss of information just as analog duplication does because, in practice, information is compressed and image files are made smaller by deleting some information. Lossy compression is the very foundation of computer culture, at least for now.

The myth of interactivity: Concept is meaningless because all computer media is interactive. Better: Menu-based interactivity, scalability, simulation, image-interface, image-instrument.

Classical art is interactive because it requires user to fill in missing information – "psychological interaction." Modern trend is to externalize mental life and control thinking. The private and individual are translated into the public and become regulated. Before we would look at an image and mentally follow our own private associations to other images. Now interactive computer media asks us instead to click on an image in order to go to another image. We are asked to follow pre-programmed, objectively existing associations.

Thoughts on other readings:

I've noticed that the topics I talk about online are often different than the topics I talk to the same person about in person. I can usually get more bare-bones information from someone online in chat or e-mail, but if I want details about something it's usually better to talk in person. The same is true with conflict resolution. It's difficult to resolve a conflict if you're only e-mailing back and forth. At the newspaper where I work, for example, I've noticed that when someone sends in an e-mail angry about something in the paper, it's usually counterproductive to send and e-mail back. Much more effective (and usually efficient) is to call the person and hear and respond to concerns they may have.

Currently, the only online communities I belong to contain people I met outside of the Net. When I was in middle school, however, I had several "key pals" who I met in what I guess must have been a usenet group. The relationships were short-lived, though, and I no longer remember much of anything about who they were. I know a lot of people form strong relationships online (a college roommate of mine would stay up most of the night chatting with a guy online), but I haven't made any meaningful relationships online. I do think that online communities are great for keeping in touch with people I already know. I like checking my friends' myspace pages occasionally to see what they've been up to. I also like photo-sharing Web sites that have allowed me to see friends' new babies who live far away.

I think one of the factors affecting the effectiveness of online communities is that most communications are asynchronous. Even where synchronous communication is possible, most people are not online and available to talk at the same time so there is usually some lag time with responses. For that reason, communications can sometimes be drawn out and very rarely go into much depth on one idea. Also, while online communities are a great way to brainstorm and collect ideas, it's very difficult to synthesize ideas online unless you have one person doing the synthesizing. In the Jervay Place example in Communities in Cyberspace the community members were able to begin a search for low-income housing information online, but their eventual design was created with the help of architectural firms in person.

2006-10-30T04:40:00.000-08:00

Flattener #5: Outsourcing Y2K

Main points:
The U.S. needed India’s large brain pool to fix the Y2K bug — a tedious process that required skilled technology workers. Since 1951, shortly after India became independent, the country’s highly competitive Institutes of Technology have been successful in educating young workers in the sciences, engineering and medicine.

India profited from the dot-com bust by being "second buyers" of fiber-optic cable. The bust made the technology practically free, allowing the U.S. to connect to India. America became second buyers of Indian brain power when India could not provide jobs for its highly skilled graduates.

After the dot-com bust, companies were under tremendous pressures to cut costs by finding the most efficient, high-quality, low-price way to innovate. GE chairman Jack Welch realized the potential for outsourcing IT work to India and other companies were close behind.
Friedman makes the point that India’s fortune did not come overnight. The country has been investing in its population’s education for more than half a century. "Fortune favors the prepared mind." — Louis Pasteur

Flattener #6: Offshoring: Running with Gazelles, Eating with Lions

Main points:

Offshoring vs. outsourcing
Outsourcing: Taking some specific, but limited, function that your company was doing in-house and having another company perform that exact same function for you and then reintegrating their work back into your overall operation.

Offshoring: Company takes one of its factories and moves it to another country to produce the very same product in the very same way, only with cheaper labor, lower taxes, subsidized energy, and lower health-care costs.

China’s entry into the World Trade Organization on Dec. 11, 2001, meant that the world has had to run faster and faster to keep up (the gazelle must run faster than the fastest lion to keep from getting eaten; the lion must run as fast as the slowest gazelle to eat). Membership has also forced China’s bureaucracy to modernize. China will continue to become flatter — political or economic upheaval could disrupt this process.

Competitive flattening: Companies scramble to see who can give companies the best tax breaks, etc. to encourage offshoring in their country (Malaysia, Thailand, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam).

American companies will need new business models to compete.

Between 1995 and 2002, productivity increased 17 percent annually in China. China is also losing manufacturing jobs as productivity accelerates, and gaining them in services, much like what has been happening in the U.S.

The U.S. should not use protectionist policies, which will only cause economic and geopolitical chaos in this interlinked global economy. Rather, Friedman says, America must adjust, but it can be as prosperous as ever.

2006-10-30T04:39:00.000-08:00

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Thomas L. Friedman

I apparently have been sleeping for the last decade or so. Or maybe, as Friedman suggests, the triple convergence that most CEOs now understand, is being kept a big secret. The walls, ceilings and floors are gone. But we still haven’t even begun to see what this convergence is capable of in this "flattened" world. Friedman says that up until now we have been in the process of creating tools to collaborate and connect. Now the real IT revolution can begin. Companies will need to find ways to work together and combine technologies to compete and innovate in a global business economy.

While I knew most help numbers now go to a call center in India, I had not realized the extent of the technology infrastructure in the country and the extent to which they will still be able to expand.

The extent of India’s brain power in the U.S. can already be evidenced by the large numbers of Indians working in America’s technology hubs, such as Microsoft and Boeing. The U.S. education system does not produce enough technology workers to keep up with demand. This does put the U.S. at a disadvantage. While it holds the upper hand in creative innovations, there is not much to stop India, and other countries like China, to begin advancing their own technologies. The United States will need to stay on top of innovation to continue to stay competitive.

Usually, when Americans talk about globalization, they speak of it as taking jobs away from Americans. But Friedman takes a wider view of globalization. The flattening of the world, he says, will allow individuals to take control. They will have the power to improve their circumstances no matter where at in the world they are. You don't have to be born in a certain country or to a family with a certain amount of status to succeed. The flattening of the world has empowered almost anyone in the world to communicate and do business with someone on the other side of the world. The collaboration that flattening allows brings the world closer together. Americans are interacting with people around the world all the time, and sometimes they don't even know it.

The United States is not likely to keep its technology advantages. The U.S. will have to reinvent itself in an increasingly flat world to stay competitive with the rest of the world. Companies will likely become more interdependent. They will be forced to collaborate with people in other countries to stay competitive through efficiency and cost-cutting.

2006-10-23T04:27:00.000-07:00

Technologies of the Third Mediamorphosis
Roger Fidler
Pine Forge Press 1997

When I visited my grandparents as a child, I would stand outside my grandpa’s office door and listen as he said into his radio, "N7DKY, this is N7DKY, do you read me?" My grandpa was a "ham," an amateur radio enthusiast. I remember staring up in awe at the tower in the backyard, thinking how amazing it was that my grandpa could talk to people so far away because of that tower.

Even before the Internet, people had a curiosity about people in other states and in other countries. They wanted to be able to have conversations with people in other places. Radio technology provided a medium of instant communication that cut across time and space. It’s not too surprising, then, that ham radio has persisted as a hobby for nearly a century. Only when the Internet came along was communication so efficient and economical. The Internet also allowed users to meet new people. Phones are primarily used for contacting acquaintances so ham radio remained viable for social reasons.

Fidler also makes a good point that people often confuse the surprise of new technology with its speed. I was surprised to learn that the first color television was available in 1947, but that the technology was not widely used until 1965 because of the delay by RCA. And the Internet was being developed in 1969, but was not widely used until about 1992. It gives me a little more hope that maybe I can keep up with existing trends.

2006-10-23T04:24:00.000-07:00

Vannevar Bush
"As We May Think"
The Atlantic Monthly July 1945

It was fun to read Vannevar Bush’s predictions for future technologies. Imagine, a color photograph that can be instantly developed! I think he was certainly insightful, though, and understood the limits of his own foresight. Bush focuses on both the ways to record knowledge, store these records and consult these records. He recognizes that the "inheritance of acquired knowledge" is useless without a way to access it.

While computers have changed the way we record information, they have changed even more the way we store it. No longer are thousands of files stored in drawers lining every wall. Instead, files are stored electronically - and then usually backed up in at least one way (computers are still far from being completely dependable after all). Bush was right when he said machines would have enormous appetites for information. Personal computers have continued to provide users with more and more memory for their files and information.

Our society has come up with some amazing ways to sort through the multitude of information, not the least of which is the search engine. When Bush describes searching through association I thought of today’s search engines. You don’t have to search alphabetically or numerically when you do a Google search. Rather, the search engine finds sites that are associated with your search word or phrase. We can, as he suggests, forget information until at such time as the information is needed. I have occasionally felt overwhelmed by all the information at my fingertips. When doing a search it is easy to click one link after another, following a trail as Bush would probably call it, and end up in a completely different place than where you started.

Computers and the Internet allow people to search for the information they want in a fraction of the time it would take without computers. I think online blogs are one effect of this. People are able to retrieve more information and they turn to blogs as a way to get more information on topics that interest them. People also expect to be able to interact with the information - to respond to it in some way.

In the future, I expect information will be very personalized. People will be able to select categories of news they would like to receive. For example: breaking news, world news (select country), national news, state news, local news, sports; and there would be sub-categories: education, technology, health, Mariners. News organizations will no longer try to figure out what the masses want to read. Rather, just as TiVo now "learns" what its users like to watch, companies will "learn" what individual consumers want to know and they will provide them with that specific information. Users’ sites will be customized. I don’t think it will take until 2050 to get to this point though. We’re already headed in that direction and I think most of the technology is already available.

2006-10-16T03:01:00.000-07:00

Determining Uses and Gratifications for the Internet
Thomas F. Stafford, Marla Royne Stafford, Lawrence L. Schkade.

The uses and gratifications paradigm tries to determine motivations for using media by focusing on what people do with mass media. I can apply this focus of understanding Internet user motivations better to my project by looking to see what ways online news sites have for readers to respond to stories and look at the ways they are used. The article lists three types of gratifications: process, content and social. It is likely that the news sites which use all three types of gratifications will be the most successful in facilitating community dialogue.

The process of responding to a story may in itself be gratifying, while the content of the story is what most newspapers are focused on. The dialogue may also be a way of socializing, especially if readers take an interest in a reporter's blog, for instance, and begin to regularly contribute feedback.

2006-10-16T02:24:00.000-07:00

The Capture of Sound
Brian Winston

Winston's discussion on the history leading up to the telephone makes a good argument for invention being more than just a useful idea that is not subject to its surroundings. The scientific competence clearly had to be present for Bell and Gray to do their experiments.

What is interesting, however, is that both Bell and Gray had the idea for a device to transmit speech, but that neither seemed in a hurry to develop the idea into a prototype. Winston says the company office provided the supervening necessity to start building inventions that could be leased to companies or individuals. Before the office was commonplace, the uses for a telephone were not obvious. And once the need did become obvious, the diffusion was suppressed by a patent war. It's also strange that the telephone has almost always been a way to communicate between two points. One-to-one communication is also fairly standard on the Internet. I wonder if this is because people prefer to talk one-on-one or if this is another way to suppress the technology. I think the Internet will probably increase multiparty chats eventually.

What the history of the telephone also illustrated was that the best idea or prototype will not always be the adopted technology. Winston refers to the inertia that helps the diffusion of a certain technology. It's very difficult for new technologies to compete once an invention has made inroads into society. If people have become used to a certain technology, they need a very compelling reason to change technologies. For example, the videophone never became mainstream because people were used to talking on regular telephones. However, cameras in Internet communications are much more common. I think this is because the Internet was seen as a place to experiment with new technologies, whereas the telephone was an established form of communication that people were reluctant to change. In this way inertia became a suppression of radical potential.

Evolution and Trends in Digital Media

2006-10-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

Media Technology and Society
A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet
Brian Winston

Introduction: A storm from paradise: Technological innovation, diffusion and suppression

Not only must prototypes of new technology be effective or functional to be accepted, but they must also fulfill a need in society. Brian Winston calls this need the supervening social necessity.
This necessity will propel prototypes of accepted inventions.

A recent example of a technology that filled this social necessity is the flash or USB drive. Numerous inventions have tried to replace the floppy disk as an electronic storage space. Zip disks held much more, but were expensive and somewhat balky. CDs can hold a large amount of data and are inexpensive, but not everyone has the technology to burn CDs. Another drawback of CDs is that most cannot be reused. The durable flash drive uses a USB port, which all computers now come with, and can hold 1, 2 or even more gigs of data. Flash drives seem to be catching on quickly for their economical and technological value.

Social forces have propelled most newspapers to adopt new technology and expand their online offerings. They have been more reactive than other types of media that do not rely as much on the printed word. The role of print newspapers is a good example, I think, of what Winston calls the law of suppression of radical potential. Many newspapers tried to reject the Web as a publishing medium at first, likely seeing the Web as something that would not flourish or without potential for newspapers. Perhaps they thought circulation and ad revenues would drop with the addition of online (which they have).

The law of suppression takes into account that many of these new technologies can be expensive. If technology changes too fast, companies won’t have the means financially to keep up. Many businesses take a decade or more before they will consider updating outdated technology. In my experience, changing technologies is a time-consuming, stressful and expensive process in the workplace — no wonder companies put the brakes on technology.

Newspapers have now realized that there is no stopping the increasing popularity and necessity of the Internet for society and have begun to embrace the Internet as a way to reach a generation that does not necessarily read a printed newspaper daily or go through the Sunday ads and classified. They are exploring the potential for replacing decreasing print revenue with online revenue as online circulation grows by leaps and bounds, though no one has yet found a way to replace all the revenue lost by the decrease in print circulation.

In Social Aspects of New Media Technologies (Williams, Strover, Grant) this process of diffusion is explained in four steps: Knowledge, Persuasion, Decision and Confirmation. Many newspapers made an initial decision to reject the innovation of the Internet. In later re-evaluation, however, these same newspapers made a decision to adopt the innovation.

I thought Williams, Strover and Grant were extremely insightful when they talked about cable TV and personal computers creating nongeographically based communities as part of the uses and gratification theory. MySpace.com is the first example of a nongeographical community that pops into my head. Cyber communities are increasingly taking the place of geographic communities. People chat with users around the country and around the world. Online dating has become increasingly popular and it is not unusual for online acquaintances to decide to meet in person. In television, viewers form a relationship of sorts to serial programs, and the diffusion of reality TV depends on viewers becoming emotionally involved with the show. When viewers invest that much emotion into a show, they seem to form an attachment with other viewers of the same show.

Also interesting was the precedent that the United States Congress set by allowing the privatization of telegraphy. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution assures the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. Though freedom of the press is not usually what companies are thinking about when they are trying to make a profit, newspapers were regular users of telegraphy and the technical innovations that came later.

How the Internet killed the phone business
The Economist

This article predicts that "voice over Internet protocol" will one day make traditional phone companies obsolete. In the decade since this article was published, VOIP has advanced, however, not nearly as much as the article assumes. I don’t think the supervening social necessity for this technology exists yet. I think a more disruptive technology for traditional phone companies is the rapid escalation of cell phones.

For example, the article makes the assumption that VOIP is cheaper than other options available. However, when cell phone users sign contracts, they are usually paying for the convenience to call anywhere they want (usually within the United States) without paying extra fees. With the advances and diffusion of cell phones, phone lines and VOIP become unnecessary.
While VOIP is probably an attractive option for larger families that don’t want to buy a cell phone for everyone in the household, I think cell phones hold the upper hand in potential. Advances will make cell phones easier to use for connecting to the Internet (VOIP’s advantage), and cell phones have the big advantage of mobility.

The article does make a correct assumption when it speaks of a "bundle of services as an incentive to buy other things such as broadband access or pay-TV services." Internet providers, cable companies and cell phone providers have all started to bundle products together in an effort to entice buyers.