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Phone Twitter? May 21, 2009

Posted by angelacrilley in Twitter.
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I was listening to 104.7 yesterday on my way home from work at 4.30pm – which is when the Hamish and Andy show airs for those who aren’t familiar. As per usual they were discussing random, pointless topics but they strayed across one that I thought relevant. Phone twitter, or phone twittering. Could it work? They questioned whether the phenomenon of ‘Twitter’ would still work and be as hugely popular if it was presented through phone conversations. Thought provoking, yes indeed. They made a few phone calls, simply quoted a 140 character sentence or less similar to one which you would find on twitter, and said it to the recipient. For example:

“Today I had a sandwich that was really nice but the cheese kept falling out.”

It didn’t really work. People were left questioning on the other end of the phone and didn’t really understand. So no, I guess the twitter craze doesn’t work over the telephone. But theoretically, they’re both forms of social networking. I think twitter is only successful over the internet, as the audience is much broader and you can check peoples tweets at your own discretion and convenience. Whereas a phone call is much more personal as it is direct and instant. There’s also the social norm that people expect an immediate answer on the telephone and a conversation with contribution from both parties, thus the whole concept of its design as an immediate 2- way communication device. But twitter can be passive.

“Twitter is the telegraph system of Web 2.0″ – Nicholas Carr, Author and Technologist

Data. Everywhere. May 12, 2009

Posted by angelacrilley in Data Visualisation.
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This weeks topic was data visualisation. I was unfamilar with what exactly this was until the commencement of this unit. The name gives a pretty acturate description though I suppose, I knew what data what and I knew what visualisation was, so put two and two together and thought it must be an image or something visual of information. This could be a very basic definition in essence, although I have developed a more thorough understanding of what it can and actually is.

Data visualisation is about the representation of a large amount of data – or information – sometimes of abstract or non physical artifacts, representing something complicated in a way which is useful and understandable to humans. The representation is usually visual, because humans are good at perceiving and measuring differences in scale, colour, shape and recognising absence or movement and positioning. These help us distinguish between things easily, as unlike computers we cannot easily process massive amounts of information and data quickly or efficiently.

Below I found at great example of a data visualisation of the US federal budget…

As exemplified in the lecture, here is a still image of the data visualistion example from ‘We feel fine’, which is an extraordinary piece of work. This specifically is the style ‘madness’, in which each dot represents a different feeling, with colours symbolizing emotion and size representing the scale in which this emotion is expressed. This way of representing all the information gathered from the web is much easier for humans to understand and recognise the vast majority of people feeling certain things, as opposed to looking at sheer numbers. This is a form of passive observation.

This site has a great visualization of an infograph representing how many sugar cubes are found in certain beverages. Originally, infographs and data visualisation seem almost the same, if not exactly, but they do have a difference. Typically an infograph deals with a signifcantly smaller amount of information or data than that of a data visualisation, you can see with the comparison between the visual interpretation of how much sugar is a bottle of coke, which is a small amount of information, whereas the ‘we feel fine’ picture is dealing with thousands and thousands of emotions, which is a huge amount of information. And although an infograph does deal with less information, it still presents to us a better understanding of something had we seen it visually as opposed to through raw data or numbers.

I came across this video on youtube about the Google API for data visualisation. It’s only short, but it briefly shows how the API works, and the transition from raw data in an excel-like spreadsheet, to a visual graph or similar. It is an example of how much easier these graphs are to understand and comprehend differences between pieces of information as opposed to the spreadsheet, and shows how easy and simple it is to use this Google API to create personal data visualisations.

Multiplicity. May 10, 2009

Posted by angelacrilley in Multiplicity.
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Unfortunetly this week I was keeling over dead and becoming great friends with my toilet bowl – otherwise known as having the flu – and couldn’t make the lecture or tutorial. But I’ve learnt that the main topic was multiplicity, which seems pretty daunting. Apparently it’s being able to do multiple things at once, something computers are very good at, but humans lack. Maybe if we had hands like this we’d have a bit more success at multi – tasking…

Web 2.0 May 3, 2009

Posted by angelacrilley in Web 2.0.
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Web 2.0 is the new generation of web 1.0 put simply, or the new generation of ‘web masters’. It enables more user friendly services and content, as well as more interactivity between not only creators/publishers and users, but amongst the users themselves. The internet now isn’t just the internet, it’s an experience which we get involved in. The net is now not only created by web designers and IT professionals, but to the general public as well, sites such as facebook and myspace enabling everyone to create their own website with multiple gadgets of web 2.0.

It seems that the net didn’t have a choice to upgrade really. The world is rapidly getting used to controlling their own technology and for everything to be interactive, for example game consoles like playstation or wii, and not only being able to choose from hundreds of television stations but the ability to do things like VOTE or POLL through your television!! Even the transition from VHS to DVD, before we just put the tape in and it played. Now, we pop a disk in and can play the movie, select scenes, watch trailers, see bloopers, watch ‘the making of’ – the list goes on. If the internet didn’t adopt this ‘user involved’ theme that is being applied globally, it would have been left behind.

Web 2.0 runs off user participation and generated content – that such as comments, tagging, ratings, forums – and the whole reason this works so well is because of the massive user base. The more people using a service the better it becomes, creating the ‘network effect’.

These are just a few video’s on Youtube I found that explain in a brief way what web 2.0 is, one more technical and the second is a more basic interpretation.

Mashup of all the currently leading industries in Web 2.0, which is what web 2.0 is all about – creating a rich user experience – and I personally enjoy looking at this picture.

This evolution of Web 2.0 has also resulting in new trends, such as ‘the long tail’, first coined by Chris Anderson in 2004, who compares it to Amazon.com – as done in the lecture also. The long tail basically is a term which reflects the way in which Web 2.0 has so much more diversity and choice in smaller, more specific categories.

As the picture above demonstrates, the specific end of the spectrum is known as the long tail. For example, Amazon.com offers a vast range of specific or alternative books, which are sold in small amounts. This virtual world of infinate books is far outselling that of physical bookstores, that ultimately run off the sales off a small range of books selling in large quantities. This is the ‘long tail’ effect.