Blog #3

The organizational habit that I discussed involved clearing space on my hard drive and bookmarking courses on my Internet browser. I found that clearly room on my hard drive allowed me to stay considerably more organized by dividing my courses into titled folders. Try going on your computers and look in your Documents folder, I think a lot of people have can agree that they have a large amount of miscellaneous documents that are due for a deleting, digital clutter. I also create bookmarks for my courses on the tab below the URL, I find this advantageous because it allows for a more direct path to the course website. It may not seem like it does much organizationally but I argue a “one click away” system helps me get to a site quickly, which personally makes me visit the site more readily.

There are many ways someone else could adopt my system but organize it differently. They could create a folder for the whole specific semester, for example you could create a Spring’11 folder or even be more specific and call it JanSpring’11.

Bookmarking is fairly straight forward, so variations in bookmarking seems tough to discuss, but there are a variety of ways that Internet browsers can act as organizational tools. I personally use Google Chrome because I have been accustmned to their layout, I know that with Chrome you can use iGoogle which is a tool that acts as a customizable homepage.

There are many ways to organize your computer documents, some methods work better for others but the computer is a very customizable device that can be a very useful tool if you want to treat it as one. 

Blog #2

Firstly, the prologue. I really thought the analogy of the Staples store to the digital world was very interesting. I always thought it was interesting how stores, especially grocery stores organized their product. How everything you always needed was in the very back and how this is different to the Staples model which places popular products in the front of the store.

Chapter 1 continues with the Staples example by providing various other types of ways in which we categorize and organize information and physical items to fit purpose and cut time and cost. Like what constitutes a spice, how we make a table for a meal, or why a CD with numerous tracks was developed. I thought the section on Bill Gates purchasing the Bettmann archive was very interesting. Gates is the man.

Chapter 2, when we are introduced to Mortimer Adler, I thought it was interesting that the Encyclopedia Britannica was disputed based on order and that doing it alphabetically was a problem and was debated. Than arranging by category would also be problematic. Than Samuel Taylor Coleridge discussed the five major category breakdown, which I though made sense.

The example that I came up with for how I personally organize something is at the very beginning of the semester I clean out my computer and create folders for every one of my new courses. I also place bookmarks for all my courses on my Internet browser so I have an easier time getting to the course website more quickly.

BLOG #1

The most impressive web application I have come across is The Hype Machine (hypem.com). It is a fantastic music site that helps you discover popular and up and coming artists through collecting a variety of music blogs (collective intelligence). Great site, it has replaced itunes for me personally. I am currently listening to it right now.

BLOG #1

As we had discussed with our group I found the most important concept to be collective intelligence and crowd sourcing. No matter what your career goals are there will be a very good chance that you at some point will work with, or discuss with other groups. The collective idea will be able to typically exceed the work of a single individual.
It is important to be able to have this social ability, to work collectively. Especially in a digital world there are now even more possibilities to interconnect everyone in completing goals.