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

A Rhetoric of WeWalk-ing. Smart Canes and “feeling of freedom” in the urban environment

The new uses of smart technology are being constantly introduced, and unlike a cat selfie device or a cute planter that aim to add some fun to our humdrum existence, WeWALK smart cane attempt to make a difference. This...

By Berenika Balcer on 09/23/19 Comments Off

EcoScanner: Self-tracking Sustainability

Piloting the EcoScanner: A Self-tracking Solution to Sustainability Annika Heinemeyer, Daniel Jurg, Molly Doell, Ziwen Tang Abstract Modern consumers are using apps to track all types of behavior (sleep, running, eating etc.). But while there are some...

By Annika Heinemeyer on 10/22/18 Comments Off

Autonomous Cars Are The Future – But For Whom Are They The Future For?

Autonomous cars have been hailed as the next leap for mankind in automotive transportation and infrastructure, offering not only advancements in private and public transport, but addressing difficulties in health infrastructure, emissions, road collisions, and government overheads on...

By Anna Mc Namara Taylor on 09/24/18 Comments Off

Spare Change Investment: Saving for the Future or Selling Out Today?

Millennials are a new target market. Personal growth, independence, and self-improvement are trends especially prominent with generation Y and Z. Right in tune, finances are following suit with budget, mobile payment and now investment apps like Acorns and Moneybox....

By Vanessa Richter on 09/23/18 Comments Off

What Apple’s new cookie blocker says about platforms and privacy

Apple’s new built-in cookie blocker may be welcomed by most consumers, but what does it say about the power yielded by the company, which maintains vast amounts of data on its own users? If platforms are allowed to make...

By Liam Corcoran on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Pokémon Go: A Blueprint for Augmented Reality?

July 2016, a cultural zeitgeist dating back to the 90s was unleashed upon the world with renewed and unprecedented vigour. Pokémon Go fever swept the world – at its peak in mid-July, it was estimated that over 45 million (Griffiths)...

By Rhubini Kunasegaran on 09/19/16 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

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

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

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

The reason Heisenberg doesn’t miss not having a smartphone

Season one, Episode two. Walter White supplies his yet to be developed alter ego Heisenberg with an extra cellular phone. Contrary to his possibilities he doesn’t go for fancy, doesn’t go for state of the art, doesn’t go for...

By Felix Clasbrummel on 09/08/14 Comments Off

The Building Blocks of Mobile Innovation

“Mobile innovation is over” – Marcus Wohlsen (Wired Magazine) A lot has happened since the first call from a mobile phone has been made by Martin Cooper 1973 from a Motorola phone. Since then the market has been ruled...

By Inte Gloerich on 10/09/13 Comments Off

Flipboard: the tasteful social curation

News consumption has somehow taken a different path since the development of RSS feed, but how is it different? And why? Let’s look at this fairly recent application, Flipboard, to answer those questions. Flipboard is a free social...

By V Weydert on 10/07/13 Comments Off

Our Future Will Last Up To Ten Seconds: Could Snapchat be used as a revolutionary tool?

Developed by Stanford University students in 2011, Snapchat is an application which allows users to send and receive picture messages and videos in real time. As well as many other features, the USP of Snapchat is that it only...

By Rose Rowson on 09/11/13 Comments Off

Death of A Museum

‘No flash please.’ A handsomely uniformed Van Gogh Museum attendant gently reminds a befuddled middle-aged iPhone-toting museum patron. The woman appears confused — confused at the prospect of making that pesky flash go away and equally confused at the...

By Lani Shadduck on 09/11/13 Comments Off

The Rise of the App Culture

The past few years have seen an enormous growth of the use of smartphones and tablets. Mobile devices have taken such a dominant role in our lives that it’s very hard to imagine a life without them. We have...

By Joey de Jong on 11/13/12 3

A Bloody Trail Behind Our Mobile Life: a fair trade mobile phone

“It is time to be asking questions about technology. Where does it come from? Who makes it? And for what?” ― Bandi Mbubi (@ TED talk) Explosions of two plants that make Apple gadgets. A series of employee suicides...

By Seah Kim on 10/16/12 Comments Off

POWER OF THE PEDAL: Pirates bring the interactive screening experience to the public

On Saturday 29th of September, Pirate Cinema attended Polderweg Damoclash festival, (located in Amsterdam-Oost), with their five-wheeled bicycle installation. Pirate Cinema’s essence lies in the synthesis of the mobile media and in its inclusion of the socially engaged message of...

By Massiel Sánchez on 10/03/12 Comments Off

[Research] Trade Your Location Information For Security?

A Liberty-Security Tradeoff in Public Policy for the Location Information Technology in South Korea This afternoon, you might tag where you have been for lunch on facebook, or even a few minutes ago, your smartphone might update you with new...

By Seah Kim on 09/07/12 Comments Off

Dis Connecting Media

In the current literary landscape of mobile phones and mobile culture it’s rare to find a title that’s both playful and insightful. In fact, most titles concerning mobile-mediated communication are text tomes: although interesting, also dense. Occasionally...

By Natalie Dixon on 11/12/11 Comments Off