Link roundup for July 26, 2008

links for 2008-07-25

• Christian Siriano on Bluefly
  Okay, here’s my girly side: DROOL. but $500+ for a jacket ain’t happening. Totally hot stuff though.
  (tags: fashion style shopping realitytelevision)

Link roundup for July 24, 2008

links for 2008-07-23

• Academic publishers reap profits - The Stanford Daily Online
  Article about the scam that is college textbooks, and the publishers’ machinations to continue the current model.
  (tags: books academic school publishing economics)

Link roundup for July 22, 2008

links for 2008-07-18

• The Fable of the Keys
  Argues that the current history of the QWERTY vs. DVORAK keyboard standard is actually mythological, and that Qwerty makes sense in current climate.
  (tags: history standards technology sts)
• The Impoverished Social Scientist’s Guide to Free Statistical Software and Resources
  (tags: software statistics socialscience dissertation)
• SocSciBot 3: Link crawler for the social sciences
  (tags: software socialscience dissertation research)
• Twitter Blocks: alicetiara
  Crazy ass visual Twitter tool!
  (tags: twitter socialscience dissertation)
• Emma Alvarez Site: 60 Recommended Twitter Tools
  Maybe one of these does what I need!
  (tags: twitter)
• 17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe | FlowingData
  RAD list of Twitter visualized.
  (tags: twitter socialscience visualization)
• Free Link Crawler, Hyperlink Database and Resources
  Brief list.
  (tags: socialscience dissertation datamining)

I Want to Believe

There’s a new X-Files movie coming out on July 25. I was an enormous X-Files fan in college, and I’m very excited about it. I’ve been watching old episodes in preparation, and they really hold up. This week the NYT ran a nice article about the film that included this quote from Gillian Anderson, who played Scully:

Ms. Anderson used to find the whole idea [of Mulder & Scully pursuing a romantic relationship] ridiculous. “There was always part of me that thought, ‘What’s so special about these two, and will everybody not shut up about it?’ ” she said. “And then, while we were doing this movie, somebody sent me a link to a YouTube montage that a fan had put together of Mulder and Scully. Clips of our growing intimacy through the series. One, it was really moving, and two, I couldn’t believe how many times we held hands and actually kissed. And I was left with my very first understanding of what the fans were on about. I finally kind of got it.

I think it is extremely cool that a fanvid by an X-Phile helped Gillian Anderson reformulate her opinion of the relationships of a character that she played! This is a great example of the influence of fandom on canon texts, and it’s also a nice counterpoint to many of the popular conceptions of romantic/shipper fanvids, that they’re something that silly teenage girls do.

I first learned about fanvids from seeing a really great presentation by Francesca Coppa at Media in Transition 5 at MIT. She pointed out that this is a historically female form of fandom that pre-dates machinima and video mash-ups, but gets almost no attention in comparison. (She also showed how incredibly time-consuming and complex creating fanvids was during the heyday of the VCR.) Here’s a great two-part interview with Francesca on Henry Jenkins’ blog: part one and part two.

Link roundup for July 17, 2008

Link roundup for July 16, 2008

links for 2008-07-15

• Two dorky men + marriage + twitter = …
  First couple in history to twitter their vows?
  (tags: web2.0 edgecases)
• On and Off the ‘Net: Scales for Social Capital in an Online Era
  This article reports on the development and validation of the Internet Social Capital Scales, or ISCS. These scales are intended to measure two different types of social capital—known as “bridging” and “bonding”—for both online and offline contexts.
  (tags: socialcapital dissertation ethnography research)
• Timothy Lenoir
  Head of science studies at Stanford, does v. interesting work on sociology/history of game design / new media
  (tags: dissertation sciencestudies science history sts)
• STIM - MouseSite
  History of HCI starting w/ Doug Elgelbart
  (tags: hci sts history technology)
• Syllabus - History of Computer Game Design
  (tags: syllabi teaching impactsofdigitalmedia)