Clue game from class

Class period on Friday, April 25th.  Congrats to the class for “solving the crime.”  Hope you had as much fun as I hoped:

posted here for the HON 392 Web Revolutions class:  Today is “Show and Tell” Day, but it’s my turn again…Today is the “Day of Silence” for support for the GLBTQ community and allies.
With that in mind, and to allow for full participation of all our class members, we are going to try an experiment.  MY SHOW N TELL IS THIS EXPERIMENT.  From this moment on, there will be silence in the room  (*with the exception of any guests, and of course, you don’t have to ask to go to the bathroom; you’re grown-ups now!)
We are testing an experiment: can this group, an established working group, one with previous relationships between its members, collaborate completely on-line (or virtually) to come up with the “answer” to a given problem? There is ONE BEST answer to this project, unlike the “real world” in business, in journalism, or even in medicine or aviation.  I do not have a prediction or hypothesis either way, if the class will achieve its goal.  But it will be interesting to observe the process, and I will be walking around the building to see your progress.  Here are the rules:
1.  No face-to-face communication of any kind-talking, passing paper notes, sign language, charades, wipe board, etc.
2.  There is one best solution; your goal as a team is to find that solution.
3.  Each person is to participate fully, and each person will be given critical information that must be shared to find/derive the best answer.  You cannot show anyone the contents of your envelope, although you are free to communicate what the contents are.
4.  The game is based on a version of the (once) popular Board Game clue (the original).  The group must determine who committed the crime, with what weapon, and where.  Also one of your classmates is the victim: who was murdered?  Hint if s/he is dead, s/he won’t be able to communicate.
5.  You are allowed to leave the room at any point, but there can never be more than four people in any room in this building (or any other) at any time between the start of the game and the end time…
6.  THE END TIME.  We meet back in this classroom (4B) at exactly 11:35am to debrief and process how the team worked.
7.  If you have questions at any point before 11:35am, you may text me at 701-739-XXXX and I will answer text messages only (again, with the exception of the guests-and don’t get them to ask on your behalf).  If you do not wish to speak in class after 11:35am, you may text me a message that I can read to the group on your behalf.
Let the game begin!  No cheating. 

Test your internet knowledge of website popularity

http://www.mentalfloss.com/quiz/quiz.php?q=295&p=1?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2008-04-25&utm_content=Top-Posts-1

At first, i thought this was a preference test, but it’s not: it’s to see if you can identify which website gets more hits.

For Class: April 14: Faculty and freedom of communication?

Topic for class discussion: how much “free speech” is there for faculty when dealing with electronic communication?  How much should be disclosed on MySpace, Facebook, other social networking sites, or by blogs.  For example, take the following article on faculty “office door” communication:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/10/lssu

April 10

Pardon Me, but Your Door Is Terribly Offensive

“Getting one’s own office can be a rite of passage right up there with defending a dissertation or receiving tenure — and many professors’ lairs are reflections of their own attitudes and beliefs. Usually, it takes just a quick glance at the door, as anyone who’s taken a stroll down the hall of an academic building can attest: What a professor finds amusing, outrageous or just plain interesting is there for all to see…”

Kay’s question for class: Do these same (yet controversial) issues arise in electronic communication?  Is a quote at the end of an e-mail from a faculty, subject to criticism?  How about his or her Facebook page?  Where do you stand on “freedom of speech” versus “hostile environment for students”?  How much is too much to disclose on a website?  Does your opinion change if we were to shift the framework from faculty to students?  Does it matter if it’s done on “University computers” or “University networks”?  Write for a few minutes, then we’ll discuss as a group.  :)KMP

Facebook Reportedly Near Accord Over Origin

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/technology/08facebook.html?ex=1365393600&en=26237aa81d2223be&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

From NY TImes
By BRAD STONE and MATT RICHTEL

Published: April 8, 2008

According to a person briefed on the talks, the company is completing a settlement of a suit brought by three former Harvard students who contend that the original idea for Facebook belonged to them.

Cyberpioneers are teenage girls!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/fashion/21webgirls.html?ex=1361336400&en=cfa7ef9f5e228fda&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Geek Chic: Not Just For Guys

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

Published: February 21, 2008

“Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls…”

The Stanford Group

The Stanford Facebook Class (I know!)
 http://credibilityserver.stanford.edu/captology/facebook/
Its facebook group: http://nodak.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5378622985

Juicycampus.com

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/02/08/juicy

Gossip and Slander at a Campus Near You

In the annals of online discourse, “did you hear about [student]’s nose job?” isn’t among the best of what the Internet has to offer. It also isn’t the worst. An anonymous Web site that’s caught the attention — and provoked the ire — of students across the country has already unleashed comments like that one, and much worse, in carefree, unregulated and sometimes vicious discussion threads that have raised privacy concerns and condemnations on several campuses… (more at article)

Interesting Blog post on the decline of Social Networking 2.0

http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/social-networking-may-be-declining-social-interaction-wont/

Social networking may be declining, social interaction won’t

February 8, 2008

[Vanelsas] read a Business Week article this morning which suggests that the current MySpace generation is becoming fed up with the ad bombardments on the site. They seem to be spending less time on MySpace because of it. A quote from the article:

The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore. MySpace, the largest social network, has slipped from a peak of 72 million users in October to 68.9 million in December, ComScore says. The total number of people on such sites is still increasing at an 11.5% rate, but that’s down sharply from past growth rates. “What you have with social networks is the most overhyped scenario in online advertising,” says Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, which places ads for customers on a variety of Web sites.

I don’t really know if we are now seeing a decline that marks a steady downfall of the current social networking sites. There seems to be contradicting numbers around. TechCrunch, for example, showed in January that Facebook is still growing in traffic, while MySpace is going down. According to Mashable traffic is increasing and they use a totally different measure, using the traffic measures from one of the largest content delivery networks Akamai. According to Akamai, they have delivered 5 times more data over their network to social networking sites in the last year. this suggests that people are spending more time on social networking sites…

Let’s have a Facebook Thread

Facebook Friends
After the cartoon, I’ll start with this article.  Ironically, it was found via Facebook “feed”:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

With friends like these …

Facebook has 59 million users - and 2 million new ones join each week. But you won’t catch Tom Hodgkinson volunteering his personal information - not now that he knows the politics of the people behind the social networking site

Google and Facebook to join ranks?

Google and Facebook Join Group

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / January 8, 2008 9:45 AM /

The DataPortability Workgroup announced this morning that representatives from both Google and Facebook are joining its ranks. The group is working on a variety of projects to foster an era of Data Portability - where users can take their data from the websites they use to reuse elsewhere and where vendors can leverage safe cross-site data exchange for a whole new level of innovation. Good bye customer lock-in, hello to new privacy challenges. If things go right, today could be a very important day in the history of the internet.

The non-participation of Google and Facebook, two companies that hold more user data and do more with it than almost any other consumer service on the market, was the biggest stumbling block to the viability of the project. These are two of the most important companies in recent history - what’s being decided now is whether they will be walled-garden, data-horders or truly open platforms tied into a larger ecosystem of innovation with respect for user rights and sensible policies about data.

The Representatives

Google will be represented by Brad Fitzpatrick, the inventor of LiveJournal and one of the primary minds behind OpenID, the concept of the Social Graph and the Google-led OpenSocial platform. Facebook will be represented by Benjamin Ling, who today runs the Facebook platform. Ling defected from Google three months ago, where he ran Google Checkout, to join Facebook. Also joining the workgroup is Joseph Smarr of Plaxo, probably the catalyst for all of this after his company scraped Robert Scoble’s Facebook account and set off a huge debate about Data Portability and privacy.

Challenges Ahead

If these industry titans can put aside their rivalry and work together - magic could happen. Hopefully they can work appropriately with the other members of the working group, bleeding edge consultants and representatives of smaller and in many cases more user-centric companies. If so, perhaps we can move appropriately into a future of powerful personalization and logically augmented activity online - while avoiding Minority Report-style dystopian scenarios.

Innovation on the internet is in its early, early days. The participation of representatives from Google and Facebook in this initiative could prove key in the continued development of what’s possible, instead of the early suffocation of what could have been.

May the participants work nicely together to create the magic that we’re waiting for.

See also: The ReadWriteWeb toollkit for 2008, where you’ll find resources for tracking data portability and other key issues in the coming year.