The power of the crowd

Crowdsourcing is a process that utilises a large number of people to collect input, solve a problem or perform a task. It can take many different forms but it is commonly facilitated by a suitable internet platform.

'The crowd' by Matt Karp
under a CC licesne

Crowdsourcing has been successfully used in a wide variety of projects and functions ranging from astronomy, where people have been helping scientists classify galaxies, politics and policy development, legislation, where people are consulted on laws in preparation, etc. Specific problems can be helped by crowdsourcing techniques provided they can be broken down into small chunks in a form suitable to be presented and processed by an individual. For instance, the Foldit game helped scientists solve protein folding configuration problems and get ideas on how to refine their corresponding algorithms.

Beyond its huge potential in problem solving, crowdsourcing is considered to be a low-cost alternative. However, there are several limitations that need to be thought of before one reaches to such means.

Using technology to improve communication during crises

'Hotline' by Alex under a CC license

Despite how advanced mankind may look, when disasters strike disruptions do take place and, sometimes, human lives are put at risk (the earthquake in Nepal being a recent major such natural disaster). Regardless of the type of disaster, communication is essential both for the people in the affected zone and for the staff of the response teams.

Under normal circumstances, in or close to urban areas, voice and data communication are not normally a problem, even when demand is high as, for instance, happens in big concerts, conferences or other major events.

But what are the challenges at the time of a major disaster? Are we ready to put the technology we have available into the best possible use in order to handle the crisis in the best possible way?

Is internet access a critical service?

Internet access is a mission-critical factor for most modern businesses. Even for individuals, internet access is amongst the top priorities covering both work and leisure reasons and has increasingly found its way to bars, hotels of any price range, libraries and public spaces. At a political level, Information Society (a part of which is internet infrastructure and services) is considered to be a tool for maintaining and strengthening human rights, while there are voices supporting a further upgrade of internet access as a civil/ human right.

'Internet open 7 days til late'
by duncan c under a CC license

Having said that,  the penetration of internet access across the population varies a lot from country to country (and from region to region). Recent usage statistics indicate that internet access ranges between about 26% of the population for Africa to about 88% for North America. For Europe the figure is at about 70%, ranging from 42% for Ukraine to 98% for Luxembourg. While increasing trends exist in nearly all regions world-wide and internet has established presence even in remote areas, access to internet is still far from, say, access to mobile telephony services, where, for instance, in Europe there are 125 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.

Despite the fact that a small-but-significant of the population don't have the means to access the internet, wherever internet access has been established it has had a marked impact on business practices, both in the private and the public sectors. Communication, ordering, data gathering, information dissemination, archiving, networking, etc., are processes that tend to be done exclusively via IT and internet resources in places where such resources are available, of course.

But is internet access being treated as a critical service?

The copy-and-paste approach of modern "journalists"

The internet together with the increasingly easy access to the online world have changed considerably the expectations we have from news and content providers, in general. Once upon a time, getting the daily newspaper and, perhaps, a weekly magazine was all it took to satisfy our hunger for news. Alas, not any more.

'What's the news' by ¡kuba!
under a CC license

The internet gave the power to news sites to add content dynamically, e.g., to post news as they happened. That has fuelled the page-refresh urge of ours to extents that, sometimes, may come close to clinical addiction.

The internet also gave the chance to a large number of people to get into the news or content-providing business. An increasing number of news sites has been appearing, some without a corresponding printed publication, which, together with the ever increasing number of blogs have created a universe with the sole purpose of propagating "fresh" information.

That's a good thing, isn't it? Well, not necessarily.

Many of news sites are, in fact, just collection of re-posts of news items. A simple copy-and-paste job. Often, without even commentary or, worse, with the original commentary and, sometimes, even worse, without attribution to the original source, too. There are also cases of circulating redacted, shortened or unfinished stories, which can lead to confusion.

Having news-hungry readers and a system that can disseminate news stories fast is certainly a good thing. At the same time, however, publishing, even online, has costs. Person-hours that need to be compensated, bandwidth costs, hosting costs, software development costs, intellectual property costs, legal services costs, etc., depending on the type of the site and the group behind it. Then there is the quality factor. Getting the story in the first place, cross-checking it, getting more data, writing the original article, reviewing and proof-reading it, updating it if needed, etc., need resources. All those,  are essential parts of the so-called "investigative journalism" thing that we, the public, are desperately in need for. Similar things also apply for non-professionals, too, who also devote part of their free time, energy and enthousiasm into preparing and publishing content, despite the fact that they may not always be after revenue, per se.

The copy-and-paste journalism, usually, has little to offer. Contrary to that, despite the apparent additional publicity of the original content, it twists the income model original content providers typically aim for, i.e., traffic converted to advertising revenue. To make things worse, it discourages readers from visiting the original sources, even if those is referenced in the copy-and-paste posts. That is because such news sites tend to offer quick turnaround of posts and, thus, are better suited for our continuous news-check addiction, much better than, say, a newspaper site, where published articles persist for longer. Additionally, there is little reason to visit the news source, if the reader has already read the article. Plus, reading online, nowadays, has its own challenges, too - as I have written previously. Social media, with their sharing capabilities, can - sometimes - make things even worse for the original content creators.

To be clear and fair, the rationale above does not apply to sites that quote and link to discrete news items or articles and provide further commentary, additional content, etc. Those are actually providing derivative work, which would normally be legally (and ethically) OK. Also, copy-and-paste journalism can be found in the printed media, too. And, finally, online journalists do face challenges that may encourage less thorough practices, including, but not limited to, the mandate to hunt for readers' clicks that can bring the much-needed advertising income.

Is copy-and-paste posting useless then? It depends. 

Copy-and-paste sites and their use of social media are particularly handy when one needs to distribute information as widely as possible. A good example is press releases, especially anything related to consumer safety. Overall, however, I would feel that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages - but that 's a personal opinion.

Can things improve? Possibly. 

One could try enforce the copyright legislation but this varies vastly from place to place and it costs, sometimes a lot. It also creates a negative overall feeling amongst content providers and readers, which would certainly not be of help. A better option would be to raise the journalism bar: readers should learn to ask for more investigative journalism, while at the same time original content providers should try to adapt to the fast publishing rate the online communities want. Content replicators will, of course, always have the right to upgrade their status to content creators or contributors.

The app update ritual

'My iPhone family pile'
by Blake Patterson
under a CC license

I've been using computers - for work and leisure - for at least 20 years now. In my early PC days, software updates was a rare thing but usually associated with major changes. Update deployment was, at those times, a fully manual procedure. One had to find a disk with the new software version and install it on the target PC.

With time, internet gained ground and developers started using it as an alternative update distribution vehicle. It has been a very welcome thing, indeed; it is normally an easy process and allows for much more frequent updates.

As the number of our digital devices grows, software updates have become an increasingly important part of our (digital) lives. Smartphones, tablets, routers, intelligent devices (thermostats, smart light bulbs, cameras, even camera lenses) allow for their software to be updated.

The frequency of the updates depends on the product and its developers but for "small" applications and apps it can be very frequent. I have come across Android apps that have had 2-3 updates per week. And there, exactly, I believe I can spot a problem. The update process is beginning to take a bit more time (as well as bandwidth and data volume) than perhaps it should. Taking one's smartphone offline for a day, most probably means being prompted for a few tens of app updates when it is taken online, again.

Has the ease of deploying updates made developers sloppier? Has it increased pressure on them to release software as soon as possible, even if not all features are there and even when the software has undergone only little testing? Or is it just adding value to users, offering them access to new functionality, design enhancements and innovative stuff as they are created? As a software user/ consumer, I 'd very much like to think of the latter, though I suspect that we are mostly victims of the former. To be fair, though, for software and apps I really value, hitting the "update" button is often accompanied with great expectations :-)

There is nothing wrong in improving users' experience through well planned software updates. Needless to say that providing updates to fix security holes or fix critical bugs is a must, too. However, offering updates on too frequent a basis can have a negative impact on users' perception of software quality and come at a cost (users' time and productivity, network's bandwidth, etc.). Is it perhaps time for software developers to re-discover quality practices? Or is the constant updating thing something that we, the software users, will need to get used to (and perhaps, even, taught to like)?

Cloud automation and the internet of things

'Robot' by Christelle
under a CC license

Day-by-day, our lives become increasingly digital. With internet gaining share in our everyday routine it was inevitable someone would start interconnecting our network-capable devices (for which I think I've written about before...).

At the beginning, things were a bit basic. For instance, being able to check our cloud-based mailbox and our automatically synchronising cloud-residing files from all our devices (desktop, smartphone, tablet, etc.).

Then cloud application upped their intelligence a notch. It became - for example - possible to send somebody an email proposing a meeting date, the cloud service would add that date on the recipient's calendar and the recipient's smartphone would remind the user on time for the proposed meeting.

With more-and-more web services, programs and devices having public APIs, cross-application functionality has taken off and the user mashup potential has become evident. It may sound complicated but the fact is that it can simplify our daily lives (and - possibly - increase our geek level, too!). It is now possible to check on and control web applications in order to achieve things that in the past would require a separate web service, app or program.

Let's take IFTTT as an example (IFTTT stands for 'If This Then That', by the way - do check their website!): A user can choose amongst a large list of web services, devices with web output, smartphone events, etc. and when something specific happens to cause a reaction. For instance, User1 can set IFTTT to monitor the Twitter posts of User2 and when a new tweet is posted, IFTTT can send an SMS to the mobile of User1 or email that post to User1's email, etc. Interesting? It can get better. Imagine using it for networked devices, such as a networked thermostat (e.g., a Nest thermostat) or a networked light installation (e.g., Philips Hue) or a signal-producing usb device (e.g., Blink(1)), etc. For instance, you can increase the temperature at home when leaving work or set the lights to the bright setting when an incoming call comes from work. All of a sudden, it is possible to achieve automation that, albeit simple, would be next-to-impossible to do (cheaply) a few years ago.

Needless to sat that IFTTT is not the only player around. Zapier, Yahoo Pipes, We Wired Wed, Cloudwork and others - many others - are available, some for free, some at a cost. I feel certain that more will follow. I believe that what we are seeing is the early days of automation for the masses :-)

Of course, by interconnecting devices and services we are exposing an even larger part of our (real) lives to third parties. This, inevitably, implies risks. Rogue or simply irresponsible service providers may opt to sell our personal data, hackers may gain control of our smartphones, lights, etc. Our privacy may be compromised in ways that may not be immediately obvious, perhaps to directions that we wouldn't really want.

As always, innovation, in itself, is not good or bad. It is just something new. It is up to us to find the best way to use it. To strike the right balance. To shape the market into the form we want, placing the right safeguards and, ultimately, to make our lives a bit better (or funnier... or geekier...), while keeping us on the safe side.

Disclosure note (and some of the usual 'fine print'): I am not affiliated to or have received any subsidy/grant/benefit in return for this post from any of the companies, whose products are mentioned above. Mentioning, in this post, a product or a service is not meant to constitute an endorsement (as I have not, personally, used all those products). The names of the above mentioned products and services are property of their respective owners.

There is plenty of information around but how much of it can we practically find?

'Another haystack' by Maxine
under a CC license

The frank answer is: it depends; on many things.

First of all, I'm talking about information that is available on the internet. That excludes books that are not available online, databases that run locally, etc. More specifically, I'm talking about information that has been indexed by at least one search engine, at least at the level of general content description. I'm not differentiating among the different types of information, though.

Estimates of the size of the internet in 2013 spoke about 759 million websites, of which 510 active, which - in turn - host some 14.3 trillion webpages. Google has indexed about 48 billion of those and Bing about 14 billion. The amount of accessible data is estimated to be about 672 million Tb (Terabytes), which likely includes the indexed and part of the deep web content.

On top of that, we have the dark internet - but this is a different thing.

So, there is a lot of information indexed (and much more that lies beyond indexes). Year-by-year we are getting more-and-more used to using and relying on the internet. But how "much" useful information can we normally find?

Assuming we are talking about seeking for "general information" the main search tool is a search engine. While common search queries return tens of millions of results, most users tend to focus on the first few hits. SEO experts often talk about users sticking to the first 5 search engine hits or - at most - the results of the first page. Some disagree but still very few users go through all the results. Of course, persistent people seeking for specific information do tend to try different search queries in order to reach reasonably relevant information.

The interesting point regarding search engines and their results is that those results on the 1st page are very valuable. So the question is: if some invest in placing their content on the top of the search results, how can the user find relevant content, if that content is maintained by people not willing to invest on SEO, e.g. by a non-profit or just enthusiast individuals?

Of course, search engines use result ranking algorithms that take into consideration a very long list of factors. Content quantity and quality are amongst those factors; popularity is another, etc. However, the way those ranking algorithms work (the exact formula is kept secret) may include - e.g., in the case of Google - a ranking bonus for content of the user's Google plus contacts. They may also include a fading mechanism, where very old, possibly unmaintained, information is ranked below the recent one.Websites offering content over secure connection (via https instead of plain http) get a bonus, too, etc.

All those twists and fine-tuning are meant to help the "average user" (I guess) reach the content they need, while at the same time giving a change to content providers (including companies investing in advertising and SEO) reaching their target audience. Most of the time, advanced users will employ additional tricks to refine their searches but (I assume) any ranking algorithms work in the same way for them, too.

Needless to say, that when search engines (and Google in particular) modify their ranking algorithm, many people worry and many people get busy.

To make things slightly more challenging, content on the internet tends to change with time. Webpages may disappear due to technical reasons. Links to content may be hided in some regions due to the right to be forgotten (a very interesting topic, on its own). Or content may be removed due to a variety of reasons, e.g. copyright violations or, even, DMCA takedown notices.

The point is that finding the information one wants needs persistence, intuition, imagination, good knowledge on how the search engines work, sufficient time and luck (not necessarily in this order). The problem that remains is that this information is very likely to represent part of the whole picture.

Some will say that this has always been the case when seeking for information. True.But now that accessible information feels "abundant", the temptation to stop looking for new data after the first few relevant search engine hits is really strong.

Unfortunately, responsibility still falls onto the user, to be wary of gaps or biases of any kind and keep looking until the topic in question is properly (or reasonably?) addressed. It's not an easy task. With time, however, it's likely that we'll develop additional practical norms to handle it.

Work or pleasure, access to the internet is a must

'Internet' by transCam
under a CC license

It is that time of the year that colleagues, friends and myself have just been, currently are or plan to be on holidays. I couldn't help but notice that although most clearly state that they plan to "switch off", all be a few actually mean "do something different to work, have fun but keep in touch". And by that, they mean via social media, skype/viber/whatsapp/hangouts/etc., e-mail and the other digital means of communication.

WiFi accessed internet tends to be mainstream in hotel/ rooms, bars, cafes, and - practically - "everywhere". Yes, I've come across free internet access facilities in small and far away places (and, needless to say, I found that pleasantly surprising). On top of that, most smartphone owners tend to have a kind of data plan on their contract.

While the demand for internet connectivity itself is sufficient to explain the corresponding market development, I wonder how come people have shifted their habits so much. I mean, yes, people did use to send postcards in the past but that was about it. Were there "communication needs" to be satisfied that were technologically impossible to address? Or did the needs develop after the right technologies emerged? Is it a trend or is it here to stay?

This time, I'll leave it at this point. There have been opinions on that (and some research, as well) but I find it is still premature to write a bottom line, yet :-)

Read me?

'Reading the paper' by State
Library of Victoria Collections
under a CC license

This time, I'll stay clear of food science and, for a change, I'll start with the bottom line:

We live busy lives, we do a lot of necessary or not-so-necessary things, most of which compete for our attention. That is why reading has become so difficult. That is why reading (long articles) online doesn't really stand a chance!

Here, I got it out of me. So now I can start again, the normal way this time. But I promise to keep it short. I have to.

I met a friend the other day and, at some point during our conversation, just after starting the 2nd pint, if I recall correctly, I vaguely mentioned something about this blog. The response I got was shockingly honest: "Yes, I know you blog but I haven't read any of your posts." That was the point I started thinking "Hey, you are supposed to encourage me or, at least, discourage me in a gentle way and you have just done neither". Instead of speaking my thought, I took another sip of my beer and said nothing.

The truth is that we get easily distracted. It is not a new thing. After all, distraction is nothing more than an attention shift from what we currently do onto something else. In our cave times, lying on the grass and getting distracted by the sound of animals fleeing at the sight of a hungry tiger could have been a life saver. This is certainly different to reading an article online and getting distracted by a twitter notification but the underlying mechanism remains the same.

There have been studies on that, both academic and informal, such as that on Slate. There are indications that the way we read and interpret, itself, is changing. Some of the observations, such as word/ page scanning, apply to both online and printed media. Regardless, they all seem to converge to the conclusion that keeping our attention on long online articles is tough. Some studies move onto providing advice for content developers (well, in this case, that is me). In brief, the things to do are:

• Put important things on top
• Use emphasis in a way that facilitates page scanning
• Keep it short and simple, avoiding unnecessary web design bells and whistles
• Use photos/ videos/ media contextually related to the text

I promise I'll try to stick to those rules. Although I'm not sure if all of those can be followed every single time. I may give it a try on a post on acrylamide in food.

And for those of you loyal enough to stay undistracted till the end, a great presentation from Apollo Robbins, pickpocket, magician, security consultant, etc. If you want subtitles (in many languages) visit TED.

The "WE" Individuals of the Digital Era

'Bee hive 2' by Botters
under a CC license

Knowledge has always been a valuable thing. A lot of resources are invested in getting it, being studies or just hiring the right people. And there are tools available to transmit it (books, schools, the media, etc.) as well as the means to protect it (intellectual property laws, non-disclosure agreements, information concealing technologies, etc.).

Information technologies have considerably changed the knowledge landscape, though. Information tends to be better distributed or - at least - more accessible. With a bit of exaggeration, one could support that it is getting increasingly easier to become "an expert" on something.

As usual, however, there is a catch. Well, in fact, many catches:

 Reliability; Accuracy;Suitability;Completeness... and that is just to name a few.

The interesting point is that those same catches also apply to several of the traditional means of knowledge dissemination, such as books. The difference, however, is that the perception of reliability, accuracy, etc., of what we find online tends to be favourably biased. I don't know why. Maybe because when we look something up on the internet we want to get somewhere quickly and easily.

The bottom line is that the people of the digital era are no longer isolated knowledge-islands but, rather, autonomous nodes of a network: they have access to "collective knowledge" and, sometimes, contribute to it. Individuals are (digitally) backed up by many others, although the process often happens unconsciously, well hidden in the background.

At any rate, in the modern business world, that brings up to the scene some new facts.

Firstly, the "layman" should now be considered as one with access to a lot of information, possibly unfiltered, possibly biased, possibly incomprehensible to him/ her, maybe even wrong but, at any rate, information.

Secondly, the expectations from an "expert" should now be somewhat different: having some knowledge on his/ her field is just not enough anymore. Experts should be able to go much beyond the layman of today and considerably beyond the well-informed professional that hires him/ her.

I have the feeling that we are now in a transitional period, where the new and old types of common people/ experts co-exist. Understandably, that leads to confusion, especially when our expectations of the others are not matched in reality.

Daniel Gulati, a New York entrepreneur, has gone as far as to advise us: "Beware of the everyday expert" in his article in Harvard Business Review. I understand his concerns. But, on the brighter side of things, today, business people may be able to do much more on their own than what was normally possible a few years ago. That is particularly helpful for entrepreneurs, I guess, although the audience they are addressing has also become more demanding.

To me, the real challenge is how we use this potential to make our lives better, at the professional but also at the personal (societal) level.

P.S. (1) And, just to be fair, a lot of focus has been falling lately on the  knowledge-based economy and the society of knowledge. The niche of this post is really tiny and has to do with everyday people in their everyday lives. In other words, please don't extrapolate to the world economy level :-)

P.S. (2) Just because we have access to information that many others have provided, we are not necessarily less "individual" than we used to. No, we haven't reached the Borg stage, yet. Surely, many people will feel handicapped if google (or bing) goes offline but it's the access to information that will be what they'll be missing, not the people behind it :-)

Pitch Black

'Natural Satellites' by Pedro
Moura Pinheiro under
a CC license

(this first 2012 post of mine is a bit off my usual fields - please bear with me until the 2nd one :-)

The Internet is a strange world. We ofter forget is the the result of adding up diverse creations of human beings. Be it like that, the internet is no perfect thing and - for sure - not a being, itself, at least not one with any of the human qualities.

Back in the '60s, when ARPANET was being expanded one network at a time, I doubt that anyone of those involved could ever have imagined that they were adding the first small bits of what we now know as "the web" (or "the internet" - although the two are not really the same thing). Back then, exchanging data and perhaps exchanging a few words with colleagues was a big step forward and that was, really, all it mattered. Now, especially for the newer generations, google, youtube, facebook and their likes are facts of life. Seriously, I bet that in big cities kids see and use google/ youtube/ facebook/ etc. years before they actually come across a living cow...

Don't get me wrong. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Those services and many, many, many others have completely transformed our lives, enabling us to do (often for free) things that would have been tedious or even technically challenging. Call them tools of creativity, business infrastructure, fun or whatever else.... Being around with the internet of today is cool and that is in-large because of those things.

BUT.....

With all good things, high expectations come, too. Think of content, for instance. There's a lot of stuff around the web. Is it of good quality? Let's - for the shake of the argument - say it is. Who maintains it? Mostly people (and in some cases, scripted robots - but that's another story). Some, because they make a living out of it, others because it is associated with their job, others because they feel it as a way to create or offer something to the masses, others because it happens to be what their circle does and others simply because they find it fun. To put it in other words, there is a huge diversity of agendas and - thus - of commitment behind each content item available on the web.

Within the last 4-5 months, 4 of the blogs I normally visited at least a few times a week have stayed inactive. Myself, I have been unable to put together a half-descent post for quite a while now...

What's the big deal, you 'll ask? Well, there is no big deal, unless you actually start counting on such small things or things affected start being not-so-small. You see, in my case with those 4 blogs I used to visit, they were something like the Sunday newspaper: It was not so much what they wrote, it was the ritual of reading them; the power of Habit! No huge loss but, plainly, an unnecessary change :( And, please, don't get me wrong, but I'll avoid describing questions, such as, "what may have happened to the people behind those blogs; are they all right?", not because such questions are invalid or irrelevant but because they are something I'd prefer to handle in a future post....

Now take the example a bit further. Imagine that something you really rely on (on the Web) vanishes. Take Gmail out the equation for a second or - even better - take Gmail AND Yahoo Mail AND Hotmail out of the equation. How does this feel? "It's not the same" you 'll reply. True! It's not exactly the same because many, many people rely on those services to run businesses or at least facilitate business tasks. But on top of those people there are others, who have their entire digital lives somewhere on those services. And in such cases, the loss wouldn't just be a question of money....

So here are the questions for you:

• How do we stop the part of the Web we like/ use/ ... from turning pitch black?
• If not (and I suspect we can't), how to we take the minimum possible loss/ frustration?
• How can we improve stability on the Web, without hindering progress?

The Internet Archive is a modest such effort of preserving content in a fashion very similar to a library. Is it a useful thing? Well, maybe. For sure it may prove useful to historians at some point, regardless of the fact that most of the content it salvages is of little practical use.

From the practical side of things, at least when it comes to our personal content on the web, the only practical solution is mirroring across different service providers or devices. It's no small feat if you have a couple of decades of digital luggage there but it's a feasible and low cost (or no cost) thing to do.

At times, there are visionaries putting together new tools to manage our digital presence and preserve it across the decades of our lives. But I can't see any solution to having the digital universe around us stay as stable as possible.

Experience suggests that digital neighbourhoods are volatile. Evolving, if you prefer. As are our real neighbourhoods, although at a much slower rate. Unlike reality, which we have learned to process, the digital change feels harder handle - especially for those old enough to have their fixed points of reference in life :)

So how about I change those questions above to something like this:

• How do we make change in the internet manageable? In what way should technologies evolve so that facing the novel we feel we experience continuity instead of the unfriendly pitch black void?

It is not a question with a single answer, I'm sure. User interfaces, functionality,  devices, education, business models, the law, personal finances, etc., they all are pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle. So, let's see if evolution will take us that way....