Meeting Summaries

July 2 - Source Distance Exercise

At the first official meeting Richard points out what the Issue Crawler does: linking analysis between URL's, which websites are higher in hierarchy, which are lower? It is not Social Network Analysis, which is the most common imagination potential users have of the IC. It does not perform small world analysis, the distance between certain websites. This week we will do research of distance between sources through the distance between engine returns. We work in four different groups, the main subject is "Global warming". The results will follow next friday.

The question remains however, whether the DMI project will continue the infomational trail proposed by Richard or the more hybrid path of Noortje Marres, the informational plus the social account of research.

July 6 - Source Distance Exercise Part 2

Goal: Method to be digitized

Source Distance exercise > method > digitize (+ name)

Source Distance is novel way of thinking about the web; the web as a search engine based medium (in stead of surfing based). The distance between sources is what we’re trying to get at. Fundamental in understanding web as a search engine based medium: Is a source closer or further away from the top 10/ user/ query/ issue/image? How does this relate to different spheres? Are sources closer related in different spheres?

Write down: What makes this method special/different/digital? What’s new about it? How should findings be presented? Graphically present output? What does it normally look like (ranked list)? How to innovate? Example: tagcloud.

Next week: How to use internet archive? Site evolution (example: Google: the demise of the directory)

To do: How have people used the internet archive? How to use it and how to study it? (Scholar) Movie: Google.com evolution

July 9 - Source Distance exercise/Wayback Machine

This meeting recapitulated what has been done last week with the source distance exercise and some jumping of members to new projects. The Scrapester group continues with the social aspect of their tool, what does it need to display besides the social network? The Issue Animal group are really making progress, Panda's (instead of standard cute polar animals) have become part of the research as well! Definitive results will follow later, just as with the sceptics and c.s analyzer group. The following weeks projects will run parallel.

The new project is the Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive of Brewster Kahle, what kind of research can we do with it? The rise and fall of websites and/or their content. Group 1 compares the Political Websites CDA and PvdA to see whether they are the same or have some significant different features they use for potential 'stemmers', or more likely, follow each other in natively digital features. The findings will be edited into a little film with Erik's Wayback Screenshot Generator or, if necessary, in ScreenFlash.

To do:

• Steady guideline for the project; which paths to take etc.
• Design logo
• Website, what should it look like and contain?
• Reader

July 12 - Source Distance exercise/Wayback Machine

CDA/PVDA Wayback group:
How do we write down CDA/PVDA (history of a website/compare 2 websites) as digital method?
To write up a tool proposal: write tool specs for SiteHistoryBuilder (png naar flw). Take in consideration that a tool builds in a technique (not really method). How do you make a tool proposal from a specific case study to a case for a tool in general?

Skeptics Source Distance group:
First finding: skeptics only appear in own sites, gov and news.
What to do next: What am I interested in as an analyst?
Creative moment: how to do this?
Process: first story, catchy title, then method/technique expanding

IssueAnimals Source Distance group:
It might be interesting to compare professionals (news) with amateurs (blogs).

History of the two way link:
Link analysis/spherical consideration: first find out what links are and how they work.
Next larger questions: Did the blogosphere come into existence with trackback/permalink (link to specific post)?
Are permalinks connected with the no follow? Is this why google handles the blogosphere so badly?
Idea for the Wayback machine: how do blogs describe their service over time (per platform)?: publicing, journal. Larger question: what to blog for?

General remarks:
How geeky do you have to be to read and understand domain tag cloud? Is the tag cloud a good way to visualize? Which tag cloud generator are we going to use/create?

Possible theme next week:
Thread, tag, or link, (internet archive, source distance)

July 15+19 - WebantennE

Originally the theme of this week was the thread. Richard was however approached to participate in the eParticipation initiative (previously Richard worked on infodrome for government). This became the most important project for this week.

What should government do with the internet? Biza wants something similar as the issueticker: What issues are hot? They want to know what the "burger" is talking about on the internet, the most important issues filtered out and presented.

Schedule web antennE: End of this week: concept > if accepted by commision > present it at eParticipatie top end of November

And we got a WYSIWYG scape tool robomaker (openkapow.com) to make our own scrapers!

July 23+27 - The tag & Nofollow

This weeks theme is the tag. One group is working on the geotag and another on machine tagging. Marijn is working on a cross-device related tags tool.

On friday we had a guest, Clifford Tatum Phd student at Department of Communication, University of Washington and currently instructor at uw honors in Amsterdam. Clifford introduced us to the topic of the nofollow tag. The machine tagging group started working on nofollow.

July 30+ August 3 - The tag & Nofollow

This week the groups continued working on last weeks projects. The geotag group extended their research to social network analysis (related to the scrapster project) and propose a tool to locate hyves groups on a geo map. Clifford Tatum joint us again Friday and continued research with the nofollow group on a case study on search results for "link:mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl" in 3 devices. Marijn continues building great scapers on demand while working on his own project: the cross-device related tags tool. Laura finished the climate change sceptics project.

This week week had another guest, Nacho Carmona student MA-HKU Editorial Design. Nacho worked on visualizations of coffee trade using DMI tools for his MA-thesis.

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