:: Wish list item #3 ::

Okay it's really geeky and everything...

...but how do I get one of these t-shirts?

And if I find one and wear it out shopping, anyone who heckles me the way they did Doc, I'll take them out!

... or at least bitch to the store manager.

:: Participatory media ::

Rebecca Blood has recently published another great article about blogging in The Guardian.

She calls blogging a new form of media, something she calls "participatory media".

I think I'm going to borrow this term for my SOCI498 paper - should fit in well with what I'm looking to do.

:: Google = "The Brain" ?? ::

I hadn't really worried much about my own googling habits until I read this article in Business Week.

Dress me up and call me Pinky, I guess. I hadn't ever thought of Google in this light.

[ ... and for those of you who might otherwise have missed my TV pop culture references herein, check out this site in order to get it... yeah I'm a fan...]

:: Introducing... ::

There's a new blog out there called The Loom that might be interesting to keep an eye on for people like me interested in all things scientific.

The Loom's creator/blogger is a guy by the name of Carl Zimmer, who, according to the New York Times Book Review is "as fine a science essayist as we have"

[ Found via Corante ]

:: Excellent RSS Resource ::

Found this RSS tutorial while searching the net for information on RSS and XML content syndication behind a corporate firewall.

It's well-written and clear. Doesn't quite answer the question I posed to Google but it is still useful nonetheless.

:: Overkill? ::

I know spam is annoying, but wouldn't it be faster and easier to use the delete key?

:: Interesting read ::

I'm including a link to this Wired article about autism and genius because...well...it's an interesting read.

[If this keeps up, I'm going to need to create a CSS trick just to reference things I find through Rebecca's Pocket.

:: Oh...my... ::

Tell me they're kidding.

[Rebecca is posting interesting stuff today]

:: Memories of childhood Decembers ::

Interesting how strongly I remember the date December 1 from my childhood. I guess because that was always the day when, after a shopping trip to Zellers, my mom would bring home a big, Christmas-scened multi-doored Advent Calendar and put it up on the fridge.

The calendar had little chocolates behind each date's brightly-illustrated door and I looked forward to going home from school each afternoon so that I could carefully tear open up the day's door to see what the shape was for that day's chocolate piece. My favourite was always the angel, which usually came around the 15th. (Odd thinking of that now, considering how devoutly religious I was...then.)

Leslie Harpold obviously remembers this excited feeling of discovery -- her online advent calendar, while not containing any chocolate pieces, still gives you the same feeling.

[Found via Rebecca Blood]

:: Of Chickens and video games ::

You can only find stories like this one in The Fray. Probably is part of the reason why I've always liked the site.

That -- and I have a certain longing to be a cyberbard myself.

:: Part of the 47% ::

I was talking to my sociology advisor/professor recently about the nature of sociality for various sexes as it relates to the activities they do together the most.

I theorized that men who don't play sports play computer games. Also, based on my own experiences (how ethnocentric of me!) I posited that women shop.

According to the CBC, I'm part of the 47% of women who cite "shopping" as a hobby, activity or pastime.

:: Christmas dream item #2 ::

A 19" LCD monitor that is height adjustable, folds flat for transport and can be hung on the wall like a plasma TV? For under $800CDN?

I want one!

:: Big brother may soon be watching ::

Developers of Instant Messaging (IM) software have developed IM prototypes with predictive "rhythm awareness". The software tracks your available versus away times and days.

The goal? Provide a service to your contacts that can predict the best times of the day to find you online.

I understand why this might be useful and I know that perhaps this is being developed for altruistic reasons, but nonetheless it makes me uncomfortable. The possiblities for mis-use are too high.

:: Online trust ::

I am an avid long-time eBay member. I love eBay probably partly because I love to shop, partly because it gets me stuff from the U.S.A. without the 2-hour drive. Mostly, though, I eBay because I save money and can trust the people I am buying from. Or so I thought.

A recent auction in which I was the "winner" got me questioning the whole thing a bit.

I live in Canada. Most of the sellers in the categories I frequent are from the U.S.A. I know that shipping costs from Canada to the U.S.A. are not the same as shipping from, say, Canada to Europe. I know the same is true in reverse because I have won my fair share of auctions and paid my share of shipping costs to ship from the U.S.A to Canada.

In this recent auction, I paid $6 shipping for something that cost the seller 89 cents to ship to me, based on the U.S. Post Office postage marker on the bubble envelope... Even if you do include the envelope in the seller’s cost, the total thing probably did not cost this seller more than $1.30 to ship to me. That means that this seller made a nice and easy automatic $4.70 pure profit from me. In U.S. greenbacks too.

What does all of this have to do with online trust?

The entire eBay business model is based on trust. The site and company could not function if the buyers and sellers did not trust one another. Without the trust, the two sides of an auction would not come together.

In eBay, you gauge trustworthiness based on an individual’s “Feedback profile”. If you come across an item you are interested in possibly purchasing, you can check the seller’s feedback profile to see how others have viewed that seller, based on the feedback they have left for him. From browsing the items available for auction to the actual receipt of the item, the entire process of eBay is based on an exchange centered around virtuality; the proof of trustworthiness therefore is essential to the equation.

I had never questioned this concept much or thought much about it in any depth before this transaction. Based on this one transaction, though, I am now thinking about it.

(To preserve the principle of anonymity on eBay and out of respect to the seller, I am not linking here to the auction in question.)

I will spare this space the long list of “he said, she said” details about this auction transaction. Instead, I will just cut to the chase: when I notified the seller that I was unhappy with the transaction’s conclusion and that I felt I had overpaid, the seller was deaf to my words until I notified them that I would leave them negative feedback to alert other Canadians to this seller’s profit-generating shipping costs.

The seller panicked and a flurry of emails ensued in which they tried to convince me to practice that old chestnut “if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all”. Keeping their supposedly “perfect” eBay feedback record of positive feedbacks intact was ultimately more important to them than actually keeping me happy. This means that they are working for their trust record without working with trust itself.

I say this because if I had gone ahead and posted my negative or neutral feedback, as I was/am sorely wanting to do, I would have “spoiled” this seller’s trust record and this, in turn, could have affected this seller’s ability to convince other Canadians to trust them enough to buy from them in the future. The circle of trust would have been affected, publicly, visibly, openly.

By encouraging me to not post negative or neutral feedback, they are misleading the eBay community into believing that they are trustworthy and have had nothing but positive and happy eBay customers to date. Because I have caved into the seller’s pleas and I have decided not to leave any feedback at all on this somewhat fraudulent transaction, I walk away from this completed auction knowing that this seller is ultimately dishonest and yet I have colluded with them to ensure that the rest of the eBay community remains ignorant of this.

If sites such as eBay depend on the feedback generation of buyers to reassure other buyers that the sellers are trustworthy and that their money is safe with this selling group, what kind of negative subversion have I engaged in by not following suit? What kind of deceitful collusion have I agreed to by not accurately, honestly and openly acknowledging the unsatisfactory practices of this one seller with whom I have done business?

What happens to the virtual circle of trust when it is not fully reflected in its entire truth, bad with good? When the bad and negative are consciously excluded from the feedback circles and records?

How accurate, then, is the online trust mechanisms within eBay and its sister sites?

How does this whole experience translate to the trust aspects of other areas of virtuality?

All questions to ponder further.

:: Topic found? ::

Reviewing my blog posts of late, wading through eh everyday and ordinary, I see a distinct theme emerging...

I seem to be showing a definite interest in the emergence of individuals and groups who use technology to get around the current corporate strangehold of the virtual and its technology.

Ok so maybe that isn't news, given that this space was created to explore that type of theme as it relates to bloggers.

But I'm now faced with doing an exploration paper as the culmination of my SOCI489L class and I need a theme that revolves around virtuality or digital culture.

With all the writing I've done in the last few months about googling and the like, I guess I might have enough to do that paper on this type of stuff.

As long as I don't change my mind...

Again...

:: Now I get it ::

Ever since a programmer I know mentioned to me the "Eclipse Project" and showed me his coding window, I'd been under the impression that the Eclipse buzz was about an open-source competitor to Dreamweaver. I'm not a programmer myself - what do I know?

Then I read thisin the ACM Queue.

Now I know better. Guess I've been looking pretty silly in meetings of late then.

:: I want one::

Too bad that it's too late to put this on my Christmas list.

I've been despairing of ever producing Brulerie St-Denis-style coffee at home, even with my beloved Cafe Britt Dark Roast beans.

Or at least I did until I read this in the Washington Post.

[Found also via Rebecca Blood]

:: A bouncing baby blog ::

Okay so I may not have kids but with my pal Tim's newest blog, I certainly show that I can birth bloggers.

With the addition of Tim's four new blogs, I've been responsible for influencing the creation of 18 to date.

Methinks I need to start a count in this space [over there on the right perhaps?] of my influential ways.

Arrogant maybe? But then..isn't every blog somewhat arrogant?

:: Whew! ::

Skinny, single and living in Portland, Oregon? Forget it!

Come to think of it....it's a good thing I'm not single...Montrealers are notorious stick insect lovers.

[Found via Hello Jed]

:: Weak ties ::

Contrary to the common wisdom that says that strong ties between collaborators are necessary for brilliance, Stanford professor Martin Ruef claims that, in fact, weak ties are more important. He has published details of his study in the magazine Stanford Business . The article suggests that strangers and acquaintances are vital to an individual's ability to come up with great ideas.

[Found via Rebecca Blood]

:: Yet more fun with Google ::

I'm thinking of writing a paper on the ways in which individuals and groups use corporate-provided tools like Google to be subversive and do culture jamming.

Another example:

Go to Google and type in "Weapons of mass destruction" and hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

Pay close attention to the result. Do not adjust your monitor.

[Again, found via the AIR list]

:: More fun with Google ::

Quick! Before "they" get wise and make Google change it....

Go to Google. As your search words, type in the words "miserable failure".

Take a look at the first hit to come up in the list.

[ Hint: lives in a big white house in the middle of a swamp ]

Google gets it; I've always said so.

I found this via the Assocation of Internet Researchers (AIR) mailing list, but this whole thing started at the very cool blog, Blah3.org

:: IM research ::

An interesting piece of research has been done by Ellen Isaacs et al.. They examined IM use at AT&T labs and discovered that all our notions about IM use for business purposes are wrong.

An excerpt:

Although people consistent with our "light user" profile have until now been generally regarded as typical of all IM users, our research suggests that the majority of IM traffic actually involves heavy users working collaboratively to address complex, work-specific problems.

[ Found via Stowe Boyd at Corante ]

:: Strongly left ::

According to The Political Compass, I am strongly leftist, ranking down in that southwest left corner with the likes of Mandela and the Dalai Lama, oh, and Stowe Boyd (from whom I found the Compass).

My exact scores:
- Economic Left/Right: -5.62
- Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.00

Can't tell I'm a liberal, urban, academic, sociology-studying, digitally-focused Canadian Gen-Xer, hmmm?

:: Googling memories of Merlin ::

While playing around with Google recently and typing in the names of various people I used to know and/or call friends, I came up with some hits for a fave former mentor of mine, Mark Windrim. In particular, I found his blog!

Of course, unless he's changed considerably since we were last in regular touch, it probably shouldn't surprise me that he blogs.

Anyways, while browsing his blogspace, I found this article about the transition days of Magic Online from a free BBS to a paid service and it got me waxing reminiscient about my own former salad days as a Magic admin under "Magic Merlin"'.

Ah...I remember when...

Thanks for the memories, Mark.

Gotta love Googling!

:: Making amends ::

I mentioned a friend of mine in a post I made recently about the black market economy surrounding gaming.

My friend took me to task for how I made her sound in that post and pointed out I misunderstood her. Based on the persuasive argument she presented, it would seem that I did.

Apparently, I let the power of my own word-making ability seduce my brain and run away with my foolish fingers.

She has apparently prepared part of a written rebuttal that she wants to send to me. Once I get it, I'll post it here.

In the meantime, I am now saying to her here, simply:

"I'm sorry".

:: Foucauldian terminology ::

I'm blogging this link here so that I don't lose track of this page.

I like Highberg's concise explanation of Foucault's conception of power.

:: Online voice, literally ::


Blogger, the nice people who give me the software to maintain I-Space so that I don't have to fiddle with too much code, have come up with a way to allow me and all the other bloggers out there using their service to blog by voice?!?

They say that it is as easy as leaving a voicemail.

Apparently they're using software from a company called AudBlog.

While I like the theoretical idea of this, I'm not sure how I feel about the actual practice of sharing my literal voice with any of the people who happen to stumble across this little piece of Internet space.

Knowing that my wriitten words are possibly getting out there on other people's screens is spooky enough - the idea of people actually hearing me say them?

Not me.

Not yet.

:: Getting a clue ::

Why have I never read this before now?

Makes me anxious to find time to read my copy of Small Pieces Loosely Joined.