03 September 2010

Links of the Day #4

Today's round-up includes an exclusive Facebook alternative (you know the internet changes quickly when people are already nostalgic for the Facebook of yesteryear), a online fieldwork ethnographic project based at Medialab-Prado in Madrid, and what happens when you trust homeless people with your credit card.


Posted: 30 Aug 2010 02:28 PM PDT
CollegeOnly isn't reinventing the wheel with their new social network, instead they've went back to the good old days of Facebook when only College students with a valid college email address could join the network. With Facebook advertisers can target certain user demographics, however the site is diluted with an all encompassing atmosphere that can put users into a different mindset when viewing ads, leaving them more worried about what mom or the boss will think of their page, while focusing less on the college atmosphere they are living in their real lives.
Posted: 30 Aug 2010 12:51 PM PDT
Prototyping is an online fieldwork dialogue and reflection space curated by Alberto Corsín Jiménez and Adolfo Estalella. The site registers the progress of our ethnographic project on Medialab-Prado in Madrid. The project looks at the cultures of social experimentation. Medialab-Prado is a privileged field site for the study of this topic because of its reputation as host to some very successful collaborative experiments between artists, technologists, software engineers and academics from around the world over the past few years.
Posted: 30 Aug 2010 12:00 PM PDT
"Can I trust you with this?" I said, handing him a $50 card and telling him to buy what he needs, but that I need it back when he was done. He nodded and scrambled to his feet. He said he would be back in a half-hour. He came back right on time, slurping from a large McDonald's soft drink cup — root beer — and with sweat on his brow. He wanted to have pork and rice from a Vietnamese noodle joint on Spadina but they wouldn't take the card. So, he scrambled to McDonald's. Lunch was a double quarter-pounder with cheese. He handed over the gift card, having spent $8.69.

Got a recommendation for tomorrow? Leave a comment and let me know.

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