Pieces of me on community... : research

Star Trek and the future of the internet(s) courtesy of Microsoft's translation technology?

b2ix — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:22:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Genevieve Bell where she talked about the future of the internet(s). One of the points she raised was that that "There is now an end to the 'anglosphere'" on the internet. More languages, more stories and more context to what is online is fast becoming the norm. From a tech perspective, this raises some interesting questions regarding design and strategy for how we create our online resources. At its most basic, how do you create experiences that work for multiple languages and norms?

This notion of language and communication is central to issues surrounding community. Having grown up with two languages at home, and even more when around extended family members, I always thought it would be great to have a universal translator of sorts, much like they have in Star Trek and other science fiction story lines. Imagine what we could accomplish if we all understood one another? While those days are still a long ways off, we are getting closer.

Microsoft translation technology has been making some great progress lately from both a tooling and a community standpoint. A couple of examples:

Windows Live Translator -- type in text, or translate a webpage into several languages using this free tool

Windows Live Translator in Internet Explorer 8 -- I haven't tried this yet but it sounds like the Windows Live Translator is a "right click" menu option in IE 8.

Windows Live Translator add-in -- have a site you want to translate? All you have to do is add this to your site and people visiting your pages can choose to translate it into another language. See John Martin’s blog for more details.

Windows Live Translation Bot -- chat with a bot, have it translate in another language, and bring in another person to the conversation. The bot will then serve as a translator for you.

Translation Library -- The MSDN Library recently leveraged some of the translation tools and applied it to the Portuguese version of the MSDN Library. Basically, the text is automatically translated and people can make suggestions to improve/edit the translation.

While with any translation, there's room for refinement I think these initiatives are a great start towards that universal translator envisioned by Star Trek. If you feel like translating my blog, I just updated my blog to include the Windows Live Translator add-in.

danah boyd is joining Microsoft Research!

b2ix — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:58:00 GMT

For years, one of my go to people for analysis of social network sites, youth and more is danah boyd. Like Dare, I've been a fan of her research for quite some time, and it's exciting to know that she will be joining Microsoft's Research team in Boston. I have no doubt that danah will continue to push all of our understanding of what is going on in this space, in addition to breaking new ground. Congrats and best of luck in the new job!

Web 2.0 Expo New York 2008 highlights

b2ix — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:57:00 GMT

This past week, I had the honor of going to O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo in New York City. Overall, it was a great event that allowed me to connect with some of the great minds in the industry in addition to learning a lot.

Some highlights from the conference:

Tim O'Reilly's keynote -- as someone who is passionate about community first and foremost, O'Reilly's call to action for us to focus on what matters really hit home for me. Community -- not limited to technology, is what brought me to Microsoft. I think tech has a big role, but ultimately the measure of it's true worth is what does it mean to everyone else? How does it solve the really big problems of facing the environment, global health, civic participation and so on? Thank you, Tim for calling attention to what really matters.

Clay Shirky's keynote -- I've always appreciated Shirky's insights in bringing much needed depth and focus to looking at how community affects social interactions. Looking at the so called information overload problem through the lens of broken filtering methods changes the conversation, in my mind, and helps us all focus on problems to tackle

Genevieve Bell's presentation -- Much like the keynotes by O'Reilly and Shirky, this session (and her abbreviated keynote) brings a different perspective to the Web2.0 space. As an anthropologist for Intel, Bell brings rich insight and poignant questions for the future direction of how the internet impacts social interactions. How this physically shapes our environment, and how it changes our experiences with technology and each other present many new challenges and opportunities for all of us.

Avinash Kaushik's presentation -- Focused on the topic of analytics, Kaushik gave a great overview of how we effectively measure and analyze what is really going on with the Web2.0 space. Kaushik provided great insight, and gave a thoroughly entertaining presentation for a topic that can be quite dry at times.

Joshua Porter -- where to begin? Porter is great! A must read in my list of feeds, I appreciated the opportunity to attend both of his sessions, in addition to dialoguing with him on issues of reputation and recognition. (thanks also to Bryce Glass for the clarification of your definition).

Other highlights -- connecting with folks from all over. Whether it was with folks from Etsy, Lithium, Cisco, Chile, or old colleagues it was great. Additionally, New York has always been my kind of town and it's a great place for something like the Web2.0 expo. Thanks to everyone involved!

Notes on "The MAIN model for understanding tech effects on credibility"

b2ix — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:06:00 GMT

I recently ran across a fascinating paper in MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning by S. Shayam Sundar titled, "The MAIN Model: A Heuristic Approach to Understanding Technolgy Effects on Credibility." Given the work that we're doing on recognition, this paper on credibility seemed rather appropriate to dig into for more detail.

Early on, Sundar lays the foundation to say that credibility cannot be effectively determined by considering solely the source of the information. Specifically, Sundar says, "Ultimately though, source, message, and the medium credibility serve as nominal cues -- a given source is perceived as credible or not, a given message element is perceived as credible or not, and likewise a given medium or media vehicle or channel is perceived as credible or not -- that provide mental shortcuts for effortlessly assessing the believability of information being received."

Instead, Sundar goes on to explain the value of using a cues and heuristic model to better understand how technology plays a role in helping people determine the relative credibility of a site, piece of content, person, etc. The model Sundar proposes is based from ten years of research from The Media Effects Research Laboratory at Penn State University -- Modality, Agency, Interactivity, and Navigability (MAIN).

I won't go into the rest of the paper, but suffice to say Sundar explores the various aspects of MAIN in more detail. While I found the framework quite interesting (especially as I think about how that may apply -- or not -- to MSDN, TechNet and Expression), what I get most from reading papers like this is a fresh perspective on issues I deal with day to day. I also find myself making multiple connections to areas of study or examples in real life I would not have thought of before. For example, when talking about heuristics ties to Interactivity, Sundar wrote "Users may be likely to evaluate the system's credibility positively, just as they would evaluate a person with whom they hit it off." While I joke with my colleagues that all of our work with social media is no different than that of a dating site, the image that popped into my head when I read this was that of a chemistry.com commercial. Thinking more on this, there is something to be said about the chemistry that occurs between people when they meet. It would seem that based on how a site triggers (or does not trigger) heuristics tied to interactivity, there may or may not be any chemistry with those coming to the site.

Another example of making connections that otherwise would not have existed were it not for reading this research paper is on this notion of being a good conversationalist. Over the course of a week I've had a series of conversations on the personal skills (or lack thereof) of others. One situation was when someone commented that this other person only talks about themselves, never asking about others. The other situation was when a father jokingly talked about how he taught and modeled social skills to his son through a book (it worked!). Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but when Sundar talks of "the real value of interactivity is that it gives the user the ability to serve as a source, and not just a receiver of communication"...I think of the need to be a good conversationalist. As someone working on social experiences, how do the experiences we provide, and the sites we publish help or hinder the notion of being a good conversationalist? How are we having a conversation with those who come to our experiences? How do we facilitate the ability for others to be good conversationalists with one another?

Anyway, those were some of my take aways from Sundar's paper. I'd be curious to hear if others had similar thoughts. If you had different insights, I'd love to hear them as well.

Intel's research on domestic satellites

b2ix — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 01:33:00 GMT

There's so much here, I don't know where to begin. Genevieve Bell is spearheading research at Intel that looks at this notion of "home" first, and then seeing what sort of tech opportunities may exist. Given my work with community and technology, this is of particular interest.

Here's a choice quote...

What for me is interesting, however, is the ways in which these sites [second homes] now seem to represent a place to get away not only from work, but the technologies of work and the work of technologies.

In some ways, this reminds me of the notion of the "third place" -- that which is neither home nor work, but some place in between. Domestic satellites seem to fall into this category.

As we look to build out the next version of community software, it would seem to be good to keep an eye on trends in the home space as that impacts how tech, community and the like are manifested in those areas.

(originally published on my beta blog)