Digital Dialogues

This study quoted in Scientific American raises some interesting considerations for online "friending" behaviours - it would be a valuable extension to this research to determine if similar factors applied to social networks!

A new study published September 21 in Group Processes & Intergroup Relations suggests that when people are able to choose friends from a larger, more diverse group, they pick pals who are most similar to themselves. Those in smaller groups, however, wind up with dissimilar—but closer—friendships.

"The ironic finding is that in more diverse environments, we find less diverse friendships," says social psychologist Angela Bahns of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, lead author of the study. She compared students at large and small college campuses to see how their social environments shaped their friendship choices. Although you might expect people who go to a large, varied campus to spend time with a more diverse group of people, in fact it just allows them to be more exclusive, Bahns says.

Whereas there is a large body of research suggesting that we have a universal preference for similarity (in everything from behavior to first-name initials), similar is not always better, according to Bahns. In fact, she found that in spite of more differences in attitudes, values and behaviors, students on small campuses reported closer friendships than their large-campus counterparts.

"If you live in a world where there's not much choice, you're going have to settle for people who are not as similar as you," says co-author Chris Crandall, a psychologist at the University of Kansas (K.U.) in Lawrence. "But you can be perfectly happy with friends who aren't that similar."

As the Agenda for the first Dachis Group Social Business Summit in Sydney is being finalised, we thought a snapshot, sneak preview from some of our speakers may provide some insights into the nature of conversations that will be occurring on the day!

Peter Kim

Peter will provide both context and vision about social business design:

• What is social business design?
• Why does this concept matter?
• How can companies get started?

Spiced with examples and experiences, Peter’s presentation will be the focal point of reference throughout the Summit.

Martin Stewart-Weeks

Martin brings a diverse range of perspectives to the Summit and will focus his presentation on:
The Resilient Sate: Smarter, Connect

• Why is government interested in social innovation?
• How does connection make social innovation more effective?
• What does all of that have to do with the “resilient state”?

Kevin Tate

As social engagement is one of the core pillars of social business design, we would be remiss not to discuss Facebook. Kevin will share his extensive work in this field through his presentation:
Putting Facebook to work Effectively: Lessons from over 300 campaigns

• Facebook’s ongoing evolution as an “attention landscape”
• The symbiotic relationship between media & experiences in Facebook
• How to create social momentum in Facebook – what works, what doesn’t
• Meaningful metrics for Facebook presence and programs
• Where Facebook is headed – what’s on the horizon for 2011

Dion Hinchcliffe

Dion’s presentation: High Impact Social Business: Stories and New Perspectives
will look at who is moving the needle and expanding the notion of how important social business can (and should) be to the bottom line of all organisations.

Didier Elzinga

At the core of a social business is not the technology, it’s their people! Learn from Didier how culture and software are inextricably linked:
Culture as a competitive advantage in modern organisations.

• What we can learn from software development
• The idea of a “lean” culture
• Creating a “heartbeat” in your organisation

Event: Dachis Group Social Business Summit Sydney 2011
Date: Wednesday, March 2
Venue: The Mint, 10 Macquarie St, Sydney

For more information visit the Social Business Summit website.
Attendance is by invitation only – have registered yet?
Early bird rates close this Friday, 18th Feb !

Click here to register for an invitation.

Employers that take disciplinary action against an employee for posting damaging or inappropriate comments on social media sites such as Facebook can face legal - and potentially costly - ramifications if they do so without following basic workplace laws and procedures.

According to Jenny Inness, senior associate at Harmers Workplace Lawyers, employers should first consider whether the employee's conduct is sufficiently connected to the employment relationship before taking action in response to erring employees in the digital sphere.

Inness said that an employer's right to take action for 'after hours' conduct has always been a complex issue. "It's a tricky balance between an employee's right to privacy and an employer's right to protect its organisation," she said.

She added that an employer is permitted to take action against an employee (including dismissal) because of their 'after hours' (or 'private') activities if the conduct is connected with the relationship of employment and has serious enough implications for the employer.

Instances where employers may have reasonable grounds for disciplinary action against an employee include social media posts that:

The issue that isn't raised in this article is the monitoring of employees social media activity by employers - when does this cross the line?

Friday Weird Science: Having trouble pooping? Maybe you should look…at your bra.

Oct 01 2010 Published by scicurious under Friday Weird Science, Uncategorized

I had another post lined up for this week, but I saw this abstract over at NCBI ROFL…and was lost. I had to blog it. It is GOLD.

(Blogging GOLD, I say)

So ladies. Your bra. Does it make you feel…inhibited? Do you feel it constipates your breast freedom, so to speak?

Lee, Kikufuji, Tokura. “Field studies on inhibitory influence of skin pressure exerted by a body compensatory brassiere on the amount of feces.” Journal of Physiological Anthropology, 2000.

Additional citations go out to all my awesome Twitter peeps who provided me with the euphemisms utilized throughout this post. You are all ASTOUNDING. And that…is a compliment. Honest. I couldn’t fit them all, but I really did try my hardest! Now, let’s lay some cable, and get this party started.

 

 

First, let’s start with “body compensatory brassiere”. That’s a bra, with the “characteristic to keep bust at a higher position, using two side bones and wire”. So, an underwire bra.

Sci personally wants to know why on earth people would conceive of a study testing the effects of bra wearing on how many kids you drop off at the pool, but there you have it. The idea apparently arose from previous work showing that skin pressure exerted by your clothing can inhibit your SALIVA. Really. Apparently they think this resulted because the pressure on your skin suppressed the peripheral nervous system (PNS), and thus your salivary glands. I’m not too sure what to think of this, as one would think that inhibition of the PNS would have a LOT more effects than how much you drool, but we’ll take it as it comes for the moment.

More to the point, previous work with girdles (heh, I love that, “previous work with girdles”, I shall have to quote me) has shown that you get smaller and slower #2 when you are “under the influence of a girdle”. And well, if a girdle, could maybe the pressure exerted by a bra change your log dropping abilities?

So they took 7 female subjects, ages 11-41 years (yes, really). All of them suffered from no constipation and were under no medication at the time. The women went braless for a week, then wore the bra for a week, and spent the last week uninhibited and nippin’ out. For those three weeks, EVERY TIME they ipnched a loaf, they had to record it…and WEIGH IT THEMSELVES. One wonders what scales they had to do this, and how they got the women to do it. I really hope they were paid. For the duration of the experiment, the amount they ate and drank was carefully controlled.

Here’s what they got:

Cancel reply

Girls - You really need to read the rest of this... it's g'teed to make you smirk ;-)

"Outdated and cruel" ... a bullfight this week. Photo: Reuters

BARCELONA: Catalonia's parliament has voted to ban bullfighting in the first such prohibition in mainland Spain.

Regional legislators voted 68 to 55 for the ban yesterday on the grounds of cruelty, the speaker of the assembly said.

The vote on abolishing bullfights in the north-eastern autonomous region follows an intense campaign by animal rights activists to end an ''outdated and cruel'' part of Spanish culture.

Catalan nationalists also seized on it as a means of expressing independence from Madrid at a time of growing political unease between the regional and national governments.

The regional government was moved to propose the vote after 180,000 Catalan citizens signed a petition circulated by Prou! (Enough!), an anti-bullfight group.

Interest in Spain's ''national fiesta'' has waned in the region and dozens of local councils, including Barcelona's, have declared in the past few years that they are officially ''anti-bullfighting''.

The Plaza de Toros Monumental, the last of Barcelona's three bullrings to still stage ''corridas'', struggles to fill a third of its 19,000 seats and often attracts more tourists than locals.

The ban, which will be introduced from 2012, was preceded by furious debate.

In an editorial, the centre-right daily newspaper El Mundo expressed a sentiment echoed in much of Spain - that the move had little to do with animal cruelty but had become a ''political issue'' in a region where the ''idea is to ban everything that is Spanish''.

Telegraph, London; Bloomberg

Congratulations Cataluna!
Now - come on - let's see this ban extended across the rest of Spain!
It's cruel, it's barbaric and does not represent the culture of the modern Spain!
No-one should subject an animal to this much torture and making it a spectator sport is just too ghastly.

Call for Papers and Presentations

BLOGTALK 2010 http://2010.blogtalk.net
The 7th International Conference on Social Software
Galway, Ireland, 26-28 August 2010

Important Dates
===============

Regular paper abstracts due: 7 June 2010 (mandatory)
Regular paper submissions due: 14 June 2010
Notification of regular paper acceptance or rejection: 30 June 2010
Camera-ready regular papers due: 14 July 2010

Demonstration and poster abstracts due: 7 July 2010 (no full papers)
Notification of demo and poster acceptance or rejection: 14 July 2010

Brief
=====

* Audience: practitioners, developers, researchers (academia and industry)
* Topics: social software, social media, blogs, microblogs, networks, etc.
* Format: talks, demos and posters, discussion panels, breakout sessions
* Keynote speaker: Stowe Boyd (/Message)
* Conference: 26-27 August; workshop ("MicroBlogTalk"): 28 August
* Medieval castle banquet: 26 August (early booking advised)
* Website: http://2010.blogtalk.net/

Introduction
============

Following the international success of the past six BlogTalk events, the next BlogTalk - to be held in Galway, Ireland from 26-28 August 2010 - is continuing with its focus on social software, while remaining committed to the diverse cultures, practices and tools of our emerging networked society. The conference is designed to maintain a sustainable dialog between developers of innovative social software solutions, academics and researchers who study and advance social software and social media, practitioners and administrators in corporate and educational settings, and other general members of the social software and social media communities.

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, audiences will come from different fields of practice and will have different professional backgrounds. We strongly encourage proposals to bridge these cultural differences and to be understandable for all groups alike. For researchers, BlogTalk is an ideal conference for presenting and exchanging research work from current and future social software projects at an international level. For developers, the conference is a great opportunity to fly ideas, visions and prototypes in front of a distinguished audience of peers, to discuss, to link-up and to learn. For practitioners, this is a venue to discuss use cases for social software and social media, and to report on any results you may have with like-minded individuals.

We invite you to submit papers describing your research and applications at the BlogTalk 2010 conference. To encourage submission of various types of work by researchers, developers and practitioners, papers can be submitted in either of two tracks:

* Regular Track (full paper required, 12-14 pages in LNCS format). We expect papers that discuss mature and implemented work, both regarding (1) practical or industrial implementations and use-case reports for social software and social media, or (2) theoretical and research aspects of social networks and social data. Papers should clearly motivate the approach and provide relevant evaluations. Each submission will be reviewed by three members of the Program Committee.
* Demonstration and Poster Track (a two-page abstract describing what will be presented). This track gives the opportunity to present recent and in-progress work, in a forum that will encourage discussions since this track will be held in a special session with ample time for discussions and networking.

Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to:

* Applications of social networking;
* Architectures of social software applications;
* Business use cases and return on experience;
* Categorisation, folksonomies and social tagging;
* Collaboration and content sharing on the Web and in the enterprise;
* Data acquisition and data mining;
* Data portability;
* Digital rights;
* Ethnography studies of social networking platforms;
* Human computer interaction;
* Identity, privacy, trust and reputation;
* Real-time Social Web, microblogging and the Mobile Web;
* Semantic Web, Linked Data and knowledge representation for the Social Web;
* Uses in domains: e-government, health care, education, politics;
* Virtual worlds;
* Web standards for social data;
* Wikis and open collaboration.

What is BlogTalk?
=================

From its beginnings, the Internet has fostered communication, collaboration and networking between users. However, the first boom at the turn of the millennium was mainly driven by a rather one-sided interaction: e-commerce, portal sites and the broadcast models of mainstream media were introduced to the Web. Over the last six or seven years, new tools and practices have emerged which emphasise the social nature of computer-mediated interaction. Commonly (and broadly) labeled as social software, they encompass applications such as blogs and microblogs, wikis, social networking sites, real-time chat systems, and collaborative classification systems (folksonomies). The growth and diffusion of social software has in part been enabled by certain innovative principles of software development (e.g. open-source projects, open APIs, etc.), and in part by empowering the individual user to participate in networks of peers on different scales.

Every year, the International Conference on Social Software (BlogTalk) brings together different groups of people using and advancing the Internet and its usage: technical and conceptual developers, researchers with interdisciplinary backgrounds, and practitioners alike. It is designed to initiate a dialog between users, developers, researchers and others who share, analyse and enjoy the benefits of social software. The focus is on social software as an expression of a culture that is based on the exchange of information, ideas and knowledge. Moreover, we understand social software as a new way of relating people to people and to machines, and vice versa. In the spirit of the free exchange of opinions, links and thoughts, a wide range of participants can engage in this discourse.

BlogTalk enables participants to connect and discuss the latest trends and happenings in the world of social software. It consists of a mix of presentations, panels, face-to-face meetings, open discussions and other exchanges of research, with attendees sharing their experiences, opinions, software developments and tools. Developers are invited to discuss technological developments that have been designed to improve the utilisation of social software, as well as reporting about the current state of their software and projects. This includes new blog and wiki applications, content-creation and sharing environments, advanced groupware and tools, client-server designs, GUIs, APIs, content syndication strategies, devices, applications for microblogging, and much more. Researchers are asked to focus on their visions and interdisciplinary concepts explaining social software including, but not limited to, viewpoints from social sciences, cultural studies, psychology, education, law and natural sciences. Practitioners can talk about the practical use of social software in professional and private contexts, around topics such as communication improvements, easy-to-use knowledge management, social software in politics and journalism, blogging as a lifestyle, etc.

BlogTalk has attracted prominent speakers in the past, and previous keynote speakers include Yeonho Oh, Isaac Mao, Nova Spivack, Salim Ismail, Michael Breidenbrücker, danah boyd, Matt Mullenweg, and Rod Smith. 2010 will also feature a stellar lineup of keynotes, including Stowe Boyd, an authority on social tools and their impact on media, business, and society. Since one of the main motivations for organising and running BlogTalk every year is for attendees to be able to meet and connect with a diverse set of people that are fascinated by and work in the online digital world, we encourage you to attend and participate in BlogTalk 2010.

General Chair: John Breslin (NUI Galway / boards.ie)

Programme Chair: Alexandre Passant (DERI, NUI Galway)

Programme Committee:

* Gabriela Avram (University of Limerick)
* Anne Bartlett-Bragg (Headshift)
* Mark Bernstein (Eastgate Systems)
* Stephanie Booth (Climb to the Stars)
* Thomas N. Burg (Socialware)
* Rob Cawte (Web Heavies)
* Fabien Gandon (INRIA)
* Josephine Griffith (NUI Galway)
* Conor Hayes (DERI, NUI Galway)
* Renato Iannella (National ICT Australia)
* Akshay Java (Microsoft)
* Philipp Kaerger (L3S Research Center)
* Sheila Kinsella (DERI, NUI Galway)
* Pranam Kolari (Yahoo!)
* Cameron Marlow (Facebook)
* Daniel Olmedilla (Telefonica)
* Davide Palmisano (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
* Christine Perey (Perey Research and Consulting)
* Jan Schmidt (Hans Bredow Institut)
* Amit Sheth (Wright State University)
* Hideaki Takeda (NII Japan)
* Mischa Tuffield (Garlik)
* Paolo Valdemarin (Evectors)
* Seokchan "Channy" Yun (Seoul National University)
* David Weinberger (Berkman Center for Internet and Society)
* Ton Zylstra (Interdependent Thoughts)

Steering Committee: John Breslin, Thomas N. Burg (BlogTalk Founder), Anne Bartlett-Bragg

Contact
=======

http://2010.blogtalk.net/
blogtalk2010@gmail.com

This is a *not to be missed* event if you're a researcher or practitioner in the multi-disciplinary field of social software.
The program provides an opportunity to bring together global thought leaders and extend your network of contacts.
I would encourage anyone researching in this field to consider submitting a paper!

Seton Hill University will supply a new Apple iPad and a 13″ MacBook laptop to every full-time student arriving at its Greensburg, Pennsylvania, campus in fall 2010.

The giveaway kicks off the small liberal arts university’s Griffin Technology Advantage Program, which aims to cultivate digital literacy among its students. It also marks a growing shift to provide students with e-books rather than textbooks.

Students will have complete access to the devices during classes and for personal use. They can download textbooks from the iBook Store, take notes, communicate and share files with professors, advisers and classmates, conduct research and engage in interactive learning experiences. No word yet on whether the expected profusion of gaming apps for the iPad will be banned during class time.

If one free iPad and MacBook wasn’t a large enough lure for prospective students, Seton Hill has also promised to replace laptops with new ones after two years that students can then take with them when they graduate. The university boasts an on-site IT department trained in Mac repair and will even loan students MacBooks while theirs undergo restoration.

But do students really need both an iPad and a MacBook? Will the graduates of less technologically progressive schools be at a disadvantage without access to these devices?

The potential for iPads as a replacement for text books and mounds of paper-based "readers" is certainly demonstrated by this initiative.
Do students need both?
Well - the iPad isn't a laptop - and the story doesn't explain what subjects they're studying, but you could assume the laptop is used for more extensive computing experiences.
(Hope they don't ban the games function... if students are playing games in your lectures, then perhaps the question is more about how are you engaging them, as an educator?)