Weinberger 9-10

I was reading chapter 10 of Weinberger (around page 202-203), and read the text that said:

"Benkler says the right question isn't whether the Web provides perfect equality but whether it provides more equality than 'the one-way structure of the commercial mass media'... in those conversations we hear multiple understandings of the world, for conversation thrives on difference... But there will always be multiple conversations and thus multiple understandings".

This information reminded me of the previous chapters in Weinberger's book about Wikipedia, and the growing conversation that occurs within a Wikipedia article. The whole idea of 'multiple conversation and thus multiple understandings' branches onto the idea of Wikipedia-users arguing their case within an article on the site.

However, it seems apparent later in chapter ten that Weinberger used examples so closely linked to his Wikipedia examples because he would later speak about Wikipedia (he brings it up again on pages 207 - 209).

Within this text, Weinberger is comparing the paper back version of an encyclopedia, such as Britannica, and the online wiki of Wikipedia (I originally wrote this sentence as "the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Are we allowed to call Wikipedia an encyclopedia?) . He mentions that the length of the text within the Britannica offers a suggestion of importance of that article to the reader. He gives the example of Oliver Goldsmith, and his entry in the Britannica and how it has diminished in size since 1911. "In the 1911 edition of the Britannica, the Goldsmith article was 6,000 words long. In the latest editions it's down to 1,500 words". Weinberger compares this to articles in Wikipedia. The length of articles in Wikipedia could suggest how important the article is to the masses, however it could also suggest that the article is important to just one person.

From this, I have gathered that there is a more humanistic approach behind the works of Wikipedia versus Britannica. This could be viewed in the realization that Britannica leaves no room for interpretation. There is no way to read an article in Britannica and then read a follow up article that suggests an opposing viewpoint. Within this chapter it seems as if Weinberger is saying that we need to understand all of these understandings/viewpoints in order to get a better understanding of the actual topic at hand.

One thing I found interesting today while reading up about the Swine Flu was how similar the articles on the online version of the New York Times are to the articles of Wikipedia. The text of both are swarmed with links to take you elsewhere. Does anyone know if this was the case 5 years ago with the New York Times? 10 years ago? Also, if you were interested in the Swine Flu (what it is, where it is located), would you first go to the New York Times search engine, or Wikipedia's search engine?

Weinberger 7-8

How fitting that Weinberger talks about Wikipedia after I decide to write my multimedia letter on wiki's.

I think that Weinberger gave me a lot of interesting negative things to speak about within my letter. By this I mean what not to use a wiki for. My favorite quote from the reading had to be when Robert McHenry said:

"The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him."

Now obviously McHenry is a bit bias, since he is editor in chief of Encyclopedia Britannica, but I thought that this was a beautiful way to outline what you could find when researching with Wikipedia. I couldn't help but imagine being in a bathroom stall with this quote, thinking of all of the writing you see on the walls. What Weinberger is saying with this is that at a site such as Britannica, or a news site like NY Times, there are people in charge of getting every little fact straight, while at Wikipedia anyone is capable of posting anything online. "Its authors need not have any credentials at all. In fact, the authors don't even have to have a name" (Weinberger 134). This could be beneficial in many ways, but the negative aspects of the site stick out as well, as it develops an anonymous screen to the reader. Every one knows that people are more willing to tell a rumor/lie if they know that their name wont be attached to it.

The idea of developing neutrality through Wikipedia posts seems like a bit of a stretch to me. In most cases, people wont want to change their minds - it's just what people do. In most cases I feel as if you would have to post both sides of something in order to produce a NPOV (neutral point of view). Is that really considered neutral, or is that just posting both sides to make everyone happy?

McCloud

How can anyone not enjoy McCloud's reading; it's a comic!

I enjoy how McCloud seems to have emerged us in this vast history of images in such little space. I managed to read through this chapter in about 15 minutes, however there was so much information there to consume. He seems to brush up on several examples, and the images that go along with it make it easier to pick up on what he is saying. For instance, on page 147 when McCloud is speaking about the evolution of poetry he says "...poetry began turning away from the elusive, twice-abstracted language of old toward a more direct, even colloquial, style". Now, by just reading this sentence, I would need a dictionary to understand what McCloud is trying to say. However, the graphic novel offers examples through pictures - demonstrating by suggesting a poem from 1819 that reads such as: "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness...", compared to a poem written in 1890 that says: Facing west, from California's shores,/Inquiring, tireless, seeking/ what is yet unfound...". It is safe to say that McCloud's use of text is working with the image in order to convey the general meaning to the reader.

One part of the chapter that was interesting to me was McCloud's ideas of "New Media". I remember interviewing Dr. Springsteen last semester for another class project, and she brought up the question of exactly what is New Media. How can we hire professors to teach New Media if we can't define it? McCloud expressed that New Media essentially "begins its life by imitating its predecessors". He offers the example that many early movies could be compared to filmed stage plays, because stage plays were the most similar medium to the invention of moving film. Over time of working with this medium, it will evolve.

This makes me think of the advancement of film. Here is an example of one of the first moving films from the Lumiere brothers, Arrival of a Train. When the movie first premiered, it had been said that audience members were terrified that the train was going to hit them, since they had never seen anything like a moving picture before. The movie also uses music instead of dialogue. Soon thereafter, silent movies were created, and after that, "talkies" were being created with audible dialogues. This evolution carries the trend of what McCloud speaks of in chapter 6. 

Krug's DON'T MAKE ME THINK Pages 93 - the end

When we did the trunk tests with group members websites last week, we all basically knew what every one was trying to go for because we're all in the same boat. However, I wonder if I had some of my friends who aren't taking the class to take the trunk test with my site - how would they fare?

On page 99, Krug offers other questions to take into account for strictly your home page. For some of them, I feel it will be difficult to answer without completely spelling out what the motive of the classroom project is, and that isn't "user friendly". For instance, with my website (www2.potsdam.edu/greenca190), you automatically see my name in bold print at the top of the page.
What is this? - this is obviously Christopher Green; but what about Christopher Green?
What does "Christopher Green" have here? - It looks like links to assignments, and an online writing portfolio. But why?
What can I do here? - Look at his work.
Why should I be here - and not somewhere else? - Because I'm Chris Green.

Krug says that the viewer should be able to answer these questions at a glance, correctly and unambiguously. However, I feel as if in order to "get" our websites from an outside-the-classroom point of view, I am going to need to put a giant chunk of info somewhere on the page. That doesn't follow Krug's rules.

One portion of the reading that I found interesting was "Farmers vs. cowmen" (pg. 126). I never thought of the internet as a "perennial struggle between art and commerce". I guess it only makes sense though, as a Graphic designer would receive a different education from a student studying marketing in school. One profound example I can think of of the difference between a graphic designer making a website and a marketing student making a website is the site for the new Star Trek movie coming out. The website first opens up to a loading screen, and takes a hell of a long time to do so. A trailer for the movie then plays, and afterwords you get the web page. It automatically sends you into full screen mode, which slows down my computer drastically. Then, you're completely taken awry by the site because it feels like a video game. I can tell that the creator wanted something somewhat futuristic, being that it's a site for Star Trek, but it's just difficult to navigate through since it's so over the top and breaks the "conventions" of internet usability.

Viewers also differ in opinion of websites. Reading this chapter can make me see how some people would prefer Yahoo over Google, when before I read it I figured they were just similar search engines. Yahoo seems to offer more then just a place to search - it offers newspaper headlines, horoscopes, games; an abundance of information right their at the home page. Some people might love all of this information, but some people might get overwhelmed. Google's homepage on the other hand is a bit more simple. It appears as simply a search engine, however has a simple horizontal toolbar all the way at the top for e-mail, news, maps, etc. This offers a more clean homepage, without so much coming at you at once. It seems more relaxed, and seems to suggest the search engine as its most profound feature.

Steve Krug - Don't Make Me Think

First and foremost, I would like to say that I think it is ironic that a person is writing a book about Web Usability with so many footnotes. I can only imagine that I am not the only person who absolutely hates footnotes, because my eyes have to travel up and down the page on a consistent basis. Krug even talks about how people get tired and frustrated when moving their eyes across a web page searching for what they need to find.

Some of these footnotes he writes are frustrating because they just seem unnecessary. For instance, on page 4: I have an even cushier job now. Since the book came out, I spend a lot of my time teaching workshops, where, unlike consulting, there's no opportunity to procrastinate and no homework... I don't really care what you're doing now. I care about web usability, which is why I opened this book. Some footnotes used by Krug are useful, however a lot of them seem to just take up space, which he advises you not to do with your websites.

However, one portion of the book I found to be extremely interesting was Chapter 3. "Conventions are your friends" it says, and somewhat advises you to try not to be original. Krug points out that people are use to the way the internet is - some that come to mind are buttons/links, navigation bars, search bars, etc. It's alarming how you don't notice these conventions until Krug points it out. The metaphor of "reinventing the wheel" when it comes to conventions is a great way to put it - and Krug says that you can't explore possibilities that range to outside of these conventions, because it will confuse web users who are accustomed to them.

Post Four

Anne Wysocki’s “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty” was some dense stuff, and after reading it I really wish I gave myself more time and broke it down in between days. Essentially, Wysocki argues that “teaching the visual aspects of texts are incomplete and, in fact, may work against helping students acquire critical and thoughtful agency with the visual”.

I would have to agree with Wysocki’s argument. She uses the ideas of Robin Williams, whom we have read already, and Kant, who we are on the verge of reading, to explain her point.

What I got out of her depiction of Williams point of view of visual elements is that Williams is to textbook with visual elements. It seems as if Williams’ point of view is a math equation, where there is either a wrong or right answer with how to perceive a visual element. Williams’ point of view includes the elements of contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. Wysocki argues that all of these elements together helps explain to the viewer what is important in the visual text, but it doesn’t give the reader room to explore the visual of the visual text. She uses the Peek advertisement that Dr. Springsteen showed off in class on Tuesday, and said that Williams’ ideas don’t offer the reader any explanation for why the picture is on the advertisement.

Post Three

Upon first reading the first two chapters of David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous, I was enthralled by his writing style and the information he was giving to his reader. After reading Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, I still admire his voice, however the information he is giving the reader seems to be awfully repetitive.

Once again in Chapter 5, Weinberger goes on to give an example to the reader of a type of system that needs organizing. In this case it’s a silverware drawer within a mutually rented college home. Then, as we read on Weinberger demonstrates to us new, fascinating ways that technology is replacing old ways of organizing.

In Chapter 3, Weinberger wrote about Amazon.com. He mentioned that Amazon’s system of giving every thing “more then one category” ends up being beneficial to the search process because you can find what you want to find by not having to narrow your search so precisely. In chapter 1 Weinberger also spoke about how a website like Flickr.com adds more information to certain pictures in order to be able to find those pictures in a multitude of places, similar to Amazon’s system. Here in chapter 5 Weinberger is once again writing about how tagging is making certain topics easier to find on the Internet, like with Delicious.com’s system – which happens to sound very similar to Amazon’s and Flickr’s. Is anyone else noticing a repetition here?

One example from the text that I use almost every day is Wikipedia’s method of tagging. Weinberger even explains how useful it is within chapter 5. I always find myself going in circles on Wikipedia, by looking up an athlete then somehow ending up reading about some guy that opened up a miniature-golf place that is named after that athlete. At least it keeps me entertained.