Archive for the 'information media' Category

Understanding Typography


I thought I knew what typography was about before. I mean, I never claimed to understand the need to appear obsessed over it. But in general, yeah sure, some types are easier to read than others. Some have a character of their own. Don’t choose comic sans. And a few other heuristics that steered you in a generally correct direction.

However as someone who takes a pretty guerilla approach to the matter I’ve never been exposed to anything approaching the Zeitgeist of typographic design. Continue reading ‘Understanding Typography’

Faux Data: Infographics

The theoretical physicist Geoffrey West criticised existing accepted thought in urban theory before coming up with a set of constants that defined the relationship between city size and the output of it’s citizens (Each time a city doubles in size it’s per capita innovation, income, etc increases by 15% – and likewise the negative social actions of crime, pollution…). Previously he found a similar efficiency in biology where the larger an organism was the less energy per unit mass it required to go about it’s life.

It’s this track record in reducing a problem domain to a simple set of rules & constraints that is so impressive. The way in which theoretical physics practitioners go about solving for x – the sense of minimalism that drives the crunching of gigs of data and seemingly chaotic environment into understandable, predictable systems. It’s raw data visualisation in it’s purest form.

And then we have the humble infographic. Continue reading ‘Faux Data: Infographics’

Government Information Flow Online

bit.flow image courtesy Marc Wathieu

A grand title, considering the relatively niche aspect of government communications that piqued my interest in the subject. But it’s something that should perhaps be given much greater emphasis as society increasingly interacts with the state online.

Continue reading ‘Government Information Flow Online’

When to do Real Time

Image courtesy jayce 31

Google has done two ‘real-time’ things lately, one good one not so good: Real Time web indexing and real time web search.

With ‘er, hang-on a minute…‘ moments now surfacing in the public domain I find the contrast between the two to be especially important. Google in their traditional engineer style expound the benefits of both in shaving seconds of search: ’11 user hours saved globally each second’; ’50% faster indexing rate of content’; figures that prove the mantra – machines search better than humans.

Machines definitely do the donkey work better than humans. Continue reading ‘When to do Real Time’

Netbook Vs iPad: Hands Free Vs Pain in the Arse

Or An Analysis for Those with Just The Two Hands.

I agree with the enthusiasts – form factor is all-important

ipad vs netbook the form factor
Continue reading ‘Netbook Vs iPad: Hands Free Vs Pain in the Arse’

The StackOverflow Rant

I should probably open my commentary on the SO community with a more wide-ranging piece on the effectiveness of self-moderation and social badge collecting in rapidly scaling a web community but hopefully by dumping this the second opinion will be more insightful whenever that may be.

forum junkieOk so really I’m just a petty net troll who completely overreacts to criticism online. That aside, I still cannot understand how the answering army at stackoverflow come to the collective conclusion that every question on a close-to-the-bone programming issue requires some inane form of rephrasing or just outright blanking.

Continue reading ‘The StackOverflow Rant’

The Emperor Has No Clothes

Slacktivism has been exposed as a joke.

Angry MobHalf way through last week a nation erupted; the Republic of Ireland football team crashed out of the World Cup at the hand of Gaul, that of a certain Thierry Henry. A Facebook group was established. It took on something of a life of it’s own – over 300k users inside the first 24 hours.

“Something has to be done”.

FIFA made no mention of the incident in their official match report. It was edited several times, each time the Magnum PIs on Twitter reporting to the world the latest breach of instant populist moral values and punch-drunk notions of democracy. Avatars may not have been coloured green, but the online social network air was turning a particularly dark shade of blue and the feedback loop of increasingly agitated noise fed into itself, reaching a deafening cresendo online while steadily losing touch with reality.
Continue reading ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’

Indy Gaming & Destroying a Platform

Zynga Twitter integration: Why on Earth?This post started off as a comparison of two of the most prominent methods of indy game distribution on the web today – app stores & social networks – but has morphed into something of a warning shot to platforms who allow their open networks to be ridden roughshot over by games ruthlessly seeking distribution above all else.

I had hoped to discuss some numbers taking both leading Facebook & App Store games as a jumping off point. But one look at my Twitter homepage this morning aroused some angst.

To their credit the realtime stream networks have opened up their far-reaching update networks to 3rd party developers without holding much back. Photos on facebook and throttling search on twitter are by and large minor holdups which would presumably have grave performance issues to overcome first anyway.

But this power in the hands of developers doesn’t come without responsibilities.

Continue reading ‘Indy Gaming & Destroying a Platform’

Wave Theory

Making a bit of a splash (no more I swear) online, Google Wave has been trumpeted as the replacement of ’60s’ email and IM applications. It’s also got friends in high places at Google Towers.

This could be a turning point on the web.Vic Gundotra, Google Engineering VP

On seeing a screenshot my first thought was ‘Facebook news feed’.

It’s got a similar albeit primitive system of inline comment right now. While it’s a nice to have, it’s not ‘killer’ and some of the Wave features (every character typed is spewed out in realtime as if participants were viewing the same terminal) will turn a lot of people off straight away. Indeed I’ve a few ideas of my own regarding ‘next generation’ communication, and they don’t involve greater intrusion. While the inline editing is a good thing I don’t regard it as a big enough win to justify moving onto a new platform, cloud or no cloud. What would be wrong with sticking this kind of functionality into Google Docs? We need smarter comms not more of them.

First quality flame post appears to be at Gigaom

Insight From the Lesser Travelled World

Sometimes a breath of fresh air comes from a source so unexpected it really does astound.  Yet it is a depressing wonder why something so simple and honest cannot emanate from the West?

 But there it is.  An Afghan blog (sadly not updated since ’07) concentrating on issues of Herat and it’s hinterland – publishes reports submitted from various news agencies around the country.  What I am so impressed by is the simple addition of a ‘description of source’ footnote to the bottom of any external piece.  Contrast that with Western media treatment of current hot potato the Gaza Strip, where any random eye-witness appears to be taken at face value and any opinion an authoritive one.

[Description of Source: Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto -- Peshawar-based agency, staffed by Afghans. The agency used to have good contacts with Taliban leadership; however, since the fall of the Taliban regime, it now describes itself as independent and self-financing. OSC IAP20071006950019 Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto 1916 GMT 06 Oct 07]

By my reckoning the BBC would do well to provide such explanatory warning notes with a good proportion of it’s foreign correspondents!  Tribal Afghanistan is a complex society whose divisions at first seem obvious but as more is learned what was black & white becomes ever greyer, something we have a taste for in NI too.  At least some of their press seem to know how to see the wood from the trees.