Professional-Lurker blog was listed as the Feedster Feed of the Day on November 13, 2005.
Professional-Lurker blog was the recipient of Best Research Based Blog High Esteem ranking in the 2004 EduBlog Awards.
The blogger is co-author of the 2004 EduBlog Awards winning paper Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs.
Mary-Chapin Carpenter
Harry Chapin
The Chieftains
Emma Christian
Connie Dover
Joseph Fire Crow
Dan Fogelberg
Nanci Griffith
Tim Grimm
Dan Hill
Al Jarreau
Joshua Kadison
Carole King
Kevin Locke
Bill Miller
Van Morrison
John Prine
Boz Scaggs
Andrew Vasquez
The Waifs
Dar Williams
Folk Alley: Folk Music, Traditional Music, Celtic Music, and World Music an online radio station
particularly the NPR channels.
Prolurkr's last.fm Recent Tracks
... Internetwork Ecology ...
Book Collector
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Dover Electronic Clip Art Series (CD-ROM)
FileMaker Pro
GoBinder
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MindMap
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Reference Manager
RocketPost
Ultra Recall
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WB Editor
Web Frequency Indexer
The Word Meter
See Prolurker's Personal List at MyProgs
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists"
You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), "Back to Methuselah" (1921), part 1, act 1
Don't let fear convince you that you're too weak to have courage. Fear is the opportunity for courage, not the proof of cowardice.
McCain, John (2004, September). In Search of Courage: Finding the Courage Within You. FastCompany, 51-56.
In the search for character and commitment, we must rid ourselves of our inherited, even cherished biases and prejudices. Character, ability and intelligence are not concentrated in one sex over the other, nor in persons with certain accents or in certain races or in persons holding degrees from some universities over others. When we indulge ourselves in such irrational prejudices, we damage ourselves most of all and ultimately assure ourselves of failure in competition with those more open and less biased.
J. Irwin Miller, Chairman of the Board (1951-1977), Cummins Inc. From 1983 letter about diversity at the company.
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February 28, 2005
Blogged academic paper
Andrea Handl at :: .. :: zerzaust :: .. :: appears to be blogging a paper on blogging, language,and equity - though I'm not sure if it's his work or that of Elmine Wijnia. I have to admit I'm having more then a little trouble following what he is doing, though individual posts seem interesting and useful. Check out everything posted for Monday February 28, 2005.
Posted by prolurkr at 05:35 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Reading success
I have finished, Stone, Biz (2004). Who Let the Blogs Out? : A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs. New York: St. Martin's Press. The book is a very good general discussion of blogs and blogging.
Now it's back to: Burnett, Robert & Marshall, P. David (2003). Web Theory: An Introduction. London: Routledge. I started this book earlier, only to sideline it so I could read both Biz Stone books. So I will be working my way through it for the next couple of days.
Quals at SLIS IU
I have had several questions from readers about the quals process to which I keep referring. I thought it might be useful to give you a link to the Qualifying Exam Guidelines - the guideline details the process in a fairly concise two pages - used by my department the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University.
This process is equivalent to what some other U.S. Ph.D. students refer to as "sitting for exams," though our process differs significantly in several areas. First we write a lengthy literature review on a topic which is worked out with ones advisory committee. Second the paper is both broad and deep, and therefore it takes more then one semester to develop, where as most "exam" takers can read the last group of required literature for their exams while taking a single preparatory class for the same. Finally the completed exam paper is voted upon by the entire faculty of the department rather then simply ones committee members.
The following useful general overview is taken from the Indiana University Graduate School 2004-2005 Academic Bulletin:
Qualifying Examination
This examination, given at such time and in such manner as the major department shall determine, shall be written, although additional oral examinations may be required. The qualifying examination shall cover the major subjects and may, at the discretion of the minor department(s) or the interdepartmental committee, cover the minor subjects as well.
Normally, the qualifying examination is taken after the student has completed all course work for the Ph.D. All such work offered in partial fulfillment of degree requirements must either have been completed within seven consecutive calendar years of the passing of the qualifying examination or be revalidated according to procedures outlined in this bulletin (see Revalidation).4 Reading proficiency required in one or more foreign languages must also have been demonstrated, whether by course work or examination, no more than seven years before the passing of the qualifying examination. In the case of an examination of more than one part, the date of passing is regarded as the date of passing the final portion of the examination, typically the oral examination. Students who fail the qualifying examination are normally allowed to retake it only once. The qualifying examination must be passed at least eight months before the date the degree is awarded.
I hope that makes the process a bit more understandable, as it seems there is a wide variety of ways one completes this process dependent upon which university and department/school thereof you are attached.
Weeks that lag
Last week was one of those weeks where non-academic stuff just takes over your life. It seemed like every day brought some new issue that needed to much of my time and raised my stress level to unenjoyable heights. I sincerely plan to make this week different. I have simple, healthful goals...sleep well, eat on time and make sound food choices, and get some work done.
My plan is that by the end of the week I will have caught up my reading and will have a both a working quals title and brief statement of the project in hand for myself and my committee.
Blog Commenting Etiquette?
T. L. Pakii Pierce at How To Blog For Fun & Profit! has an interesting post on Blog Commenting Etiquette.
If someone comes to your blog and comments and also leaves a url to their blog or web site in a signature under that post - that is acceptable - maybe. It is one way to use blogs to help boost your blog or web site and build back links legitimately...BUT BUT BUT...it depends on the publisher.
Some publishers don't allow links like that and some do. More often than not, people just post comments and the comment system sign in captures the e-mail address or url. I recommend that if people want to leave a url back to their site as they comment that they first check the blog they are about to comment at and see what manner of comments have been left at the blog previously. This isn't always a real good way to determine if adding your url to your comments is acceptable but it is a good start in ascertaining protocol. Also check to see of the blog has an "acceptable use policy" and follow it if it does. If no policy is in place and you cannot tell from other comments whether it is acceptable or not to post your url then proceed with the understanding that your link my be removed if the blog publisher finds your url to be spammy or against their posting policy.
BUT whatever you do contribute value to the discussion...never post something like "oh that's interesting!" and then put a big link to your stuff.
The issue here is "What is acceptable etiquette for comments at your blog?" Just as Trackback has proper use in that you don't Trackback someone just because you can you should also watch your comments don't just use comments as a way to self-promote. This is what all spammers do after all. Relevancy and policy are the rules of thumb.
Check out Pierce's blog, he has lots of straightforward information for both the novice and experienced blogger. This post is just one of the valuable entries he has online.
February 27, 2005
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
Hubby and I broke out to go see one of his favorite movies for the first time on the big screen. Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964) is showing at the Yes Cinema.
I am convinced the G.W. must have this movie memorized. Can't tell you how many of the lines sound like things I've heard him say at press conferences. Now THAT is scary.
February 26, 2005
NASA's free World Wind application
jkOnTheRun refers to C:\PIRILLO.EXE post on NASA's free World Wind application.
From the Nasa site:
World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.
Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara.
It's a big download (180 mb) and takes some work to find a mirror that is working, but looks like a cool program - got mine from the AU site because it is afterhours there.
Founder of Amnesty dies aged 83
From the BBC, Founder of Amnesty dies aged 83:
The founder of human rights organisation Amnesty International, Peter Benenson, has died aged 83.
Mr Benenson died on Friday evening at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.
The British lawyer founded the group in 1961 as a one-year campaign after reading a news article on the jailing of two Portuguese students.
"Peter Benenson's life was a courageous testament to his visionary commitment to fight injustice around the world," said Amnesty's Irene Khan.
Amnesty International has a nice bio for Mr. Benenson on their site. Mr. Beneson's life and legacy are a testament to what one voice can do to create a movement.
NYTimes slams the Numa Numa guy
To Gary Brolsma, the guy from the Numa Numa online video: Gary those people at the NYTimes are just mean. I personally love the video and watch it every time I need to smile - which has been quite a lot this week. Have fun with the attention and ignore the nay sayers...they are just jealous anyway. I hope all this bandwidth is not driving you to the poorhouse.
To the NYTimes: I think you would have had to really work to have put in more references to weight, and pejoratives for grassroots entertainment and New Jersey. Get lives guys, we watch the video cause we love it. It's way more fun then going to the opera.
- Links:
- Internet Fame Is Cruel Mistress for a Dancer of the Numa Numa from the elitists at the New York Times.
- Numa Numa video
- Professional-Lurker's first post on the video
Delinking of "Addressing the Unseen"
The link from my paper Addressing the Unseen: The Audience Envisioned for Adolescent Diary Weblogs, in the sidebar, to the SLIS Working Papers has been severed. The department has instituted a second level of review - beyond that being done by the publication venue - and noted that there were typographical errors in my submission. So after a month on the site they pulled it for editing.
The paper will be undergoing some significant revision to add more detail, and make structural changes like using a different citation style, to meet the requirements of the editors.
We feel your piece is informative and clear and represents a useful introduction to an under-researched new area. Overall, for your revisions, we would like you to 1) consider the balance between the data and discussion, 2) reconsider the statistical section and 3) develop conclusions about gender. We feel there is a lot of interesting data in the chapter which could use more analysis. When you start to include examples of blogs (e.g. "As a witness testifying to the experience"), you describe the blog in a couple of sentences, but you don't analyse it, for example, by commenting on language use. We feel this is a missed opportunity. In the statistical analysis section, we would recommend summarising the findings, as the approach is fairly descriptive. We feel the statistical section would benefit by being set in context of gender theory (as gender is a key variable). Finally, your conclusion could be stronger and perhaps develop points about differences between blogs and other forms of writing, and about gender.
Some minor points. The chapters won't have abstracts, so we'd be grateful if you could incorporate this in your text. It would help to include more subheadings early on (e.g. adolescence, blogs and diaries, etc) in order to make the structure of the chapter clearer; and introducing Langellier's typology later would eliminate current repetition in the introductory section (i.e. cut the reference on p.2).
So rather then progress on a two-track editing system, one for SLIS and one for the book chapter, I have decided to wait until the book chapter revision is completed then I will post that work online possibly at the SLIS Working Papers site or on BROG.
If you have the paper bookmarked you will want to delete that link as the old URL has been overwritten by another paper. Also if you would like a copy of the work prior to its reappearance online, please email me and I will send it out to you.
Here is the current abstract for the piece:
This paper is divided into two sections. In the first section I discuss adolescent diary weblogs and their prevalence online, situating them with respect to their offline antecedents, and aligning them with concepts of offline and online performance including Langellier's (1998) typology of personal narrative performance. The second section uses content analysis in applying Langellier's typology to the implied audience embedded in adolescent diary weblog posts. The content analysis of a small sample of adolescent weblogs finds that Langellier's typology can be successfully applied to adolescent diary weblogs.
Happy (belated) Birthday, BROG!
Shamelessly stolen from BROG: The (We)blog Research on Genre project where it was posted by Susan Herring:
Just over two years ago (February 12, 2003, to be precise) the BROG project met for the first time. Its original members were Sabrina Bonus, Lois Scheidt, Elijah Wright, and myself. Inspired by Diane Squire, who was into blogs before most people in SLIS had heard of them, we got together to do one simple study -- a content analysis of random blogs, in order to characterize the emergent weblog genre. (See Diane's article about it in SLIS News from Spring 2003 -- Yes that IS a frog -- photoshopped -- on Lois's shoulder.) It was low-hanging fruit at a time when almost no serious scholarship on blogs existed. Since then, blog scholarship -- and blogging -- have expanded. And we've acquired a taste for the fruit, and are willing to climb higher to find it -- to the point of hand-coding nearly 6000 blogs for a link analysis study last year, just to be able to characterize with confidence one small corner of the blogosphere. Two years later, the BROG project lives on, an informal but durable collaboration with more research ideas than we have the time and resources to develop, even with our present expanded membership. Who would have thought we'd still be at it? :-)
It has been a wild, wonderful ride that I plan to hang on to till it ends. In the last two years I have learned a vast amount about research, academic friendships, blogs, and sushi...not necessarily in that order.
Along the way we have published papers we are incredibly proud of, incited a bit of controversy over the methods of our research (quantitative vs. qualitative debate), gotten to travel to conferences (Toronto, Kona HI @ 2, LA), and had far more fun then anyone would have thought possible for a bunch of grad students hanging out with top-drawer professors.
Mostly those that join us stay. Sabrina Bonus had the bad taste to graduate, get a job, and start to assume a more "normal" middle class life...we wish her well out there on the left coast. Ning Yu, the brilliant women behind those amazing graphical representations in the Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis "From the Bottom Up", got a real campus job so that she can pay the bills. I totally understand having to pay the bills.
I forgot about Michael Tyworth who received his masters and wondered off to do doctoral work in Pennsylvania. Sorry Mike my oversight was totally inadvertent.
So now our core group is seven, which gives me more collaborators then I ever would have thought possible. We've tackled great research ideas with more output on the burners, personally I can't wait to get back into BROG work with both feet. Gotta qual first though (my mantra these days).
Thanks to Susan Herring for pulling all of us together. Thanks to Elijah Wright and Sabrina Bonus for teaching me, I didn't know much about blogs or blogging when we began. I just had a serious interest in the phenomena and the desire to learn more about it. Thanks to everyone who has joined us since Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs, you challenge me to find new ways to work within a group. Who would have ever thought that work could be this much fun? It can't be legal. LOL
Sushi anyone?
Posted by prolurkr at 09:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 25, 2005
Kathryn LaBarre - Accepted Diss Proposal
Kathryn LaBarre's dissertation proposal The Use of Faceted Analytico-Synthetic Theory as Revealed in the Practice of Website Construction and Design was accepted without revision. Way to go Kathryn!
February 24, 2005
Young People Online
My colleague in AU, Angela Thomas asked her young collaborators:
If you could write a guide for parents about the internet, would you have any warnings for them, based on any unpleasant experiences or knowledge you have gained?
Their answers are very insightful. Hint: If is hints at irony it probably is meant to do so. *S*
DON'T YOU DARE LET YOUR KIDS INTO PUBLIC CHATROOMS EVER!!!!!!! *coughs* Yeah, I have to agree with Jandalf on that. I've only been in one or two... on Barrowdowns... and that was bad enough. And, to carry on with a basic guide by me...
Do not let your children read slash fanfic. It will taint their minds.
Do not let your children see the image of Gollum in a tutu. That will taint their minds as well.
Set google on strict filtering, unless you want your kids looking at nudes. And supervise them when they search too, just in case. Especially image searches regarding female celebs.
Do not just randomly jump about in live journal.
Do not randomly email people.
Do not post your IM or email in a profile. Especially IM. Unless you actually want a wannabe jerk on all your IM lists as aliases trying to flirt with you at all possible moments, do not let them have your IM.
Keep your password secret. I haven't given mine out, but, really. ...okay, a couple people who I really trust could actually hack most of my accounts, but... heh... KEEP IT SECRET!
And don't join webpages that just have "some" evil stuff on them. Chances are it'll spread and taint the rest, no matter how nice the rest of the page may seem.
Don't read R rated fanfics if they're in the romance category.
Don't flirt with people who might take you seriously.
Heh... yes, I could go on for hours about what you should avoid doing on the internet... I've learned everything the hard way.
New book for the library
A new book was added to the library today. Not for quals exactly but surely for quotation in the revisions of a couple of papers. It also will be useful for future online diary research.
Benstock, Shari (Ed.) (1988). The Private Self: Theory and Practice if Women's Autobiographical Writings. Chapel Hill NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
FBI warns against teen blogs
The Blog Herald tells us that the FBI warns against teen blogs
Not content to let their British counterparts warn alone against the dangers that blogging presents children and teens, the FBI in Little Rock has joined in the fun.
According to a report at KTHV Little Rock, the FBI is warning against posting personal information on blogs after 23-year-old Louisiana man was arrested for kidnapping a girl he met through a Xanga blog.
Bill Temple, special agent in charge of the Little Rock FBI says, "We have made numerous arrests, convicted people that have gotten on the Internet pretending to be teenagers and meeting for sexual purposes."
Temple says one in five kids every year is contacted by a predator. He is surprised at the amount of personal information kids are posting in blogs.
Temple says, "The Internet is a wonderful thing for educational purposes and a lot of other things, but it's open to everyone and we live in a dangerous world where not everyone has good intentions."
The FBI apparently has many tips for parents when it comes to Internet safety and never let your kids post pictures of themselves. Never let them give out personal information
Is the issue the technology or the lack of supervision many parents give to their teens online activities? There is no doubt that children and teens should exercise care when releasing personal information in any forum, not just online. But my experience is that in initial contacts very little information is given, it is only as relationships grow that more information is passed. This is the same process that adults use in building relationships.
One giant question that underlays this issue is one of prevalence. Studies including UK Children Go Online show that children are approached online with access to materials and offers for encounters that most adults would find inappropriate. However what I would like to see addressed in a study is who are the people making the offers and providing the materials? There is a colloquial impression, fuild by the media, that all of these are pedophilia issues. In my experience much of these issues are created by older children/teens approaching younger children/teens. The routes for handing the two issues are quite different and need detailed investigation.
The Biology of Faith
The Guardian has a fascinating research based article on the biological components that may predispose humans to faith in a higher power, see Tests of faith
Faith has long been a puzzle for science, and it's no surprise why. By definition, faith demands belief without a need for supporting evidence, a concept that could not be more opposed to the principles of scientific inquiry. In the eyes of the scientist, an absence of evidence reduces belief to a hunch. It places the assumptions at the heart of many religions on the rockiest of ground.
So why do so many people believe? And why has belief proved so resilient as scientific progress unravels the mysteries of plagues, floods, earthquakes and our understanding of the universe? By injecting nuns with radioactive chemicals, by scanning the brains of people with epilepsy and studying naughty children, scientists are now working out why. When the evidence is pieced together, it seems that evolution prepared what society later moulded: a brain to believe.
The article continues
Childish belief is one thing, but religious belief is embraced by people of all ages and is by no means the preserve of the uneducated. According to Boyer, the persistence of belief into adulthood is at least in part down to a presumption. "When you're in a belief system, it's not that you stop asking questions, it's that they become irrelevant. Why don't you ask yourself about the existence of gravity? It's because a lot of the stuff you do every day presupposes it and it seems to work, so where's the motivation to question it?" he says. "In belief systems, you tend to enter this strange state where you start thinking there must be something to it because everybody around you is committed to it. The general question of whether it's true is relegated."
As one who does not believe that she will ever get to the point of not questioning, I find this discussion of the biological basis of faith to be fascinating and very relevant to human communication in general. We have many kinds of faith in our lives...a belief in the unseen...might much of it be biologically based?
February 23, 2005
CFP - Seventh Annual Minitrack on Persistent Conversation Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS 39)
Seventh Annual Minitrack on Persistent Conversation
Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS 39)
Hyatt Regency, Kauai, Hawaii
January 4-7, 2006
=== AT A GLANCE ===
= Summary of Topic =
Persistent conversations occur via instant messaging, chat, email, blogs, bulletin boards, MOOs, graphical VR environments, document annotation systems, text messaging on mobile phones, etc. Such forms of conversation play a crucial role in domains such as online communities, the sharing and management of knowledge, and the support of e-commerce, e-learning and other network mediated interactions. The
persistence of digitally mediated conversation affords new uses (e.g. searching, replaying, restructuring) and raises new problems. This multi-disciplinary minitrack seeks contributions from researchers and designers that improve our ability to understand, analyze, and/or design persistent conversation systems.
= Who =
Researchers and designers from fields such as anthropology, computer-mediated communication, HCI, interaction design, linguistics, management, psychology, rhetoric, sociology, and so forth.
= Chairs =
Thomas Erickson, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center (snowfall@acm.org)
Susan Herring, School of Library and Information Science,
Indiana University (herring@indiana.edu)
= Important Dates* =
Abstract submission:** Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Abstract feedback: Thursday, March 31, 2005
Paper submission: Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Accept/Reject notice: Monday, August 15, 2005
Final papers due: Thursday, September 15, 2005
One author must register: Thursday, September 15, 2005
* For other dates. such as end of early registration and hotel deadlines see the official HICSS conference site
** Abstracts are optional but strongly recommended; to submit a paper without an abstract, please contact the chairs
= For More Information =
* This call for participation: http://www.visi.com/~snowfall/HICSS39pc.html
* History (papers and participants in previous minitracks):
http://www.visi.com/~snowfall/HICSS_PC_History.html
* About the minitrack, contact: snowfall@acm.org, herring@indiana.edu
* About the HICSS conference, see:
http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/Hicss39/apahome39.htm
=== DETAILS ===
= About the Minitrack =
This interdisciplinary minitrack and workshop brings designers and researchers together to explore persistent conversation, the transposition of ordinarily ephemeral conversation into the potentially persistent digital medium. The phenomena of interest include human-to-human interactions carried out using chat, instant
messaging, text messaging, email, web logs, mailing lists, news groups, bulletin board systems, multi-authored Web documents, structured conversation systems, textual and graphical virtual worlds, etc. Computer-mediated conversations blend characteristics of oral conversation with those of written text: they may be synchronous
or asynchronous; their audience may be small or vast; they may be highly structured or almost amorphous; etc. The persistence of such conversations gives them the potential to be searched, browsed, replayed, annotated, visualized, restructured, and recontextualized, thus opening the door to a variety of new uses and practices.
The particular aim of the minitrack and workshop is to bring together researchers who analyze existing computer-mediated conversational practices and sites, with designers who propose, implement, or deploy
new types of conversational systems. By bringing together participants from such diverse areas as anthropology, computer-mediated communication, HCI, interaction design, linguistics, management, psychology, rhetoric, sociology, and the like, we hope that the work of each may inform the others, suggesting new questions, methods, perspectives, and design approaches.
= About Paper Topics =
We are seeking papers that address one or both of the following two general areas:
* Understanding Practice. The burgeoning popularity of the internet (and intranets) provides an opportunity to study and characterize new forms of conversational practice. Questions of interest range from how various features of conversations (e.g., turn-taking, topic organization, expression of paralinguistic information) have adapted in response to the digital medium, to new roles played by persistent conversation in domains such as education, business, and entertainment.
*Design. Digital systems do not currently support conversation well: it is difficult to converse with grace, clarity, depth and coherence over networks. But this need not remain the case. Toward this end, we welcome analyses of existing systems as well as designs for new systems which better support conversation. Also of interest are inquiries into how participants design their own conversations within the digital medium -- that is, how they make use of system features to create, structure, and regulate their discourse.
Examples of appropriate topics include, but are not limited to:
* Turn-taking, threading and other structural features of CMC
* The dynamics of large scale conversation systems (e.g. USENET)
* Methods for summarizing or visualizing conversation archives
* Studies of virtual communities or other sites of digital conversation
* The roles of mediated conversation in knowledge management
* Studies of the use of instant messaging in large organizations
* Novel designs for computer-mediated conversation systems
* Analyses of or designs for distance learning systems
For other examples see the list of previous years' papers:
http://www.visi.com/~snowfall/HICSS_PC_History.html
= The Workshop =
For the past six meetings the minitrack has been preceded by a half-day workshop; we hope this will be continued for 2006, but will not know for sure until March or April. See the online version of this call for more details:
http://www.visi.com/~snowfall/HICSS39pc.html
= Instructions for Abstract Submission =
Submit a 250 word abstract of your proposed paper via email to the chairs: Tom Erickson <snowfall@acm.org>, Susan Herring <herring@indiana.edu> by the deadline noted above.
= Instructions for Paper Submission =
* HICSS papers must contain original material not previously published, or currently submitted elsewhere. All papers will be submitted in double column publication format and limited to 10 pages including diagrams and references. Papers undergo a double-blind review.
* Do not submit the manuscript to more than one Minitrack Chair. If unsure which Minitrack is appropriate, submit the abstract to the Track Chair for guidance.
* Submit your full paper according to the instructions found on the HICSS web site: http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/Hicss39/apahome39.htm
=== END, HICSS PERSISTENT CONVERSATION CFP ===
------------------------------------------
Tom Erickson and Susan Herring (snowfall@acm.org, herring@indiana.edu)
Chairs, HICSS 39 Minitrack and Workshop on Persistent Conversation
Digitial Media: Content and Communication Track
Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS 39)
http://www.visi.com/~snowfall/hicsspc39.html
Mutliple flavors of blogging hit the NY Times
New York Times Technology Section has an article on Bloggers Add Moving Images to Their Musings By Sandeep Junnarkar.
Web logs - the personal online journals better known as blogs - use text to dissect nearly every conceivable topic, and now video blogs, or vlogs, which incorporate moving images, are on the rise. Mobile blogs, or moblogs, have brought blogging into the cellular age by allowing people to post video and photos taken with camera phones to a blog, or to call in an audio posting.
But the object remains the same as with traditional blogs: to inspire (or to provoke) others to post responses to one's ruminations and images.
Handling comments from paper and presentation submissions
I personally see much value in the comments I receive to papers I write for conferences or publication. But being human, I often don't see the value for at least 24-hours after I first read the comments I receive. After a couple of recent conversations, about comments and the reviewing process in general, with other scholars and while having three sets of comments to paper's laying on my desk - all for work that is headed for publication either in press or pre-submission - I decided to outline what I do when working with this universally required and equally despised system.
- When I receive comments I read them through as soon as I can find a moment to do so.
- Then I vent quietly. If needed I pull up a notepad and write out my issues with what was said, so that my venting is complete. Once I've written it all out, I delete the notepad or tear the paper up into very very small pieces. There is a weird level of satisfaction to hearing the paper rip.
- Then I set the comments aside for at least 24-hours, longer if possible.
- It's amazing how much more sense, how much easier to comply with, and how much more helpful and insightful all of the suggestions seem after a good nights sleep.
On the rare occasion I have received truly hurtful comments, in this single case the light of many mornings doesn't improve what was said about me personally, I try to remember that reviewers are human too - they are aren't they - and that they have bad days as well. And I try to remember this as I review for conferences and publications.
In truth, the first review I wrote for a journal editor was pretty awful - much to negative with not enough suggestions that would help the author improve the article. Luckily for me, the editor in question was very good at helping me work through my concerns and develop a better style for relaying my comments to an author. Sadly not everyone gets that mentorship.
So read your comments, go hangout with friends for awhile, then reread the comments. It does help to lessen the sting of someone else not loving your work as much as you do, or of them finding flaws with a piece that you think is nearing brilliance. Buy a beer for me too, getting graded is always a hard thing for those of us that have been socialized to want to be perfect or nearly so.
What do SPAM and HIV have in common?
From Geek News Central, Spam Filters May Unlock The Secret to HIV
What does Spam filters have to do with Bio-Med researchers around the world? It looks like Software scientists at Microsoft are testing their spam blocking techniques to see if these ideas can be used to find a vaccine for HIV. Today this alliance will be announcing a plan to use "machine learning" or "data mining" computational techniques to decipher HIV's wildly creative genetic ability to constantly change and disguise itself from immune system detection and deletion.
HIV is constantly mutating, but researches feel it shows a pattern somewhat similar to how spammers mutate their e-mails to avoid detection. What works for detecting and filtering spam may be the same technique used to find the secret of HIV mutation and someday find a vaccine. The Seattle Post Intelligencer has an excellent article and graphics that will show you more of the concept. We can only pray that something of benefit will come from this project.