New media hasn’t improved current affairs savvy

“Americans’ knowledge of national and international affairs has changed little in two decades despite the emergence of 24-hour cable news and the Internet as major news sources.”

AP: New media hasn’t improved current affairs savvy

CIL2007: Information Design for the New Web

A quote from Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwarz:

The “fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better. … There is a cost to having an overload of choice. As a culture, we are enamored of freedom, self-determination, and variety, and we are reluctant to give up any of our options. But clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction — even to clinical depression.”

I see much the same issue with many websites — including libraries — which put too many links, gizmos and widgits on their websites and search tools. I’m a big fan of the K.I.S.S. principle…

CIL2007: Webmaster Cool Tools

From Jeff Wisniewski of Pitt:

• pipes.yahoo.com
• Personalize maps @ Google Maps
• developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns
• The Rasterbator (rastorize an image)
• Firefox Web Developer Toolbar

From Darlene Fichter:

• Zamzar (free online file conversion tool)
• Gliffy (online flow chart marker — also see FreeMind, a freeware app)
• Linkify
• Pixer.us
• Trailfire
• Swivel
• Many Eyes
• MyxerTones
• MyBlogLog
• CrazyEgg

From Frank Cervone, Northwestern Univ:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• SiteMapBuilder.net — download a freeware app to make Google XML Site Maps
• oswd.org — open source goodies, website templates and CSS sheets
• openclipart.org
• freedigitalphotos.net
• Gvisit.com — geomap the visitors to your website
• Last.fm
• dbWiz — open-source federated search tool
• Keystone ILS

CIL2007: Mashups, Remixing Info & Making Data Browsable

Heard about a new programming language at this session — called Django — which of course has its own website at djangoproject.com. Derek Willis of the Washington Post demonstrated some cool sites that use this to mash up data, such as:

ChicagoCrime.org
project.washingtonpost.com/congress

Django has some built in admin tools (add/edit/delete records) which could make life for sysadmins a lot easeier…