natematias

Recent blog posts by natematias

Learning to Make Anigifs and Earning Badges at #MozFest

Submitted by natematias on November 10, 2012 - 10:41am

I'm here in London at the Mozilla Festival all weekend, where I'm joining Rebecca Mullen and Matt Thompson on the liveblog team. I just got to interview Alayna, who learned to make animated gifs for the very first time today and earned four Open Badges in the process.

Alayna talks about learning how to make anigifs
Tiger Catches Bee, by @kittycatalayna

I asked Alanya, who lives in London, if she knew about animated gifs before coming to the festival. "I have seen a lot of animated gifs on Google and I wanted to make an animated gif before, but I didn't know how to do it."

Designing Acknowledgment on the Web

Submitted by natematias on November 1, 2012 - 11:27pm
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

I have a confession to make: my persona

Reboot: Surveying Information Ecosystems in Pakistan

Submitted by natematias on November 1, 2012 - 2:11pm

Fresh from a new research project with Internews on information ecosystems in media-dark conflict areas in Pakistan, Reboot has joined us to share and discuss their latest research project in Pakistan, as they start to compile and interpret their results.

Panthea Lee and Kate Krontiris of Reboot, a consultancy which focuses on the practical implications of design and technology in global governance. Their impressively broad range of projects stretches from service design and governance reform to mobile justice and civic media. They focus especially on global governance adn international development, with a particular interest in Africa, MENA, and Asia.

Tinker Maker Enquirer Expert: Doing Research in Public Online

Submitted by natematias on October 24, 2012 - 1:48pm

This morning in an interview about yesterday's Guardian Datablog post on gender in UK news, the Tow Center's Anna Codrea-Rado asked me for ideas on how data journalists and academics can collaborate. I mumbled a response about the cycles of peer review, models of public engagement, and expertise at visual presentation.

Inside, I was thinking, "Dear me! She thinks I'm an academic or maybe some kind of expert. Am I an academic? What does that even mean anymore?"

The Beauty and Terror of Commenting Communities: Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Media Lab

Submitted by natematias on October 22, 2012 - 6:23pm

How can writers nurture great commenting communities while still engaging with the tough questions?

Speaking at the Media Lab today is Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor and blogger at The Atlantic and author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. Before The Atlantic, Coates worked for The Village Voice, the Washington City Paper, and Time. Coates a visiting researcher here at MIT this year.

"I'm a college dropout," Coates reminds us. He's a writer now, but he failed English once in high school and twice in college. Coates started writing in 1996 and left school because he was in love with writing. He didn't understand at the time that writing could be a career. Once he figured out that he could get paid, he left to focus on his writing. For the first 12 years, Coates was a product of print. His father ran a small independent press. Growing up, there were books everywhere; he never expected to become an Internet writer.

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