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Published: 8/18/2010
This week the MobileASL project was the subject of a feature from UW News. The MobileASL project team is developing the first device able to transmit American Sign Language over U.S. cellular networks. The tool is just completing its initial field test by participants in a UW summer program for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
So far the MobileASL team has been able to dramatically decrease the bandwidth necessary for video conferencing. The MobileASL system could be integrated with the iPhone 4, the HTC Evo, or any device that has a video camera on the same side as the screen.
The team hopes to determine whether the devices that have been tested remain reliable in the field. The MobileASL research is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, with additional gifts from Sprint Nextel Corp., Sorenson Communications and Microsoft Corp. The project leader is Eve Riskin, a UW professor of electrical engineering. Collaborators at the UW are Richard Ladner, professor of computer science and engineering, and Jacob Wobbrock, assistant professor at the Information School.
Tressa Johnson, a master's student in library and information science at the iSchool and a certified ASL interpreter, is studying the phones' impact on the deaf community. So far the story has garnered attention on Gizmodo and Newsblaze.
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Published: 8/11/2010
Assistant Professor Karine Barzilai-Nahon and the Virality of Information (retroV) team has won a Google Research Award. The award program, according to the Google Research website, "facilitate[s] more interaction between Google and academia and also nurture[s] stronger relations and partnerships with universities. The intent of the awards program is to support academic research aimed at improving information access (defined broadly)." The selection process is very competitive, and will allow the retroV team to have access to data from Google and YouTube that they otherwise wouldn't get.
The retroV team is interdisciplinary, and includes three Ph.D. students from the iSchool (Shawn Walker, Jeff Hemsley and Sheryl Day), and a Ph.D. student (Muzammil Hussain) and Professor Lance Bennett from the Communication department.
The Virality of Information project deals with the process of information diffusion in the Internet. Theories of information diffusion pose two contested approaches to viral information diffusion: one that suggests that virality is a process governed by reliance on powerful gatekeeping nodes, and one that considers virality as a more dynamic process where gatekeepers play an important, but less central role. The retroV project investigate this process by focusing on the top election-related videos that became viral on the Internet for the period between Jan 2008 to Jan 2009 during the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.
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Published: 8/11/2010
The Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA) is presenting this week at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Annual Conference. IFLA is is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users.
This week at IFLA, TASCHA researchers Chris Coward and Karen Fisher will launch a new strand of research activity on Social Information Literacy. The program attempts to broaden the understanding of information literacy to include a larger range of people's information behavior. You can find out more about this research program by visiting the TASCHA website.
The team from TASCHA also presented a paper during the second day of the conference, and have a poster at the session, titled "What is open access to research data?" This poster emerged from work conducted through TASCHA's Global Impact project.
The theme for this year's IFLA Annual Conference is "Open access to knowledge - promoting sustainable progress." The conference is being held in Gothenburg, Sweden, from August 10-15. You can follow the conference live at http://2010.ifla.org/.
TASCHA’s foundational work on Social Information Literacy is being conducted in partnership with public libraries worldwide. The research findings and applications have broad relevance to all agencies that serve the public, by leveraging the potential of key people in local networks through ICTs. Domains of strong potential benefit include health, finance, employability, and education.
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Published: 8/2/2010
Emily Shepard Smith’s paper received the 2010 Earl C. Borgeson Research in Law Librarianship Award. “May It Please the Court: Law Students and Legal Research Instruction in Prison Law Libraries,” was selected by a panel of three judges who are experts in publishing law librarianship topics. The honor also carries a $1,000 prize. The papers are written as a component of the University of Washington Information School's Law Librarianship program, where students with law degrees earn a Master of Library and Information Science with a Specialization in Law Librarianship. Penny Hazelton is the director of the program, and worked with Mr. Borgeson to establish the annual award in 2001.
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Published: 7/20/2010
Associate Professor Joe Janes was interviewed by NPR's Wendy Kaufman regarding a recent milestone for electronic and digital book sales — for the first time, Amazon's sales of digital books has surpassed its sales figures for hardcover books.
You can find the article on the NPR website. Dr. Janes was also the keynote speaker at "Reference Evolution" preconference before the ALA's annual meeting in Washington, D. C. in July. During that keynote he spoke about the movement away from fixed media to downloads to streaming to the clouds.
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