Social and Community Informatics

In Linked by Barabasi, he discusses the idea that everything is interconnected and there are networks in so many things that we experience in our daily lives. He discusses graphs and networks along with the inherent constraints that they bring. I agree with his interpretation of these systems. It makes sense that the way that a graph or network is constructed will directly affect how they are used. Topology is an amazing field of mathematics. It has so many applications and wondrous ideas that allow many people to realize the elegance in everyday systems. One complex example of how topology can lead to great discoveries is evident when dealing with string theory. Barabasi had briefly mentioned "superstrings" when discussing the reductionist point of view. These are tiny vibrating "strings" of energy that are present at the plank level and are the fundamental building blocks of matter. String theory is not yet proven, yet the mathematics that it takes advantage of involves complicated topology that is utilized in an 11 dimensional space. Physicists and mathematicians have come up with a representation of space called a Calabi-Yau manifold. The topology of these multidimensional spaces allows for many of them to exist, yet only one is what physicists expect to accurately describe our universe. Another example of an interesting topology theory involves maps. If someone were to make any number of shapes on a map, such as countries or states, they would only need a maximum of 4 colors to differentiate between the different shapes. Another more familiar topology application is a Möbius strip. All of these applications of topology require a strict set of rules and regulations or else they would be completely different.

Barabasi also discusses "random graph theory" and "random network theory." He talks about how at a party, or any other event, each person can represent a node. These nodes can be connected indirectly to any other node by a series of other nodes. This idea is the basis for the game 6 degrees of separation. The theory that all of these nodes can be connected after such a short number of node interactions is a powerful idea. One example that comes to mind that demonstrates this well is the social network website Facebook. On Facebook, people add friends to their list of friends. When they see that those friends have friends that they know, they often add them to their list as well. After only a little while, there is a giant web of people who are added that all know each other either directly or indirectly. It is this idea of "random network theory" that gives an incite as to how information is spread so rapidly. The longer a network is able to develop, such as the network of Facebook friends, the more nodes are added through other nodes, at what appears to be an exponential rate.

Posted by Jeremy at 6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments  

We are making lots of progress at the Capital City Rescue Mission in Albany. So far we have been able to successfully publish our remade homepage onto their servers. We have also become more familiar with the software they use called IPSwitch. It allows us to transfer files to and from their hosting server. With this program, we will not only be able to post new pages, but also retrieve their current files that are more updated than the ones in the data backups. We will also use this to help them schedule regular backups to prevent this from happening again.

On the new homepage, we had taken their old page and completely recoded it to get it to read in the Dreamweaver WYSIWYG Design interface. This is necessary in order to easily modify the page in the future. The new homepage was uploaded onto the server soon after we finished it. Unfortunately, the rescue mission had changed their mind about how they wanted the content displayed on the page, so we were not completely done. Fortunately, our template for a three column page did not need to be changed, so we only had to move content and create new images and text. This is the beauty of Dreamweaver templates. We can simply modify the dynamic content, while the basic template of the static content, such as the header, footer, and navigation bar, can remain the same. They feel that the homepage is the most important because it has much higher traffic, so it should naturally have information that is important. We had spent a lot of time modifying the homepage and tweaking it to their specifications and changing it when they decide on a different organization, but we also feel that it is worth it because they are now very happy with the page. If they decide to change the information on the homepage, or any page for that matter, they only need to make a simple modification. All of the text formatting styles will be consistent with the use of CSS. This will allow them to have a great dynamic page while still having the comfort of knowing that the new content will naturally take on the look of the rest.

For the future we are going to recreate the rest of the pages in a Dreamweaver readable format. We have started on a few pages so far, and they are looking good. The reorganizing of the pages is time consuming but fairly simple. The difficult task will be creating the CSS for things such as all of the special colored boxes that encompass and separate information on the page in a way to keep with their current style and layout. We are already working on many of these pages and they are expected to be completed soon. Some of the work will be done outside of the rescue mission to save time because we already have their input on many pages and all that is left is to code them.

I expect that we are making good time on the project and that we will have it done by the deadline along with many inevitable modifications. More information will follow with the final report.

Posted by Jeremy at 6:58 AM | Permalink | Comments