At Gord Hotchkiss’ site we can find interesting interview with dr Teena Moody from UCLA’s Semel Institute, who conducted survey on how human’s brain work during searching the web. The research is based on the method name as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Main goal of this research was to find out on the scale of differences between human’s brain work during reading and searching the web. Another dimension of the research was to check if there are any differences between different grops of people - heavy users and novices.

Magnetic resonance revealed that brains of novices, named by dr Moody Internet-naive persons, during searching the web behave at the same way as they were reading, on the other hand heavy users’ brains work more activelly, more brain centers are active. Especially front and limbic lobes are being used by heavy-searchers. These two lobes are responsible for making decisions and conflict settlement.

Brain centres active during searching the web for heavy-users and novices:

Explanation for that fact is quite simple, using the Internet changes our brain work procedures, people who do not use Internet everyday behave like children in the mist - they just fell lost in new enviroment and act like they were reading it, gathering the information to get the full scope of view. However heavy-users make decisions basing on the information the just have found in perfectly known enviroment.

This partly supports thesis that using Internet changes our brains.

-mw

Amazon Web Services published almost one terabyte of knowledge, databases of different sorts are now available and accessible. Among them we can find US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, DBPedia Knowledge Base, Freebase Data Dump, Wikipedia Extraction and NCBI Genbank. This cloud of information can be processed with ease by creating EBS volume, basing it on the snapshot ID of the data, attaching created volume to a running EC2 instance in the same disk space and adding mount point and mount the EBS volume on the instance. Downloading these inconceivable dataset is not necessary any longer.

This can be found to be the milestone in starting the web cloud computing space. The main use for these cloud will be availing these information for bots, that will process them and support humans with their structured knowledge.

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When one faces the deluge of information one of most important issues becomes the fact of credibility of information we get from the Web. There are methods of setting the track record for particular websites (based on monitoring the site’s credibility), but there’s no guarantee that the site we find trustworthy would be among the results for particular query. Answer and remedium for this problem, can be Google Wiki Search, that enables to mark up specific site (for example the one we consider to be a good source of information). This site would be always at the top of search results site, when we search for terms that can be boiled up to the same category (for example try financial crisis and credit crisis).

In this case we can observe completetly new approach - giving credibility status with web tools is individualized, previously there were start-ups basing on social suggestions, Eurekster or Mahlo, just to give examples. But in this case we were forced to trust the community - which in fact remained anonymous. These services are not closed, opened social services that gather opinions from enthusiasts who, in many cases, lack the elementary knowledge in specialized disciplines, like for examples economy, medicine or others. On the one hand - it is the silent bauty of Web 2.0 - every amteur can become an expert, but on the other hand during searching the Web to get the information essential to your company or research it can just complicate things and waste our time.

Trust if of course the basis of each society (at least these highly developed ones), but wasn’t the web since it beginning a meritocratic phenomenon? I do not claim that democratization of Web is something wrong, it is good, it enhances the flow of opinions and provides another areas of potential business-making but… user-generated content affects the web credibility. In the field of retrieving credible information, that can determine the success of our venture or our client’s venture it seems that it is better to trust competent people. Social marked search results can be useful just for preparing the popularity ranks among particular web communities and at a pinch to get the opinion of web users.

-mw

Have You ever wondered about how the information on websites is organised? How is it connected to make it easier finding what we want on particular pages? Most of us are not even aware that navigation is most crucial part of design for page’s usefulness. Most typical navigation types are: vertical and horizontal menus, but recently, mainly thanks to flash technology it became possible to design navigation that brakes this convention.

I’ve selected few pages characterizing with unconventional navigation, the choice was made basing on the bestwebgallery.com, which presents fresh ideas in web design. Common features of chosen pages are technical advancement and navigation far different from classic one.

Navigation at most of them is commonly defined as an act of directing the way of something. In the web it is an act of directing a way for ourselves and to move around the information. Designing unconventional navigation is a risky task, it has to be intuitive (many different users have to act in the same way to find information we want them to). That seems to be most important thing in designing non-linear navigation - prognostication of intuitiveness among page’s target group.

One of my former lecturers said that Internet is a cluster of technologies, which are the adaptation of technologies existing in the past. He meant mainly the map and telegraph. I will focus on the example with the map. Map is a copy of the real surface, it presents two-dimensional projection of reality by educing it from its surrounding.

Simcityds.ea.com and Betaclan.net - this examples give the most simple illustration of that process. It is also visible in the case of Agencynet.com and Creaktif.com, where designers replaced the open-area map with plans of buildings.

"Flying islands" at Rakugaki.iekaki.jp

Other example of such a map-alike projection is given by designers of Rakugaki.iekaki.jp. This is more advanced and very innovative method of data presentation. It worth adding, that this site is a poll results presentation. Flying islands suspended in three-dimensional space can serve us as an very inspiring example of breaking convention of navigation design.

We can find something similar at Javierferrervidal.com, where we can preview the photos, which seem to be spread in 3D, their configuration is chaotic and irregular, but we can randomize them even more. Before we got to the portfolio, we can navigate moving towards unexpected and random directions, what can be also considered as one of characteristics of unconventional navigation.

Please note, that in case of Rakugaki.iekaki.jp the navigation is doubled, below the content we can find images of particular islands, we can switch between.

"Board game" at Problemplayground.com

Sort of projection of map was implemented by designers of the site Problemplayground.com, whole content is interactive, its graphic presentation looks like a board game, we can switch between sections. Navigation is also doubled, we have classic horizontal menu in the left-upper corner and we can navigate by clicking on the content or the arrows, that display on the edges after moving the cursor.

The other innovative form of navigation are interactive videos. It was implemented on Theovenreinvented.com. Users can interact with the virtual characters, representing the organizations by clicking on items in the video. User gets the opportunity to choose between few different scenarios, which is also a characteristic for non-linear navigation, it is more individualised.

"Chaotic" portfolio in 3D at Javierferrervidal.com

Unfortunately common feature for most websites with untypical navigation is the lack of two-sided communication between the users and admin. In 2.0 era simple e-mail form may look like a step back,  as far as design is concerned. As far unconventional navigation is lonely one not social. It seems to be the result of destination of particular services. Their nature does not require implementing all new forms of communication - most of them were designed to be presentation of product, portfolio or idea. The exception is site Rakugaki.iekaki.jp, which is a very advanced poll result presentation where we can add our comments and opinion.

Non-linear navigation is predominantly supported by using the classical navigation forms, but also some technical tricks can be helpful, I mean - lightening clickable elements, or sound effects after moving the cursor on them. This can vastly improve the intuitiveness of navigation. Also leaving the space between particular elements of design increases the comfortableness in browsing the site.

It seems that significant thing for intuitiveness and user’s confidence while browsing with unconventional navigation is using popular-culture references in the design, they can efficiently amplify the message.

It looks like it is a popular idea among non-linear navigation designers to secure themselves by introducing double navigation - classical and unconventional one. It should, at least in some part, prevent outflow of users, who cannot find themselves using such an innovative service.