Wow, really interesting article over at Zogby International talking about how they did the first mobile phone poll to see whom people are going to vote for. In an obvious nod to the incredibly (and inexplicably) popular American Idol pop candy show, the folks over at Zogby finally figured out that there is a huge group of people who don’t answer their land line phones anymore — and, surprise, they are young and liberals! Oh by the way, this isn’t a politically motivated post, just an opportunity to point out to you that the times really are a changin’. Stop over and take a look … here’s a little quote:

“Mr. Zogby went on to note that Zogby International plans to explore future text-message surveys in response to concerns throughout the polling industry about reaching mobile telephone users. He added that text-messaging has become an important tool for political activists on both sides of the political spectrum, and Zogby International will be at the forefront of technology shifts that affect polling.”

No shit … What do you think?

Ok, I know, I know … I am REALLY late with the DA for this week. I’ll make it up to you though. How, you ask? Well, how about this … NO DA NEXT WEEK! You turn this one in by end of next week and you get 20 points for it. Now, there are some rules associated with this one … I am interested in you all going above and beyond, so I am adding a few wrinkles to the mix. Read on …

What I want you to do is complete the DA in typical fashion by posting your comments here in the Class Blog, but as you’ll notice this DA is asking for a report … what does that mean? Well, look at it this way, I am counting this twice, so it should be well thought out, creative, and follow all the guidelines below. Take your time and do this well … one point to consider, you may want to think outside of the examples provided. First of all, everyone in the class will do a MAC machine … and second, the examples are well-understood systems. Try to think of some other types of interfaces people are faced with on a regular basis — look in the HUB, at the gas station, the grocery store, and all sorts of places.

I’m not going to do an overview of the topic — I expect you are reading!

Discussion Activity

Conduct a real-world observation of people using a system such as an ATM machine, Lion Cash machine, or Swipe card machine for doors. Write a report describing the system. Make sure to include a description of the interface, the functions of the system, the social environment of system, and your observations of people using the system. Observe for 30 minutes, but do not talk to the users. You should only make observations. Be sure not to jeopardize users’ security by observing too closely.

Today in class (slides are here) we looked at some interface design principles. Design principles help guide you when creating a software interface or web site. Problems arise because principles are just guides; they are not rules. This means that you still have to make decisions about the thing you are designing while you are designing it, and then try to figure out whether or not it looks good and is functional. For example, you could add objects to your interface in a symmetrical fashion, but that might impede information flow.

Your best bet when designing the interface for your solution, and your website in (week 13), is to create 3 designs and show them to people to critique. You can prototype your design in Dreamweaver or Powerpoint, both of which are on the Macs in our classroom.

Once you have a satisfactory design, then you can build your website. For the project, you can add the designed prototype to your final delivery. If anyone wants critique on a design, then I am happy to do so. But I will only do this in person, so catch me at the end of a Thursday class or in my office hour.

We also looked at some bad designs. You were all pretty good at seeing where the bad designs I showed in class went wrong. You can see the bad designs from class at the interface hall of shame.

How do you know when you see a interface good design? Do you have to interact with it first? What if the interface is ugly, but functional? Is it still a good design?

This is cross posted from my Learning & Innovation blog site … I was just curious to see if any of you had comments:

So Apple came out with the long rumored iPod Photo yesterday … I, like all the other Mac folks out here were reading about the features well before it was announced and you know, until I really saw it and started to look at its specifications and features, I thought “whatever.” Then, when I saw how Apple actually pulled it off, kept the form factor close to the same and how it really works I started to think about how powerful an academic (and business) tool this thing can be.

I do a lot of traveling and I am always giving presentations … sometimes my trips take my across the country, but at the same time a lot of them are on campus, are day trips around the state, or other “down and back” endeavors. For the long distance, multi-day trips I would never consider leaving my 12″ PowerBook at home — it’s just too much a part of the whole travel experience (digital photos, email, music, web, DVD, etc). But, with this new iPod Photo, I can see instances where that’s all I have to take with me to do my presentations. I use Keynote as my presentation software — simply because it is so much better than PowerPoint … I need to look at it more, but I could see myself pulling jpegs of all my key slides for my presentations and simply run them via the iPod Photo … my pictures, my music, & my presentations all running from this little device that fits in my pocket. If you can do “On-the-Go” photo “playlists” then I could quickly assemble presentations from a whole slew of key slides I use. Cool.

I also read you can sync slideshows to audio … I have been playing with the whole podcasting thing for a couple of weeks now … I’ve even gotten it figured out how to route voice, music, iChat, and really anything else into an iPod for recording … my colleague, Bart Pursel and I are going to start a (maybe) weekly podcast this week or next, so stay tuned for that. Anyway, back to the idea … if I can exert some influence via my role in the Apple Digital Campus, I am going to push for a simple authoring tool to allow everyday people to create podcasts that can be synced with images — think digital photos, presentation slides, maps, or anything else that is graphical in nature. These little iPod Podcast Presentations could be wrapped up and served via a RSS enclosure so they could be delivered to your audience as often as you want — all automatically in portable way. I’ve done research with HP about doing these types of things with the Pocket PC, but the results were less than perfect — the devices just couldn’t hold their own and had too many features to be easy to use.

It would be great to have all my students using an iPod Photo — like the Duke project on steroids — so I could build short interactive iPod Podcast Presentations to cover all sorts of supplemental material. Let alone the commercial applications — Museum tours, city tours, University tours, just in time training applications — imagine if you are a network system support person and can’t remember how to repair a bad switch and you could pull up, on the spot, and interactive guide on the iPod Photo! Lots of cool applications there!

All in all, I am more impressed with the device than I thought I would be — almost surely because I like just about anything Apple does, but this one has some real potential outside of its intended purpose. When you combine this with the One-Click Assessment concept I’ve blogged about before, the iPod is shaping up to be a hidden jewel for technology integration in the classroom … I still agree with Steve Jobs that a portable video device isn’t what people want, but I bet if they came out with one I would (a) buy one, and (b) think ways to use it beyond watching illegally downloaded movies from Bit Torrent — not that I do that. And yes, I did buy one yesterday — all 60 GB of it. When it gets here, I’ll be taking it apart to see how it can be used to have a larger impact.

It is really starting to heat up in the legal file sharing space on University campuses … just read this article about the North Carolina University system pilot testing a new service that may allow students with access to several online music and movie stores. They say a “fee is likely,” but I doubt that will make students uptight given they are being told ahead of time. Especially if you consider that students will be able to “opt in” at $2-$5 a month … If you remember, we had a discussion like this earlier this semester and you all overwhelmingly wanted to know what the real (read hidden) costs of the Napster project are. This seems like a much better approach.

Now, when you are researching your solution, you know of a place that is really attacking this issue — the North Carolin University state system. I wonder if that could ever happen here in the Commonwealth of PA? I think I know the answer, but would be interested in hearing from you all.

Update 10.25.2004

On the other end of the spectrum … I just read an article at Wired.com that speaks to the importance of all this … the article, “Song-Swap Networks Still Humming” claims that, ” Peer-to-peer traffic has not declined despite the music industry’s aggressive pursuit of illegal file sharers…” Wow, couldn’t figure that one out on our own, could we? They go on to link to some great resources you should take a look at and discuss how they measure activity and challenge earlier research that said P2P activity is on the decline. All in all, a good read … take a look and let us all know what you think!

Dean Thomas discussed the IST program, its roots, and its mission today in class. His main point is that IST prepares leaders for the global digital economy …

Dean Thomas started by talking about that there is a 2 trillion dollars a year investment in technology in the US … top managers in the USA are not seeing the return on investment based on the fact that there are few people who know “how to use the technology to make a difference,” not “how do you do 200 lines of debugged code.” He went on to say that we as educators haven’t trained people to be solution providers – we tend to focus on the technology itself. At IST we look at the interfaces, the social, ethical, policy issues, as well as the drill downs into the basics of technology … we educate students who can engage, defend, and articulate solutions with clients. Employers love that stuff! And oh, by the way so do students … both in their internships and their real jobs!

In relation to outsourcing, Dean Thomas says he hears a lot parents say “outsourcing means there won’t be any jobs out there for my kid …” the dean laughs – he even calls it silly. The stuff that gets outsourced is “production stuff,” not problem solving. He goes on to say, that IST students can go into companies and provide a series of competencies that will not be outsourced — they become strategic advantages.

Let’s boil it down to two main issues that get to the heart of the IST:

1. Can you use technology for competitive distinctions when everyone has the access to the same technology? Yes … it becomes the people who use the technology to create winning solution.

2. How do you get people to use the technology so it can make a difference? You make them understand that there is more to a solution than the technology — that solutions are a product of a systems-level perspective.

He also discussed some numbers related to the School — 98% placement at about $53,000.00 starting salaries — both the highest rates at Penn State. If you were engaged in consulting (a third of our graduates last year) those salaries went up into the $70,000 and $80,000 range. Check out some of these stats online. As a School, we do huge research initiatives – we’ve done over 24 million in research in the list two years. Check it out.

He discussed several IST faculty member’s research agendas … really just to give you all a flavor of what is going on here – and how applied it is to the real world. Sort of like your videos! Take a look around the IST website and see what its all about. If any of you have questions for Dean Thomas, you can post them as comments here and I’ll make sure he gets them. Thanks for listening and asking such insightful questions.

Topic 7 is designed to help you understand the value of data and data management tools and how they can be applied. Very little of what we do today as an Information Society would be possible without the massive investment in database tools, techniques, and technologies … most of the knowledge we come across in our daily lives is stored in some sort of a database structure. Please read topic 7 so you can understand that there are different types of databases for different reasons. I have to say, you cannot solve our challenge without a complete understanding of database technologies — you just can’t do it. Pieces of what you learn in this topic will really allow you to solve it.

The topic begins with an overview of the importance of data. Without data, computers are of little value. The worth of a computer or an information system is measured in terms of its ability to support the processing, transmission and/or accessing of data. In fact, data management can be the key to success or failure for an organization. Many companies run into difficulties because they lack the appropriate data to make effective decisions, and/or the way their databases are constructed inhibits the ability to analyze and manipulate data in a timely, cost-effective manner. It goes on to lay out the basic terminology associated with databases … this is a critical bunch of information as it really gives you the basics.

From there, it goes on to discuss the characteristics of databases and on to a very importnat lesson related to database management systems. Make sure you finish out your reading as it gets into some fairly complex stuff … the key here is that databases are the main ingrediant in so much of what you as a knowledge worker will need to know to solve large-scale IT challenges. Don’t miss reading this topic! When you finish your reading, respond to the discussion activity below … and remember, your challenge asks you to decide on a database sytem to power your solution — the information in this topic should be a starting point for you to do just that.

Discussion Activity

At times, we collect data from our employees, peers, customers, and friends. As knowledge workers, we are expected to sort through data and come up with meaningful information. There are many things that can jeopardize the meaning that we intend to pull from data, especially when data comes from surveys or some type of human-generated information (interviews, reports, journals, or books). The respondents’ truthfulness, the quantity of responses, possible bias, and time constraints can lead us to “stories” that might not be valid. Can you think of some other problems that may occur when trying to extract meaningful data? How do you plan to only extract valid and reliable data so as to create meaningful information?