Saturday, June 27, 2026 Strategy, technology, media, and social systems

I Think

Sorin Adam Matei

Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.

Category: Digital News

Topical news on social media, web culture, digital humanities

Research: Focus Groups Vs Social Media | Brandwatch

Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesResearch: Focus Groups Vs Social Media (Research: Focus Groups Vs Social Media http://tinyurl.com/6h4bm4y…)…Show original

Smashwords – Virtual sociability: From Community to Communitas – A book by Sorin Adam Matei

Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesHow do virtual communities come together? What makes them strong? What social theories can be used for explaining them? What rules and policies can be used to make virtual communities last?Show original

Virtual Sociability: From Community to Communitas book sees virtual space as permanent, conflict ridden initiation ritual (free download, Smashwords, Kindle, Amazon,PDF, .mobi, ebook)

To what degree can the human exchanges we observe online be called “sociability”? In other words, do these exchanges amount to any meaningful type of social organization? Are they more than the mere froth of collective emotion discharging its energy with a…

State of the Art: A Laptop, Its Head in the Cloud

Samsung Series 5 3G Chromebook (Arctic White) Google Chromebook, the minimal-OS, always on, wireless laptop is a major disappointment for David Pogue… Truth is, considering how stripped-down the Samsung is, you have to wonder why it’s as big, heavy and expensive as…

News roundup from Matei.org: Maps added to Elsevier Articles, IBM anniversary, Blended Print and Digital Publishing

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IBM 125th Anniversary: 1100100 and counting

  In an industry where the highest valued companies (Microsoft, Apple or Google) can count their age in mere decades, IBM goes all the way to the 1880s. Hollerith’s counting machine, whose patent was later purchased by what will become IBM, pioneered…

Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats propose a National Public Wireless Internet

Despite the controversies that surround continued public support for the NPR/CPB there is much talk in Washington nowadays about creating a public funded, yet potentially politically controlled national Internet wireless network. The network will be funded from allocating some of the proceeds…

Amazing maps that show how Facebook is taking over the world

Faceboo dethrones HI5, Orkut and other also ran networks in most countries of the world. Only significant exceptions, Russia and China.     via Amazing maps that show how Facebook is taking over the world.

The 150th anniversary of the Civil War: A Tribute to the Past and to the Present (video)

With the recently passed April 14 anniversary of the Fort Sumter occupation by the Confederates we have entered a period of four years of remembering the 150th anniversary of the many and bloody Civil War battles. The memory of the 600,000 dead…

NYTimes: Defense Secretary Warns NATO of ‘Dim

11 weeks into their mission European NATO partners are out of munitions… Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly criticized NATO nations on Friday, warning of “a dim if not dismal future” for an alliance at risk of becoming irrelevant.

New Games and Software Announced at 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo – E3: Konami, Sony NGP, Windows 8, Star Wars for Kinect

A 2011 E3 Video news roundup E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo at which major video and PC game vendors present their new products. This year’s event promises a number of long expected events and products. Here is a line up of…

Joplin tornado Declared EF-5 event or “devastating”. See tornado Path map in KMZ

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the May 22 tornado that scythed a path through Joplin, MO “devastating” assigning it the maximum level of intensity EF-5. It is the deadliest since 1950, when modern record keeping started, and 8th in recorded…

Connected docummentary by Tiffany Shlain connects death, technology, life

Connected, explores the visible and invisible connections linking major issues of our time—the environment, consumption, population growth, technology, human rights, the global economy—while searching for her place in the world during a transformative time in her life.

Neal Mohan to John Battelle at CM: television ads are a rip off (paraphrase)

For the same results, total television ads cost $50 billion more: Mohan noted a $50 billion disconnect between consumer attention given to digital, and consumer attention given to television. In other words, major brand advertisers are spending a lot more in TV…

The future of the book finally here: a book that sings, talks, and takes you to the movies

Al Gore’s next book promises to start a publishing revolution. Keep your eyes on Push Pop Press. The 800-pound gorilla in this digital space is Adobe, whose tools are used to create some tablet periodicals (including the iPad version of WIRED magazine).…

Monterrey kindergarten teacher keeps Mexican children safe during drug gang shootout (video)

A class of Mexican kindergarteners braved a drug cartel shootout right under the windows of their school by singing “When it will rain chocolate.” The teacher, maestra Martha Rivera Alanis, told them to lay down and put their little faces on the…

When DSK (Dominique Strauss Kahn) Met Michelle (Obama)

“No, you can’t!” A semi-funny non-verbal communication situation that might or might not convey the meaning of the situation. At the Pittsburgh Summit, 2009 President Obama introduces  his wife  to Dominique Strauss Kahn (DSK), who at the time was still the director…

Monitoring by Social Mention Indicates that Positive Reactions to Obama Middle East Speech Declined Dramatically in Social and Traditional Media (CHART, PICS)

After a great start, with great positive reactions on Twitter, President Obama’s Middle East speech has become only a few days later a more controversial proposition, both for social media audiences and for newsmakers. According to Social Mention, a social media monitoring…

Obama Middle East Peace Speech Sentiment Analysis: Greater Enthusiasm on Twitter than in Media or Blogs

NEW: Read latest update on social mention sentiment analysis of President Obama’s Middle East speech Textual analysis of the rhetoric and of the social media buzz created by President Obama’s speech on the future of the Middle East (see transcript of Middle…

Where in the World is Les Chandelles (Candles), the swinger club allegedly frequented by Dominique Strauss Kahn (DSK, Map, Street View, Pics)

The book “DSK: Les Secrets d’un presidentiable” (Secrets of a presidential contender) affirms that Dominique Strauss Kahn, the recently resigned IMF head arrested for sexual assault at Sofitel Hotel in New York, was a customer of the Paris swinger (wife swapping) club…

3D Model of Osama’s Abbottabad Compound Used in Training Special Forces (Wired Dangerroom Report)

Wired’s Dangerroom reports on the amazingly fast transformation of Osama’s last known lair into a recruiting and training ground for the US special forces: TAMPA, Florida — To passers-by, T.J., a fit 20-something, is running around a red felt carpet about half…

Kennedy Space center Discovery shuttle launch captured on Iphone from plane goes viral on Twitter and YouTube

Little did @stefmara Twitter user and Neil Monday know that their pictures and videos of the space shuttle Discovery launch from Kennedy Space center, which they captured on their Iphones while flying from Orlando, will make world wide news. Here it’s one…

Gizmodo’s verdict on Chromebook: What would you expect from a 400 dollar notebook?

Gizomodo thinks that Google’s notepad/online thin client laptop Chromebook needs to try harder All in all, it’s about exactly what you’d expect for $429 of computer in the shape of a laptop. No more, and not much less. (To be less ambiguous:…

Group responsible for 2010 Wikileaks Denial of Service attacks against Amazon and Visa splits, reveals power elite, confirms main ideas of Virtual sociability book

The hacktivist group Anonymous, which was recently in the news for its strong-armed support of Wikileaks, is in the middle of a mini civil war. A group of secessionist members has revealed the online identities and other details (Ip addresses) of some…

Google Launches Chrome OS as Hardware and Software Subscription Service

Google plans to lease computers for $20 a month, including hardware and software upgrades. I/O 2011. From Mashable:   The program, called Chromebooks for Business & Education allows businesses and educational institutions to pay Google a monthly fee in exchange for a…

Play “SEALs Take Down Osama:” Counter-Strike PC Game offers map of Osama Bin Laden Abbottabad Compound (.BSP Map and .KMZ model)

Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad Mansion is now a scenario in Counter Strike The Abbottabad compound that was the scene of the recent killing of Osama bin Laden by a SEALS team has now been reproduced as a map (.bsp) for the the…

NYTimes: Secret Held if Bin Laden Lived Here, Village Says

If Bin Laden ever hid in Chak Shah Muhammad, a small farming village in Pakistan, the residents said they would have known. http://nyti.ms/kvZyqi

PHP Tutorial for Beginners | Webmonkey | Wired.com

Very good stuff for absolute  beginners… PHP is a powerful scripting language that fits gracefully into HTML and puts the tools for creating dynamic websites in the hands of the people — even people like me who were too lazy to learn…

Cree.py takes ubiquitous computing to a new level of surveillance

All your digital breadcrumbs in one place… A program aggregates all your location based information and plots it on a map. A new software tool created by Greek programmer Yiannis Kakavas goes much farther in the shock category. Called “Creepy,” Kakavas’ tool…

Business Wakes Up to Cloud Computing – NYTimes.com

We are finally getting somewhere… Cloud computing, though, is more than a hyper-efficient means of distributing digital services. The cloud model is animated by a set of Internet technologies for juggling computing workloads in data centers far more efficiently than in the…

Installing WordPress plugins and Buddy Press for beginners

The power of WordPress consists in its ability to be extended to perform any number of tricks. In this post I will introduce the notion of WordPress plugins for my WebProduction class and I will illustrate it with several examples, including Register…

Fukushima: Radioactive Water is Flowing into Pacific

The level of radioactivity in the basin is about 1000 milisievert/hour, 330 times higher than the radiation dose that is normally absorbed in one year by an inhabitant of an industrialized country. TEPCO representatives said that they intended to stop ...

Workers Give Glimpse of Japan’s Nuclear Crisis

In the early days after the earthquake and tsunami, many Tokyo Electric workers had little time to speak out. An explosion had blown the roof off one of the reactor buildings in Fukushima, heightening fears of large-scale radiation exposure. ...See all...

Japan considers covering Fukushima with fabric to contain radiation

It's already doing so. Japan's Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed radioactive iodine in the sea near Fukushima at 3355 times the normal level. Our correspondent Mark Willacy joins me now from Tokyo. When we spoke an hour or two ago, Mark, Reuters ...

Developing nations’ rise poses risks for rich ones via msnbc.com iPhone app

Online Interaction Graduate Seminar to be offered during the fall semester 2011 at Purdue University

Next fall I will teach the Online Interaction Seminar at Purdue University. The class is listed as 47566 – COM 63200 – 001 and it will meet on Tuesday – Thursday from 1:30 pm to 2:45 pm PM. This is a fun…

Is Justin Bieber’s fame in cyberspace as big as in real life?

Ali Wylam, one of the students enrolled in my Com 435 class (Emerging Communication Technologies) found that teen sensation Justin Bieber has a gigantic stature in cyberspace. He is right up there with the big corporations. He garnered over 30 million monthly…

WordPress statistics: Most popular content management system in the world

WordPress is indubitable the best content management system in the world. It is used by half of the top 1 million Alexa sites that run off-the-shelf content management systems. Also, there are 27 million WordPress publishers in the world, of which I…

Scientists: Radiation in Japan food poses low risk – USATODAY.com

News about “radioactive” foodstuff in Japan needs to be taken with a grain of salt: The Japanese government has found radiation levels “significantly above” acceptable levels in milk, spinach and kakina, another leafy vegetable, produced near the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power…

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi fortified compound residence Bab Al-Aziza in Tripoli bombed: Map and video clip

The latest news from Gaddafi’s compound Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Of the two dozen residences Muammar Gaddafi calls home, the most known and recognizable is the Bab el-Aziza compound, located right in the heart…

Slashdot’s top stories of the day: Moore’s law does no apply, radiation

The end of Moore’s law and it’s economic effects https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/03/20/0413224/Michio-Kakus-Dark-Prediction-For-the-End-of-Moores-Law?from=newsletter#commentlisting Links: 0. http://slashdot.org/my/journal 1. http://www.salon.com/technology/computers/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/03/19/moores_law_ends_excerpt How much radiation can your body absorb? https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/03/20/1422238/A-Handy-Radiation-Dose-Chart-From-XKCD?from=newsletter#commentlisting Links: 0. http://xkcd.com/radiation/ Which are the world’s premiere science cities? https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/03/20/1648254/Citation-Map-Shows-Top-Science-Cities?from=newsletter#commentlisting Links: 0. http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.3216 1. http://www.i-programmer.info/news/81-web-general/2154-citation-map-shows-top-science-cities.html

Japanese Physicist: Fukushima Plant needs to be entombed Chernobyl style

Defensive measures at the Fukushima Nuclear plant are called by Michio Kaku, a Japanese physicist teaching in the US, “like squirting a gun at a forest fire.” He would opt for the Russian solution, entomb the reactor in sand, boric acid and…

‘What the hell is going on?’: Japanese PM

As dangerous levels of radiation leaked from four crippled nuclear reactors in Japan's earthquake-ravaged northeast Tuesday, Naoto Kan, the Prime Minister, stormed into an executive meeting of Tokyo Electric Power Co. and demanded to know, ...See a...

Japan's Northeast Coast, Before and After The Quake

Radiation levels continue to fluctuate at the nuclear power complex at Fukushima. Workers struggling to control the damaged reactors there and the spent fuel were withdrawn earlier today. Throughout the most heavily damaged areas along the coast north ...

Will the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster give pebble reactors a second lease on life?

As the reactor failure at the Fukushima Plant in the aftermath of the Sendai earthquake increases public apprehension of nuclear technology, the future of this type of energy production might not be as bleak as it looks. There is one design that…

Radiation in Tokyo ten times the normal level

Live feed of main Japanese Television Network (NHK) in English Online TV Shows by Ustream Update: Fukushima powerplant releases radiation in the atmosphere. Spent fuel rods could be exposed to air and catch on fire. MSNBC reports that the situation in Tokyo…

Volvo Drives Augmented-Reality Ad Campaign on YouTube

The next effort in new media is for the new Volvo S60 sports sedan. Volvo and its agency, Team Volvo, part of Havas, are joining forces with the YouTube unit of Google for a campaign centered on augmented reality.See all stories on…

Facebook makes 60% of its revenue from game applications and Groupon

Facebook does not seem to have a very large advertising footprint. In fact, it relies in great measure on two major partners, Zynga, the producer of Farmville, and Groupon. Gaming and group buying partners are responsible for 2/3rds of Facebook’s revenue. While…

MyTourGuide.com aims to become a Wikipedia of travel

By integrating augmented reality, one of the most exciting new technologies, MyTourGuide.com tours can combine real world images with modified or enhanced images or graphics. MyTourGuide.com is the first mobile tour developer to include this ...See all...

Most popular technology news at New York Times March 9th 2011

Most emailed articles at New York Times 1.Warner Tests Renting Film on Facebook for Web Cash http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/technology/09facebook.html?src=me&ref=technology&nl=technology&emc=techupdateema6 2.YouTube Acquires a Producer of Videos http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/technology/08youtube.html?src=me&ref=technology&nl=technology&emc=techupdateema6 3.Matchmaking for Web Start-Ups and Investors http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/technology/start-ups/07angel.html?src=me&ref=technology&nl=technology&emc=techupdateema6 4.Bits: Used iPads Selling Quickly Online http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/first-generation-ipad-reselling-quickly-online/?src=me&ref=technology&nl=technology&emc=techupdateema6 5.Storing Your Files Inside…

Who are the copts?

The recent and worrying news of violent incidents between the Muslim majority and Copts, a largely unknown Christian minority of Egypt, made many ask “since when are there Christians in Egypt?” The answer is simple: since the first or second century AD.…

Software Progress Beats Moore’s Law

From The New York Times: BITS: Software Progress Beats Moore’s Law Research shows the pace of software progress has surprisingly outstripped gains in computing from faster chips. “A White House advisory report cited research, including a study of progress over a 15-year…

Sites Like Twitter Absent From Free Speech Pact

From The New York Times: Sites Like Twitter Absent From Free Speech Pact The effort by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft has failed to attract other tech companies, raising questions about its impact. “The initiative was created in 2008 after human rights groups…