Monthly Archives: January 2007
E-mail After Death
A conversation yesterday got me thinking about what happens to our online presence after we die. I thought it might make a good article for the newspaper, or perhaps for something larger; but in researching the idea, I found that someone else already had that idea.
The Baltimore City Paper published “Ghosts in the Machines” in June [...]
Posted in Digitalia Comments closed
WikiCourt
According to the New York Times, more than 100 court rulings in the past two years have relied on the Wikipedia, including 13 from the tier of courts just below the Supreme Court. Though most in the legal profession are not yet willing to rely on the site, some judges cite the encyclopedia in footnotes, [...]
State of the Union
The New York Times has published a little flash tool that lets you analyze the current president’s State of the Union addresses, which so far amount to more than 30,000 words. You can search the text of the speeches to see how often certain words have appeared. Kind of a neat tool that might be [...]
Posted in Miscellany Comments closed
HUMINT
According to my spy novels, the title of this post is short for “human intelligence.” Fitting, because I learned today that the Central Intelligence Agency has a Facebook page, the National Clandestine Service.
Now, an article on Ars Technica discusses the ways a social networking site like Facebook could be used by spy agencies to study [...]
Posted in Social Networking Comments closed
Michael Becker has been blogging about academia, digital culture and journalism since 2005. He is the Web editor of the
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