Blogging Reflection

Reflection is a critical step in making progress. In order to better reflect on my growth as a blogger and writer over the past few months, I’ve picked out 10 of the posts that I felt were most interesting. Here are the top ten with my take-aways in chronological order:

1. Bold Growth, February 16, 2009: The earliest post, this one speaks to growth in blogging and touches on the critical question: what is the value of blogging? Having read a large amount of material on the subject, I took the descriptions that meant the most to me. It appeared that a weblog’s greatest strength was also its greatest weakness.

2. Blog Imagery, February 26, 2009: Another post on the elements of effective blogging, here I looked into the way “visual rhetoric” adds to the appeal of a blog. I analyzed a blog that had a strong appeal and illustrated how the imagery of a blog can create a kind of ethos when blended with text, which is critical for any blogger to understand.

3. Niched Media, February 23, 2009: With the ways in which we interact with media rapidly changing, the question of what makes a good media product hasn’t been more important. This post goes into a some of the philosophy and idealism behind the media.

4. Tip Towards Buyer Power, March 2, 2009: Blogs that I feel are of the highest quality are able to integrate interesting research. This post does just this, posing an answer to the question of how the “new economy” has changed and led to a more powerful consumer.

5. Technology Free Riders, March 3, 2009: This post again builds and goes beyond the required reading. I muse on the process of growth that internet technology has led us through and am cautious as to how well future predictions can truly hold up.

6. In Economist We Trust, April 2, 2009: This post goes into the foundations that led to the success of an magazine also published on the net known as The Economist. It addresses the critical features that make this publication such a trusted source of valued information.

7. Extended Mind and My Generation, April 6, 2009: The question of how the internet has changed the way we think is crucial in our current culture. Now, as we transition into new modes of thinking, is the time to investigate the changes that have occurred and the resulting costs and benefits. This post puts together some of the strongest arguments, empirical research and philosophy behind these changes.

8. Wisdom of Crowds, April 13, 2009: The idea of “collective intelligence” has been discussed in economics for a while. This post goes into some current research in this field and an application of it. This is likely to have a strong potential for the way we all interact in the future and one of the largest changes the internet has fostered.

9. Internet Audience, April 13, 2009: Addressing some of the past research on the way we interact with the internet, it cuts down and organizes the most interesting information on the subject. The psychology of reading online is different than through book reading and this has implications on the way in which internet texts should be constructed.

10. Social Media Musing, April 20, 2009: A current hot debate is the possibility of a web 2.0 bubble. This post was more personal than a lot of the other posts, so I think it adds a little different flavor. I also feel this was the best approach I could take to find the value behind social media.

Social Media Musing

Answering the existentially frightening question of “what are you doing?” is requirement for someone making consistent facebook or twitter updates.

Often these questions are easily answered: “Buying plane tickets” “Writing a paper” “or even “Making a sandwich” Trivial, maybe, but hey, it seems like other people are interested.

One cue to look at how social media will develop is see where I get benefits from it. Social media is a tool after all. It helps me stay in touch with friends, colleagues, professional contacts, even family on occasion, who otherwise wouldn’t know what I’m up to and vise-versa. The concern comes in where you decide to draw the boundary between your physical interactions (phone/skype calls would be a hybrid here) and through the net.

To use myself as an example, my boundaries are set in making email replies within 24 hours. This is occasionally subject to change, in the case I’m traveling/without access to a computer where I could set up an auto-reply or something similar. I also don't add people as facebook friends that I haven't met before in person, or know someone I trust can vouch for them in some way.

The key is setting expectations for the people you are constantly in touch with. At some point, everyone I know, knows that it's easier to get a hold of me through email than facebook. Being open about this can also be another way to set the expectation immediately.

In Clive Thompson’s I’m So Digitally Close to You he makes the remark that:

"growth of ambient intimacy can seem like modern narcissism taken to a new, supermetabolic extreme — the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world”

Once the hype of expressing yourself to everyone you knows settles down however, what is left is the actual value the service can provide. The people who don’t realize the benefit I just don’t get.

Intellectual Capital Giveaway

“In the industrial age we went to school, in the communications age, school comes to us." –Andy DiPaolo, the Stanford Center for Professional Development director.

One of the interesting developments in the information technology and the Internet has been access to education.

In 1999, the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) pioneered a model called OpenCourseWare (OCW). The mission, considered by many revolutionary at the time in its apparently non-profit motivation, was to give everyone access to educational resources.

With a few clicks you can navigate published teaching materials, syllabi, lecture notes and exams to any course at MIT. The only catch? You can’t get credit for taking them. However now, almost anyone with an interest in subjects that range from biological engineering to linguistics can learn on their own or update their knowledge base. Donations are of course encouraged.

This trend has continued with other schools following suite. Through venture funding by Sequoia Capital, Stanford currently has made available 10 online courses through a program called Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE). The current offering includes basics in computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics with the possibility of future additions in nanotechnology, bioengineering and energy/environment. Check it out.

Wisdom of the Crowds

If you’ve ever watched the show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” you know that one of the most reliable lifelines is asking the audience. With above a 90% chance for a successful answer out of 4 choices, what is often called the wisdom of crowds can be directly applied to leading to a correct final answer.

The wisdom of crowds has been widely documented in both economic and psychological literature. One of the fruits of this is a small company in Ireland that you might have heard mentioned on CNBC or Bloomberg. It is called Intrade.

With registered members from 162 countries and a 82,000 membership, the website brings together a broad audience which a lot of predicting power potential. In a book appropriately titled The Wisdom of Crowds James Surowiecki points so some of the requirements for a crowd to possess a “collective intelligence.” Surowiecki argues that questioning a crowd can often, as in the case of “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire” lead to correct answers; answers that are much more reliable than had an “expert” been in charge. Intrade brings in all of Surowiecki’s preconditions such as (1) diversity of opinion; (2) member independence; (3) decentralization and (4) a good method of aggregating opinions. While the results can often be incredibly accurate, what are the members motivation to participate in making accurate predictions? For profits of course.

The exchange works in a way that is similar to options trading. You deposit some funds into an account with Intrade and with this deposit are able to purchase contracts and make a bet on certain events occurring (each that is valued at $10 USD). These events can be from anything, from how long the recession will last and political events to American Idol winners.

Take the event on the front page of Adam Lambert winning American Idol. As of today, the contract is selling (bidding) at 65.5. Each point on a contract is actually .10 cents, so if you had decided to purchase a contract at 65.5, you would be putting down $6.55.

In the event that Lambert wins American Idol, the contract will close at 100 points, making you a profit of $3.45 ($10-$6.55). If he looses, the contract expires at 0 and you lose your margin of $6.55. Another element that plays in, is that you can sell your contracts at any point before the event actually occurs, as long as you have a willing party on the other side of the contract. Low trading contracts then have the potential for a lower investment outlay and a high potential return.

This potential of this technology can even be expanded to other areas such as hedging taxes or other better forecasting decisions. In the case of the next American Idol winner, my mom has faithfully watched the show for the past 6 seasons and predicted each winner correctly. My money is on Adam; definintely a way to make the show interesting.

The Internet Audience

The rules of "normal" pen to paper writing, just don't apply when you're publishing on the web.

Studies by John Morkes and Jacob Nielsen in the late 90's have made a number of telling observations about the different ways the audience of web-users read and process information. This has implications on the ways in which authors of internet texts should transform their presentation styles to meet their audience’s needs.

One aspect to always keep in mind about web readers is that they are content driven. Using revised websites based on a presentation that were concise, scannable and objective, the researchers found that respondents had better (159% improvement) of overall usability defined by:

• Task time
• Task errors
• Memory
• Subjective satisfaction

Instead of jumping into the more difficult to navigate content, links provide ways for author’s to reduce clutter and organize material for easy access. You want to do the opposite of what this Japanese site has done. Links lend a kind of internet credibility as long as they are well positioned. Content hungry users don’t want to waste their time reading inaccurate or flashy material and you will be rewarded for giving them what they want.

Also, the internet audience is likely to scan your material instead of reading word-by-word. And even then, the material that is scanned is read 25% slower than it would have been in a physical text. To combat this, information can be set up into a multimedia form. Concisely put together text should be complimented with relevant images, video, audio and interactive content that are designed to meet an a user's content needs.

Nobody is happy..

College Textbook Profit Inflation?

One growing concern for college textbook publishers has been recent scrutiny regarding elevated prices. In a widely publicized report released in January 2004, a public interest group (CALPIRG), found textbook prices to be unnecessarily high. A follow up study showed prices of U.S. textbooks to be significantly more than those in other countries. This is just another addition to the inflating costs of education.

Instead of money going to students, a lot of it appears to be going directly to professors. The main Physics professor at ASU actually wrote his own book with labs attached to the back of the book. The book itself is a customized fit for his course, but having labs just make the book useless for future students and therefore resale. This is similar to the adding of additions where newer books have supposed "needed" updates.

With these kind of margins and the average student according to CALPIRG spending between $775 to $875 per year, it is little wonder why many are looking for better options. Services are now available where books can be rented at sites such as Bookswim which claims to be "netflix for books." Investors are being attentive and a recent B-series round by KPCB and Foundation Capital of $25 million was confirmed in February for Chegg.

At this point, most of us prefer books to digital sources, although this is changing. Looking at Amazon’s Kindle 2, the screen is made to work like ink, with “no glare or backlight.” It is only through this kind of change that professors will not be discouraged from producing quality textbooks. Instead, costs associated with paper, retail and shipping (55.6%) could be eliminated for the most part (you still have the original fixed cost). So in actuality, while student costs will drop in the short-term, the overall solution could be a while.