Humanities Computing

CSS Regions will give us new options for text flow on a page.

A smart political article about the relation between communication and capitalism. Useful especially on the way technical networks both present themselves as political and foreclose the political.

This article explains how social networking is changing our "interpersonal psychology" and what we can do so that it doesn't get the best of us.

NPR discusses how the use of social media has brought the Treyvon Martin case into national spotlight.

This article examines the use of emotional attachment and building of unique stories to create buzz through social media sites like twitter and facebook.

Careful who you de-friend! I was interested in any news around the changing of language based on our use of technology - things like using "Google" or "Wiki" as verbs, for example - and thought of "friending." When I Googled this and looked at News, there were several stories to this effect!

While sites like Facebook and Google seem to be taking over the world, it would be nice to be able to eliminate some of the sites we all are constantly having to check or update or interact on or remember logins and passwords for! Just think: no more Blackboard, you're already on Facebook all the time-why not post for class while you're there? :-)

This is a completely pointless website that kind of made me laugh. I'm one of those people of 50% of the time uses "Google" as a verb ("Just Google it") and who 50% of the time still asks an actual human being the question first but inevitably gets: "Well, did you Google it?" So...this isn't an article. But still kind of funny. Digital technology is certainly changing our language: Just Google it, Wiki it, I friended her the other day, when I was Pinning, I wish I had a "Like" button right now!, and so on...

an amusing infographic comparing the benefits of search media versus social media

I really liked the idea from this week's reading that we should look to gaming for the future of interactive interfaces for social media. This article explains the ways that computing could be transforming in the future with motion sensing input devices like the Xbox Kinect. It's crazy to think that some of these things are possible!

This article explains how location-based mobile applications can collaborate with marketing teams to provide location-specific advertisements for users.

The popular app Foursquare will notify users of nearby places/things to do/people that the user may want to explore on its update in iOS 5. With this update, the user can receive notifications of places to eat and things to do nearby even when the app is closed.

Nicholson Baker on the Kindle. Very smart but cranky and idiosyncratic.

An interesting article on educating parents, teachers, and kids on digital citizenship and safety - and integrating better digital practices and training in schools.

This is the social networking homepage of a online gaming website, IGN. I wanted to share this because it seems to overtly combine the gaming and social elements of social media. It also, similar to the AXE site, allows users to follow certain products and claim an identity based on what products the user owns in comparison to other members of the community. Within the site itself members have some level of gaining badges and competing by listing and comparing their games and interacting with each other. Also, on the level of competition, there are prizes available for different interactions on this site which further invokes the sense of gaming and competition.

I talked about this in class and I've posted on this before, but when I first posted this the idea was still in the inchoate stages of development. Now you can click on different chapters of the story and there will be a menu on the right hand side that shows animated versions of people added to the story. By clicking on this drawing, the story will advance to the period where this person makes a guest appearance and will show the real photo used for the drawing which is sometimes a facebook profile picture. Why I think this is especially interesting is that it has elements of IF that are in use in electronic literature, but it also creates a participatory community based around a specific exigency which is buying products from AXE.

Below you'll see a link to Code for America. Here is a related TED talk.

From about page: "We make it easy and attractive for the web generation to give back through our Fellowship, which connects technologists with cities to work together to innovate; our Accelerator, which will support disruptive civic startups; and our Brigade, which helps local, community groups reuse civic software."

Jobs in social media are apparently very popular and lucrative, especially in Boston.

An article addressing how twitter can actually be damaging to use in a crisis.