Douglas Adams
“You live you learn. At any rate you live.”
Add comment January 5th, 2006
Books
A list of books that I would like to acquire and read:
- Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications by Stanley and Wasserman
- Social Network Analysis: A Handbook by Scott
- Theories of Communication Networks by Monge and Contractor
- The New Media Handbook by Lievrouw and Livingstone
Add comment January 5th, 2006
Design Philosophy
I think this quote is really good at summing up my design philosophy:
“You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Add comment January 30th, 2006
Offshoring of software work poses challenges, offers rewards
Alla in the News, From the Indiana University Informatics Website:
While the shift of computer software development and research to other countries has increased and poses challenges to the United States, the offshoring of such work also has reaped benefits for our nation’s software industry and consumers.
That is one of the conclusions of a study released today by the Association for Computing Machinery, a report that had input from experts with the Indiana University School of Informatics. The report, The Globalization and Offshoring of Software, was designed to examine the issues surrounding the migration of jobs within the computing and information technology field and industry.
“Offshoring can be harmful to individuals who lose their jobs and the local communities they live in, but what often is neglected in the discussion is that when American companies are made more productive and competitive by offshoring – and this can create new jobs here at home,” says William Aspray, Rudy Professor of Informatics and an executive consultant and editor of the study.
The report also finds that concern about projected U.S. job losses to low-wage, high-education countries such as China and India are overblown. It predicts the most likely scenario is that up to 3 percent of the country’s IT work would go overseas over the next decade.
“It is true that jobs in the software industry are among the very best jobs available in India, and software services there represent the country’s largest export,” says Aspray, an expert in the historical, political, and socioeconomic aspects of information technology. Aspray is the co-author of The Supply of Information Technology Workers in the United States (Computing Research Association, 1999), an acclaimed study that probed the supply of and demand for information technology workers and related issues in the United States.
On the upside, Aspray notes that the U.S. IT industry has reaped favorably. He points out the industry has found new markets for its software products, which are bought by software companies in India and elsewhere, it has lowered prices on American products, and has speeded the products to the marketplace.
Despite widespread perceptions that IT jobs have rapidly dried up in the United States – particularly in the wake of the so-called Dot-Com boom-to-bust era (1999-2003) – the reality is that the number of jobs actually increased significantly during that period, the report says. And that came at a time when offshoring was intense and on the upswing.
The report found that workers and students can improve their chances of long-term employment in IT occupations by acquiring a strong educational foundation, learning the technologies used in global software, and keeping skills up to date throughout their careers
“Some of the recommendations of this report fit well with the School of Informatics and its objectives,” Aspray says. “For example, it takes an interdisciplinary approach to an IT education, coupling core technical knowledge with other specialty knowledge. Students and young researchers learn the values of teamwork and communication, and they get to learn about other cultures, which really is a strength of the School and Indiana University as a whole.”
Other IU people had a role in the ACM report. L. Jean Camp, associate professor of informatics, was a contributing writer to a chapter about the risks and exposures to intellectual property, privacy and security by offshoring. Matthew Hottell, lecturer in informatics, and Alla Genkina, a former IU graduate student now pursuing a doctorate in California, also provided research support for the study.
To read the report’s full text, go to www.acm.org/globalizationreport/index.htm.
Add comment March 1st, 2006
Innovation places trust in Web site selection in users’ hands
Alla in the news continued. This was my Master’s thesis, and I am still working on it. Again from Indiana University School of Informatics:
As more people navigate their way through the often-murky ocean of the Internet to buy, sell and conduct other business, many are finding it increasingly difficult to steer a course away from fraud and other types of deception.
That’s one of the reasons L. Jean Camp, associate professor at the Indiana University School of Informatics, has designed Net Trust, a system that allows individuals to select their own trusted sources of information and to rate particular sites as trustworthy or not. Camp recently received a $37,000 grant from Google to support system development.
“Impersonation is easy on the network because Web sites are presented without social, geographical or physical context,” says Camp, an expert on privacy issues and how information technology affects individuals and society. “A myriad of technical solutions have been proposed to solve the problem of people judging a Web site, but none of them have been based on sound social as well as technical foundations.
“Net Trust allows users to share their own information, and to determine if a Web site is authentic,” Camp explains.
Net Trust uses ratings from users’ social networks and from user-selected third parties. Net Trust informs user decisions, as opposed to altering security settings. End users select a set of roles and a corresponding set of people for each role, such as co-workers or family members.
When users leave each Web site, they choose whether they want to share information about sites they have visited. The user sends out a flow of information using a rich-site summary, a format for syndicating Web content (often referred to as RSS news feeds), but that feed is not associated with an identifiable user.
“Essentially Net Trust adds context to the browsing experience in order to provide explicit trust information,” says Camp, who is affiliated with the IU Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. “This application does not offer a trust decision for the user, but provides information to enable the user to make that decision.”
Camp’s development of Net Trust was initiated when she was on faculty at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She has been assisted in her research at IU by Alla Genkina, a School of Informatics graduate student.
Add comment March 1st, 2006
Globalization and IT
I was the graduate researcher for the ACM Job Migration Study. Now that the report has been released, its getting a good amount of press coverage. Here are some highlights:
Newsweek:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11571580/site/newsweek/
NYT story: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/technology/23outsource.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
NYT Editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/opinion/01wed3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Its gotten lots more hits, but there are good highlights.
Add comment March 1st, 2006
Sunbelt Conference
I am going to be attending the Annual Sunbelt Social Networking Conference this year from April 25-30. Its in Vancouver this year, so I get to visit someplace new :) Here is my abstract:
The World Wide Web is filled with unreliable information, unscrupulous merchants, and malicious attacks. As a response, an increasing number of commercial websites have set up reputation systems in order to aid customers in evaluating products and services, as well as increase trust in the company. This paper proposes that we leverage an individual’s social network to extend beyond localized and branded reputation systems in the evaluation of website authenticity and reliability. This paper will present historical data from early print culture to demonstrate that people have formerly relied on social networks to negotiate saturated and uncertain information environments. Unreliable information was evaluated through the transfer of trust inherent in personal networks to entities outside of the network. Furthermore, current research findings indicate that individuals continue to rely on trust transfer via social networks for information evaluation in complex environments such as the Internet. Drawing on historical experience, this paper will discuss how social networks can be leveraged to create a more trustworthy and reliable environment in the new print medium, the Internet.
Add comment March 17th, 2006
WHY YOU SHOULD CHOOSE MATH IN HIGH SCHOOL
Here is a great piece explaining why you should choose to take math in high school (and I would add college as well): http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i11_math.html
Some Is a Highlight:
“Choose math because you will make more money. Winners of American Idol and other “celebrities” may make money, but only a tiny number of people have enough celebrity to make money, and most of them get stale after a few years. Then it is back to school, or to less rewarding careers (”Would you like fries with that?”). If you skip auditions and the sports channels and instead do your homework — especially math — you can go on to get an education that will get you a well-paid job. Much more than what pop singers and sports stars make — perhaps not right away, but certainly if you look at averages and calculate it over a lifetime.”
Add comment March 22nd, 2006
CRIA’s Study
CRIA’s (the Canadian version of RIAA) own study counters P2P Claims
Here is a Sample:
“The survey asked for the sources of music on people’s computers. Among those who download music from P2P services, the top source of music was ripping copies of their own CDs (36.4%), followed by P2P downloads (32.6%), paid downloads (20.1%), shared music from friends (8.8%), downloads from artist sites (5.6%), and other sources (2.9%). In other words, even among those who download music from P2P services, the music acquired on those services account for only one-third of the music on their computers as store-bought CDs remain the single largest source of music for downloaders”
Add comment March 22nd, 2006
Danah Boyd’s Essay on Social Software
Title: Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?
This personal essay speaks about the differences between Friendster and MySpace. “If you want to understand the differences, you need to understand the history, the decisions that were made, and how these decisions affected practice.”
Add comment March 22nd, 2006