Zach Beauvais Online

The BBC reported a few days ago that:

Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research.

The idea is that people are using the web to get things done, and don’t seem to notice that service providers want them to stick around. They even get tetchy with intrusions or ‘widgets’.

I agree, to a certain extent, with this statement—that people are impatient with adverts on sites. However, I’m not sure if I feel this article is that well informed. Yes, it is backed by Jakob Nielsen (so-called “Usability Guru”); which means it’s founded on stable research etc…

But, what’s a widget if not a short-cut to a result? An Amazon widget on a site is basically a way to buy a product without the need even to visit Amazon.co.uk. I don’t think it’s helpful to lump all widgets together on this one. Most widgets are functional—In fact, I’d go so far as to say that a non-functional widget is just a banner-ad.

It IS annoying when your browsing is interrupted with a flash game or advert placing itself over your text or form. It doesn’t help me make a decision, and actually puts me off that particular site. The Times Online had a long-running Land Rover ad which drove over the page, stopping me from reading. Since when is a Land Rover Discovery 3 an impulse buy?

What this article fails to notice is that users are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do: use. The internet is usable now.

I just watched this talk by Richard Baraniuk (link if embed doesn’t work), about opening up access to educational text and information. One of the most amazing ideas from his talk and the project they’re working on (Connections) is open-sourced text books.

The idea is that collaborative text-books, published on-demand could answer more questions and provide a better, more tailored resource to students and teachers. If educational resources are produced with granularity (i.e. like ‘Lego’ blocks which can be reused at a small level) they can be used and reused in a variety of novel and unpredicted ways.
Have a look and let me know what you think!

I tend to live in a world of metaphor. It’s not my fault, according to Lakoff and Johnson. We all use metaphor all the time: to construct our thoughts and work out abstract concepts.

I’ve been exploring this a bit in the context of the Semantic Web over on Nodalities. Please feel free to have a look and send me some feedback on what you think about this set of ideas.

Well, since blogging about Talis several times, I’ve taken the plunge and accepted their gracious offer to become a researcher for their Semantic Web Platform. That means I’ll be blogging a lot about the Semantic Web and it’s cool features etc. over on one of Talis’ blogs, especially ‘Nodalities’ where you can see my first post: Hello World–really original title, that.

Hopefully all my blogging here will put me in good stead to encourage discussion and facilitate dialogue (fancy words!) over there, and I hope everyone likes what I write… we’ll see.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading on the Semantic Web lately, and its primary feature from the perspective of  a writer is a difficulty of easy definition. It avoids simple sobriquet and isn’t explained without analogy and lengthy description.

The best way I have come to think of the whole system is as a set of perspectives, a way of looking at information in a network. Sir Tim Berners Lee described it using the Social Graph as an analogy, but described it using the Social Graph as an analogy, but Nova Spivack, from Radar Technologies,  has a brilliant talk about the Graph which explains the concepts and history behind the Semantic Web:

Nova Spivack - Semantic Web Talk from Nicolas Cynober on Vimeo.

The folks at Read/Write Web have published an article I wrote  for them about UK-based innovations company Talis.

Feel free to have a look over at the post, and feel free to leave comments either on Read/Write Web, or here on zachbeauvais.com.