6° (or -14°C) of Separation

In Linked, Barabási discusses the notion of “six degrees of separation”, according to which any two individuals are connected by no more than 4 other individuals. This is a direct result of our modern society; people are more connected, be it by computers or long distance travel, than ever before.

One such connection is the internet; it allows us to instantly communicate with people nowhere near us. This makes six degrees of separation quite feasible. I, through online communities such as deviantART, have friends in Great Britain, Egypt, and Denmark. I've never been there, but in one “step” I have crossed the Atlantic. Five more steps and I should easily be able to connect with anyone in Europe.

When I was in elementary school, there was a student who had immigrated with his family from India. Through him, I have a link to people in a country on the other side of the globe. Long distance travel like this makes the separation between individuals much smaller. Our acquaintance functions much like deviantART; they both make connections between nodes that otherwise would be multiple steps apart.

Works Cited

Barabási, Albert-László. “Linked”. 2002. London, England: Penguin Books, Ltd.

What's Up at the Rescue Mission

Since my last blog about the Rescue Mission, a lot more has happened. We've built a new index page for them and have started work on the next batch of pages that need updating. But in this post I would like to focus on Dreamweaver Templates.

In Dreamweaver, developers can built templates, which are basically web pages that have no content. Then new pages can be built off of these templates and the content is filled in; nothing else on the new page (the code copied from the template) can be changed. This is a great tool for developers who want to let others build new pages that will play well with the current web site. Standard things such as navigation, theme, and scripts can be put directly into the template, so others need only worry about filling in the content.

But this is only the most basic use of templates.

When a template file is modified and saved, Dreamweaver offers to update all pages based on that template. Suddenly, managing a large web site becomes a lot easer; there is no need now for PHP or other server side languages to built pages, which slows down load time. Instead, the page is built from the start.

At the Rescue Mission, Jeremy and I have used templates to make all the pages work and look the same. We can put the CSS and JavaScript in the template, so the people at the Mission do not need to worry about it.

Templates can be built off of other templates, creating what is known as nested templates. This way, templates can be built from more general templates. If the outer template (the original template) is modified, the nested template and all pages based on it are updated. If the inner template is modified, only pages based on it are updated.

We used nested templates to easily build one-, two-, and three-column layouts for the Rescue Mission. The index page uses the three-column layout, while most other pages use the two-column layout. Each layout is based on a basic layout that defines theme and behavior (scripts). The inner templates only require a short bit of new code to make columns. Again, updating is easy; only one file should ever need to be modified.

By using Dreamweaver templates, we hope to allow the Rescue Mission to keep their web site looking professional and uniform after we are gone, and to build new pages without a lot of work. To this end, we also plan to set up a blog, which would of course make the page even easier to update with news and announcements.

Here's what has happened.

Jeremy and I have been volunteering at the Capital City Rescue Mission for the past couple months now. They have asked us to do a few things:

• Import their website to Macromedia Dreamweaver
• Fix their layout issues
• Set up a blog and show them how to use it

These may not seem like particularly difficult tasks, but updating the website is turning out to be a real ordeal. The company that built the site used very poor techniques. The worst is the tag soup, a mess of HTML with no layout or formatting and overlapping, unclosed, and depreciated tags. Also, there is no CSS, so the layout is built right into the content. The website is so bad that Dreamweaver is unable to open it.

In order to open the website in Dreamweaver, we have had to rebuild the website from the ground up using XHTML (a stricter subset of HTML) and CSS. This allows us to build a Dreamweaver template, so new pages can easily be added with little effort. Also, this separates the page's content from its presentation, so changes can be made without worrying if it will break borders.

The blog is not as big an issue; we have set up a simple Blogger blog, and we plan to make it match the website's theme. The problem here is that we would like to set the blog up on the Rescue Mission server, but we are not sure if the Mission allows external FTP. If it does not, the website will have to link to the blog on Blogger.

For our last couple visits, we have been slowly integrating the new, template-driven web pages into the old site, but none have been published to the public website yet. We hope to get something up on our next visit.

Works Cited

"Capital City Rescue Misison". <http://www.capitalcityrescuemission.com>

The Onion - America's Finest News Source

The Onion is the internet's finest source for farce news. Here is today's headline story:

Unreleased Jimmy Page Guitar Riff To Be Retrieved From Secret Vault To Save Rock And Roll

GWYNEDD, WALES—Recent developments in the music world, such as the popularity of the Dixie Chicks and Sufjan Stevens, have created a "perfect storm of lameness."

The Onion has an RSS feed, or you may (as I do) receive daily e-mails with the day's headlines. The stories are generally funny, and sometimes absolutely hilarious.

Works Cited

Gwynedd, Wales. "Unreleased Jimmy Page Guitar Riff To Be Retrieved From Secret Vault To Save Rock And Roll". The Onion. 5 Mar 2007. 5 Mar 2007. <http://www.theonion.com/content/node/59249>

Reading, Writing, and... Blogging?

Weblogs, or blogs, are the new digital diaries, and they are gaining popularity quickly. It seems that adolescents are particularly fond of blogs; as much as 51% of blogs are run by teens. (Huffaker) Given this context, should not our educators be using blogs in their curricula?

In my Social and Community Informatics class, we have been using blogs (this one, for instance) to write our responses instead of traditional essays. This has allowed not only for a more relaxed atmosphere, but also the use of media other than the written word, such as images, movies, and hypertext links. Proper use of these media can help get points across more effectively, which is important in education. If teachers kept blogs, they could link their students to useful resources. Students, who would use their blogs to write assignments, could give and get feedback to and from their peers.

While blogs are great for delivering content, but what is the best way to collect content? The answer is RSS feeds, XML documents with short descriptions of and links to articles, blog entries, and other such content on websites. RSS feeds are given to programs called RSS aggregators, which display the content of the feed in a human-readable format. One such aggregator is Bloglines, which we use in my Informatics class. I have a couple dozen feeds, including the New York Times, BBC News, and the Linux Journal.

While Bloglines is good, I prefer a client-side aggregator (one that runs on my computer). I use a widget for Dashboard called NewsReader. Having my aggregator running in the background all the time is much more convenient than having to navigate to a page to see what has happened in the last so many hours.

I try to pick feeds to keep me informed on subjects that interest me, therefore I have mostly technology, computing, programming, and Apple-related feeds, with a couple news feeds to keep me honest. Bloglines recommended some feeds, but mostly I took feeds from sites I already frequent so I can let my computer visit them for me.

Works Cited

Huffaker, David. "The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom". First Monday. 3 Jun 2004. 26 Feb 2007. <http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_6/huffaker/>

Remember I was talking about Internet Explorer?

As I mentioned in my last post, coding for IE is a bit of a joke; one never knows what code will work and what won't without doing a bit of research. Unfortunately, I can't easily test any of the new features I add to this blog in IE (I'm on a Mac -- the best Microsoft will give us is IE 5). I've tested it extensively in Firefox and Safari (the Apple browser), but I have to log onto a PC to test in IE.

So, if you notice anything not working in IE, please comment or send me an e-mail (or just tell me when you see me). Thanks a lot.

Internet Explorer icon courtesy of Aaron Burrows.

Thought Answers

Computing has come a long way since its start back in the early twentieth century (although some may argue that computing actually began in the early nineteenth century). Even so, one of the main goals of computer engineers has always been to make their systems configurable. This is because an ICT's use is not fully defined by its design.

When a computer user is given a new piece of software, for instance Mozilla's Firefox web browser, he has expectations for the software based on both previous software products he has used and his current needs and job requirements. He may decide to customize and configure Firefox to fit his particular needs by installing extensions for the browser. While other software products may not support extensions as Firefox does, their users still have needs not exactly met by the current version of the product. In this case, the software's developers must listen to their users and try to release a new version of the product that more properly meets the requirements of the users.

One of the most well known examples of software whose developers that did not listen to the user base is Microsoft's Internet Explorer (which you may be using to view this page right now -- if so, I must encourage you to take a look at Firefox). When IE was released, Netscape Navigator (now the Netscape Browser) was the browser of choice, if only because it was the first graphical browser of its kind. For the next decade, Microsoft and Netscape competed in what has come to be known as the First Browser Wars, where both companies rapidly released new versions of their browsers, with little or no input by the users of the browser. Each release had new features which were either incompatible with or not supported by the other browser, which meant that any website that worked in one browser would probably not work well in the other. While all these features were being added, many bugs in the current versions were ignored.

Eventually, IE emerged from the war victorious, and Netscape was bought out by AOL. Since then, IE has been notorious for its poor support of many of the standards set by the W3C, the organization responsible for standardizing the different protocols used on the World Wide Web. Web developers have been pleading Microsoft to improve its standards compliance for years, but IE 7, the latest release, is still lacking many key features, including full CSS 2 and DOM support, both very important in creating dynamic web pages. Also, IE uses its own version of the JavaScript programming language, JScript, which is markedly different from standard JavaScript in several key points. This means that web developers have to spend more of their time writing code to support IE than developing the actual web site.

To solve this problem, Microsoft would need to support the full standards set forth by the W3C in IE. They would need to have more minor releases to fix bugs and implement the latest standards. They would also need to listen more to not just their users, but also the web developers who depend on their software. Most end users would not even know what DOM or CSS are, let alone know that their browser has substandard support for both. They might even blame the web site developers for sub-par performance. Therefore it is in the best interest of all IE users to improve standards support.

One of the most tragic examples of poor interaction between users and designers was the incident between the USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 655. In a combat situation, the Vincennes mistook the passenger jet for a fighter plane and, after attempting to communicate with it on several military frequencies, fired two missiles, destroying the plane and killing everyone aboard. After an investigation, the US government said that, due to combat stress, the crew of the Vincennes were unable to properly read the computer displays. The government also said that the crew could have been suffering from a psychological condition known as 'scenario fulfilment', which caused them to act out a training scenario while ignoring sensory input to the contrary.

Experts who examined the incident say that, while the crew may have been panicked, they should still have been able to use the computer systems properly. Whoever designed the systems should have anticipated that they crew may have been been under considerable duress during use; after all, the Vincennes was a combat vessel. According to an article in The Nation in August 1988 (about two months after the incident occurred), the Aegis combat system was never properly tested. What tests it did undergo tended to eliminate the element of surprise. The designers and developers should have understood better the conditions under which their systems would be used.

When it comes down to it, users depend on the ICTs they use, sometimes for their livelihood and sometimes for their lives. It is the job of the developer to make sure that the ICT is easy to use and does what the user needs, not what the developer thinks the user needs. Customization and configuration are ways for the user and the developer to reach a compromise; the developer does what he thinks is best, then the user requests changes in the parts he needs to in order to work properly. As Alan Kay, a professor of computer science, said,

The general precept of any product is that simple things should be easy, and hard things should be possible.

You can read more about Iran Air Flight 655 in its Wikipedia article. I don't know if this link to the Opposing Viewpoints article will work; you might need a membership for that. The document number is A6604712. When searching for information on the incident, I found that the Wikipedia entry was more helpful in getting a neutral overview of the event. The articles I found in the university's databases, which come from newspapers and magazines, tended to be more opinionated. Even so, they still had good insights and information.

Works Cited

Biddle, Wayne. "Testing charade". The Nation. Opposing Viewpoints 27 Aug 1988. 5 Feb 2007. <http://galenet.galegroup.com.libproxy.albany.edu/>

Kling, Rob, Howard Rosenbaum, and Steve Sawyer. Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics. New Jersey: Information Today, Inc., 2005.

Blog the First

There is a difference between the ways in which the popular media and scholars discuss technology. There always has been, probably ever since popular media was invented. Newspapers of the time probably glossed over the technical aspect of the light-bulb while the scientific community marvelled at it. But why does this difference exist?

The popular media must appeal to a wide range of viewers, both educated and uneducated. This limits the extent to which the media can examine technologies. News stories rarely talk about the programming or engineering that goes into any new technology, because frankly most people would not care. Instead they focus on how the technology impacts the lives of the viewers. Movies show computers as complicated and mysterious. This article on Drivl.com has a list of what computers do in the movies that does not (and should not) happen in real life.

Scholars, on the other hand, can assume a certain intelligence and understanding when discussing technology. They very often discuss the behind-the-scenes aspect of new technologies. The best example is the open source software movement. There are open source projects and communities springing up all over the Internet -- Linux and Mozilla Firefox are among the more well known. These communities are groups of programmers and software engineers who get together to design and build new software. If one were to visit their forums, one would notice the maturity and knowledge displayed compared to other more popular online forums. They discuss code and debate different algorithms, and generally talk about the "nerdy", less popular side of technology.

Maybe the average man does not care about the latest technology because it never really changes his life. After all, how revolutionary can new ICTs be? The answer is pretty darned revolutionary. The printing press was one of the most revolutionary inventions of its time; it allowed the middle and lower classes to afford books, which meant that they could have access to information previously only attainable by the rich. In more recent times, there are the radio, the television, the computer, and of course the Internet. The last is one of the most revolutionary of all, because it is still evolving decades after its creation. Search engines like Google and Yahoo bring information directly to the seeker, instead of him or her having to go out looking for it. Community sites like Youtube and DeviantArt allow members to share and discuss videos and artwork from almost anywhere on the globe. These capabilities didn't exist even 10 years ago. According to Michael Rothschild, a published economist,

Since the invention of the microprocessor, the cost of moving a byte of information around has fallen on the order of 10-million-fold. Never before in the human history has any product or service gotten 10 million times cheaper — much less in the course of a couple decades. That's as if a 747 plane, once at $150 million a piece, could now be bought for about the price of a large pizza.

That is an impressive figure. Remember that a byte is eight bits, that is the answers to eight yes or no questions. But the most impressive part is the fact that it has never happened before. Is that not what being revolutionary is all about? Surely, therefore, it is a little too cynical to say that ICTs never cause social transformations.

Works Cited

Kling, Rob, Howard Rosenbaum, and Steve Sawyer. Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics. New Jersey: Information Today, Inc., 2005.