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

Book review: In the Plex by Steven Levy

"I wanted to write a book that got the reader inside Google and learned about its thought process, the way it planned and built products, its visions for the future, and the way it struggled with issues like China,...

By Demet Dagdelen on 09/20/11 Comments Off

Book Review: The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading. Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine by Peter Lunenfeld

The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading. Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine is a brilliant piece written by UCLA professor and digital media theorist Peter Lunenfeld, in which he sets out to explain his envisioning of the...

By Luana Pascu on 09/18/11 Comments Off

Book review: Peter Olsthoorn – De macht van Google

What does Google know from us? Since search engines are able to track the user’s search queries, personal information can be gathered in order to improve the engine’s accuracy and provide better results. In De macht van Google (The...

By Erik van Mastrigt on 09/17/11 Comments Off

Book Review: The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser

The Filter Bubbler refers to the personalization processes taking place on the Web, which shape what content you see and more important what content you don't get to see. Big players like Google and Facebook feed you what they...

By Jorrit Schaap on 09/17/11 1

Social networks + SEO = Social SEO ?

Sometimes the results of a search on Google, Bing or Yahoo are not really satisfying. If you search for specific terms sometimes the search results are very limited. Often only the first three search results give usable information. The...

By Jesse Oyegbesan on 09/13/11 Comments Off

Google’s Doodles: How transforming logo can empower a brand

I’m always get excited whenever I enter Google’s page and there’s an intervention in the logo – more or less expressive – featuring a holiday, birthday or something totally new to me with drawings, videos, games or interactive animations....

By Juliana Paiva on 09/11/11 2

Is the internet ruining our brains?

We shouldn’t be talking about the rise of the social media and new media any more. It’s here, in everyone’s lives on a daily basis. And it’s doing things to us. It’s changing the way we communicate, learn, socialise...

By Ave Tampere on 09/09/11 Comments Off

The Internet Is Taking My Pictures

Unlike Google Maps, Russia’s Yandex Карты is much more tourist friendly in that it does not blur your face away when you have been caught on camera! Yandex does not seem to uphold an evenly strict privacy policy as...

By Pim van Bree on 06/06/11 1

The Search Engine That Talks Back to You

With the mission of defining 'the future of information consumption', the founders of Qwiki, a self-proclaimed multimedia alternative to the text-based search provided by Google state to have launched the 'next big thing': a narrative search-tool based on the...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 03/20/11 2

Free and Open: Unfolding the politics

Lets talk about the supposedly free and open Web again, not ‘again’ in the sense that it has been discussed too much or too abundantly but in the sense that maybe new and other frameworks have to be introduced...

By Levien Rocha on 03/14/11 2

The Missing Link: Google Alternatives

“In the greatest leverage of the common user, Google turns traffic and link patterns generated by 2+billion searches a month into the organizing intelligence for a new economy.” – Kevin Kelly (Bruns 2008, 174) Whether users realize it or...

By Ronen Shay on 03/11/11 2

Map of Autocomplete Holland by Google

I had a look at the United States of Autocomplete by Dorothy Gambrell (found through Erik Borra's mood message on Skype, thanks!). I couldn't resist trying it out with our own little country and this what you see below...

By Minke Kampman on 12/17/10 1

Be afraid of Google?

A week ago I went to a lecture about The Googlization of the Global street by Siva Vaidhyanathan. The lecture was at “de Balie” and organized by Open. With Googlization Siva mean the process of being processed rendered and...

By Mathijs Voordenberg on 10/31/10 Comments Off

Back to the fairytale, to make science? Digital publishing a new revolution, what about the truth?

While thinking of a new blog about digital publishing, I am a little bit confused. What about the impact of my writings? I can describe the influence of digital publishing with a non objective view, quote a lot of...

By Layla Van Daalen on 10/18/10 Comments Off

E-books – The Black Market. Can We Stop It?

Along with the growth of the popularity of e-books as well as iPad, e-reader and other devices that allow for reading digital publications on the screen there is a huge increase in books piracy, what causes enormous losses for...

By Michal Kielbasa on 10/17/10 Comments Off

Wikipedia, we have a Google refresh problem!

What did the web crawler say to Wikipedia? I'll update you later! So the question is … just how much later?! I'm wondering because there seems to be a discrepancy between just how fast Wikipedia bots/editors seem to shoot down...

By Isobel Gorman on 10/16/10 7

Journalism 2.0 – A Field in Transition

Let's say it is Friday night, 7pm. All shops are closed and every normal working person went home to enjoy the weekend. Some people are heading home for dinner with their families, others are having drinks with friends. And...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 10/16/10 1

“The customers of this product also bought this, would you like it too?” [x] Not interested

When signing up for a service or installing software, have you ever read privacy policies that you had ‘to agree’ with in order to continue? You surely agreed, but what you have agreed with is probably a mystery. The...

By Philip Man on 09/26/10 2

The Privacy Paradox in a control society

Nowadays a lot of people are in some form represented on the internet. These virtual forms can include profiles on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, but also as writings on a personal websites and blogs. They has...

By Sander Jansma on 09/24/10 4

Living In AppLand

Chris Anderson headlined his latest feature in Wired magazine: The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet. He maintains that with the ubiquitous iPhone comes app addiction; so while most of us spend the whole day on the internet...

By Natalie Dixon on 09/24/10 Comments Off

Book review: “Deep Search. The Politics of Search beyond Google”

It is hard to imagine life without search engines. Information is everywhere and we seem to need it all the time. So the importance of being able to access all information at any particular time of our choosing cannot...

By Rosanne Sliuzas on 09/19/10 Comments Off

What’s a Good Online Dictionary?

Every good scholar and samaritan comes across a new word throughout their life, so we've relied on dictionaries to aid us. Our lexical resources have evolved with our languages, and even in my...

By Ashiq Khondker on 09/19/10 Comments Off

Bow down for your Google overlord

The Church of Google worships their God as a female Goddess. She is all knowing, omnipresent, potentially immortal and infinite. The Church of Google has touched me, therefore I shall spread the word.

By Cendy Calis on 09/12/10 2

Google-izing the television

For a couple of years now scientists and new media enthusiasts have been talking about the merging of television and personal computers. Nowadays there are a couple of examples through which this merging takes place and last week almighty...

By Bob Nefkens on 09/11/10 6