Are we in a Digital Ecosystem?

A new perspective of the Internet - Information Ecology!

The 'information ecology' can be compared to the natural environment in that a relationship with mutual benefit exists between technology and the user, much like a symbiotic process. I must admit to liking the description 'information ecology' in terms of the Internet and the Web. It does not support technology or social determinism but instead requires acceptance of both as being necessary and equally important - one cannot 'be' without the other. This is an exciting business model for any online venture. If I understand it correctly.

 

Communication within the 'information ecology' represents the bridge or connection between technology and users. Information is knowledge and it is a resource therefore information has significant value. But I wouldn't confuse information as a technology, that is to say it is not just a set of tools in the context of this ecology. Information is knowledge in the form of data that is shared and dispersed by the technology. Switching from my often used notion about using technology when sending an email, to the idea of sharing information when sending an email, is an example of what I think 'information ecology' can support. Hopefully I am not way off the mark with my thinking here...

 

Communication ecology tells me that the focus is on the technical aspects of a particular environment. The word communication is often associated with technologies and the word communications (plural) sits with terms such as information technology.  Although nowadays, if I heard "Im in communications" my first question is "communications in what?". So even though the literal meaning of communication can be taken as it is within a particular environment or 'ecology' I suspect we don't use the term 'communication ecology' too much because it leads to misinterpretation. It's hard to change widely held and accepted ideas of what 'communication ecology' means.

Evaluating Web Sources

• http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/index.html
  Article index page "The Psychology of Cyberspace"
  Various articles by John Suder (various dates), Rider University, NJ.

The articles listed are all written by John Suler, Ph.D. although he does advise other authors may be included and identified. Suler's pages are situated on the Rider University, NJ domain. Suler is a Clinical Psychologist active in the field among his patients, peers and students. This site links to his other websites and affiliations which offer more investigation and research on many Internet related activities centred around human psychology. I get the impression he is writing to inform and it is fair to say that Suler's entire network of sites is a personal academic diary of his continued interest in "The Psychology of Cyberspace". The articles contain appropriate academic references and they are set out using subheadings for quick scanning of content, such as the article shown below:

• Which is better, an annotation with or without a screenshot?

A picture says a thousand words but a screenshot cannot. An annotation is more informative and answers key questions I would ask about the source, relevance and reliability of the subject. Snapshots of a site do provide a good visual cue of what the page should/might look like but it shows very little detail. A bigger screenshot doesn't really help as I'd rather just click and go to the page to read more that way. But, if the site had a diagram or flowchart, a screenshot would be helpful I think. Apart from that though I would stick with plain text anno's and a hyperlink.

For anyone else who might come across my 'site information preview', I'd like to use both methods: picture and text. The annotation is the best way for users to read about a site, providing it is an informative and helpful precis of course! Then I think a screenshot might also be useful, to make it easier for readers to visit the site if they did find the annotation interesting. The screenshot could be a clickable visual cue.

Web Tools

This is probably a good a time to begin familiarising myself with a few key productivity tools that will really help with my future studies. In particular I'm interested in categorising and filing URLs and clipping parts or all of a webpage. I want to be able to 'tag' my bookmarks for searching and it would be ideal to have all of this information residing on my desktop as well as online or 'in the cloud'. As I began testing the first few, I came to the realisation that a lot of productivity tools come in different shapes and sizes. Some of them didn't work or weren't made for my PC and others did too little for my own needs. And to be a little more selfish about this, I'm not at all keen in spending more than 5 demanding minutes learning how to use a tool. Below I've listed two of the required and one that I found along the way...

Bookmark Buddy

The software was quick and easy to download and install - it's file size was small enough for low broadband speeds and the automated setup was a fairly clear process. Bookmark Buddy is ideal for just about anyone to start using right from the get go... but it only works on a Windows PC, pity Mac and Linux owners can't use it. I'm guessing the software writer would have provided a version for different OS platforms if he/she could because other OS represent a significant number of people. After fiddling with Bookmark Buddy for a while I tried to find ways that I might begin to use it for my own needs. Using the example bookmarks and categories, I decided it would be too much work to customise, the software is pretty good but it requires too much thinking on my part to become a useful tool for daily use. So I'm not sure if I would use this yet as I'd like to use a browser based action to 'clip' website content etc. I'm not sold on using it because it isn't 'easily everywhere' like the web based Diigo or Delicious services. The final nail in the coffin was the trial period of 30 days. If I loved this software, I would be forced to pay for it or start again with something else - actually the positive thing about this tool is you can export your bookmarks after the trial period so that's great. The try before you buy scenario seems to be standard across the web but I find the purchase price a little steep when Diigo and Delicious are free and open to everyone regardless of the OS in use. The alternatives are web based such as the services I mentioned, Diigo etc. I think if one seriously needed to bookmark and organise their content links, Bookmark Buddy would prove too restrictive.

WebCopier

I found this software quick and easy to download and run. The 15 day trial is probably long enough to get a good feel for it's use but after a quick swizz on the website I got the impression this tool would have some difficulty copying all sites. I tried downloading from the Curtin student Blackboard (requires login) but it didn't work after I input my login details. I'm a bit wary about typing login information into software but from my previous attempts to ftp files to Curtin aka FortKnox I felt the uni was already safe from my feeble software tests. I would need to look for some answers as to why but saw how old and empty the forum was, support information needed reading and I'm already bailing. So I decided to try copying my blog instead. I set WebCopier to download just 50 files and other limits for bandwidth, filesize etc Unfortunately the process locked up, my computer screen froze and I couldn't wait past 5mins. REBOOT.

The reason for this frozen screen could have been caused by one or all of: my Internet connection, my computer resources, my blogger.com site, the unknown. Websites have too many different technologies and bits I don't understand (until it's too late) so I'm not keen on WebCopier at all. A reboot is a slap in the face for me, no thanks.

It's a worry, the software is quite easy to download and run but it requires much reading and study of its detail to make it work. Beginners might find this a nightmare.

EverNote

Clipping software is a great idea for Internet users who want more than a bookmark. OneNote is Microsofts king of clipping links and content but OneNote is limited to PCs and is pricey for the average user.

I really think that EverNote is a good alternative to OneNote - it's free as long as you don't use more than 40MB of storage for files. This might be a problem sooner rather than later I think, as I soon came close to that limit within days of frequent use. It's actually a great program to use, all the good things - it's a small program, easy to run, easy to figure out how to use etc. I'm using EverNote now to prepare for posting to my blog. I also use it more than MS Word because it's a quick program to load and run and I can do most things to my content. If the makers of EverNote continue to upgrade the program I will probably pay the $5USD per month to use it. That's like a coffee and cake at Cibo - I can give up that luxury quite easily!

Diigo

I had an old account at Delicious that I hadn't used for ages. But lately I have been swayed towards Diigo based on my own and fellow students experiences while testing Diigo out. I also came across a great page called 7 Reasons Diigo Tastes Better Than Delicious, and that tipped me in favour of Diigo. It is still early days for me in Diigo but the service passed my short attention span window of 5 minutes and that's always a good thing for users!I've installed the Digolet on Chrome and the Diigo Toolbar on Firefox. I don't use IE unless it's absolutely necessary so I did not bother to put Diigo on that browser. If you're used to bookmarking, tags and sticky note applications then Diigo is dead simple. The chat function seems a bit pointless but I can see it being a useful thing in collaborative work with other students. 

My opinion of Blogs

Although I've never had a blog before this one, I have nothing but positive feelings about what a it means to be a blogger.

I have yet to think of a reason to write my own blog apart from this one but that doesn't prevent me from appreciating the good things that arise from blogging.

If you look at what was available before user-friendly blogs came along, it's no surprise that there are billions of blogs online today. WYSIWYG applications were great but still required some technical know-how to make the content viewable online.

The development from CMS (Content Management Systems) which are Not user friendly, to WYSIWYG web blogging platforms has removed much of the technical hurdle for ordinary people. Now it's easier for anyone with something to say or just a curiousity to create their own blog - for free.

Age, sex, religion the entire gamut of worldviews make no difference here in the blogosphere.

I think blogs have extended the abilities from email and newsgroups, where the content of a blog is asynchronous but on a timeline that is surrounded by a relevant mix of hyperlinks and further choices within the blogs context. A single blog page makes a point or three and it serves up information without losing the reader in what might be termed irrelevant or uninvited communication. There is no such compendium of 'threading' or interconnecting patterns in an email or in newsgroups.

The true positive here is the blogger does not have to work hard at connecting ideas or forming loose categories since most blogs offer support to do that in some way or another that is point and click friendly.

Unfortunately the popularity of blogging lends itself to everyone thinking it's ok to blog about everything. Nearly. Some blogs are wrong, and I believe most of them fall under the business or commercial end of the blogosphere. Call it a gripe but I see no value in a blog that purports to help or inform when it's written like a product brochure or service proposal. I land on the page like that and immediately feel that the author is not 'there'. I expect a blog to give me a reason to believe there is a person with an opinion behind the page, but that's just me...

My Student Page URL

My URL is on a Curtin University server so it's not viewable for everyone:

http://student.curtin.edu.au/~14399200/

I chose to use the student web space because I am quite comfortable using the Unix/Windows webserver path to uploading websites. I had no idea this choice was going to challenge my every urge to bail and simply blog about it. Well I am not one to give up so easily so I used what is only useful to latecomers like myself... the Net11 discussion board; posts by frustrated students trying to ftp their files to their student web space. Thank you to all for participating!

The process involved finding the appropriate instructions, downloading the appropriate files, installing software, file transfer and then viewing. The instructions made it look simple enough. This paragraph gives the impression it is simple. But it was not as easy as it looks. In fact I often felt like I was trying to break into Fort Knox.

I found this task quite interesting to do - as I worked through each step, I reminded myself of the user considerations and overall security issues that the folk at Curtin University (obviously) thought about before they threw the student webspace keys to me. Impressive!

Copyright

OMG I had to double check that the cartoon image I used on my Email Metadata~ology page didn't breach any copyright. Phew I found the evidence I needed, it's ok to embed the cartoon in a web page as long as the code is left unchanged. I remember feeling confident about it being ok but having to scrutinise my image use just now made me anxious about missing details somewhere. I really like the cartoon and it's relevant for the page it's on, so to take it down would have left me feeling sad and a tad dopey as well.

• Would I be in breach of copyright if I put the Curtin University logo at the top of this web page for an assignment?

Difficult question. Although it's clear that the logo is copyrighted and I know it is also Trade Marked, it would be wise to seek permission to put it anywhere on the web page let alone at the top. I considered placing a screenshot of the Trade Mark page here but chickened out at the last minute as I'm not 100% certain if that's ok either! Because it's a logo I think I'd be pushing the limits by asking to put it where logos normally go - at the top of a page. A logo can be thought of as the identity of the entity (no rhyme intended, words simply fell) and having Curtin's logo at the top of this page would be deceptive, I could literally "ride on it's kudos and weight" with whatever I write.

I think :)

5 Web Writing Wrules

Quite often when I search for specific stuff, I come across some cruddy websites but the content was almost always spot on for my needs. That tells me that the author made a site that performs what it is 'designed' to do and not what it is perceived to be - perhaps the site was not intentionally 'designed' but hey I'm happy lucky down with it.

My thoughts on three 'web writing' resources...

Nielsens paper is still current but I wouldn't say it was applicable to all web writing. In fact Nielsens list would have helped me more if each (valid) point focused on a particular audience i.e. a student, retail customer, home-maker, HR manager. As the interest from budding web designers increases and creates new meanings, so would the list. Meaningful results for web designers are not all based on web copy. Sometimes it's just about how the reader got to your website.

The Dartmouth College information was great because it went further into the context of the web user/reader and gave all those web rules some meaning. I agree with one of the points mentioned, that long web copy is probably not suitable for Joe surfer but for certain users it presents no barriers and in fact necessary. Sales pages for a popular in-demand product or service could get away with longer web copy.

I liked the site by Dennis G. Jerz and especially his direction offered to 'newbies' in web design. I think his content is helpful and relevant even 6yrs later.

5 Rules for Writing Online

1. Say what your site says! Write at least one sentence or short paragraph that tells the reader what is to follow on the webpage. Apparently people on the web have short attention spans and are fickle (don't know who proved that but it's mentioned by many in web design and development).
   
2. Write for your audience. Know (figure out, consider) who your typical interested reader might be and write like you are speaking to her. Formal or informal? Should you use a friendly tone or write with more authority?
   
3. Watch what you say! There's a big difference and certain unpleasant implications between what you 'think' and what you 'say as fact'. Add another sentence if you have to, just to be clear about what you mean. If you're joking, make that clear in your text! Adding disclaimers may not keep you out of trouble.
   
4. Do some basic proof reading. On the web first impressions might make the difference between a sale, a subscriber, positive credibility or your reader might leave the site if it's too hard to read.
   
5. Know the difference between copyright and copywriting in the context of web authoring. Copyright is the one that could get you into trouble, it involves the issues of legal and rightful use of images, audio, video etc. Copywriting is what a guy like Joe Robson would do for your website by writing uber-sticky words on a webpage to help sell your widget or whatever you like really, he's that good.