We are all part of the emerging information economy, building and using applications that create overflowing streams of information. Social network sites create compelling spaces, where social interactions act as lubricants, accelerating the flow of information. Users are encouraged to respond, add to, consume and redirect content. As information flows by, some may grab a piece when it is most relevant, valuable, entertaining or insightful, and at times, choose to pass it onwards.

Attention = Power

While the threshold to publishing nears zero, attention has become the bottleneck. One cannot demand attention anymore, or expect to have it at certain times of the day. We all need to understand the preferences and behavior of our respective audiences, and adapt our own behavior in order to attract the attention of others. The ability to attract attention is power, and in this 140-character economy, understanding how people manage their attention is incredibly powerful.

Because information spreads through people, networks of friends, fans and followers, by understanding information flows we have the ability to unlock insight about where people place their attention. Some data spread at an unpredictable viral speed, while the majority are only seen by a handful. In order for messages to propagate, people along the way must be attentive: notice them at the right time, and pass them onwards. How this happens is the million dollar question. Here are some examples:

Gaining your Network’s Trust

This is a visualization from a recent study we published about the spread of the tweet on the Osama Bin Laden operation. Media that monday morning was focused on the story that “Twitter broke the news”. Over an hour before the formal white house announcement, people on twitter had figured out that it was Bin Laden. There was much speculation on why the presidential announcement had to take place on sunday night. Some were on the Gaddafi side, and others, Bin Laden.

It was a single tweet that triggered an in credibly fast information cascade. A single tweet from Keith Urbahn, Donald Rumsfeld’s chief of staff, drew 80 retweets within a minute, and generated over 300 within two. This message spread like wildfire. (see study for more detail)

Before May 1st, not even the smartest of machine learning algorithms could have predicted Keith Urbahn’s likelihood to spread information on this topic, or his potential to spark an incredibly viral information flow. While politicos “in the know” certainly knew him or of him, his previous interactions and size and nature of his social graph did little to reflect his potential to generate thousands of people’s willingness to trust within a matter of minutes.

Tight Knit Network or “Tribe”

Another example of an interesting information spread is that of Urban Outfitters vs. the NYC crafters community. In this case, the ‘I heart NYC’ necklace design was ripped off an independent designer by UO. The artists put up a blog post, and Amber Karnes published the following post to Twitter:

This led to an avalanche of reactions, to the level that her username was trending in LA, Portland, New York, Toronto and then the United States.

In an incredibly insightful post, Amber wrote:

I am not a Twitter celebrity by any means. I barely had over 1,000 followers when the day began and I’m pretty sure about 200 of those are spam-bots. What I do have – and the reason that my call for a boycott on Urban Outfitters spread so fast and wide – is a tribe. A tight knit group of independent artists and crafters that follow me. My cause resounded with them. They spread it, and their friends spread it, and a few big influencers on Twitter spread it, and then it was gone.

Topic + Network + Timing

We see this over and over again: The right social-professional networked audience, along with a relevant piece of information, all at the right time, led to an explosion of public affirmation, many times, unexpected by the author.

Paradox of Social Networks

While networked sociality promises us equal opportunity, the ease and frictionless connection to literally anyone across the globe. But what plays out is in effect very different. As James Gleik notes in his seminal book ‘The Information’:  “The structure of the social web stands upon a paradox. Everything is close, and everything is far at the same time.”

These small world networks usually offer 4 degrees of separation. And even though the distances between people may seem short, finding the right route that will provide us with the wanted outcome is extremely difficult. This is why cyberspace can feel not just crowded but lonely .You can drop a stone into a well and never hear a splash. But alternatively, you can be received with a flood of water. And while the latter is less common, the more people spend their time in SNS, we’re seeing that happen again and again.

the promise of data

Whether you’re interested in socializing or in selling a product, understanding your network’s habits around information consumption and production is imperative to attaining people’s attention, and building an engaged audience. We all build these mental models in our heads, imagining our invisible audiences; the people who give us attention. But as long as its all in our heads, it doesn’t scale. We need to build and use tools that drive insight and help us find effective ways to makes sense of all the digital breadcrumbs left by our online audiences.

Psyched to be working at the heart of this.

Within a fortnight, Eden Abergil becomes an Israeli public figure, stamped on news articles slashing one of Israeli IDF core principles, its moral values, and Israeli society as a whole. All because a single, insignificant girl’s actions; a girl who has no connection whatsoever to the army anymore. Domestic and international news agencies turn against her. The IDF condemns her actions and releases her from reserve service. Yet Eden still does not really grasp why here photos are perceived as problematic. In a recent interview, when asked if she understands the world’s anger about the photos, Eden answers: “of course I understand! The whole world is against us. Its not a secret that the world hates us (Israelis)”. It was her army service, the photos were her souvenir which she posted on her supposedly private Facebook page, and had “private” conversations with her friends. She did not physically harm the prisoners. On the contrary, she claims that she fed and gave them water. “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about!” – she exclaims.

But the powerful fact still holds. With a tiny click of the mouse, by uploading these photos, Eden provided the world with ammunition against one of the most powerful armies in the world: a way to attack the IDF’s *prized* moral values. Compulsory service means that every Israeli is connected to the army – siblings, parents and friends. It is an integral part of Israeli society, making it difficult for one to criticize its actions. When you criticize the IDF, you’re criticizing your brother who might be serving, your father who is in reserves, and your friend’s family, whose son was killed in one of the many dangerous oprations in Gaza. The story of Eden Abergil hit one of Israel’s most sensitive spots – the IDF’s moral values. During the Lebanon and Gaza wars, as well as the Flotilla attacks, Israeli “hasbara” consistently uses the IDF values as its main defense reasoning. IDF soldier’s intent is to target militants and terrorists NOT civilians. IDF soldiers act to protect Israeli civilians, they react when attacked. Their values are aligned with what the western world would expect a truly valiant army.

The repercussions of Eden Abergil’s actions are a country’s worst nightmare, and a byproduct of the difficulties Facebook users have grasping issues of privacy on Facebook. When looking at Eden’s photos it is hard not to jump to conclusions and judge the IDF as a whole. “Finally the true face of the IDF has been revealed” – “see how they ruthlessly treat Palestinian prisoners”. But as we all know, the truth tends to be much more complex and multi-faceted. Yes, there are countless cases of detainee mistreatment by IDF soldiers. Hundreds of Palestinians are held without any legal justification. However in Eden’s case, there was none of that.

From blogs to mainstream media, Israelis disgusted by the sheer stupidity of this girl’s actions, horrified by the fact that within a day, Eden Abergil turned from being a nobody retired soldier chatting about shopping, parties and boys with her friends, to a world-wide symbol of “vicious Israeli occupation”; the face of the IDF, affecting people’s perception of Israel around the world.

The harm that Eden’s photos did to the image of the IDF will take a long time to heal, if ever. However, the damage done to her personal image will never be erased. Eden is mocked and publically slandered by media outlets as well as Isarelis across the country. The following youtube skit marks her as an “Arsit” (a.k.a. ‘white trash’) while numerous Internet memes have unfolded with her photo and name plastered all across. Eden will always be rememberd as that stupid girl who posted abnoxious photos on her Facebook account. She will have a hard time finding a job, and will always be the poster case for “people doing stupid things online”. Her micro-celebrity status will most likely drive her insane or to the extreme edge of society. When the waters settle, she will be forgotten.

But never forgiven.

im in ur army, corruptin ur valuez

This recently posted video of Israeli soldiers dancing to the beat of Ke$ha’s “tick tock” in the middle of their patrol in the West Bank is a great example of the clash of context. The video went viral extremely fast, as many Israelis re-posted and proudly emailed the link, naively thinking that “the world will finally see that our soldiers are humans who also like to have a little fun”. They could not have imagined just how offended people across the world would be from watching the video. Slogans like “It’s easy to laugh at the occupation when you’re the oppressor” were posted in response, causing lots of frustration and confusion all around.

Intentions were good, but were lost in translation.

Ethan Zuckerman has been writing about xenophilia and culture bridging for a while. He points at people’s tendency towards homophily (’birds of a feather flock together’) and sees this as a fundamental challenge, since with the web, we’re more able than ever to find people that are like us. He stresses the importance for us to seek out and understand people different from us, especially as cultures clash on global web services become more common. Ethan defines xenophilia as people in the world who are genuinely fascinated by the breadth, complexity and difference of the world; “third culture kids”, people who were raised in one country, but are “from” another. Bridge bloggers are xenophiles who have the capacity to connect both sides of a story, because they themselves are associated with both sides.

In his recent blog post, Ethan looks at data released by peace.facebook.com, boasting how many daily connections are made between pairs of battling entities. According to the site, 15,747 connections between Israelis and Palestinians have been made over the last 24 hours on Facebook. I find this piece of data incredibly hard to believe (especially since the number doesn’t seem to change over the course of the week). Even if a reciprocal relationship equals 2 connections, I can’t imagine such a high number of connections forming on a daily basis. That said, 20% of Israeli population is Arab, many with roots and family in Gaza or the West Bank. This fact could certainly explain the data.

Their notion of “connections” makes me wonder if they account for Facebook fan pages. Successful fan pages tend to be politically charged, and polarize the users according to their political agenda rather than bring those with different views together. However, if Facebook’s data is counting Israeli Arabs as Israelis (as they should!), I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d accounted for multiple connections forming via these fan pages.

I am extremely doubtful that much bridging happens through direct Facebook “friending”, nor that it is represented by direct Facebook “friendships” between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. So where does it happen if at all?

In order to answer this question, we must discuss the notion of a “safe space”, which I consider crucial for bridging to happen. A safe space makes us feel comfortable, almost at home. Its an environment where we are supported and validated; a place where we are willing to lower our defenses.

I am a huge fan of Global Voices, but wouldn’t consider it as a safe space for Israelis. The majority of readership on the Middle East section tilts heavily towards Arab articles, comments and opinions. One might say that is totally fair since it is representative of actual world distribution of population. But the outcome is an imbalanced environment, which for an Israeli, feels unsafe; a place where they won’t be supported, nor will they be identified with. Why hang out where everyone’s picking on you when you can easily go play with fun friends elsewhere? For the most part,like the Guardian or Al-Jazeera, Global Voices is not perceived as a safe space.

However I believe that Facebook creates new opportunities for safe spaces to form, especially as they are based on people’s familiarity with each other.

Facebook received massive adoption in Israel, easily taking over any other Social network or service. Israel is a tiny place, and people are inherently social – making Facebook a perfect place to interact with the “hevre” (Hebrew for ‘gang’ – also the name of one of the earliest Social Networks that saw light in Israel). Facebook is a place where my friends from Israel feel extremely comfortable. Even when someone lands on my profile page, there are always other friends a mere click away, in the periphery. One is never alone, in any given context.

The Flotilla incident triggered something I hadn’t seen before. Friends from different contexts don’t tend to communicate with each other, even when reacting to the same post. The flotilla events changed this.

When dealing with such a complex topic that has no clear “right” or “wrong”, I witnessed multiple “cross boundary” conversations happening on my own Facebook page, and also amongst my Israeli friends who are also living abroad. Our pages served as bridges, or safe havens, where contacts from “opposing sides” could have a conversation.

It would go something like this – (1) Facebook page owner posts link to article (2) Israeli friend/relative responds with a pro-Israeli message (3) European friend responds to that with a counter opinion (4) Another Israeli friend responds (5) another foreign friend supports #3 (6) profile owner mediates…

…you get the drift.

The interesting part here is that even if there are no direct links between those in Israel, and those with opposing perspectives wherever they were, a conversation could take place because of the personalized nature of Facebook. Because it felt safer to do it there, on a shared friend’s page. Much safer than on Global Voices, or other international news websites.

The more Facebook grows, the more I see these kinds of exchanges happening. In his post, Ethan claims that “we overestimate how many of our online contacts cross borders and underestimate how often these tools are used to reinforce local friendships”. While I agree, I’d add that we shouldn’t only look at direct cross-border connections, but rather try to understand and estimate the value that Facebook serves as a safe space for bridging to occur. I’m not sure how we quantify the amount of cultural bridging that is not represented by FB connections. We could only do this by analyzing public discussions happening on profile pages, between profiles who are not friends on Facebook.

To conclude, Obama argues that we suffer from an “empathy deficit”, as quoted from a speech to college students:

“There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room. As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier.”

Placing yourself in someone else’s shoes is much easier when the store attendant is your close friend. Facebook as a platform has the potential to host these conversations; be the store. Safe space.

But we the users, have to make the conversations happen.

Three glowing screen are set amidst arching piles of ghostly pale books. One continuously reconfigures Twitter posts about reading, on another bouncing letters randomly settle into place, revealing pointed quotes about reading drawn from well-known books, while the third uses the viewer’s image to trace out a series of related passages.

Photos below:

more project information here.

I am sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, since ceasing to exist on Facebook so will drastically reduce my ability to communicate with many friends. And this gets to the crux of the challenge: are we so addicted to Facebook that we can’t tell whats good for us anymore? Is Facebook an Evil? Are they trying to Monopolize the social web? All of the above??

Last December, Facebook broke the social “contract” that we all signed up for by changing its privacy defaults. It switched the context right under our noses, prompting some 65% of users to go public without even knowing it. Many users still have no clue how visible their profile information and photos are (we all know how unintuitive FB privacy controls are). While this is totally unacceptable behavior and places some users in potentially risky situations, I can’t help but also look at the flip side. Facebook is on its way to becoming the first truly global social network platform that has potential to fundamentally change the way we experience the web. By placing social information in context and not in a single, aggregated feed, Facebook might actually succeed at creating some fantastically useful socially-aware and personalized browsing experiences. All that simply traded for our privacy!
Well, not so simple.

Some think that it is possible to bring the demise of Facebook by creating applications that will scare users; creepy apps that know way too much about you. While this might make headlines, it is unlikely that such an approach will prove to be successful in the long term. As a society, we’ve become so hooked on Facebook, that we are willing to take potential future risks in return for current socializing. And realistically, unless I were a hormone-fluctuating, socially uncomfortable teen, what content could your app possibly surface that is so detrimental to my life?

Raul Pacheco hits the spot when he writes that Facebook’s actions are ‘not enough for us to care’:

There has been a lot of debate online about how Facebook keeps making it more difficult for users to keep their privacy. My question to everyone is — if Facebook is that “evil,” why are we all still using it? Why not be completely democratic and demonstrate (with our vote, e.g. with our not having a Facebook account) that this loss of privacy is unacceptable?
The answer is — because not enough of us care. If the millions of users of Facebook really cared that much about their privacy, they would make the Big Brother/Sister accountable. But in a society that is valuing privacy less and less, accountability has become an afterthought and not mainstream. Sadly, that also means that we have lost the power of protecting our privacy to commercial interests.

I wouldn’t say that Facebook users don’t care about privacy. I just think that many don’t care enough to be obsessing and worrying about potential future risks. Even if one recognizes a slightly riskee photo or comment, it is tempting to just leave online, as the fun of social interaction trumps the thought about potential future uncomfort. While these types of actions most likely don’t affect users in the near term, there are two things that we should be aware of: (1) the consequences of our actions onto others, and (2) the long term implications of sharing our data.

This is where User Experience Design can play a significant role, as we are facing an extremely difficult design challenge. We need to create a visual language that helps users understand these potential risks taken by making content visible. Not unlike the automobile association in West London who set the first warning signs on roads in 1908, or the cigarette manufacturers who were mandated to highlight the medical issues correlated with smoking, we need to figure out best practices to display potential risks without scaring users away. We need to design digital warning signs that keep attracting people’s attention and not fade into the background. We should be aware of our privacy controls at all times – perhaps by placing icons of just how many people can see an item before it is submitted.

As Danny Sullivan writes:

I shouldn’t have to dive into complicated settings that give the fiction of privacy control but don’t — since they’re so hard to understand that they’re ignored. I shouldn’t need a flowchart to understand what friends of friends of friends can share with others. Things should be naturally clear and easy for me . . .

Would you like to see your dad, teacher and ex-girlfriend’s icons next to an item before submitting it? Probably not.
Is there a system that can helps us visualize the audience to which we are writing? That’s something users don’t want to see, and thus a challenging design problem.

There is a growing need for applications that help us understand our personal online brand: how we are portrayed online, and what potential risks we face. What’s the equivalent of an anti-virus application, that instead of protecting our computer, protects our online persona? We need something that can warn us when a risky action was taken online (either by us or our within our social network).

Facebook’s new APIs makes is super easy for web developers to build on top of its social graph. Almost too easy. By embedding widgets in the form of like buttons and status update boxes, websites can easily personalize their views according to you. For a growing number of services, this is done without even requiring users to login. For example, on likebutton.me you will see your Facebook friend’s activities from a variety of websites, as long as have previously logged into Facebook. A central listing of what my friends recommend, separated by topics. Creepy, but potentially useful.

The same type of connection happens with both yelp and pandora. At first feels creepy, yet as an experience, potentially something we may get used to, or even like.

Here are two examples where things can get out of hand:
(1) There are Facebook “community pages” that automatically add any status updates that include the page keyword. From CIA and FBI to Terrorism, they’ve got it all, with your name and thoughts right there, thanks to your inability to understand their privacy defaults! As a user, without even knowing it, your name is automatically associated with a community that algorithmically formed around a used keyword.

(2) It is dead simple to create Evil “Like” Buttons – by hacking the button to point to another page. Again, adding the risk that our usernames would be associated with something we are not aware of.

As a User Experience designer my task is to think about users first, place them in the center of my design, protect them, respect their needs, and help them accomplish whatever they come to do in the best possibly way. However, Informing users of privacy hazards is a difficult design challenge, one that Facebook obviously doesn’t want to handle. As web entrepreneurs, should we be leveraging this powerful yet scary technology that Facebook has enabled?
If so, how do we warn our users without scaring them away? How do we show users what they don’t really want to see or deal with? How can we warn of risks that only affect the far future?

We should also ask ourselves if regulation is needed. And if so, what would it look like and how it might further complicate the matter?

In his book’s second chapter (on borrowing) he quotes Einstein: “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”. What he lays out later in the chapter, describes “smart” ways of borrowing – basically don’t borrow ideas from your direct competitor, but possibly someone else in a related field, or yet better, someone in a completely unrelated field, who is trying to solve a similar problem. Bill Gates borrowed solutions from the existing software industry, while Charles Darwin borrowed his creative solutions from places not usually associated with biology (Galapagos). Borrow from within your industry and you’re considered a thief or lowly pirate. While if you borrow from another industry, you are considered a creative genius.

Another interesting quote from that chapter: “If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.” He continues to write about how Bill Gates stole the mouse+click GUI idea that Macintosh developed first. Apparently Steve Jobs spotted that technology at XEROX parc, hired the reseracher who worked on the mouse, and put him to work on the Mac. Gates immediately recognized the potential of the idea, and blatantly copied it. After years of legal battles, Microsoft won the suit, on the claim that the original idea didn’t originate from Apple, but from Xerox. Dan Bricklin, a prominent software engineer who developed the first spreadsheet, said about the suit, “This is a sad day for the software industry in America.” He added, “Writing software is not the same as writing a book. Software builds on what was there before.” Bricklin is right. Software builds on what was there before, but so does every commercial product, engineered machine, scientific theory, and creative thought… also books!

In the Q&A session I asked the author what his thoughts of DRM & technology/web copyright. He didn’t have a stong opinion other than – he understands why its necessary for profitability, but also sees how it inhibits the creative process.

My notes from his talk:

Borrowing Brilliance is about taking ideas and restructuring them. New ideas are always built out of existing ideas. The key becomes where you go to look for ideas. Main questions:

1. can you teach someone to be creative? Definitely.
2. is there a defined process? Maybe.

defined six steps:
the origin of a creative idea:
step 1) defining – define the problem that you’re trying to solve
step 2) borrowing – borrow ideas from places with a similar problem
step 3) combining – connect and combine these borrowed ideas (this is the essence of creativity)
the evolution of a creative idea:
step 4) incubating – allow the combinations to incubate into a solution
step 5) judging – identify the strength and weakness of the solution
step 6) enhancing – eliminate the weak points while enhancing the strong ones

DEFINING
We’re not necessarily good at the formation of a problem. The problem is the foundation of a creative idea. Its important to define, understand and describe the problem. Its important to describe the problem from different perspective, define it differently.

BORROWING
The problem with define where to look for the solution. John Nash had an economics problem: how do members of the economy act, he sensed that they were acting with incomplete information. He recognized that as the same problems he had playing poker. He took the same solutions to the problems from poker into create a decision-making model as a solution for his economics problem.

how do you solve a navigation problem? First look at other software companies. Then step away outside that industry and look at search&rescue teams, truck drivers… etc, and see how they solve their navigation problems.

COMBINING
this is the essence of creativity.
Walt disney created disneyland by using a movie metaphor while constructing the park. Used a move metaphor while breaking out the different experiences that people should have in different parts of the park. Facebook’s original metaphor was an online yearbook. Creative thinkers use metaphors. Isaac Newton was thinking in terms of metaphors – making the connection between the apple and the moon – the apple falls down, but moon moves around. combined celestial and earth-based physics.

INCUBATING
Input to the subsounscious is important => incubate => output from the subconscious (usually happens in the shower! -> the one time of the day where we’re not consciously thinking). Before going to bed, important to glance over some things we’re thinking about, then put it away… It’ll come back.

JUDGING
This is used to drive/improve the idea. Put on your positive and negative hats. So in the next phase, you can bring up an idea that doesn’t have the negative bits and mostly the good bits. This helps develop your intuition, identifying good ideas fast. Example: steve jobs visits XEROX PARC 20 years ago. Goes wild over a demo of mouse+click GUI. Identifying that as a brilliant idea vs. others that had the same demo…

ENHANCING
Trial and error as the passage to the creative solution.

[tags]creativity,book,review, David Kord Murray [/tags]

Even with the staggering numbers that we have seen over the past year (the newspaper industry shed an estimated 15,970 jobs in 2008, and 8,484 through April of this year), it is important to remember that the future of quality journalism does not depend on the future of newspapers. People have gotten used to getting the news they want, whenever, however and wherever they want. This change is here to stay. The discussion needs to move from “How do we save newspapers?” to “How do we strengthen journalism — regardless of which platform it is delivered on…”

We must not act as if we are still operating in the old content economy, as opposed to the new link economy. The survival of the industry cannot be found by “protecting” content behind walled gardens. The future is a linked economy – it is search engines, online advertising, citizen journalism and foundation supported investigative funds.

Arianna firmly believes in a hybrid future:

where old media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy) and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism). The emphasis should not be on subsidizing what exists now, but on how to rededicate ourselves to the highest calling of journalists — which is to ferret out the truth, wherever it leads. Even if it means losing our all-access-pass to the halls of power.

Unfortunately, this is a concept that has fallen out of favor with too many journalists who, like Pontius Pilat, wash their hands of finding the truth and instead are obsessed with a false view of “balance” and the misguided notion that every story has two sides. And that the truth can be found somewhere in the middle. But not every story has two sides and the truth is often found lurking in the shadows.

[tags] huffington, news, senate,arianna[/tags]

I must say, it was actually much more complex than I’d thought. When controling pagination of a site, especially with dynamic content being pulled from a database, the application constantly needs to figure out where in relation to the database results, the user is browsing, how many pages forward or backward exist, and all the end cases (first/last pages).

In this example I used the jquery library to make the AJAX calls (no need to usually). The ajax call updates the #results div with the content. The .php file holds the majority of the functionality – calculates the number of pages (according to # of entries we want per page), then according to the current page, calculates how many before and after, creates the links, and makes sure the current page is not clickable.

Here are links to the files: (note – you need to insert your own database info in the php file for this to work)

pagination.html

pagination.php

And below is the .php code I created:

——————————————————–>>

<?php

$mysql = mysql_connect(”***your host***”,”***your username***”,”**your password***”) or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db(”****your db****”,$mysql) or die(mysql_error());

$NUMPADDING=6; // number of links on either side of the current page

$pagenum = $_GET['pagenum'];
$page_rows = $_GET['page_rows'];

$data = mysql_query(”SELECT * FROM entries”) or die(mysql_error());
$rows = mysql_num_rows($data);

//This tells us the page number of our last page
$last = ceil($rows/$page_rows);

// SQL QUERY
//This sets the range to display in our query
$max = ‘limit ‘ .($pagenum – 1) * $page_rows .’,’ .$page_rows;

//echo “SELECT * FROM entries $max”;

$data_p = mysql_query(”SELECT * FROM ***your tablename*** $max”) or die(mysql_error());

// FIRST
echo’<div id=”pagination”>
<ul id=”pagination”>
<li class=”first”><a href=”javascript:getPage(\’1\’,\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>first</a></li>’;

// PREV
if ($pagenum>1) {
$prevpage=$pagenum-1;
echo’<li class=”previous”><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$prevpage.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”><- previous</a></li>’;
//echo’…’;
// —PADDING

if ($pagenum-$NUMPADDING>0)
$start=$pagenum-$NUMPADDING;
else
$start=1;

for ($i=$start;$i<$pagenum;$i++){
$tmp=$i;
echo’<li><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$tmp.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>’.$tmp.’</a></li>’;
}
}
else
// no prev necessary
echo’<li class=”previous-off”><- previous</li>’;

// CURRENT PAGE
echo’<li class=”active”>’.$pagenum.’</li>’;

// NEXT
if ($pagenum<$last) {
// PADDING+++
if ($last-$pagenum > $NUMPADDING)
$end=$NUMPADDING;
else
$end=$last-$pagenum;

for ($i=1;$i<=$end;$i++){
$tmp=$pagenum+$i;
echo’<li><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$tmp.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>’.$tmp.’</a></li>’;
}
//echo’…’;
$nextpage=$pagenum+1;
echo’<li class=”next”><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$nextpage.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>next -></a></li>’;
}
else
// no prev necessary
echo’<li class=”next-off”>next -></li>’;

//LAST
echo’
<li class=”last”><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$last.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>last</a></li>
</ul><br/>
</div>
‘;
?>

[tags]pagination,javascript,js,php,jquery,html,tutorial,code,example[/tags]

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