Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
Topical news on social media, web culture, digital humanities
Via Scoop.it – Media convergenceLet us reinvent the ebook by imagining a continuous horizontally scrolling canvass… (From one of the godfathers of http://pressbooks.com ). More details: “In printed books, the two-page spread was our canvas. It’s easy to think similarly about…
What if we allowed the authors and the reviewers of academic papers to interact with each other and, horribile dictu, to know each other’s identies. This PLOS paper believes that we would get better reviews and better papers. Citation: Leek JT, Taub…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesMalcolm Gladwell (of Tipping Point and Blink fame) puts the dot on the i regarding Steve Jobs’ real genius: to combine things that he found in semi finished state. “Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His…
From The New York Times – MEDIA DECODER BLOG An organization formed by Congress to market the United States to international travelers is moving ahead under a new name. They need to know about http://alterpode.com
From The New York Times: CULTURE AND CONTROL: Pushing China’s Limits on Web, if Not on Paper “Murong Xuecun, a popular Chinese novelist, often runs afoul of censors, which has pushed him to become a vocal critic of censorship in China and…
Amazon’s investment in the new Kindle Fire, which includes almost free access to books that it bought on its own dime, seems to be for the long haul, which although a surprise, might or might not work. “Amazon is giving away books,…
Ai Weiwei, whose artistic vision partially inspired the iconic “bird’s nest” stadium, which changed the image of Beijing from a cookie cutter apartment building factory to an emerging world metropolis , has also been known for his vocal opposition to official Chinese…
Via Scoop.it – Mapping current events I am sitting in a wooden hut in a forest clearing near Tusnad, aware of a distinct tingling in a delicate area – the part of my body that touches the plank forming a seat. It’s…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesReal problem are the homophily assumptions built in the selection filters (birds of a feather ought to flock together), not the filter themselves. What prevents us from creating filters that promote heterogeneity? “Eli Pariser…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies MANY mocked, but the money rolled in.Via www.economist.com
Via Scoop.it – Mapping current events“Researchers have discovered an underworld of genetic exchange among bacteria, one more vast than previously imagined.” Bacteria exchange genes to create superbugs, sometimes at very great distances. According to Wired Mag “A comparison of thousands of bacterial…
A list of principles for designing on-line communities created by Dr. Sorin A. Matei and his students registered in various versions of the Online Interaction Graduate Seminar at Purdue University Online / virtual community design principles Design guidelines are not guarantees. Many are necessary for…
Via Scoop.it – Mad Max Societies: Post Apocalyptic Technology and Society Astronomers suggest that artificial illumination creates a signature that could point to the existence of civilizations on other worlds — and they say we should get started on a survey of…
This is the title of the opening theoretical chapter of Francesca Comunello’s edited book “Networked Sociability and Individualism: Technology for Personal and Professional Relationships“. The chapter is the product of my collaboration with my former PhD student, Robert Bruno, now Assistant Professor…
“It’s staggering to contemplate how much the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs understood about modern America that those who govern it still don’t.” Steve Jobs was a master at simultaneously goading our sense of individuality and fueling our yearning for community (a topic…
At $199, the color Kindle Fire is less than half the price of the Apple iPad. It’s browser Silk, partly living in the cloud, is very fast and turns the device in something like a phone tethered to a very clear set…
Authors: Sorin Adam Matei, Eric Kansa, Nicholas Rauh. Abstract: The paper presents a platform for supporting academic collaboration and publishing created by flexibly linking Visible Past, a web collaboration and digital-print publishing with Open Context, a geo-historical data archiving and publishing service.…
Marc Smith, cyber sociologist, product developer, Connected Action Chief Scientist, and leader of the Social Media foundation will visit the West Lafayette Purdue campus between September 22-23 and will give a talk about one of his most important projects, NodeXL, on Thursday,…
Image by wolfgang.wedenig via Flickr The patent claims that a belt connecting to a network device “creates a sensation for a user similar to having guests in a remote location to be physically present as virtual guests,” allowing people to “concurrently experience the…
Via Scoop.it – Foreign Affairs Let us talk about the best tools, books, tricks and ideas for building online communities and fostering online interaction that is meaningful for people everywhere.Show original
Image by Joshua Kaufman via Flickr About 1/4 of Americans use some sort of mapping or location based information service via mobile. This includes mapping and location aware services alike. Only a small proportion, @ 4% of adults, use services such as…
88 percent of women, versus 84 percent of men appreciate their college education… Apud Resource Shelf and Pew Internet. Half of all women who have graduated from a four-year college give the U.S. higher education system excellent or good marks for the…
ESRI has published a very nice map that shows Irene’s impact as captured in Flickr photos, Youtube clips, and tweets. If you get over the clutter at lower levels of resolution, it looks like a very nice idea. For some years ESRI…
Via Scoop.it – Media convergence“[Our] results suggest that processes of human memory are adapting to the advent of new computing and communication technology. Just as we learn through transactive memory who knows what in our families and offices, we are learning what…
Iceland surprised the world when it announced that it will include in the draft of its new constitution suggestions made by the citizenry via social media. A website and a special Facebook page were used as main means for collecting public input. The…
QR codes, which are a type of barcodes that can call up multimedia on cell phones (see Around the World in 80 Days example to the right), are now embraced by the art world. The MOMA art exhibit ““Talk to Me: Design…
Are you in front of an information booth, at the mall? Do you want to do a Google search without a keyboard? The Google voice gizmo by Breakfast, an open source hardware project, has something for you. The device uses Arduino boards…
Bryan Pijanowski, the head of the Soundscape Ecology Project at Purdue University, and Sorin Adam Matei, the author of this blog and the founder of the Ubimark publishing initiatives have set up a mapping site, http://Ubimark.info, to collect and map everyday sounds…
The tablets used in the series Star Trek have come to life. CBS sells the PADD Ipad application on Itunes. CBS Interactive just released the holy grail of Star Trek apps, an app that turns your iPad into a genuine PADD straight…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesA Santa Fe Institute study looked at chains of social interactions online and it discovered that negativity online tends to spin out of control faster than positive interactions. “The world they’ve chosen is a massive multiplayer…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesThe Information Society is a multidisciplinary journal intended to answer questions about the Information Age. It provides a forum for thoughtful commentary and discussion of significant topics in the world of information, such as transborder data…
Via Scoop.it – Media convergence A new, interesting Iphone App and project, similar to another Flickr project A few new apps will tell you what used to be nearby, or even what might have been nearby — less practical but often thoroughly…
According to a recent European Union study, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Cyprus lead social networking pack in Europe, with more than 2/3rds of Internet users accessing social networking sites frequently. On the other hand, the same countries are less concerned about privacy…
If you are rushed, as I was, to upgrade to the3.2 version of WordPress and if you are using the Arras theme, you might get the white screen of death. After upgrade you might not be able to see anything. The solution…
Via Scoop.it – Media convergenceIO5 revolution via All things digital (Wall Street Journal)… Physical buttons to control the camera Location aware notifications Itune-less connection to other devices Deep integration with Twitter Native support for newsShow original
Swiss students at the The Flying Machine Arena at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control ETH Zurich re-purpose Xbox hand gesture controller Kinect for remote controlling a helicopter. Related articles 7 Mind-Blowing Xbox Kinect Hacks [VIDEOS] (mashable.com)
Google+ is the search giant’s response to Facebook’s recent raise as the most visited site in the world. The tools aim to make the web experience of Google account users a little bit more like that offered by Facebook. The problem is,…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesWhat is really at stake in the Google+ project “But as I learned in almost year of following the project’s development, with multiple interviews with the team and its executives, Google+ is not a typical release.…
Via Scoop.it – Media convergenceAn analyst expects Apple to launch both an iPhone 5 and a mid-range iPhone 4S [caption id=…Show original
Via Scoop.it – Mad Max Societies: Post Apocalyptic Technology and SocietyThe Intifada is not televised, it is now spread via Iphone apps… “US computer giant Apple has culled a Palestinian application from its iPhone offerings at the request of Israel, which said…
Via Scoop.it – Mad Max Societies: Post Apocalyptic Technology and SocietyFor a long time I thought Al Qaeda uses donkey mail. Now we know that in fact it uses “thumb nail”… “Does al-Qaida really not have an IT department? The U.S. intelligence…
Via Scoop.it – Mad Max Societies: Post Apocalyptic Technology and Society An Internet for abandoned community. How long until the Taliban figure out how to use these technologies? “In light of events that occured in the Middle East earlier this year, many…
Via Scoop.it – Mad Max Societies: Post Apocalyptic Technology and SocietyAlbeit LulzSec calling it quits, the hacking saga continues. Hacker group Anonymous claimed responsibility of taking down Tunisian government’s official website moments ago.Show original
Via Scoop.it – Mapping current eventsSpringfield tornado is now officially rated as an EF-3 on a scale of 5. An EF-3 event can easily level strong frame homes.Show original
Via Scoop.it – Media convergenceNewsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. Another type of front page…Show original
Via Scoop.it – Media convergence“Apple might want to sell you your next TV… Apple plans to “blow Netflix and all those other guys away” with a console that would have Apple TV and iTunes built into it, the source reportedly told DailyTech.…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies “J.K.Rowling presents Pottermore: a unique and free-to-use website which builds an exciting online experience around the reading of the Harry Potter books…” The site will combine reading with extra features, some embedded in a new…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesIt’s not a skill that’s been widely understood until quite recently, however community management has begun to move to the forefront of di (RT @cflanagan: .@mor_trisha commenting on Dion’s Community Mgr as “jack of all trades”…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesThe average working woman is putting in more hours on the job, a Bureau of Labor Statistics study found. Women are averaging about 10 more minutes a day on work compared with last year. Question: does…
Via Scoop.it – InfotentionWhat if you had to focus for at least 30 minutes on every single task that you did? Would it improve your productivity? Cal Newport takes hard focus for a test drive.Show original
Via Scoop.it – InfotentionThe point is that new tools in general, and Twitter in particular, greatly challenge the binary dichotomy of attention as something that is either given or taken away, distracted. Instead, these tools allow us to direct attention to destinations…
Via Scoop.it – InfotentionScraperWiki is an online tool to make that process simpler and more collaborative. Anyone can write a screen scraper using the online editor. In the free version, the code and data are shared with the world. Because it’s a…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesA resource for social media and digital humanities scholars. Academic and professional papers on mass media and social media research.Show original