WikiScanner

The media has been reporting on a neat tool that Virgil Griffith developed called the WikiScanner which scans the Wikipedia for entries edited by a particular domain. This has allowed people to find that people at the Department of Defence, for example, are hard at work editing the entries for abortion and the pill. The BBC has a story at Wikipedia ‘shows CIA page edits’. Wired has a story, See Who’s Editing Wikipedia – Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign. Wired also has place you can submit interesting Wikipedia Spin Jobs.

All this raises the question of what/who is a legitimate Wikipedia author? Is there something wrong with a company editing its own entry? Isn’t the point of the open enditing to let all the various interests out there negotiate the entries?

I should add that the WikiScanner is an example of the unexpected uses of datamining. It uses information no one expected could be mined and combined to produce interesting results that can be interpreted.

Adobe Labs – Apollo

Adobe has developed Adobe Integrated Runtime (or AIR) as a web applications development platform. AIR was previously called Apollo and reminds me Konfabulator and OS X Dashboard applications. With it you can adapt web applications into desktop applications. AIR lets you take an application written in HTML, Flash, AJAX, and JavaScript and create a runtime desktop application.

So, why do the Dashboard widgets only run when you turn the Dashboard on? Why not let them run like other applications? Konfabulator did. And … regarding Konfabulator, they seem to have been bought out by Yahoo are now supporting Yahoo! Widgets.

Is there a name for these small, easy-to-program, networked applications? Niall Kennedy and others call these tiny tools “at-a-glance” applications. Kennedy has an Engadget story that talks about Dashboard and its history.

I’m thinking this would be a good way to teach interface design to students comfortable with web design. I also think we could do some neat stuff with web services like those from TAPoR.

What if violence is good for you?

The Globe and Mail has a story about the virtues of playing computer games by Guy Dixon, What if violence is good for you? (Aug. 11, 2007, R1 and R7) Strangely the title and lead picture in the print edition is different (and more appropriate) than online. Online the title is about violence and the picture is the Terminator. In print there is a picture of a shadowed kid playing games and the title is “A healthy way to spend your summer?” followed by, “It sure is!”. The print version of the story also appears online, A healthy way to spend your summer? and is longer. The violent version was posted 40 minutes before and is shorter. Are G&M writers posting as different stories the same story as it evolves. Did Dixon decide to spin the story differently? Hmmmm.

Anyway, the story is worth noting as it points to evidence that game playing is good for problem solving skills.

Leiter Reports: Philosophy Blog

The Leiter Reports is a blog kept by Brian Leiter and others with “News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture…and a bit of poetry.” It looks like a good way to track the profession.

Thanks to Wes for this.

Youtube – Google Developers Day: Theorizing from Data presentation

Theorizing from Data is a 52 minute long presentation by Peter Norvig at Google about what they can do (and are doing) with lots of textual data. While it is long, it is excellent. One possible conclusion is that linguistic models don’t compete with lots of data and statistical methods. Some of the useful applications of this are Google Sets which shows you terms that cluster with the items you provide. Another is Google Trends
and Google Translate.

This is part of a set of videos from the Google Developers Day.

Thanks to Alex for this.

Evaluating Digital Media for Tenure and Promotion

I am giving a talk today at the MLA organized ADE/ADFL meeting in Montreal on evaluating new media research work. I prepared this cheatsheet for the participants, Evaluating Digital Work (PDF). The short answer is:

  • Communicate Early and Often
    • Be clear about expectations starting with the job ad
  • Recognize the Administrative Work
    • Don’t ask them to run a lab or fix your computer without recognition
  • Statement of Purpose
    • Have author describe the original reseach
    • Get documentation
  • Have it Reviewed by Experts
    • In the content field, and
    • Technical experts
    • Have it reviewed in original form

Scratch: Block Programming

Image of ScratchScratch is a visual programming language for kids developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT. You program by plugging blocks together and you can then share and comment on projects through the web site.

I heard about this listening to Nicholas Negroponte’s TED talk on “The vision behind One Laptop Per Child.” (A project to develop a $100 laptop for millions of kids to learn with around the world.) Scratch is the sort of free downloadable programming environment he imagines will be used on the OLPC by kids.