My survey!

I created a survey in surveymonkey.com in order to get some responses that I was interested in. Even though I posted it in many social networks such as tweeter, facebook, tuenti, yahoo answers and the good ereader, I didn't get as much responses as I expected.


I also have to mention that once collected the results, I realised that some of the questions like "what do you like to read most?" weren't relevant for my field of research.


The first chart on the right respond to the question "how old are you?", the one at the bottom right corner responds to "what do you think is more ecologically friendly, ebooks or paper books?". The first one on the left is "what do you like reading most?" and the one at the left bottom corner is "how many books do you read a year?"

The last question of my survey was: Do you prefer to read a paper book or an ebook? 
(this are some of the responses that I got)




-a book because of the feeling, but i prefer the ebook if the book I want to read is to heavy for me to carry it around

-I would prefer using eBooks (ink based ebooks, such as Kindle) for reading because they are more convenient to carry around. They are generally small and light and can store multiple books thus eliminating the need to worry about extra added weight. However, reading paper books seems more natural. :)

-paper book because we can read it everywhere, we can also read with an ipad or something like that but we have to be careful on the device. So I prefer textbook.

-A paper book! I like to feel the weigth of the book in my hands, and also turning the page. An ebook is cold, paper is warmer.

-A paper book, but then again, I have never tried reading from an ebook. I just like to have a hard copy, which I can make notes on, fold pages. If given something digitally I tend to print it off before reading.

-I prefer to read a paper book, it's just easier, you can open & close it freely, a paper book doesn't need charging, nobody's likely to steal a paper book as well

WHENEVER & WHEREVER

When I talk about the new readers generation I mean all these people that as I said in previous posts read electronically. There are many good reasons to read from a screen. One of them is internet, it is huge the amount of written data that we get from and through internet as a routine.  See for example e-mails, web journals or magazines, electronic books or any kind of written document really. This lately phenomena happens out of the benefits that internet leads us when it comes to getting any kind of data almost whenever and wherever we want it.  Meaning that when a nowadays student needs to get done some course work, will find the brief in the university website.  If you happened to want to read Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen when you are waiting for the bus, you can just download it from the internet and start reading it in less than five minutes.

Another of the greatest advantages of this “electronic reading” is the weight and space saving. With this I am referring to that big shelf filled with books that good readers have. This shelf isn’t a problem for settled people. But in the last 15 years the fact of moving around the world has become easier and this is generating a generation of nomads. For this nomads is way more comfortable to carry just one light and little device that can fit all their books in it. 

This is what THEY say

I signed up into yahoo answers and I found this relevant question that someone else made along with a great answer from another participant of the network:

I also made my own question getting some very useful responses, I post here all my questions with the best responses:

ereaders replacing paper books? This is and Opinion

This is another video that I found this afternoon where an ereader user gives his opinion about the ereaders vs. paper books "war". I think he has an interesting point of view, that is why I chose to post it.

What are eBooks??

Going through YouTube videos about eBooks and eReaders, I just found this technology expert that explain very clearly what an ebook is. He also gives some historical content about it.

WHO gives the information ???

Martin Raymond has an interesting theory that repeats with the exact same words in both of his books "The Tomorrow People" and "The Trend Forecaster's Handbook", fact that I personally found quite "amusing". This theory is relevant for my research anyway. It consist on an explanation of the amount of information that is posted into networks from different individuals. Apparently 80% of the information in networks is provided by 20% of the network integrants.

Does this means that I have to find this particular integrants?? But if I do so, I won't get much variety of opinions or responses... I know of course that I need to ask a particular public that is going to be interested in my research or that will be willing to answer my questions in order to help me with my task.

Digital Books or Paper Books?????

Ebooks Vs. Paper Books , this is a very controversial discuss with two well differenced sides. we have the romantic side, which prefer paper books, and the innovator side, pro ereaders. In this link above I found very well explained some pros and cons of both items. 

This Is What I Need To Do Next

My Chosen Topic

Going on and on about my searching for the topic that was going to suit me better I though I would research about Rock music in terms of how it affects people moods. But when I did my preview attend of research I found out that too many things have been said already about this matter, and that it wasn't going to be easy for me to find something new. That same afternoon I was taking to my boyfriend about the new Sony Readers that we bought last week and I realised that this particular subject was something that many people are taking about lately. So I finally found the topic I am going to research about! eBooks and eReaders.

a KIT-KAT please!!

As you all know a Kit-Kat is a well known chocolate bar, but in Spain (the country where I was born) we    also use it as an idiom. Yes, I know, this sounds weird, when we say in Spanish "wait a Kit-Kat" is like if we were saying "wait a moment". This has a very rational and simple explanation, Spanish people is not that crazy... Back when this brand started to be sponsored in Spain they were advertised like a break snak.  That is why we use it like that. Whatever, this isn't what I really intended to write in this post. I was checking for some inspirational reading for this blog and I found "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell in our recommended reading list for this module. To be honest it was the only book that I managed to find as an epub to load into my digital book reader.

The fact is that I find some of this book's theories very interesting, so decided to share it along with all my incoming research.

"The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea very simple. It is that the best way to understand de emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of a unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of work of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and the messages and behaviours spread just like viruses do.

The rise of Hush Puppies and the fall of New York's crime rate are text book examples of epidemics in action. Although they may sound as if they don't have very much in commun, there share basic, underlying pattern. First of all, they are clear examples of contagious behaviour. No one took out an advertisement and told people that the traditional Hush Puppies were cool and they should start wearing them. Those kids simply wore the shoes when they went to clubs or cafes or walked the streets of downtown New York, and in so doing exposed other people to their fashion sense. They infected them with the Hush Puppies virus.[...] The second distinguishing characteristic of this two examples is that in most cases little changes had big effect.[...] Finally, both changes happend in a hurry. They didn't built steadily and slowly."

Weak & Strong Ties

I retained something that my lecturer mention today that I found especially interesting. This matter was weak and strong ties within a network. I looked at Raymond's Trend forecasters handbook but I wasn't completely satisfied with his explanation of the subject. So I kept researching about it a bit more and I found this clearer vision of weak and strong ties.

"In Mark Granovetter's social world, our close friends are often friends with each other as well. The network behind such a clustered society consists of small, fully connected circles of friends connected by strong ties, shown as blod lines. Weak ties, shown as thin lines, connect the members of these friendship circles to their acquaintances, who have strong ties to their own friends. Weak ties play an important role in any number of social activities, from spreading rumors to getting a job." 

(Barabasi, A.L. (2002) Linked: The New Science of Networks. Plume: Penguin Group)

I have been thinking about it and I came out with the conclusion that for my own network is going to be much better to use weak ties. Because I am interested in getting as many different opinions as posible. 

PERSONAL NETWORKS

A few days ago we were told in one of this module lectures to visualize our own network. So we all tried to draw a diagram of it in a piece of paper. (Later today I will be posting and Illustrator version of mine) This matter reminded me of something very similar that I had seen in Raymond's Trend Forecaster's Handbook, "The Friend Wheel". It is an application developed for Facebook and Tweeter by Thomas Fletcher, this app basically connects all your Facebook/Tweeter friends to each other in a coloured wheel. I tried use it and make my own friends connections wheel, but seams to be having some problems to generate new ones, so I will just post a screen-shot from someone else's wheel that I found on the internet.