Technology

Maybe Google could do this for you too…..

By AMH

I find myself with a number of colleagues looking at ecological monitoring, so this article about using web crawling for ecological monitoring caught my eye. You might remember the trends tool at Google that got a lot of attention last fall that mined the queries people typed into Google, correlated them with known cases of the flu, and then watched new queries as they came in to try to spot new locations where the flu had cropped up as it was starting. The idea here is the same – take the data that has already been maintained by Google or … Continue reading Maybe Google could do this for you too…..

Not so fast, Google…

By AMH

Interesting to see that in light of concerns, Yale has delayed their switch to Gmail to allow additional conversation. The article from the Yale Daily News brings up some interesting points I hadn’t thought of about outsourcing academic email to Google, including the fact that much student data might then be stored in servers overseas, and apparently Google will not disclose specifically which countries students’ email might end up stored in (and thus, which country’s laws may govern access to students’ email).

Barbara Liskov Rules!

By AMH

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, wherein we are encouraged to weblog about the work done by women in the sciences! If you don’t know much about Ada Lovelace, this video, albeit for kids, about Ada’s life and accomplishments is a decent short biography. Or, you know, try Wikipedia ;) Why do people still care? Because the Bayer Facts of Science Education survey out this month of women and underrepresented minorities in the sciences (particularly chemistry fields) says that 66% felt that stereotypes that women and/or minorities do not do math and science contribute to their underrepresentation. School science classes was … Continue reading Barbara Liskov Rules!

Gmail.edu

By AMH

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 … Continue reading Gmail.edu

Cookie-Free Tracking

By AMH

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 … Continue reading Cookie-Free Tracking

Coming to the end of making even gaming painful and hard….

By AMH

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 … Continue reading Coming to the end of making even gaming painful and hard….

Next Advertising Frontier

By AMH

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 … Continue reading Next Advertising Frontier

No Wookies in the classroom

By AMH

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 … Continue reading No Wookies in the classroom

Let Turk research for you

By AMH

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 … Continue reading Let Turk research for you

Best Bots

By AMH

I’ve noticed that whenever I teach a subject, the news appears to be disproportionately full of stories about that topic (and yes, I do understand that is not the case…). These are some of my favorites I have found recently: I linked to the BigDog project several months ago – Boston Dynamics has outdone themselves, pushing their sophisticated walking abilities into a bipedal robot, Petman. The video on this is amazing! [via many places, including C.] On the opposite end of the spectrum, iRobot has developed a “morphing blob” robot based on a structure of inflatable air pockets. [via many … Continue reading Best Bots