Chapter Summaries of a Great Book - Item 1

This book is quiet a good read, "Information Architecture of the World Wide Web, 3rd edition". I usually hate reading text books but this one was well written and keeps making me want to read more.

It talks about what Information Architecture really is, and the processes and skills behind it. I will summaries a few of these from chapters 5, 6, & 7.












Chapter 5: Organisation Systems
This chapter talks about how we always organise our information for everything and ways we organise. For example, we live in towns which are in states which are in return inside countries. This is an example of "Bottom-Up" Hierarchy organisation.

There are a lot of challenges involved in organising information, such as:

• Ambiguity: words are capable of being understood in more ways than one.
• Heterogeneity: referring to a collection of objects or parts that are unrelated.
• Differences in Perspectives: everyone views things or sets things differently.
• Internal Politics: Choice of organisation and labelling can have a big impact on how users perceive a company, group, or person.

There are a number of organisation schemes. They come under two categories, Exact and Ambiguous.

Exact:

• Alphabetical
• Chronological
• Geographical

Ambiguous:

• Topic
• Task
• Audience
• Metaphor
• Hybrids

Organisation structures include:

• Hierarchy: Top-Down Approach
• Database Model: Bottom-Up Approach

Hypertext systems involve two components, the items or chunks of information to be linked, and the links between those chunks. Hypertext systems are page transitions for example. Clicking a link in a Wikipedia article will take the user to information linked to that link.

Free tagging is another way of organising. It involves the users to tag one or more key words to objects. These key words act as pivots so mass information can be found easily to a single key word being searched for. Users can move swiftly through objects, authors, tags, and indexers this way.

For example, Del.icio.us is a web application that allows users to tag saved bookmarks to describe the link. This allows easy searching for search engines.

Chapter 6: Labeling Systems

Labelling is important because it is a form of representation. Such as using speech to represent concepts and thoughts, we use labels to represent larger chunks of information in websites.

Types of labels:

• Contextual - Hyperlinks to chunks of information on other pages or to another location on the same page.
• Headings - Labels that simple describe the content that follows.
• Navigation System Choices - Labels representing options in navigation.
• Index terms - Keywords, tags, and subject heading all represent content for searching or browsing.

Iconic labels are quite a difficult bunch. Just as the saying goes, "A picture means a thousand words", so does an iconic label. A lot of study and analysis has to go into creating an iconic label. Users can get quite confused with navigation or subject matters if they are not clear enough or without text to describe them.

The rest of the text is quite dull on this subject, nothing much left to describe (The text continues to go into indepth analysis of these types of labels and how to design them, often repeating itself).


Chapter 7: Navigation Systems
As you may assume, this chapter is all about Navigation. It describes how navigation is like the story, "Hansel and Gretel". Users will get lost extremely quickly on the World Wide Web unless they leave a trail of breadcrumbs to show their path.

It is important investigate the environment which the system will be implemented in. A lot of users use different web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer to move around websites. Different web browsers use many different built-in features. A different web browser can force a user to enforce different views on a website's navigation.

Before a navigation is plotted, we have to locate our position. Many users jump in to a random page of a website from search engines. This can be really confusing navigating a site since the home page is usually skipped. A good course of action to check if a user can recognise the "here you are" in a website is to test them. First user jumps directly into a random page of the website, skipping the home page. Can the user figure which they are in relation to the website? Can they tell where the page will lead to next? Are the links descriptive so the user understands what they are about?

The design of navigation systems is deep in the "grey area", meaning it can very in many ways. This is because the design is comprised of information technology, interaction design, information design, visual design, and engineering. Now you can see why it is very hard to form a well-designed navigation system.

Hierarchy is powerfully familiar way to sort a website's information. It is used often. A web's hypertextual capabilities (i.e. search engine) remove the hierarchy to give freedom to travel anywhere in the website. But make sure the website leaves "breadcrumbs", or some sort of "you are here" label or you can get lost.

Types of Navigation Systems:

• Global - a navigation system that is to be present on every page through a website.
• Local - a navigation system that is present on pages related to a certain area of a website. e.g. Sub-menus.
• Contextual - a navigation system that is used to link to specific page, document, or object in a website. e.g. Clicking an image on Google Images to take the user to the image.

Supplemental navigation systems are external to the basic hierarchy of a website. They provide extra ways to search for finding content or completing tasks. These are:

• Sitemaps - Just like a table of contents in a book or magazine, just implemented on the website.
• Site Indexes - Just like indexes found in many printed materials, a website's site index presents keywords or phrases alphabetically. This is great if a user is knows what they are looking for.
• Guides - Can take on many forms (guided tours, tutorials, and micro-portals). They focus around a specific audience, topic, or task, and often serve as tools for introducing content (e.g. When you get a new electronic product for the first time and it brings up a tutorial on the device itself).
• Search - Search engines that look in the websites parameters for information.
• Wizards and configurations - Considered a special class for a guide, they help users configure products and navigate through complex decisions for their product.

Some advanced navigation approaches include personalization and customization. Personalization involves serving tailored pages to the user based on their behaviour, needs, or preferences of one individual. Customization involves allowing the user full control over presentation, navigation, and content options.

Ning - Personalising Mass Social Networking - Item 1

A number of social networking websites are through out the World Wide Web. To name a few:

• Facebook
• Delicous
• Flickr
• Twitter
• myspace
• youtube

Users usually only try to stick to one of these services to connect with their friends, family, fans, co-workers, etc. because keeping familiar to one service is much easier than it is when a user tries to use many.

The downside to using one social networking application alone is the information is usually only kept within the application itself, so outside networks can't access.

A web service, launched in October 2005, tried to gather all the social networking websites into one and change the way people viewed social networking.

Ning was this web application. It is a monthly paid service which allows customers to create a community website for anything with the ability to customize the appearance with its own feel with features such as photos, videos, forums and blogs. It can receive and send information to social networking sites to keep the user able to stick to one service. Ning's services extend to the social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo!

Ning is able to collect information from multiple social networking websites which MySpace and Facebook has not achieved and still stay inside their own "boundaries".

Over 90,000 social websites are running on the Ning platform. It has turned into a successful service.

Creative Commons Licensing - Item 1

When offering any work you have done under a Creative Commons licence, it doesn't mean you are giving up your copyright. It means allowing more use of your materials through other means, under certain conditions.

There are four Creative Commons Licences and more than one can be used on the same piece of work.

Attribution (BY): Whenever work is copied or distributed, the original creator must be credited and the source linked to.

Non-commercial (NC): Lets others copy, distribute, display and perform the work for non-commercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works (ND): Lets others distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work. They may not adapt or change the work in any way.

Share Alike (SA): Allows others to remix, adapt and build on the work, but only if they distribute the derivative works under the same license terms that govern the original work.

The photo sharing website, Flickr, uses these licences. It is understandable why Flickr gives many options for people to license their products. A lot of users have different views on their products. Some would rather let their pictures be shared and used for free rather than being paid for its use. Others would rather be paid or acknowledged in the use of their products.

But does Flickr promote Creative Commons Licensing enough?

I honestly would like to be acknowledge and paid for it if it's an image I'm to use for a company, or personal use. If it was for viewing pleasure, I'd definitely want to change my licensing to public.

So I do agree that Flickr does enough to promote Creative Commons Licensing. Let's face it. A lot of users who use Flickr are people who rarely use or know much about permissions with products online.

Google Reader - Benefits & Drawbacks - Item 1

After subscribing to a few feeds on Google Reader, I've taken quite a liking to it. The subscriptions I signed up to were: FAIL Blog, xkcd.com, both for a good chuckle. I'm a guy who loves his humour.

I've noticed a couple of benefits while using Google Reader. When I login to Google Reader, it shows how many new posts are online since I last logged in. As I scroll down the page and read each post, the application automatically ticks it as read for me, so I know I'm up to date with the blog when I'm finished. It is a lot more useful than email boxes, how you have to click "read" or click into each one to count it as read.

I looked further into Google Reader since I was interested in this new application, and found some downsides to it. It doesn't update when new material is added to the subscribed material. The updates to Google Reader lags a bit but doesn't take longer than 15 minutes to receive new material.

I also found Google Reader doesn't annotate items, so it's hard to understand some images or videos I receive.

All in all, I would recommend Google Reader to everyone I know who likes to keep an eye on their subscriptions. The Pros out-weight Cons in my opinion. I will stay a Google "Reader" for quite some time now, since I have experienced it's magic.

AJAX is Your Friend - Item 1

Ever get tired of typing the same thing in a search engine or email login? Then all of a sudden what you are about to type appears highlighted and you can click it to type the rest of your work. This is AJAX, and only one way to use it.

AJAX working in a search bar, looking into
popular common searches.

AJAX takes the repetitiveness out of exploring the World Wide Web. AJAX stops the start-stop style of flow of Web pages by sending bits of information while the Web page is still stopped. This technique is only limited to a certain extent, but eliminates the constant page refresh problem.

A lot of common uses of AJAX used in Web pages are: username validation, checking fields in forms are properly filled in, and checking for commonly referred searches in search bars.

References

D. Murphy (2011, August 6) The World Wide Web, Not the Internet, Turns 20 Today [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390583,00.asp

Reading Response : Lessons from the History of the Internet [Image] (2012, August 6) Retrieved from http://ijndekwuforcm221.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/eading-response-lessons-from-the-history-of-the-internet/

History of web application, (2007, July 13) Retrieved from http://www.roseindia.net/servlets/HistoryOfWebApplication.shtml

Mobile Device Configuration, [Image] (2012, August 6)
http://www.deakin.edu.au/current-students/it-support/email/mobile/index.php

Health care embraces the iPad: Doctors jump on the new technology, (2011, February 7) Retrieve from http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2011/02/07/bisa0207.htm

[Society Embracing Technology] Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6238309.stm

Why the Web Evolved into Web 2.0 - Item 1

There were a great number of technological developments that helped evolve the Web into the Web 2.0 we know today, but most of us don't realise them. A few of these developments I believe had a bigger influence then others, such as:

• Connectivity available almost everywhere
• Web-based applications were developed for many devices
• Society embraced technological changes

Connectivity Available almost Everywhere
The World Wide Web was distributed globally thanks to the help of the Internet. A lot of people think the Internet and World Wide web are the same thing, but they are not. The Internet was actually invented a few years before the World Wide Web (Murphy 2011, August 6).

The Internet is a system of local area networks, regional networks, and other separate networks that are all inter-connected like a spider web. It was a system some businesses used to keep information inside their business.

Example of networks (Reading Response : Lessons
from the History of the Internet, August 6, 2012)

This "spider web" is what is used by computers to communicate to other computers. For example, computer "A" can connect up to computer "B", or even smart phone "C" to exchange information thanks to this "webbed" network (Murphy 2011, August 6).

Who created the world wide web though and why? It was all thanks to a man called Tim Berners-Lee. While he was working at a company called "Cern", he noticed there was a lot of random information in his job that didn't relate to each other. So he came up with a program called "Enquire" which linked all this information together. This program helped give him the idea for the World Wide Web later on in his carrier.

He purposed a project to his company about making a program that would link all the information that was at his firm on the internet. This project further gave him the idea to link the internet and hypertext markup language together to make a global information centre. Also being the kind of person he was, instead of making million and most likely billion from his idea, Tim gave his invention away for free.

Web-based applications were developed for many devices

Different Mobile Devices (Mobile
Device Configuration, 2012 August 6) 

Client-server computing use to have each application have it's own client program and worked as a user interface. This user interface had to be installed to each user's computer in order to enable the application (History of web application, 2007 July 13).

Although today most web applications use HTML or XHTML that are usually supported by all the browsers. Every Web page is displayed to a client as a static document in which lets the user navigate through the content on the page. The difference in a web application is that it provides a more interactive experience on the client side (History of web application, 2007 July 13).

All mobile devices use XHTML to apply the same effect a web application would have on a personal computer. This is because XHTML uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which is helpful in resizing Web pages as well as content for client-side viewing outside the use of a personal computer.

Society embraced technological changes

First year medical students using the iPad.
(Health care embraces the iPad, February 7, 2011)

People from all over the globe are adopting technology earlier than their previous of kin. Research from Las Vegas reveals that consumers are understanding technology and adopting it because it is the future. Mr. Wargo, the director of industry analysis for the Consumer Electronics Association (or CEA), stated that people are not just upgrading their current technologies, but buying new one's every year.  (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6238309.stm)

From the research point of view, consumers of the current generation are adopting technologies early and are understanding it well.