On CyberJournalist.net I found A Bloggers’ Code of Ethics. This code was adapted from a journalists code, so I am not sure if it should be applied to research blogs, but most of it reads right. Is there a research blog code? How would it be different?
Note, the link is no longer functional. Here is a different Code of Ethics from Morten Rand-Hendriksen. How to start a blog was also recommended to me as a place to get advice on setting one up.
We are releasing version 1.0 of the TAPoRware Tools. (You can get the version 1.0 now, but we there are some loose ends to clean up.) That got me thinking about the next version. Stan Ruecker and Zachary Devereux of the University of Alberta gave a paper at the Face of Text on Scraping Google and Blogstreet for Just-in-Time Text Analysis which showed the potential for certain tools and included a list of features they would like. Stan kindly sent me the list so I could weave it into my list.
Continue reading TAPoRware Features
Earlier I mentioned the need for game engines for games research. Brad Nickerson at UNB sent me a link to Panda3D from the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. Panda 3D was originally developed by Disney and it sounds like it was used by them for some games.
Continue reading Open Source Game Engines
The Da Vinci Effect is a fundraising campaign by Carnegie Mellon that is touring the US and which bills itself as a “multisensory theatrical event”. From the digital video is seems to involve an actor dressed up like Leonardo who coordinates a multimedia show.
What is interesting is how Carnegie Mellon is focusing on the intersection of arts and technology and using Leonardo as an iconic figure for that interesection. They aren’t promoting Italian studies or Renaissance studies, but the combination of entertainment and technology. I wonder what Leonardo would have pushed as a curriculum for effect?
Continue reading The Da Vinci Effect: Carnegie Mellon Gift Tour
The Guildhall at SMU (Southern Methodist University) offers a 18 month certficate in digital game development. They seem to have a serious facility and faculty complement. The program allows students to specialize in Art Creation, Level Design and Software Development. The program appears to have been designed with industry people and aims to be responsive to the industry. I don’t see a lot of theory or narrativity, but the curriculuar sections are behind a password.
This came to me from Paul Taylor.
One of the most exciting directions in text analysis is the adaptation of spiders, trackers and aggregators so that they can gather just-in-time texts (jitexts) for further analysis. This could open up text analysis to cultural studies researchers and make it a playful way to comb the internet. Most of the tools out there start with Google as their spider – do we need to create our own index so as to avoid depending on Google?
Continue reading Text Analysis Spiders
Both The Globe and Mail and CBC ran stories about researchers who compared word lists from Iris Murdoch’s books looking at word variety. See CBC News: Iris Murdoch novel may be evidence of Alzheimer’s. Now that computers index our files (a feature in Tiger, for example), could we get them to warn us when our word variety goes down? Could my e-mail client or blog be fitted to alert me to changes in my use of language?
Continue reading Text Analysis and Alzheimer’s
UMass Amherst reports that Researchers create tool to automatically search handwritten historical documents” href=”http://www.umass.edu/umhome/news/articles/7683.php”>Researchers create tool to automatically search handwritten historical documents. Working with 1,000 scanned pages of George Washington’s manuscripts, a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have developed a manuscript retrieval system that can find words like “regiment” in the handwritten manuscripts. There is a demo at Handwritten Manuscript Retrieval.
This is thanks to Matt Patey.
StÈfan Sinclair has blogged an article on Techies getting on-the-job nontech training? by Ed Frauenheim, CNET News.com, Nov. 19, 2004. The article is based on a report by Robert Half Technology on training in nontechnical areas.
Skills such as project management, leadership and communication may be critical for the next generation of information technology (IT) managers, but many employees are not receiving formal education in these areas, a new survey finds.† Nearly half (47 percent) of chief information officers (CIOs) polled said their companies do not provide IT professionals with instruction in business and communication fundamentals. (Press Release, “Knowledge Gap: Survey Finds Only Half of Companies Provide Non-Technical Training to IT Staff”, Nov. 17, 2004, Employment News – Employment Information.)
Like StÈfan, my question is whether such “soft skills” can be taught in typical workplace training? What exactly is it that we want in employees when we hire them? Are the listed skills really “soft” skills or are they deep capacities for ethical work, questioning, and thoughtful communication? These are what the humanities have tried to teach. Perhaps the technical skills should be acquired in the workplace and the human skills acquired at school.
Continue reading Soft Skills for Techies
St?©fan Sinclair drew my attention to a neat interactive visualization of walking, BioMotionLab1.6 by the Biomotion Lab at Ruhr-University and Queen’s University. It took me a bit to get it. Try it out.