I’ve blogged about Kiva before, and my impression of them and their work keeps growing. Instead of talking more about how great they are, and how they make a huge difference, I’d like to simply host a very short documentary-promotion video about them. If you’d like more information, obviously, you can go to http://www.kiva.org. If you’d like my personal experience, please feel free to tweet me(@zbeauvais) or email me (zach at zachbeauvais.com).
I’ve been blogging a bit over on Nodalities about “stuff being connected”. The idea being basically: everyone is constantly creating data—all the bits of information that can be used in abstract. These tiny bits of information are constantly being generated by every process we undertake, from the obvious like online banking to the more obscure like driving to work (your odometer tells you how many miles you’ve gone, your on-board computer may store info about your car’s status, your satnav knows where you’re going and been, your mobile phone may know this too, the garage knows when your last service was… this list can go on and on). These data are more powerful when automated by software, and they become exponentially more useful when they are connected with other data. For example, the knowledge that £50 pounds left your account isn’t particularly helpful without a connection to that little bit of data which tells you the date of the transaction.
But why are some data more obscure—why don’t we even think about using some of them?
It may be simply because they’re not immediately useful to us, yet. We can, right now, log in to our banks and have a look at our accounts. We can shuffle and access and compare and analyse because this information is being presented to us in an easily-managed and understandable way. We have access to the raw data, and most of us have some basic understanding of why these data are important. I wouldn’t be surprised if readers of this blog have a spreadsheet or two with financial calculations on it, or use quicken with their balance info. We all know how important calendar events, emails, address book contacts, and bank balances are, and we have various systems to deal with them.
But, what do we DO with all the data we don’t currently access routinely? Well, this is where those connections come in. We can connect data together using some sort of framework, or abstract construct like a database. However, this database will need to be connected to another database (or exported to an existing one) in order for these new bits and pieces to be considered in terms of others.
More simply, the tools and formats we use all the time (spreadsheets, calendars, notepads, computers, odometers etc…) already exist but they don’t currently take into account the further levels of data we create. We don’t have a tool to see our car’s mileage at a certain date, so we’d need to walk out to the car, look at the odometer, and guess. The bit that’s missing is the connection—the link between information we have and a tool or another bit of data. In the previous example, we need a database to collect mileage, a connection between that and date data, and a calendar to view it—tools and data.
There are two sides to these software tools, though. There’s the side presented to the user, and the side that is accessed by processors and memory and software. I’ll blog more on the human-side later, but the “stuff” happens at the edge of these two coming together.
The “Semantic Web” works on a framework which enables any data to be easily connected to other data. Instead of sitting in a traditional relational database, which makes its connections based on a set of specific instructions (schemas), all the data are encoded with a bit of information identifying them to the web. In essence, each piece of data has an address, and can be pointed to much like a web site points to another. This works at various levels of granularity, so individual records can be linked very easily, allowing for applications to be written on top of these linked data. These applications can then let us analyse, manipulate, swap, and USE anything, literally, that we can link.
Alongside this linked data infrastructure (call it the Semantic Web, or Data Web or just the Web) is the proliferation of computing hardware. Processors and memory are being manufactured into just about anything we can buy. Thiese are all working to take the stuff we do and “translate” it into data. Phones, cars, fridges, credit cards, clocks, scales, watches… we’re surrounded by little processors or bits of memory recording and crunching what we do. What makes this situation currently frustrating/exciting is that they currently don’t share their information, and aren’t “aware” of the potential of other computing.
So, what am I getting at? Well, like we’re saying over on Nodalities, hook it up! We’re getting data, that’s happening. We have the framework(s) and the distributed network (the Web), and we have decades of experience automating data-comparisons (which is all Software ever does, if you boil it down).
I’m planning to attend this year’s Future of Web Apps conference in London. Their list of speakers sounds fantastic, and I’m really looking forward to meeting some folks in real life.
I’m particularly interested in this conference for its stated focus on the web community. Just have a look at the Agenda:
How to grow and nurture your community
Work/life balance or Blood, sweat and tears: Which is the startup way?
Colliding Worlds: Using Jabber to make awesome web sites
Startups live – An interview with three new European startups
How to survive outside of Silicon Valley
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
There are also “Networking Opportunities” there. These sound brilliant despite the rather corporatese description.
They’ve apparently got seats left, and if you book before 4th August, you save £100.
If you’re going, let me know—we can meet up. I can tell you a bit about myself and Talis.
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. People can think to themselves: “I’d quite like to buy an iPod, right now.” Within a minute, they can have a confirmation email and estimated delivery date in their inbox. This is using the web, and I think it’s not so much a ‘ruthless’ thing or a ‘selfish’ thing. You expect to buy what you’d like in a supermarket, and no one would call you ruthless for not setting up camp there for the afternoon. I know I like to spend as little time in Tesco as possible, and I don’t think anyone who considers me selfish or ruthless does so on account of that.
This is actually an issue of usability and confidence. People are more confident in their ability to purchase, find information, and network online. The majority of my book, electronic, and increasingly household purchases are done on amazon.co.uk. I check my calendar on Google before confirming appointments, and I even check people’s statuses on Facebook to see how they are. This is confident, comfortable use. I don’t need to spend an hour on a site when I can get the info I need in my RSS reader (Vienna, it’s brilliant!), but I still want the content.
I’m also still open to relevant advertising… If I’m after an iPod, I don’t mind being shown iPod accessories, especially discounted ones. I don’t mind being recommended a new book by a previously-read author. But, I do mind being shouted at by banner-ads and I tend to ignore them.
Having worked in online marketing, I couldn’t imagine a less-useful tactic than plastering your content with splashy ads and irrelevant content. It’s not helpful or usable, and goes against the grain of how the web works. It’s an open garden, and it’s rude to litter. This does not mean we’re ruthless, we’re just getting better at keeping our spaces clear and useful.
There’s the bin, put your Flash-ads in on your way out of our park, mate.
I read about sliderocket over on R/WW, and at ZDNet, today, and signed up for a Beta. While I’m waiting for them to send one out (I hope) I’d like to talk a little about why I love the idea of this product.
Firstly, I was recently tasked with conducting a 40-minute presentation. This is something I was quite excited to do, since it was about the Semantic Web, but I didn’t have any presentation software on my PC. I downloaded a copy of OpenOffice, which has a presentation application built in, and found it ironically bland for an app called ‘Impress’. I know, as a person of geekish persuasion (I’m only half-geek, on my father’s side) I shouldn’t give a toss about what an application looks like, but should focus entirely on what it does and how well. But this is a presentation–aesthetics is what the software was written for. I’m not crunching numbers or writing code, I’m standing up in front of people discussing an exciting topic, trying to put forward a well-polished talk. I want my slides to reflect that–they need to add to the talk, and they can’t do that if they’re boring.
Not only this, but I find OpenOffice’s Impress seemed to have loads of options in random places, and a difficult-to-follow system of preferences. It has dozens of background settings, but it’s like pulling teeth to get a gradient you like.
Eventually, I downloaded a trial of Microsoft’s Powerpoint 2007 and found it much, much better. It’s easy to use, simple-to-navigate, and aesthetically pleasing. It’s huge downside, however, is that it’s expensive.
Now, having seen sliderocket’s site, and had a look at their demo presentation, I’m struck by three things. First, it’s gorgeous! The actual presentation is stunning, and eye-catching and flawless. This is desperately important for a presentation app.
Secondly, because it’s a web app, it can incorporate web-features natively. Granted, I find it hard to think why I’d need a hyperlink in a presentation (I’m there, pointing to it, after all), but it offers import assets from Flickr and other web-tools. This is a huge step towards a semantic-type application which could use the very latest information in a presentation (live stock reports, automatically-updated images, up-to-date contact information for companies…).
Finally, this is platform agnostic. It’s on the web, so you can use it on the web. Although there is an offline reader for download, you can play it using just flash seamlessly. No longer will you have to make sure the place’s projector will talk to your laptop (or like me, that the laptop they provide has a reader for your presentation ;~)). It’ll run on Linux, Mac, and Windows!
There is one, only one, concern of mine, though, That’s that when you click to advance a slide, your curser turns into a clock and you have a bit of a delay. This could be incredibly annoying for time-critical presentations or animations. We’ll just have to see how well this bears out in a trial, though.
Are we, as a society or set of societies too quick to categorise?
I think we have built upon the Victorian-era’s predilection for classification for understanding. You’ll notice, no doubt, that I categorised the idea of classification as Victorian. Perhaps this is a helpful metaphorical conduit for expressing a large number of semantic nuances–a sort of communicative shorthand. When I mention ‘Victorian’, loads of images appear in my mind: women in petticoats and parasols, men with mustaches, steam engines, industrial buildings, red-brick, tea, lack of smiles… and a corresponding set of ideas begins to emerge rather like a tag-cloud which gets more intricate the longer you focus on a single tag.
But, what if this becomes a hindrance to meaning. I am not alone in experiencing the frustration involved when someone tries to categorise you. My wife, a veterinary surgeon, was recently introducing herself to a middle-aged woman who had asked us how long we’d lived in our town.
“Oh, I recently got a job in the vet’s practice,” says my wife (who’s blessed with ageless looks which often leave people stunned to learn her real age)
“Really! Do you need some sort of qualification to do that?”
Both my wife and I had to bite back any reproach involved in explaining that it does indeed take quite a bit of training and qualification before being allowed to take a job as a practicing veterinary surgeon, the last of which being five-years’ worth of 40+-hour weeks of a veterinary degree and harrowing RCVS examinations.
What the woman was trying to do, of course, was to find out whether Wendy works there as a nurse or sweeping floors and cleaning kennels. Her surprise proved this when Wendy laughingly explained that she’s a vet and therefore has several necessary qualifications.
What this illustrates is a time when the categories we use as a conceptual structure don’t fit. The woman’s whole perception of my wife came to a crashing, embarrassing end when she was forced to re-render her conceptual structure. Now, I believe that we, as humans, require certain conceptual and metaphorical constructs in order to turn our perceptions into understandings. They, in essence, allow us to contain a concept in order to analyse it and let our abstract processes work. They give non-physical concepts substance so we can get our physical brains around them. (For more, I highly recommend Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors we Live By).
What I ambeginning to wonder is whether there is a glitch in the natural necessity for these constructs. What happens if a society becomes transfixed with its own metaphors? Or, maybe it’s just that the shorthand is used too freely? What does it mean to be ‘post-modern’, ‘ecological’, ‘ethical’, or any number of tags we use to convey huge propositions of meaning? I propose that conceptual tagging, and the short-hand language of metaphor is fast becoming the newest form of cliche. We are learning, culturally, to package more meaning than we understand ourselves into ever-smaller packages. Communication is beginning to break down at some levels due to ambiguity and a lack of understanding so that the entire semantic package is not necessarily being transmitted.
If I am having a conversation about industriousness, working hard, or innovation, I use the idea of ‘Victorian’ in a very different way from its use in a dialogue about expressive freedom, colonialism or interior design. So, to a certain extent, the context of the conversation is important. But what is actually happening when someone uses ‘toxins’, ‘carbs’, and ‘omega-3′ as tags for ‘unhealthy’, ‘bad for you’, and ‘beneficial’ respectively? I’d love to understand this phenomenon of communication more fully.
Please note: I am not attacking culture, education or the general state of the world, but trying to explore the concepts of understanding and communication. If you have ideas, please let me know them.
RT @paul_clarke: Good conv with 5 yr old about TBL. -Do you like this picture? :Yes. -He invented the Web, you know. :Did you say thank you? [zbeauvais]
RT @chrismessina: Proof you have too much email? When walking through security you realize you're carrying water and mutter "Shit, I nee ... [zbeauvais]
