New on the Podcast: The City with Eyes
The Digital Tattoo Podcast – Episode 5 As the government of Canada slowly prepares to embrace the future of city building, a small plot of land races ahead to become the nation’s first smart city. Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., is developing a proposal for 12 acres on the downtown […]
Guerrilla Archiving
On December 17, 2016 The Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto hosted a Guerrilla Archiving Event to preserve American environmental data in preparation for the incoming President. There was concern leading up to the inauguration that the new administration under Trump would be hostile to evidence based environmental studies. I had the pleasure of connecting with […]
Allow Access to My Location?
Introduction How many times a day do applications on your phone ask to be allowed to access your location. Do you leave your location GPS on all the time? Do you know how to turn it off? If you’re not concerned with how companies like Google having access to your location, consider that with that […]
Digital Identity Digest (October)
US citizens can register to vote within Snapchat application In an appeal to its young audience, the popular and ephemeral video sharing application, Snapchat, is encouraging young people to vote by allowing them to register within the application. The campaign is in partnership with Democracy Works’ TurboVote, and its advertisements will automatically be displayed in Snapchat Stories for […]
Digital Identity Digest (September)
Facebook is changing the way that WhatsApp works When Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014, there was a promise that the privacy of the popular messaging application’s millions of users’ wouldn’t be affected. That’s all changed with its new Terms of Service. The move is part of WhatsApp’s plan to monetize, and involves sharing phone numbers and analytical […]
Digital Identity Digest (August 21 – 27)
New Facebook application for teens presents privacy concerns Facebook released a new video sharing application called Lifestage this week that is intended for users under the age of 21. The social media company has been losing market share to ephemeral applications like Snapchat, and has been looking for ways to engage the young users who favour its […]
Blackboard Connect: Exposed (Part 4)
As I continue waiting for the return of my data from UBC’s Office of Counsel, I’ve begun examining the structure of the Connect system. For a Learning Management System, Connect effectively manages the amount of information that students can learn from it. The system is divided into three roles: that of the student, who creates the majority […]
When Social Media Bites Back: Election Edition
As we gear up for the upcoming election, it’s no secret that social media has influenced this years’ campaigns more ways than one. It seems each time I scroll through my Facebook newsfeed, I deal with the collective ‘Stop Harper!’ screams of my youthful friends, while a Justin Trudeau advertisement curiously appears on my sidebar […]
![Original image from Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) [https://www.flickr.com/photos/gforsythe/18417835582/in/dateposted/]](https://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/files/2015/05/open-learning-360x231.jpg)
Open Learning
Video credit: Open Learning Remix – posted by The Digital Tattoo Project on YouTube Watch Think Explore Links Discuss Think Explore Open learning has slowly increased in popularity over the last few years. It generally refers to the practice of using online technologies to share knowledge and information freely. The idea is that learning should be […]
Why should I care about privacy if I have nothing to hide?
Many defenders of mass surveillance use the argument that “only people involved in bad acts should worry about their privacy.” In some ways, this seems to make sense. After all, if you’re doing something you don’t want people to know about, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, right? Glenn Greenwald, one […]
People said…