Google has launched a new service for personalized searches. I wonder if this will be the solution to my problems? Also, I notice that it wonít accept the characters ëÂí ë‰Ã­ and ëˆÃ­, excluding searches in Swedish. (Via OLDaily and elsewhere)

Sense in Communication by Douglas A. Galbi looks promising. He regards presence as a model of communication alongside information transfer and storytelling, and concludes that the best way to approach the subject of sense in communication is with the presence model in mind. By drawing on examples from television, virtual worlds and telephony, Galbi states that ‘the economics is elementary: external sensory stimuli substitute for costly bodily effort in creating the same component in sense’ (p.140), and argues that audio communication creates a sense of presence at a lower cost than text communication, which is in line with my findings.

For a neat summary of the paper, visit Stuart Henshallís Unbound Spiral. (Via Seblogging/David Weinberger/Google/Conversations with Dina/Stuart Henshall )

In Kairosnews I found a link to gnovis, “Georgetown’s peer-reviewed journal of Communication, Culture and Technology”, which looks as if it could be worth checking out every now and then. In the current issue, for instance, there is an article on realism and subjectivity in first person shooters. I am interested in the importance of realism in virtual environments, and might be able to find some pointers there. My first thought was to add this journal to my list of possible publication venues, but after having read Dennis G. Jerz’s (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) comment to the post (in Kairosnews) I’m not so sure anymore.

I am fascinated by the (sometimes scary) possibilities of tracking peopleís whereabouts on the Internet. Wherever you go, you can be sure that you have left a trace, whether visible to you or not. Of course, tracking can be done for quite harmless reasons, as in the case of my own tracker in this blog (yes, I do have one, at the bottom of the side bar), which I mainly use to get an idea of whether or not I have any readers. After having blogged for a while I became obsessed with the idea of checking if my favourite blogs had been recently updated, sometimes visiting the same blogs as much as ten times a day (Iím sure you know who you are). It was not until later that I realized that these people might start wondering why I cared so much about them, and that they might start asking themselves if I had no life of my own (which would have been a quite reasonable question to ask, not saying that I would if I found such traces in my tracker ñ I would just be flattered that someone were that anxious not to miss anything). Iím aware that I still leave traces all the time, but with Blogrolling, at least I donít have to check all my blogs for updates all the time. Also, of course there is a big point in leaving traces in blogs. Okay, IP addresses wonít tell you a whole lot, but, after all, comments and trackbacks are two important ways of leaving traces, without which it would be much more difficult to maintain a blogging community.

I’ve spent the last couple of days reading Naipul’s 600 page novel ‘A house for Mr. Biswas‘ (after having read about 300 pages I learnt that it long ago had been decided that we should read another of Naipulís novels ñ the 300 page long ìThe EnigmaÖî ñ instead, but already having read half I decided to stick with Mr. Biswas). This is the story of a very ambitious young man of Indian descent living in Trinidad in the time between the two European wars. Never being content with what heís got, his life is characterized by the constant feeling of waiting for change, and especially with that of waiting for a nice solid house of his own. In the end he does have a house in which he gets to spend his last days, but considering the vast loans he has on it, it would be wrong to claim that the house belonged to Mr. Biswas. Also, Mr. Biswas, in a sad kind of way, has to lower his ambitions when he realizes that the house is not at all as solid as he thought it would be. For the course I am taking, we are to write keywords for each novel that we read, and Iím thinking of analyzing this novel either from a feminist criticism perspective, by looking at the roles of the women in the text, or from a psychoanalytical perspective, relating Mr. Biswas behaviour to his relationship with his parents. Other interesting themes concern the conflict between tradition and western ways, and that between communism and capitalism. Very likely I will also try to make something out of the symbolism of the house. This literature course, which is an obligatory part of my PhD. studies, goes on for about a month, but already next week I will start another compulsory course in language history: Old English. This means that, as I feared, I will have to give my Sims- assignment low priority for a while again, but I hope to be able to work on it on the side.

Sebastian Fiedler has commented on my previous entry on presence in blogs in his Seblogging. There you will also find my response to his comment, in which I have been careful not to give away too much of the content of the proposed BlogTalk 2.0 presentation (not very difficult considering the short length of my response)

Via Seblogging, I found a list of articles dealing with the use of blogs in education (posted by Stephan Mosel). Probably a useful resource for future courses on learning in digital environments.

I have been introduced to the great services of Blogrolling, making my daily routine of reading favourite blogs much more efficient. However, not all blogs listed show correct update status. According to my list some havenít been updated since I put them there, which isn’t true. Does anyone know why these updates wonít show, and is there something I can do to solve this problem? Thanks.

Jerz’s Literacy Weblog links to an interview in the Armchair Arcade with Emily Short (IF author) on Interactive Fiction (IF). This is a term I will need to define for my Sims paper, and I think I might be able to get some pointers from Emily’s web page on the subject. In that same issue of the Armchair Arcade there is another article dealing with gender roles in games, and more specifically with Gay Characters in Video Games. Might be worth checking out a bit more closely… But, now I’m off to greet the spring in Stockholm with my sisters (provided that it’s arrived there yet – here in Ume it still hasn’t), so that will have to wait until next week.

Stephen Downes, in his outstanding newsletter OLDaily points me to an interesting article, Con-text? (An Inquiry), on the role of non-verbals in interpersonal communication on the internet, written for DEOSNEWS (a monthly electronic journal published by the American Center for the Study of Distance Education). The authors present a comparison of two different theoretical approaches to the subject, Channel theory and Process theory, and claim that process theory has many advantages. For instance, they argue that ìas decoding channels like body language and tone are removed, humans will just find a way to effectively use whatever channel is availableî (p.14), an argument which seems tenable to me. Also, their list of references includes links to some other online articles that look promising.