A few weeks ago I went out and bought a e-reader. A Sony PRS-350 to be exact. I resisted the urge to blog about it straight away, waiting instead for the novelty to wear off.

Why?
There are some definite large advantages to reading on an electronic device. The most obvious is that you can carry quite a few books with you on a very small reader. This is compelling, but in the end, books are not really like mp3s, most people seriously read only a few books at a time, so I hardly find the ability to carry around a library all that interesting.

However, there are other, more enticing reasons to get one. First of all, you don’t have to have physical books anymore. I imagine that for many people, this would be exactly the reason not to get an e-reader. This sentiment is fully understandable, books have a certain stature in our culture and owning books speaks volumes (pun intended). But, the majority of what I read is really not worth having in print. Not that it is garbage, but I tend to read things that are very low on graphics and high on text. ACM papers, for example, are not particularly aesthetic.

Then there are the little conveniences that comes with having digital versions of books. First of all, it is search able. When you have digital book, you do not need to go through the absurd action of looking texts up on Amazon, inside a book you already own. Additionally, you benefit from having books accessible everywhere where you have internet connectivity, if you save them in the cloud. Paper versions lack this distinct quality. Oh, and did I mention they don’t weigh anything?

What struck me most though, was the increased time spent reading. Apparently, it isn’t only me. Reading becomes more of a habit and the portability of an e-reader means that you can read it wherever you are. Don’t be put off by the small screen though, you hardly notice this after a few hours.

Pricing

Pricing of Tony Judt’s (excellent) Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 on amazon.com

Then, a few words about the pricing of ebooks. I fully understand that only about 12% of a paperback is packaging and distribution. Electronic books are thus not bound to be much cheaper. But what makes my head spin, is the fact that paperbacks are often more expensive than electronic books. I find it hard to swallow that, somehow, paperbacks can be produced more cheaply than electronic books. I am aware that converting books into their respective digital versions is costly, but surely, this process can’t possibly push up the price of digital books to the extend that they end up being more expensive?

So, all in all, I am very satisfied with my purchase and can heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to read more, or is already reading on a backlit screen and wants to have less strain on their eyes. The downside is that you might end up forking out more for a product that is undeniably of less quality than physical books: kindle does not really allow you to donate your old e-books to the library or give them to a friend, does it?

Wow, it just occurred to me that my modest little blog is already more than four years old. Quite a lot changed since then: I graduated, started a Masters course, moved to a different country, shifted my interests slightly along the way too. On the internet, four years is an eternity.

As a followup from Switching from Word to Latex: A Few Thoughts, a few words about using Mendeley.

Mendeley is trying to be for academics what last.fm is for music fans. When I graduated in 2008 it still wasn’t that stable, but since then I have used it exclusively as citation management software. Today, I’ll write a bit how I incorporate it into my literature review process and how it fits in with writing.

What does it do?
It recognizes academic papers or other literature pieces. To me, this is the killer function. Simply copy a paper into your Mendeley folder and it will try and recognize what it is. This saves you a lot of typing time. Once you have your source in the library, it also syncs the actual file to the Mendeley servers, if you want this. Online you can see what others are reading or publishing, as well as search for papers. This give it that added social component, which is cool. What is great is that you can import a document into your library with a single click from the online library. The web importer is also great: simply click the bookmarklet and Mendely will add the currently viewed tab in your browser to your library, often recognizing the content (e.g.: authors, date, title, etc). As easy as that. You can also create folders or groups of papers. More on this later.

Bookmarklet importing a web source

Citations
Next, and probably most interesting if you using Word for writing, is that you can download and install a plugin that allows Mendeley to grab citation details from your library and put these in Word, Neo and Open Office. If you are using a citation style such as Harvard (Author, Date) this might not be a big deal, but for IEEE or ACM papers that use numerical citation styles (e.g.: [2,4,5]), this will save you a lot of work. Even with Harvard-like styles, you might end up combing through your text, trying to find sources that are missing in the bibliography. This process is automatic in Mendeley and all the used sources will appear in the bibliography automatically, in the stipulated format, from which there are quite few to choose from.

Citing is easy. Once the plugin is installed you get a menu option in your word processor of choice. When clicked, this takes you to Mendeley and allows you to select one or more sources. Once you selected, you are taken back to Word where your citations have appeared (in the text and bibliography).

Less than 100 citations seem to work fine in a document but I find that it starts getting worse from there. As for the library size it works fine with medium sized sets of sources, but I have noticed that once you get to 1k of sources in your library, startup can be sluggish. I have also given up on trying to make sure I don’t have duplicates and wrong meta data.

Groups

Mendeley Groups
I’d recommend groups for every new project, but try and not be too enthusiastic with adding sources if you are not actually using them in your text. Your groups get messy and you lose all oversight. In order to keep things accurate, I make sure that all the documents in a particular active folder is in a pristine state. Doing so for your entire library feels little futile. Just make sure that what you cite is correct.

You can grab Mendeley here.

TLDR: Mendeley is great for managing and organizing your sources. It saves you a lot of time in formatting citations for your text. Works well with Word.

I recently took the plunge and switched to LaTex (pronounced Latech) for thesis writing. LaTex isn’t actually a word processor, but rather, a document markup language. It differs from processors such as Pages and Word in that it is not a WYSIWYG editor: text needs to be compiled first before it can be seen in its “actual” format. This sounds more daunting than it is though: in reality it is merely like generating a printable document.

In general, LaTex is much more popular in the hard sciences since it allows you to create nicely rendered equations. However, it has also been somewhat popular amongst humanities students who do not need to have equations in their text.

I found it remarkably easy to switch: I had about 10k words written for my thesis, in a document containing about 100 citations generated by Mendeley. The hardest part was switching my Harvard-style citations over to BibTex, but even this wasn’t as bad because I could search for “(Gefen 2000)” and replace all occurrences with its BibTex equivalent (\cite{Gefen2000}). In total, the whole procedure took me less than a day. This includes figuring out how LaTex and BibTex works. Below I will highlight some of the pro’s and con’s that influenced my decision to try it out. I’d like to state that I am a novice, so if anyone with a lot more LaTex experience wants to correct anything, let me know.

PROS
Citations
LaTex + BibTex + Mendeley makes citation easy. This is probably the main reason you could consider switching. Mendeley does a pretty decent job of recognizing papers. It is also capable of generating .bib files, with citation keys pre-made (AuthorDate). This makes it very versatile since if you are managing your library with Mendeley, you can always still use Word to write shorter pieces of text, whilst still benefiting from your citations. Citing in LaTex is dead easy: once you know the citation key, the only thing to do is write \cite{CitationKey}. Writing software such as TexMaker makes this process even easier by offering a drop down of existing citations, sourced from your .bib file (think of it as a linked .css file). The benefits of BibTex are even clearer when you are dealing with 100+ citations. Word + Mendeley just isn’t that good (yet) when handling larger bibliographies. The benefits are even greater when you using number based citations like ACM or IEEE: LaTex generates these automatically.

Another major plus it the ability to insert page numbers into your citations: \cite[p. 192]{Putnam 2000}. The sky is the limit when it comes to library size.

Flexibility
When writing in Word, you are stuck with using MS Word on your PC or Mac. Alternatives like Open Office don’t always play nice with your .doc(x) files, so you really have no alternative. With LaTex, you can choose any text editor. This also means that you are platform independent. For some people this might not be a important, but since I routinely use Mac, Windows and Linux (Mint), it is a plus. You could even opt to write it in your browser. Additionally you can use fullscreen editors that allow for distraction free writing, ultimately saving you a lot of time. You also have direct control of the text: there is no second guessing what your word processor is doing: you can see the inner workings.

Stable
LaTex is stable. If your Word document has ever become corrupted, or all your citations lost, I think you can really appreciate the stability of LaTex.

Formatting, Numbering
One of the biggest headaches in Word is getting a nice table of contents and consistent numbering. Sure, it is possible to do so, but the process is not as intuitive as it could be. LaTex is super easy. It has a hierarchy, depending on the document class, and merely typing \chapter{Introduction} tells it that there is a new chapter. The code \section{Method}, denotes a section in that chapter, etc. Putting in a table of contents is as easy as typing \tableofcontents. Images and captions are also significantly easier to deal with. I remember spending a day on my bachelors thesis, just to get the images where I want them. Additionally, pdf’s generated can have hyperlinks to text, figures, citation, etc., plus bookmarks to your chapters.

CONS
Coding
If you haven’t coded before, LaTex might be daunting. Most of us grew up using Word or some other alternative where we are not confronted with the inner workings of the text. With LaTex you are exposed to the syntax. This, once again, sounds more daunting than it is: it is actually simpler than HTML and many people are are quite familiar with this (thanks MySpace!).

Compatibility
Outside of the technical sciences, LaTex is not a very widely used. This can be problematic if you are required to send drafts of your work to colleagues. However, there are some LaTex -> Word -> converters, which makes collaborating easier. I can’t vouch for these though, I haven’t used one.

Design
The default design of a LaTex document looks quite good if you are writing a thesis in Humanities or Technical Sciences. For Design students, this might not suffice. Changing fonts and layout is possible, but there is a slight learning curve. However, you can opt to write entirely in LaTex and then produce a text file (.rtf or .doc) that you can then place into InDesign, so you can design your final document the way you want it. However, there are loads of LaTex packages available that will allow you to create documents that look just the way you want.

To conclude: if you are used to writing rudimentary code and don’t mind working in a text editor, then you might want to give LaTex a try. Setup is not that hard and there are lots of example and source files available. I would generally recommend it for longer writing projects with lots of citations. If you are not using a lot of sources in your writing, then it might not be worth the effort to switch. Simple documents such as short essays might not be easier to write in LaTex.

A few resources:
Citations in LaTeX
Great General Tutorial by Andy Roberts
Default LaTex Layout (pdf)

Some software:
TexMaker, a good cross platform editor.
MikTex (You’ll need this to compile your document in Windows)
MacTex (You’ll need this to compile your document in OSX)

Code Rush, a PBS documentary, provides an interesting look at Silicon Valley in the late 90′s. The story focuses on the open sourcing of Netscape’s browser code to Mozilla and their subsequent sale to AOL. The documentary has been released under CC License. So, if you have an hour to spare, I can really recommend it.

I have updated my Work section to better reflect what I have been doing recently by removing all to the webdesign related projects and instead focus more on the research related work done since, and during, my Bachelor graduation. I am at the moment also very fortunate to working on a great project proposal at the Interaction Design Lab in Potsdam. Hopefully more on that later!

I wrapped up my Internship at the Deutsche Telekom Design Research Lab on Friday after six really great months at the Labs on Ernst Reuterplatz. It was a great introduction to more scientific ways of working and gave me great inspiration and motivation for the next year of my Masters. Definite highlight was getting our full paper accepted at the Sustainability in Design conference, to be held in Bangalore later this year. Hopefully, a second full paper is on the way.

As for peterpixel.nl, I am not entirely sure how to proceed with the blog. My interests have sort of moved on from general usability into more design (research) methods. Perhaps I can find a place for the here. Either way, the coming 5 weeks will be spent preparing for my Masters Thesis, getting ready for my epic trip to Asia and moving to a new flat. Hopefully, I’ll get back to some more regular writing as the new semester starts.

As part of my Masters thesis I am looking for people who are currently working under some time pressure (read: are little stressed) in a fairly open office environment where various communication tools are being used.

The students at my former University of Applied Sciences in Rotterdam, currently graduating at various companies in their 4th year, forms a perfect group of people to talk to, which is why I hope they are reading this.

Since I, like most of you, am currently working during the day, I would love if we can schedule a skype meeting one evening. I estimate that 30 minutes should be enough.

If you are reading this and am interested, please get in touch with me via email (communication@peterpixel.nl) or twitter (@peterpixel). Alternatively, simply leave a comment here.

Thanks in advance!

It has been a while since my last post, apologies. Reason for my absence was a three week holiday in South Africa, visiting family. Prior to that, end of semester duties had to be taken care of.

Since coming back home on the 3rd of March I have been working at the Deutsche Telekom Design Research Laboratories here in Berlin, leaving little time left for blogging.

However, the Design Research Lab is a very interesting and environment for an internship and I am very lucky to be working with a bunch of really bright people.

Project I am working on at the moment is coined Next Neighbourhood, and if you are interested you can have a look on our team blog to find out more about what we are up to. Topics covered range from Design Methodology, Community Informatics to Participatory Design. All in all, very exciting times!

Stumbled upon a very interesting talk by Stefana Broadbent on TED. It deals with Internet and how it enables intimacy. While the talk in general is quite interesting, I was struck more with how small our social networks really are. This is a topic close to my heart since it concerns the topic of my Master Thesis (Social Network Interaction based on Location).

The idea behind it is that our Social Networks online are not representative of our actual social network. As it turns out, this is in fact the truth: the average person only communicates with 5 – 7 people in their intimate circle, using technology. Facebook is also quite interesting: the average user has about 120 friends but two way communication only takes place between 4 -6 people, depending on your gender.

It does make me realize that Social Networks don’t adequately deal with the fact that our actual relationships are vastly different from those depicted on our online profile.

(Sources are at 1:30)