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Form an impression! (and help with my research....)
by Alastair Weakley 10 Mar '05

10 Mar '05

Hi I am looking for academics with an interest in technology to take part in an online survey about impression formation (my research is into the sharing of implicit and tacit knowledge with people over the Internet). I would be very grateful if you would consider sparing a few minutes of your time to take part in the survey which is available here: http://www.weakley.org.uk/experiment1/index.php Many thanks for your help. Alastair Weakley ___________________________________________ Alastair Weakley Creativity & Cognition Studios Faculty of IT University of Technology, Sydney Australia Tel: +61(0)2 9514 4637 Mobile: +61 (0)424316744 alastair(a)weakley.org.uk http://www.weakley.org.uk AIM: alwkly

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New AoIR Website
by Nancy Baym 10 Mar '05

10 Mar '05

AoIR is excited to announce the launch of our new website. As a member of AoIR, you will be able to: - access papers from AoIR conferences - view and access the members only area, and members benefits - create forums and post announcements - build collaborative community resources - maintain a blog - post and view job and conference announcements - post events to the communal event calendar - and other interesting features. Our hope is that the new system will provide a platform for our members to become more involved in creating online spaces and resources that benefit internet researchers. The site is designed so that members can take the initiative and build resources on their own. We will be adding and modifying content in the site as it develops and invite you to join us in creating the kinds of content you want to see. The new system is based on open-source drupal software. For information about how this works, visit the drupal handbook at http://drupal.org/node/6261. *** If you are already a member you will need to create a new account *** To do this, go to the http://www.aoir.org/?q=user/register user registration page. Give us a few days to double check that you're really a member, and then we'll send your login information. We will try to keep turnaround on this brief. If you are not currently a member, you will need to join aoir before you can use the full features of this site. Membership in AoIR includes other benefits including sizeable discounts on journal subscriptions and book purchases and a discounted registration fee for AoIR conferences. The URL to click to become a paying member of AoIR is in the signature file of every email on air-l. I want to thank everyone who has done so much work over the last few months to get this together including, among others, Jeremy Hunsinger, Ulla Bunz, and Charlie Breindahl. Have fun, explore the site, think about resources you want to build, and if you have questions or need assistance, please contact suggestions(a)aoir.org -- Nancy Baym http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym Communication Studies, University of Kansas Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 102, Lawrence, KS 66045-7574, USA Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org

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counting google hits
by Barry Wellman 09 Mar '05

09 Mar '05

Q: From a librarian: "Dear Barry: I do not know much about this debate, but I have a question for you: Please tell me how do you find in google the hits? what is the procedure? i.e. if I would like to know how many time the word Caribbean appears in Google, how will I proceed? Thanks for your help! Nelly" A: 1. Go to www.google.com 2. type in Carribean 3. Look at the light blue web bar on top of the first list of hits. It will show you the approximate number of hits: Example: "Results 1 - 10 of about 38,100,000 for caribbean" Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 To network is to live; to live is to network () ASCII ribbon campaign -- don't use HTML email /\ _____________________________________________________________________

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CFP - HICSS39 - Virtual Communities Minitrack (fwd)
by Caroline Haythornthwaite 08 Mar '05

08 Mar '05

FYI. /Caroline ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 18:21:43 -0500 From: Raya Fidel <fidelr(a)u.washington.edu> Reply-To: rhill(a)asis.org To: asis-l(a)asis.org, sigdl-l(a)asis.org Subject: [Asis-l] FW: CFP - HICSS39 - Virtual Communities Minitrack [Forwared for Raya Fidel. Dick Hill] Online Communities in the Digital Economy CALL FOR PAPERS Thirty-ninth Annual Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences January 4 - 7, 2006 Hyatt Regency, Kauai Additional detail may be found on HICSS primary web site: http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu Mirror sites: http://hicss.sepa.tudelft.nl/ and http://www.is.cityu.edu.hk/hicss/ Virtual Communities have been studied from a variety of different perspectives. Examples range from communities of interest to communities of practice, from gaming communities to communities of transaction. Community building and community management can be a key success factors in the digital economy. They can either supplement existing or even represent new business models in the digital economy, or other form of continuous interaction and social relationships. The communities we target may be constituted as communities' platforms, Internet shops, portal sites, reputation systems, educational, groupware systems, electronic auctions, billboards, peer-to-peer file sharing infrastructures, enterprises or organizations. Product-centred communities are relevant for online companies, as for example the reader community at Amazon.com or mutual support groups for software development. Other communities might enhance real communities or other forms of social networks, like support groups, fun and discussion groups, technical and service communities and more. Furthermore, virtual communities can be formed on different platforms: forums, newsgroups, listservs, chats, instant messenging and more. As the examples show, online communities differ in their orientation. Nevertheless, there are common features which all types of communities share: common interests, practices, languages and ontologies with common semantics as well as normative issues. Communities are a sociological phenomenon. They can foster a social atmosphere for interactions and transactions. We are interested in the common and different as well. We call for papers that address communities as a social phenomenon, the design of platforms and services, and community-related business models as critical success factors in the digital economy. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: - Communities as sociological phenomenon in the digital economy (e.g., dynamics, relationships, information control, managing communities, flow of information in communities) - Community-related business models (e.g., productivity, trust, reputation systems) - Business Communities - Personalization and use of customer profiles - Case studies and topologies of Online Communities - M-Communities and hybrid communities - Design principles for community platforms (e.g., coordination, trust, normative values, design patterns and methods, implementations, architectures and components, personalization and avatars) - Formal or semi-formal models of communities and their platforms (e.g., conceptual frameworks, organizational models, cognitive models, multi-agent systems, formalizations) More information can be found at: http://www.e-business.fhbb.ch/hicss MINITRACK CHAIRS: Karine Barzilai-Nahon (Main Contact) Assistant Professor The Information School University of Washington Mary Gates Hall, Room 370B, Box 352840 Seattle, WA 98195-2840 (206) 685-6668 karineb(a)u.washington.edu, website: www.ischool.washington.edu/karineb Mark Ginsburg Asst. Professor MIS U of Arizona 1130 E Helen St. #430 Tucson, AZ 85711 mginsbur(a)eller.arizona.edu Blair Nonnecke Assistant Professor Dept. of Computing and Information Science University of Guelph Guelph, Canada nonnecke(a)cis.uoguelph.ca IMPORTANT DEADLINES Abstracts - Authors may contact Minitrack Chairs for guidance and indication of appropriate content at anytime. June 15 - Authors submit full papers to the Peer Review System, following Author Instructions found on the HICSS web site (www.hicss.hawaii.edu) All papers will be submitted in double column publication format and limited to 10 pages including diagrams and references. Papers undergo a double-blind review. August 15 - Acceptance/Rejection notices are sent to Authors via the Peer Review System. September 15 - Authors submit Final Version of papers following submission New Date! instructions on the Peer Review System web site. At least one author of each paper must register by this date with specific plans to attend the conference to present the paper. Early Registration fee $525 applies. October 2 - General Registration fee $575 applies until December 10. December 10 - Deadline to guarantee your hotel room reservation at conference rate. Deadline to receive conference registration refund. Late registration fee $675 applies. INSTRUCTIONS FOR PAPER SUBMISSION . HICSS papers must contain original material not previously published, nor currently submitted elsewhere. . Consult the conference website (www.hicss.hawaii.edu) for the listing and description of Minitracks for HICSS-39. . (optional) Contact the Minitrack Chair(s) by email for guidance and verification of appropriate content. . Do not submit the manuscript to more than one Minitrack Chair. If unsure of which Minitrack is appropriate, submit abstract to the Track Chair for guidance. . HICSS will conduct double-blind reviews of each submitted paper. . Submit full paper according to detailed instructions found on the Peer Review System website. HICSS-39 CONFERENCE TRACKS Collaboration Systems and Technology Co-chair: Robert O. Briggs bbriggs@GroupSystems; Co-chair: Jay Nunamaker nunamaker(a)cmi.arizona.edu Decision Technologies for Management Chair: Dan Dolk drdolk(a)nps.edu Digital Media: Content and Communication Chair: Michael Shepherd shepherd(a)cs.cal.ca E-Government Chair: H. Jochen Scholl jscholl(a)u.washington.edu Information Technology in Health Care Chair: William Chismar chismar(a)hawaii.edu Internet & the Digital Economy Co-chair: David King david.king(a)jda.com; Co-chair: Alan Dennis ardennis(a)indiana.edu Knowledge Management Systems Co-chair: Murray Jennex murphjen(a)aol.com; Dave Croasdell davec(a)unr.edu Organizational Systems & Technology Chair: Hugh Watson hwatson(a)terry.uga.edu Software Technology Chair: Gul Agha agha(a)cs.uiuc.edu HICSS conferences are devoted to advances in the information, computer, and system sciences, and encompass developments in both theory and practice. Invited papers may be theoretical, conceptual, tutorial or descriptive in nature. Submissions undergo a double-blind peer referee process and those selected for presentation will be published in the Conference Proceedings. Submissions must not have been previously published. CONFERENCE ADMINISTRATION Ralph Sprague, Conference Chair Email: sprague(a)hawaii.edu Sandra Laney, Conference Administrator Email: hicss(a)hawaii.edu Eileen Robichaud Dennis, Track Administrator Email: eidennis(a)indiana.edu 2006 CONFERENCE VENUE Hyatt Regency Kauai 1571 Poipu Road Koloa, Kauai HI 96756 1-808-742-1234 http://Kauai.hyatt.com ____ ________________________________________ Asis-l mailing list Asis-l(a)asis.org http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/asis-l

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Your help needed for Undergraduate Research
by Becky Singson 08 Mar '05

08 Mar '05

Air-l members, I need your assistance! I am a senior Interdisciplinary Studies major at Miami University of Oxford, OH. I am currently working on my undergraduate thesis. My thesis is relating to Web development and the role of end-user research in the web development process. For part of this thesis, I am doing a survey study of Web development professionals. The survey is a short, 12 question online survey. The questions are geared towards understanding what methods of user research developers use when doing research for Web development projects and at what part of the process they employ these methods. If you have participated in any Web development projects, as I'm sure many of you have, then your imput is crucial! Please take my survey. As I said, it is a short, 12 question survey. It probably won't take you longer than ten or fifteen minutes. All questions are optional. You do not need to provide any identifiying information unless you choose to at the end of the survey. The results of this survey will not be used for any other purposes except to contribute to my senior thesis. I ask that you please complete it by Tuesday, March 15th. The survey can be found at http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2246MSXMJ28 If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at singsora(a)muohio.edu. Thank you so much for your time and assistance! Becky Singson

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SIGGROUP No; Special Issues Si & Conferences Si
by Barry Wellman 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

_____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 To network is to live; to live is to network () ASCII ribbon campaign -- don't use HTML email /\ _____________________________________________________________________ I have recently received the sad news that SIGGROUP is no more: the Special Interest Group on Group stuff of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The group's Bulletin (an informal journal) has been shaky for some years. SIGGROUP's shakiness is puzzling, because I found lots of life at the ACM's recent CSCW conference (that's Computer Supported Cooperative Work, literally; Group and Social Network stuff, more generally) and reportedly at their annual GROUP conference (which I haven't attended in a while). Fortunately, both conferences are continuing. Also good news is that two more Special Issues of SIGGROUP Bulletin will be published in the first half of 2005, although I don't know in what order: 1) Less of You, More of Us: The Political Economy of Power in Virtual Communities. Editors: Jason Nolan, Knowledge Media Design Institute, University of Toronto Jeremy Hunsinger, Center for Digital Discourse and Culture, Virginia Tech The goal is to bring into the dialogue a number of researchers on virtual community who are looking at the borders and peripheral locations that are ignored, unknown or explicitly overlooked. Within the notion that community, often the walls we build around ourselves form mechanism of power and preference, this issue will examine online communities that are excluded or self-excluding from the dominant forms, norms and discourses. For example, there are a large number of researchers inquiring into the recent blogging phenomenon, but many explicitly exclude technologies/communities such as LiveJournal.com with his 3.8 million users (1.7 active), and discount the value of teenage bloggers, who are mostly female (67% of Livejournal users). Because researchers tend to cover familiar territories, we encourage authors to explore alternatives. Our issue will provide researchers with the opportunity to expose the readership to a wider sense of virtual community and what is going on at the edges of the event horizon. Some of the themes are: hacking virtual community; the overlooked, broken down, subverted or reconceptualized virtual communities; borders and breaches, the ordering of virtual community; hacktivism; sexually focused virtual communities; questioning the value of online community; collective intelligence is just the fordism of the mind; the Slash Fiction communities; MOOs the early forgotten virtual communities; and the code beneath the community - exploring programmer and system administrative communities. 2) Online Learning Communities. Edited by Anabel Quan-Haase University of Western Ontario, Canada). As we spent more of our time on the Internet sending and receiving emails, talking on chats, and surfing through the web, we learn from others - informally from family and friends, formally from online classes, and as apprentices in communities of practice. Learning via the Internet is not a lonely endeavor but consists of exchanging information with others, debating current issues on chats, and participating in listservs. A wide range of online learning communities have emerged from the wide range of opportunities the Internet makes possible, for example, grass roots communities based on shared interest, informal interaction, and voluntary participation; knowledge communities and communities of practice which support information exchange, knowledge creation, and sharing of group practices. Other learning communities are more formal in nature. These communities are often set up by institutions, such as colleges and universities, who offer learners the opportunity to obtain a degree through distant education. Learners often prefer online learning as it has the potential to overcome many of the traditional barriers encountered in face-to-face settings such as distance, time constraints and combining work and study. Thus, online learning offers a flexible, alternative to traditional learning settings. However, critical analyses of social and psychological issues including access, literacy, personality, group interactions, temporal aspects, and online conversation are needed to better understand the nature of online learning communities and to make informed decisions for supporting and developing practices that best suit the needs of online learners. This special issue contains papers that examine online learning and knowledge communities, both formal and informal. Papers are empirical and theoretical in nature. The authors explore the nature of online learning communities, key characteristics of online learning environments, major challenges for creating and sustaining online learning communities, and best practices for online learning communities among other possible topics. Authors: 1. Leila Alem & Simon Kravis: Design and evaluation of an online community: a case study at CSIRO 2. Michelle M. Kazmer & Caroline Haythornthwaite: Multiple Perspectives on Online Education 3. Michelle Kazmer: How technology affects students' departures from online learning communities 4. Christopher Hoadley & Peter G. Kilner: Using technology to transform communities of practice into knowledge-building communities 5. Kirk St.Amant: Distance Education in a Global Age: A Perspective for Internationalizing Online Learning Environments 6. Anthony Papargyris & Angeliki Poulymenakou Learning to fly in persistent digital worlds: The case of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games

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Cybersafety Conference: Call deadline
by Vicki Nash 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Dear Colleagues, Could I please take this opportunity to remind you that all abstracts for our 'Safety and Security in a Networked World: Balancing Cyber-Rights and Responsibilities ' event should be sent to cybersafety(a)oii.ox.ac.uk no later than 11th March 2005. The event will be organised by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), in collaboration with the University of Auckland, NetSafe (the New Zealand government backed Internet Safety Group), EURIM and others and will be held between the 8th-10th September 2005 at the Said Business School, Oxford. It aims to address the value choices and conflicts surrounding cybersafety in a converging world and will feature leading international authorities from government, industry, NGOs and academia, including the computer sciences, humanities, law and the social sciences. For further information on the event and our call for papers please refer to: <outbind://43/www.oii.ox.ac.uk/cybersafety> www.oii.ox.ac.uk/cybersafety If you have any questions please email: cybersafety(a)oii.ox.ac.uk Kind regards, Dr Victoria Nash Policy and Research Officer 01865 287231 Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford 1, St Giles OX1 3JS www.oii.ox.ac.uk <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/>

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google history
by Fred Turner 06 Mar '05

06 Mar '05

Hi Steve -- I don't know a business history of Google, but for a comparison of how google and other search engines work, technically and, I think, economically, you might see Diane Poremsky, Google and other search engines. Good luck! -- Fred ___________________________________________________________________ Fred Turner Assistant Professor Director of Undergraduate Studies Dept. of Communication Building 120 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2050 O) 650-723-0706 Fax) 650-725-2472 fturner(a)stanford.edu

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Asian Tsunami Web Archive
by Randolph Kluver (Assoc Prof) 06 Mar '05

06 Mar '05

On March 1, a Web archive of sites relating to the Asian tsunami was soft launched -- at http://tsunami.archive.org WebArchivist.org provided technology and services to this collaborative effort, which included the Singapore Internet Research Center at Nanyang Technological University and the Internet Archive in San Francisco. The archive includes sites from dozens of nations and in thirteen different languages. AoIR members involved in the project included Kirsten Foot, Steve Schneider, and Randy Kluver. Some details of the project are available at http://www.webarchivist.org/projects.htm. Members of AoIR are invited to visit the site and give feedback. We especially welcome feedback, given that we are still working to clean up the data and make the information more useful to visitors. Randolph Kluver Singapore Internet Research Centre School of Communication and Information Nanyang Technological University Singapore 637718 phone (65) 6790-5770 http://www.ntu.edu.sg/sci/sirc/

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Re: counting google hits
by Mike Thelwall 06 Mar '05

06 Mar '05

Re: "folks realize that using the "number of hits returned on google" is a hilarious bad way to prove a point -- right?" A couple of points for the debate from the webometrics research field... The research field of webometrics uses search engines quite a lot for raw data such as hit counts and link counts, and the findings indicate that whilst there are individual anomalies, on average, hit counts tend to reflect underlying real differences. This research is summarized in two recent review chapters: Bar-Ilan, J. (2004). The Use of Web Search Engines in Information Science Research. In: Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 38 Thelwall, M., Vaughan, L. & Björneborn, L. (2005). Webometrics. In: Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 39, 81-135. However, you would probably guess that commercial search engines like Google have a significant international bias, which should be taken in to account when counting hits. But this bias is not deliberately manufactured or due to language factors, it stems from the history of the web and the way in which links are used in web crawling. See: Vaughan, L. & Thelwall, M. (2004). Search engine coverage bias: evidence and possible causes, Information Processing & Management, 40(4), 693-707. http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/papers/search_engine_bias_preprint.pdf Mike Thelwall Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/ http://linkanalysis.wlv.ac.uk/ http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/mycv.html

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