From the category archives:

Distributed Systems

User Experience Design

5 May 2011
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Have you ever visited a web site and wondered who created such a great experience? Have you ever wondered who makes the invisible visible?
No? Why do you think that is? If it works well, you don’t notice it, and if the site is a mess, it is all you do notice.
Therefore, what element can help [...]

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The Science Network – A Social Network Parody

18 April 2011

You don’t get to 11 million papers without a few dodgy results.

So, what do you think? Did he or didn’t he invent PubMed?
[Via Jane G.]

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Current-Generation Supercomputers — How Fast Is Fast? Can We Build Next-Generation Supercomputers That Are As Proportionally Fast?

4 March 2011
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Will we see advances in microprocessor speed during the next decade similar to what we saw in the past two decades? If so, how?
Researchers at DARPA asked this question, or, rather, asked: “What sort of technologies would engineers need by 2015 to build a supercomputer capable of executing a quintillion (1018) mathematical operations per [...]

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CBS News Examines the Internet and Our Right to Privacy

21 February 2011
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What if you are asked to resign your position because of a complaint about photos you posted to Facebook that you thought were private and for friends only — but weren’t? What if in the pictures you are perfectly sober, but simply posing with two glasses of alcohol, and reference a site that has a [...]

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Hierarchy of Digital Distractions

3 January 2011
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How do you manage all of the distractions from the data and information thrown at you from social media, email, the Web, chat and [insert name of app here]? Well? Not-so-well? Do you focus on one task at a time, or do you multi-task?
David McCandless of Information is Beautiful created this Hierarchy of Digital Distractions [...]

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YouTube Rewind 2010: Year in Review

29 December 2010
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What were the most popular videos on YouTube in 2010 across all categories? Employees at YouTube put together this compilation of the greatest hits of 2010, below.
You can watch all of the top 10 videos, as well as other video hits of the year, via a timeline of the year 2010 at youtube.com/rewind. The [...]

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2010 — the Year Mobile Connected the World

27 December 2010
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I’ve only had a smart phone for 10 months, and yet I cannot imagine how I lived without it. Therefore, for your viewing pleasure, I have posted this animation from themobilefuture on the mobile phone in the year 2010. The animation is by http://www.istrategylabs.com.
The authors cite the following statistics (sources not listed):

Massive increase in apps [...]

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Our Lives with Data using Data

9 December 2010
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Can you imagine life without Internet access (email, FTP, etc.)? What about Web access (i.e., anything via a browser)? If you have a smartphone, can you imagine not having one again?
GOOD Magazine decided to take a look at our life with data by creating the somewhat cheesy video below.
The video creators write: “from Google [...]

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The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet…and the Web?

7 December 2010
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Is the Web dead? What about net neutrality?
Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff’s August 2010 piece in Wired Magazine called, “The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet” caused a bit of controversy. The authors argued that the Web is losing supremacy, and stated that our online world will be cordoned off into closed [...]

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Digital Preservation Education for NC State Government Employees

19 November 2010
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This past week, the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources released guidelines for state employees responsible for preservation of the state’s public record. I have included the press release below. Whether or not you are an employee of the State of North Carolina, if you are interested in learning about digital preservation, I encourage you [...]

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