The Daily Reviewer

The November issue of Wired Magazine (UK) features "Unlocking the Digital City", a series of articles exploring how new technologies have transformed - and are continually reinventing - urban life and urban landscapes. The entire issue is worth reading. Below are excerpts from three perspectives on the promises and realities...

Anthropology Blogs

Aug 13, 2009 6:30am

I came across this list of the top 25 anthropology blogs as compiled by Invesp Consulting (an e-commerce conversion optimization company, of course). Their Blog-Rank statistics are based solely on (automated) data extraction from various aspects of online content, such as RSS membership, Yahoo and Google indexed pages and pagerank,...

VoiceThread for collaborative learning and teaching

Aug 9, 2009 4:56am

I read this review article today on Educ@conTIC (Spanish only) about a web-based service for creating collaborative, multimedia conversations. VoiceThread is "a powerful new way to talk about and share your images, documents, and videos".With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world....

Spain still below average, natives still digital

Aug 5, 2009 6:31am

The latest from a European Commission report on Internet use throughout Europe has found that Spain should seek to improve and expand upon the use of new technologies in homes and businesses. Less than half of Spaniards make use of the Internet regularly, and those who use it daily represent...

So long and thanks for all the bratwurst

Jun 30, 2009 10:47am

Auf Wiedersehen, Bavaria.I'm moving on now to the next stage of my journey and the completion of my PhD thesis. This blog and my other accounts (OAC, Twitter) will go dark over the next week or so as I relocate.More soon....

Open Anthropology Cooperative (Update)

May 29, 2009 6:32am

The OAC now has an excellent homepage hosted at NING, a just-add-water social networking platform that I hadn't even heard of until now. I'll probably review it in full at a later date, but it's incredibly simple to use and has all the features needed to develop a fully functioning...

Open Anthropology Cooperative

May 24, 2009 3:02am

Several anthropologists have encouraged the formation of an Open Anthropology Cooperative to engage in anthropological discussion and collaboration away from the restrictions of formal academic management. It looks as if all of the tools which have (relatively) long been at our disposal - wikis, blogs, interactive social networking platforms -...

The Internet as imagined in the future before this one

May 12, 2009 4:38am

The fun part of past projections of miraculous household devices of the future is how they are always cloaked in technologies of the time, like the stunning circuit board feature in this video. The computers here are even discussed as sentient beings that can inform their owners and be informed...

None of you have any friends.

Apr 28, 2009 11:37am

Just admit it, and move on.[Source: Current TV ... I mean, @current]I'm so over the superfluous analysis of Twitter.Edit: I think it is also important to add, with the current climate of fear due to the worldwide health scare, that perhaps Twitter is not, after all, the best place to...

The End of an Era?

Apr 24, 2009 9:36am

Insider technology news - with its detailed web-trend tracking and analysis - can be responsible for somewhat misleading predictions about fundamental changes in the very fabric of Internet space and time, such as the designation of Web 2.0 and the social web as "new eras" in communication. Such grandiose terminology...

Homage to xkcd

Apr 15, 2009 8:01am

I saw this great comic on xkcd, and couldn't help but notice that anthropologists were conspicuously missing (ahem, sociology ≠ anthropology...), so I added an additional panel (far right). All of the artwork (graphic and text) belongs to Randall Monroe, I just rehashed it. If you're not familiar with the...

It's a nice place to live, but I wouldn't want the RSS feed

Mar 24, 2009 9:15am

A few weeks ago, I subscribed to a service called EveryBlock.About EveryBlockEveryBlock filters an assortment of local news by location so you can keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city.“What’s happening in my neighborhood?”For a long time, that’s been a tough...

Top 5 Firefox Browser Extensions

Mar 18, 2009 9:53am

I've decided to review what I feel are the best Firefox add-ons that, in my short period since converting to FF devotee, have made all the difference to my browsing experience. This is a totally biased look from a pragmatic doctoral student hell-bent on functionality, productivity, performance, a streamlined user...

24/7 Internot Everywhere (The Irony of Ubiquity)

Mar 14, 2009 6:09am

Over the past few years, I have lived in five residences across four countries and had to contract a new Internet connection seven times (not including temporary visits of less than one month). Whether dial-up or broadband, wired or wireless, in all these cases, a reliable, highspeed, 24/7 Internet connection...

A brief history of the future

Mar 7, 2009 5:24am

I'm really interested in the time line of technologies that have come into existence, become horrendously popular household necessities, and then faded into oblivion (especially those which have completed the cycle in the course of my lifetime). It's probably the slightly awkward nostalgia it inspires that peaks my interest. In...

Zotero

Feb 26, 2009 2:41am

I have a confession to make. Up until now, I haven't consistently used any citation management software. I despise EndNote and haven't found a good open source alternative that suits my OS and research needs. So, I organize my citations manually and have a master list by subject ... in...

The future looks dim, or are those just the students?

Feb 25, 2009 3:46pm

iTunes U Proves Better than Going to ClassSarah PerezSkip the lecture, download the podcast. That's probably not what university professors tell their students, but perhaps they should. New psychological research conducted by Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, shows that students who only...

On the left

Feb 18, 2009 11:21am

The word "liberal" has been so tainted by 8 years of far-right imperialism that it doesn't mean very much in US politics today, and, all in all, it's not something that I dwell on too often. When Americans-formerly-known-as-liberal added progressivism to the mix, the ambiguity of the left compounded further...

Of rats and humanity (Steinbeck not included)

Feb 13, 2009 1:49am

The award for best rebuttal of disproportionate stupidity this month goes to Maximilian Forte (aka Dr. Max Rat) at Open Anthropology. I'm not even going to summarize his recent encounter with ignorance; it has to be read in full. Read it now. Seriously.Upon reading his post I was once again...

A Nation of Bloggers

Feb 6, 2009 11:52am

So often, researchers of the social web insist that blogging, microblogging, lifestreaming, social neworking, etc., have revolutionized the way that we (as people, citizens, netizens) live our lives and communicate. The means are simple. Text-, photo- or video-based online diaries act as lenses through which a worldwide audience can peer...

A propos, 3.0. Google Gears.

Jan 31, 2009 1:30pm

In my last post, I discussed how the more dynamic content we can began to expect from the Internet will make use of applications which not only add features to your browser, but provide desktop utilities to complete tasks normally done solely online. I mentioned that the ability to work...

Web 3.0: because Web 2.0 is so 2008 ...

Jan 27, 2009 12:16pm

Faster than you can say "social networking sites", Web 2.0 has been rebuilt and we have now arrived/are about to arrive/may soon arrive at Web 3.0. And may I say, it's about time.According to Jason Calacanis, "Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by...