MIT has also developed a tool called Eyebrowse, a Firefox add-on that enables you to record, visualize and share your browser history in real-time.

PSFK’s next Good Ideas Salon in New York will be on October 1 with Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase. Chipchase will present his thoughts on ‘Pattern Recognition’ at the salon followed by a Q&A with the audience.

As people increasingly move online for their news and entertainment, media providers and advertisers alike are seeking new ways to design these environments to maximize audience share, while successfully monetizing the (mostly free) content. In this evolving space, media companies are faced with the constant dilemma of maintaining the proper balance between content and ads; place too many flashy banners and risk losing your viewers, but not enough and your revenue streams suffer.
Until recently, achieving the right mix appeared to be more of a guessing game than anything based on scientific rigor, but all that might be changing as major [...]

Last year, Dopplr CTO Matt Biddulph coined the term ‘Silicon Roundabout’ in reference to the circular junction at Old Street, home to UK start-ups such as Last.fm, Moo and Dopplr. It’s the UK’s very own Silicon Valley.
Although it’s been a year since the initial chatter around the subject, creative design consultancy Schulze & Webb is helping Georgina Voss to carry out some ethnographic research into the culture of the area. If you’re based in the area, grab a coffee and a biscuit with Georgina and have a chat about your involvement and impressions of the area.
More at details here.

Google has launched a new service aimed to fetch and organize facts from across the web. Google Squared automatically constructs a table of facts about any category you specify. It’s not that easy to use but we’re sure once we’ve played with this a little more it could be a useful research collection tool.
Google Squared

In an article on ‘being open’ in the Financial Times, their digital correspondent Tim Bradshaw describes how companies are trying to engage partners, suppliers and consumers by revealing their process and inner-thinking.
Indeed, at a time when many companies’ investments in innovation are being cut, technology and media companies are showing that there can be advantages in harnessing the ideas of customers or even competitors.
The principle has been extended beyond technology and applied to organisational structures. For instance, new kinds of advertising agencies are springing up that replace the vast, all-encompassing networks of WPP or Omnicom with something more informal [...]

Print  is no longer the default medium according to the latest edition  of the Modern Language Association’s handbook for academic citation.  The MLA’s style bible for research paper writers has incorporated many changes that point to the ongoing cultural shift away from the printed word.
This seventh edition says “that the medium of publication should be included in each works cited entry” rather than assuming it’s print.  The MLA has also decided to eliminate specific URLs in citations, claiming they often are session specific, or too long. Searching for titles or authors is suggested instead. Keeping with the web-centric view of [...]

This past January, PSFK brought together our favorite innovators and thought leaders for our Good Ideas Salon London. There, Christian Nold, artist, designer and educator famous for his Biomapping project, discussed how design can create systems of trust within communities.
Picking up where the design panel left off, Christian elaborated on how new, performative and embodied approaches to engaging our surroundings and those around us can create powerful change and how designers can leverage technology to develop social relations through democratic procedures.
Coupled with a background in fine art, Christian describes the various ethnographic techniques he employs to find out what the [...]