03/10/2012 - Security Breach! Warning!

Experienced a very "Digital Economy" relevant event today. In fact, it's a bit of an internet rite of passage really - I got hacked. Well, in truth I probably got "phished" and subsequently all my followers on twitter received a message telling them of an exciting new promotion, or a video which contains them. Most of my fellow internet patrons are clever enough not to follow the link and just send me scolding messages or correct the grammar - so, thankfully, I reckon the damage will be minimal.

Nonetheless, a standard internet clean-up has begun. Changed all my passwords, revoked all app access to Facebook and Twitter, restored my phone to factory settings, ran full anti virus and ad-aware scan on my computer. Sent out numerous apologetic tweets and messages.

I've never been hacked before, not in my email, game or any other accounts. I have to say I feel like an inner circle of mine has been penetrated (steady yourself). As far as I'm aware this is a fairly standard reaction - I'm more angry at myself really. I've just started a doctorate course which focuses heavily on internet security, privacy and identity, and within a fortnight of my first day I'm already letting the side down. Epic failure.

So, if you're one of the unlucky people to have received a message from me in the past few days: please ignore it. And if you receive one from this point on, please let me know - because I'll need to take further action to plug the hole.

28/09/12 - Positive Online Behaviour

A lot of people on my course seem to have arrived with at least half-formed ideas of what they want to be studying over the next four years. Myself, I've turned up with a pen and paper and a relatively empty brainbox. I'm hoping that over the first few months of taught lectureship something will click in my brain and I'll be whisked away by a good idea. But who knows.

I did have a bit of a brainwave last night. One of those thoughts that are so good you actually consider getting out of bed to note it down - but then you weigh that impulse against the ambient temperature of your room outside of the duvet and roll back over to sleep. The idea was as follows:

"Exploring the efficacy of Gamification for encouraging positive online behaviour"

I had to write a little bio about myself and my research interests earlier this week, and I put that my interests are in "digital identity, decentered selves and gamification". The first two ideas go hand in hand, but the third is a little off-the-wall. I also wrote that I'd like to find a way to mash the three ideas together. I'm hoping that the above title (or some iterative evolution of such) might provide me the opportunity to do that.

In terms of "positive online behaviour" (avoiding the usual postmodern guff of "can we say what is positive behaviour?" etc - let's do our best to avoid an existential crisis here people), I'm thinking along the lines of information sharing, collaborative creation and the discouragement of things such as griefing, trolling and the like. I need to do the background reading nice and early, seeing as I have to have a PhD proposal to present to the group by the end of Jan.

27/09/12 - Numero Uno

I started this blog about a squillion years ago, with a view to use it to talk about net/digital identity stuff which I couldn't quite fit into my main blog. In the end, it ended up just being left with 2 draft posts and a lot of open space.

One of the senior staff here at my new PhD department recommended that we keep a record of our experiences and progress over the next four years. Seeing as I've been blogging over at dwp for about 2 years now, I figured that dusting this space off for use would be far more preferable than noting stuff down in a scrap book which will inevitably get lost, burned or pissed on by the cat.

So, draft posts are deleted. Terrible blog-title altered, and off we go.