Online Ethics

Recently we had a lecture on ethical considerations in the world of technology. We were given three situations to consider and discuss if ethics come in to play. The third of these situations regarded whether Facebook should be allowed to tailor news feeds to enhance user moods. This reminded me of an article I read recently regarding how Facebook decides what goes in your news feed.

The article can be read here: http://jrnl.ie/2048647

While in class the suggestion seemed to revolve around some kind of grand conspiracy going on at Facebook HQ, this article seems to tone it down a bit and emphasizes how it has more to do with algorithms than Illuminati.

Yes, Facebook show you content in your news feed according to what they think they know about you based on what and who you interact with most. There have been trends over time however in what type of content they prioritize over time, as outlined here, but at most this is Facebook trying to push a new marketing plan rather than trying to warp our minds. Sadly a lot less dramatic, and I had my tinfoil hat at the ready.

We'll leave it there so...

This will be my last post on this blog for this semester at least. It has been an interesting few months getting to know a lot about the online world that I was not aware of beforehand. Tools such as Diigo and Prezi were alien to me until now.

Perhaps the part I found most beneficial would be working with MIT App Inventor 2. This really makes app developing much more approachable, and the process of creating apps, I found, requires a whole different way of thinking which I wouldn't have experienced before.

If there were any negative aspects the only one I'd consider is the fact I now have accounts with a number of different online websites which I might not use again, or perhaps I will, who knows.

Regardless, it's been worthwhile.
Thanks for reading,

Marcus.

PS. Check out the Prezi made for the finished product of my project:

Variables, Procedures, and Fusion Tables in App Inventor

When developing an App in MIT App Inventor 2, I had to get used to using "Variables" and creating "Procedures" that would perform distinct functions, such as sending data input by the user to be stored in a Google Fusion Table. I was not hugely familiar with these concepts to begin with so it took a short time to get used to them.

Variables

Initializing global variables such as these mean they can be called on time and again in the app to retrieve data stored within the app itself. The standard protocol used here is lowercase variable names for variables which can change (userName, activity, etc. in the above example), and capitals for variables which stay constant, or do not change, like the API_KEY.

Procedures

Procedures give the app the ability to do something with the information input by the user. In the "quotify" procedure above we see the app take a string (a sentence or series of letters/digits/syntax input by the user) and surround it with apostrophes. The middle section replaces all apostrophes input by the user with inverted comas, so as not to confuse the procedure. 

Fusion Tables

The procedure for entering data into a table is it must be formatted into a string of characters in the format "INSERT INTO" followed by the table ID, a bracket containing the column headings separated by comas, "VALUES", and finally a second bracket containing the data to be inserted in apostrophes (using the aforementioned quotify procedure) and separated by comas, eg:

 INSERT INTO 191GHtZ_B2 (Name, Date) VALUES ('Sam', '10/10/2012')

In the photo example above we can see an "insertDataInTable" procedure which sends a query to the Fusion Table, that query being a string with " INSERT INTO " with the constant variable global TABLE_ID following, the appropriate column headings, then " VALUES ", and finally the values surrounded by apostrophes using the quotify procedure.

Flickr-ing About

Setting up with Flickr was straight forward enough, despite requiring my Yahoo Mail address which I do have but rarely use. Adding titles, descriptions, tags, etc. is relatively easy too during the upload process, and the photo editing tool was rather user friendly afterward. The default privacy setting was set to Public which might irritate some however, and it did take a minute or two of snooping to figure out how to change this but that would be my only concern. Not that it mattered in this case however, check out the photos I shared from my recent holiday to Malta below (the first of which was edited post-upload with built in effects):

N.B. A side note of a small irritant I found whilst sharing the above photos here; the auto-set "share size" of each photo is 75px x 75px, annoying but easy to change.

A Musing on Musicians, Discographies, and Databases

An idea with potential...

When we began our group projects we were to think of an information need and develop a concept to meet that need. While I'm happy with my group's concept, and development of that concept, I have come up with another idea since that I feel could have potential and might be worth exploring;

An IMDb for music...

IMDb is rich in information and reviews from user experiences, and in that way is somewhat immune to corporate spin. Different people in the film industry have their own pages with details of exactly what their role was in each production they were involved in. Some also have biographies, and in IMDb Pro some even share their agent contact details. Although IMDb doesn't actually contain full length films, it is still a frequently visited source for information about the world of movies.

Does something similar exist for music?

Allmusic.com appears to run something similar, however in my experience I find a few fautls with the website. While Allmusic allows for a rating out of five stars, I would find this quite limiting. It seems to place paramount importance on comparing an artists individual albums with each other rather than all albums in the website's database. Further to this, just like individual episodes in a TV series can be rated, I feel individual songs within albums should be rate-able too. With use over time the would be potential to develop charts similar to the IMDb top 250

Screen-casting and Fusion Table-ing

Here I made a screen-cast video (using http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/) to describe a fusion table I created in Google Drive. When I say "IP address" in the video, I meant API key, please excuse.

Working with Prezi

Today I explored the functionality of Prezi, which I discovered is a particularly versatile presentation tool. They have a free package for educational purposes which is always a good thing, and so I logged in using my UCD email address.

The Pros:

• There are templates available to do most of the visual groundwork, allowing the user to spend more time concentrating on the content. These templates are also customizable so you don't have the exact same design as someone else. In this case I used the "Papyrus" template with the "Autumn" theme.
• It is very user friendly. Each frame has blank title and content fields ready. Sizes of anything can be adjust manually or by presets. There is a rotate option too which can be helpful.
• YouTube videos can be embedded and played during presentation easily.
• Images, symbols and shapes can also be added easily. The built in Google Image search option is particularly useful. There are also simple image editing options available too.

The Cons:

• Correct me if I am wrong but I could not find the option for inserting diagrams, etc. If this function is there, it's not easy to find.
• The simplified functions can be frustrating as undesired things can happen by clicking a mm or two off exactly where you're supposed too.
• The text editor is not great either as it does not easily allow for Tab functions. Putting individual words or phase in bold or italic within a greater text body can also be troublesome.

All in all however I found it very useful and innovative. Have a look at the finished work below.

Mashing Up with Google Maps

Today, following instructions from here, I worked on creating a mash up with Google maps and data contained in a two spreadsheet documents relating to famous trees in Ireland. In doing so I've realised that Google maps is significantly more versatile than I initially thought. By importing the .xlsx file Google Maps was able to extract the data itself before pin pointing the locations using their longitude and latitude. This made the process of mapping locations much easier than entering them manually and allowed for time to focus on labeling the different types of tree accordingly.