Information sources for the users

According to OCLC, consumers are using information in more new, creative and fun ways. In the contemporary society the difference between the medium and the message becomes even more obscure than before. Our society wants “granular pieces of information” in a timely fashion and in the correct format. (OCLC) http://www.oclc.org/reports/2004format.htm

Users were more cautious about information before. They strictly followed the rules of using the info gathered by the reliable sources, which was then archived for future references. Life has changed, so did the information users’ trends and now we notice a tendency of users being more open to diverse sources. Below is a list of some of them:

· Colleagues, peers and friends

· Social Publishing (such as blogs)

· Open Models

· Instant Verification

· The New Credibility

· Youth have a propensity to share

· …But adults get in on the act, too

· Relief from the glut

It is also believed that more people, especially the population who is just entering the workforce, prefers e-mailing, music file sharing, podcasting, instant messaging. (Outsell)

http://www.outsellinc.com/subscribe/FutureFactsIndustryOutlook.htm

The Internet

Experts celebrate the new technology: the search know-how, peer-to- peer networks, and blogs. They bemoan those places and institutions that are slowly adapting fast technological changes. Quote: “ I never would have expected that such a high percentage of people would be utterly dependent upon the Internet for such a large proportion of their daily communication activities. If you took it away, it would be shell-shocked. But 10 years ago we didn’t even have it!” (Fox) http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/145/report_display.asp

Internet affects students: High school students see the Internet as an essential source of virtual libraries, virtual tutor and a study shortcut, place where virtual study groups and other meetings can be easily conducted, virtual advisor that may be refer to when a question arises about their future careers or schools. (Levin et al) http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/67/report_display.asp

Internet Bandwidth: Even though the Internet traffic is growing rapidly, an enormous bandwidth will soon be available on the Internet “backbone” as well as to a lot of offices and communities. (Kotz et al) http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/papers/kotz:future2/

According to Pew Internet, 34 percent of all adult Americans have access to broadband either at home or in the workplace. Much of that is due to the slow dial-ups; the price is hardly an issue in the broadband adoption. (Fox) http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/145/report_display.asp

Internet and the healthcare sector: Dr. Sands claims that the Internet is revolutionizing the healthcare system in a lot of ways. It changes the information sharing between the doctors. It radically transforms that information flow between the providers and patients. It saves time and money when the patients are allowed to see their personal records online rather than on paper. The Internet affects patients’ expectations of the clinicians by demanding more services such as e-messaging, instant messaging, video conferencing, and many other online services. (Fox) http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/145/report_display.asp

E-mail According to IDC about 31 billion emails, 22 billion of which are not spam, travel the Internet every day. IDC predicts that next year (2006) that number will go up to 60 billion. (OCLC) http://www.oclc.org/reports/2004format.htm

Instant Messaging

IM is getting popular at work: About 80 million people in the United States regularly use IM, AOL said, quoting data from ComScore Media Metrix. According to CNET 58 percent of the people are using IM at work and 49 percent of the users are using it for making important business decision and other related work issues. 77 percent of all users believe that IM has had a positive effect on their lives and helped them in situations such as dealing with a client or avoiding difficult face-to-face conversations.

(Sharma) http://news.com.com/Study+Teenagers+favor+IM+over+e-mail/2100-1032_3-5944265.html?tag=sas.email

53 million adults trade instant messages and 24 percent of them use IM more frequently than email and 6 percent say they use IM as frequently as they use email. (Shiu) http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/133/report_display.asp

Teenagers favor IM over email: According to CNET’s study it seems like younger population prefers instant messaging rather then sending emails. Nearly 66percent of people between ages 13 and 21 say that they are using IM more than email. (Sharma) http://news.com.com/Study+Teenagers+favor+IM+over+e-mail/2100-1032_3-5944265.html?tag=sas.email

Media devices

The new cell phone technology has gone a long way and transformed from a basic communication tool to a mega-purpose device used for not only phone calls but many other purposes such as: media players, photo cameras, text readers, digital wallets, remote controls and PDA organizers. OCLC predicted that one forth of all mobile phone sales would be camera-phones in 2004. (OCLC) http://www.oclc.org/reports/2004format.htm

Digital media players will enter all spheres of life. For example, a patent by the Walt Disney Co. describes plans to provide portable media players to consumers, potentially at McDonald’s. Consumers would receive free content downloads, including parts of movies, as rewards for food purchases. At the same time, companies like McDonald’s are expanding Wi-Fi access in their franchises. (Bossman) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/technology/12mcdonalds.html?emc=eta1

Audiovisual Media More and more audiovisual devices will be embedded into the future technology formats.

· Format Dilemmas Looming – DVDs add up to 37 percent of rentals but only 6 percent of libraries’ collections, “with a projected rise to 31% in 2 years”

· Videocassettes alive and well- “reports of the death of the videocassette industry are not ‘greatly exaggerated’; they are totally wrong!”

· Audiovisual Circulation Increasing- Circulation has grown “by nearly 32 percent over 3 years.”

Statistics: DVD players may have reached 50 percent of the American homes and 25 percent of United Kingdom TV households in 2002. (OCLC) http://www.oclc.org/reports/2003format.htm

Search engines

Despite a huge popularity of hand held devices, mature working population still prefers to receive their information on PCs or Internet Websites. From the most popular Web search engines Google seems to be the leader in the search market and has 75percent satisfaction rate among the users. Google is well-liked search engine that has various features to it, such as email, messenger, maps, scholarly section, financial and other important features for the users. “The arrival of Google five years ago served as a kind of upgrade for the entire Web. Searching for information went from a sluggish, unreliable process to something you could do with genuine confidence. If it was online somewhere, Google and its ingenious PageRank system would find what you were looking for—and more often than not, the information would arrive in Google’s top 10 results.” Other engines such as Yahoo and MSN have 62 percent and 48 percent respectively. (Johnson) http://slate.msn.com/id/2085668.)

Statistics: Google queries per day: 1999- 3 million, 2000- 20 million, 2001- 100 million, 2002- 150 million (Google) http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/history.html

[Web 2.0]

With the dot com boom in 2001 a big dilemma arose for those who managed to stay in business of how to better prevent the crash from happening again.

Web 2.0

Example: (O’Reilley) http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Web 1.0 Web 2.0

DoubleClick --> Google AdSense

Ofoto --> Flickr

Akamai --> BitTorrent

mp3.com --> Napster

Britannica Online --> Wikipedia

personal websites --> blogging

evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB

domain name speculation --> search engine optimization

page views --> cost per click

screen scraping --> web services

publishing --> participation

content management systems --> wikis

directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")

stickiness --> syndication

Blogs

Blogging is clearly a key part of Web 2.0. So are technologies like RSS or the wikis. It’s happening so fast that the words skype, blogging and wikis aren’t even recognized by the spell-checker that is embedded in the latest version of Microsoft Word…(Bildt) http://bildt.blogspot.com/2005/11/coming-Web-20-tsunami.html

Media believes that blogs have experienced a tremendous growth in user preferences but in actuality it seems like blogging is not spreading as fast as expected, especially among knowledge workers who don’t know how to use it. It is believed that government and educational sectors are less likely to use blogs than healthcare and corporate sectors. (Outsell) http://www.outsellinc.com/subscribe/FutureFactsIndustryOutlook.htm

In the emerging era of the blogs, experts are convinced that the Internet will bring an even more dramatic change to the news and publishing worlds. (Fox) http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/145/report_display.asp

Wikis and blogs are new indicators of a big change in the information world that could lead to “publishing paradigm”. OCLC reports that wikis, moblogs, and blogs have given the ordinary people power to publish. According to Copeland, “86 percent say that blogs are either useful or extremely useful as sources of news or opinion. 80percent say they use blogs to read news that they can’t find anywhere else. 78 percent read them because the perspective is better. 61percent value the faster news and 61 percent say that blogs are most honest.” (OCLC) http://www.oclc.org/reports/2004format.htm

Blogs for the teenagers: “Unprecedented numbers of teens are using blogs (Web logs) to do what they once did through personal diaries, phone conversations and hangout sessions: cementing friendships with classmates, seeking new friends, venting, testing social limits, getting support and getting all emotional.” At least 8 million teens blog, according to Intelliseek. (Kornblum) http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2005-10-30-teen-blogs_x.htm

Weblogs are shifting the public’s attentions from the traditional news media. Public therefore witnesses the slow death of newspapers due to erosion of mindshare by online influences such as news Web sites, chat rooms, message boards and online gaming.” (Fox) http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/145/report_display.asp

RSS: With Web 2.0 came one of the things that has made a difference is a technology called RSS. It is the most significant advance in the fundamental architecture of the web since early hackers understood that CGI could be used to create database-backed websites. RSS allows users not only to to link to a page but also to subscribe to it, with notification every time that page changes. (O’Reilly) http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Looks like a growing trend among users who are technology savvy. VoIP is a telephony service that works over the Internet or corporate data networks. It is an awesome way of cutting on telecommunication costs, which is probably the reason why a lot of users put up with numerous glitches, bugs and service outages in the system. According to Business Week “already, 52percent of all US businesses and about 3 millions of the nation’s consumers are using VoIP.” (Khariff) http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/tc20051128_964764.htm

Younger population as information users We live during the cyber age in a world of technology and innovation and younger population as part of the society have their own information demands. The Internet is more than a source of entertainment for them. Younger people use it for all kids of their needs starting with restaurant searches and ending with keeping in touch with their friends. (OCLC) http://www.oclc.org/reports/2004format.htm

Gaming

Chinese kids play early rounds of video games that our children and young adults either don’t have any time or patience to complete. Or on the other hand pass rounds that our kids have hard time passing and need to have passed to see what other rounds offer. Chinese by playing those games accumulate virtual currency, which is traded between the users and can be used for purchasing armor or create more powerful characters. Chinese get paid real money for the virtual money or points they get playing the games. (Barboza) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/technology/09gaming.html

Gaming is radically transforming society. Implications include the blurring of fantasy and reality; the creation of virtual economies and societies that begin to have implications in the real world, and the withdrawal of many game users into a virtual world. (Lindgren) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/books/review/18lindgren.html?emc=eta1

Education

According to USNews- Podcasts, back channels, and bookless libraries are coming to campus. More and more professors and students are using various technology tools in class to make learning more exciting and fun. The usage of iPods as academic tools for lecture recording is becoming more and more trendy. Also PDA devises with navigation and other cool built in software helps students walk around campus and do research. (Hallett) http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/articles/051017/17elearn.htm

Pew Internet predicts that in a decade information technologies will make the students spend at least part of their school days in virtual classes, grouped online with their peers who have the same interests, mastery and skills. (Fox) http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/145/report_display.asp

Knowledge management

Technological infrastructure of a company plays a big role in the knowledge and the information used by the users. Most companies employ several tools including Lotus Notes and the Web. Technology dictates not only the explicit knowledge of an organization but also its tacit knowledge. (Davenport et al)

http://www.providersedge.com/docs/km_articles/Building_Successful_KM_Projects.pdf