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October 19, 2009

Netflix Prize: Crowdsourcing for cash

In 2006 online movie rental company Netflix announced a contest called The Netflix Prize. The company's challenge? Beat its in-house movie recommendation system by 10%. Prize? $1 million.

More than 50,000 teams participated, but recently one team (a combination of four of the front running teams) announced that it reached 10.05% improvement.

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October 14, 2009
Fish in the fMRI?

Fish in the fMRI?

Functional MRI (fMRI) is a technique of brain imaging that allows researchers to see what parts of the brain respond to stimuli, resulting in interesting images of real

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September 21, 2009
Mobile phones around the world

Mobile phones around the world

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) compared annual mobile phone costs, and the U.S. is in the top three for most expensive. American especially is expensive compared to Europe as the average American pays $635.85 annually, compared to $131.44 in the Netherlands and $137.94 in Sweden.

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September 14, 2009
Woman fired for using ALL CAPS in email

Woman fired for using ALL CAPS in email

ALL CAPS CAN GET YOU FIRED.

Vicki Walker of Auckland, NZ sued her former employer after being fired for creating "disharmony in the workplace by using block capitals, bold typeface and red text in her emails."

What's next? Use of Comic Sans and clip-art as a fireable offense?

September 10, 2009

Video Games and Music

Ethnography of Rock Band Bar Night. The Rock Band video game (and the similar Guitar Hero) are more than video games where players try to earn points and some are exploring the deeper meaning of such games.

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September 3, 2009

Social Media and Political Engagement

According to a report (PDF), those who participate in political activities online are from higher socioeconomic status. This is also the case with political participation generally. The Pew study suggests that new forms of civic engagement through social media services may change this.

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September 2, 2009
WikiTrust - a new era in Wikipedia Credibility

WikiTrust - a new era in Wikipedia Credibility

Soon, the addition of WikiTrust as an optional feature for Wikipedia users (in English only) will give people a tool to evaluate the credibility of Wikipedia articles and editors.

WikiTrust assigns a color code to each word in an article based on the author's reputation and how often the text has been recently edited.

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September 2, 2009
Early Adopters? Young Families

Early Adopters? Young Families

According to a Forrester Research, young families are early adopters of new technologies.

Young families tend to own consumer electronics like Blu-ray players and home theaters. They are also more likely to own PCs.

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August 31, 2009
Google Maps Crowdsources Traffic

Google Maps Crowdsources Traffic

Google announced that Google Maps can now display live traffic data from both highway authorities and GPS-enabled phones that use Google Maps with the My Location feature. As phones move, Google will see how well traffic is flowing.

August 26, 2009
Millions of Books for Free

Millions of Books for Free

Google announced that it will now allow users to download over 1 million public domain books in the EPUB format with no DRM.

This format can be read by eBook readers and on personal computers, either via the web or downloaded locally.

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