I remember way-back-when, in the early days of Facebook, it used to be possible to run searches based on personal attributes. Anyone who listed themselves as a woman interested in women was easy to find. And then, I think in part due to complaints from users and privacy advocates, that functionality disappeared (or at least was a lot harder to access). Now it’s back with a vengeance.
Over at /dev/culture, my friend Nat posted about Guitar Hero and learning the ukulele: It was pointed out to me by my brother that playing the guitar is a lot like playing a video game:…
A few recent posts from around the web have gotten me thinking about how the concerns of cyberinfrastructure play out in local laboratories: Jonathan Eisen, a biologist at UC Davis, posted on The Tree of…
I spend a lot of time in videoconference meetings. I live in San Diego, but I’m a post-doc in the CSC Lab at the University of Washington, and also have an appointment in the Institute…
Facebook has been playing with their friend suggestion algorithms, and people are starting to notice. Last week FB suggested I become a friend with one of the participants in my research. I am pretty liberal…
If you use Atlas.ti software, be careful when upgrading! Version 6 is not backward compatible. I really like Atlas.ti for qualitative analysis, but I pretty annoyed by my recent experience. I have a license which…
In response to Jude and Eric, I decided to check out my facebook friend network using Nexus. Nothing too surprising here, except what isn’t shown. I have “real” friends who don’t use facebook, but actually…
I don’t like it when software insists that there is only one right way to do something. Most of the time it doesn’t matter (or I don’t care) if I have to click A before…
I haven’t been particularly wowed by the iPhone. Sure it’s cool, but in the end, the price-to-value ratio seems just way too high. But the new Urbanspoon iPhone application tickles my fancy. You shake your…
Yesterday Dan got a text-message on his cell-phone from the UCSD emergency response system: “classes r canceled 4 week du 2 uncertnty of fires & xtreme bad air. Res. dining halls, & studnt health centr…