TiVo the Internet?

TiVo has announced plans to create a way to TiVo downloaded videos from the internet and watch them through the television set. This way you can see things on the internet through the quality of your televsion. I am continually amazed at the techology they keep coming out with, and if this works, it will be really interesting to see what happens with it.

Internet Anonymity? Think again.

In this day and age, so many people now have access to computes and the internet, and they are using it a variety of ways for so many different things. Even my grandfather, who can barely work a microwave, now sends emails and “googles.” After witnessing this, I think it’s pretty safe to say that if you have access to a computer and the internet, you’ve “googled” at least once in your life. My mother, who is the furthest thing from computer savvy that you will ever get, now consults Google almost every time someone asks her a question.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a big Google advocate myself. I think being able to have search engines that spit out tons of information on any topic imaginable, right at our fingertips, is an amazing tool. It always makes we wonder, what the heck did we do before the internet? But I think the thing we forget when we’re typing in a new Google search we are leaving behind a trace. Most search engines keep a log of exactly what words and or phrases are put into those search engine boxes. Many of the big companies use it for marketing and research tools. Therefore, they are essentially getting information from and about us, without us ever even knowing about it. But where does it stop? How much information about us can be accessed by the public every time we search?

The internet is supposed to be “anonymous,” because when we enter things in our search engines (if it is not tagged with our names) we cannot be immediately identified. But the key word to remember is immediately. I think it is safe to say that NOTHING that is on the internet is ever anonymous. Nor can it ever be erased. Once something is put out on the internet, it is out there, in some form or another, forever. And thus, that information can be obtained by anyone who can do a little digging. Just recently, AOL released three months’ worth of users’ search information data and made it accessible to the public. 650,000 AOL users were not personally identified in the data, but the logs contained enough information that their identity could be tracked down (Hafner). Although after the incident AOL withdrew the data, it didn’t matter. Once information is out there, it is there to stay and can be traced. If it’s downloaded, it cannot be erased from the internet and can be found again.

After reading Hafner’s article, I do not really agree with people’s personal information being taken and analyzed through search engines, but I also realized, what can we do about it? This technology is not going anywhere, and it is only going to get bigger. I’m sure it helps marketers and other researchers obtain valuable information, but what about when it comes to social security numbers, or credit card numbers and bank information? It is a scary thought to think that this stuff is all in computers, because it can be searched and found relatively easily. And what happens when it falls into the wrong hands? Filtering and security systems have been developed over the past couple of years to help put a stop to identity theft and such. And while that has helped, I think the ultimate solution is that the internet users have to be aware of what they are putting on the internet. With this ongoing burst of technology and accessibility, most of us don’t think twice when using this technology. But we have to remember that with such a powerful tool comes very big responsibility. There is not a lot of privacy that still exists out there today, so we must be very careful about how we are using the internet and the information that we are putting out there. I’ll have to remember to tell my grandpa.

Hafner, K. (2006, August 23). Researchers yearn to use AOL logs, but they hesitate. New York Times.

Information Architecture

Here is an interesting article that gives more information about Information Architecture. It is explains its evolution and development of the process and discusses some of the failures. It also shows how to create an effective information architecture in the business context and even gives a 9 step approach to doing it.

An Information Architect?

When I was a freshman in high school, my economics teacher stood in front of our class and told us that most of us would go into careers and hold jobs that had not even been invented yet. At the time, I took it into consideration, but I never really took it seriously. However, now I can see how correct my teacher’s statement was.

Technology and the internet is growing and expanding by the minute. And as it continues to develop, the internet has become an unprecedented platform where more and more jobs are being created as a result of it. I’ve always known what an architect was. They design houses, buildings and skyscrapers. They even have architects that design gardens. But an information architect? That is a job that, until today, I did not even know existed. Looking back I don’t know that I should be surprised, I knew that the content and information structure on the internet came from somewhere. I just didn’t know there was an actual formal title.

Information Architecture is how people process information and interprets the relationships that exist between the different pieces of information. An information architect therefore, need to make sure the users are able to translate what they see and hear and turn that into knowledge. An information architect deals with “the structural design of shared information environments, as well as the art and science of organizing and labeling Web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability” (Hoffman). I think I have become so accustomed to having the internet as this instantaneous tool that spits information at my fingertips, that I don’t even take a second to realize what goes on behind it.

The Information Architect is a job that is here to stay. As long as we have the internet and it continues to expand, we are going to need architects to continue to build it up. It may be safe to say that Information Architects are becoming just as important as those architects who are designing skyscrapers in Manhattan or Chicago. And while “the typical path to becoming an information architect doesn’t exist”(Hoffman)….it definitely will be soon. I am now taking heed to what my very smart economics teacher said six years ago.

Hoffman, Allan. “Information Architects. Web Builders with a Sales
Bent.” http://technology.monster.com