Humanities Computing

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.

Kind of an odd connection, I know, but it's really important for social media users to recognize what "sock puppets" are and how they can be used outside of arguments between high school kids.

This article questions the value of LinkedIn, noting that many users are members without involvement. This raises questions about professional identity in a social media atmosphere-- is it worth it for the user to create a brand for herself here?

According to the Terms & Conditions of Pinterest, all users must have complete ownership of everything they "pin," a condition that completely goes against the purpose of the site, or legal action can be taken against the user. Not only should this article be a wake-up call for Pinterest users (including me), but it is also an interesting addition to the conversations of copyright and ownership/distribution of digital information.

More on badges. This article discusses both the pros and cons of badges as an alternative credential system.

This brief article is related to our class discussion on identity and social networking.

According to Google, over 20 million books have been digitized thus far.

This is related to my previous post on the SOPA backlash. Wikipedia decided to change domains based on GoDaddy's support for SOPA.

Another trend on this Diigo group and class discussion seems to be Facebook. If there is one thing Facebook users love more than Facebook, it is making fun of Facebook.

I've only given cursory attention to this site (when I checked it out, I found it less useful than I had thought it would be), but we've talked about technology monitoring people, breaking their identity into tiny bits of data, etc. and this website encourages people to do that to themselves to live a productive life ... in some ways it is kind of like the guy who photographs all his food, combined with an OCD, capitalist mindset. See also: any website that tracks your miles run, your calories consumed for the day, etc.

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? :-)

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.

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."