Wrapping it up

Technology is forcing change across all of the aspects of our culture. This is a truth, however the impact of technology is greater upon some facets of our world than others. There is a sliding scale of its impact and that scale can be related to levels of income and education. In order to be impacted the audience has to have access to the medium. I think that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that technology and the internet is not as ubiquitous as we think. Certainly the level of penetration is not yet as great as with the more traditional 2 dimensional forms of media, such as TV, print and radio. 

Only time will show these changes. Certainly with the advance of the technology the ubiquity of the medium will grow. This is where we as information proffessionals in the public sphere enter the story. We can be the means of providing access for those who don't necessarily possess the resource, through either limited income, or otherwise through lack of connectivity. Fast internet is still the province of cities and regions, thus the public library in rural areas is for many a sole point of access.

Upon entry to this course I had a naive perspective, and therefore my learning goals were very passive. My intention was to approach the education with an open mind, and to take in that which was presented to me. As I have progressed through these last couple of weeks in this exercise, I have learnt many things about the current state of play with communications and information media. Much of what I have studied has confirmed that which I already knew: There is a division between the haves and the have nots and it is getting wider with the progression of time and technology. The irony of the internet as a collaborative and social medium is that it offers the potential for individual empowerment, active media participation. Also however it is a world of greater penetration for those who have a product to market. On the one hand the medium empowers, and on the other hand it overwhelms.

I deeply enjoyed the discovery of Trove. I love the concept of using the long tail in the culture to assist in the translation of the digitised resources into text. There are many opportunities for time suck on the web, and this is definitely a pitfall for the history lover. 

I am proud to declare that mine (and my partner's) addition  to the Wikipedia site has stood the test of the last couple of weeks, and still remains on the article. There have even been a couple of text lines from our contribution that have been linked and cited too. My first reaction to Wikipedia was to look up the subject of my partner's PhD thesis, and discovered at that time that it was an article that was in stub form that contained very little information indeed. I have encouraged her to do something about this and will continue to do so until she makes some more information on the topic available there.

Twitter was a resource that I had previously discovered through its application to politics. The medium is useful for politicians because of the way that it seeks to reduce the message into consumable bites. In a fast moving world the succinctness of the medium as a point of reference to other resources is useful and valuable.

Cloud Storage was an interesting new concept and I have since taken it up as an additional failsafe for the preservation of important documents, such as completed assignments. The more backups that are made across the more locations and mediums the better.

Social Bookmarking was a great new discovery and it is a tool that will provide great assistance as I continue the journey through this course. It is another example of the long tail that yields lots of precious data about marketers about consumers; the information is freely mind and provided to the marketer by the consumer. Whilst the opportunities offerred for making connections are boundless, like many of these new social functions it is a 2 edged sword and I retain a certain degree of caution about the media. I understand the devision between proffessional database resources, and popular social media resourcing, and see that the motivation differs greatly depending on the intention of the authority and the needs (if known) of the audience.

The Maps exercise, while frustrating for me gives a good indication of the direction that internet resources will now take. Elements of all forms are joining together to create new results and possibilities. 

I have discovered many new things in this assignment, and some new tools I will take away from it and will use throughout my course, my future career and my personal consumption of information. It is possible that being assembled into groups of 4 or 5 is a little unnecessary, given that (apart from say the shared documents component) there isn't a great need for specific groups. I did appreciate touring around other student's blogs, and perhaps would appreciated spending more time looking at the wider resources of all of the class, rather than remaining focussed in particular on my group.

So from passive beginnings I have been armed with an increased knowledge of some possible resources, and feel that based on this I can now in my turn begin to consider the option of passing this knowledge onto others, who are at a similar level of naivete about it all as was I when I commenced this voyage. I am now a little less innocent and cocooned in my resistance to forms of modern media, and will take on elements such as RSS and Social Bookmarking as useful tools in remaining abreast of areas of interest. It was stated in a lecture the other day that Information Proffessionals are accused of not being widely read enough in their own proffessional realm. Resources such as these assist greatly the information proffessional in remaining abreast of change.

Mashing the Information

Passive RFID is now a basic function in employment in libraries. Users of borrowed resources self check after scanning a barcode from their library card. Active RFID will then mean that the information agency can then track that item whilst it is out, or after it has become overdue.
I am currently employed in the events management industry for a company which has in house contracts for service provision at several venues. Regularly data projectors and our laptop computers are stolen. It has been a dream for several years to use active RFID or GPS to track these items, but for a small cap company the restriction remains that the overhead of the use of such infrastructure still remains preclusive. Thus the procession of lost resources without any means of recourse still remains prevalent.
Very soon there will be a situation where annual stocktakes are no longer required, because the corporation server knows through the intertwinglement of asset lists, GPS and RFID readers where every single asset is located at any given time.
Theoretically malfeasance between orders and physical deliveries leaving the warehouse must become a thing of the past, because the system will know what is in the truck, and whether an item too many or too little has been loaded. From a PDA an order is generated or retrieved. Thumbnail images can be recalled and shared.
Location software speaks to logistical task schedulers, so that in planning a delivery run a course is plotted from point to point. At any one given time the system knows where all of the vehicles, the people and the assets are.
We are on the cusp of an age where such sharing of information between systems is ubiquitous. The adjustment between the two and three dimensional information age is as much about the resources and the software as about the people who are using the systems. Thus the present observation about mashing tools are that the systems themselves are hard to access, and are not well explained. Indeed we are still in the process of discovering the applications towards which we would focus the mash.
It will be very interesting to compare this perspective with that which will be given about this form of intermingled functionality in just the next couple of years, as consumers of information and owners of things become more and more accustomed to the growing dynamic relationship between things and their interchanged systems of governance and application.

Google Maps

I found the exercise of mashing the Google Maps site with images from elsewhere on the web incredibly frustrating. The act is promoted as being simple and fast, however I think it is this exercise that has taken the most of my time and energy in order to get to a point where I am even half satisfied with the results.

Initially I had thought to incorporate some of my own images into the map. Therefore I gave way to my objections to revealing information about myself to Yahoo, and created a Flickr account and uploaded some images. Next step was to link to these images from the Google My Maps. Repeatedly I was left with an annoying little icon with a question mark inside it. Google Maps didn't give any explanation as to why my photograph linking didn't work. In disgust I gave up on Flickr thinking that Google was refusing to link information from a competing site. Therefore off I went and created a Picasa account and uploaded my images again. Whilst I was able to post my images to a Picasa map, the same annoying question mark icon kept on popping up every time I made the attempt to link to the Picasa site from Google Maps. Much study ensued over Creative Commons licensing, as I now began to figure that the default allowances on the Picasa and the Flickr accounts over reproduction were not allowing the linking of the image. Alas, no matter what setting I chose for my photo licenses Google Maps did not allow for any photograph linking. Of course I could hyperlink to the photo site via text, which would annoyingly go to precisely where I wanted, but no matter what I could do I could not link the image to the Google Maps marker so that it would appear.

Thus I gave up and began searching the web for generic images of my locations. Of course there were many and varied photographs available, so these have formed the basis of my Google Maps My Maps Mash Up.

I succeeded in the end in linking these images because I could get to the specific .jpeg file extension, which seems to be what the Google Maps Marker is requiring when you direct it to make a link to an image site. In every previous instance I was attempting to link a Flickr or Picasa website location for the photograph, which appears to be the reason why the Google Maps marker was not allowing the publication of my images to the My Maps mash up. This appears to be because each time I was attempting to source the URL location of my images I was actually logged in, so the Flickr and Picasa services were giving me the editor's URL for the image, rather than the passive view that is accessible via Google Images. I am sure that with some more persistance I will be able to work out how to access the web based .jpeg file extension for my images, however as I am now overdue to complete this component of the exercise and the wrap up of the assignment is now due pending the cut off, which is Monday of next week, I have left my voyage of discovery with this mash up page as is. Please see below for the embedded version of this very frustrating little mash up site. Note: Customising the embedded html is just as frustrating as actually using the service. Many attempts at resizing have been made before I have given up with my hands in the air.

Whilst I am not the most techno savvy IT proffessional, I have found this application annoying and frustrating beyond measure, and my MAC is very lucky to have not found itself developing wings and flying out of the window. Online help pages and related queries on Google Maps and Picasa have also both been singularly unhelpful in assisting me with my problems. 

It appears that site mashing is at a point where it has departed from the realm of the tech pioneers and is now entering the general consumer market. However it is not yet at a point where it is user friendly enough to be commonly accessible. As I stated I deal with computers and software every day both proffessionally and at home, however this exercise has been a significantly frustrating one.

Please see my attempt at Site Mashing using Google Maps. It shows our beloved Glenelg River Estuary on the South Australian/ Victorian coastal border and some of the many places that we have stayed there through the years. The photographs as harvested from various places throughout the web certainly do it the justice that it deserves. You will need to zoom out to see all of the place markers from Moleside Landing to the Estuarine River Mouth, as despite all of my attempts at customisation this annoying little initial view is all that Google Maps will give me.

View Lower Glenelg River Estuary in a larger map

Social Bookmarking

Hi all and sundry;

Here are my initial observations on Social Bookmarking, Would love to hear your comments in order to facilitate the discussion element that is required for this week..

The most common element of all of the social bookmarking forums that I have explored is that they all require the user to establish accounts, should they wish to actively use the service. Whilst some of them will give access to the content without the need to sign in, none of them will allow active use from a more anonymous standpoint, in the same way that Wikipedia does.

Websites:

Delicious and Faviki primarily reference websites. Faviki seeks a unified tagging language ie it attempts to direct the user to predefined sets of tag references such as those defined by Wikipedia. Delicious makes allowances for a more democratic and personal means of tagging definition. Delicious summarises popular themes and gives immediate options to the user to set up RSS feeds for sites tagged under a particular theme. Both sites present options for similar tags. Delicious will also allow for a freetyped tag search, suggesting that the most popular tags are presented at the front end of the interface, but that there are several other tags in it’s cloud. Delicious in particular is useful as a first port of call for referencing popular themes. Delicious gives access to the content without the need for a login, whereas a login is required should you wish to view the Faviki resources.

Diigo provides the user with a few more options, such as sticky note and highlighting annotations. Options are given to the user to set up private networks, or to view public communities. You can  also be recommended to other users on the basis of an analysis of the subject matter that you tag. You have to have a login to view this resource. I liked this service (and therefore signed up to it) because it presents versatility for data migration between it and other social bookmarking sites as well as from your local computer. The sticky notes and highlighting add ons give a means of access to components that are of particular interest within the referenced websites.

Academic/ Databases

CiteULike is a bibliography manager and sets up tag clouds for academic articles. It directs users to databases, and therefore implies a level of access in terms of reaching the content that is referenced. It provides short abstracts on articles and presents related tags to the article. It will also give references to other articles from tag related CiteULike users.  It is a useful medium for bringing academics together and establishing relationships. You can view the tagged resources without needing to be logged in.

Cataloguing:

LibraryThing and GuruLib are both cataloguing tools. Whilst LibraryThing focuses solely on books, GuruLib is also open to games, movies and music. It directs users to each other or to institutions and events. Both have discussion and review forums. Both sites will allow access to content without having to sign in.  Both sites are almost magazine like in the way that the user can be introduced to new content through related interests, articles and forums. Certainly a useful medium for bringing people of similar tastes together, and for directing people to institutions that may be of interest.

Cloud Storage

Institutions and corporations provide space within their own networks to share data and to maintain security for their own intellectual property. Access is available to users dependant on their predefined authorities; and can be gained from within our without the corporate network, dependant again on the controlled access as defined by the institution.

The preservation of intellectual property requires constant backup across media and in separate geographical locations. This is a component of administration that requires as much of a clearly defined management programme as sales, operations and accounts but is often pushed to the side as a secondary consideration. Without a clearly defined process for the preservation of intellectual property in the face of catastrophe, an institution can be brought to it’s knees.

 I have been unfortunate enough to have worked in a business that suffered the total destruction of it’s offices through fire. Every physical invoice and purchase order record , everybody’s personal work area and associated document storage, everybody’s PC and most devastatingly the server room itself were all destroyed.  The most recent local backup had not been performed for several weeks. Fortunately the order and the email system were located in another place, and the fire did not reach the inventory, so it was possible to continue trading – but only just. The destruction of intellectual property will destroy an institution. Few businesses can survive such an event.

Curiously enough at that time I found myself in the position where the files that were located on the hard drive of my own laptop, which was not destroyed because it was off site were among some of the only current records available for me to do my job. Whilst the merits of digital storage are obvious, it is also worthwhile to point out that local physical storage is not redundant and should not be discounted.

Google Docs.

Being suspicious of Google and the means by which it accesses it’s clients as information consumers, I approach the storage of any information on their site with a fair degree of scepticism. They quite plainly declare as a term and of usage that they will use the data that you store as a means of measuring you as a consumer, and therefore pinpointing which advertising will be most likely to be effective. Beyond this there is the potential to analyse your data as a means of refining their own corporate strategies. You become an unpaid contributor to their marketing programme.

Google Docs use a couple of applications that are modifications of existing Microsoft based formats. Therefore the capacity of the medium as backup and/ or file exchange system are limited. Having said all of that I am impressed by the testimony of teachers who are building worldwide curriculum programmes through the medium. The capacity of a popular site such as Google to transcend local intranets is obvious.

I have agreed with some fellow students to use Google Docs as a means of sharing documents in a Group exercise that is being undertaken in another subject. I will report on this as we progress through this assignment in the coming weeks.

Drop Box

Drop Box makes claims about it’s capacity to provide real time syncing for files. I found that across separate computers this is true: ie I attempted modifying files on my Mac, which updated the file online and was visible on my work PC Based laptop, both computers having had Drop Box installed. As the updates are performed a bubble pops up for a few seconds advising of changes, and giving reversion opportunities.

Frustration set in however when I saved a file from my PC to drop box, then modified it locally and replaced it to Drop Box in the same session from the PC. The modifications were not carried across. I found that the only way that I could successfully update the file to Drop Box in this manner was to delete it there and then replace it with the modified file.

Further to this new files and modified files that were saved to a folder from the PC and then replaced to Drop Box via the folder were not being replaced to the backup folders that already existed in Drop Box, that had been saved thence from the PC in the same session. Changes from the MAC were however being updated to Drop Box in this manner in real time. Bubbles pop up for a few seconds advising you of the change.

I conclude from this that the real time updating is limited to the extent that you cannot expect to transfer files that already exist in Drop Box in the same session on the same computer. This is contrary to the notion of this Cloud Storage tool as a real time updating system. If you are using it as a kind of network medium between systems this is OK, however it does not appear to be smart enough to pick up changes in the same session. I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong....

A history of sorts is provided by Drop Box of changes, and opportunities are presented to revert these changes, however the full history of changes is not available on the Drop Box interface.  This makes it a bit incomplete as a point of editorial reference.

The conclusion that I draw is that if you have finished your file for the moment then Drop Box is useful both as a backup and as an intermediary. Thus I have chosen to use it only for finished works, or works that are for the present finished and may require a network intermediary.

For the moment I’m sticking to my hard drive, the USB Drive and the network for complete record backup of works that are in progress. They seam more reliable and less fraught with potential pitfalls for the unwary.

Microblogging

The front page of twitter rolls selected tweets. A BBC World report on the Japanese disaster, commentary on the cricket World Cup, advertisements for iphone apps, teen angst, pop personality controversies. 

Conceived in 2006 originally with SMS in mind, by means of clever marketing the site grew exponentially within a period of months. The Twitter site is owned by a private corporate entity and employs a similar revenue model to Google: sponsored links enjoy search ranking priority.

The site operates along typical social media lines: You can follow favourites, are offerred suggestions over pages to visit that are based on your search history, you can communicate directly with other users.

I joined Twitter last year under the guise of @Anticraft. I did this as an add on to viewing Q&A. I found that the attempt to follow the discussion on the program was confused by the constant stream of commentary, sometimes concise, often insipid. A couple of weeks later the program started broadcasting selected tweets. Until enrolling in Information Management this was the extent of my micoblogging career. I have now reinstated myself in the medium and look forward to hearing from all of you.

Indeed Twitter as a medium of political message is highly effective. Social media forums such as this and Facebook are atttributed as major contributors to the recent Middle Eastern uprising. Other political phonemena that have been attributed include Kevin07 and Barak Obama. Twitter is powerful as a means of conveying a political message because there are millions of users worldwide and the constraint of 140 characters or less lends itself well to the simplification of a political message. 

Twitter and other microblogging sites provide for a point of concise focus. My local library service  has several articles on its website, but the Twitter feed for the same is communicating about one project in particular. Also highly popular is the deployment of a short comment and then a URL. Thus microblogging sites are a great place to place a banner that can lead to a more elaborated place on the web.

Famously, stuff said on Twitter cannot be unsaid. There is no option to recall a wayward tweet. Given the open nature of the site, and the fact that what you tweet may be retweeted, much care should be taken before choosing to broadcast your many pithy phrases.

Yammer on the other hand provides the opportunity for a closed forum that can be controlled by the administrator. As an example, already on the ISYS1166 Community we have witnessed students collaborating on assignments, assisting each other with IT Functionality, and sharing topics of interest in open discussion forums. Communities such of these can be highly valuable in organisations that have a geographical disparity; ie in ISYS1166 there are online students that are studying from all parts of Australia. The establishment of this community is a fantastic way to facilitate network relationships and collaborative work practises.

Regardless of the nature of the site, the devil is in the distraction. Much time can be spent (or wasted) in communication that is useful to the few, but not all, or in communication that is gratuitous. Organisations have been grappling with these issues since the advent of email; the potential for diverting oneself from the original purpose can cause just as many problems as it solves.

Newsfeeds

My exposure to Web 2.0 through this course is indeed exponential. Indeed having set up a reader, then reporting back to it later, up of course pops up all of the recent updates, job opportunities, developments at the local library branch.. Whilst I may not become a part of the local muslim women's leadership program, or have much of a chance at being a Senior Library Services and programs officer at this point, I am given an indication of the pace at which information is transmitted and received. Now it becomes clearer why the windows of opportunity and lead times are becoming narrower. Technology is making the world a faster and a more competitive place. Current subscriptions include some likely contenders (much rage over Harper/Collins) from the suggested list of blogs to follow, buddies in the Web 2.0 Adventure and of course, the local libraries website. More will come as my knowledge of this new world expands

Wikis and Trove

Editing a Wikipedia article was indeed quite confronting. All of a sudden I am behaving as an authority and a publisher... I delayed the task for a few days until I realised that my partner was an academic! Immediately I picked a subject of interest and began to trawl for information. This provided for a modest beginning: Here can be seen the article before editing:

Here is the modest edited masterpiece

Having gained some confidence with my new found authority, off I went to the Trove to become acquainted with some history. After reading the obituary of my Great Grandmother (1948) which had translated perfectly (with the exception that the newspaper itself had misspelt my Grandfather's initials) I began searching around for some information. After trying many different subjects along my way I searched on my home town's river and found this gobbledigook:

Here is the corrected article. It's an awesome concept to outsource to the public this task of translation. It was great to be able to make this little contribution to the public knowledge base. As you search the database you can come across some really interesting facts... I found out that my local railway station began it's operations in 1929, but there has never been an official opening. Perhaps here is an opportunity for a community event!

Week 1: Web 2.0 Adventure Blog Analysis Task (About 100 words):

Helen Blower's blog site LibraryBytes observes the transition from social media to social marketing in Web 2.0. She advances a community garden approach that is focussed on empowerment and collaboration.

There is much discussion there on the impact of technology on culture, particularly children. This raised some questions about class divide and our own preconceptions about the changing expectations of the information consumer.

The challenge for community libraries appears to be engagement and empowerment for the community as well as the provision of targeted and focussed information products. These objectives drive in opposite directions and are in themselves a dichotomy.  

The purpose of all this study

So why am I here? I'm perfectly happy doing what I am doing. I suppose that nothing stays the same forever and I have been considering this post grad for several years... Possibly it is a good thing that I have waited until now, precisely because there is so much change in the world of communication, media and information. Certainly I have been seeking a lifestyle that is not reliant on the city, but my career has been built in the events industry. Beyond party hire there isn't a great amount of opportunities available

I have had a passion for communications, media and the arts all my adult life. This commenced with music and a media arts degree which was highly unacademic and hands on (it was so much fun), progressed into the events industry, led to an inventory management and procurement role, and then progressed to the business systems representative job that I currently am doing (in between the business and IT).

I want a life that is not tied to the city, and a career that is not beholden to share holders. It seems that this is leading me in the direction of public libraries, but I have no real idea what such a workplace actually is. Certainly I enjoy borrowing from my local library resource and my son is an avid reader and is generally very eager to go to the library. I can see that I can merge everything that I have done before into this new career..

Further consideration

Well this isn't necessarily true. Certainly in my profession I work in a team whose members are located in Auckland, Adelaide and Sydney. We are regularly chatting using Skype and Microsoft Communicator and also regularly meet on the Microsoft Live Meeting format. There is not a day that goes past without the necessity for using any or all of these formats in order to communicate and exchange information. Whenever I want to go anywhere these days I will vet the journey first on Google Earth; recently we were considering purchasing a new house.... Of course we eventually actually went to the property, but beforehand much time was spent viewing it and the surrounding countryside; checking the fire risks and the distance to the nearest town. Indeed the initial contact to the agent was established by means of messaging from the advertising site.
Whenever we are considering purchasing any product, before entering a store we will visit ebay to get a perspective on the market... We have bought our last two cars this way, and we found our existing house 10 years ago on the Web 1.0 Real Estate sites. The new information technology has pervaded our lives to the extent where the new ways of attaining information are actually under the surface, intangible.
There is much fear of a world in which we have very little experience or familiarity. We are both empowered and disempowered by it all. We put up barriers of resistance in order to protect ourselves and our families from the ever encroaching world. Buying a gaming console for your children is fraught with political implications. A wedge is driven between the generations, creating alienation and animosity. However to resist is to deny the opportunity to understand and to make decisions that are informed and analytical.

Loss of innocence

Well my resistance to the information revolution lasted exactly 2 hours into my Post Graduate studies. I thought that I would at least be able to wait until my 7 year old had turned 9 before it became necessary to embrace this new world order. Here am I proudly wielding a mobile phone that is nearly as old as my boy thinking that I would be able to maintain my innocence for at least another couple of years....