This sounds crazy. But maybe a blessing for anthropologists?

Know more about MyLifeBits Project here.

I need a version control system. Not for coding but for paper writing, especially for collaborative writing. From time to time I need to work with peers and send revised drafts back and forth. Those drafts usually wind up as a bunch of files having similar filenames but with different dates appended. Some documents are similar while some are dramatically changed. However, I can’t tell the change merely from their names. Sometimes I work on the same paper using different computers. Usually I keep the latest copy on my flash drive and email myself a latest version. It is very tedious and I still have the problem with naming files.

Archiving those files is another issue. I usually keep all versions of draft. But the filenames with dates do not make much sense–I can check the file dates embedded in file info easily. Obviously I need more informative file names. But is it realistic to name a file as “2nd_paragraph_deleted_methods_rewritten_blah.doc?” I doubt so.

I’m wondering if there is such a version control system can satisfy my needs. I want to keep track of all the changes I’ve made. I want to be able to see the revisions with ease. I hope it can support multiple users. It should be an online platform that I can access anywhere. If it has clients, I hope they can work both on Mac and Windows. I don’t mind complex installing procedure as long as it is easy to use. If you know of anything close to it, please let me know. I really appreciate it.

Dan’s iPod
2004 – 2007

Dan’s iPod, a 4G iPod with Click Wheel, died on May 8, 2007 at the age of 2.37. The cause was hard drive failure.

It is survived by its whining owner, Dan Li.

Pew Internet’s latest report proposes a typology of Information and Communication Technology users. The typology is developed based on three dimensions of people’s relationship to ICT: assets, actions, and attitudes. Want to know what type of Internet user you are? Take a quiz on ICT use to see what user category you fall into.

Some highlights from the report.

• 8% of Americans are deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications
• Another 23% are heavy, pragmatic tech adopters – they use gadgets to keep up with social networks or be productive at work
• 10% rely on mobile devices for voice, texting, or entertainment
• 10% use information gadgets, but find it a hassle
• 49% of Americans only occasionally use modern gadgetry and many others bristle at electronic connectivity

As females have outnumbered male Internet users, men are more likely to be elite ICT uers. According to the profile of omnivore [ emphasis added ],

Omnivores make up 8% of the American public. They are young, ethnically diverse, and mostly male (70%). The median age is 28; just more than half of them are under age 30, versus one in five in the general population. Over half are white (64%) and 11% are black (compared to 12% in the general population). English-speaking Hispanics make up 18% of this group. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many (42% versus the 13% average) of Omnivores are students.

Forrester Research released a report on consumers’ participation in social technologies. It is based on surveys of 4,475 U.S. adults in December 2006 and 4,556 youth in October 2006. Forrester categorizes Social Computing behaviors into a ladder with six levels of participation [ I have a problem with the definition of Social Computing behaviors though]. They use the term Social Technographics® to describe a population based on its participation in these levels. The report costs $279.

Thanks to Dan Farber from ZDNET, we can glance through the adoption of social technologies among consumers.

I’m particularly curious about those who participated in more than one level. Are people involved in higher level of participation (in terms of content creation) more likely to consume content as well?

Via Cynical-C Blog via Waxy.
I do like the crowdsourcing idea. Researchers should adopt the idea and consider involving the interested public in such labor-intensive projects, of course, in a fun way. NASA has one.
White Glove Tracking: Creating a data source together one glove at a time.

There are 10,060 frames of video in Michael Jackson’s 5 min 35 sec nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. The White Glove Tracking project (W.G.T.) is an effort to isolate just the white glove from this moment in pop-culture history. Rather then write unnecessarily complex code to find the glove in every frame of the video I am asking for the assistance of 10,060 individual internet users to simply click and drag a box around the glove in one frame. In the end this data will be shared freely for all to download, visualize, and use as an input into other digital systems.

This is an open source project that shares source code and result data (coming soon). Contributors can be credited if they like. The top 10 contributing users will receive a free print of the visualization of the final data set.

Hey Katherine! Here is something special for you: a great great great Web design.

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July.