Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web

At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?

I can't embed the film clip here but the video can be viewed here

Friday, September 26, 2008

Copyright free stock photos

When embedding photos in your website you need to consider copyright issues. You can't just grab photos from the web: they may be subject to copyright. use your own photos or take them from a reputable photo stock exchange site. Click on the link for a good example.

So, how do blind people access information on the web?

I'm glad you asked that question.

You can read the answer on this site, which is about improving web accessibility for people with disabilities.

E = Q x A and web design

Effectiveness = Quality x Acceptance

If you want an effective web presence, you need a site that is of high quality, and is accepted by your target audience.

You can have the most beautifully designed, multicoloured, beautifully written English language website in the world (so Quality = 100%) but your target audience is either
-blind,
-speaks only Swahili, Latvian, and African Click, and / or
-isn't connected to the web anyway
(so, Acceptance = 0%),

... then the effectiveness of your web presence is going to be Q (100) x A (0)= Effectiveness (0).

So, before you build your web site you will need to consider who the target audience is, and what constitutes quality as far as web presence goes. Here are some links that you might find very useful.

World Best Website Awards: http://www.worldbestwebsites.com/criteria.htm
Vincent Flanders, Web Pages that Suck: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
Jakob Nielsen, How users read on the web: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
Navigation and labelling: http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign/navigation.html
Use of colour in web design: http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign/color.html

PS Try and find out what percentage of people in the world are, to a greater or lesser extent, colour blind. The results will surprise you. If you find the answer post it here as a comment!

Monday, September 22, 2008

The Rijkswidget

Would you like a widget?

What's a widget?

A widget is a small program that only does one thing: but does that one thing, very well. My favourite widget is the Rijkswidget (see above) which is a small program that showcases a piece of art from the Royal Dutch Museum (the Rijksmuseum). A new work of art appears on your desktop every day. Click on it once and it increases in size and resolution, click on the bottom right corner and you get information about the artwork and the artist.

You can download one for free from the Rijksmuseum:
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/widget?lang=en

There are many widgets: global clocks, weather reports, cute stuff, educational stuff, latest updated newspapers front page from all over the world ... anything. Widgetbox have a good selection, but there are many sites that allow you to download widgets.

Have fun.

Friday, September 19, 2008

What are ‘academic sources’??

Definitions of what constitutes an ‘academic source’ will vary but essentially an academic source represents a scholarly writing that is reviewed by peers.
A publication is considered to be scholarly if it is authored by academics for a target audience that is mainly academic, the printed format isn't usually a glossy magazine, and it is published by a recognized society with academic goals and missions.
A publication is considered to be peer reviewed if its articles go through an official editorial process that involves review and approval by the author's peers (people who are experts in the same subject area.) Most (but not all) scholarly publications are peer reviewed. Some trade publications are actually peer reviewed, but some databases, such as ProQuest, do not consider them when filtering on peer reviewed. This is because getting results from trade publications instead of academic journals can be frustrating to researchers. Instead, these databases exclude these peer reviewed trade publications and only consider publications that are scholarly in terms of content, intent, and audience.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

If you surf the Internet too much

... your cursor will catch fire!

A medieval helpdesk

New technology ... new skills... We will always need the Helpdesk.

National strategic approach to ICT


Sawasdee ka! I hadn't forgotten you, good students of NUBCC ... To follow on my post about the ICT challenges and opportunities in India, I thought I would provide some material about the strateic implementation of ICT in Thailand.

Chadamas Thuvasethakul Ph.D., and Thaweesak Koanantakool Ph.D. are of the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), a semiautonomous government agency under the Thai Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment. They have written a very clear story about the history and future of the National ICT Policy in Thailand. If you are interested in a national strategic approach to ICT implementation, this is a good article to read.

ICT and Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities

At the recent Conference on Tourism in India – Challenges Ahead, 15-17 May 2008, Dr. Deepthi Shanker from the Indian Institute of Technology presented a discussion paper titled "ICT and Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities". You can access her very readable paper here.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

How users read on the web

Successful writing for the web entails understanding how people read on the web. According to Dr Jakob Nielsen, people don't! They don't read - they scan instead. You can access his studies on readability, research how people read websites, and learn how to improve web writing strategies.

The information is based on academic studies which illustrate how little people read on the web ...

I wish the web designers of many university websites (including our own) would have read Dr Nielsen's short and informative page ...

Is Google making us stupid?

A fascinating article by Nicholas Carr on the Net and effects on human cognition:

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Where is all your data stored and what is a petabyte?

This week on the ABC radio program Background Briefing, reporter Stan Currey explores where all your data is stored and what a petabyte is. The audio of each Background Briefing is available on-line for four weeks after the program goes to air. You can listen back to recent programs or download them to your computer or mp3 player.

CLOUD COMPUTING
Reporter: Stan Correy
Google turns ten this week and their data storage needs are exploding along with all the other service and content providers. Data server farms are popping up everywhere as we enter the Petabyte age.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2008/2359128.htm
Sunday 14th September 9.10am
Tuesday 16th September 7.05pm
Wednesday 17th September 4.05am

Monday, September 8, 2008

Want to improve your English?


Most of the students studying this unit are speakers of English as a second language. Many of you might like to (or need to) improve your English. Garnet Education have recently published a book called "English for Tourism and Hospitality". I can recommend this book. More information on the book can be found here.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

More articles by Buhalis

In a tutorial today I did note that Dimitrios Buhalis appears very often as an author of articles dealing with information technology and Tourism.

According to a study, Dimitrios is the second-most frequently cited scholar in the period 1998-2007 (see http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2008.03.003 )

Well done Dimitrios!

A link to a collection of (some) of his useful articles (in pdf form) can be found here

Link to article by Buhalis

Buhalis D & Law R (2008) ‘Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet - The state of eTourism research’ Tourism Management Vol 29, Iss 4, August 2008, pp 609-623

This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyses prior studies in the context of Internet applications to tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing.

You will find this article very useful in gaining an overall perspective of the state of eTourism research.

The paper can be found here .