Information Overload

"We have access to too much information." I'm sure that if I'd said that 100 years ago I would have been considered a little odd, and if I had said it to Copernicus, Da Vinci or Galileo they would thought it extremely bizarre perhaps even considering me a little mad.

But these days it's all too true, those of us connected to the internet are all but drowning in a vast ocean of information. From company web sites, news web sites, blogs, video and social sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter there is a huge amount of data for us to consume. Fortunately, some of it is duplicated either by virtue of syndication or because there are many people reporting the same event, but that still leaves the vast majority of information which isn't.

I am sure that it's possible to spend the whole day just keeping up with everything streamed on Twitter, let alone Facebook and I wonder just how many hours of video are now available on YouTube. It's impossible for one person to keep up with it all, and it's not even worth trying. We need to be selective in what we consume, which leaves us at the mercy of how a web site is designed and how it's data/pages are categorised. Not forgetting the search engines which play a vital role in helping us find that information, though they are by no means the only way and perhaps not even the most significant these days.

But we also need the self discipline to limit what we consume and the time that we spend, otherwise we'll spend it all consuming information and none of it getting on with the important things in life.

Posted by Richard on 26/01/2010

Getting the Message Out

While it is easy and cheap to send an email, particularly when sending it to more than one recipient, it isn't always appropriate, particularly when time is a factor for those receiving the message. Lets face it, one of the failings of email and, for that matter, any online method of communication, is that there is no guarantee that the intended audience will receive a time critical message in time, unless the lead time can be measured in days. But even then there is still no guarantee, there is always the potential for an email to be lost in a spam filter for instance.

Take as an example the problems facing head teachers when the decision has been made to close the school, something which is proving to be a quite common occurance in the current weather conditions. This decision isn't normally made until the morning of the day concerned, and at that point there isn't a lot of time to get the message to the parents. It seems that radio stations become the primary tool for getting the message out to the parents, although quite often a message is also put on the school web site. This puts the onus on the recipients to listen to the radio or browse to the web site, a potentially hit and miss scenario as there is no guarantee that the parents will be listening to a radio or able to browse the web. Which is much the same as if an email were to be sent, as the parent would have to know that they need to check their email at that time - which isn't something on most peoples minds at that time of the day, certainly in those conditions.

It's an interesting problem, you need to get a message out and it needs to reach the maximum number of people in the shortest possible time and be guaranteed to reach them. How do you do it? Well, there is a solution, SMS or texting as it is more commonly referred to. These days it is possible to send a text to a large number of people in the same way that you would an email, and since almost everyone has a mobile phone you could be reasonably sure that the message would reach the intended recipients.

Unfortunately, this solution isn't without it's problems. The recipient may not be in range of a mobile phone transmitter at the time the message is sent, so the message doesn't arrive straight away. But that's not an insurmountable problem, as the message will be delivered once the mobile phone comes within range again, and there aren't that many places that have no mobile signal at all these days anyway.

If you have this sort of problem and need some advice then get in touch, our details can be found on our contact form. We have a number of solutions starting at just a few pence per text.

Posted by Richard on 11/01/2010