Interestingly in the last few months researchers started thinking about possible alternatives to Google’s pagerank algorithm. Given the rich information coming from trusted peers in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, researchers started designing alternatives based on the links shared in these platforms as well:
– Facebook EdgeRank: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/facebook-edgerank/
– Twitter Tunkrank: http://thenoisychannel.com/2010/04/07/go-tunkrank/
Politica e mafia sono due poteri che vivono sul controllo dello stesso territorio. O si fanno la guerra o si mettono d’accordo.
Paolo Borsellino
Recently, I have been attracted by a number of projects spinning around the idea of digitizing books. There are two aspects which to me deserve more attention: 1) first how to produce cheaply digitized version of traditional books, and 2) what to do once we have digital books.
(1) Concerning the first point, I like Google’s idea of digitizing all the biggest public libraries to give people access to this knowledge worldwide. However, this does not solve the issue of those billion of books which lie in people’s premises. To address this second point, a group of artists has put together a number of recommendations on how to build an home-made book scanner. See an example in the picture below.
(2) Digitizing the book might soon become the easy part. The next step would be to add interactivity to these book so that advanced reading features might become available. See the demo at this link. The idea is that an interactive book might offer translations on the fly, pronunciations of uncommon words, dictionary entries, support for the visually impaired, etc.
Drugs don’t work in patients who don’t take them.
— C. Everett Koop, M.D.
Free online tools to manage to-do lists:
gmail task list
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
George Bernard-Shaw
“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”
—Arthur C. Clark
V. K. Günther, P. Schäfer, B. J. Holzner, and G. W. Kemmler, “Long-term improvements in cognitive performance through computer-assisted cognitive training: a pilot study in a residential home for older people,” Aging & Mental Health, vol. 7, pp. 200–2006, May 2003. [PDF]
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This paper describes the results of a pilot study conducted to investigate the effect of a computer-assisted cognitive training software on aging-associated memory deficits, information processing speed, learning, etc. The authors conducted a longitudinal study with 19 residents of a home for older people. Cognitive tests were administered prior to the program, immediately after, and after a period of five months to assess the effectiveness of the cognitive training.
Participants were asked to participate in 14 weeks of cognitive training program consisting of 45 minutes each week. The psychometric test battery was administered three times and consisted of two tests: the California Verbal Learning Test (Delis et al, 1987) and the Nurnberger-Aging-Inventory (NAI, Oswald and Fleishman, 1986). The study used “Cognition I”, developed by Marker (1992), which includes tasks that are designed to increase attention, verbal performance, and general knowledge.
When comparing performance pre-training and immediately post training, significant improvements were observed in the majority of cognitive functions. Verbal and visual, secondary and long-term memory, information processing speed, learning, and interference tendency improved significantly.
Gaze and Gestures in Telepresence: multimodality, embodiment, and roles of collaboration
Mauro Cherubini, Rodrigo de Oliveira, Nuria Oliver, Christian Ferran
(Submitted on 18 Jan 2010)
This paper proposes a controlled experiment to further investigate the usefulness of gaze awareness and gesture recognition in the support of collaborative work at a distance. We propose to redesign experiments conducted several years ago with more recent technology that would: a) enable to better study of the integration of communication modalities, b) allow users to freely move while collaborating at a distance and c) avoid asymmetries of communication between collaborators.
[PDF]
Position paper, International Workshop New Frontiers in Telepresence 2010, part of CSCW2010, Savannah, GA, USA, 7th of February, 2010. [conf. URL]
SQUARE has been defined as the PayPal for the real world. It allows user to accept micro payments almost everywhere there is a GSM connection:
Square uses a small card scanner which hooks up to a mobile by plugging straight into the audio-in jack. It lets you make physical credit card transaction payments, instantly. Think PayPal but for the physical world. At the moment it works on both the iPhone and Android handsets. […more]
I believe this is an interesting application because it might allow to extend further the concept of virtual economy allowing users to create virtual currencies as forms of payment. Of course, enhancing the range of companies that have access to credit card payments has also social implications for the management of the credit as some people might might be lend to spend more than what they can afford.
