Fade to Play

WWW 2006, Edinburgh
Collaborative Web Tagging Workshop
Call for Papers and Participation
Contact: [frank AT rawsugar DOT com]

Goal and Topics of Interests

The goal of this workshop is to bring researchers and practitioners together in order to explore both the social and technical issues and challenges involved in Web tagging. We plan to address not only the current state of collaborative tagging, and understand its attractiveness to early adopters but also discuss its future.

Topics of interest for the workshop include:

* Semantics and Vocabulary: How can collaborative tagging be used in the creation of ontologies and the semantic web? What are tagging�s benefits and limitations in this domain? How can meaning be faithfully preserved when disparate tag sets are integrated? Is there a place in tagging for controlled vocabulary? Is it necessary to match synonymous tags, and if so, how can this be accomplished technically? Are there other mechanisms that can extend tagging to provide some of the capabilities of hierarchies without the drawbacks?
* Measurement: What is the structure of tagspace? What behavioral patterns do users display when tagging, and how can the entire space of objects and tags be understood and visualized?
* Standardization efforts: Although very little of this has been done currently, current services are somehow interoperable through the use of RSS or Atom feeds. What could be the benefits of tagging standards and what would they be?
* Scalable architecture for tagging: What will happen when millions of users will tag, how about hundreds of millions? What kind of architecture can deal with billions of objects? Can current tagging concepts be applied to such scales?
* Multimedia: Are there special considerations for tagging multimedia such as photos, videos and audio? Yahoo photos now already has over two billion photographs.
* Search and Navigation: How can tagging improve internet search? How are tags used as a mechanism for navigation and discovery of content?
* Discovery paradigms: How to search, browse a tagged universe? What is the use of faceted search, people search, etc.?
* Blogging: What is the relationship between tagging and blogging?� How do these two methods of adding personalized organization to web content affect how that content is found, navigated, used and interpreted by others?
* Interfaces: Using boolean operators like AND, OR and NOT on sets of tags rapidly grows complex and confusing, especially for nontechnical users. How can good interface design simplify and clarify these complex operations?

Important Dates:

Individual workshop submissions deadline: 10 January 2006 29 January 2006

Acceptance notifications to authors of workshop papers: 1 February 2006

Final workshop program available: 1 March 2006

Workshop date: 22 May 2006

Technorati tags: cfp, conferences, tagging, cscw

Position Available: Full-time Research Associate/Post-doc

The Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC)
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Annual, renewable, starting immediately
$40,000-$50,000 CDN

The Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC) is looking for a

post-doc/research associate who will work with the Director and
Associate Director to conduct and coordinate research and training
activities. Areas of expertise include technology-oriented and
human-centred research in areas of media, visualization, graphics,
ubiquitous computing and applied cognitive systems. In addition, the
candidate will be involved with creating funding opportunities as well
as some of the day-to-day operation of MAGIC. The position is like a
faculty position without teaching duties and the salary is paid from an
endowment.

ABOUT MAGIC
MAGIC has a mandate to foster research in media technology that will
have an impact on economic development in the Province of British
Columbia. These goals are achieved through training of highly qualified
personnel and transfer of knowledge technology for media, graphics,
visualization, human-computer interaction and communication technologies

to the community. We also offer a Graduate Specialization in HCI.

MAGIC research extends across all disciplines that push boundaries
through the use of interactive technology. We have collaborated in
projects involving biomedical imaging, scientific and engineering
visualization, installation and performance art, and interfaces for
musical expression. Our affiliates range across departments: Computer
Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Music, Forestry, Psychology,

Medicine, Education, Commerce, and Fine Arts.

More information may be found at http://www.magic.ubc.ca/postdoc.htm

Please contact Sid Fels, Director at director@magic.ubc.ca for more
details and how to apply.

Relevance: This is my home department and I do my research in Sid’s Human Communication Technologies lab. Good luck everyone.

Technorati tags: research assistant, post-doc, hci, infoviz, cognitive systems, university, vancouver

ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers) is here in Vancouver. It is free and some sessions are open to the public. The conference takes place November 30 - December 4, 2005.

joi ito is speaking at a panel and he recommended attending it. It is entitled “Welcome to ICANN, Here’s What It Means To You.” The roundtable is scheduled for Wednesday, 30 November, 10:30 - 11:30, at the Columbia’s Westin Bayshore.

ICANN will hold a public roundtable discussion at the Vancouver meeting titled: “Welcome to ICANN, Here’s What It Means To You”. The roundtable will be open to all ICANN meeting participants, especially those attending their first ICANN meeting. The purpose of the roundtable is to introduce ICANN — its community and its work — to the local and regional community and press. The roundtable will feature members of the ICANN community in an informal, moderated discussion of what ICANN does, why ICANN is important to various stakeholder communities, what the ICANN community will be doing in Vancouver, why you volunteer your time with ICANN, and how people can get involved.

The roundtable is scheduled for Wednesday, 30 November, 10:30 - 11:30.

Relevance:I am once again amazed at the number of excellent conferences that have been in Vancouver. Unfortunately, we have a meeting on a ubicomp game we are developing then so I won’t be able to attend.

Technorati tags: icann, conference, internet

I logged in this afternoon to find an email from Tara ‘miss rogue’ Hunt (Blogger, Riya Marketing Guru, and part of the Web 2.0 Digerati) who’s blog I read daily. I highly recommend it to anyone. She is Canadian and I met her at tagcamp earlier this year.

I am one of the first 1000 alpha testers of the Alpha 2 version for Riya. You can read about it on their blog. I have tons of photos to try it with (although my camera is still missing).

Hey Alpha Group!

The alpha has finally arrived! Stoked?

Okay…a few things I need to communicate to you before you get your hands dirty:

…

Have fun!

Tara ‘miss rogue’ Hunt
Online Marketing Manager
www.Riya.com
the Jamboriya: http://blog.riya.com/

Relevance: I’ve never been part of an alpha group before so I will be sure to give constructive suggestions.

Technrati tags: photosearch, riya, tagging

My ethics form is in. I made the deadline by about 4 hours. Don’t think I’ve made any deadline so early. I had to make some minor changes and my main supervisor let me print it out at her office. I didn’t have much sleep last night so when I was using the printer to print double-sided I accidently printed some out single sided to double-sided, when I meant double-sided to double-sided. ooops.

The next step is to work on my literature review this weekend and to send an email to my full committee for a large meeting where we can make minor changes to the form for the future. I have a real good committee and I feel that everyone can contribute with my topic on tagging.

Technorati tags: thesis

I’m done my ethics form. I will print it out in a few hours, get the necessary signatures and hand it in. Tonight I will work on my literature review.

Technorati tags: thesis

I just send my second draft off to my two supervisors. I am going to sleep for a couple hourse then work out and address any minor comments, make the changes tonight and submit it tomorrow. This will be a fun tagging study.

Technorati tags: thesis

Tomorrow I have a meeting with my supervisors to discuss my ethics form which is due on Friday. However this is not what is on my mind.

Somehow, somewhere my camera is missing. I noticed it on Friday and tried to retrace my steps without success. Maybe I left it somewhere, maybe it was stolen, I really don’t know.

I feel completely lost and detacted from the digital world. I want to take photos and upload them to flickr but I can’t. Today, I joined Brat Pack 2.0 but I am wondering when I will be able to upload photos. I can’t share photos on my blog and I am wondering about the pictures I was going to take for my research projects. Now I could use the camera in the lab, but that isn’t the point.

I know I can’t afford another camera, especially as I bought this one in Portland (no sales tax/no GST) and with my 1 GB memory card, extra battery and carrying case this is a fairly big loss.

Hopefully, it will show up somewhere. If anyone wants to contribute to the Phillip new camera fund, let me know.

[update]: my camera has been found. Everything is ok.

Technorati tags: personal, camera

So. I have been working on my thesis ethics form this weekend. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I thought. I am going to wake up early and write up the appendices. I want to email something to my supervisor by 10am. The good thing is that I have a much greater understanding of my topic. The deadline is Friday and I think it is going to be tight. I want another meeting with my two supervisors on Wednesday to go over my ethics form. Although my main supervisor wanted a large supervisory meeting with the whole committee this week, I don’t think I am ready for that right now as I would prefer to have that the following week. I will email her later today about this.

I’m glad I worked out yesterday evening. Need to keep my mind and body fit.

Technorati tags: thesis

9. It crashes at the beginning of an important overseas conference freaking you out because you didn’t back anything up (yes, I backup now)

8. It periodically freezes for no apparent reason forcing you to reboot your computer losing any data that wasn’t saved since your last backup (autosave on Word is now every minute)

7. The screen will twinkle for no apparent reason making the characters unreadable for a short or long period of time dependent on the mood the laptop is in

6. The down arrow will temporarily stop working for no apparent reason

5. Numbers (sometimes 5, sometimes 6) will temporarily stop working for no apparent reason

4. You’re afraid to install anything in case that is the application that permanently breaks your laptop

3. You listen keenly to people that have “the same model and type of your laptop” discuss how it just stopped working one day.

2. When someone tries to use your laptop for a lab presentation you comment that it has “issues” and change the topic to the weather

1. You admire your labmate’s Powerbook and secretly wish you had your own

Technorati tags: laptop