The Most Terrifying Thing About Technology

So it’s Halloween and we’ve had a whopping two trick-or-treaters. It looks like that’s all for the night. And those two even came together. On the plus side, more leftover candy for me. Score!

As I was trying to think of an appropriate topic for a Halloween post, I recalled the most terrifyingly annoying concept to ever hit the Internet. I am, of course, referring to “screamers”. If you don’t know what those are you can watch a poor kid be terrified by one below.



Basically the unwitting victim is presented with a computer screen that requires their attention in some way. The one I fell for back in 2001 was “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” which encourages you to intently study the picture to figure out, you guessed it, what’s wrong with it. After a few moments, the picture suddenly changes to a horrible image, usually a bloody face or ghost, and a piercing scream erupts from your speakers.

Now, let me say that I love scary stories, Halloween, and all that stuff. It’s easily my favorite time of year. But I really, really loathe screamers. If you’re going to pull a prank on someone, you should do it face to face. For one, it’s not funny if you’re not there to see it happen. But more importantly, if you’re going to be trickster to your friends, you should at least have the decency to be there in person to face the consequences, as follows.



The end result is that every time I view a video or flash game on the Internet, in the back of my mine I'm wondering if it's another screamer, waiting to pounce on me.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Electronic Paper

As I mentioned in my e-audiobook posts, e-books don’t seem to be catching on. At least, that’s what everyone tells me. And it makes sense. I’ve never used one and have no plans to start using them as things are now. Personally, I prefer audiobooks, followed by real books, with eBooks coming in at a distant third place. But there is some technology which is largely under the radar still which I think could change everything.

It’s called e-paper (electronic paper) or sometimes electronic ink. It's a display technology designed to replicate the look of normal ink and paper. Unlike the LCD screens of computer monitors and PDAs, e-paper isn't a backlit display, which are notoriously hard on the human eye. Instead, e-paper reflects light just like an ordinary piece of paper. It can also be bent and crumpled just like regular paper, though it's typically a bit thicker than standard office paper, more like construction paper. The especially cool part is the power it uses. An electric current is needed to change what the paper is displaying, but once changed, the display remains without any additional power being used. In other words, e-paper only uses electricity when you "turn the page" in your e-book or whatever else you're viewing on it. And of course, refinements and advances are continuing to be made. There is already color e-paper, and kinds and even support video (though the quality is fairly poor at the moment).

This has been making news for several years, popping up in the occasional tech article on upcoming technology. So far though, it has seen very little commercial use. A few newspapers are experimenting with it and one cellphone model uses e-paper for its display. And every year, companies and analysts promise "it's just a couple years away". Still, it is coming, and it could bring about a revolution in libraries some thought (or feared) e-books would. The holy grail at this point is to create an e-paper book. Imagine a book which looks and feels almost exactly like a regular book, but there's a small memory chip in the spine. A touch of a button could switch the print in the book between any of the dozens of titles stored in memory, with more books easily downloaded off the Internet.

I have no idea what that would mean for libraries, or even the publishing industry as we know it, but I have to admit... that's pretty damn cool.


-Joe

Technology and the Easy Life

In this day and age, it’s something most of us have paused to think about. Is life really easier with technology? Well... maybe. It all depends on how you use it.

There's been such a push in technology for the last few decades, it's easy to overreach. There are all sorts of gadgets out there these days promising to streamline your life. Sync your palmpilot up with your computer and automatically copy over your work files, emails, schedule, shopping list, etc. etc. Everything you could dream of and more can now be synced up, integrated, and digitized. But do you really need that? Maybe some people do but I sure don’t. It would be vaguely nice and come in handy every now and then… perhaps. And then you factor in how much work and money it would take to get those gizmos to sync up and share data properly. Don’t forget to figure out exactly what data you want to sync and how to get just that data. And are you really going to blindly trust everything worked okay before you head off each day? No, you’re going to sit down and make sure the important stuff is still there. Is any of it even worth it?

That’s a bit of gadget-nut scenario but the same thing can happen to anyone using technology. Is it worth the time to learn this program? Will it really help your work? Sadly, it’s hard to know until you try. Luckily for me, I love playing around with all this tech junk in my spare time so I tend to know what I need.

The other problem is it’s not always up to you to choose your own technology. At school, work, and sometimes even at home, you have to take what you are given and just do the best you can. Hopefully you don’t end up fighting a computer all day when you could just take out a pencil and paper and be done in 10 minutes.

But is technology to blame for all these headaches? In part, yes. But I think the lion’s share of the blame falls on our own expectations. Think how hard life was 100 years ago and how slow things moved. Now imagine having the same timeframe for deadlines as back then, but with today’s technology. Talk about the easy life! I can see myself napping in my hammock already. But in reality, we have to compete -- faster, better, harder, stronger. Still, it’s worth thinking about. It could do us all good to use technology more sparingly yet deliberately. Make things easier, not just fancier.

So Easy It's Hard

Ah Wikispaces, how I liked you once. Well, I suppose that’s a bit harsh. It is still the best of the wiki services I’ve seen. But shortly after my first foray into structuring a nice page a steady series of frustrations cropped up.

My group (Mooresville) decided each member would create his or her own layout for the home page of the wiki. Diane mentioned that she really liked the St. Joseph Subject Guide Wiki, so my thought was to emulate their layout for the Mooresville Wiki's homepage. In an attempt accommodate people with monitors set to 800x600, switched the layout from three columns to two. A few minutes later, I had a nice enough looking page.

Well, kind of. The table tool in the Wikispaces editor lacks a lot of the options one would have with standard HTML code. The text was slammed a bit too close to the borders for my taste. More troubling, the shorter column was vertically aligned to the center of the table, instead of starting flush to the top, which looked rather bad. Eventually, I created a new theme for the wiki, copying the old one and adding in a bit of CSS code to fix up the table so it looked as pictured above. A bit annoying, but no big deal. However, as I turned my attention to the rest of the page, a rather troubling bug popped up. After saving any changes to the page, though I didn't edit the table any more, the result was this:

My headers and lists in the table had lost their formatting. Somehow a few line breaks in the code were deleted inside the table. I fixed it and tried again... and again... and again. But no matter what I did, the table format was always ruined the next time it was saved. Looking into the help section, I found the problem listed in their bug list along with a host of others.

Alright. No problem. I could insert my own HTML and make the table from scratch. This worked splendidly... until I tried to edit it. I couldn't. No one can. The table appeared as a little gray block in the editor. I could resize the block (fat lot of good that does anyone) and delete it, but that was it. Switching to the text editor was even less helpful. I could make a nice table for the front page, but no one would ever be able edit it, defeating the point of the wiki entirely.

Between the bugs and streamlined editors designed to help the non-programmer types out there, I couldn't get through to fix the problem. Of course, you can layout a nice page without tables or columns, but it sure doesn't help matters.

-Joe

P.S. Come to think of it, this makes wonder how the Butler group is going to handle making the new-fangled hybrid wiki Butler is requesting.


UPDATE (10/10/07) : After doing some more digging, I found a wiki that explains how to create your own wiki themes. Turns out it shows the correct way to make columns too (avoiding the table tool). I'll add the link to the classwork wiki too.

http://themes.wikispaces.com/

Forecast: Cloudy

Tag clouds are perhaps one of the more interesting developments in Web 2.0 technology. Users assign their own labels (tags) to items in a database. These are used as keywords when searching and browsing. Browsing is done not through a simple list of tags, but rather through what at first seems to be a massive jumble of words. The more a specific tag is used, the larger that word will appear in the tag cloud. For an example, check out LibraryThing.com.

The application for libraries is immediately obvious. Using tag clouds in our library databases would have a number of positive effects. The community involvement with the library collection would be increased. Not only would patrons be able to interact with the collection in a new way, but they would be more directly involved in its development. Why have catalogers or the Library of Congress decide what search terms are relevant when the community can develop its own terms which are uniquely suited to it? Properly cultivated, this could evolve into a more robust search system than any library staff could dream of creating on its own. Tag clouds could also prove useful for collection development. Not only would staff members have a visual guide to various areas of their collection but would have a unique window into how the community views the collection as well.

Of course, there would be drawbacks too. As with many Web 2.0 technologies, the tag clouds would need to be moderated in order to ensure no malicious tampering is done. There is also the usual knowledge gap. Just imagine a new computer user sitting down to browse the catalog and having a chaotic jumble of various sized words fill the computer screen. I certainly don’t think this should be the new replacement to our current search engines, but it could certainly prove to be a powerful supplement.

- Joe