Screenshot: A Weblog

I know that a lot of schools are looking at outsourcing more and more services to save money - both physical services like facilities maintenance and technological services. I liked this student perspective in a recent Yale Daily News on Yale's plan to transition their email to Gmail. Besides enumerating some of the privacy and accessibility concerns that such plans have raised, the article argues for an open process when making such a significant change. It seems, from these students' perspective at least, there are questions they would like to have answered about the services Gmail will provide before a switch is made. I cannot comment on what types of opportunities for information and feedback Yale may have provided. But taking this article at face value, these types of open conversations can be time consuming, but particularly at a college or university I think there is so much value to helping students practice being part of complex decisions where multiple factors are being weighed, that the type of transparency being called for has a strong connection to the educational goals of these institutions.

Posted by Amanda at 8:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am teaching information security this term, so expect more security related content over the next couple of months. First up, if you're wondering how easily traceable you are on the internet, visit Panopticlick. A project from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the site looks at what unique information it can collect about you via your browser - even if you have cookies off. Based on information like your time zone, your screen size, what fonts your browser has access to, and what plug-ins you have, a "fingerprint" is created for you, and the compared against the fingerprints of all of the other users to try the site so far. My browser tested as unique against the 610,703 tested at the site so far. While that doesn't prove that my configuration is 100% unique, and certainly most if not all of that information is easily changeable if you are trying to hide, it does suggest that if sites (whether corporate or government) were interested in tracking visitors and sharing information about what people are doing to build up profiles, it would be quite plausible.

Posted by Amanda at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It is a convenient coincidence that a number of interesting articles about different aspects of gaming and gaming culture have surfaced in time for the last week of my intersession course.

• Develop magazine recounts the stories of the ten biggest flops as games in the past decade - the reasons behind the failures are the most interesting part
• MSNBC reports that the size of certain portions of your brain predicts your ability at playing video games - an odd claim given that "video game" is a very broad category and I don't tend to think that there is a single set of skills that lead to success in all games, which is consistent with some of the details buried later in the article
• In good news for my students, learning how to create computer games can improve other student skills and can be effective in broadening interest in computing
• On the down side, they may find themselves at reduced risk for rickets if they play too much
• One game player muses on how to compute the value of a game based on a combination of cost, enjoyment and time spent playing it - seems to me there might need to be an exponential in there somewhere
• Besides describing a neat Project Natal game, 2 Finger Heroes, that is on the scrap heap, this article alludes to the problem of localization in games, in this case that gestures do not always translate across cultures
• Finally, if you think the life of a game developer seems like fun and games, take a look at this open letter from wives of Rockstar employees protesting their work situation - though be aware this is just one person's presentation of the situation; there is also an interesting implied gender to the developers at Rockstar in the letter

Posted by Amanda at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There are a lot of interesting angles to the possibility that Google is developing technology to detect billboards and other ads in Google Maps street view images and replace them with their own ads. This news is based on a patent application, so it may not even happen. But it raises the question of whether Google even wants to get into doctoring their images to such a degree. Blurring out a detail or removing an image is one thing, but if users know that what they see may not be reality, will they lose faith in the reliability of the system? Having the imposed ad integrate seamlessly with the image would probably be necessary for it to be effective, but I would personally prefer to be able to identify imposed content.

There actually seem to be a set of patent applications that the articles I have seen are talking about and merging the discussion of - one that automatically finds ads in images and one that manages auctions of advertising space. The image-processing patent (application number 20100004995) is quite long so I've only skimmed it, but I would be very interested if this were pursued on how exactly an advertisement was defined and if there was an intention to include a person in the loop to ensure that only actual advertising space was being treated as such. Near me there are giant "Welcome To Pennsylvania" (or West Virginia...) signs that could look like ads but which convey map information that ought not to be lost. Simply finding large rectangular details won't do it.

This also seems to raise the possibility that billboard advertisers will start acting like spammers, carefully crafting ads that both advertise and yet are missed by Google's algorithm. Google's online actions might end up changing the way our real-world advertising looks.

Posted by Amanda at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been playing a lot of games recently (but for work!) and I'm trying to be attentive to what makes me remember a game. Being a Tetris fan got me to check out First-Person Tetris, but I expected to find it gimmicky - when you rotate, the screen rotates around the piece instead of the other way around. But it ended up being a nice variation on the original that adds a small bit of extra complexity to a familiar game. It adds a single thing that complements the game play nicely, and executes it well. Unfortunately, after a few levels nausea can set in with the rotating screen, if you are prone to that sort of thing.

Posted by Amanda at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This article via Wired about whether geeky decorations turn women away from computer science has me conflicted. The article is definitely provocatively titled, "Star Trek Stops Women From Becoming Computer Scientists", but the underlying study being reported shows that sitting in a room with Star Trek decor correlates with women responding more negatively to a survey of attitudes about computer science, with men not showing the same effect.

As always with this type of study, there are things to poke at - would other strongly themed decors have the same result? What about a non-neutral room with lots of academic science posters and pictures? Or does a decor with any geeky content correlate with negative attitudes? Is the negative impact due to association with the geeky culture and the types of people the women think of as doing those jobs, so the issue is it being Star Trek, which triggers all sorts of stereotypes? Or is there a disinclination to associate so strongly with science that it defines one's whole life including the decor of one's space, and it doesn't matter what the nature of that geeky decor is?

I obviously have ulterior motives for wondering - I inevitably end up decorating my spaces. And I'm a bit of a geek. I might even have a *very* *tiny* Enterprise model in my office that someone gave me, as well as the obligatory Escher calendar, conference posters, etc. Is this subtly hostile to female students, and do the quilts and curtains that I've hung help counteract that? Should I take down the XKCD cartoons I've hung on my lab door? I don't want to - I like that students read them and will tell me "oh, now that I've taken your AI class I actually understand that!". But I can also see how that type of imagery projects the message that you are either in the group and get it, or outside the group and don't. I would be really curious if one gets the same effect with, say, physics or math.

So I'm thinking about it.... It adds to the oddness for me that I am the only female professor in my department, and I'm definitely the one with the strongest inclination towards geeky decor. Probably with the strongest inclination towards decor in general. I would have thought personalizing a space would show an appealing warmth and personality, which one might think would have a positive impact on attracting and retaining underrepresented minorities. But maybe I ought to think about bringing my Hermione wand home...

Posted by Amanda at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Being interested in, and recently done a fair bit of reading about, human subjects research, this article from a couple of months ago about using Amazon's Mechanical Turk for running human subjects experiments caught my eye. It's a pretty neat idea for pulling in volunteers from a variety of demographics, with some obvious concerns - are people who they say they are, and how much effort will they put into the experiment being the major obvious ones. The article gives some nice specific suggestions for avoiding biases, cheaters, testing the correctness of your study, and addressing other issues. If done well, this seems like a clever way to recruit and manage anonymous subjects.

Posted by Amanda at 9:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)