Category Archives: READINGS

THE LONG TAIL

Chris Anderson outlines that the Internet affects heaps on business these days.

In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

Websites such as Amazon, eBay, and iTunes clearly are the most popular online sales site, but what are their gains? True, they do have strong demand but their supply don’t satisfy the needs of customers, but the rest of the market goes on for a long, long way – thus Anderson speaks of it as ‘The Long Tail’.

More than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles.

 

What Anderson’s research has shown is when the demand for niche products is served, there is actually less interest in the hits and the customer is more likely to be satisfied with their product purchasing outside of the big sites. With Music, Spotify is a good example. They have a wide range of music genres, and its free. 

Anderson shares a 3 point guide to how online entities are seeking to gain the most out of the Long Tail:

1. Make Everything Available

2. Cut the price in half. Now lower it.

3. Help me find it

The example of Spotify above successfully achived the 3 points.Therefore they are now growing bigger and bigger.

read more on Esther’s blog .

RICH GET RICHER

Networks are always growing, little by little, node by node. They don’t stay the same size.

Network nodes link with one another, and more likely linking with popular posts than old posts.

 

Actors with more links have a higher chance of getting new roles. Albert-László Barabási

 

this explain the point above. Producers are more likely to cast popular actors than others, simply because they gain more attractions from viewers and fans. This contrast the point when Rich get richer.
Its the same with the employing process. The one with impressive experiences in areas get the job , while the fresh new one don’t.

this is twisted.

okay-guy-job-experience

 

Overall, its all about preferential attachment. The one with more impressive links to the right areas will always comes first.

Interesting post by Mardy 

Narrative

Michael Joy, the granddaddy of hypertext fictions, in 1987,  published what is recognised as the first major narrative of this genre, afternoon: a story, which he created with Jay Bolter using the software and hypertext application, Storyboard.

afternoon-1-web

Hypertext offers readers and authors the same type of freedom, in a far more seamless fashion. Furthermore, the idea of narrative in hypertext expands beyond the written text, incorporating visual or audio content that goes along with the fictional narrative.

Miichael Joy talks about how paragraphs on different pages could go with other paragraphs in other parts of the book. Douglas mentions how interactive storytelling meets a desire that many readers have – a desire for the inexhaustable story. A book no longer has to stay the same every time you open it up. Sounds cool to me. Imagine playing video games like God Father, Grand Theft Auto, you are able to choose your path and experience new plots every time you play.

( Agreeing with Tim‘s view on this. )

 

corazon_de_oro

On the other hand, I’ve been too familiar with linear structure which there’s beginning and ending , and an interesting body part betweens.

Overall, It was mentioned that hypertext is quite a unique technology, and therefore cannot be compared to print media. The hypertext narrative must be treated as its own entity. We just need to balance the two and treat them equally, as they are both close and useful to us these days.

 

 

 

Networks

In lieu of the Australia Day Monday classes, I watched a video called ” Six Degress”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dcupE1PWj0

 

Six degrees of separation is the  that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of “afriend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.

Kevin Bacon also has a website, called Six Degrees, dedicated to donations all across the globe.

bacon_pkg

In fact, nowadays, people are connected through the internet, social media like Facebook, Tweeter, phones, apps, or anything that traveling is not required. So I believe that the fact that we are connected to each other thesedays, are thanks to the technology bring us together, and thats why ” the world is getting smaller.”

People-computers

Im so excited to see the changes that technology will bring to our world, as 10 years ago, I wouldn’t imagine sitting at home and being able to do everything on internet connected computer.

 

 

Hypertext

This is the very first time I’ve actually learnt about the concept of hypertext rather than just knowing its definition as “text displayed on a computer display or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text which the reader can immediately access, or where text can be revealed progressively at multiple levels of detail”.

 

hand-cursor-clicking-a-link

As my understanding, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow either by clicking or by hovering or that is followed automatically and Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. As I understand more about Hypertext by reading this article The history of Hypertext by Jakob Nielsen on February 1, 1995.

 

We can clearly see that nowadays, hyperlink has made life much easier and quicker with just one simple click on a blue underlined text. Even in this blog , hyperlink are used to link it back to my readings and to other referneces. How useful is that?

But, there comes an idea which states that Hyperlink break the traditional way of reading, non sequential, people can jump to anywhere, not follow a particular order like reading a book from start to end. Moreover, as it is now widely used around the world, accessible to everyone, privacy and security should be concerned. Nothing is really safe on the internet.