Week XIV

Continuing the theme of legal resources for teaching/students... Project Oyez, a website dedicated to Supreme Court Media. The United States court system is notoriously traditional when it comes to allowing media in the courtroom. The Supreme Court especially has been hesitant to allow photos, let alone audio recordings released to the public (there is an ancient audio recording device that records for the use of the Court, but is not generally released).

Sometimes, rarely, there are releases made. Other media are allowed at times too. Oyez is dedicated to archiving all of this media and information for public consumption, which I believe is a valuable tool for students, etc, trying to gain a deeper understanding about the Supreme Court.

Week XIII

After years of legal research, I've become fairly familiar with some of the most useful sites. I shared the Presidential Documents link a few weeks ago. Another hugely useful site, though its interface leaves a lot to be desired, is THOMAS, run by the Library of Congress.

Thomas contains online text for bills, resolutions, etc. proposed to the United States Congress. Its searchable, and while it has a fairly clunky interface, it is very useful, especially for people who don't have access to Lexis Law.

Week XII

Okay, this is for Week XII, but the link features National Library Week, which is April 15-21. I personally think, as educators, being aware of initiatives like this is very important because often times there are extra materials these non profit groups provide that help to highlight their cause. It can be a very good way to briefly introduce students to a wide variety of issues without the teacher having to spend an in-depth amount of time on structuring a lesson plan to overview the topic.

Week XI

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents

A rather little known site (outside of legal research), where the actual text of any presidential document is posted only a week or so after its release. This is especially useful for students wanting to do a paper on a presidential speech that may not have been televised, etc. One of its limitations though is that it only covers until 1993 digitally, though the information is available less conviently in print for earlier presidential documents.

Week X

Playing post catch-up...

Project Gutenberg

The oldest of the e-book libraries online, and still one of the best maintained. Has copies of public domain works whose copyrights have expired in the United States. I personally think this would be a great resource for lower income schools who might have computer labs, but not necessarily the money to buy all the books for reading each year. This way kids could do some of their readings in-class (maybe some kind of after school homework reading program even?).

Week IX

There has been a growing trend in the last two decades or so away from the physical written word. While books are still a popular way to disseminate information (even with the increasing availability of e-books, especially e-textbooks), e-mail and other forms of digital communications such AIM and Blackberries have detracted from practices like letter writing. The post office has noticed this and has had to raise the price of postage several times in recent years to help defray the costs this lack of business has brought.

While this new technology is definitely useful and has become not only an early adopter phenomenon, but one accepted by the general population, there are still a large number of late or non adopters. Many of these people are either economically disadvantaged or of a generation that is not comfortable with adopting new technology (the latter category of non-adopters is who I would like to address). One of the unfortunate social trends as a result of this technological trend is that many of the elderly who are living longer, and often alone, are even more isolated from remaining friends and family who are more technologically advanced and reliant on that technology as a way to communicate.

For example, I think nothing of sending an e-card to wish a friend a Happy Birthday, but I rarely think to make the "effort" to go buy a card and stamp for one of my great aunts or uncles who doesn't have a computer.

Around Christmas time I was reading a LiveJournal community for gift ideas when I ran across an intriguing idea called "Subscription to My Life." The idea was simple- "give" one of your relatives a 52 week subscription to your life. I adapted this idea for my Grandmother who is 90 and lives by herself out of state. I rarely have time to call and talk, but I took an on-line subscription form and used Photoshop to doctor it and make it look like a subscription form for my life. I went out and bought several dozen postcards and stamps and every week I send her a quick written postcard just telling her what happened with my week.

My parents, who talk to her several times a week, say that she rarely talks about anything else since I've started sending her the postcards.

I was talking to one our classmates today and she was telling me about her great-grandmother who is in a similar situation. I told her about this idea and she loved the concept of it and said that this would be a great idea to share. Both from the perspective that it could really help you connect with someone you don't usually get to connect with, and from the idea that sometimes we should think about those who get left behind when technology springs ahead without them.

Week VIII

And another post to catch me up for now. There are only a few really good resources for people researching new media from a social sciences perspective. Terra Nova is one of the best. Terra Nova "is a blog about virtual worlds and their implications. Virtual Worlds include synthetics worlds, MMOs, MMORPGs, Social Worlds, MUDs, MOOs, and MUSHes. Terra Nova authors include scholars, practitioners and writers."

The discussions are deeply academic and examine both common topics like violence in video games, as well as more obscure concepts like the rights of players to control user content (one instance where several users had their accounts/characters deleted from an online game was characterized as murder). The authors are a veritable "who's who" in the study of virtual worlds.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about the study of virtual games let me know. One of my classes in Undergrad was an ethnographic research project undertaken in the MMO World of Warcraft. It was only the second or third time a class like that had been offered in the nation and it was interesting both to research in that type of environment as well as endure the kind of scrutiny a class of that nature created in both the academic as well as virtual world.

For example, we often had lectures in-game so that we could talk with some of the most well-respected researchers in the field. Nick Yee "visited" with us in World of Warcraft which proved challenging as we met near a "public" road in-game. The "sight" of twenty gnomes sitting in a clearing, attentively listening to a Nigh Elf discuss age of consent forms for survey takers on a public chat channel drew a lot of interest, as well as criticism from fellow gamers. The reaction of the academic community to our endeavors was similar as well, unfortunately.

My paper for this class, which examined Western colonial themes built into World of Warcraft, was featured one month on Terra Nova, in an article on Cultural Borrowing in World of Warcraft. The ensuing ruckus was a sight to behold as academics, players, and anyone else who wanted to get involved promptly did so, loudly, and not always nicely. It really highlighted for me how important this growing field is academically, and also, on many levels, how misunderstood it is as well.

Week VII

With regards to my last post, where I presented the concept of abandonedware (software that is still under copyright, but can no longer be bought and so is therefore offered on the web for free), I'd like to provide a link to the Wayback Archive Internet Archive. The Archive provides an archive of sorts of the internet- it takes samples of web pages periodically and stores them in its system. You can search and see pages as they existed from years ago.

"The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites. Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web. Imagine surfing circa 1999 and looking at all the Y2K hype, or revisiting an older version of your favorite Web site. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine can make all of this possible."

The About section of the Archive explains some of the different aspects and uses of a concept of an archival system of the internet:

"Libraries exist to preserve society's cultural artifacts and to provide access to them. If libraries are to continue to foster education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it's essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world."

"Internet libraries can change the content of the Internet from ephemera to enduring artifacts of our political and cultural lives."

"Without paper libraries, it would be hard to exercise our "right to remember" our political history or hold government accountable. With much of the public's business now moving from paper to digital media, Internet libraries are certain to become essential in maintaining that right. Imagine, for instance, how news coverage of an election campaign might suffer if journalists had only limited access to previous statements that candidates had made in the media."

"Historians, sociologists, and journalists could use Internet libraries to hold up a mirror to society. For example, they might ask when different ethnic groups or special interests or certain businesses became a presence on the Internet. "

I think this site is very interesting to those involved in many different aspects of communications research, from history to new technology. I also think, from a teacher's perspective, that it makes a very good point to students that while the web is ephemeral in a sense, there is more permanence to it than many people of the current generation generally give credit to.

Week VI

Turning the Pages

This is a fantastic website with digitized images of rare biomedical books from the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The presentation was done with Flash, and I've listed some of the images below. If only some of our other museums managed to do such a wonderful presentation online:

Week V

Home of the Underdogs is an old favorite of mine that I wanted to share. It has lots of old PC games that are available for download free. The games are all ones that are no longer being sold, so are distributed as "abandonware".

Now, from a practical standpoint, the website offers a lot of old games that are really useful, not just for fun but educationally too. But, from an ethical standpoint, even though the offered games are no longer being sold and cannot be bought from the copyright holder, they still fall under copyright. Abandonware is illegal. Here is the rationale posted on the site:

"Despite the illegal status of abandonware, we believe that we are offering a valuable service to the gaming community: classic game collectors have a chance to retrieve games that have otherwise been lost or rendered defective with the passage of time. As our Disclaimer printed on every page makes clear, we will gladly remove download links to any game that is either 1) still being sold by the publisher, or 2) at the request of the publishers themselves. Encouraging publishers to continue publishing great classics of yore has always been this site's foremost goals, and we will gladly link to the publisher's order or download site without hesitation should they make their products available again, whether commercially or as freeware.

That said, we are continually seeking permission from copyright holders to distribute their games on this site. If you are a copyright holder and would like to grant us permission (or request that your games be taken off-line, as the case may be), please contact us. "

I thought it would be interesting to get some feedback from the class on what they think ethically...

Week IV

My two year old desktop decided to die two weeks ago. This computer took the place of my laptop which crashed rather gloriously during the most hectic time in my undergrad years and which spawned an emotional breakdown that had me locked in my bathroom for the better part of finals Junior year. Obviously, this was not an experience I wanted to repeat.

I played with it for a week or so. Defragged it. Did Disk Cleanup. Ran virus scans. Had my technically inclined friends come over and shrug at it. Then, I dug around, found my four year warranty, and settled in for a nice chat with Dell.

I spoke to three different levels of technicians during two different days and over five total hours on the phone. Michael (who was very clearly based in India), tried hard. We went through the entire manual before he transferred me up to Ronald (back to domestic support), who eventually transferred me up to Hector. By Hector, I had run pretty much every test known to man, gotten into an argument about the fact that my flash drive did not cause Blue Screen of Death, and wiped my system clean. At this point, it was established that it was in fact a hardware failure and not 1.) software related, or 2.) user error. In hour five, Hector actually had me OPEN my tower case up and start taking bits out.

Hector: "Okay, now you see the silver box?"
Me: "Which one?"
Hector: "The one on the right."
Me: "The upper right or right behind it?"
Hector: *pained silence*

It was at this point that we established that my motherboard was malfunctioning. Hector put me on hold (presumably to inform his supervisors that they would actually have to fix my computer), and then scheduled a technician's visit. I was impressed when he gave me his number/ employee code- he was Dell technician 01.

My parents are less technologically able than I am (which is really saying something- last month I set my vaccum cleaner on fire), so, traditionally, I have been the one to call tech support for anything from the internet going down to my Dad throwing the printer at the wall (the printer really did deserve it). I've picked up some tricks over the years which serve me well:

1.) be patient (even if you know what's wrong, if you want them to pay for it, you're going to have to let them run their diagnostics and tests their way)
2.) be polite, ask them how their day has been and actually care, remember that 9 out of every 10 calls likely involves cussing, and, trust me, call 10 is the one that gets the best help
3.) write down everything- their name, their employee identification, all the steps you're going through, and most important- your case information so you don't have to start over from scratch if the call gets lost (it happens more often than you'd think)

A rather humorous, Tips for Dealing with Tech Support, written by techs.

My computer, as of yesterday, has a new motherboard and appears to be functioning well. If not, I have two years left on my warranty, and a lot of cell phone minutes.

Week III

More fun with podcasts... I surfing CNN today and found an interesting story on a popular podcast on grammar called "Grammar Girl." I wanted to post the link to the story for two reasons- it sounds like an interesting podcast for anyone wanting to improve their grammar (or their students'), but also as a communications/media person to acknowledge that podcasts have gone "mainstream" enough to be picked up as a story on CNN. I think its significant that such a major news conglomeration willingly assumes that most of its readers will have enough of a basic knowledge at least of what podcasts are that they don't explain it in the story.

Grammar Girl, a Quick and Dirty Success

Week II

This is a livejournal from one of my old Communications Professors, Aaron Delwiche, who specializes in new media studies. Because of this he has a lot of links and updates to things going on in the world wide web:

http://delwiche.livejournal.com/