G. S. Bubbra's blog

Folksonomy

Guru — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:51:04 +0000

The following is the second part (of three) of a take-home midterm exam we had…

A folksonomy is a categorization tool that some social networking websites use. More specifically, according to Vander Wal, folksonomy can be defined as “the result of personal free tagging of information and objects (anything with a URL) for one’s own retrieval.” Vander Wal continues, “(This) tagging is done in a social environment (usually shared and open to others) (and) is created from the act of tagging by the person consuming the information.” From this point, these tags can ultimately be utilized as a form of classification for an entire online community or experience rather than for a single user.

Within Terdiman’s article, Vander Wal states “It’s very much people tagging information so that they can come back to it themselves or so that others with the same (or similar) vocabulary can find it.” Within the same Terdiman article, Matt Haughey states, “Tags are great because you throw caution to the wind, forget about whittling down everything into a distinct set of categories and instead let folks loose categorizing their own stuff on their own terms.”

Folksonomy can be seen as an extremely useful for the management of information since the tags generated are derived by the user in his or her own words and not those imposed by any predetermined system. Thus, items can be categorized with any word that defines a relationship between the resource and a concept within the user’s mind (Guy). Tagging terms can range from the obvious to that of the more obscure variety. This is particularly useful for others with the same type of vocabulary as they will be readily able to search through or for your content.

An additional strength of folksonomy is the social aspect of tagging. If you open your content to others, they are then able to label and tag your content as well. Thus, all users can contribute to the folksonomy. Thus, an important benefit of folksonomy is that it is scalable!

Like all things, folksonomy also has its weaknesses. The fact that the user can create tags based off of any criteria, it is fair to conclude that there will be ambiguous or inexact terms used.
Additionally, to put it politely, people are inconsistent; the terms that may work for one individual, may not necessarily work for the next. The main issue with this imprecise approach is that tags could change over time and from user to user.

Another weakness of folksonomy is that people can lie. An individual could mistag a photo on Flickr hoping to optimize the relevancy of that photo within the search results. Additionally, according to Doctorow, people are lazy; if someone does not want to tag his or her photos, he or say will not and then it can be up to someone else to decide the tags.

Another limitation with folksonomies is that some websites only allow single word tags which can result in many compound terms or each individual word being entered as its own tag. Overall, the use of folksonomy can result in an uncontrolled and chaotic set of tagging terms that do not support searching as effectively as more controlled vocabularies do (Guy).

Works Cited

Doctorow, Cory. “Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia.” The WELL. Accessed 05 March 2011 <http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm>.

Guy, Marieke and Emma Tonkin. “Folksonomies: Tidying Up Tags?” D-Lib Magazine 12.1 (2006): n.pag. PDF File.

Terdiman, Daniel. “Folksonomies Tap People Power.” Wired. Accessed 05 March 2011 <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/02/66456>.

Vander Wal, Thomas. “Folksonomy.” Vanderwal.net. Accessed 05 March 2011 <http://www.vanderwal.net/folksonomy.html>.

The Five Hat Racks

Guru — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 20:35:55 +0000

The following is one part (of three) of a take-home midterm exam we had…

As web developers, how we decide to organize the information that is to be presented to the user is an important decision. This organization can affect how the user responds to and interacts with our website (Lidwell 84). Thus, we should organize our website’s information otherwise we run the potential risk of overwhelming our users with information.

There are various ways to represent how information should be organized to allow for user interactions. However, it seems as though none of these other avenues to separate data further have been as effective as the Five Hat Racks. The Five Hat Racks essentially states that there are a finite number of organizational strategies (Wurman); as the name states, data can be organized by five factors. These five factors are:
   1. Location – organizing by physical location (either geographically or spatially);
   2. Alphabet – organizing alphabetically;
   3. Time – organizing in a chronological sequence (for example, step-by-step);
   4. Category – organizing through a shared similarity or relatedness; and
   5. Hierarchy (also known as Continuum) – organizing by magnitude (for example, from least to most importance).
Essentially, the Five Hat Racks affect the organization of information which in turn can influence the user as well as the way in which the user understands and interacts with the provided information.

No matter how you perceive data or information, it will fit in to one of the above factors (Towers). As stated above, hierarchy is organizing through magnitude; the type of magnitude will change depending on the particular circumstances. An example of the use of hierarchy would be within a website because it allows you to assign value or weight to the information (Wurman); thus, comparing the information by some sort of common measure (Lidwell). The home page itself has its own hierarchy that signifies the most important information (at the top or “above the fold”) to the least important pieces of information (at the bottom or “below the fold”). Thus, by providing this priority the user will be able to understand the level of importance that is on the page. This model can be taken further within a website by reviewing the navigation scheme of the entire website as the more important pages will be higher within the navigation structure.

Another example of organizing by hierarchy would be search engine rankings.

Again, organising by category refers to grouping information based on similarity or relatedness. There may even be cases where people seek information based on perceived similarities. Category can mean different models, different types, or even different questions to be answered by lending itself to organizing items of similar importance (Wurman). An example of using this approach would be the use of category headings to further break down the navigation structure of a particular website. For example, when visiting the Humber College website we notice the main categories of the website on the very top of the page. When hovering (or mousing over) an appropriate category, the menu allows for a dropdown list to showcase its various subcategories.

Another example of organizing by category would be that of subject in a book store or library (for example, fiction, non-fiction, autobiographies, etc.).

There are no limits to which organization method you may use or even how many you may use as organization is simply a way to help others find the appropriate content. Your navigation may be based on category, your search results are based on hierarchy, and your sitemap may be organized by alphabet while the posts of your blog are organized by time.

Works Cited

Lidwell, William, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler. Universal Principles of Design. Gloucester: Rockport Publishers Inc., 2003.

Towers, Ashley. “Five Hat Racks.” Usability Friction. Accessed 05 March 2011 <http://usabilityfriction.com/2009/09/29/five-hat-racks/>.

Wurman, Richard S. “The Business of Understanding – Latch: The Five Ultimate Hatracks.” InformIT. Accessed 05 March 2011 .

Post-midterms

Guru — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 22:35:33 +0000

Midterms are now for the most part complete; I still have a take-home exam to do.

So what can I write about this latest round of exams??? For the most part, I believe everything went well; I had a week off for Reading Week to study so I should have been fine as I did not have to do much this past week besides a light review the night before each respective exam.

If you noticed, I wrote “for the most part” above and that had to do with the practical portion of my old nemesis (turned ally) ASP.NET. I knew… no wait, I know my stuff but something just happened during that portion of the exam. One tiny frustration led to another and then another and things just seemed to snowball from there; you can say I had a bad few hours. I did, however, start to overcome those frustrations as time was nearing the end.

I guess I got too used to having three hours for a practical portion that I had not accounted for this exam being only two hours. Oh, well… all that can really be said is that I had an off-day. There is no point reflecting over something that is now done; time to move on. We live and we learn… Here’s to part marks!

One month in…

Guru — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 22:27:39 +0000

Week four is now complete, meaning we should all be kicking things up a notch from here on out. However, things are a little slow at the moment as we await confirmation from our various instructors and coordinators regarding what it is we will be doing exactly on our various team projects.

But enough of all of that stuff…

Being that we are now one month in, here is a general observation (or perhaps, a suggestion) regarding our program…

For consistency purposes, I strongly believe that ONE domain and hosting company should be used by all the students in this program. We spent the majority of the first month of classes doing basic configurations on each hosting provider (for each group of students) that we were getting behind from the very beginning.

Each instructor has his or her own preference with regards to a hosting provider and some are definitely better than others as they have different features (some we need, others we do not).

So many students have been having issues with their respective hosting providers that a few of us students agree that perhaps a domain and hosting package be included within our tuition (with the option to optout). Or even at the beginning of the program suggest one that has been unanimously agreed upon by the instructors. This way things would be standardized across all boards for all students.

Because as students, we do not want to spend even more money just to buy another hosting package or services from our providers.

Myers-Briggs

Guru — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 18:23:55 +0000

The Myers-Briggs personality type assessment test… What can I write about the Myers-Briggs which was assigned to us as homework in our Career Connections course.

I guess the first thing I will write is that this assessment and others like it are highly subjective. Depending on the test variation I take I tend to get a different personality type each time and it is not due to some sort of dissociative personality disorder. However, if I take the same variation of the test over again, I will receive the same personality type as before so in that sense things are consistent.

The two personality types I tend to get most often are ENTJ and ESTJ. Of the two it is difficult to say which one I am. My peers seem to agree with the ENTJ assessment while I seem to be split depending on the certain description I read at the time. A year ago, I felt as though ESTJ fit me best of these two, but now it is ENTJ.

Here is a brief description of the two…

ESTJ: "responsible, finisher, decisive, norm following, respects authority, punctual, hard working, stiff, self confident" (Source)

ENTJ: "leader, ambitious, hard working, dominant, prepared, hates to be bored, confident, opinionated, analytical…" (Source)

So, which sounds more like me? Since I did not specifically state which was my primary personality type earlier (ie., the one I get the majority of the time), I will let you know… I’m an ENTJ.

Week 2

Guru — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:03:11 +0000

Another week of classes has now come and gone… And we are still in the introductory stages of many of these courses, while others seem to be starting to picki up some steam.

Going into this semester, I was probably looking the most forward to the PHP course as well as the Mobile development course. That is not to say I do not have any background in PHP because I do; however, I feel as though I had hit a wall in how much of it I could learn on my own and that was the primary reasoning behind me joining this program. Since this is only week two, I will not voice an opinion or really comment on my expectations for any of the classes this term (at least, not at this point).

However, I will say it was interesting writing a quiz for our XML class in only our second XML class; not that I was ill prepared or anything. I am probably over doing things in these early weeks because I know myself; I would rather be over prepared now than stressing myself out later when we are closer to midterms and finals.

I know this post was a little short but things have been somewhat busy in a non-school related manner the last little bit…

And we’re back…

Guru — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 02:19:08 +0000

With the first week of the Winter (or second) semester now complete, here is one general observation so far… there is much work to be done this semester and that is probably putting it lightly. Since this past week has mostly been filled with introductory classes for each course, there is not much to say.

In the XML and PHP courses, we went over some general rules and basic syntax. For the Mobile/ASP.NET course, we spent the majority of the time setting up our individual MS SQL databases, but also did some basics with the login control. I found the login control pretty useful and straightforward last semester as I used it for my custom CMS for my ASP.NET final project.

For Web Securites we went over some of the basics and for Information Architecture, we spent a good amount of time going over our group projects for this semester. And lastly, our Career Connections courses was canceled for the week as some issues get sorted out (ie., finding an instructor).

Getting back to the group projects… yes, projects… plural. We were put into new groups for this term and I am pretty sure the same groups will remain for next semester as well. We were also given the documentation binder for our the determined website; this website will be done using ASP.NET. We were also told of another group project where we would update the content of a specific program within Humber; here we will be using PHP as Drupal is used for the CMS.

My new group seems pretty good so far and we are on top of things as we have already had two group meetings within these first few days. This will be an interesting semester and I will have to make sure I stay on top of things. And with that, I should get to some readings or some simple reviewing.

Better late than never…

Guru — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:27:55 +0000

Today is Thursday, December 16th and it is currently six in the morning (I am dating this as I do not know when I will be able to post this online). I am writing this blog entry from my gate at Pearson International Airport while I wait to board my flight to California and begin my winter break.

Last night I wrote my last final examination for the semester as well as completed my ASP.NET final project; I actually thought I would have been up all night completing that project, but I was able to finish with enough time to spare to allow me to get a decent amount of sleep (sleep I will eventually catch up on once I return home).

So now the semester is finally over; well, at least for me as my classmates still have class today and tomorrow. This semester has been informative and interesting, while at times boring and confusing but that is all to be expected. The final examinations were fine; nothing really complicated but probably a bit more studying was done than I was originally expecting to do. Therefore, all that extra studying took some time away from me completing my ASP.NET final project but in the end everything seemed to work out fine.

Besides final examinations and projects, we also had our group presentations to deal with. Our group was great! As the team leader, I may have pushed them at times but I believe they all now know and feel as though it was worth it. I pushed them in the sense that I set hard deadlines for things to be done and everyone delivered (even if a reminder was needed). Back to the topic of our presentation… we put in weeks (if not months) of hard work and effort toward getting everything just right. In the end, we were cut short as another class had to come in to write their final examination in our classroom. However, all we really needed were another five (or perhaps six) minutes to finish up. The ultimate payoff was going to be our big finish which I spent about the last two or so weeks working on; mostly just making sure I had the wording just right. But that was not the case… C’est la vie! Overall, I am happy with the way things were progressing and really proud of my group. Gr8 Ideas did a great job!

This semester is now over, but our program is far from over… And after the semester we just had, I cannot wait to begin my break… I feel as though I definitely deserved it!

See you in the new year!

The day that was the Polytechnics Canada Showcase

Guru — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 04:19:06 +0000

Currently it is 3pm on Friday afternoon and I am sitting in the Porter lounge at the Ottawa airport along with Dr. Watzke, among others. I have been up since 3:30am this morning as I had to eventually make my way downtown to get to the Toronto island airport for the flight to Ottawa. I have to say that the ferry ride to the actual terminal was such a waste of time (waiting fifteen minutes for a thirty second voyage), but that is a topic for another day.

I am in Ottawa because I was presenting on research and innovation on Humber College’s behalf at the Polytechnics Canada Showcase regarding a certain research project I have been involved with for the past few months. It should be noted that I was one of nine student presenters today.

Once I arrived in Ottawa, I headed straight to Algonquin College to meet up with everyone else at the Polytechnics Canada Showcase for a quick bite to eat. Next, we proceeded to march to the actual conference hall where a few key speakers spoke for about one-and-a-half hours collectively and then we were given a chance to mingle and network.

Next, came the moment of truth… The time had arrived for the student presentations. We were not told the order in which we were presenting until mere moments before any one of us were to start. I guess by the luck of the draw Humber was chosen to go first, so I got the party started. My presentation went well or I think it went well; at least, everyone seemed to tell me that. The other student presentations were quite interesting and covered various topics. And after the last student presented, we had a question and answer session.

We then proceeded back to the dining hall for a quick lunch before each student was to meet with Minister Goodyear. The protocol for how this meeting was to be conducted was altered a few times in a short period of time; however, it was concluded that each student would get ninety seconds to deliver an “elevator pitch” in regards to his or her presentation topic. Once the last student spoke, he came and spoke to each student individually.

The event wrapped up with a few closing speeches and with Minister Goodyear handing out some awards. I then continued to network and mingle for a few moments before l had to leave for the airport.

And this concludes the events of the last twelve hours of my day…

(FYI: you will not be able to tell from simply reading this, but I wrote this entire entry from my iPhone as I thought doing so would help pass the time and give me one less thing to worry about this weekend.)

a pre-finals “rant”

Guru — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 20:07:55 +0000

There are only a few weeks left in this semester and things have been progressively moving faster. We are eleven days away from beginning finals. And on top of that we have individual assignments and projects, group projects and a presentation. Busy… Busy… Busy.

For both the digital design and web programming courses, I believe I am fine. The same goes with project management, although my group and I will begin practicing for our presentation this week so that should remove any of the “kinks”.

Regarding our database course, I am fine with SQL and MySQL; however, it is what we covered during the PL/SQL portion of the class that has left everyone in the class scratching his or her head. The content seemed pretty straightforward until we were given our latest assignment having to do with procedures and functions… I do not think one person was confident with his or her responses to that assignment.

Regarding ASP.NET… what can I say about this course??? The material seems fine; there is much of it, but manageable to a certain degree. We are behind in the course material since we took two weeks to go over the midterm, which ultimately removed the second portion of our final project. Now, the second and third portions have been merged for one massive final project that will account for 32% of our final grade. I have no issues with the percentage of the final project; it is more an issue of what we are supposed to do and how I feel we are not fully prepared to do so. Do not take what I am writing the wrong way… the work seems doable; it just seems like much to do in such a short amount of time. I simply do not know where to begin which is odd for me.

Anyways, my “mini” rant is now complete… back to trying to figure out and work on the above ASP.NET project.