One of the features I have been working on for some time in my lab was just released this past week. Cyclopath, the geowiki for bicyclists, now supports tagging. It is just too cool. Here are two short videos that one of my teammates prepared explaining how tags are used in the system.
Twitter has been getting a lot of attention from the media lately. Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN saying he would get 1,000,000 followers on Twitter first. And even Oprah announced she was joining Twitter. So it is only fair to poke fun at them. Here is a funny Twitter parody. Enjoy.
I apologize for the lack of posting during the past week. One of the reasons for this has been that I had been working hard on my cool Silverlight class project. I went to sleep at 10am after a whole night of coding and presented the project in class at 4pm. Almost everyone was impressed! I think we really nailed the layout and look and feel of the application.
Silverlight feels a lot like Adobe's Flex, which I use daily for my research project, Cyclopath. Before this project, I just thought that Silverlight was Microsoft's clone of Adobe's Flash. But after using both, I realize that they are quite different to work with. My main complaint about Silverlight is how hard it is to do dynamic styling and theming. It can be powerful, but it is also overly complicated without the assistance of a theme editor or the like. What I liked best was Microsoft's powerful debugging capabilities. It is a joy to be able to explore almost any value or function at any time during debugging.
At the end of the semester I will post screenshots of all our class projects. Meanwhile, I believe I have an appointment with my bed. Good night and thanks for reading!
Yesterday was an internet holiday. April Fools Day has become the day were you cannot trust almost anything you read and see on the internet. I of course exaggerate when I say that, but it is incredible the number of sites and web companies that increasingly take part in the pranks each year. Even the server where I have been playing Go (KGS) played a prank on us where all users were given the highest rank. I actually thought it was a bug. If you have time to spare, check out this giant list of April Fools Day pranks by TechCrunch.
It has been almost 11 months since I started my Twitter account. I have more than 270 tweets, but I have only posted five times in 2009. So why this decrease after a fairly decent start?
I still believe Twitter is a really cool web app, but at this stage in my career, I have decided it just isn't for me. I have instead focused on Facebook status updates. I think the main factor that motivated me was the greater number of responses I get from Facebook status updates. With tweets, I felt as if they would just go unnoticed and unread. They felt like a waste of time. My Facebook updates, on the other hand, get replies very often. And with the addition of "likes", I get even more feedback from others. Replies are also way easier to follow as Facebook provides some support for threaded conversations while Twitter does not.
Facebook status updates have, of course, some obvious drawbacks. The main one is that they are limited only to my set of friends. My Twitter messages could be read by anyone in the world. So there is a lot more opportunity for networking there. Still, that is what I have this blog for. I can communicate with the rest of the world through here. For smaller, more everyday thoughts, Facebook is just perfect.
I am not giving up on Twitter just yet, but the slow posting rate will remain until a gust of motivation comes my way. I would like to hear from others who have tried one or both systems. What are your thoughts?
I just finished working on my second group project for the Developing the Interactive Web course I am taking. This second project had to be done using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT).
GWT is very different from the first toolkit I used (YUI). YUI was just a collection of code written in Javascript (the programming language used in most web sites to make them interactive on the client side). It can be quite a hassle to work with Javascript, especially because of the difference in how browsers handle it (older Internet Explorers being the biggest pains). That is the reason for creating tools such as YUI to aid the programmer.
Now GWT is not a collection of Javascript. It actually tries to keep the programmer from touching the Javascript. GWT is all Java (a very rich and powerful programming language) and it handles creating the annoying Javascript for you and the communication between the server and the client, which is very useful.
GWT was fun to program in, although it had many inconveniences that I will not get into right now, including complicated setup and Java code that does not translate into Javascript.
As for the project we created, I think I will try to set it up within the next few days so you guys can try it out for yourselves!
I found out this week about a version of Wikipedia called Simple English Wikipedia. It is the same concept as the normal Wikipedia with the exception that articles must be written using shorter sentences and easy words. At first glance, this seems almost childish (and you sometimes feel that way too while reading it). But when you think about it, this is excellent for people who are still learning English.
Go ahead and take a look and post your favorite (or funniest) simple sentences in the comments section. Here are a few of mine:
The people who make shampoo try to make it smell nice.
Quantum mechanics ("QM") is a part of physics. It explains how certain very small things behave.
A lot of people like to pick their nose. Nose-picking is a very common habit.
I love to see extreme examples of paper prototypes or, in this case, paper tutorials. This falls somewhere in between art and giving presentations. These guys take what is supposed to be a simple process and convert it into a painstaking, awesome-looking form of art. This short Google Maps marking tutorial is way more fun to watch than on the real Google Maps. Enjoy!
I was supposed to post yesterday night, but for some reason, I could not access my blogging tools at UMN's uThink site. Today, I was still not able to access them. I couldn't even access the blog itself. When I ran a search query for "uthink", the correct link and description were shown, but the title was completely wrong. It had something to do with buying cheap drugs. When you looked at the cached page, it was filled with more of the same junk. So obviously the site was hacked. This makes me worry a little bit about the fact that this is where I'm hosting my blog, but at least the consequences didn't seem to affect my blog much, aside from the fact that it was unavailable for a while. Sorry for the short downtime!
Michael Sherrin wrote a series of posts at his blog, Prodigeek, where he listed what he thinks are the 28 coolest superpowers. I think he got most of the important ones, although I don't completely agree with the rankings. His top three superpowers were:
1) Telekinesis
2) Telepathy
3) Super speed
My top three would have been:
1) Control Machines - I can't help it. I'm a computer scientist. This would make my life way easier.
2) Telepathy - This would provide endless hours of entertainment. (We did agree on this one.)
3) Shapeshift - Excellent way to hide acne.
You can look at the whole list by following these links:
28-22
21-15
14-8
7-1
So what are your favorite super powers?
My first class project for Programming the Interactive Internet involves the use of the Yahoo! User Interface Library. I can't say too much about it yet as I am still just dipping my feet, but it seems to be a very useful library. We are basically working on a movie-oriented mashup that will bring in data from Flickr, Twitter, Technorati, and more. I'm currently in charge in my project team of getting that data and parsing it. I will use the YUI toolkit to access this information using Javascript and without having to refresh the page or redirect the user to a new page. That means that all this data will be fetched dinamically as the user interacts with the page. It is just awesome to be in a class that requires you to make a mashup!
It has to be while I am working on my Computer Security project that my computer decides to get infected with countless numbers of adware, spyware, trojans, and viruses. I have no idea where they came from, as they began their attack while I visited the set of web sites that I look at regularly. But the irony is just too much for me to bear. I will refrain from taking any Cancer Biology or Criminal Justice classes from fear of what irony could do to me.
One important part of Cyclopath is geocoding. If you have never heard of geocoding (I hadn't before this project), it means translating an address to latitude and longitude coordinates. Whenever someone uses the route finder, we have to translate those addresses into coordinates, find the nearest intersections, and then have our route finder look for the shortest path between those two points.
Well, as you can imagine, geocoding is not an easy task. That is why we don't implement this part ourselves. There are some great geocoders out there too. We had experimented with Yahoo's geocoder and then moved to Microsoft's MapPoint geocoder. Aside from a few sporadic issues, Microsoft's geocoder worked pretty well. That is, until a few weeks ago. For no obvious reason, addresses that used to work now completely failed. My own home address now dropped me at a location miles away from where I live. This was a problem. And users were starting to complain.
A few email exchanges with some people from Microsoft (which were very prompt by the way) didn't help in finding out what had changed with the geocoder. There was no way to get around it. So we started looking for other options. Google has an excellent geocoder which it uses for Google Maps. Unfortunately, its Terms of Service state that to use it your application must be using Google's maps. We create our own maps (needed to make it as editable and interactive as we need), so we had to scratch Google's geocoder off the list.
We found another geocoder that focuses on the Twin Cities metro area, which is where Cyclopath focuses too. So I was delegated the task of changing the code in order to use this new geocoder. After I finally started making some progress, while testing some code, I decided to try an address on the old geocoder that I knew would fail. To my surprise, it gave the correct location. Perplexed, I tried all other addresses that had been problematic in the past few weeks and to my surprise all of them worked. All of the sudden Microsoft's geocoder was working correctly. After all that brainstorming, sending emails, and looking for alternatives we were back to where we were before.
Well, not exactly. We have decided (although with a little less urgency) to finish implementing the new geocoder and leave it as a backup. That way, if Microsoft ever decides to confuse our users again, we'll be ready. Bring it on!
I love keeping track of my friends' status messages on Facebook. Unfortunately, when you have more than 600 friends, that can be too much. Facebook lets you subscribe to an RSS feed of your friends' status messages, but it includes everyone. There seems to be no way to just subscribe to the status messages of a select group of friends. If there is a way to do this, someone please let me know! If there isn't, then I sure wish Facebook would implement that soon. Meanwhile, I'll just have to keep getting my Google Reader flooded with status updates.
Once you know how to edit the map in Cyclopath and look at recent changes, you’ll probably want a simple way to keep track of changes in areas you are interested in. That’s where watch regions come in. Watch regions let you select an area in the map so that you can keep track of changes there. By default, you will be notified by email of any changes. Let’s take a look at how to create a watch region. First of all, you have to go to the My Watch Regions panel on the left side.
This is the list of watch regions, which is initially empty. To add a new watch region, click on the “New Watch Region� button. A new watch region appears in your map.
You can change your watch region’s name and color on the left panel.
Chances are you probably don’t want your watch region to be a boring square. Well, you’re in luck. You can drag vertices around to alter your region’s shape.
And if four vertices aren’t enough, you can use the “Add Vertex� tool on the upper right to make your watch region even more complex.
Now your watch regions list displays the new watch region.
You can click on “look at� to center the map on the watch region and on “x� to delete the watch region. When you’re done, just save changes and your new watch region is ready. You will be notified by email of any changes in your region. If you don’t want to receive emails, just uncheck the “Enable email� checkbox (while ignoring the two e’s). You can still use watch regions to filter the changes shown in “Recent changes�, which is useful for looking at changes that only affect your area of interest.
You now have all the basic knowledge needed to use Cyclopath. I may throw in one more Tutorial post, but this should be enough to get started. There is a lot more information in the Geowiki Help page if you’re interested. Have fun editing and cycling!
In the last post, I talked about how you can edit the map in Cyclopath. Now, how do you see what changes other users have made? And what can you do if another user makes an edit that you know is not correct? This is where revisions come in.
Revisions are used in many applications such as Wikipedia and Google Docs to keep track of changes made to documents. Each revision is a change or save made by a user. Whenever you make changes to the map in Cyclopath and hit Save, you are asked to summarize your changes. These changes are grouped together into a revision, accompanied by your summary. Now, let’s look at how you can view and interact with other users’ revisions.
We will be concentrating on the Recent Changes panel of the interface.
This panel shows a list of all recent changes (revisions). You can view all revisions or filter them by visible area (only show revisions that affect the area of the map that you are currently looking at) or by watch regions (we’ll talk more about this in the next post). The list of revisions shows for each revision the revision number, the user who made the change (if anonymous, then the IP address is shown), the date and time of the revision and the user’s summary about the revision.
Now, what happens if you click on a revision?
You’ll notice that a section of the map just got highlighted. This is where the change occurred. Sometimes, this change might not be in the visible area of the map. To move to where the change is, click on “Look at�. The map will then center on the location of the change and zoom in as much as possible.
Now comes the fun part. Diff mode. This is where you can see the changes that actually occurred during the selected revision(s). There are two types of changes in Cyclopath: geographical edits and non-geographical edits. Let’s take a look at non-geographical edits first. With the revision we selected above still selected, we now click on the “Changes� radio button in the “Map shows:� section. This tells Cyclopath that you want to view changes made in the selected revision (not just where they occurred). Click on “Update� and the map will change to Historic Mode.
The map now highlights the changes made. The blocks highlighted had some of their information changed. We can click on them to view what changed.
Same thing can be done with points. Here’s an example.
By the way, to exit Historic mode and go back to what the map is like currently, just click on the “Exit historic mode� button on the bottom of the map.
Now, let’s take a look at geographical edits. Revision 4941 is a good candidate. When we click on “Update� after selecting “changes� we get the following screen:
Looks quite different, right? Here, the edits actually moved vertices and points around, added new blocks and removed blocks. We call them geographical edits because they change how the objects look on the map. Take a look at the Comparison Key if you ever get confused about what the colors mean!
To make looking at geographical edits easier, at the bottom at the map there is a “Before� and an “After� button. With these buttons you can view what the map looked like before and after the change.
Before:
After:
To go back to viewing the difference together, just click on the “Both� button at the bottom of the map.
Now, what if you see a revision that you think is incorrect? How do you undo it? In the world of wikis, this is called reverting a revision. Reverting a revision in Cyclopath is simple. Just click on the revision you wish to undo and click on the “Revert Revisions� button above it. Write a short summary of your reason for undoing that revision and you’re done.
Another neat feature about revisions in Cyclopath is writing feedback. If you want to comment to someone about a change they made, just select the revision you want to give feedback about and click on the “Write feedback� button. You will then be given a change to write your feedback, which will be sent to that user and to the Cyclopath mailing list.
You should now know the basics of viewing changes in Cyclopath. Go ahead and give it a try. Have fun!
One of the coolest features of Cyclopath is that you can edit the map as you wish. You can add points of interest, add roads, remove paths, etc. Today, I will be going through some of the basics of map editing in Cyclopath. Let’s start with the easiest: editing points of interest.
Editing a Point
Editing an existing point is very easy. To edit a point’s information, it’s as simple as clicking on a point on the map and editing the fields that appear on the left pane in “Point Details�.
You can move a point by dragging it on the map. And to remove it, just click on “Delete Point� in the Details panel.
Finally, for adding a point, you’ll need to use one of the tools on the upper right corner of the map.
When you click on the second tool, the “Add a Point� tool, your cursor will change to let you know that you’re using that tool (that’s what is happening in the image above). Once in this mode, simply click on the map and you will be prompted to enter a point name. After you enter the name, a point is created in the location that you clicked.
Editing Blocks
Editing blocks (or road segments) is a bit trickier. The simple part is editing a block’s information. As with points, just click on a block and edit the fields in the Details panel. One difference though is that you can add multiple notes to a block (and add those notes to other blocks). Furthermore, you can edit multiple blocks a time by holding either CTRL or SHIFT to select blocks (CTRL allows you to select individual blocks, while SHIFT allows you to select a path of blocks).
The harder part is editing blocks geographically, that is, on the map. To create a block, click on the “Create new block� tool on the upper right.
After selecting the right tool, you can click anywhere on the map to create a new block.
You will notice that the new block has two endpoints. You can drag these endpoints to connect your new block to other block endpoints. The endpoint will snap to other endpoints when nearby.
If you have the connectivity checkbox checked, you will notice that the new block is now connected to other nearby blocks. Now, suppose we don’t want the block to be a boring straight line. We can shape it even further by adding vertices. For this we select the “Add vertex� tool (it will only be enabled when you select a block).
This time, the cursor will not change. But when you click on your block, a new vertex will be created!
You can now drag this vertex around to give your block a better shape. Keep in mind that you can’t snap vertices to other endpoints though! Only endpoints can be connected to other block endpoints.
Now suppose you want to connect your new block to the middle of another block. You can't just drag it over because there are no endpoints, so it won’t snap. What you’re trying to do is create an intersection where there isn’t any. To do this, first we have to split the block we want to connect to. For this, select the “Split Block� tool on the upper right. Once again, you have to have the block selected for the tool to be enabled and the cursor won’t change after you select the tool.
Next, click on the block wherever you want to create the new intersection.
Now the block has been split in two, basically creating an intersection between the two blocks. These two blocks are connected together through endpoints where we just clicked. Now we can connect to these endpoints!
Now, what if you want to remove a block? Simple. Click on the block and go to the “Advanced� tab in the Details panel.
There is a button called “Delete Block(s)�. Click it to remove the block.
Now we have another problem. Remember the block that we split before? We want to stick it back together, merge it back into only one block. To do this, first select the two blocks (you can use CTRL to select multiple blocks). In the Details panel, right next to the “Delete Block(s)� button, there is a button called “Merge Blocks�. Just click on it to merge the two blocks back together!
And that’s it! You now know how to edit the map. Just three more tips before I end this post. There is a checkbox called “Aerial Photos�. This is incredibly useful when editing the map geographically. It displays satellite photos, allowing you to do more precise editing (be careful with it though, since the photos may be a few years old). The second feature that you should use extensively when doing geographic editing is the connectivity checkbox. This is the best way to know if you are connecting blocks correctly. The third thing to keep in mind is the usefulness of the Undo, Redo and Discard Changes buttons. Use them as much as needed! And use them to experiment and try out map editing. As long as you don’t hit Save, your changes won’t affect the system.
So go ahead, give map editing a try. It’s the coolest thing around.
The fastest way to start using Cyclopath and getting some benefit out of it is using its route finder feature. It’s also one of the features that most users are already accustomed to thanks to other popular route finders. Let’s take a look at how to use the route finder.
On the left side of the interface, you will find the “Routes� panel:
At first, until we ask it to find a route, it will be empty. By clicking on the “Find New Route� button, you will be presented with the following popup:
Inputting addresses to search for here is pretty straightforward. But there are three more things to be aware of. First, besides addresses, you can also search for points. Points are those locations of interests that can be found throughout the map. For example, in the following screenshot, Mariucci Arena, Williams Arena, and TCF Bank Stadium are all points. This means that you can find routes to them by writing their names instead of street addresses.
The second thing to be aware of is the sliders at the bottom. One says Bikeability and the other says Distance. Cyclopath has a few ways of measuring bikeability, which we will talk about a little more later in this post. You can ask the route finder to find a route that is more bikeable or a route that is shorter.
The third thing to be aware of is that this interface may change somewhat in the near feature. As we are still in Beta development, some really cool features are currently in development. So stay on the lookout for these cool changes!
After you write in your source and destination addresses, click on the “Find� button to get your route. (click on the image to view a larger version)
You will get the route displayed on the map and the directions (included distance of each step) on the left. You can get a nice, printable version of the directions by clicking on the “Printer Friendly� button.
Now, let’s get back to bikeability. How is bikeability computed? The base case is based on a formula that takes into account aspects of the blocks such as usable shoulder space. Now comes the fun part. You can affect this computation by rating blocks. That’s right. How you rate blocks will change how the route finder computes bikeability. If you rate a block as excellent, the route finder will give that block preference. If you rate a block as poor, it will be penalized by the route finder. You can even rate a block as impassable to have the route finder avoid it altogether. By the way, for blocks you haven’t rated, if a reasonable amount of other users have rated it, their averaged rating will be given priority over the base formula. Cool, isn’t it? Now, let me show you where to apply the ratings:
When you click on a block, the Item Details panel will open. Here, you will be able to see the estimated rating of the block and the option for giving it your own ratings. Keep in mind that you have to be logged in to use this feature, so be sure to register! Once you have rated a block, all you have to do is save changes and your ratings are ready to be used the next time you search for a route.
By the way, blocks you have rated will be colored differently depending on the rating you give them. Check the Map Key at the bottom of the map to see which colors correspond to which ratings.
Now you should know how to rate blocks and find routes. Have fun rating!
I am really enjoying the project I am working on, Cyclopath. It’s an awesome geowiki for cyclists in the Twin Cities. But for the first time user, it may be a lot to take in. It has a lot of neat features that most people don’t expect to see together (e.g. map editing and route finding). So I decided to dedicate my next few posts to explaining the basics of Cyclopath. I won’t cover all there is to say about it (that’s what the user manual is for), but I’ll try to focus on the most important aspects. Also, Cyclopath is still in Beta, so new features and changes occur frequently. Anyway, this should still prove to be useful. Enjoy!
Part 1: Getting Around Cyclopath
Cyclopath is at its core simply a map. That is why the most obvious thing you will notice when you visit it will be a map of the Twin Cities. Everything revolves around this map. After you have located the map (shouldn’t take you more than a few milliseconds) you can then start focusing on all the other awesome stuff lying around. Here’s an overview of some of the stuff you’ll find (labeled on the picture below for your convenience):
A) Help Button – If you get stuck, this is the place to go! This opens a new window with help information.
Log in/ Register Button – You can use Cyclopath even if you’re not registered, but that’s no fun. Please register!
B) Item Details Panel – This panel displays information about blocks (as in road segments) and points (as in locations of interest). It remains empty until you select a block or point.
C) I’ll talk about these other panels in later tutorials. For now, just take my word that they’re very useful!
D) The map, just in case you couldn’t find it.
E) Navigation – You can move around the map by either dragging it or using the navigation buttons here on the upper left. The plus and minus buttons are for zooming in and out, respectively.
F) Editing tools – Since this is a geowiki, it means that you can edit the map. That’s right. You can change information, points, and even the road segments themselves as you see necessary (try not to vandalize though). The set of tools on the upper right are used for editing, but we’ll delay the explanation of these tools for another tutorial. For now, all we need is the select tool.
G) More Tools – These are a few settings and tools. You can save any of your changes here. The four checkboxes toggle connectivity (which shows you which blocks are connected to which blocks), Watch Regions (we’ll talk about this later), Aerial Photos (so you can see what the map really looks like), and Sticky Intersections (we’ll talk about this later too).
H) Map Key – If you forget what some of the colors and shapes mean, just click on the map key for a refresher.
Viewing Item Details
When you are zoomed close enough, you can click on points and blocks to view their details. The screenshot below shows what that looks like.
A) A selected block – When you select a block, it is highlighted with blue and all its vertices are shown. Its information is then shown on the left.
B) Points are in the shape of circles. They too can be selected to display their information.
C) Name - The name of the block or point, which usually shows on the map.
D) Type – For blocks, you can select the road type.
E) Flags – Some more options to set for blocks.
F) Ratings – We’ll talk about this more in the next part of the tutorial, but basically this is where you rate blocks.
G) All blocks and points can have notes associated with them. This is where you can see and edit these notes. Blocks that have notes appear on the map highlighted with purple.
If you’re a new user, then you probably aren’t interested or confident enough to start editing right away. Take some time to explore the map, clicking on different byways and points to see their information.
I hope this brief introduction helps. Let me know in the comments section if you have any questions!
In honor of Talk like a Pirate Day, Facebook has put up a new translation of their site called English (Pirate). Be sure to try it out! Some of my favorite translations are:
Friends = Me Hearties
See my Videos = Spy Me Bewitched Portraits
Logout = Abandon Ship
X friend requests = X sorry louts think they're yer mates!
It's live! Cyclopath, the project I joined this last summer has just entered its public beta stage. That means anyone can try it out. So go ahead and visit the website here and take a look. If you're not from the Twin Cities you won't get much out of it, but it's still fun to try.
For those of you who forgot or don't know, Cyclopath is a geowiki. The 'geo' part is because it's a map and the 'wiki' part is because anyone can edit it. It's a map for cyclists near the Twin Cities in Minnesota which anyone can edit. It's like Wikipedia and MapQuest (or Google Maps) put together.
So go take a look!
With Cyclopath going live soon, at the same time working on two other projects, and having my mother- and brother-in-law here, I've been quite busy. But I'm not one to let that keep me from blogging. So here goes. For your enjoyment, a funny video from collegehumor.com. "Mailbox! Open mailbox!"
Last month I started working on a very interesting project as part of my transition to a new lab. This project, led by graduate student Reid Priedhorsky, is basically a geowiki for bikes called Cyclopath. What does it mean by geowiki? Well, think Wikipedia. Any user can edit wikipedia. That's what wikis are all about. Now, a geowiki is the same concept, but in a geographical setting. In our case, we have a map of the Twin Cities (MN) focused on bikes. And any user can edit it. That means users can change routes, comment on them, view older revisions, and much more. Furthermore, users of our geowiki can rate streets and search for routes based on distance or bikeability. It is a really cool project, which will be going into beta in August. If you want to sign up to be an alpha tester or just want to be notified when the site goes live, go to www.cyclopath.org. Also be sure to check out these two articles that appeared in local press last Saturday:
Star Tribune Cyclopath Article
Pioneer Press Cyclopath Article
A musical with a villain as main character? That has to be awesome! Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a really fun musical. The songs are catchy, the acting is good, and it has villains and superheros! What more can you ask for? Go take a look at www.drhorrible.com. They're making the musical available by acts and the first two acts are already online. If you like the videos, be sure to support them by buying them! I think they will be available on iTunes.
How would you feel if this blog had more ads than content, opened every link as a popup, and had grammatical errors roaming like wild beasts freely in my posts? I wouldn’t seem credible to you, would I? Today’s paper deals with just that: credibility. Don’t forget the comic strip at the end of this post. Also, if you’re interested, I’m listing references to all the papers at the end of the posts (below the comic strips). Feel free to look them up (Google Scholar is a good place to start).
Paper: What Makes Web Sites Credible? A Report on a Large Quantitative Study (reference at the bottom of this post)
What in the world did they do?
The authors surveyed hundreds of people to find out what they thought made a website more credible or less credible.
What’s so cool about that?
These guys came up with dozens of items relating to website credibility for users to rate. It was cool to see which items people perceived as making a site more or less credible.
Did anything worthwhile come out of it?
The authors gave some guidelines at the end of the paper on how to design credible websites. They were:
- Design websites to convey the “real world� aspect of the organization (let people know you actually exist).
- Make websites easy to use (unless you’re a government office).
- Include markers of expertise (people may actually believe you).
- Include markers of trustworthiness (linking to and getting linked by other credible websites seems to be helpful).
- Tailor the user experience (makes people feel that the experience is more personal).
- Avoid overly commercial elements on a website (awh… I was thinking that 10 more ads would have made this blog livelier).
- Avoid the pitfalls of amateurism (OMG UR NOT SERIOUZ, ARE U?).
Why should I care?
There are a lot of shady websites out there. And sometimes it’s just sad to see some perfectly legitimate websites being avoided because their design does not make them look credible. If you’re a designer, make sure to remember these guidelines. If you’re just a web surfer, be on your guard when you visit websites that stray far from these guidelines.
Now on to the comic strip! (click on the image to enlarge it)
Reference: B. J. Fogg , Jonathan Marshall , Othman Laraki , Alex Osipovich , Chris Varma , Nicholas Fang , Jyoti Paul , Akshay Rangnekar , John Shon , Preeti Swani , Marissa Treinen, What makes Web sites credible?: a report on a large quantitative study, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.61-68, March 2001, Seattle, Washington, United States
Today is the second day in a week of HCI-related research papers, together with new comic strips. Today’s paper proved to be a popular one in the HCI class I took last semester. Give it a search on Google Scholar when you have a chance!
Paper: Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities (reference at the bottom of this post)
What in the world did they do?
The authors of this paper tried to apply some social psychology theories to MovieLens, an online community where users rate movies. The goal was to see if they could motivate users to rate more movies by:
- letting them know their contribution was unique
- letting them know their contribution was beneficial (to others and to themselves)
- giving them specific goals (rate X number of movies)
What’s so cool about that?
These guys took a bunch of theories from one field and brought them over to HCI. It was cool how some of them stood their ground and others just didn’t cut it. It’s also pretty cool to find out what makes us contribute more or less online.
Did anything worthwhile come out of it?
They confirmed that when you let users know that their contributions are unique (not redundant with other users’ contributions) they contributed more. They also confirmed that giving users specific goals (not just “do your best!�), they also contributed more.
Interestingly, not telling users that their contributions were beneficial to others or to themselves made them contribute more than telling them. Also, users contributed more when assigned to groups than when working individually. This was not expected according to social psychology theories.
Why should I care?
Online communities are everywhere. From Wikipedia to Flickr to YouTube. We all like to use them, but we don’t always contribute. Yet these communities only work because of the people who contribute to them, not because of the people who just use them. Community designers must therefore look for ways to get more of us to do something of value for sites like these. In the end, we all benefit. The more people contributing, the better content we all get.
Now, to today’s comic strip. Enjoy!
Reference: Gerard Beenen , Kimberly Ling , Xiaoqing Wang , Klarissa Chang , Dan Frankowski , Paul Resnick , Robert E. Kraut, Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities, Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 06-10, 2004, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Today starts a week of research papers! Sounds boring, doesn’t it? I know it probably does, especially for people outside the field of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). That is why I’ll try to make this as fun and easy to read as possible. As part of this effort, I’ll end each post this week with an original comic strip. So let’s just get right to it.
Paper: He Says, She Says: Conflict and Coordination in Wikipedia (reference at the bottom of this post)
What in the world did they do?
You’ve most probably heard of Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. You can probably guess that people don’t always agree as to what should go in each article. Well, these researchers studied how conflict and coordination occur in this environment.
What’s so cool about that?
Wikipedia by itself is awesome. But as for this research, it’s cool that these guys tried to understand when and how often people argue on Wikipedia.
Did anything worthwhile come out of it?
These researchers found out that as time passes, there are less people editing articles and more people discussing what should be in the articles.
They also came up with a simple, but cool algorithm to detect articles which had conflict going on. They used stuff like number of revisions and number of editors to figure this out.
The last thing they did was group together editors of an article. The resulting groups usually had people on the same side of the issue.
Why should I care?
When you’re searching for information on any topic on Wikipedia, you expect the information to be sufficiently accurate. And with so many different opinions floating around, how can you expect to find information that is not too subjective or wrong? Well, if we can understand how conflict and coordination occur in Wikipedia, we can pay more attention to articles in which people are having trouble deciding what should be included in the article and look for ways to work it out. In other words, dealing with conflict in Wikipedia means better articles for you.
Now, as promised, here is today’s comic strip. Enjoy! (Click on the image for a larger version.)
Reference: Kittur, A. et al. He says, she says: Conflict and coordination in Wikipedia. In Proc. CHI. 2007
A themed week is coming up soon. I'm preparing some cool content for it, so it has taken me more time than I thought. Meanwhile, I'll give those who are behind in internet culture a little overview of what lolcats are. Why? Well, although they are sort of lame, if you want to become internet-culturally-savvy you have to learn what they are. And after you see them a few times, you'll find out that they're actually somewhat fun to joke around with.
So, what exactly are lolcats? They usually consist of a picture of a cat with a caption on it. The caption is written in a form of broken English, commonly known as lolspeak. You probably see the pattern here. Both words have the word LOL in them, which is a commonly used "lolspeak" word. The site credited with making lolcats into an internet-wide sensation is I Can Has Cheezburger. Below is the first image in their blog:
Nowadays, lolcats and lolspeak can be found in a whole lot of places. Here are some of my favorite examples:
Some lolcat fans painted a mural of a very popular lolcat that has the caption "Invisible Bike". Follow this link to see the mural and the original picture.
If you want to learn how to speak lolspeak, check out The Definitive Lolcats Glossary.
The Googlified Blog made their own lolcat version of the Google main page. Check it out here.
For programmers, there is LOLCODE, a programming language written entirely in lolspeak.
There is an ongoing project to translate the Bible into lolspeak. Check out the lolcat Bible, now with lolhymns!
Even web comic artists are joining in on the phenomenon. Check out Scott Kurtz's Lolbat.
As you can see, this lolcat thing is actually pretty big. I guess I'll have to enroll in Lolcat as a Second Language classes to stay with the times.
