#5: Internal Intranet Blogs and My Website Experience

For the first time in a while I can truly say I learned something that has expanded my world. Before taking this course my technological brainwaves were feeble and pathetic; but now I actually have a sense that I know what I am talking about when discussing these newly learned technologies. There are two areas in particular that I now feel I can discuss with confidence and expertise: Internal Intranet Blogs and HTML code.

I did one of my semester projects on Blogs in Special Libraries. I chose to research and discuss the blogs in a corporate setting because it is my area of most interest after graduating, and let me tell you that there is plenty of information on the subject, probably because there are now numerous consulting firms any organization can hire to set them up. Internal blogs, taking the place of old, non-collaborative Intranets or even e-mails greatly enhance an organization’s knowledge and information flow. They inspire sharing, community, and brainstorming, and they compound tacit knowledge and expertise. An Accenture survey revealed that 6 out of 10 managers cannot find the information they are looking for on a daily basis and that more than 2 hours a day is wasted looking for that lost information. This will no longer be the case with the new communication and information sharing social platforms available today. While researching this project I pitched the idea to the organization I work for and they are now in the development stage of an Internal Intranet Blog Platform. This class has already paid off.

The other project I worked on over the past couple of months was the creation of an original website. Since this was a project that was focused more on code semantics and visual creativity and not scholarly research, I found it to be an enjoyable and interesting experience (although I do now know that I would never want to sit and write thousands of lines of HTML code for hours a day as a career). But what I found to be fun was seeing it grow in “look” and complexity. I enjoy puzzles; I enjoy seeing them grow in front of me as I put time and work into it. This, to me, was a similar experience. The only problem I did encounter during my experience was the difficulty with FireFox vs. Explorer. At one point I went to Flickr to obtain photograph. Well, since I am building my site in FireFox I forgot that when you search and save photos while navigating in Explorer you cannot easily transfer them to FireFox and display them on your web page. I came very close to pulling my hair out when I realized this after searching for usable photos, all 20 of them, saving them, and not being able to use them as easily as I first thought. Let’s just say that it added a few hours of work I was not expecting last Sunday. My computer nearly paid the price for my gaffe.  But I calmed down and learned from my little mistake.

But coding and creating a web page it is an excellent skill to have, especially in today’s technological environment. I have the knowledge and understanding so if it ever does present itself, I can create a simple to slightly complex, elegant, creative, or professional web page on my own.

So this semester was a wonderful experience for me. I enjoyed having Dr. Stephens as my professor because of his knowledge of, command of, and enthusiasm for the subject matter. I enjoyed having you all as my classmates because of your friendliness and camaraderie. I wish you all the best in the future. Take care.

#4: Organizing The Web

I understand that this blogpost has little to do with the focus of my blog site; however, the subject matter of the article I read was very interesting. The article, found on Digg, was originally written by Marion Jensen for the technical site TechConsumer and was titled “The Next Big Thing: Why Web 2.0 Isn’t Enough.” The article talked briefly about the new realm of the social web and the sites that have become popular because of it and why they are so. Jones relates the popularity of these sites to real estate. What is the most important part of real estate? location, location, location. These sites’ ability to give the user what they need in one location has been a saving grace for many. But it opens a can of worms: if these sites can control the information and in an organized way, why can’t we do that with the rest of the information on the Web? That’s right – the organization of the Web as a whole. Right now, as we all know, information on the Web is just pages of information, unorganized, uncategorized, and messy. People have been talking about organizing the Web for years, but there is no simple and easy way to do it. Metadata tagging and organization is just a job that nobody wants. Even if it could be done, it seems that deciding on a set of rules for organization, not unlike that of a library’s AACR2, is a mountain that may not be able to be climbed.  My biggest doubt, other than the obvious talk, talk, talk, rather than work, work, work that is the librarians’ mantra, is the method of organization. I have come to believe that no matter which way someone tries to organize anything in the library world, it fails over time. It simply fails to classify all information needed to be classified, whether its the Dewey Decimal System or anything else. If you are going to organize the Web, it has to be lasting, or everything else will be lost. And with the ever-changing environment of the Web that is not going to be possible.

#3: MySpace Searchers

I was reading the business section of the paper the other day and discovered an interestiong article about MySpace and the people who subscribe, search, and pray to it. I have had little experience with it, except to find someone I work with who supposedly posed for his frontpage flexing his muscles to woo women. I never found it so I was not able to make copies to post up in various places in the workplace. But the key here is that I did not find it; the main point of the article is that there are now people who do. Last week in the Chicago Tribune  an article titled “Technology Firms profiling MySpace Users’ Needs” wrote about a young man who was searching MySpace for a guy his friend had met at a party who wanted to take her out on date. The main problem was she did not remember meeting him. The young man immediately went to work on his laptop. Now, he run a company that does exactly that – cyber-searching. He is paid to search social sites for people, paid by other people who want as much information possible about their new-found friend, a possible new hire at a company, or someone you do not remember who is asking you out on a date. It is a simple concept and one that will grow as Web 2.0 does.People are free and easy about their personal information all of the sudden and there are now dozens and dozens of companies out there searching MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook for everything they can about you. What concerns me is when people accidentally share more information then they intend to. One of my freinds, someone who is very well versed in the applications and knowledge of the Web and social sites posted a picture of himself on Flickr. In the background of the photo was his home, with his street address clearly visible on the mailbox next to him. Now someone knows who you are, what you look like, where you live, and probably where you work, all because of one photograph. This is beautiful world full of wonderful people; but it is also a dangerous world full of dangerous people, and we can sometimes make it easier for them to be dangerous. So have fun, but be careful.

Post# 2: Today’s Communication Technology and Company Information

Over the past couple of weeks I have been researching corporations to determine where to send my resume to. While doing so I came across a website titled Vault.com. I found it very useful to my current needs in the job-search process. Advertising itself as the “most trusted name in career information,” you will quickly see how surprisingly trustworthy it is. What disturbed me about it was the amount of unsolicited information found on it.

To check the information about each organization I first entered the one I currently work for to check the accuracy of the information retreived. After hitting the search key I found myself sitting in front of a screen titled “Discussion Topics from Industry Message Boards.” Underneath were threads of discussions about the corporation I worked for. No big deal, right? No! I currently work for a highly successful, ultra-private, family-owned corporation which reported its earning to Hoover’s as a miniscule fraction of its actual eanings. It can do this because private corporations do not have to report its actual earnings to anyone but the IRS; and it does misrepresent itself to keep its business highly controlled and unsucceptable to external factors. But right in front of me was dozens and dozens of people adding threads on a public discussion board about the intricacies of the workplace and business. Earnings were talked about, future plans of the corporation, strategies, best practices, as well as lawsuits, hiring practices, and firings. Much of this is secret, proprietary information.

This information is highly valuable to the corporation and it was simply added to a basic discussion board for all to see. At work we have a list of guidelines to follow to answer questions about the corporation outside of the workplace. For instance, if I were asked by an outsider who owns the corporation I work for I am supposed to say “A board of selected members.” If I speak openly about the one owner and president then who is to say that his or her’s son or daughter could not be kidnapped and held for ramsom? Some responses are for the safety of the owner, some are for the privateness of the company itself. On Vault.com his or her’s name is openly talked about.

The career I am pusuing is Competitive Intelligence, and I see on this website a weath of knowledge about my potential competitors at my fingertips. It will be my job to find information about the company you work for and then use that information to my advantage. So it disturbs my that people freely divelge proprietary information on public forums, but it also helps me.

Post# 1: HD-DVD Code Causes a Stir

A while ago a certain code caused quite a stir on a hand-full of user-driven 2.0 sites. Referred to as the 09 f9 for short, the AACS encryption key controversy is full of arguments and viewpoints. As someone new to this controversy I initially went to Google to find info on the subject. Searching “HD-DVD Code,” I received 7.7 million hits. One of the most popular sites retrieved that had a wealth of info on the subject was Digg, a user-driven technology blog site. Digg found itself at the center of the controversy when users began publishing the hacked code at an alarmingly fast rate. That was when Digg owners received a call from the owners of the code. “Pull all blogs containing the code from your site and refrain all users from publishing the code and all will be forgiven.” Digg chose to comply; hence, users went crazy, crazy enough to change Digg’s mind on its initial decision. Now the code is found just about everywhere: bumper-stickers, t-shirts, someone even wrote a song with the code as the lyrics.

Now the arguments rage on. Digg took the chance at first to save itself from the proprietors of the code, then it saved itself from its own users who were in uproar claiming that Digg was censoring public information. Owners of the information wants to sue every site that has allowed the code to be published. I want to know where the “right” is.

I personally beleive that the person who discovered the code and freely published it should be punished. Some bloggers have argued that the code is just a set of numbers and letters and are not of any importance so the discoverer should be left alone. I do not agree with this viewpoint. The code has value to the proprietor and to the market, therefore it has value in of itself; I liken it to a “secret recipe,” blueprints, or even an idea. A restaurant does not just give out its recipes to anyone, it has value to them. The code keeps that market where it should be. if everyone had the code and could use it, yes, then the prices of hd-dvd’s would plummet, probably plummet so low that organizations would discontinue making them. It is similar to Napster of a few years ago. Napster would have driven the prices so low that the industry would collapse. Now Apple charges one dollar per song; enough to keep both markets thriving.

But id Digg to blame for any of this? I say no. Once the code is published somewhere on the Internet then it is already too late. The hacker got the code and published it, end of story. It was private, proprietary information of high value and worth to its owner, a minute later it was public information with high value to the public. It’s too late to censor it.

The only other person at fault in this situation is the engineer who created a way for the code to be discovered. He should probably be fired; at least I would fire him. The owner of the code simply did not make it difficult enough to keep it secret. He should blame himself, knowing that if it was discovered, it would be put on the Web at some point. And if he knows anything about technology, as I believe he does, he would know that once it hits the Internet, it’s all over.  

 So what do you think?

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