Responding to a question from Jackie, I found a paper that attempts to model "rational" imitation in social networks.  It's fairly mathematical but you might find it interesting if you just read for the general ideas.  

Here's a restatement in print of the final assignment requirements (after the presentations), in response to questions:

When do you want us to hand in the written portion of the group presentation?

The answer from the syllabus is still correct: "Final grant proposals are due no later than Monday, 22 December." 

I will grade these over the holidays and if you wish return the papers with comments. 

I also need to know if anyone wants to be pass-fail by December 22.  If I don't hear otherwise from you, I will give you a grade.  If you want to be pass-fail please email me to make sure I get the message and I will confirm. 

We are also unclear on what needs to be turned in to you as the written portion.

This was not in the syllabus and while I've tried to describe it clearly in class, I apologize for not having provided this information in written form.  Here's what I want:

• A project description.  This should be no more than ten pages, not including any bibliography, which can be as long as you like.  The project description should provide a view of the whole research project: What problems it is intended to solve, the methods to be used, resources required, how it is necessarily transdisciplinary, etc.  This will necessarily be a high-level view because the specific activities will depend on what grants you get. 
• Three or four LOIs (Letters Of Intent) summarizing specific grantable sub-projects.  Each LOI is two to three pages long.  These letters should be written to specific granting agencies, ideally but not necessarily in response to specific RFPs (Request For Proposal).  (It doesn't matter if the RFPs are expired.)  The LOIs should describe the intended activity and results, the use of the grant money, and how the proposed work contributes to the large project defined in the project description.  These sub-projects can be done by one or multiple people, and can be within a single discipline or can involve multiple disciplines. 

Feel free to ask questions in the comments.  If you want to email me a question for whatever reason that's fine.  I may "sanitize" your question to remove any personal details and also answer it on the blog if it is potentially relevant to more than one student or team. 

--Jed

I finally put the readings provided by Brigitte Garney up (they are PDFs).  See this page. 

Here is the proposal I mentioned a few weeks ago to put clock gene information into Wikipedia. 

Also I should have blogged that I did put up my most recent presentation as promised.  

Two things we need to take care of:

• Schedule the group presentations -- for the next two classes. 
• I need to know who's taking the course for a grade, and who's taking it pass/fail.  I believe only students who are taking the course to satisfy the Transdisciplinary requirement can take it pass/fail.  

Here's what I have, subject to correction:

• 28 October: Juan, Kate, Jackie
• 4 November: Andrew, Cynthia, George, John
• 11 November: Evren, Patricia, Brigitte, Woohyun

A recent article in Computer World titled "Growing Pains for Google" has a close tie-in with last week's presentation by Steven Casper.  It appears that a good number of Google executives and managers are leaving for various reasons:

CIO Doug Merrill now works for Facebook Inc.

Cesar Mascaraque now works as European managing director for Ask.com

Rob Kniaz was the product manger on Google's AdSense now works as venture capitalist for Fidelity Ventures.

The reason why distinct employees leave varies from discontent with the corporate atmosphere to chid-care concern to lack or too much autonomy.  It seems inevitable that these changes happen to Google since they're growing at a fast pace.  They're only 10-years old and yet they are just as big as either Microsoft or IBM.  Google reportedly now has 20,000 employees.

I came across this article today while browsing the net.  I thought it was interesting, that even political figures are now using twitters to inform followers on upcoming events to keep them interested.  I personally never used twitter or even knew much about it, but recently I've seen a lot more bloggers adding twitter applications to their websites.  I guess even politicians are using them now...

Here's the article: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-09-25-twitter-utah-government_N.htm

This is an interesting article that focuses on a possible usage of social network analysis that I have not seen before. From Computer Supported Collaborative Learning perspective, social network analysis is a common tool to measure relationships and flows between information or knowledge processing entities. The papers I have read so far typically used social network analysis to analyze sense of community in a learning environment. Although I have not done a social network analysis yet, reading this article showed me the complexity of conducting such a study.

Below is a video clip that explains online social networking from PICNIC'07 Conference.

Check this out. It is super cool. It is called viral marketing. I think it is  very creative and effective.  watch till the end...http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii

I was interested in the "online game" for three years. Currently, I realized today topic and papers have a close relationship with my interest. I would like to share my previous survey and study as follows.

Although the online game market is still smaller than the size of the offline market, with the rapid growth of broadband and development of Internet technology, it has been a big industry all over the world. In Korea, the broadband has almost reached the saturation point with about 70% of households having a broadband connection. As a result, online games have become more pretty popular than offline one. These situations showed that the market is set for strong growth. Obviously, opportunities are plentiful, but growing number of competitors are existed. To survive as a successful winner in this competition, careful strategies and insightful market knowledge are essential. For example, a korean leading online game provider, NCsoft, will be a role-model as the first compan to make $100 million a year online games. They did this with just one product, Lineage-series. NCsoft, established in 1997, is the leading Korean online game company. NCsoft has launched ‘Lineage’, which is recognized as one of the most successful MMORPG (massively multi-player online role playing game) in Asia. NCsoft has also launched ‘Lineage’ in North American market, however, despite the success in Asian market, their achievement was not really successful in American market.