March 09, 2005

Bibliography

Bibliography

This is a working Bibliography for my research paper: Our Relationship with Information in the ITR - Out of control or not? I am confident that I will find additional sources of information to add to this list.

In addition to the guidelines set fourth in our course’s Study Book and the APA manual, I used the UNC-CH Libraries Citing Information.

BOOKS

Brown, John Seely & Duguid, Paul. (2002). The Social Life of Information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

This book provides an excellent insight into the limits of information and discusses the aspect of tunnel vision.

Shenk, David. (1997). Data Smog: Surviving the information glut. London: Little, Brown and Company.

This book provides the foundation for my discussion of Data Smog. Shenk provides statistical information about the jump in average word read over the years (although dated) as well as information on how society as a whole handles Data Smog.

LEXISNEXIS

Getting a grip on our information overload. (2004, August 9) Investment News, p. 8. Jim Pavia. Retrieved March 6, 2005 from LexisNexis Academic database.

This article has some interesting statistical information that should be useful in my research.

How to prevent information overload. (2004, May 1) Direct. p. 6. Paul Bradley. Retrieved March 6, 2005 from LexisNexis Academic database.

This article briefly describes the importance for companies to data mine - a set of techniques and methodologies that can detect patterns and trends in large data sets. The idea being that if companies have technology to help them organize their date, they can use it more effectively.

Information overload: understanding the type of learner you are to better handle the day-to-day barrage of information effectively. (2004, May 22) Edmonton Sun Alberta, Canada. p. 68. Anita Bruzzese. Retrieved March 6, 2005 from LexisNexis Academic database.

This article is helpful in defining how different learners can deal with information overload.

So many pages, such feeble search; Microsoft is just the latest tech outfit to tackle the info-overload problem. It's joining a host of others that have miles to go. (2004, July 16). Business Week Online. Steve Hamm. Retrieved March 6, 2005 from LexisNexis Academic database.

This article describes the need for Microsoft and Google to do more to put the information individuals look for in their hands quickly. I do not anticipate using this article, but it has some interesting statistics on how much money organizations spend on trying to create a system that more effectively gets relevant information into users.

Turn it off. (2004, April 25). Sunday Mail Queensland, Australia p. 4. Joanna Bounds Retrieved March 6, 2005 from LexisNexis Academic database.

This newspaper article has interesting statistics on the amount of new webpages are added to the Internet. It also discusses the need people have to process information, even if it is an overwhelming amount of information.

Unplugging the addiction to information overload; professor urges protection of psychic space, quiet time. (2004, May 10) The Washington Post, p. A03. Anonymous. Retrieved March 6, 2005 from LexisNexis Academic database.

This article might be helpful as an example of a person who tries to balance Information Overload and life. The specific example here is the subject’s observance of the Jewish Sabbath – when he is not allowed to use the computer.

WEBSITES

Anonymous. (2004, May 1). Managing Information Overload -- A conversation with Erik Brynjolfsson of the MIT Center for eBusiness. Retrieved March 8, 2005, from CMP Optimize Online Magazine Website: http://www.optimizemag.com/article/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ZGIYZVT3WEDW0QSNDBCSKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleId=19502343&pgno=2

This interview with Erik Brynjolfsson discusses the how business can manage Information Overload without loosing productivity by discussing his research. Erik studied the communication between headhunters and executive recruiters over a two years by tracking their emails, questionnaires, and interviews.

David Shenk. (date unlisted). David Shenk. Retrieved March 8, 2005. Website: http://host190.ipowerweb.com/~davidshe/index.html

This website lists all of Shenk’s publications and interviews and will be useful as a secondary source for his Data Smog book.

Peter Lyman, Hal R. Varian. (2003, October 27). How Much Information? 2003. Retrieved March 8, 2005, from The University of California Website: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/

This site offers a number of statistics that will be useful in illustrating the jump in formation we process. Also, I can use this site as an example of a research project that effectively uses hyperlinks and is appropriately laid out on a website.

Posted by arosenst at 08:25 AM | Comments (1)

March 06, 2005

How Semiotic Analysis helps to plan web pages, sites, and blogs.

“The important goal of a website is communication, and metaphor is a significant component of successful communication using a computer interface, and yet it does not appear to have been adopted.”
Grant Sherson The Relevance of Semiotics to the Internet: How Web Designers use Metaphors in Web Development

When creating and planning webpages, sites, and blogs, it is essential to keep in mind the ways audiences understand the signs. Iconic Metaphors are helpful in the process.

We store signs and metaphors in our minds and can apply their meanings effectively when prompted. For example, two browsers Netscape and Explorer both use similar interface designs that make good use of metaphors.

• Both use ‘home’ buttons to take the user back to their homepage.
• Both us a stop symbol to allow the user to stop a page from loading.
• Both use colorful moving icons to show the user that a page is loading.

However, the interface design between websites and blogs is not always this similar and does not always effectively use iconic metaphors. This is to be expected on some level as different sites and blogs strive to be unique. However, the lack of memorable metaphors slows down communication while the user is forced to learn another set of buttons or tries to remember the sites metaphors.

Webpages within the same site and blogs should be homogeneous. The repetitive use of metaphors within a site reminds the user where the and helps to create better communication between the site and the user.

Posted by arosenst at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2005

Greenwich Dream Time - Full Article

(ZipUSA: Greenwich, Connecticut) David Rakoff. National Geographic Feb 2004 v205 i2 p118(5) (1075 words)


http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0402/feature6/index.html
National Geographic, Feb 2004 v205 i2 p118(5)
06830: Greenwich dream time. (ZipUSA: Greenwich, Connecticut) David Rakoff.


Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2004 National Geographic Society


With its rolling lawns and elegant buildings, the campus of the Greenwich Academy is as imposing and beautiful as many full-blown universities. Founded in 1827, Connecticut's oldest school for girls, teaching preschool through grade 12, is a dream of academic girlhood. Even the lacrosse field seems an expanse of perfect, implausible green.


It is an implausible green, as it turns out. The grass is artificial, an indestructible carpet woven atop a bed of synthetic mulch. Reaching down, nay fingertips bring up a fine trace of the "soil," a particulate mix of black rubber crumbs. A student walks along, singing a refrain of a song in French. Her lovely voice carries out over the field to a group of stretching athletes. I jump a few times on the ersatz turf and feel a springing weightlessness.


Perhaps this buoyancy is nothing more than the boundless sense of possibility brought on by the affluence that permeates this town. A scant hour from Manhattan by train, Greenwich, Connecticut, is synonymous with wealth in America. A particular kind of wealth; specifically, Old Money--in some sense older than the nation itself. When Paul Revere rode through in 1774 (a year before his famous ride), Greenwich was already 134 years old. Were he making the trip today, he would surely have traded in his nag at the Bentley or Porsche dealerships in town.


Along Greenwich Avenue, the main commercial strip, the sense of longstanding privilege glows as if frozen in amber. The street is redolent of an idealized past (Gap and Banana Republic notwithstanding). Uniformed officers call out "Cross!" when it is safe to do so. The 75-year-old Subway Barber still sports its sign of art deco steel letters; in the front window, chairs in the shape of tiny red convertible roadsters seat its youngest customers.


For purest nostalgia, however, nothing compares to Best & Co., a children's apparel store full of antique toy cars, rocking horses, girls' wide-brimmed straw hats, and boys' seersucker jackets in impossibly small sizes. The original store, established in New York City in 1879, gave up the ghost in 1971. The Greenwich incarnation is all of six years old--not that one would know it. It's a High WASP movie set, a brilliant simulacrum of burnished wood, miniature sofas, and glass display cases imported from New York (as are many of the town's residents). Ironically, Best & Co.'s owner and chief designer is Susie Hilfiger, whose ex-husband, Tommy, has made a fortune outfitting hip-hop kids, the spiritual opposite of this starched primness.


Concern with appearance, contrived or not, fits with the town's reputation as exclusionary. It's an image that wearies and chagrins some residents. One woman asks if I'm going to write "the usual slam," while another leaves a message, hoping I won't be too "sarcastic" People feel duty bound to drive me through Chickahominy, one of the town's working-class neighborhoods. They point out the renovation of a charming old redbrick building for the Boys & Girls Club for underprivileged youth--a project entirely funded by private donations.


"There is ego here, but almost no arrogance," says Diane Terry, a 15-year resident and mother of three who runs an adventure-travel business. Her nuanced distinction is worth understanding. One needs at least a modicum of ego to make upwards of a million dollars a year--which many residents do--while arrogance would be woefully out of place in a town where there is always someone with a good deal more, and a good deal older, money.


That Old Money dominance has shifted, however. Dozens of investment firms have been established in Greenwich, making it a hedge fund capital rivaling Manhattan. More people commute into town than out of it, and only 28 percent of today's residents were even born in Connecticut.


Parsing the Old Money-New Money distinction is ultimately futile. Yet more than one person makes a concerted effort to apologize for the arriviste "McMansions" springing up everywhere. The rap on these newer houses is that they are too opulent, striving vulgarly for Old World legitimacy. But to an outsider they seem indistinguishable from the more established manses. A gray-shingled colossus on the water built with telecommunications money seems no larger and no gaudier than, say, the century-old blinding white replica of the Petit Trianon palace of Versailles.


It's an interesting concept: astronomical wealth as great social leveler. It might explain the marked lack of competition among the 25 debutantes and their parents at the annual Greenwich Cotillion, a fund-raiser for the Junior League. All is a happy buzz as the girls mill about in their long white dresses with bouquets of pink peonies. They wear surprisingly utilitarian hairstyles--lots of sensible comb-outs or plain barrettes. "Most cotillions in America are society driven, with girls included only by invitation or lineage;' says Junior League president Laura Geffs (a "post-deb" from South Carolina). "We don't turn anyone away." Indeed, every senior high school girl is invited. Each participating debutante is required to do community service (and each family is required to pony up $5,000 for a table for ten).


There are military campaigns less carefully planned and executed than the Greenwich Cotillion. At 7:47 the debutantes line up. At 7:55 their fathers enter, peeling off one by one to the strains of "When the Saints Go Marching In." At 8:05 the young ladies and their escorts advance to "Thank Heaven for Little Girls." It's amusing, this use of beloved standams as subtextual commentary: But what can it mean when the music shifts to the beautiful albeit ill-advised choice of the Gershwins' song for the lovelorn, "But Not for Me"?


At 9:08 the debutantes waltz haltingly with their fathers. The couples bump up against one another sweetly, like apples in a bathtub. The evening's light drizzle has graduated to full-on torrential. It sounds like applause against the walls of the enormous tent.


In 1640, when Greenwich was founded, the settlers had little idea of the nation whose birth was more than a century away, or of how Greenwich itself would become a shining symbol of that new republic's most bountiful promise. Even now, the place appears as an almost unattainable dream.
06830
POPULATION OF ZIP CODE:
24,552
HOMES WORTH A MILLION DOLLARS OR MORE:
Nearly 2,000, or 47%
MEDIAN FAMILY INCOME:
$105,500
PEOPLE LIVING BELOW POVERTY LINE: 1,350

Posted by arosenst at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)

Greenwich Dream Time

Greenwich dream time
by: David Rakoff
from: National Geographic Magazine, February 2004 v205 i2 p118(5)
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0402/feature6/index.html

Article abstract: The article introduces life in Greenwich Connecticut and explores the issues surrounding life in an exceedingly wealthy town including egos and arrogance. In Greenwich, the fight between old and new money has become a social equalizer.

Greenwich Facts from the Article:
• Zip Code: 06830
• Population of Zip Code: 24,552
• Homes worth a million or more: Nearly 2,000, or 47%
• Median Family Income: $105,500
• People Living Below Poverty Line: 1,350
• Located just over an hour from Manhattan by train
• Today, only 28 percent of today's residents were born in Connecticut

Ego and Arrogance
In Greenwich, there is a sense of longstanding privilege evident in the very structure of their city. Appearance is so important to some people, that they feel obligated to drive out-of-towners through a working-class neighborhood, where they point out the Boys and Girls Club building – a project supported completely by private donations.

Town residents say, “There is ego here, but almost no arrogance.” Appropriate for a place where there is always someone with a more, and older, money.

Old Money and New Money – Social Equalizer
Greenwich’s wealth, specifically Old Money, is in instances older than our Nation. However, Old Money is on the out as new investment firms take root in Greenwich, creating a hedge fund capital rivaling Manhattan.

With this increase of firms and people with New Money, astronomical wealth has become a social equalizer.

Everyone in Greenwich is rich.

Summary
Greenwich is a symbol of the Republic’s promise.

Suggestions to improve the article for Web experience:
Sentences should be shorter and easier to scan. In addition, sentences should be able to stand on their own.

Visually, the article needs more than just a girl in a beautiful dress on an elegant stairwell and a picture of a large estate. Graphs illustrating their wealth compared to Middle America and a picture of the town’s ego and arrogance would be helpful.

How the information changed for my version.

I had to leave out a lot of the language that made me want to visit Greenwich. The language in the original article illustrated the uniqueness of the city and created an image of people who just happened to be extraordinarily wealthy. I wanted to be able to visit Greenwich and marvel at the wealth. For this version, I hope that people researching Greenwich as a vacation spot, will see it as the city that captured the American Dream.

Posted by arosenst at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)