Ideas….

Lee Rainie is the Director of Pew Internet Project and a New Yorker (gasp!).  But he’s redeemed himself because he lives in Washington, DC…a wonderful place!
http://www.pewinternet.org/ppf/a/102/about_staffer.asp

Lee had some great facts.  Luckily he’s posting the presentation on the Pew Website.  I’ll add the link later.  He also says that he talks fast…and that’s true.  I’m hoping I don’t miss anything.  His goal for this presentation is to point out how the information ecosystem is changing.  And he’s come up with points on how that the ecosystem is changing.  Below are 9 points that prove this.

The Occurrence of Information Changes

Information is Coming from the “long tail” — Chris Anderson author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

the long tail: where information is occuring.

The Location of Information Changes

People don’t need to go to newspapers anymore, they can get their information from blogs, the web, and all kinds of places.

The Velocity of Information Changes

Devices allow us to communicate quicker.

The velocity of information increases and smart mobs emerge — Howard Rheingold.

The Venues of Information Changes

We are using more mediums:  reading newspapers on your computer, reading a book on the kindle, watching tv on your iPod.

The Vigilance of Information Changes

We are constantly waiting for information input.

Linda Stone says: attention is truncated

Andrew Keen author of The Cult of the Amateur and Terry Fisher say: attention is elongated

The Vibrancy of Information Changes

The immersive qualities of media environments make them more compelling places to hang out and interact.  MetaVerse Roadmap Project

• Virtual Worlds (second life)
• Mirror Worlds (google earth)
• Augmented Reality (rfid chips that might be able to keep track of who created the chair, where the materials came from, etc.)
• Life-logging (youTube, flickr)

The Relevance of Information Changes

Information improves for your life style and beliefs because of search and customization change.  — Nicholas Negroponte

The Voice and Visibility of Information Changes

Democratization of informaiton.  A bloggers blog is as important as some other information source.

The Voting and Ventilating of Information Changes

tagging, rating, commenting occurs and collective intelligence asserts itself.  –Henry Jenkins and David Weinberger

Action items for the Information Ecosystem Changes

• be findable
• be available
• use social networks
• provide information and social support similar to social networks

I’ve been poking around mediawiki a bit because I just set up a personal one. Some of the users of my personal wiki aren’t going to be very technologically savvy, so I thought of putting some information to help them use the wiki. I created some quick editing tips, how to login, and then I thought, “how am i going to explain what the heck this thing is?” That’s when I remembered CommonCraft‘s video, Wikis in Plain English (see below):

So I thought wouldn’t it be great to embed the Wiki’s in Plain English video into a wiki so that people can figure out what it is before beginning to use it. I found a great extension called VideoFlash that allows you to embed a number of different video types into a MediaWiki site. So I included the Wiki’s in Plain English video on my personal wiki as well.

Then I thought, “hey i can use this for my mediawiki farm at work”. We have a mediawiki farm here at Wheaton that allows multiple wikis to exist on with just one MediaWiki installation. One of my to do lists is to create a main page for the farm. I thought what could be on the main page is a form asking people to sign up for a wiki. I then thought maybe the main page could be a wiki. Users could see the video, and fill out information via a form.

So I found a very simple extension that is basically a form handler that will email the information submitted by the user to whatever email you would like, its called:
FormHandler send form by Email

I’m still not sure if I’m going to go this route, but it is a possibility and maybe something that others might find interesting as well.

Have you seen the add with the girl saying that it’ll take 2 billion and some odd hamster to get to the moon (annoyingness: she should have asked from what point, sea level or the Himalayas)? Did you go to the site and wonder…what the heck is this thing?

Well the KGB site seems to be a combination of Google and Wikipedia, with the community guidelines saying you may be penalized if you misuse your power, because “with great power comes great responsibility” (yes, they actually do quote the spiderman comic…however they attribute the quote to the wrong character; it was really spiderman’s uncle that said it…wonder if they’ll penalize themselves).

Apparently KGB used to be INFONXX, a company that provides “branded directory assistance services” according to their Linked In Profile. I discovered this by reading their press release about Bruce Stewart the new CEO, Mobile and Digital. Prior to taking this position, Bruce Stewart worked at Yahoo and had a fancy long title: Vice President & General Manager of the Connected Life Americas Division, which I was able to confirm on this older Yahoo site. Reuters, Yahoo, and The Washington Post picked up on the press release, so I’m assuming its legit.

What I find most interesting about all this is that KGB means business. They are attempting to compete with Google’s Knol, a similar project that’s “goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it“. Knol is a bit older it seems than KGB (Knol was announced in 2007 on the Google Blog). At the same time they are attempting to compete with Yahoo!’s directory assistance prowess, by using Yahoo!’s employees.

What I like most is that its a phone company that sees that phone info isn’t what it used to be; they are branching out into texting, buying up texting technology and the internet with the new kgb site. I see it like MovieFone, the movie information services that you used to have to (gasp!) call to get movie times. And if you’re interested in how people are using the kgb site, you should try their scroll of questions.

And for those of you that think it’ll install malware on your computer, you’re probably doing a Google search for Knowledge Generation Bureau and clicking the second link, not the first one. Tip: you should read the website link in green before you click to see if it matches with the website name.

So that’s the skinny. And if you’re wondering what Shinola is…Wikipedia has the answer, but interestingly enough KGB doesn’t.

Knowledge Generation Bureau – Commercial – Episode 1