Pinboard (guardiantech)

Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks >> PNAS

guardiantech — 2014-06-29T21:09:11+00:00

Just in case you haven't read the paper that pretty much nobody noticed. Only three pages. Its conclusion: what other people write on the internet can affect your state of mind if you read it.

How the internet has woven itself into American life >> Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

guardiantech — 2014-04-01T15:50:40+00:00

Has (statistically robust) data on computer, mobile phone, smartphone and internet use in the US. Two fascinating stats on smartphones: Hispanics are more likely to own one than whites (61% v 53%); 83% of those aged 18-29 have one, v 19% of those over 65.

A Revolutionary Shape Changing Smartphone That Curls Upon a Call | Human Media Lab :: Queen's University

guardiantech — 2013-04-30T21:28:01+00:00

Researchers at queen’s university’s human media lab have developed a new smartphone – called morephone – which can morph its shape to give users a silent yet visual cue of an incoming phone call, text message or email.

Looks like those Christmas cracker fish which also tell you whether you're emotional or in love. (Thanks @Sputnikkers for the link.)

Learning from big data: 40 million entities in context >> Google Research

guardiantech — 2013-03-25T21:43:20+00:00

When someone mentions Mercury, are they talking about the planet, the god, the car, the element, Freddie, or one of some 89 other possibilities? This problem is called disambiguation (a word that is itself ambiguous), and while it’s necessary for communication, and humans are amazingly good at it (when was the last time you confused a fruit with a giant tech company?), computers need help.
To provide that help, we are releasing the Wikilinks Corpus: 40 million total disambiguated mentions within over 10 million web pages -- over 100 times bigger than the next largest corpus (about 100,000 documents, see the table below for mention and entity counts).

Awesome.

Crazy: 90% of people don't know how to use Ctrl+F >> The Atlantic

guardiantech — 2011-12-07T10:18:35+00:00

"This week, I talked with Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, about the time he spends with random people studying how they search for stuff. One statistic blew my mind. 90 percent of people in their studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page! I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don't use it at all. "90 percent of the US Internet population does not know that. This is on a sample size of thousands," Russell said. "I do these field studies and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebody's house as they've read through a long document trying to find the result they're looking for. At the end I'll say to them, 'Let me show one little trick here,' and very often people will say, 'I can't believe I've been wasting my life!'" They probably didn't build the computer themselves, either. Nor install a smartphone mod. Defaults rule. (via @wtfcuk)

How to read tech analysts' shipment reports and forecasts >> Mobile Opportunity

guardiantech — 2011-07-02T15:50:28+00:00

Also from 2006, but just as relevant today. It will be interesting to see how the big analysis firms will handle the fact that Acer says it's going to do a fire sale of millions of machines that were part of something that's almost inventory fraud in Europe.

Research projects vie for EU’s €1bn prizes >> FT.com

guardiantech — 2011-05-23T21:28:13+00:00

"Perhaps the most futuristic proposal is EPFL’s Guardian Angels, which will use computing and imaginative energy research to 'create the ultimate smart device that will assist humans from infancy to old age'. The guardian angel will 'scavenge for energy' from its environment, for example by tapping the heat and movements of the human body, said Adrian Ionescu, project leader."

Faintly scary.