week 8 – wednesday (10 Aug 2011)

Agenda

• Housekeeping (points sheet)
• Lecture/Discussion
• Group Project (remediation)
• Course Evaluations

Lecture/Discussion

How Google (and website architects) “curate” the information you see

Filtering (perhaps unknown to you)

• Google Instant
• “correctly identify the goals for 90% of the queries studied” – ACM, 2005
• Facebook Newsfeed
• Web sites (Phil’s research)
• Anonymizer – Thor

What are the implications for political discourse?

Google+

• How would you go about trying to find politicians or government officials?
• Exercise: try to find two (no fair looking at Kathy’s circles!)

Class members on G+

• Adam – http://gplus.to/adambish
• Amy – https://plus.google.com/115982643235493113823/
• Cecilia – http://plus.google.com/108535472372266852683/
• Chia-Ho – https://profiles.google.com/110899008221883333286/
• Danny – https://plus.google.com/105559003039948422797
• Jessie –  https://plus.google.com/101660442361664955946/
• Kathy – http://gplus.to/kegill
• Sean – plus.google.com/u/0/103262498203342271311/
• Tim – https://plus.google.com/103671435940819042284/
• Xiaoxi Jin – https://plus.google.com/104744396568609823442/about

Group Project Collaboration (remediation)

• Several students have most or all of their bookmarks “private” but showing to the group — these bookmarks need to be reposted (you cannot edit this setting)
• Many students have bad links on their research posts – because you cannot edit the URL, these need to be reposted
• G+ links -> missing dates, publication info (tags), the three requested categories [research, tips/how-tos, examples of use

Course Evaluations

• Need volunteer to collect and drop in campus mailbox
• Do you want to do this “before” lab time —  so you can do the remediation (if you want points adjustment) now or later?