Category Archives: Internet

Leaving the Information Age

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http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2007/09/22/leaving-the-information-age/
Leaving the Information Age
I missed the Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age but have been pretty much in the thick of the Information Age, so I was a little startled to learn that it was over. Or nearly so.
David Wienberger pointed to an essay by Joe Andrieu titled “Leaving the Information Age,” written in September of 2007. It makes a compelling case for the the idea that we’re nearing the end of the Information Age:
As cable television and the Internet invaded our homes, we began to find that we could satisfy many of our wants and desires through Information rather than physical goods. It was liberating, intoxicating, and led to one of the most outrageous economic bubbles since the heyday of the Industrial Age triggered the Great Depression.
Similarly, the Information Age is, (surpise!), defined by MORE information. More channels. More telephones. More email. More websites. More advertising. More media.
And in a (perhaps) surprisingly short period, we now find ourselves echoing a new version of the mantra that ended the Industrial Age: “Enough! We don’t need so much Information!”
Mr. Andrieu makes the topic much more interesting than your junior high history teacher.

I missed the Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age but have been pretty much in the thick of the Information Age, so I was a little startled to learn that it was over. Or nearly so.

David Wienberger pointed to an essay by Joe Andrieu titled “Leaving the Information Age,” written in September of 2007. It makes a compelling case for the the idea that we’re nearing the end of the Information Age:

“As cable television and the Internet invaded our homes, we began to find that we could satisfy many of our wants and desires through Information rather than physical goods. It was liberating, intoxicating, and led to one of the most outrageous economic bubbles since the heyday of the Industrial Age triggered the Great Depression.

Similarly, the Information Age is, (surpise!), defined by MORE information. More channels. More telephones. More email. More websites. More advertising. More media.

And in a (perhaps) surprisingly short period, we now find ourselves echoing a new version of the mantra that ended the Industrial Age: “Enough! We don’t need so much Information!”

Mr. Andrieu makes the subject of “ages” much more interesting than your junior high history teacher. Well worth the read.

Internet service restored

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After a few misstarts, my Internet service was restored yesterday. The problem was a tiny broken wire and as I watched the tech repair it, I marveled at just how much flowed through that gossamer thread (come on, when will I get another chance to write “gossamer thread”?).

Movies, photos, TV shows, audio, conversations from a world away. It makes a boy think about the “digital divide.” Every child should have high-speed access to the net. And I believe they will. Mobile access to the Internet will continue to change the world. And for the better.

Local bank phished. Again.

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I received this text message last night. It never occurred to me it was anything but a scam. You call the number and some social engineer asks you for all kinds of questions about your accounts. And, yes, some number of clueless folks apparently called the number. I’d kind of like to know how they got my mobile number. Probably not that difficult. This same bank got hit by an email phishing scam a year or so back.

Tim Robyn: Bringing consistency to state government websites

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I recently learned of an ambitious undertaking involving the websites of some of the divisions of state government here in Missouri. The objective is to bring some consistency of design and how the information is organized.

tim-robynFor example, why not put the search box in the same place on each site? Or, when deciding on names for different kinds of content areas, use the name most common to the public, rather than some acronym known only to those within the division or agency.

The man responsible for overseeing this sisyphean task is Tim Robyn, Deputy for Web Presence with the state’s IT services division. We had a cup of Rocket Fuel here at the Coffee Zone yesterday and he talked about the program.

AUDIO: Interview 15 min MP3

The state of Missouri has dozens of websites but ten have been selected for this UI make-over. I forgot to ask Tim which ten but when I have that list, I’ll grab some screenshots so we can see a before-and-after.

PS: Tim has what might be the coolest title I’ve heard in a while.

UPDATE: The official State of Missouri site (below) and the MO Dept. of Agriculture were among the first to get the make-over’s. The Dept. of Insurance is up next, and offers a good “before” example. On deck: Revenue, Office of Administration, Economic Development, Labor and Industrial Relations, Mental Health, Natural Resources, Health, Social Services

I could be wrong, but the design below sure looks like a WordPress them to me.

SOM-website

A new website for under $60.00

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On Thursday of this past week one of our company websites “broke.” That’s my non-geek analysis. It wasn’t the first time and we knew it wouldn’t be the last, so –with the support and encouragement of our IT department– we decided to just flush it and start over.

At noon on Friday I installed a new WordPress theme ($59.95 from StudioPress) and started copying and pasting content. By four o’clock, I was pretty much done. Here’s a screen shot of the work-in-progress:

Learfield Communications is comprised of two operating divisions: Sports and News. We have a corporate website; a website for the sports division; one for the news division; and one for each of the networks that make up the news division.

The news division site was a challenge because we really didn’t have any dynamic content for the site and I hated putting up a “brochure” that never changed.

The WordPress site we tossed together in a few hours on Friday afternoon won’t win any awards but it will allow us to do things we couldn’t before. Like video. It’s becoming much easier to shoot, edit and host (yea YouTube and Vimeo!) video, so it makes sense to include it. WordPress has endless plug-ins for this task.

And WordPress is just a very good content management system, at least for our needs. I’ll be able to show folks in our marketing department how to create and update pages which makes it possible to keep the site fresh and current.

WordPress is very social-network friendly. Flickr, YouTube, Twitter… wherever you have content, you can quickly incorporate it.

The effectiveness of this –or any– website will be measured by the quantity and quality of the content and ease of interaction with the people who visit it. WordPress delivers.

It would have been easy to spend a couple of months a  few thousand dollars getting a simple site like this developed. I can now take that money and time and go improve some more of our sites. [END OF COMMERCIAL]

Twitter spammers: No clue. No pride.

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I really hate to think that spammers will be able to destroy Twitter in the same way they’ve destroyed email. Okay, maybe not destroyed but made it a pain in the ass to use. And I haven’t gotten much spam on Twitter but know it’s coming.

Here’s the latest. I know nothing about Shorty Small’s –other than they are clueless– but will, in the unlikely event I find myself in Branson, avoid it and encourage you to do the same.

They search twitter for any reference to “Branson” and then put a little commercial in your Twitter stream. In the example to the right, you’ll notice the business didn’t know (care?) that I was poking fun at Branson. BBQ spam. Yum!

“The revolution will be Twittered”

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“As the regime shut down other forms of communication, Twitter survived. With some remarkable results. Those rooftop chants that were becoming deafening in Tehran? A few hours ago, this concept of resistance was spread by a twitter message. Here’s the Twitter from a Moussavi supporter:

ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and shout ALAHO AKBAR in protest #IranElection

That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.” — Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish

11,000 channel “radio”

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“The VTech IS9181 is a Wi-Fi music streaming device, designed to make accessing the near-infinte variety of Internet radio as easy as traditional radio.”

“The IS9181 connects to any wireless network (802.11 b & g) and lets you access more than 11,000 free Internet radio stations worldwide. It also lets you access audio files (MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, Real) stored on you Wi-Fi-enabled computer (PC or Mac). The IS9181 also offers localized weather (based on zip code).” (via Podcasting News)

My first thought was, “If I’m running a radio station, it better be one of the 11,000.” My next thought was, “It better be one of the ‘best’ of the 11,000.”

Why two Google Shared Stuff pages?

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I’m a regular user of the Shared Stuff feature in Google Reader. That’s the little widget in the sidebar, which feeds to a larger page. I love it.

I recently discovered another Google tool that also seems to be called Google Shared Stuff. This one works from a little icon in your menu bar. As you surf around the web you can add links and notes to a “shared stuff” page. But not the same shared page. It has to be a DIFFERENT shared page.

Why can’t the shared pages be shared? One page for stuff from my Google Reader and the “shared” button. If any of you kids in the Accelerated Class can help me out with this, I’ll be grateful.