Research Essentials

Facebook first became popular with young people of university age. They use it to co-ordinate their social lives, alongside mobile phones, to share photos and generally add an extra dimension to the fun side of being at uni. There are more ways in which it can be used, but I think that remains the basis. [...]

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When Cory Doctorow talked at the Open University today, the audience in the room was supplemented by a more widespread group who were watching the live webcast. Throughout his talk, the extended audience was discussing, reacting to, reporting and referencing what was said. By the end of the session, Cory was responding to a question [...]

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My research group spent a successful day this week brainstorming and developing projects together. We began by considering what we enjoy about research, and found that social and affective factors are hugely important to us. We wanted to carry out joyful research – visionary research – research that would engage us and make a difference [...]

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My Facebook usage has diminished as my Twitter usage has grown. However just recently one of my other circles of friends has “discovered” facebook and this has got me back into it again. I’m now nearing the end (I hope!) of writing up my PhD thesis. Eileen (one of my supervisors) said early on that [...]

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At HHL2007, I joined twitter. This was good fun and definitely a little ahead of the game. I’m now signed up for HHL2008 in October and this year they’re sending all delegates who register before 31st July a free Nintendo DS. Apparently it will come with one game and some conference material. I wonder what else? [...]

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I’m almost reluctant to wade in with yet another post about twitter. It seems to quite polarise views. Will triggered qute an interesting dialogue when he highlighted some disadvantages of twitter in his blog and suggested that it might be possible to become addicted to twittering. Martin responded with some interesting points about how twittering [...]

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…if augmentation is the correct term. In March 2007 I attended the ALT-C conference in Nottingham. After registering, I was invited to give my blog address to the organisers so they could add it to their Yahoo pipe. All the blogs in this pipe were aggregated into a single chronogical feed. At the conference, many [...]

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Patrick’s posts about his efforts in managing time more efficiently have caused me to have a go with a couple of the applications he’s mentioned. One is ThinkingRock, which is based on the principles of Dave Allen’s “Getting things done”. Been using it for about a week and so far it seems very useful. It [...]

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In the light of all these reports about the dangers of information availability on the net, I decided to share a recent experience. I received a letter addressed to somebody else at my home address. The name of the addressee was hidden in the little envelope window so I opened it. It was an invoice for [...]

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Yet more reflections on Twitter. Since my last post, I’ve started to warm up again considerably to twitter. But why? I also use Facebook. This is mainly for the statuses. I really enjoy the ever changing statuses of my friends. They’re limited in length and are often witty. I feel like I’m keeping “in touch” [...]

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