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anonymous

http://www.slc.edu/cdi/media/pdf/SLC_WhenAChildPretends_Booklet.pdf - 0 views

www.slc.edu/...WhenAChildPretends_Booklet.pdf

shared by anonymous on 30 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 30 Jul 14
     
    Can a socially interactive assistive robot play the role of an effective play partner in a kindergarten classroom where augmented reality is accessible in dramatic play areas?
anonymous

Development and Utilization of Projector-Robot Service for Children's Dramatic Play Activities based on Augmented Reality - 0 views

www.aicit.org/...AISS5-367029JE(final2).pdf

#ThoughtVectors technology robot projector education teacher presence

shared by anonymous on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 05 Jul 14
     
    After interviewing, focused on the three different aspects, such as differences from previous dramatic experiences, interesting points in the play activity, and the role of the media (robot or computer), most interviewees positively evaluated the augmented reality based dramatic play activity. Regarding all three of the categories, we concluded that the robot, as a delivering medium, did a better job than a computer when it came to helping children concentrate on the media and technology, peak their interests and understand the roles of the media.
perezmv

My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale! | The Trichordist - 0 views

thetrichordist.com/...ake-from-a-single-t-shirt-sale

artistsmakingmoney musicians money profit artistsgettingcash

shared by perezmv on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • As a songwriter Pandora paid me $16.89* for 1,159,000 play of “Low” last quarter.  Less than I make from a single T-shirt sale.  Okay that’s a slight  exaggeration.  That’s only the premium multi-color long sleeve shirts and that’s only at venues that don’t take commission.  But still.
  • Soon you will be hearing from Pandora how they need Congress to change the way royalties are calculated so that they can pay much much less to songwriters and performers. For you civilians webcasting rates are “compulsory” rates. They are set by the government (crazy, right?). Further since they are compulsory royalties, artists can not “opt out” of a service like Pandora even if they think Pandora doesn’t pay them enough. The majority of songwriters have their rates set by the government, too, in the form of the ASCAP and BMI rate courts–a single judge gets to decide the fate of songwriters (technically not a “compulsory” but may as well be).  This is already a government mandated subsidy from songwriters and artists to Silicon Valley.  Pandora wants to make it even worse.  (Yet another reason the government needs to get out of the business of setting webcasting rates and let the market sort it out.)
  • get an actual business model
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Right now Pandora plays one minute of commercials an hour on their free service. Here’s an idea!  play two minutes of commercials and double your revenue!
anonymous

Supporting augmented reality based children's play with pro-cam robot - 0 views

dl.acm.org/citation.cfm

supporting augmented augmented reality reality based children play #ThoughtVectors technology media education

shared by anonymous on 30 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The study has found that robot-assisted AR based play showed improved learning effects, compared to the conventional play, in language and creativity and this is attributed to the operational flexibility, novelty, robotic mediation and capturing the attention of the children. The result was also made possible in part by designing an effective interface for the teachers to control the robots and manage the simultaneously occurring tasks.
Mirna Shaban

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted - 1 views

www.aucegypt.edu/...articledetails.aspx

socialmedia revolution internet

shared by Mirna Shaban on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Much of the organization and mobilization occurred through the Internet, particularly on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. But social media also played a vital role as a democratic model. Its inclusive space indirectly taught lessons in democracy to a wide sector of Egyptian youth that was not necessarily politically inclined. When the right moment arrived, they were ready to join the revolt.
  • What happened in January 2011 in Egypt did not start in January 2011. It began at least ten years earlier, and it’s not over yet
  • The main catalyst for the January 25 revolution was the Internet, so it may be accurate to describe this as an Internet-based revolution. Not that the Internet was the only factor involved, or that Internet users were the only ones protesting. But the Internet was the tool that showed every dissident voice in Egypt that he or she is not alone, and is indeed joined by at least hundreds of thousands who seek change.
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • Facebook did not go to Tahrir Square. The people did. Twitter did not go to Al-Qaied Ibrahim Square. The people did.
  • More than one-third of Egypt’s population of eighty million remains illiterate, and just 25 percent of Egyptians use the Internet. However, Facebook and Twitter were instrumental in organizing, motivating, and directing these crowds as to where to go and what to do. Egypt’s revolution was created as an event on Facebook eleven days in advance. People clicked “I’m attending.” Certainly, this was a people’s revolution, yet one based on and accelerated in many ways by the Internet. What happened in Tahrir and every square in Egypt was the accumulation of years and years of activism, including Internet activism. Social media prepared Egyptians for the revolution and enabled them to capitalize on an opportunity for change when the time came.
  • The Internet, by definition, is a democratic medium, at least in the sense that anyone with Internet access is a potential publisher of information.
  • The mere presence of the Internet as a source of information helps open up a freer space for public debate, and makes it much more difficult for governments to censor information.
  • Internet activism started in Egypt with the appearance of Web 2.0 technology in the country around 2003
  • Blogging was the first valuable brainchild of Web 2.0 technologies.
  • The phenomenon exploded in the Arab world, with Egyptian bloggers pioneering and leading the scene. Blogger numbers in the region approached half a million by the beginning of 2009, the great majority of them coming from Egypt.
  • Political blogging in particular became more popular, as users felt that they could remain anonymous if they so wished
  • Nevertheless, most Egyptian political bloggers choose to blog under their real names, which frequently got them in trouble with the regime. The state security crackdown on bloggers was testimony to their potential impact.
  • Undoubtedly, blogging created a space for the voiceless in Egypt.
  • It was the first time individuals felt they could make themselves heard. That in itself was important, whether or not the content was political, and whether or not anyone was reading the blogs. The phenomenon created a venting space for people who had long gone unheard.
  • Early on, Alaa Abdel Fattah and Manal Hassan were awarded the Special Award from Reporters Without Borders in the international Deutsche Welle’s 2005 Weblog Awards (Best of Blogs) contest, where their blog was cited as an instrumental information source for the country’s human rights and democratic reform movement. The husband-and-wife team had created one of Egypt’s earliest blogs, “Manal and Alaa’s Bit Bucket,” where they documented their off-line activism and posted credible information on protests and political movements, election monitoring and rigging, and police brutality.
  • Another award-winning blogger was Wael Abbas. He received several honors, including the 2007 Knight International Journalism Award of the International Center for Journalists for “raising the standards of media excellence” in his country. This was the first time that a blogger, rather than a traditional journalist, won the prestigious journalism award, a testament to the important work such bloggers were doing. In the same year, CNN named Abbas Middle East Person of the Year. He has been instrumental in bringing to light videos of police brutality in Egypt, a topic that was taboo before he and other bloggers ventured into it. As a result of these efforts, the Egyptian government at one point brought three police officers to justice on charges of police brutality for the first time in Egypt’s history; they were convicted and sentenced to three years in jail.
  • As blogging was becoming a phenomenon in Egypt, some political movements started having a strong on-line presence, and taking to the streets based on their on-line organization. The most important was probably the Kefaya movement, whose formal name is The Egyptian Movement for Change. The movement was established in 2004 by a coalition of political forces, and became better known by its Arabic slogan. The word kefaya is Arabic for ‘enough,’ and as the name implies, the movement called for an end to the decades-old Mubarak regime, and for guarantees that his son would not succeed him as president. Kefaya was instrumental in taking people to the streets, thus bridging the gap between the on-line and the off-line worlds. Many of its supporters were bloggers, and many of the street protesters started blogging. So, increasingly, reports on the demonstrations found their way into blogs and were provided media coverage even when the traditional media ignored them or were afraid to cover them. One result was that many more Egyptians gained the courage to write blogs that openly criticized the authoritarian system and crossed the ‘red line’ of challenging their president.
  • nternet applications such as the video-sharing platform YouTube, which appeared in 2005, took blogging to a higher level.
  • hey were also capable of videotaping street protests and uploading the clips on YouTube. Watching people chanting “Down with Hosni Mubarak” in the mid-2000s was a totally new, riveting experience, which led many other brave Egyptians to join these demonstrations. Internet activists and blogger stars such as Wael Abbas, Alaa Abdel Fattah, Manal Hassan, Hossam El-Hamalawy, Malek Mostafa, and others uploaded hundreds of videos of police brutality, election rigging, and different violations of human and civic rights.
  • media, the platforms that allow for wider user discussions and user-generated content such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter
  • he next important development came with the introduction of what is typically known as social
  • The structure of social media taught Egyptians that space exists that you can call your own, your space, where you can speak your mind. To many in the West, this is probably no big deal. There are countless venues where they can express their opinions relatively freely. But for people in Egypt, and in the Arab world in general, this was a new phenomenon, and one I believe to be of profound importance.
  • horizontal communication.’ Before social networks, Egyptian youth were accustomed to being talked at, rather than talked to or spoken with. Communication was mostly vertical, coming from the regime down to everyone else
  • Authoritarian patterns of communication do not allow for much horizontal interaction. But social networks do, and eventually their existence on the Internet taught Egyptian youths a few lessons in democratic communication, even if the essence of the conversations carried out was not necessarily political in nature.
  • The bulk of those that I believe were affected by these lessons in democratic expression were clusters of the population that were not previously politically oriented. These form a good sector of those who took to the streets on January 25, and were joined by millions who held their ground in Tahrir Square and in every square in Egypt until Mubarak was toppled. The majority of these millions, including myself, were people who had never participated in a demonstration before. They were not political activists before January 25, but they saw or heard the call for action, and it touched a nerve as they found safety in numbers
  • another function that social networks served: making you realize that you’re not alone.
  • Perhaps the first time Egyptians learned about the power of social networks was on April 6, 2008. Workers in the Egyptian city of Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra planned a demonstration to demand higher wages. Esraa Abdel Fattah, an activist then twenty eight years old, felt for the workers and wanted to help them. She formed a group on Facebook and called it ‘April 6 Strike’ to rally support for the workers.
  • he knew it was too much to ask people to join in the protest, so she simply asked them to participate in spirit by staying home that day, not going to work, and not engaging in any monetary transactions such as buying or selling. The group was brought to the attention of the traditional media and was featured on one of Egypt’s popular talk shows, thus getting more exposure. What ensued surpassed all expectations. To Abdel Fattah’s own surprise (and everyone else’s), the Facebook group immediately attracted some seventy three thousand members. Many of these, and others who got the message through traditional media, decided to stay home in solidarity with the workers. Others were encouraged to stay home by a bad sandstorm that swept across parts of Egypt that day, and yet others stayed home for fear of the strong police presence on the streets.
  • The overall outcome made political activists realize that social networks could be a vital tool in generating support for a political cause, and in encouraging people to join a call for action.
  • The April 6 event was meaningful because it provided a sense that people were actually willing to take an action, to do something beyond clicking a mouse
  • three months before the January 25 revolution, Malcolm Gladwell argued in a much-discussed article in The New Yorker under the title “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted” that social media can’t provide what social change has always required. He said that social media is good when you’re asking people for small-scale, low-risk action, but not for anything more. “Facebook activism succeeds,” he wrote, “not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.” He explained that this is because high-risk activism is a “strong-tie phenomenon,” meaning that those who carry out such acts of activism have to personally know each other well and develop strong personal ties before they would risk their lives for each other or for a common cause. Since Facebook and Twitter provide mostly “weak-tie” connections, since users typically have a strong off-line social tie with only a small percentage of their ‘friends’ or ‘followers,’ these social networks were therefore not capable of motivating people for a high-risk cause. He therefore concluded that a social network “makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.”
  • nowing that you are in the company of many who share your utter belief in the same cause. That is something that social networks delivered
  • ne of the Facebook pages that played a major role in this regard was the Khaled Said page. Khaled Said was a young Egyptian who was brutally beaten to death by police informants outside an Internet café in Alexandria in June 2010. He had an innocent face that everyone could identify with. He could be anyone, and anyone could’ve been him. The Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said” appeared shortly thereafter. It started asking its members, whose numbers increased steadily, to go out on silent standing protests in black shirts with their back to the streets. The demonstrations started in Alexandria and soon spread to every governorate in Egypt. Numbers increased with every protest. More and more people gained a little more courage and tasted the freedom of dissent.
  • One of the main advantages of the Khaled Said page was how well organized the events were. Protesters were provided with exact times and locations, and given exact instructions on what to wear, what to do, as well as who to contact in the case of any problems with security forces.
  • t was the Khaled Said page that eventually posted the ‘event’ for a massive demonstration on January 25, Egypt’s Police Day.
  • The administrators usually polled their users, asking them to vote for their place or time of preference for the next protest. The responses would be in the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, and the administrators would read them all, and give a breakdown, with exact numbers and percentages, of the votes.
  • The January 25 demonstration was motivated and aided by an important intervening variable, the revolt in Tunisia. When Tunisian protesters succeeded in ousting President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, Egyptians felt that toppling a dictator through demonstrations was finally possible.
  • he Khaled Said page, which by then had about six hundred thousand followers, demonstrated its strong ability to organize. They listed all the major squares in every Egyptian governorate where they expected people to gather, and again gave specific instructions on what to wear, what to take with you, and who to contact in times of trouble. They then alerted the users that the listed venues for demonstration would change at midnight on January 24 to give police forces a lesser chance of mobilizing against them the next day. On the morning of January 25, there were close to half a million people who had clicked “I’m attending” the revolution. Today, the Khaled Said page has more than 1.7 million users, by far more than any other Egyptian Facebook page.
  • nd indeed that was what happened. We witnessed another key moment illustrating the power of the interaction between social media, traditional media, and interpersonal communication. Newspapers, broadcasters, and on-line outlets had been discussing the potential ‘Facebook demonstration’ for a few days prior to January 25. As groups of demonstrators marched through the streets enroute to main squares chanting “Ya ahalina endamo lina,” (“Friends and family, come join us”), people watching from their balconies and windows heeded the calls and enabled the protests to snowball to unprecedented numbers. People were galvanized by the sight. The core activists, who attended every demonstration for years, were suddenly seeing new faces on January 25, mostly mobilized by the Internet. They came by the thousands, and then by the hundreds of thousands, numbers larger than anyone had expected.
  • Twitter played an important though slightly different role. Crucial messages relayed in short bursts of one hundred and forty characters or less made protesters ‘cut to the chase.’ Most activists tweeted events live rather than posting them on Facebook. Twitter was mainly used to let people know what was happening on the ground, and alert them to any potential danger. It usually was ahead of Facebook in such efforts. Twitter also enabled activists to keep an eye on each other. Some managed to tweet ‘arrested’ or ‘taken by police’ before their mobile phones were confiscated. Those words were incredibly important in determining what happened to them and in trying to help them. Most activists are, to this day, in the habit of tweeting their whereabouts constantly, even before they go to sleep, because they know that fellow activists worry if they disappear from the Twittersphere.
  • When the Egyptian regime belatedly realized on January 25 how dangerous social networks could be to its survival, the first thing it did was block Twitter. Internet censorship is a ridiculously ineffective strategy, though. Users were tech-savvy enough to find their way onto proxy servers within minutes, and to post on Facebook how to gain access to Twitter and how to remain on Facebook if the regime blocks it, which indeed happened later. The government felt it didn’t have any other option but to block all Internet access in the country for five days starting January 27 (as well as mobile telephone communications for one day). By then it was too late. People had already found their way to Tahrir and nearly every square in Egypt. Ironically, some were partly motivated by the Internet and communication blockage to take to the streets to find out what was happening and be part of it. And they were joined by workers’ movements in many governorates that expanded the protester numbers into the millions. The major squares of Egypt were full of people of every age, gender, religion, creed, and socio-economic status
  • Gladwell, it turned out, was wrong. These people didn’t know each other personally, but the “weak” personal ties had not proved a barrier to high-risk activism. Egyptians discovered the strong tie of belonging to the common cause of ousting a dictator
  • ocial network users were not the only ones revolting, and social networks were not the only reason or motivation for revolt. However, the role that social media have played over the years in indirectly preparing sectors of Egyptian youths for this moment, and in enabling them to capitalize on an opportunity for change when the time came, cannot be understated.  It can also be said that the role of social networks in Egypt has hardly ended. The revolution is not yet complete. 
Mirna Shaban

Egypt's Spring: Causes of the Revolution | Middle East Policy Council - 0 views

mepc.org/...gypts-spring-causes-revolution

revolution government

shared by Mirna Shaban on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • eemed that nearly all of the 90,000 people who had responded to the Facebook request to demonstrate on Police Day had filled the square, crowded into central Alexandria, and confronted the security forces in Suez City
  • An accidental president, who came to power because of Anwar Sadat's assassination on October 6, 1981, Mubarak initially calmed the public, stressed the rule of law, released political prisoners and encouraged parliamentary elections. However, as soon as he began his second term, in 1987, he refused to reform the constitution, extended the state of emergency, promulgated laws to exclude opposition parties from local councils and tightened the grip of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) over parliament. He denounced opposition groups for criticizing his policies and asserted, threateningly, "I am in charge, and I have the authority to adopt measures…. I have all the pieces of the puzzle, while you do not."1
  • after the Islamist groups renounced violence in 1997, emergency and military courts continued to operate. They prosecuted civilians charged with nonviolent infractions, such as Muslim Brothers who met to prepare for professional syndicate elections or journalists who "slandered" regime figures. Police increasingly harassed people on the street, demanding bribes from shop owners and minivan drivers and free food from vendors and restaurants. They seized and beat people in order to coerce false confessions or to pressure them to become informers. They harassed people who came to the police station to get IDs or other routine documents, and they nabbed those who "talked back" to them. Amnesty International concluded that torture was "systematic in police stations, prisons and [State Security Investigations] SSI detention centers and, for the most part, committed with impunity…. [Security and plainclothes police assault people] openly and in public as if unconcerned about possible consequences."
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • 3 Even the government-appointed National Council on Human Rights, in its first annual report (2004), expressed deep concern about the 74 cases of "blatant" torture and 34 persons who had died in police or SSI detention that year.4 A U.S. diplomat cabled in 2009 to Washington that Omar Suleiman, director of the Ge
  • neral Intelligence Directorate, and Interior Minister Habib al-Adly "keep the domestic beasts at bay, and Mubarak is not one to lose sleep over their tactics."5
  • All aspects of public life were controlled, ranging from censorship of cultural and media production to the operation of labor unions.
  • Workers were banned from striking and, since the change in the labor law in 2003, were often hired on short-term contracts, under which they had no medical — or social — insurance benefits. The monthly minimum wage had not been raised since 1984, when it was set at LE 35 (in 2011 the equivalent of $6).6 The ETUF enforced government policy rather than represented its millions of members.
  • Private-sector workers suffered even more, as the 2003 labor law failed to provide any protection to employees negotiating length of contract, salary level, hours at work, overtime compensation, vacation or lunch breaks. Workers often lacked health and injury insurance. Many private-sector firms forced new hires to sign, along with the contract, Form No. 6, which allowed the employer to fire them without warning, cause or severance pay.
  • The exclusion of opposition forces from the political arena in fall 2010 was accompanied by systematic crackdowns on the media, cultural expression and university life. The regime wanted to prevent critical commentary from being aired in independent newspapers and on private satellite stations. The government closed down 19 TV and satellite channels, hacked or blocked several websites, and pressured private businessmen to cancel outspoken critics' positions as editors, opinion writers and talk-show hosts. The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) concluded: "The Ministry of Mass Media and Communication has tightened its fist over all media channels to markedly reduce the space for freedom of expression, especially [during and] after the last parliamentary elections."13
  • Already, press and cultural output were managed through myriad control boards. Journalists were beaten, jailed and/or fined if they investigated corruption or police brutality and were charged with incitement or libel when they criticized government policies or political leaders. AFTE also reported heavy-handed censorship of movies, plays and books.
  • The crackdown on university life accelerated after the 1979 student charter was amended in 2007 to give administrative bodies — and, behind them, the SSI — the right to bar students from running in university elections. By th
  • en, the SSI was interfering deeply in university operations: approving the appointment of rectors and deans, exercising a veto over teaching-staff employment and promotions, vetting graduate teaching assistants, determining the eligibility of students to live in dormitories, and interfering in scientific research, textbooks choices, and faculty permissions to travel abroad to participate in conferences.14 The SSI presence was overtly threatening; guards stood at the gates and at each building. Plainclothes SSI officers quelled demonstrations as well as threatening and arresting student activists. Then, in October 2010, the government refused to implement the Supreme Administrative Court ruling that banned SSI guards from the campuses and also blocked anti-regime candidates from contesting seats in the student-union elections.15
  • They sold significant portions of the public sector for their personal benefit and decreased public investment in agriculture, land reclamation, housing, education and health
  • Nearly half the residents of Cairo lived in unplanned areas that lacked basic utilities, sometimes living in wooden shacks
  • the World Bank reported that, by 2006, 62 percent of Egyptians were struggling to subsist on less than $2 a day
  • Given the overwhelming power of the state, the severe restrictions imposed by the State of Emergency on public gatherings, and the unchecked violence by police and security forces, people were fearful of protesting in the streets. Nonetheless, there were many efforts to expose the conditions. Novels and films highlighted corruption, police brutality, urban poverty and sexual harassment.29 Some art exhibits displayed in-your-face paintings depicting torture and military repression. Human-rights groups reported on poverty in the countryside and cities, deteriorating environmental conditions, harassment of women and activists, restrictions on the press, police coercion, and thuggery during elections.
  • There was public outrage at the very public beating-to-death just before midnight on June 6, 2010, of 28-year-old Khaled Said, seized as he entered an internet café in Alexandria.35 Late that night 70 young men and women gathered across from the police station, demanding that the police be brought to justice. They received the usual response: beaten, dragged along the street, attacked by police dogs, and arrested. Protests continued throughout the summer: funeral prayers at Sidi Gaber mosque, attended by 600 mourners who spilled out into the street afterwards; a vigil outside the Ministry of Interior headquarters in Cairo; a silent protest along waterfronts and bridges throughout Egypt; and numerous violently suppressed protests in downtown areas not only involving well-known politicians and protest groups but also people who felt that Khaled Said could have been themselves, their son, or their grandson. A teenager reflected this perspective, saying: "This is an extraordinary case. This guy was tortured and killed on the street. I did not know him but I cannot shut up forever."36 "For the sake of Khaled! For the sake of Egypt!" (ashan Khalid, ashan masr) became a rallying cry, voiced in fear as well as in the determination to restore individual and collective dignity (karama). On the fortieth day commemorating his death, people shouted outside the High Court: "Our voices will not be silenced… We've waited for 25 years, but our condition has not improved. Tomorrow the revolution will come."37
  • Dozens of Facebook groups supported the cause, of which "We Are All Khaled Said" became the most famous. They circulated reports about poli
  • ce brutality, many of which had been posted in the past but had not received such intense scrutiny. These included the video of police sodomizing a 21-year-old minivan driver in January 2006. Filmed by police officers in Boulaq al-Dakrour station, the police mailed it to the cell phones of other van drivers to intimidate them. "Everybody in the parking lot will see this tomorrow," they boasted.38 Hafez Abu Saeda, head of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, noted: "Police brutality is systematic and widespread… The humiliation of the simple citizen has become so widespread that people are fed up."39 Their anger, he warned, could spark a rebellion.
  • Nonetheless, the protesters themselves agree that it took the swift removal of Ben Ali to make them think that, if sudden change was possible in Tunisia, it might be possible in Egypt.
  • Even when people broke the barrier of fear on January 25, played cat-and-mouse with security forces on downtown streets on January 26 and 27, and withstood the onslaught all day and night on January 28, they faced a formidable regime, supported by the security forces and the entrenched NDP. The revolution would have been much bloodier if the armed forces had stood by the president. President Mubarak and Interior Minister Habib al-Adly hastened their own demise by unleashing extreme violence on January 28, followed by Adly's abrupt withdrawal of all police forces that night. Enraged, the public created neighborhood watches to ensure the safety of their communities.
  • Mubarak miscalculated by ordering the armed forces into the streets, even though their loyalty was to the nation — not to the person. He further miscalculated that he could offer minor concessions — such as appointing a vice president, changing the prime minister, and saying that he would not seek another term — on January 28 and again on February 1 and yet follow those placating words by unleashing fierce attacks on February 2. Over the next week, protesters held their ground, thousands of people flooded to city squares to call for dignity and freedom, labor strikes spread, employees in public institutions joined the movement, and lawyers, doctors, and professors marched in their professional garb. Finally, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ended its silent watch and forced Mubarak's hand. When Mubarak resisted leaving, the generals compelled the newly-appointed vice president to inform the president that, if he didn't step down, he would face charges of high treason.
  • Suddenly on Friday, February 11 — as millions of people surged angrily through the streets — Mubarak vanished. Anger transformed into tears of joy and celebration. And the next morning, young people cleaned up the public spaces, symbolically starting the huge task of cleansing Egypt of the corrupt regime and rebuilding the country. How they would rebuild Egypt remained uncertain, but their mobilization instilled a new and powerful pride, coupled with determination to take control over their future and not be cowed again by any authoritarian ruler.
wstrahan

In Africa, Li Keqiang Refutes Charge of Chinese 'Neo-Colonialism' | The Diplomat - 0 views

thediplomat.com/...rge-of-chinese-neo-colonialism

#neocolonialism

shared by wstrahan on 25 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Chinese Premier Li Keqiang finished his four country tour of Africa, making stops in Ethiopia (including the African Union headquarters), Nigeria, Angola, and Kenya. China’s activities in Africa are increasingly gaining media attention around the world, particularly as speculation heats up about a competition for the continent between China and the U.S. (or even China and Japan).
  • Li promised to devote “more than half of its foreign aid to Africa,” with no conditions attached to the funding. Li pledged China’s friendship to Africa, and reiterated Chinese support for Africa playing a larger role in world politics as it continues to develop. Li also stressed that China “will never attach political conditions to its assistance to Africa and will never use its aid programs to interfere in the internal affairs of African countries,” a tacit criticism of Western countries who often refuse to provide funding to countries seen as human rights violators.
  • Li Keqiang also acknowledged in a speech that China-Africa relations have encountered some “growing pains,” a nod to tensions in some African countries over issues such as illegal Chinese mining operations and resentment against local Chinese traders. But Xinhua was quick to emphasize that these “growing pains” are “problems that inevitably occur during the development of relations” — meaning no one (especially not China) is to blame.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Like Xinhua, Li was at pains to combat perceptions of China acting as a “neo-colonial” power in Africa. His tour largely ignored the question of resource exploitation, and instead emphasized China-Africa cooperation in fields such as infrastructure, training and education, poverty reduction, environmental protection, and cultural exchange.
  • Li promised that China will help develop high-speed railways, highways, and regional airports in Africa, citing infrastructure construction as a top priority for Africa’s continued development.
  • These assurances will help counter Western criticisms that even China’s infrastructure development in Africa provides little benefit to the continent, as construction is often done by imported Chinese work crews.
  • coverage of Li’s stop in Angola, a major oil supplier, barely mentioned China’s oil deals. Instead Li focused on more general Chinese investment in the country, including plans to expand cooperation in infrastructure and agriculture.
  • Starting with Mao Zedong, China forged a strong bond with Africa based on their common identities as victims of colonial exploitation.
  • China wanted to emphasize its altruism, playing up the unconditional nature of its aid money, and emphasizing the real-world benefits its investment and technology transfers would bring to African people
wstrahan

Literature Resource Center - Document - 0 views

go.galegroup.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=LitRC&userGroupName=viva_vcu&tabID=T006&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=3&contentSet=GALE%7CA290630533&&docId=GALE|A290630533&docType=GALE&role=LitRC

Spotify piracy music

shared by wstrahan on 08 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Sam Rosenthal, who's the founder of a label called Project Records
  • iTunes and the other music players have had in the past; buying to own
  • Spotify really is changing here is we're talking about access to music.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • if they really like it they will share it and their friends will discover it and they in turn will listen to it
  • Daniel Ek is the founder and CEO of the music streaming service Spotify
  • But again, what I sort of emphasize that we're paying the labels. We don't pay the artists directly.
  • What we're really trying to do here is move people away from piracy into a legal model that contributes revenue back to the music industry.
  • Yeah, I do want to address that because I feel that it's important to mention that it's still early days and Spotify's only two years in using the service, almost three. But in that short period of time now we've become the second largest revenue generator for the labels in Europe and we've paid out more than a 150 million dollars back to the music industry.
  • He recently wrote on his blog that 5,000 plays on Spotify generates a little more than six dollars, and in comparison 5,000 track downloads at iTunes generates for him $3,400. I mean, it's a big gap there.
  • I definitely think that we want to have access and that's the big shift here, but I do think that ownership still plays an important role. You do want to own the things you really care about.
  • At the same time one of the big criticisms that we've heard from artists is that the royalties that they get from Spotify are so low that it might as well be piracy.
  • I think if you keep creating great music people will in fact listen to it and they will in fact buy it if they think it's a great record.
perezmv

http://oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2006/08/17/inside-pandora-web-radio.html - 0 views

oreilly.com/...inside-pandora-web-radio.html

Pandora howstuffworks music musical technology symbiosis format business model records experiments attributes project company analysts dimensions

shared by perezmv on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Pandora (which is also the name of the company) grew out of the Music Genome Project, which company founder Tim Westergren began six years ago.
  • He became fascinated with the way directors described the music they were looking for, which led to his wondering what made people enjoy certain types of music. He asked himself, "If people haven't found any music that they love since college, and artists are struggling to find an audience, is there a role for technology to help bridge the gap?"
  • Westergren started the Genome Project from the idea of creating a platform for connecting people with music that they'll love based on music they already enjoy. The project uses experts called "music analysts" to deconstruct music into its fundamental parts and capture the results into a database. Pandora has 40 professional musicians who come to the office every day and listen to one song at a time, analyzing each in anywhere from 200 to 400 dimensions. (The dimensions are somewhat different for each genre of music.)
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Pandora chose the dimensions because they are quantitative. For instance, how breathy are the vocals? Is the music diatonic or chromatic? The music analysts are trained to be able to score songs consistently. In fact, one of the test cases is, "Could a group of 10 musicologists listen to a song and agree on one score for a particular element?"
  • vector space.
  • "What is exciting about the Music Genome Project, with respect to Pandora the radio-listening experience, is that by understanding the music on a song-by-song basis we can put together a playlist that has a much more natural ebb and flow than you might be able to do with collaborative filtering data," Conrad says.
  • "I think curator is the right word," Conrad replied. "Of all the financial models that could be leveraged to make Pandora a successful business, the 'play for pay' model runs completely spiritually opposite to the founding of the company.
  • I asked what Pandora was doing to avoid being influenced by big record labels, which have been widely accused of corrupting traditional radio through payola schemes.
  • "Since we use a human analyst to analyze song by song, we've experimented with using a smaller number of elements," he continued. "We've determined that you can't create interesting playlists with only 20 attributes. But we do keep an eye on machine listening as it might provide a way to augment the manual analysis."
  • I ask myself, "What's this song doing in my Bill Evans station? This song should be in my 'Soft Jazz Guitar' station. Why can't I tell Pandora to place this tune in the appropriate station?"
  • "It's fascinating to me that you raise that particular example," Conrad said. "Because the scenario that you just described is--after we evolved the product over five months and took a lot of low-hanging fruit off the table--probably the number-one listener request.
  • Pandora creates playlists with a "matching engine," written in C and Python, for each listener station. This engine builds the low-level linkage to the "source" music (the music that listeners indicate they like) and the music that actually gets played (a mixture of what the listener explicitly indicated, mixed with music that the Pandora service believes listeners will like). The replication system is Slony.
peppermara

SoundCloud Manages Criticism As It Moves To Become The YouTube Of Audio - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...to-become-the-youtube-of-audio

#tv008 #ThoughtVectors #soundcloud

shared by peppermara on 08 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Now with 38 million users, the platform has users in almost every country around the world. It could hit 55 million users by year’s end as it registers 70,000 people a day.
  • The company has more than tripled its user base since January 2012, when it had 10 million individuals registered. Since its redesign, average plays per artist have gone from about 6,900 a month in December to more than 12,000 plays in March
anonymous

Embodied Cognition (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - 0 views

plato.stanford.edu/...embodied-cognition

#ThoughtVectors technology media education augmentedreality embodied cognition

shared by anonymous on 11 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Consider four evocative examples of phenomena that have motivated embodied cognitive science. We typically gesture when we speak to one another, and gesturing facilitates not just communication but language processing itself (McNeill 1992). Vision is often action-guiding, and bodily movement and the feedback it generates are more tightly integrated into at least some visual processing than has been anticipated by traditional models of vision (O'Regan and Noë 2001). There are neurons, mirror neurons, that fire not only when we undertake an action, but do so when we observe others undertaking the same actions (Rizolatti and Craighero 2004). We are often able to perform cognitive tasks, such as remembering, more effectively by using our bodies and even parts of our surrounding environments to off-load storage and simplify the nature of the cognitive processing (Donald 1991).
  • anonymous on 11 Jul 14
     
    Thinking about embodied cognition in young children's dramatic play with robotic teachers and augmented reality.
jdinhhh

IRIN Asia | Analysis: Southeast Asia's human trafficking conundrum | Indonesia | Cambodia | Thailand | Vietnam | Human Rights | Migration - 0 views

www.irinnews.org/...-s-human-trafficking-conundrum

asia human trafficking

shared by jdinhhh on 25 Jun 14 - No Cached
    • jdinhhh
      jdinhhh on 25 Jun 14
       
      Reading the story told by this women just tells me how cruel the world can be and how you can't really trust anyone but yourself. She just wanted to work and support her family, and she is played by a man and is sold into forced labor. This shows inequality and does not help the poverty problem in third world countries. 
George Neff

Report: Netflix Plans to Order First Original Series for French Market | Variety - 0 views

variety.com/...s-for-french-market-1201224701

#ThoughtVectors netflix french originalseries

shared by George Neff on 25 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Ahead of its launch in France, Netflix is reportedly set to order an exclusive original series in France, according to news channel BFMTV’s website.
  • Netflix approached select local producers to submit pitches for original series
  • France wouldn’t be the first overseas territory where the company has targeted specific original programming, having already done so in Latin America.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • an exec at EuropaCorp Television told Variety, “Netflix (had) not commissioned a French series to (them) as of today.”
  • Netflix has already worked with GIT on Eli Roth’s “Hemlock Grove,” which was reupped for a second season; and recently ordered “Narcos” with Wagner Moura set to play Pablo Escobar.
  • Per BFMTV, Netflix is on track to launch this fall and will likely be priced at €7.99 ($10.90) per month for the standard-definition service; $12.23 for high-definition and reception on two devices and $16.30 for high-def and reception on four devices.
nbell003

Fashion Trends,Understanding Fashion, Fashion Trend Forecasting - 0 views

www.fibre2fashion.com/...fashion-trend-forecasting1.asp

shared by nbell003 on 25 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • uy, based on their culture, mood, beliefs, occasion & geographic locations, it is also dependent on fashion cycle and plays a major role in introductory phase of recurring fashion cycles.
  • houses around the world totally rely on designers for understanding the same, but on the other side there are others who dont believe in it at all. In current times when we look at technology we know nothing is by chance and there are people who are working behind the scenes, day and night to make things appear easy and affordable to us
    • nbell003
      nbell003 on 25 Jun 14
       
      Fashion Forecasting is based on recurring fashion cycles. Color, texture, architecture, food, fast fashion fatigue, all influence forecasting and the market
  • nbell003 on 25 Jun 14
     
    Fashion Cycles
Mirna Shaban

New study quantifies use of social media in Arab Spring | UW Today - 0 views

www.washington.edu/...of-social-media-in-arab-spring

revolution socialmedia

shared by Mirna Shaban on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
    • Mirna Shaban
      Mirna Shaban on 26 Jun 14
       
      Yellow highlighting= Information about role of social media in the Arab Spring. Pink highlighting= Statistical information Blue highlighting= Possibility of link to more information. 
  • After analyzing more than 3 million tweets, gigabytes of YouTube content and thousands of blog posts, a new study finds that social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring.
  • “Our evidence suggests that social media carried a cascade of messages about freedom and democracy across North Africa and the Middle East, and helped raise expectations for the success of political uprising,” said Philip Howard, the project lead and an associate professor in communication at the University of Washington.  “People who shared interest in democracy built extensive social networks and organized political action. Social media became a critical part of the toolkit for greater freedom.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • During the week before Egyptian president Hosni Mubaraks resignation, for example, the total rate of tweets from Egypt — and around the world — about political change in that country ballooned from 2,300 a day to 230,000 a day. 
  • Data for the UW project came directly from immense digital archives the team built over the course of several months.
  • the team located data about technology use and political opinion from before the revolutions. 
  • The Project on Information Technology and Political Islam assembled data about blogging in Tunisia one month prior to the crisis in that country, and had special data on the link structure of Egyptian political parties one month prior to the crisis there.
  • Political discussion in blogs presaged the turn of popular opinion in both Tunisia and Egypt.  In Tunisia, conversations about liberty, democracy and revolution on blogs and on Twitter often immediately preceded mass protests. 
  • Twenty percent of blogs were evaluating Ben Alis leadership the day he resigned from office (Jan. 14), up from just 5 percent the month before.  Subsequently, the primary topic for Tunisian blogs was “revolution” until a public rally of at least 100,000 people eventually forced the old regimes remaining leaders to relinquish power.
  • In the two weeks after Mubaraks resignation, there was an average of 2,400 tweets a day from people in neighboring countries about the political situation in Egypt. In Tunisia after Ben Alis resignation, there were about 2,200 tweets a day.
  • Ironically, government efforts to crack down on social media may have incited more public activism, especially in Egypt. People who were isolated by efforts to shut down the Internet, mostly middle-class Egyptians, may have gone to the streets when they could no longer follow the unrest through social media, Howard said.
mcandersonaj

The One-Sided Problem of Oversexualization in Video Games - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...ersexualization-in-video-games

gaming sexualization

shared by mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      This article poses questions about the oversexualization in video games and gives some examples to back it up.
  • These are the “ideal forms” of each of these characters. Yet only one of them is ever viewed sexually to outsiders, the women.
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      When both characters are created by the player and the story is almost identical in every way, why do we only say that the female character is sexualized. 
  • Both are genetic mutants, by any stretch of the imagination, but one is sexual, and the other isn’t.
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      How can we only count one as sexual and the other as not. Is it because what we deem to be acceptable? a man walks around shirtless all the time but put a woman in that clothing and all of a sudden its sexual? i'm not really so sure
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • I was playing through playstation All-Stars last week and found that in the entire roster, there were two women. Fat Princess and Nariko, both from rather obscure games. The rest? All men. Even the cartoony ones. All 16 others. You’ll find a similar ratio in Super Smash Bros, another collection of video games’ most famous icons.
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      This is one of the truest statements from the articles I've read that i never really noticed before. Its sad to hear that such a statistic is true we really do need more strong female characters.
  • The sexiness of the existing women in video games is not the problem. It’s really a subjective argument about why guys lust after Lara Croft, yet girls don’t have eyes for Nathan Drake.
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      This is comparing two characters who are almost identical in every way except one is female the other is male. Both are treasure hunters and dress the same yet Lara is seen as sexual and Nathan is not. 
  • mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
     
    This discusses the trends in games, fighting games in particular
  • mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
     
    This discusses the trends in games, fighting games in particular
mcandersonaj

Sexualization in Video Games - 0 views

trredskies.com/sexualization-in-video-games

gaming sexualization

shared by mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • To sexualize a person in a video game (or any medium really) is to reduce them to an object; to reduce their value down to a sexual thing.  
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      Gives me an actual definition of what it is to sexualize a character in a video game.
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      The author talks about how he feels about sexualization in games. 
  • Even better: let’s leave sexualization out of our games.  Sexy is cool and is but a single variety of character personality.  Sexualization is a whole other thing.  And for women, a largely negative thing.
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      An extremely one sided comment, to me it sounds like he's saying that if a man were to be over-sexualized it would not be a negative. 
  • ...2 more annotations...
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      While the article does make valid points it seems extremely biased. So i need to be careful when rereading it and pulling information from this article 
  • It’s the point at which the player controlling that character cares a lot more for the sexual fantasies she inspires than her value as a character.
    • mcandersonaj
      mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
       
      Another good definition to be aware of when I do more research on the topic. This point that he talks about is one that most players never really think about when they play games and look at their characters. 
  • mcandersonaj on 26 Jun 14
     
    A man talks about gaming and sexualization
braxtondn

Seventeen and Vogue Magazine Have Issues, Like Body Image Issues | Autostraddle - 0 views

www.autostraddle.com/-like-body-image-issues-137515

vogue Seveneteen magazines self-image teens effects

shared by braxtondn on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • the photoshopped images and super-skinny smiling blondes of popular teen magazines
    • braxtondn
      braxtondn on 26 Jun 14
       
      The "ideal" look based off of new media.
  • “We know that Photoshop can be very harmful to girls because they think they have to look like these images. But it’s not even real, it’s Photoshop. So it’s kind of impossible to look like that in real life.
    • braxtondn
      braxtondn on 26 Jun 14
       
      People are, literally, trying to become something that isn't real. Nobody looks exactly the way people see them on tv or magazines. Its either makeup or photoshop.
  • Magazines, as mentioned above, play a hugely important role in the development and sustaining of girls’ and women’s self-images. They’re also hugely prevalent pieces of our culture, with Vogue and Seventeen leading the way because of their sheer popularity and branding power
    • braxtondn
      braxtondn on 26 Jun 14
       
      Because of the popularity between these two magazines and the amount of people that read them. I would think that they would help try to defend people's self-image/body-image by publishing covers with teens of all sizes. 
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • ad of obesity, citing a recent trip to Minnesota where  she said she could “only kindly de
  • Photoshop to make people “look their best,” and condemned Americans for worrying too much over anorexia inste
    • braxtondn
      braxtondn on 26 Jun 14
       
      Obesity is just as serious as anorexia; but the idea that the media is only focusing/ showing off skinny girls, doesn't really help put an emphasis on both. Weight is a big issue with the media, but the media needs to realize that people come in different shapes. ANother thing is that the effect that the media is having on people's body-image, mixed with the bullying on social medias, is just causing the media to be a horrible place to come to when it comes to human interaction and "ideals". 
  • scribe most of the people I saw as little houses.”
jdinhhh

Human Trafficking in East Asia | Foreign Policy Journal - 0 views

www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/...human-trafficking-in-east-asia

shared by jdinhhh on 25 Jun 14 - No Cached
n30nra1nb0w liked it
  • Interestingly, reports estimate that 30% to 40% of this is unregulated traffic. It is unclear how much of this migration flow is human trafficking, but it is clear that at the very least, a significant portion of it is.
  • An amplification in the demand for domestic servants in developed countries combined with unemployment of women in developing countries has seen the growth of entire organized crime gangs devoted to fulfilling this need, albeit illegally.
  • according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), sexual exploitation is the “most commonly-identified form of human trafficking.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Consider the one-child policy in China that has lead to a skewed gender ratio. Because of this, brides are ‘sold’ for a premium across China.
  • Trafficking plays a cyclical role with organized crime, and we must strike at both to render the world safe.
Will Sullivan

The Radio as New Technology: Blessing or Curse? A 1929 Debate » - 0 views

americainclass.org/lessing-or-curse-a-1929-debate

augmentedreality

shared by Will Sullivan on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Accommodated as we are to mass media, we must work to imagine the impact of commercial radio broadcasting in its early years. From the late 1800s, new electronic devices had been expanding the realm of shared human experience — people conversed on telephones, sent news through telegrams, played records on phonographs, and enjoyed films in local theaters. But until the radio, nothing offered such widely shared simultaneous mass experience. By turning on your radio set, you could listen to a jazz band, baseball game, religious service, even a president’s speech, live, along with millions of fellow listeners.
  • Will Sullivan on 27 Jun 14
     
    An excerpt from an old criticism of the radio in the 1920s. Sound familiar?
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