Humanities Computing

Keeping track of passwords is definitely a hassle for most of us, so a service that groups all of them didn't seem far off. It will be interesting to see how this develops, and if it will catch on and be secure.

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.

Rapleaf: a way of gathering/pulling and managing user reputation. Targeted to websites that want to gather information about customer demographics, it's one example of how profiling works integrally to web 2.0.

This short clip shows some pretty wild concepts of where computer and touch screen technology may be going in the near future, including the magnets and holograms.

Nature Valley has definitely put a spin on what it means to explore the great outdoors. We've had a few conversations in class about the difference between reality and virtual reality. While I strongly argue that Watching a video or seeing pictures does not come close to first hand experience, sites like this are good for exploring places you might like to go or to remind you of favorite places you've been. It also makes me wonder if there's anything that Google doesn't dabble in.

This is a critique of comments that users make in response to news items. It speaks to some of the readings.

I'm posting this article because the author and this website are referenced in our book and I think this is also relevant to the ideas presented in O'Reilly's book. We often see discussions about knowing the audience and bringing them to certain and specific actions which brings into question the kind of rhetorical situations we react to online.

This is another satirical look at what's going on online and how sites like myspace seem to be loosing relevancy. In some ways the video is actually a little disturbing, but it does at least partially bring into question what makes a good social networking site and what causes us to favor sites like facebook over sites like myspace. For instance, was myspace too customizable to the point that it left the user with too many choices and left visitors feeling out of place every time they visited a page that blasted music at them they didn't actually enjoy?

This is a short cartoon that satirizes the experience of using twitter to communicate. It has some funny phrases including when one friend inquires about people on twitter "who are they talking to?" the other friend responds "this is how we communicate now in bite sized yippity-yap!" Once the first friend becomes extremely cynical and essentially awakens the people in the "twitter-sphere" from a zombie-like slumber, the whole reality begins to crumble. As silly as it is, it says some interesting things about social networking and the public's perception of the different forms of communication.  Also, it's worth noting that the video was made prior to some of the Iranian and Egyptian conflicts in which twitter played such an important role in empowering the masses (but is it the opiate of the masses?).

I know I talked a little in class about how facebook has had an affect on dating and people's perceptions of flirtation, so I thought I'd share this short article that discusses some of the potentially negative affects of dating through facebook. I'm not propagating that idea (my finance and I just looked through our very first facebook messages yesterday and it was heart warming) but it's interesting to see how others view the potential friendships and heartbreaks of this particular digital social sphere.

I thought parts of this article were interesting and relevant to the reading we're doing. O'Reilly discussed privacy to some extent in this first half, but, I thought it might be interesting to look at some policy about privacy protection more deeply.

What strikes me as especially interesting about this book review is that it emphasizes and leads with the buzz surrounding its predominantly digital publication instead of the controversy about the popularity of hardcore erotic literature for women.

Apparently employers will soon be using a Facebook rating scale to determine what kind of employees we'll be.