The email loses its site

I recently received a query from Argentina through simultaneously and, allegedly, two pathways. One of them was quite traditional, via email, virtual address can be found easily on this site, while the other was through a Facebook message (message is also received in the mail address defined by the user when discharged). Like Facebook, Twitter also has its own private messaging system called Direct Messages also send a message privately, do get an email from one user to another, and within different user interfaces of this tool-Whether through the Web or through one of his many tools, affecting this dual messaging system.

Despite being configurable, if someone writes in the Wall "on your Facebook profile, say that this" wall "is a kind of bulletin board-staff user also receives an email to the address you used to be of registered with the service and if someone says a statement from a friend who you like or could comment, you also receive an email slowly clogging the mailboxes of the users, so that within hours you can have 20 emails without checking and ask for your attention. However, in this case, there is a "but" is that you lose the context of the messages so the fact of receiving this email requires you to visit the website of the Social Network in a position to answer.

But in fact, I've noticed that people have added, former classmates, people I know - "friends of friends" could be considered "of those who do not know an email address and if I had to get in touch with them, the system would use would be one of the two described above. Or Twitter (because I know it's them) or Facebook, although this second option is more reliable because people are more likely to be identified without doubt within the Social Network as it is apparently , a more closed and private.

What I do not doubt is that, slowly, while our communicative habits change, these new platforms of the Social Web are positioned to stay, gradually becoming less use email to keep in touch with our acquaintances. Our personal email accounts simply are turning into landfills where we receive the typical chain letters, presentations noisy hardly occurs to us to open them at work, just open for bulletins to be practically impossible to consult all or Facebook status updates , comments we received on our blogs, new followers on Twitter ... mail account that they will not disappear, there is always the need to send resumes, scanned documents to any administration, a desperate letter to try to fix an uncertain situation, but will slowly lose as a mere catch-all those who no longer extract all its previous potential.

Managing death in the Web

Although he weighed, slowly, the Web is becoming an extension of our culture, our social relations, personal needs and desires. Of course we still find people trying to make a distinction between real life and virtual life, however this occurs in a majority of the generations who grew up or at least, lived in a disconnected world without the Internet, while youth of today (and have access to the network of networks not forget) sculpt your day with a tool they consider an extension of his own life.

Recently, the Internet turned 40 and one of its creators claimed that the Web is in its adolescence, with hormones to the surface, while trying to create an identity. But 40 years is a generation in terms of a human life, so that while the Internet gives his steps rapidly growing, young and bright, those who were putting stone upon stone in its construction to make it what it is ( Whether in terms of technology or content) age and unfortunately die.

Death is the last barrier of the human being, an element that we have difficulty to understand and even believe, but as part of our lives, depending on the culture we've received and where we have grown, we celebrate it or hate even an inseparable part of our being. I need not go very far either in time or in the area of this site to remember the discussion that suggested Tomàs Baiget in the distribution list on Iwetel Exit directory. This directory was a Baiget own initiative in which I wanted to pick up the majority of experts in information processing. Loaded with patience and a digital camera, was portrayed and adding to the professionals who met in courses, conferences and congresses. However, it reached a certain point, some of these professionals were killed and the question that arose was: "Given this, what do you do?"

The death appears to be turning into this consumer society in one of the ugliest parts, something to avoid and ignore as far as possible. In the real world, management is completely protocolarizada, it takes thousands of years trying to accept and deal with death in our lives and our social environment, however what to do in the digital world?

It is not an easy decision, although increasingly it is a perfectly normal (In fact, since the advent of the Web also did the so-called Virtual Cemetery). Blogs, such as participatory elements, who first opened a gap to contemplate the death of a person normally. Even suicide, one of the most vital decisions censored by our society, has been described and portrayed in some blogs. But the site managers, the questions on the respect for people assaulted them. What to do with the profiles of those already dead? Do retired out of respect? "We keep them as a tribute?

Eventually, the social network Facebook has also had to take a position and considered that the best you could do is to keep the profile of the deceased as a memorial, a place where his acquaintances could leave their condolences to his friend without anyone could violate his memory. In some forums, this decision was provided with some banter as ridiculous or unnecessary, but there is nothing further from reality. As we manage what we publish as part of our life on the Web, we also get used to accept and deal with death in it, provided that we have different options on how we deal with this fact in a personal and intimate, for course.

Information flows are neither created nor destroyed, only transformed

The world has changed. I feel it in the water, I feel on earth, I smell in the air ...
Much of what was, is lost ... But nobody lives that you remember.

From these statements, none of them are mine. The headline I've extracted the latest opinion article by the director of The Bulletin, a weekly regional economic Valencia, Sierra Cruz, while the other sentences cited more than one can remember.

The information world is changing quite dramatically, the way in which we consume and also information professionals, we face a crossroads of whether we are prepared for the changes ahead. In Spain, the group of information professionals as are two different groups but have not been agreed at the time of appropriating a certain term, but envisage how the world are being transformed.

Although the documentary makers have tried to adapt to new times with the formulas of designation as infonomistas or technological watchdogs; the truth is that these formulas have been rather than inclusive, exclusive, collective distancing might well have shaken hands. For their part, journalists have tried to find synonyms in the communication professionals, first, while later tried to cover all the communication done by information professionals formula. Moreover, the term information science in Spain are considered assets of journalists (some university departments benefiting from this name), while documentarians believe their discipline, the Documentation, as the Science of Sciences, ie Science of Scientific Information.

This apparent clash between radically different disciplines as no surprise. The information processing can be reduced has three basic concepts, namely, Information - Communication - Documentation, a triad that can be expanded by adding all the elements you wish, but can be fully understood with these components. However, archivists and journalists face a new world dominated by the Web in which the support is phagocytosed by the bits and the main distributor of users almost focuses on a single actor.

On the side of journalists, David Simon summed it up beautifully in the story that he dedicated the country to its great series The Wire in which he attacked the blogosphere. Thus, the journalist accused the bloggers of engaging in most cases "to amass information found elsewhere without doing themselves any exercise of journalism. And I accuse bloggers write a lot about corruption without ever released have been spent inside the institutions that are critical. "Simon does not believe in citizen journalism and its feasibility within a society that needs the tutelage of the fourth estate and not critical been lacking.

Journalists have discovered how to turn their primary source information on the Internet claiming the role that only they should give them a job after filtering, context and analysis. However, blogs - Social Media and the result of evolution - they skip that process. In many cases, lack of contextualization that serve only to blogs, many of them commercial, focusing on the replication of the press releases from companies and institutions without going into the validity of such data. That's the biggest mistake and what society is losing slowly. Maybe the final product of the Social Web is not quality, but within the Internet is so popular and profitable and, as we know from other media, popular faces final product quality, even selfishly we like circumvent it.

For its part, documentary filmmakers have attempted a process of reflection itself. un ciudadano intelectual capaz de crear y consumir responsablemente ciencia y cultura ) y el Homo Documentator (un nuevo perfil de documentalista a la altura de la sociedad de la información) . In this way, Jose Lopez Yepes presented to Homo documentalists (an intellectual citizen can create and consume responsibly science and culture) and Homo Documentator (a new documentary profile to match the information society). However, the new powers proposed by the documentary seem to be swallowed up by Professor Homo documentalists, which conforms with the instruments that puts the Web at your fingertips.

The oldest documentary, to which we referred in an earlier, watching the flow of information within society are changing rapidly, while those in charge of analysis seem stuck in a better past. Homo Documentator must take a further step toward understanding the information as an economic good, understand its characteristics and its ecology. We must begin to abandon books as major elements of knowledge transfer and begin to stop and understand and integrate the reporting process as a whole that we must study, so publishers are starting to consider Google as the worst that has happened, and books electronics as the inevitable future.

The future is quite exciting and we began to join him. Information flows, what really should concern us, are still there, have not been destroyed, we must discover, study and take advantage of it as far as possible to our organizations.

"Smart Mobs. The next social revolution "by Howard Rheingold

One who is close to Smart Mobs will meet during his reading with a taste of something you already know, but that is currently designated otherwise. That is, in this book we find an author who offers facts, attitudes and technologies that are currently widespread and established within the site, as well as our existing close relationship with the new technologies applied in day to day. You can give the impression that Reinhgold had been mistaken when using the terms we use today to describe certain attitudes or technologies, but we who err because neither the author is misguided in its statement of facts or in its definition, and the reader is confronted with an attempt to change what has already been established.

Quite the contrary, we face a book of foresight, a text published in 2004 that collects the trends of that year and invites us to move into what will become of common occurrence in the coming months. Yes, the cat that water can take him O'Reilly fixing the term Web 2.0 in 2005 but described by Rheingold, but also points out, goes beyond the collaborative web and the tools that would result from it. Thus, the author opens his text telling her fascination to discover a very special crossing of Tokyo (Shibuya), surprised by the frenetic activity of teens thumbs pounding the keys on their phones, and new social relations that are able to establish using this tool. Of course that does not stop there, as it slowly moves to another type of collaborations both in the physical world and virtual worlds, stopping even in the Social Networks popular in the past two years.

The original title of the book Smart Mobs, smart mobs, specifically refers to the potential that new technologies give us the time to expand our ability to analyze a problem and provide a solution. For example, says the move to offer free internet access via WiFi in major American cities, which would be tried in Spain for carrying the process underway FON, and concretely the fact that during the days after the S 11-enabled collaborative movement on the island of Manhattan businesses and individuals might have a connection to the Internet despite the technical difficulties were meeting after the chaos after the attacks.

Of course, look into the future does not stop there. Rheihgold also pays a visit to various technology centers where we study the smart clothes as well as the implementation and integration of new technologies in our daily lives beyond our social behavior. Obviously, this is somewhat distant for immediate practical application, bearing in mind the wisdom of the obvious-the ubiquitous network, the creation of collaborative tools in the Web-Smart Mobs text may be recommending a not so distant future.

Why call it "cloud" when they mean Internet

Last week, reading a fairly popular technology columnist, I was surprised when Cloud used the Internet undoubtedly referring generically. The Community points out that an application of the iPhone was connected to the country for downloading the information, but instead of calling this action as a connection to the Web, defined as cloud connection. We've thought a lot about here the continuous changes in designating things, the creation of new terms and more if it is in the technology sector. The term Web 2.0 is so hackneyed that it is shunned him and precisely the Social Web, seeking to replace, has a number of connotations that do not fit the above and some suggest that in fact the first covers the last. Quite similar has happened with the terms intelligent or collective intelligence crowd that reinvented as swarm intelligence that failed to materialize, although the latter certainly has my sympathy.

It may be that the Internet is one of the toughest environments subject to changing trends and reinventing the wheel, as someone once remarked to me, though, it must be said, is probably one of the places where information moves faster and where the exchange occurs more rapidly. Perhaps for this reason, the Web should be renamed trying to adapt to new trends, while urging the speedy adoption of the same so that the machine never stops running.

However, it is fair to say that the new baptisms arise with new concepts and could be at the success of one, similar market niches adopt it quickly and not distinctive, causing confusion and border crossings that cause confusion beyond the clarification of terms.

Because my column again, this time the iPhone will download information via the Web without going through a browser, which has always been the most traditional way to achieve it. It is not an RSS or an email software but a finalist for the news flashes, although this idea had also seen this same website in the form of desktop applications. Therefore, in this case, the Cloud describes an abstract entity that does not refer to traditional mechanisms in obtaining information from the Web, but obviously the process is quite similar.

It is possible that the cloud concept is shifting to the Web (Spider Web in English) due to the rapid penetration of the ubiquitous (found everywhere thanks to wireless connections) within our society. If a few years ago, the Web on your phone, do speak of WAP, seemed like a joke compared to what was seen through a computer and a desktop browser, iPhone, and the development of mobile-specific browsers, such as Opera Mini, along with the development of WiFi networks are bringing the concept of Internet-linked computer, a desk and chair, available in almost any device imaginable.

But this cloud is just a reinvention of another term, the grid computing or distributed computing whereby a number of computers were connected simultaneously to perform calculations, storage and processes are coordinated and cheaper than if large supercomputers are question. Grid Computing, we turn to cloud computing, but this time the need to provide a layer of varnish was more commercial, centralized and hence the Cloud, in which a number of companies hired the computing power of servers for third-party accommodation or processing information so that the cost was less than that having a dedicated server itself.

However, the metaphor of Cloud or Cloud is too romantic to pass up, so use the entire morass of applications for Web 2.0, where the work is not performed on the desktop but on one Web server and others , broadcasters the benefits of Web 2.0 this term decided to stick with converting most of the work done on the Web at work done in the cloud.

Cloud because our documents (Google Docs or Zoho), email (Gmail, or Hotmail), photos (Flickr or Microsoft Live), videos (YouTube or Dalealplay) and even markers remained on websites, in computers and servers from outside users changing the way we work and allowing our work and personal data they manage others.

In order that if the Web is only part of the Internet, although we use these terms almost interchangeably, it is possible that the cloud becomes synonymous with the Web even though it is merely a subset of it, the subset while Web 2.0, but really will not matter too much because the machine will keep running.

When will the Cloud 2.0?

You better not have to choose between oblivion and memory

Better not have to choose
between forgetting and memory,
between the snow and sweat.
You better learn to live
on the line
ranging from boredom to passion. [...]

This mouth is mine - Joaquin Sabina

The newly released public editor of El País, Milagros Pérez Oliva, went completely rag in his article Facing stay in the network setting out the cases of some readers who requested the removal of certain information to find in newspaper archives . The Ombudsman explained that a growing number of readers and users of its website came into contact with the company requesting the deletion of certain data concerning them, because doing a simple query through the Google search engine using its name as a keyword dismay discovered information obsolete or, as appropriate, outside the context in which they were given and considered harmful.

As an example, Milagros Perez collected the testimony of a reader who had participated in the forums of the newspaper, something seemingly innocent, but now is concerned that that comment was exposed as its first result on him by the Mountain View giant. One might imagine that the reader was dismayed because he wanted the first reference to his person was in a playful tone. What if, during a selection process for future work, the manager of the interview see the Google database and discovered that? Where did you put him? Depends on the tone and theme, of course, although there are cases heavier.

Nominal consulting, we can find from examination results-private information that can not be exposed or to a board or in a PDF posted on a website of a university site, results of selective processes scholarship exam functionary, administrative requests , sentences or pardons, and so on. We are faced with information that is published daily on the Web at some point may be useful for the user, but after a while leaving a trail of activities that not everyone would like them. In all these cases, personal information is published under existing legislation through official publications, which until recently was only relevant and known almost exclusively by the victim. However, Google changes everything and sorted all robots from making it accessible to anyone without contemplating whether to bring out a person.

The open debate in the country has been intense in the newspaper forums - Periodistas21 or The Weaver - which has made a reflection on the work of the journalist. Thus, if an individual called the judge to testify as a defendant and collected the media, but is acquitted after trial and they will not publish it, where is the correction? How do you erase this stain on his reputation unfairly digital? Of course, for the publisher, the files are untouchable. You can not delete that information, though perhaps it should be upgraded or at least should not fall into oblivion as soon as it stops being news.

Meanwhile, Google considers that it is within its jurisdiction to maintain clean files of all the websites. The technology inaccessible to a particular page exists and should be used by publishers rather than intermediaries between users and information. This will hold those responsible, although there is a sentence that requires the form that this information is inaccessible and relieves the publisher of the website.

Meanwhile, the digital reputation is embodied as a necessary element to watch for anyone. The control over what people say about us and what is recoverable in the website has more important every day, making the Web an extension of our personal and professional identity beyond our control. Not only do we control what social networks or Web 2.0 is published on us, but we must be vigilant and be aware of what our personal data tracks are arranged in a completely free network of networks almost without our noticing it.