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

G is for Google, F is for friendly and I is for innocent

The 11th of August this year Google announced a big change; Google from now on will be part of a new parent company Alphabet which will cover all of Google’s activities. For some this might be a surprising move as Google...

By Lieke Kersten on 09/15/15 Comments Off

UHD Format is Coming

The Seven Kingdoms Seven of the biggest IT companies are collaborating to createa new format for Ultra High Definition (UHD) video.This collaboration is called Alliance for Open Media and includes companies such as Google, Netflix and Microsoft. There’s also...

By Pepijn Bierhuizen on 09/14/15 Comments Off

A wolf in sheep’s clothing

On the first of September this year, Google surprised the world with a new logo that will replace the old quirky logo that has appeared above the search box since 1999. According to the Google design...

By Kyra Delsing on 09/14/15 Comments Off

Google: Art Project

The ‘Googlised’ Indsutries We live in the age of information, in the digital age, maybe we can say we live in the age of Google if we think of the term ‘googlisation’, on the other hand this is not...

By Blanka Szamos on 11/07/14 Comments Off

Unplugging the cyborgs

While this week’s tech-press has devoted much space to the launch of yet another better, bigger and more amazing set of consumer electronics, it was a seemingly unexciting object with the looks of a humble notebook-charger passing by the...

By Sebastian Bertoli on 09/15/14 Comments Off

Cyborg Unplug – Counter-Surveillance Device or Product to profit of Fear?

For everyone being paranoid that strangers could spy on them using drones, cameras, microphones or even Google Glasses – finally, a solution has arrived, which is going on pre-order on September 30, 2014. Cyborg Unplug is a gadget no...

By Daniela Diewock on 09/15/14 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

Google Spreads Its Wings: Will Flutter Soar or Burn?

Flutter. The name implies flight, but it is actually described as to wave or fly rapidly in an irregular manner or to flap the wings without flying. However, a third way to describe flutter is that it’s the name...

By Vincent Sloof on 11/18/13 1

Internet Imperialized

In 2010, Google.cn redirected users to Google.com.hk. Google released an official blog post announcing that it would no longer censor search results for Chinese users. The decision proceeded an allegation that U.S. companies (Google included) had been attacked by...

By Samantha Carter on 09/12/13 1

The Internet is now built on mass surveillance

Brought to light in recent months, the Edward Snowden-powered NSA leaks have publicized the wholesale spying efforts by US and UK intelligence agencies that undermine the very fabric of the Internet – turning it into a vast surveillance program...

By Nicholas Vieira on 09/09/13 1

‘Bashing’s’ Datavisualization as Information Intervention

Living in the era of Big Data, data visualization is booming in science, marketing and journalism (( Segel, Edward, and Jeffrey Heer. “Narrative visualization: Telling stories with data.” Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions 16.6 (2010): 1139-1148. )). In...

By Ineke Scheffers on 03/20/13 Comments Off

From brick-and-mortar to eCommerce… and vice versa

Being able to buy your Ikea sofa online and going to a retail store to get your Google products. It may seem odd when stated like this, but we are seeing more trends of companies making a turn in...

By Leonie Nijenmanting on 03/01/13 Comments Off

What do the web search engines “think” of the Pussy Riot case?

The Pussy Riot sentence has become the unprecendented event concerning the global resonance, compared to other news from Russia in the recent years. 86% of the world mass media have covered the Pussy Riot case, media monitor NewsEffector reports....

By Daria Koreniushkina on 10/19/12 Comments Off

[Interview] Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – “Content is a king, not a Cinderella”

Many people still think they can manipulate search engines in order to get top rankings. A well-known example is the campaign against George Bush, when a lot of websites and blogs linked George’s Bush page with the key words...

By Mihaela Naftanaila on 10/15/12 3

Google and the Principles of the Semantic Web

One of the first goals of the Internet was to expand the knowledge of the users by connecting different data. However, the contemporary web is by no means comparable to this initially academic network. The web expanded unprecedentedly and...

By Lauressa Ford on 09/10/12 Comments Off

Google Web Lab: a global museum exhibition

Until next summer, a visit to the Science Museum in London can be more than a thrilling experience. Among seven floors of exhibitions, it can be found in the basement the new Google Web Lab, which is running until...

By Juliana Marques on 09/08/12 Comments Off

Gigapixel photography – a new vantage point

If you enjoy roaming the virtual streets of Google Maps’ Street View, take a deep breath and dive into the unique visual experience of “Gigapixel photography”. A gigapixel photograph is, mathematically speaking, an image that consists of one billion...

By Bozhan Chipev on 09/08/12 1

Google Search Plus Your World; seems to be the next big move in a long and painful war

So, what is going on on the interwebs? Well, in the social and search segment, things are getting heavily mixed up. Google finally uses its monopoly to push Google+ with its googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/search-plus-your-world.html">Search Plus Your World. Basically, the search...

By Philip Man on 01/14/12 Comments Off

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – An interview

Which role does Search Engine Optimization play nowadays? Different methods, techniques and tools are being used to increase traffic and popularity of websites on the well-known search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. What is behind all this? Which...

By Jesse Oyegbesan on 10/31/11 2