This is my final research paper about social norms on the web. It’s a good time. It’s kind of long, but here are the highlights:
You need investment from the user, either through a genuine offline to online identity, or a strong tie to the community focus.
We want the same things online that we do offline. We just want everyone to be nice. Again. And again. And again…
This stuff is based in game theory and evolutionary biology. Check out the ultimatum game. Only when you have the possibility for altruistic punishment and user engagement in site moderation can you develop successful norms.
I just did a research project for my CS224N class where we tried to predict the gender of different Facebook statuses. We also made a fun tool that will generate typical male and female Facebook statuses. Check out our research here.
Check out the 5-person juggling pattern I made up. It is a variation on a feed weave with five people and two feeders, with the feeders passing in a two count and the feedees passing four out of six passes.
I wrote a short PHP script which allows you to compile study guides really quickly.
Lets set the scene: You have a long list of vocab terms, and you need to collect basic information on them all quickly…basically you need to find the definition from Wikipedia. With this tool, you just type in your words, and it fetches the information and creates and formats the study guide for you!
Test it out and let me know what you think! — (it’s not perfect, but it definitely works)
So I got the ipad yesterday, and ive been playing around with it a bunch and I think I figure out some of the things that make it an awesome piece of technology. The reason I want to explain it is because I have heard such opposing opinions on the device.
I have heard people say that it’s amazing, and i have heard people wonder why you would ever get something thats just a big Itouch and is worse than a computer.
(i think my typing is an indirect review of the keyboard… It definitely works but it takes somr getting used to)
So for me, the reason the ipad is an amazing new device is because it represents a fundamentally new category of technology. People who criticize it say that it doesn’t really do anything your laptop doesn’t do, in fact it does less. People say the music and other apps exist on the iPhone– and both of these claims are true. But the real point i want to make is that its a different category of device which means that although people are doing the same things on the iPad, they are using it in different ways.
For example, when the laptop came out, it really was not better than the desktop computer. Actually, it was probably worse because it had less computing power, and a smaller screen, no mouse, and a small keyboard. So it would be fair to wonder why anyone would ever get a laptop when a desktop does what you want and does it better. However, a laptop offers mobility, and this alone makes it useful as a whole new category of product. Suddenly it can be used in schools by students, and in hundreds of other cases, and it really makes it a new type of product. It really becomes silly to compare its shortcomings to the desktop because is a different product with different goals,
This is how I see the iPad. It looks like a big iphone and a small laptop (and it is), but these differences make it a new product made for different situations. It is the right size to be a book and a hand held web browser. It is the right size to be a game board or a video screen. It is made to go on airplanes, it. Has your books, music, and video all in an easy format to access. It is made to be used in groups.
While computers feel like they are made for productivity, the. iPad seems to be made for casual usage. It is like an interactive coffee table book or your newspaper as You relax And eat breakfast in at the morning.
That’s my take on the iPad. It’s made to be used differently. The features it lacks actually seem to demonstrate what it was made for. Its not for coding and its not for power usage. It meets basic modern day computing needs ( music, video, email) in a simple and beautiful design. I say if you’re a person who gets angry with computers, this may actually be the “computer” you are looking for.
non-trivial
This is used to describe something that most people would just call “hard.” However cs people need to make sure to tell you that it’s actually “not extremely easy.” You will probably find a cs person using non-trivial where it should not be used. For example, “Doing the laundry is completely non-trivial.”
well-defined
ambiguous
These two go together. Well-defined and ambiguos usually refer to descriptions of problems, but cs people can really use them for anything. “I’m not sure if my wants and needs are well-defined.” “The solution to your girl problems is ambiguos.”
How cool would it be if you could follow updates on sites that don’t offer RSS feeds?
It would be very cool.
And there’s a Google product for that. Google Reader can now get you updates on site changes that don’t export RSS feeds. My current use case will be to fetch announcements from class pages. I haven’t really used it yet, but it sounds legit.
