A few years ago I ran a Web Annotation start-up called Fleck.com. We decided to print businesscards showing nothing but our names and emailaddresses and annotate them as needed. I don't think we ever had to annotate anything however. Once people have your emailaddress then they pretty much have everything else too. We still have those businesscards. Just a name and an emailaddress.

Patrick just asked me for the emailaddress of Jeff Jarvis. He said Do you have Jeff Jarvis' email address? and I replied Sure! and opened my AddressBook app. No record for Jeff Jarvis. Odd?

No, not at all. He spoke at our conference once, attended dinner at my house and we met again in Germany at another conference. In the past 2 years we exchanged maybe 6 or 7 emails. I know Jeff and know how to reach him. More importantly: I know he knows me*.

So I did a search for Jarvis' in my email application and within seconds I had a few email threads and all the contact details I needed for Jeff and passed them on to Patrick.

My next logical step would be to add Jeff to my AddressBook. By why would I really? It makes so much more sense to look him up in my email application and hit reply on his last message instead of composing a new message. The advantages:

1: bigger chance I will email him at his most current emailaddress
2: bigger chance that Jeff will read the message
3: bigger chance that Jeff will remember me when he sees the context in which we met earlier

So no, I didn't add Jeff to my AddressBook. Basically the only reason to keep up my AddressBook is because it is easier to access phone numbers that way when I want to call someone on my iPhone. But how often do you imagine I'm going to give 99% of my AddressBook a call?

I currently have 2073 addresses in my AddressBook. I wish I could just delete them all and start all over. I would keep only the people in there that I actually want to call now and then and whose home address matter to me. The rest is easier to find though my email archive.

* = Please Jeff, tell me you remember me! :-)

Original title and link for this post: The End of the Address Book

A few days ago, I asked for help in tracking down some of the scientific support for Matt Richtel's claims about the bad effects of "digital overload" ("More factoid tracking", 9/1/2009). One of the more trackable factoids was the "study conducted at Stanford University, which showed that heavy multimedia users have trouble filtering out irrelevant information and trouble focusing on tasks". And sure enough, The Neurocritic quickly came up with a reference that fits: Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony Wagner, "Cognitive control in media multitaskers", PNAS, Published online before print 8/24/2009.

I believe that the full paper is freely available at the link given above (please let me know if this is wrong), and if you're interested in this topic, I urge you to read it. As in the case of the last paper by a Stanford psychologist that was discussed here, you should start by asking "Never mind the conclusions, what's the evidence?". And again, you may conclude that the descriptions of this research in the popular press and even in the original paper lead readers pretty far beyond the interpretations warranted by the research itself.

Here's the paper's abstract:

Chronic media multitasking is quickly becoming ubiquitous, although processing multiple incoming streams of information is considered a challenge for human cognition. A series of experiments addressed whether there are systematic differences in information processing styles between chronically heavy and light media multitaskers. A trait media multitasking index was developed to identify groups of heavy and light media multitaskers. These two groups were then compared along established cognitive control dimensions. Results showed that heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant representations in memory. This led to the surprising result that heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set. These results demonstrate that media multitasking, a rapidly growing societal trend, is associated with a distinct approach to fundamental information processing.

Note, by the way, that the authors (unlike Matt Richtel) carefully avoid any suggestion of causation, instead writing about "systematic differences in information processing styles" and "a distinct approach to fundamental information processing". This way of putting it is consistent with media multitasking causing cognitive disabilities (in this experiment's sample), or cognitive disabilities causing more media multitasking, or some third variable influencing both. But as we'll see, it's not completely clear that the claimed association (between media multitasking and certain information-processing deficits) even exists.

What's the evidence? It starts, of course, with that "trait media multitasking index". They administered a 20-minute online questionnaire to 262 Stanford undergraduates, presumably from the Psych Department's subject pool.

The questionnaire addressed 12 different media forms: print media, television, computer-based video (such as YouTube or online television episodes), music, nonmusic audio, video or computer games, telephone and mobile phone voice calls, instant messaging, SMS (text messaging), email, web surfing, and other computer-based applications (such as word processing). For each medium, respondents reported the total number of hours per week they spend using the medium. In addition, they filled out a media-multitasking matrix, indicating whether, while using this primary medium, they concurrently used each of the other media Most of the time, Some of the time, A little of the time, or Never. As text messaging could not accurately be described by hours of use, this medium was discarded from the analysis as a primary medium, although it still appeared as an option in the matrix (meaning respondents could still report text messaging while being engaged in other media).

They then created a "Media Multitasking Index" (MMI).

Step 1 was to translate verbal responses about concurrent media usage into numbers, on a scale from "Never" = 0 to "Most of the time" = 1.

Step 2 was to create the sum m_i of the numeric responses about concurrent media use for each of the 11 primary media. Thus a student who indicated that while web surfing (the 10th medium in the list), she listened to music "Most of the time", engaged in voice phone calls "Some of the time", checked email "Some of the time", engaged in IM conversations "Some of the time", and responded to SMS messages "Some of the time", would get m₁₀ = 1+0.67+0.67+0.67+0.67 = 3.68.

Step 3 created the individual's MMI as a weighted sum of the m_i values,

where h_i the number of hours per day that the student estimated she spent using primary medium i, and and h_total is the sum of all media hours. Note that multimedia hours are counted multiple times, so that a respondent's h_total may be larger than her number of waking hours. Unsurprisingly, therefore,

Media multitasking was correlated with total hours of media use, r (260) = 0.46, P < 0.001.

The authors observe that

The MMI produced a relatively normal distribution, with a mean of 4.38 and standard deviation of 1.52. This suggests that there is not a bimodal distribution of heavy multitaskers and nonmultitaskers. Nonetheless, we can identify individuals who very frequently use multiple media and those who tend to limit their use of multiple media. []

Based on the questionnaire, those students with an MMI less than one standard deviation below the mean (LMMs) or an MMI greater than one standard deviation above the mean (HMMs) were invited to participate. The invitation yielded 22 LMMs and 19 HMMs who gave informed consent and participated in the study for course credit.

(In fact, the number actually participating in the various subexperiments varied, down to 15 "Low Media Multitaskers" (LMMs) and 15 "High Media Multitaskers" (HMMs).)

Before going on to the behavioral experiments and their results, it's worth saying a few things about this Media Multitasking Index. First, high MMI values may correspond to many different patterns of life experience. You might be someone who has music coming into at least one earbud during many other life activities, media-related or otherwise; you might be someone who likes to keep a baseball or basketball game going in the background while studying or websurfing; you might be someone who's often talking on the phone or IMing friends while surfing the web. Each of these patterns could contribute the same amount to the MMI, but it's plausible that their psychological causes and effects (and their associations with other relevant lifestyle variables) are quite different.

Given this likely diversity of HMM experience (and we'll see later that the HMM group tends to have more variable performance on the behavioral tests), the rather small number of subjects is a reason for concern. Given that the study aimed to understand the effects of interactions among 12 different forms of "media", it's troubling that there were only 15-19 "High Media Multitaskers" tested, and that we don't know what sorts of media multitasking they actually reported engaging in. (And while we're focusing on this issue, it's worth noting that the pool of survey responders with MMIs at least one sd above or below the mean should have been (2/3)*262 175, raising as usual the possibility that the transition from 175 possibiltiies to 19+22=41 volunteers might have introduced some sort of selection bias.)

This is Yet Another Reason to publish raw data there's no reason that the authors couldn't have published (in a convenient digital form) all their media-use matrices, keyed to the performance of individual subjects on the various behavioral tests. This might make it possible to consider various alternative theories about which aspects of the media-use responses explained how much of the observed differences in performance (to the extent that the small number of subjects permits).

But this brings up a second and much more important issue with the MMI: it's entirely based on self-report. It's well known that self-reported measures of life patterns are not very reliable. Specifically, according to Bradley Greenberg et al., "Comparing survey and diary measures of Internet and traditional media use", Communication Reports 18(1):18, 2005:

Between the survey and diary methods, correlations range from .20 for listening to music off-line to .58 for email sent. Internet estimates are correlated .39 and television time estimates are correlated .35.

In general, subjects tend to over-report such activities in survey responses by about 25% overall, in the just-cited study. But more important, the divergences between facts and self-reports are subject to several forms of recall bias, as a result of which conclusions based on self-reported data always need to be interpreted with great caution.

Let me give a personal example that may be relevant to this case. If you were to ask me to estimate how many stair-steps I encounter per day, the answer I give today would be significantly higher than the answer I would have given before August 3, when I tore some ligaments in my left knee. For someone on crutches, with one leg unable to bear weight, stairs are a lot more salient than they are for someone who can bound up and down them without any problems or concerns. There are a surprising number of stairways around Penn's campus that I never really noticed before, even though I go up and down them almost every day.

So it wouldn't be surprising to find that people with certain physical handicaps tend to give a higher estimate of the number of stairsteps they encounter in daily life, just because climbing stairs is more salient and thus more memorable to them. If we use such self-reported estimates as the basis for an epidemiological study of the effect of chronic stair-climbing on physical agility, we risk being led astray.

Similarly, it's plausible that people who "have trouble filtering out irrelevant information and trouble focusing on tasks" might find the distractions of everyday multitasking more salient and thus more memorable, and therefore might tend to give somewhat higher estimates of how much of such multitasking they engage in. So given noisy estimates of media multitasking, and even a modest salience effect of this kind, the set of subjects with high MMIs may be significantly enriched in individuals who are more distractable or otherwise cognitively less able to deal with the demands of such multitasking.

I'm not going to discuss all of this paper's experimental results in detail, but I'd like to point out three things that seem to apply across all of them: the differences between the LMM and HMM groups are rare (that is, they appear only in a fraction of the experimental conditions where they might have been found), modest in effect size, and associated with higher variance in the HMM sample.

Thus consider their "Filter Task", where "participants viewed two consecutive exposures of an array of rectangles and had to indicate whether or not a target (red) rectangle had changed orientation from the first exposure to the second, while ignoring distractor (blue) rectangles":

Fig. 1. The filter task. (A) A sample trial with a 2-target, 6-distractor array. (B) HMM and LMM filter task performance as a function of the number of distractors (two targets). Error bars, SEM.

The only statistically significant difference between the LMM and HMM groups appears in the 6-distractor case, where there is a difference of about 0.3 (1.4 to 1.7) in the performance measure K. K is a somewhat complex measure, described in Edward Vogel et al., "Neural measures reveal individual differences in controlling access to working memory", Nature 438:500503, 2005:

We computed visual memory capacity with a standard formula that essentially assumes that if an observer can hold in memory K items from an array of S items, then the item that changed should be one of the items being held in memory on K/S trials, leading to correct performance on K/S of the trials on which an item changed. To correct for guessing, this procedure also takes into account the false alarm rate.

In the crucial six-distractor case, the standard error for the HMM group was about 0.15 items, which corresponds to a standard deviation of about 0.15*sqrt(19) = 0.65, or more than twice the difference in the groups' mean values. The standard error for the LMM group was about a third of that. We don't have the raw data to check, but this is consistent with a pattern in which the lower performance of the HMM group was driven mainly by a few individuals with especially low scores, who are in the HMM group not because they actually engage a lot media multitasking, but because they are "multitasking handicapped" and so overestimate their consumption.

I'll end with their "two- and three-back" task, a version of a classic short-term memory experiment:

[P]articipants were presented a series of individual letters in the middle of the screen. Each letter was presented for 500 ms, followed by a white screen for 3,000 ms. Upon presentation of a letter, participants were to indicate whether or not the present letter was a target, meaning that it matched the letter presented two (for the two-back task) or three (for the three-back task) trials ago.

Before seeing the data, you might expect that the HMM group would be more likely to forget the correct letter in all conditions, and even more likely to do so in the three-back condition compared to the two-back condition. But what happened was this:

There was no significant difference in the hit rate for the 2-back or 3-back conditions, or in the false alarm rate for the 2-back condition. The only difference was in the false alarm rate for the 3-back condition. Again, the difference was modest in terms of effect size: about 4.8% vs. 3.2%, or a difference of about 1.6% in false alarm rate in the 3-back condition, where the HMM group has a standard error of about 0.7, or a standard deviation of 0.7*sqrt(15) = 2.7, corresponding to an effect size of about d=0.6.

The authors also performed a more complicated piece of data analysis:

This [pattern of performance] indicates that the HMMs were more susceptible to interference from items that seemed familiar, and that this problem increased as working memory load increased (from the two- to the three-back task). This problem also became more acute for HMMs as the task progressed, because proactive interference from irrelevant letters accumulated across the experiment. Specifically, a general linear model of the likelihood of a false alarm in the three-back task revealed: (a) no main effect of HMM/LMM status nor of time, but (b) a significant HMM/LMM status*time interaction, such that the number of false alarms increased over time more rapidly for HMMs, B = 0.081, P < 0.001. These data demonstrate that HMMs are not only less capable of filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment, but also are less capable of filtering out irrelevant representations in memory.

This seems plausible. But it leaves entirely open the question of causation. Are the members of the HMM group "less capable of filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment [ and] less capable of filtering out irrelevant representations in memory" because their brains have been damaged by media multitasking? Or are they in the HMM group, not because they actually do more media multitasking, but because they're less able to deal with it and therefore more likely to remember and report it? Or, perhaps, are they more tolerant of media multitasking because they just don't care as much about the details of what happened where and when?

This paper also leaves open the question of what sorts of media multitasking are really in play here, and what other variables might be associated with MMI differences. The authors did consider the problem of associated variables:

[A] new group of 110 participants filled out the MMI questionnaire as well as their SAT scores, gender, the Need for Cognition index questionnaire, the Big Five Trait Taxonomy (including measures of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness), and a creativity task derived from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The data from participants with an MMI one standard deviation or more above and below the mean (16 HMMs and 17 LMMs) were compared.

They found no significant differences but again, it's a very small sample, and differences that would be rejected in this test as plausibly due to sampling error might still have been large enough to affect the experimental results in the earlier sample.

If we had access to the raw media matrix and the associated experimental scores, we might find (say) that their HMM group happened to include a subgroup whose MMI is high because they (report that they) listen to music during all other life activities, and who tend to smoke pot more often than their peers. Alternatively, Ophir et al.'s 15-19 HMM students might happen to include a substantial mix of driven over-achievers who network obsessively while studying and web-surfing, and are also among the substantial percentage of Stanford undergraduates who take Ritalin or Adderall in order to improve their academic performance and decrease the need for sleep.

From a certain point of view, all of this criticism is unfair. You can always think of alternative models to fit and new controls to run, to check and perhaps to challenge the conclusions of any study. And compared to some attempts to enlist science in discussions of social policy, Matt Richtel's (implict) reference to this paper rates very highly: the research is actually on the topic, and supports the desired conclusion.

But in my opinion, it doesn't support it nearly strongly enough. What's at stake here is a set of major choices about social policy and personal lifestyle. If it's really true that modern digital multitasking causes significant cognitive disability and even brain damage, as Matt Richtel claims, then many very serious social and individual changes are urgently needed. Before starting down this path, we need better evidence that there's a real connection between cognitive disability and media multitasking (as opposed to self-reports of media multitasking). We need some evidence that the connection exists in representative samples of the population, not just a couple of dozen Stanford undergraduates enrolled in introductory psychology. And we need some evidence that this connection, if it exists, has a causal component in the multitasking-to-disability direction.

What does all this have to do with language? Well, most of the types of "media" at issue here involve speech or text. This is also an interesting example of the rhetorical trope "studies show that ". And it's part of my on-going investigation of the interpretation of generic plurals. Of course, all of these connections are minor compared to the possibility that digital media are ruining our brains.

Apple makes computers, tablets, phones, portable media players, TV set-top-boxes, displays and a dozen other things, but to date, it hasn't made a wristwatch. Oh, wait, actually, it has! It's called the new iPod nano.

Sure, battery life will be a problem when you leave that screen on the whole time, but you could just act like it's an LED watch and it's nighttime by hitting the button to see the time.

People have dreamed of fancy computer watches for a long time, and they've recently become a reality in a sufficiently usable form. LG started the latest upswing trend by introducing a watch phone concept at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show.

Apple may not have intended the nano to be used this way, but the above Flickr photo from Kei Ogikubo leads us to believe that maybe tablets aren't the only geek fantasy that Apple is recently the first to get right!

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

More About: apple, flickr, ipod, ipod nano, iwatch, trending, watch

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With the launch of Ping this week in the latest update for iTunes, Apple is finally adding social elements to its software. Ping is essentially a social music discovery feature in iTunes. You can friend, follow, or lurk to see what music other people on iTunespeople you know, people you don'tlike, review, or buy.

Ping is very promising if only because of Apple's reach through iTunes to 160 million music consumers. And it will no doubt get better over time. But at launch, it is riddled with problems which stem from the fact that Apple does not know how to create social software. It is completely out of its element, and it shows.

The biggest problem I have with Ping is that it lives in iTunes. Not only does it live in iTunes, it is isolated there. iTunes is not social. It is not even on the Web. And Ping doesn't communicate with any other social networks. I can't see people's iTunes Pings in Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else. While Ping does make iTunes itself more social, the problem is that I don't live in iTunes. It is a store. I go in to buy stuff and get out as fast as I can. I am not sure Ping is going to make me want to hang out there more.

Let's start with when you sign up. There is no easy way to find people you already know on Ping. Facebook Connect was supposed to solve that, but that feature is disabled until Apple and Facebook work out their differences. So what you are left with now is having to type in people's names and hope they've signed up for Ping, or invite them one at a time through email. Hopefully nobody else has claimed their name. (The fight with name squatters and spammers is already beginning. Earlier today I found a dozen Steve Jobs accounts, which have since been cleaned up). There is no mechanism for importing your contacts from Gmail or any other email, or bringing in the people you already follow on Twitter or other social networks.

That leaves you with the option of finding one or two early-adopter friends and clicking through their profiles to see who they follow and add the interesting people. The only people I can find right now are bloggers and tech folks I follow elsewhere for different reasons. I have no idea whether they have any taste in music, but I guess I'll find out soon. Getting up and running should be easier than this But that is not the deal breaker.

Once you start following a few people, you can see all the songs they like, rate, review, or buy. It creates a realtime activity stream which gives you social entry points into the iTunes music store. It also works on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

But don't be confused about Apple's social ambitions. Ping is all about driving more sales in iTunes. It is completely separate from your existing iTunes library of songs. You can't like a song while you are listening to your existing collection. If you've bought a song or album, Ping assumes you like it (bad assumption), but none of your actual listening activity appears in your stream.

You can only like songs in the iTunes store. And even doing that isn't easy. There is a big like button for each album, but if you want to like a song, you need to click the drop-down arrow next to the buy button. Be careful not to hit buy, unless you really like the song.

Once you do like a song, that shows up in your stream with a nice big buy button for all your friends to follow suit. Of course, they can't listen to the whole song before deciding to buy, only a sample. You can't share playlists. You can't really do much other than peddle music to your friends.

Ping is just too commercial. It is not fun. There isn't even a leaderboard or any visible game mechanics. There is no way to see which of the people you follow are the best music recommenders as measured by subsequent purchases from people who follow them, likes or any other measure.

Ping is a promotional vehicle for iTunes and bands. If you follow a band like U2, it seems like they get a special account which allows them to upload videos (and who knows what else). Why can't I upload photos or videos to my stream? I can't even add a random comment or status update without first liking, rating, or buying a song or album.

While I am sure Ping will help drive more sales, and is probably something I will check out whenever I am in iTunes to do something else, it is not as compelling as it could be. The most interesting information in iTunes is what your friends are actually listening to and what they think about the songs they know by heartthe ones in their music library. Simply allowing people to like or promote the songs in their existing collections while they are listening to them in iTunes or on their iPods would make Ping a lot better. Sharing playlists is another no-brainer.

Ping could be so much more than it is: isolated, controlling, and a bit boring.

If you have ever searched for a Wordpress theme before, you will have probably noticed that some theme designers use some weird text when showing off their themes which looks like Latin. I have always wondered what it was, why designers choose to use it and where it came from.

After a bit of research I have some answers.

What Is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is a group of text that people commonly use as filler text, or dummy text. It's basically a bunch of mumbo-jumbo (at least that's what it looks like) that people use to show what a design layout will look like when the proper text has been inserted.

Why Do Designers Use Lorem Ipsum?

What I kept asking myself is why they would use this jumbled up mess of a foreign language and not some English text? It all comes down to focus. It's a known fact that if they were to use actual copy, someone trying to look at only the design would be distracted by what the text says. That is one of the major reasons people choose to use Lorem Ipsum. With text that is unrecognizable, there's nothing to read.

Where Did Lorem Ipsum Come From?

As it turns out, Lorem Ipsum did come from Latin. It's actually a modified version of it. What does it actually say? According to Lipsum.com,

Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC.

Lorem Ipsum has been used since the 1500's. It was made popular in the 1960's and has survived into the digital age with desktop publishing programs like Aldus PageMaker. As we also know, it is still being widely used among web designers such as Wordpress theme designers to show different design elements.

Can I Use Lorem Ipsum For My Projects?

Sure, why not? It is still widely used so join the proverbial club. In fact there are many tools out there that make using it so easy. Here are a few of them.

Lipsum.com

I have already quoted from this site because it contains quite a bit of information on the subject. It also contains a tool to generate a portion of the text.

MakeUseOf's Directory contains a writeup about it. Since that time they have released both a Firefox plugin and a Chrome plugin.

Lorem2: Lorem Ipsum Text Samples

This isn't really a software program or tool per se. It's really a website containing different sample Lorem Ipsum texts. It contains short paragraphs, long paragraphs, short list items and long list items. Web designers should add this site to their tool belt.

HTML-Ipsum

This tool takes Lorem Ipsum usage to a whole different level for web developers.

They offer much of what the last tools offers but with the HTML tags included, making development that much easier.

Tell us, do you use Lorem Ipsum? If so, in what way? What tools do you use that we should know about?

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Since this year marks the 25th Anniversary of Back to the Future, there seems to be a lot going on. First, there's a big convention happening in Burbank, California. November 5 to November 12, 2010. Check out the site here. Be sure to look at the schedule and celebrity list. The whole thing looks amazing and to boot, the profits will help fund research for Parkinsons disease. I doubt I'll be able to make it personally. If anyone goes, let me know how it is.

The other bit of news is that the SELF-LACING SHOES from Back to the Future 2 might actually happen. I'm getting TONS of emails about it, and have received a number of different links, so I'm not sure which link to point to. You're best off doing a Google search. It seems like what they're saying is that Nike filed a patent for it recently, but we still don't know how exactly they'd work, or when they'd be in stores, if this happens. We can all hope it'll happen by 2015, like in the movie. I'm sure the year 2015 will be see a lot of other Back to the Future 2 stuff. I doubt the flying cars though.

Oh yes, and there is another Back to the Future thing happening. From the Nerd.

The data storage industry has relied on a few basic technologies for more than three decades, and chief among these is the concept of redundant array of independent disks (RAID). But the mathematics that underlie traditional RAID are being replaced in response to increasing disk capacity and demands for greater flexibility. That means cutting-edge storage systems, from RAID 6 arrays to cloud storage, are using erasure codes rather than traditional parity.

Many early RAID systems simply mirrored data between two independent disk drives. Referred to as RAID 1 systems, these were simple to implement, required no advanced calculations and could accelerate read performance in a fairly uncomplicated way.

However, RAID 1 wasn't efficient when it came to capacity. As a result, parity-based solutions like RAID 5 became popular. These systems apply a simple even-or-odd computation to data, providing redundancy across multiple disk drives without the overhead of RAID 1. While performing a simple parity calculation introduces overhead and slows write operations, this can be easily overcome through the use of specialized hardware and DRAM cache.

One common misconception of RAID is that it ensures the integrity of data. Although RAID allows data to be recovered in the event of a disk failure, mirroring and parity can't detect smaller unrecoverable read errors. Physical hard disk drives employ a variety of mechanisms to improve the reliability of read and write operations. One of the most important is a common cyclic redundancy check (CRC) that's capable of detecting single bit errors, forcing the disk drive to retry reading the data.

Manufacturers estimate that conventional hard disk drives are incredibly reliable, only failing to read one bit out of approximately 12 TB. That was reassuring when hard disk drives were measured in MB or GB, but today's multiterabyte drives make the chance of an unrecoverable read error (URE) unacceptably high.

Erasure codes add reliability

That's how we arrive at erasure codes and RAID 6. Long ago, mathematicians developed algorithms to detect errors in a data stream, some of which can even recover the original data when one or more errors are detected. These calculations were too difficult for early RAID controllers, but today's microprocessor technology has brought them within reach. Many of these advanced data protection systems rely on a class of mathematics called erasure codes.

Erasure codes in action Erasure code math sounds complicated, but it's easy to comprehend. Imagine your phone number was 123-4567. It would be easy to remember because of the linear pattern of the numbers. Because it's a linear pattern of numbers, you can tell someone to start at 1 and dial each number until they reach 7. This allows them to easily recognize if they have dialed the wrong number. Erasure coding creates a mathematical function to describe a set of numbers so they can be checked for accuracy and recovered if one is lost. Referred to as polynomial interpolation or oversampling, this is the key concept behind erasure codes. Although the math used is more complicated than our phone number example, the fundamental idea is the same.

Technology similar to erasure codes is used to make Blu-ray Discs less susceptible to scratches, and DSL and WiMax data transmissions more reliable. Erasure codes are also used in many object and cloud storage systems, distributing data across multiple locations. The ability of erasure codes to allow data to be recovered from unreliable sources makes them extremely valuable in many modern systems.

RAID 6 becoming standard component of modern storage systems

As hard disk drives grow, RAID 6 becomes increasingly important. With Seagate's recent introduction of a 3 TB hard disk drive, we have reached the point where every typical 4- or 5-disk RAID 5 set is likely to encounter an unrecoverable read error in its lifetime. Because RAID 5 can't recover from such errors, RAID 6 has become an absolute must-have for RAID sets employing such large drives. Systems that still use RAID 5 should include advanced techniques like verify-on-write and data scrubbing to reduce the risk of data loss.

Happily, the average end user need not worry about the gloomy prospect of read errors and data loss. Storage manufacturers have been adding integrity-enhancing features for years, and nearly all enterprise data is protected using backups, replication or snapshot technology. RAID 6 is rapidly becoming a standard component of modern storage systems as well, with nearly every midrange or larger array adding this capability. Advances in processor technology make it likely that RAID 6 will spread to every corner of the market just in time to head off disaster.

BIO: Stephen Foskett is an independent consultant and author specializing in enterprise storage and cloud computing. He is responsible for Gestalt IT, a community of independent IT thought leaders, and organizes their Tech Field Day events. He can be found online at GestaltIT.com, FoskettS.net, and on Twitter at @SFoskett.

The business of building websites is one of constant change, adaptation and strategy. The way designers and developers build websites is often informed by the methods of others and their own trial and error. In light of this, we can draw a number of parallels some philosophical, to a certain extent between Web professionals and one of the oldest and most popular board games of all time (counting traditional and digital games). This game is chess.

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In this article, we'll explore the relationship between the game of chess and the Web industry. We'll learn fundamental lessons from the pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen and king, and we'll highlight the factors both offline and online that determine best practices. The game is beloved by many professionals, so it seems fitting to apply its great strategy and elegance to the digital age; certain practices might help you lead a more successful working life.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]

Pawns

Of all the pieces on a chessboard, the most abundant and least strategically useful are the pawns. Acting as soldiers on the front line, these men of honor advance across the board in an attempt to reach the end of the opponent's side and transform into a more useful piece (i.e. another queen). While this doesn't happen often, pawns nevertheless play a fundamental role in shielding higher-ranking pieces from attack, and these simple pieces are also used at the outset to gain positions of advantage.

Always Move Forward

Pawns can only move forward. They can get a quick start; players have the option of moving the pawns up to two spaces on their first move and subsequently moving them one space at a time. When you work on projects in a business environment, the principle of moving forward without back-tracking is an inspirational perspective. If you cease to constantly drive your ideas forward, they can become stagnant; progress is critical to a website's development.

Here are some tips you can use to adopt this mindset:

• Don't get stuck using deprecated practices when structuring website code.
• Examine your community to determine needed features for future upgrades.
• Change a website's interface only if it would benefit the user experience.

Be Willing to Sacrifice

The ideal of giving something up in exchange for a greater good is realized by pawns, which, though limited in function, are plentiful and can protect others. In design, shielding the end user from issues that can damage the usability of the website is a worthwhile sacrifice. Having to let go of something that took time and energy is always unfortunate, but knowing when to say goodbye could mean the difference between success and failure.

Here are some tips for internalizing this attitude:

• Ensure that your Web layouts are flexible enough to meet the needs of various devices.
• Weigh the benefits of features against their pitfalls before eliminating them.
• Content is more valuable than design; never dilute its quality for eye candy.

Aim for Change

The pawn's greatest moment is arriving at the opponent's side of the board. Striving for betterment and aiming for your goals are behavioral ideals firmly upheld by professionals. This requires dedication and careful planning. When undertaking a creative project, it's important to think beyond the current ask and consider the long-term project.

Here are some tips to get into this mode:

• The website-building process is never complete; ensure that you maintain a steady flow of updates.
• Think of ways to enhance the website to better cater to your visitors' changing needs.
• It never hurts to have a business plan when scoping out a Web-based project.

Rooks

Rooks (or castles, as some people call them) are fortresses of strength that move across the board either horizontally or vertically. Their nature is similar to that of bishops in that they move in a straight line (although bishops move diagonally). Progress can be hindered by barriers, and interaction with other pieces is sometimes required, but the rook's overall benefit is stamina and longevity.

When working on Web projects, we often put a great deal of thought into things like conventions and patterns and their theory and implementation. The nature of semantics and following recognized pathways in order to structure a document properly is reminiscent of the way that chess pieces such as the rook have a particular function and invariably carry out unique tasks. Only with logical thought can we hope to change the ultimate goals of an event and avoid obstruction.

Structure With Purpose

A rook represents strength and structure. The castle of stone might be restricted in its interactions on the chessboard, but its value is in its character. Websites need to be constructed well in order to survive the trials of everyday use. Considering how such needs should be met will ensure a sturdy and durable display of data. Take great care when structuring your work to reduce illegal moves and syntax.

Here are some tips for strengthening your outlook and code:

• Always validate your code; it will reduce the number of bugs.
• Use the right element for the job to improve your code's semantic value.
• Keep code minimal to reduce file size and loading time.

Assist Those in Need

Like the other pieces on a chessboard, the rook is always on hand to help out by attacking or defending. Working with others to accomplish a task is only part of their job. In a Web environment, the same is true: if you take the time to assist those who use your website or service, not only will you increase your value, but you will gain the gratitude of the visitors, whom your website requires in order to keep running.

Here are some tips that might be of assistance:

• Providing ways for people to contact you is important to maintaining trust.
• Negative feedback can still be constructive; don't dismiss it as bashing.
• Provide social interaction aids to help visitors feel involved in your community.

Take Precautions

Sometimes things don't go as planned, in which case you'll want to hold the strongest position possible. Rooks, like all other critical pieces, are only tools to protect other pieces in play, but caution is fundamental to remaining in a position of power. Thinking of how future scenarios might challenge your strategy can help future-proof your work from obvious flaws. You don't want visitors to encounter obstacles that make them miss out on the benefits of your website!

Below are some tips for fortifying your website:

• Turn off scripts and styles to test whether your website is still usable.
• Test your websites on mobile devices, a market that is proliferating.

Knights

Knights are unique in their movement, going forward two spaces and then taking a single side-step. This means they can weave past other pieces and take up positions of singular advantage. Strategically, knights are most often used to pin hard-to-reach pieces in place through a clever attack. While this unique movement has its advantages, the knight does not replace the other pieces, which have their own strategic benefits.

Our uniqueness, whether as it is applies to our creative process, our products or our ability to solve common problems, is something we as professionals take for granted. We are able to incorporate creative flourishes when we forge applications, flourishes that can be tracked through the code (such as conditional comments, which give stylistic flavor to Internet Explorer). Like a white knight saving our sanity, our uniqueness helps us side-step issues that could otherwise become complicated.

Be Brave in Adversity

Mythology has taught us the familiar attributes of the knight: bravery, strength and honor. Thoughtful reflection on the Web-building process teaches us to be courteous to others and brave, while sticking to our guns when faced with the prospect of compromising in order to gain market share.

Here are some tips to make yourself more knight-like:

• Never take criticism personally; negative feedback is often the most useful kind.
• Don't resign in the face of competition; the only failure in life is to quit trying.
• Try to rally support for your project; there's strength in numbers.

Have a Selling Point

The knight is the only chess piece that move in two directions in one turn; even the queen can't do this! This attribute teaches us the value of having a selling point. Selling points give visitors a reason to choose one product or service over others that perform the same function.

Here are some tips on finding your selling point:

• Draw from other people's work, but never steal anything outright.
• Improving on existing services is a kind of innovation in its own right.
• Be focused in what you offer; reinventing too much increases complexity.

Avoid Barriers to Access

The knight is the only piece that can pass over others in its movement. This ability to navigate past barriers is somewhat reminiscent of standard recommendations for accessibility, which ask us to remove barriers to access on our websites. The goal is to allow freedom of movement and access to content.

Below are some tips on removing barriers:

• Consider the types of people who are not as able as you are online.
• Testing your work on an audience is better than going solo.
• Make sure your website works in different browsers to avoid serious breakages.

Bishops

The bishop is a piece that moves diagonally across the chessboard. The bishop scans the board for its next move, minding pieces that block its path, in the same way that a visitor scans content until a barrier prevent their progress. A bishop cannot step off the tile color to which it was initially assigned, ensuring a kind of vendor lock-in.

As Web professionals, we tend to get caught up in arguments about whether frameworks are useful, given their disadvantages (and even with graceful degradation, for example). The benefits of frameworks for certain situations occasionally outweigh their downsides (like trapping users in the environment), so make the most of what you have; dismissing less powerful options is not always the best way to go in fact it could increase the amount of work required.

Have Faith in Your Work

The bishop, of course, is religious in nature, an agent in the battle between two sides. Faith in a religious sense is not needed to practice Web design, but as a quality of character it does play a part in one's identity. Faith affects motivation and makes you believe in the project you're spending so much time and effort on. If you have no faith in your craft, the job is doomed from the outset.

Here are some tips for building faith in your work:

• Create a list of benefits to focus on your website's potential.
• Set realistic, structured goals to achieve success.
• Encourage visitors to recommend your work to people they know.

Know Your Limits

It may seem frustrating that each bishop is trapped on its own color, limited in impact. But if you make the most of it, bishops can still be useful. Know your own strengths and limitations, so that you don't attempt the impossible or unachievable if you do, the result will surely be flawed.

Here are some tips on knowing your limits:

• Get external support or advice when you hit a wall.
• If something can't be achieved the way you hoped, look for alternatives.
• Reduce your weaknesses by learning new skills regularly.

Stick to Your Guns

While being able only to move diagonally may seem like a disadvantage, this can prove useful on occasion. Having sheer determination to carry out a job in a certain way is admirable. We humans are sometimes stubborn, and we stick to our guns when possible. This can cause us to make mistakes or motivate us to persevere.

Here are some tips on being determined:

• Reflect on a project's overall goals whenever possible in order to reassess a plan's feasibility.
• Mistakes happen, and no one is perfect, but that's no reason to stop trying.

The Queen

The queen is the second-most important piece on the chessboard. She can move horizontally, vertically and diagonally across any distance, and her power spans the entire board. She is the king's most agile bodyguard, and losing her can be devastating. You have to use your power responsibly, both on the chessboard and in your profession; misusing your tools could cause you to lose visitors to the competition.

Sometimes we find ourselves swatting a fly off a nuclear warhead. Knowing exactly what to use, when to use it and how to use it appropriately is what ultimately distinguishes professionals from amateurs. In addition, taking advantage of the powerful tools at our disposal can speed up progress and eliminate the complexities that come with attempting the impossible with simple tools.

Realize Your Potential

A potent force, the queen moves freely about the chessboard, with few restrictions. The queen is a powerful piece and reminds us to exert the greatest effort to reach our potential. Rather than staying in our comfort zone, we must always learn new skills and achieve more than what is expected of us.

Here are some tips to stretch your skills:

• Everyone has the capacity to learn; keep your skill set up to date.
• Push yourself to become a better professional and to exceed your own expectations.
• Try not to let any of your skills go to waste when creating something.

Cover All Bases

In our work, we try to minimize error by viewing every situation from multiple angles this is important. In chess, players use the queen in much the same way, exploiting her power yet shielding her from harm. In the creative process, your only real limitation is being blind to critical elements, which is why getting some perspective from outside testers and users never hurts.

Here are some tips to cover your bases:

• The more time you spend planning a project, the better the results usually will be.
• Information architecture is your friend; make use of wireframes and mock-ups.
• Spend time testing your website intensively for critical flaws.

Strategy and Learning

You have two knights, two rooks, two bishops and many pawns, but only one queen. Her value lies in her singularity; each move of the queen requires strategy and consideration of consequences. We become better players and professionals through trial and error, constant learning and foresight. Being cautious in the game teaches us to be wise in business.

Here are some tips to help you strategize:

• Read blogs, books, tutorials, magazines and anything else that can help guide you.
• Analyze your target audience to get ideas on what your website might need in future.
• Researching the competition gives you a sense of what potential visitors need.

The King

No piece is as important as the king; it is the one piece that must evade capture. The king moves only one space at a time, in any direction, and whenever it is in immediate danger, either a piece must be moved to block the attack or the king must be moved to avoid it. The king has no equal and cannot be restored by a pawn sacrifice, and so prevention is imperative.

Web professionals have to protect what is important, too. We deal with payment details, databases, passwords and other sensitive information. If we lose any of that through carelessness or a lack of preventative measures, we end up losing something greater: the customer. Establishing trust takes time, but it can be lost as quickly as a surprise checkmate!

Avoid Traps

Protecting the king is the primary concern of every chess player. Gaining advantage to prevent loss is important. While Web professionals usually have no reason to evade capture (unless they're doing something wrong), the benefit of avoiding common traps (the equivalent of foolsmate in chess) becomes apparent when testing the cross-browser functionality of a website.

Here are some tips on avoiding traps:

• Try to reduce the intrusiveness and obtrusiveness of your website to enhance the visitor's experience.
• Actively seek out errors in your work to improve your service.
• Internet Explorer is a pain. Watch out for its rendering faults.

Value and Importance

A common tactic in chess is to weigh the value of the pieces against the benefits they represent. The king is critical because the game is lost without it. Comparing value has an important role in the Web industry, too, especially when losing mission-critical features would undermine the entire process. Comparing value also helps when prioritizing maintenance work or scheduling upgrades.

Here are some ways to tip the scale:

• Accurately pinpoint the value of your service.
• Upgrades are avoidable, but reduce downtime as much as possible.
• Price your service fairly; prices that are either too high or too low create problems.

Know When to Resign

Sometimes we get so excited or stressed, as the case may be about complex or next-to-impossible projects that we forget the option of saying no. We never like to resign or throw down our sword; we feel as though we have failed because we couldn't meet the client's needs. But firing bad clients and knowing when to scrap weak ideas is a part of being a professional. You can't win every fight.

Here are some tips on recognizing when to throw in the towel:

• Trust your instincts when deciding whether to undertake a project.
• Salvage something from anything you work on.
• Learn how to deal with clients from hell.

Chessboard

Chess players focus on the pieces in play and on capturing the king, but they must also understand the chessboard as a battleground on which this drama plays out. This relates to the website-creation process (and to a lesser extent, the Web industry): lessons are to be learned from the chessboard itself.

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Light and Dark

Like a chessboard, the Web industry is full of light and dark, good and bad. We weigh benefits and pitfalls when performing our roles. A chess game tells a story; likewise, the fruits of our labor and our highlights and disappointments all appear online.

Think Ahead

One of chess' biggest lessons is to think ahead, instead of in the moment. Being able to predict how your opponent will move helps you gain advantage. This is also true of the website-building process. Unjustified decision-making leads to problems, whereas well-planned strategies that entice people to visit and use your service lead to faster results and greater rewards.

Weigh Your Options

In chess, there are literally millions of ways a game can play out, and with every move the number of potential outcomes decreases. Knowing your options and which route affords the best opportunity for success is a critical skill. Website creators have many different methods of production and implementation as well, but missing the mark with scalability or usability can diminish a website's user-friendliness and jeopardize its success.

Make Your Move

Decision-making can be tricky; in chess, a wrong move can cause you to lose a piece, a good position, an advantage or even the game. The same could be said of building a website. Preparing for different projects, services and eventualities is one thing, but having the courage, skill and understanding to carry them out successfully takes practice. After examining your options, make your move: put all your careful planning into action.

Checkmate!

So many useful lessons can be learned from chess. If you haven't played it before, visualizing what we've gone over might be hard, but the fundamental principles of the game how the pieces interact and the role of strategy in the big picture should not be ignored. The game actively promotes logical thinking and strategy both useful skills.

More lessons could certainly be drawn from the game, but hopefully this article will serve as a source of inspiration, especially if you feel your goals are out of reach. We often learn the most from making mistakes, losing a battle and then returning to win the war. Nowhere is this been truer than in chess, where a mixture of practice, skill and occasional luck is required to become the grandmaster.

So many aspects of the Web industry (such as syntax, design and ideals) change constantly, but the fundamental principles of learning, growing and trying your best often mean the difference between failure and success. Try to incorporate lessons from the chessboard into your own work; while having all the pieces doesn't guarantee victory, having the basic skills will give you the confidence and awareness that you need to succeed.

(al)

Alexander Dawson for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
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