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Google's New Search Algorithm to Crack Down on 'Black Hat Webspam' By Ars Technica By Matthew Braga, Ars Technica Nefarious search engine optimizers be warned. Google is coming for you-again. Following previous changes to Google's ranking and page layout algorithms, the search giant is pushing yet another update to its algorithm this week with the hopes of curbing "black hat webspam" from creeping into search results. * Google thinks that by increasing the complexity of its algorithms, it can weed out malicious intent. Funny thing about complexity is that it tends to breed more complexity. This reminds me a bit of Bogost's book on games. This cat and mouse scenario between Google and fake SEO creators seems to lead to ever evolving code much like in natural systems where the adaptations of the prey animal to take advantage of an environment are eventually matched by a predatory animal with adaptations designed to match or exceed the prey's abilities...

A neat -WIRED- blog documenting new developments in software (mostly Internet based), also offering some tips-and-tricks kinds of features too.

Whoops

My last day teaching was Friday and already they're trying to make it so I can't come back :( Though, I've seen computer poetry and I'm not sold on the idea that computers can gauge quality...

A pretty tongue and cheek article on 'microblogging' (e.g., updating a Facebook status while in line at Kroeger's).

Fascinating recent plagiarism case from the New Yorker. Spy novel written by author who was "undercover" in the sense that he was secretly writing everything with passages lifted from other novels. 

Of the different online accounts I have, Tumblr is one account I don't have and after reading O'Reilly and looking at the site I have to admit I'm a little fascinated by it. It seem like in many ways it's taken the parts of Myspace, facebook, and twitter that work and pasted them all together at once. In some senses this seems overwhelming, but just from the sample pages, what I see doesn't look entirely unlike what I'm creating for this class. I intentionally linked to the about page since I think there is a great deal of interesting info that feels like it came almost came straight out of O'Reilly's book especially in regard to building communities and allowing for participation, customization, and interaction. The home page also has some useful pieces worth exploring I think.

Interesting process of Wikipedia's response to really poorly done political commentary on its site.

This is a web site of a friend I used to work with, and thought it was a nice example of designing a web site for a professional portfolio as well as including personal interests and links.

Another article on the Wikidata development.

This short article begins the discussion of what role the Digital Humanities will play when Google comes out with glasses that have cameras built in that will enable "real-time geolocation, facial recognition software, the journaling and storing in the cache and third-party's servers of everywhere you go and see whilst wearing the glasses." He questions how we can use these gadgets to our benefit while still protecting human rights and freedom of speech.

I really like the black-and-white photo in this article that shows the group of people wearing 3D glasses--that's exactly the visual I had in my head while reading this article. It's kind of unsettling to think that that image could become an everyday reality in the not-so-distant future.

This is an interesting article about how "the digital humanities is really an insurgent humanities," and how this is a revolution of sharing ideas that, "affirms the value of the open, the infinite, the expansive [and] the democratization of culture and scholarship.""

I thought this was an interesting article after looking at the corpus last week that used books online. There is great discussion of how computers and machines will enable us to look at literary texts in entirely new ways.

Here is a new way literature is moving into technological applications. I've been looking for a better article on this, but most seem a bit too brief. Here the author discusses How works of T.S. Eliot and Jack Kerouac are becoming Apps. This is a really interesting move of taking flat print to deep code.

This article touches on a lot of the topics that keep surfacing in our classroom discussions about narcissism and how we use social media to communicate with others and share our own identities. It also expresses some of the concerns that I am often torn about; how much privacy can we have if we are going to use this technology, and why aren't we more aware of it.

Article on the use of milblogs and other Web 2.0 technology in the military.

This article goes along with Lovink's idea in "MyBrain.net" that we "constantly login, create profiles in order to present our 'selves' on the global market place of employment, friendship and love. . . Trust is the oil of global capitalism and the security state, required by both sides in any transaction or exchange" (4-5). It looks like identity fraud is what happens when we trust too easily on social media sites.