I often have a gentle chuckle to myself at some of the random combinations that are generated by our bot chums. Vaksman Innes, Hoaglin Little, Marylou Freas – surely the names of previously anonymous guests from one of Jay Gatsby’s parties? Tanisha Hendricks, Lee Buffet, Tish Dreith – straight from a Jilly Cooper novel? Tia…
I’m preparing to teach this foundational work of hypertext theory. On the surface, this short story is a spy thriller, in which a subversive protagonist relies on intellect to match wits with a worthy, authority-wielding foe. Originally published in Spanish in 1941, this story takes the form of a conventional narrative, but its plot features…
Thanks for the link, Kary. To subscribe to the New Yorker, Wired, Vanity Fair, GQ, The Atlantic, Details, New York, and Time, you’ve got to have seven different apps, many of which are bloated. Some issues of Wired, for example, have weighed in at 500MB each. And what do you get inside? Aside from the…
After taking a whole bunch of new high-quality images, I found myself running out of space on my production machine. I briefly toyed with the idea of uploading a big chunk of files to The Cloud — thinking I could just get it back if I ever needed it — but then the voice of…
why aren’t there more women in technology? Hmm, let’s see if Twitter can help us find out.
I call what I’m doing “digital humanities” when I shift from treating technologies as objects of inquiry (e.g., a cultural history of magnetic recording) to actually expressing my work through them (e.g., using a platform like Scalar). In this regard, my work is significantly influenced by scholars such as Cheryl Ball, Tara McPherson, and Virginia…
Note to thieves. If you steal a nameplate from a judge, don’t let anyone post a picture of you holding it on Facebook. U.S. News – Cops: Man stole judge’s nameplate, posted Facebook photo of himself with it.
With rare exceptions, schools currently treat the digital revolution as if it never happened. Computers, more often than not, still sit in dedicated rooms, accessible only with adult supervision. … When students step out the door of the institution called school today, they step into a learning environment … in which one is free to…
Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn’t have data on mobile usage. via The Mounting Minuses at Google+ – WSJ.com.
And it’s easier to avoid what is, to many, a very painful truth: Going offline is no longer a realistic option. Sure, we can unplug for an hour, a day, or even a week, but it’s not like you can permanently shut off the challenges of our online existence. The offline world is now utterly…
via Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized – YouTube.
A good example of correlation. (Simply changing your Facebook content won’t automatically make you a better worker or student, but certain Facebook details do correspond to achievement in the offline world.) Researchers spent about 10 minutes looking at photos, wall posts, comments, education, and hobbies on Facebook profiles, while answering personality-related questions including whether the…
Twitter / Search – “couldn’t remove your contacts” – All Tweets.
Nothing really new in this article, but it’s useful to be reminded of how valuable our data is to those who want to make money off it (without our permission). Apple allows any app to access your address book at any time—it’s built into the iPhone’s core software. The idea is to make using these…
A survey of 1300 people across the UK was carried out by Opinion Matters on behalf of the agency, and found that 65 percent of 16-24 year-olds rated social media as their favourite hobby, rather than watching television, reading or playing video games. […] TV was considered as a favoured leisure activity by 54 percent…
The new censorship technology announced by Twitter allows the company to block tweets or users on a country-by-country basis. Previously, blocking tweets had to be done globally, meaning if an oppressive regime asked Twitter to remove a tweet or block a user, it had to be done for everyone in the world. Now, Twitter can…
I did not actually think this Kickstarter project was going to make it when I pledged earlier in the week, but it squeaked by. CASSETTE: A Documentary Film about the Cassette Tape. by Zack Taylor and Seth Smoot — Kickstarter.
[A]n interview I did with key staff at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA, not far from Pittsburgh. This is the most connected university I’ve ever seen – every student, and there are around 2200 of these, gets an iPad and a MacBook (!), and, of course, they bring their own wireless devices to campus…
The original headline for the press release highlights the names of the two groups doing the work, which is of course flattering to the groups, but far less newsworthy to the public the PR people are supposed to be relating with. “A large amount of researcher time is spent formatting documents, rather than getting on…
While I’m not quite ready to ditch the traditional term paper, students in most of my classes use blogs for brainstorming, prewriting, reflection, and synthesis; I encourage students to post new media artifacts as part of a “creative criticall presentation” in lit and media classes. For freshman writing, I stick fairly closely to a shared…