Unit Structures Fred Stutzman’s thoughts about information, social networks and technology.

Posts from September 2008

Facebook Datasets and Private Chrome

Via the Berkman Center, news of a Facebook dataset now available to the general public.  I haven’t written up the necessary research statement to access the data, but the publicly-available codebook provides insight into the set.  According to the codebook, the data is scrubbed, with personally-identifying data removed.
The “non-identifiability” of such a dataset is up [...]


Reminder – Productivity Seminar this Friday

Just a reminder – this Friday we’ll be hosting a productivity seminar in 208 Manning Hall, from 10-11:30AM (Before CRADLE).  All students, faculty and friends are invited.
To find out more information or to propose a 10-minute talk, visit the website:  http://academicproductivity.pbwiki.com/ (password: SILS)
Sessions include:

10:10 – 10:20 – Inbox Zero – Erin White
10:20 – 10:30 – [...]


Academic Productivity workshop – October 3

Abe Crystal and I are teaming up to bring an academic productivity workshop to UNC.  From 10-11:30 on the morning of Friday, October 3, we’re going to open the floor for ten-minute talks on productivity – particularly the tools and methods we use to get our work done.  I’m probably going to talk about literature [...]


Microsoft launches MSR New England

Microsoft Research has launched a new, interdisciplinary research center – MSR New England – in Cambridge, MA.  I’ve found out about this from danah boyd, who is joining the center.  danah writes:
Jennifer and Christian’s vision for the lab aligned with my view of research. They believe in interdisciplinary work, believe in the ways that new [...]


IBM launches Center for Social Software

Some very interesting news – IBM has launched a Center for Social Software in Cambridge, MA.  According to IBM, the “goal of the IBM Center is to create a new type of collaborative environment to tackle some of the toughest questions about social software, identify new business models, help discover next-generation Web 2.0 applications, and [...]


Pew on Teens, Video Games and Civics

This will be of interest to many Unit Structures readers – the Pew Internet and American Life project has released a new report on the gaming behaviors of young adults.  The report was led by Amanda Lenhart, who has done excellent work studying teen use of social networks and social media.  Notably, this report was [...]


Technologies of Friendship – Weeks 1 and 2

Last evening was the third meeting of my Technologies of Friendship class.  While I’ve been meaning to blog about the class each week, this post will have to serve as a catch-up.  We’re actually not that far behind – this was actually only the second teaching class due to Labor Day and the fact our [...]


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