Lab Update

Well, as I was telling you in the last post, I am in the "grant writing period" ... So blogging is slow ... Still, some important updates:

1) Anna Lomanovska, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in my lab, got the very prestigious and competitive FRSQ Postdoctoral Fellowship grant ! Now she is funded for 2 more years, so we will be able to do really good things I am sure ! Well done, Anna, congratulations !

2) Talking about grants, Catherine also got the FRSQ Student grant for her Master Degree in my lab, but unfortunately, she had to say no since she already got the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell grant ... Still, that means that we are probably not the worse lab in the world if everybody gets grants here ! (or that I am lucky to attract only the best people, which I do believe too).

3) Twitter, twitter, twitter, I so love twitter ... Definitively, Twitter has really an ideal format for me, short and efficient messages, perfect for litterature updates and so on. So, people, if you want to follow what we are doing, follow me on Twitter @matthieuguitton

4) I will be in Florida in 1 week now, at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Beside giving a lecture on cyberbehavior (Multi-Modal Aspects of Immersion in Virtual Spaces), I will be participing to two courses there: "Visual Design" and "Technology and Modern Civilization". That will be most interesting I think.

5) Papers ... things are advancing, the PLoS ONE of Catherine is in press, as is the chapter on "Cyber Behaviors in Canada" of the "Encyclopedia of Cyberbehavior", and we have currently 4 other papers submitted (even if, of course, some will be longer to publish than others).

Lab Update

Long time without a post ... that is mostly due to the "grant writing period": two time per year, you go out of the world to live in your micro-world, to write research grants so your lab can work. Anyway, some updates.

First, I changed my main affiliation. I moved from the Faculty of Pharmacy to now be Professeur sous octroi at the Faculty of Medicine. I am now in the Department of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology and Ophtalmology. A sensory department, with a fully multi-modal and integrated focus, seems to be a perfect match for me and my research interests, so there are a lot of new opportunities there for me.

Second, the visit of Lee Cadieux from the University of Ulster went perfectly well. It was an amazing time for me and the students to talk about cyberbehavior with another expert of the field. By the way, here is one of his latest paper, just published:

Cadieux L (2011) Open Sandbox: New Modalities of Animation Delivery. Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal. 5:635-644.

A "must-read" paper, for those interested by this kind of topic. This paper was actually published after a very interesting talk Lee gave in Roma in February at the Design Conference.

Third, about Twitter ... Well, actually, I find that Twitter is a very convenient tool, and since I finally decided to create an account, I simply can not live without it anymore ... It is an amazing tool to spread litterature udpates or comments, so, if you are following this blog, I can only suggest you to follow my twitter account too:

http://twitter.com/#!/matthieuguitton

And, that's all for today, back to my grants !

Research Update

Today, our paper on the factors supporting the judgment of humanness a human will do over his partner in a situation of computer-mediated communication got accepted with revision. And the comments of the Reviewers were honestly very good (not to say elogious for one of them at least!). And that is pretty good for us, because we got accepted with revision in PLoS ONE ! Meaning, we are climbing pretty well in terms of Impact Factor ! Actually, to be honest, it will be once the revision will be made, one of the papers on CMC published in the highest journal ! As well, the fact that we are now able to publish in journals with this Impact Factor means that the field is getting mature, and that people in general science become more and more ready to hear about what people working on cyberbehavior have to say. This paper is part of Catherine's Master degree, which is getting better and better each month it seems ... More to come soon, keep tuned !

Literature Update

A paper published in Science Express about the effect of having constant access to information technology such as Internet or Google on the cognitive strategy we used to retrieve information stored in our memory. The paper itself is there:

Google effect on Memory

And there is also a comment on it in Science:

Comment from Science

On another topic, the TV interview went ok (they called me in the morning for an interview at 13h ... always great when you have "plenty" of time to get ready, somehow ...).

Comment

Even if new classifications have been proposed in the last 2 decades, the old classification of "players" of Bartle is still relevant. Bartle divided the players of video-game and virtual spaces in 4 categories, alongside two axes: an action/interaction axe (for those interested into the history of tools of personality evaluation, or on the history of things such as ther MMPI scale, we are close to the concepts of Tellegen of narrow vs. extended, of internal vs. external focus), and a others/world axe (akin to a human/environment axe). The four categories were: "achievers" (action/others), "socializers" (interaction/others), "explorers" (interaction/world), and "builders" (action/world). Latter on, he added a third axe to go with 8 categories (including the Second Life highly popular "griefers", or the World of Warcraft as popular "killers"). However, the 8 categories classification somehow works less than the original 4 categories, which I think is still the best so far ...

Something else, my colleague Lynn Köller from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Florida, lucky people !) pointed to me today a very interesting paper which document how actual people "perceive" the usefulness of e-media support, in this case how patients perceived the usefulness of online electronic medical records.

Winkelman WJ, Leornard KJ, Rossos PG (2005) Patient-perceived usefulness of online electronic medical records: employing grounded theory in the development of information and communication technologies for use by patients living with chronic illness. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 12:306-314.

Lab Update

Finally, I have a Twitter ! So, if you are interested, you can tweet with me at @matthieuguitton on Twitter ... And "follow" me there to follow me here, so you can get updated when we have new things to say here !

Comment

On Facebook ... and on Facebook Credits. Facebook Credits were around since some times already, and were used as a possible choice to pay various "side services" of Facebook, typically some games. However, since July 1st, they are the only and mandatory currency for any application using the Facebook plateform. With the ambition to have them used to buy songs, or movies online, Facebook clearly want to push the Facebook Credits as the main virtual currency. And with taking 30% on each transaction, Facebook would generate a lot more money. Yes. And no.

Let's remember what happened with the Linden Dollars of the famous Linden Labs star application, Second Life. When people began to actually win so much money inside the world of Second Life and to convert it in real money, when people exchanged currency via Second Life, some governments began to be clearly annoyed. Leading up to the taxation of Linden Dollars inside the European Union. So, what if Facebook Credits become so popular that they actually get to have the different government looking at all that a bit more closely ? And add, let's say, a 10% taxe over the already 30% of taxe of Facebook ? Somehow, using this virtual money to get virtual services would cost more than using a real money to get real services ... And during all this time, all the other players of the cyberspace will be playing soccer in the courtyard and not try to develop another (virtual) currency to compete ? Like the Google Credits ? All that will be interesting to observe in the future, and to observe how it will affect us all ...