New Media M.A. Research Blog | Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

Is Apple News what the newsroom of the future would look like?

Last month, Apple introduced an app named News. This newsreader gives Apple users the opportunity to collect all the news items that might be interesting for them. On their website, Apple states the following: News collects all the stories you...

By Anne Zwaan on 09/17/15 Comments Off

A true astronaut of inner space: how your phone is making Virtual Reality a reality

“Looking like a cross between a T’ai Chi master, a navy frogman, and the Terminator, a man harnessed to electronic leads and fitted with a strange piece of headgear slowly turns and gestures. The pointing hand and the ballet...

By Nick van der Meulen on 09/16/15 Comments Off

AI: is it just buzz or is it really changing the web design world?

“A.I. Websites. Build for Humans.” It has been quite a while since the non-stop futuristic flashy banners began showing up on my browser. The Grid is an AI web-builder that will build a website for you in a couple...

By Izumi Otsuka on 09/16/15 Comments Off

Mobile Apps as a New Level of Reality

“New Media”. This collocation is used so often nowadays (and not just by researchers or practitioners, but by journalists, self-proclaimed experts and general populace) that it takes a conscious effort to take a step back and ask “What’s new...

By Leonid Goryachev on 09/15/15 Comments Off

Augmented reality; Pokémon in the real world

After 20 years, The Pokémon Company announced the release of its latest project. A new mobile game called Pokémon Go, produced in collaboration with Nintendo and Niantic. The game will be available in 2016 for iOs and Android. For...

By Kimberly Leerkes on 09/15/15 Comments Off

The Companion: App which walks you home

Walking home at night can be a pretty terrifying experience. If you ever had to walk home through eerie suburban streets at 2 am., you know how it feels. That is why five college students in the US created an application...

By Radvile Dauksyte on 09/14/15 Comments Off

YouTube | It’s gone 360º

YouTube – Home to viral sensations, talking cats, Charlie’s finger and not to mention irritating music videos – with some holding over two billion views! From its launch in May 2005, YouTube has developed, changed and re-formatted over...

By Max Cantellow on 09/14/15 Comments Off

rMA Thesis Conference 2015: (pre)Cyberspace Perspectives on Information Technologies

The following is a modified transcript of my research presentation for the 2015 Research Master in Media Studies Thesis Conference. My thesis is an exploration of magical writing practices in contemporary digital culture. This was too much to talk...

By Rose Rowson on 05/05/15 Comments Off

Training Wheels

As one of the cultural capitals of Europe, thousands of international students (2,000 at the University of Amsterdam alone), new residents and tourists convene in Amsterdam every year. Unfortunately, not everyone who comes to Amsterdam has the typical Dutch...

By Auke Akkerman on 10/17/14 Comments Off

The posthuman cyborg: Technological telepathy

Researches have recently published an article where they have done an experiment with some kind of technological telepathy. A man in India wearing a BCI (Brain-Computer Interface), has successfully transmitted different kind of words through thoughts to a man’s...

By Chaïm Wijnberg on 09/18/14 Comments Off

Your taxi 2.0 has arrived?

Amsterdam. Capitol of the Netherlands, known for cultural highlights as the Rijksmuseum, the Anne Frank House, the canals, fleamarket on Waterloosquare and an infinite number of bikes. The last twenty years the number of bikes has grown so much...

By Kyrsha Verweij on 09/18/14 Comments Off

Manually Manipulated Modulation

In the year 2013, six hundred seventy-two million people used a mobile phone in Europe. And this number is on the rise. In the Netherlands alone, twenty million mobile phones were used by the end of 2013. Mobile phones...

By Oskar Strajn on 09/18/14 Comments Off

Could Snapchat’s new feature challenge Facebook’s dominance in terms of trust and privacy?

What’s the next Facebook or is there one? Ask many, including John D. Sutter (2012), who suggests that this question is not only wishful thinking, but an increasingly likely reality. Jamie Turner argues that although Facebook is still “king...

By Agnieszka Walewinder on 09/18/14 Comments Off

Forget glasses… the future is smart contacts!

Eyeware devices have been around for some time with gadgets like Google Glass or BT-200; what they do is to enhance reality by projecting images into our field of vision and this can be films, videogames or the screen...

By Ana Mireles on 09/17/14 Comments Off

Will SCiO be the Google of Physical Objects?

How many calories are in the cake you are eating? Does that medicine contain caffeine? Is your shirt really 100% cotton? SCiO, A small new sensor, molecularly scans objects and instantly displays their nutritional or chemical make-up on your smartphone. Will SCiO change...

By Gali Ronen on 09/17/14 Comments Off

SCiO: the Star Trek tricorder in real life

One of the most emblematic and authentic motifs from the American sci-fi television series Star Trek involves the medical officer Leonard McCoy using a tricorder in order to scan and analyse living beings and environments. He records data with a small...

By Josip Batinic on 09/16/14 Comments Off

Is our privacy at risk !!!

Google, a company that is renowned for its top of the line high-tech gadgets is said to release its highly anticipated Google Glass in the near future. Google Glass is a new generation of wearable computing , which giving...

By Thomas Hardiman on 09/16/14 Comments Off

Let’s go out for digital dinner

iOS Application developpers seem to learn fast from each other these days; in a short amount of time, many applications for pairing wine with a main dish have been developped and its content has been extended. For example, on the application market were...

By Wouter Klaase on 09/16/14 Comments Off

Smartwatches: a step closer towards the Cyborg?

Introduction On the 9th of September, 2014, Apple organised their iPhone Event, in which they not only introduced the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus, but also the Apple Watch. This is Apple’s version of the latest trend...

By David de Bie on 09/15/14 Comments Off

Translation and Technology: Where are we heading?

The effects of new digital means of translation are starting to affect the way we interact with the world. If everyone can understand every foreign language with the use of new technology, how can those changes be understood and...

By Giel Veenstra on 09/11/14 2

One Word May Become Revolutionary in Media

Media as a form of communication has become ubiquitous within modern society. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are often considered a part of daily-life and allow users express their own thoughts and opinions to readers, friends, followers...

By Sage Stargrove on 09/11/14 Comments Off

GOOGLE SYNDROME: A Psychological Perspective

Usually Google needs no introduction. But what it stands for is quite relative and as all things in life, it’s in the eye of the beholder. Thus, for my mum Google is the whole internet (!), for some tech...

By Nikos Roumeliotis on 09/10/14 Comments Off

(Digital) Media: Shaping human´s productive force

Social media marketing, crowdsourcing or the Long Tail – if somebody should tell how the Internet and associated digital media have changed economy, he/she would most likely describe their influence from a marketing perspective: digital media as means of...

By Danny Lämmerhirt on 09/09/14 1

The BB.Suit: Wearable Tech as Fashion’s New Playground

Borre Akkersdijk’s BB.Suit combines built-in technology with 3D printed fabrics offering an aesthetic approach to electronics that challenges the notion of wearable technology. This high tech jumpsuit is a collaboration between the University of Technology in Eindhoven, 22Tracks, CRISP,...

By Ivar Dusseljee on 09/08/14 Comments Off