So we have all now introduced ourselves. I think it is fair to say we are settling in and starting to get to grips with what we have to do. Now that I have a computer which will happily let me use Excel and NodeXL I now feel like I am finally getting somewhere. Thursday I hit a brick wall and spent the whole day playing with VirtualBox and Linux but thankfully by the end of the day it seemed to have been sorted.
NodeXL is a fantastic tool which allows you to pull in data from twitter or other social networks. It generates network graphs which you can manipulate to understand the internal relationships or the selected users. It automatically generates in-degree, out-degree, betweenness centrality and clustering coefficients to name just a few of the outputs. If you are planning to do any analysis on social machines it is definitely worth a look
I would say that yesterday was my favourite day so far. It feels like I am being paid to research and do things that I find really interested, what more could you ask for from a job? Max, a member of the SOCIAM group (he will probably be mentioned quite a lot as the interns desks surround his) has asked me to be the “usability/design czar”. I’m not quite sure how I feel about this wording but I am happy to take on the role. I have started to collect several books on my desk which I need to start working through. Tufte seems to be a must according to Max! This is a great sub-project for me as I researched usability and user interface for my third year project.
To live up to this new “usability/design” title I will need to update/improve my programming skills. I have been directed to the ultimate book on JavaScript (by Max) – Javascript: The Good Parts, which I have started to work through.
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/JavaScript.html?id=PXa2bby0oQ0C&redir_esc=y
I will keep you updated on my reading progress and any tricks and shortcuts that I have learnt through my self-taught programming sessions.
Anna
The Social Machinists 