Category Archives: Miscellanea

Guardian: Reading the Riots study to examine causes and effects of August unrest

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"Reading the Riots is modelled on an acclaimed survey conducted in the aftermath of the Detroit riots in 1967. The findings of that study, the result of a groundbreaking collaboration between the Detroit Free Press newspaper and Michigan's Institute for Social Research, challenged prevailing assumptions about the cause of the unrest. Prof Phil Meyer, who co-ordinated the Detroit study more than four decades ago, will advise the research into the English riots."

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science: Upper-income people still don’t realize they’re upper-income

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Poll data suggests many rich people can't place themselves accurately on the US income distribution: "30 percent of these upper-income people say that upper-income people pay too little [tax], but only 6 percent say that they personally pay too little. 38% say that upper-income people pay too much, but 67% say they personally pay too much."

O’Reilly Radar: Got an iPhone or 3G iPad? Apple is recording your moves

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"Today at Where 2.0 Pete Warden and I will announce the discovery that your iPhone, and your 3G iPad, is regularly recording the position of your device into a hidden file. ... All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called "consolidated.db." This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp. ... All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called "consolidated.db." This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp."

Advertising Age: The New Yorker Decides Facebook ‘Like’ Is Good Enough

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"If, for a limited time, you go to The New Yorker's Facebook page and "like" it, you will gain access to a new essay from [Jonathan] Franzen that is also available to paying print and iPad subscribers. ... Facebook has become vital to publishers. For many, the social network is among the two or three biggest drivers of traffic, often eclipsing even Google searches and making Twitter look like a ghost town in comparison.... The New Yorker's stated goal of generating engagement on its page couldn't be more sensible, especially as the literary brand, which once seemed to regard its website as though it were a misplaced umlaut that made it into print, invests more and more in its digital operation through its iPad app, blogs and podcasts. "

GigaOm: How Twitter Could Bring About World Peace

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Academic research on Twitter shows individual journalists' Twitter accounts may be more effective than brands': "People are more important than brands. Many of the biggest Twitter accounts are big media brands such as CNN and Time, but the study suggests Twitter’s active users actually tend to prefer individuals over outlets. So while the average follower of @NYTimes has six followers themselves, individual journalists have followers who boast a median following count of around 100. That gives individual journalists — who are also, the study says, more likely to link to a multiplicity of sources — a much wider and more influential network of connections."

New York Times: Cellphones Track Your Every Move, and You May Not Even Know

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Story on the Zeit Online data retention interactive: “This is really the most compelling visualization in a public forum I have ever seen,” said [Matthew Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania], adding that it “shows how strong a picture even a fairly low-resolution location can give.”

Forbes.com: Interactive: Billionaires’ Favorite Politicians

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"The billionaires on the Forbes 400 list have given more than $30 million to politicians and political action committees since 2006, along with millions more in soft money to politically active groups. Although Forbes 400 members give about 15% more money to Republicans than Democrats, they fund groups across the political spectrum."

New York Times: People Share News Online That Inspires Awe, Researchers Find

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"Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles, checking it every 15 minutes for more than six months, analyzing the content of thousands of articles and controlling for factors like the placement in the paper or on the Web home page. ... most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list."

Channel 4: Who Knows Who

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"Who Knows Who is Channel 4's new website which shows the connections between politicians, celebrities and business leaders, and where power really lies in the UK. We hope that it will reveal the surprising and often hidden stories behind the headlines. This is the first iteration of an ongoing process to develop this tool to be rich in content and functionality and over time build the biggest network of connections in the UK."