Environmental Racism On Display In Google Earth Images

Environmental racism as seen from space, via Google Earth.

In an article by Mashable writer Matt Petronzio points to a report by journalist and ecologist Tim DeChant that uses Google Earth to determine the correlation between the wealth of a neighborhood and the number of trees that neighborhood has.

via Environmental Racism On Display In Google Earth Images. via Rhonda Ragsdale

 

What are the liberating possibilities of technology, and what is the impact of the digital divide on the ability of communities to organize for equality. Also, does inequality raise our carbon footprint? What implications might this have globally?

Positive Yelp Ratings Can Boost a Restaurant’s Nightly Reservations by 19%

Parody “hipster” checkins all you want, but they can actually help boost small businesses. This is not only augmented reality, but hyperlocal, too.

Customer reviews travel far in the age of tweets and mobile check-ins. As more foodies come to rely on word-of-mouth reviews, Yelp’s system of ratings can make or break a restaurant.

 

Economists at the University of California, Berkeley published the results of a study, examining the effects of Yelp’s online ratings in this month’s Economic Journal. The study shows a slight half-star improvement in ratings can increase a restaurant’s business during peak dining hours by 19%.

 

Berkeley professors Michael Anderson and Jeremy Magruder found that “Yelp ratings affect both customer flows and the probability of booking a reservation.” The researchers compared the digital word-of-mouth reviews on Yelp of 328 San Francisco eateries with the frequency of nightly reservations at each establishment.

 

via Positive Yelp Ratings Can Boost a Restaurant’s Nightly Reservations by 19%.

David Beer and Roger Burrows: Sociology And, of and in Web 2.0

This is one of the readings for Thursday, September 29, in case you are having difficulty accessing the learning management system (GullNet).

This paper introduces the idea of Web 2.0 to a sociological audience as a key example of a process of cultural digitization that is moving faster than our ability to analyse it. It offers a definition, a schematic overview and a typology of the notion as part of a commitment to a renewal of description in sociology. It provides examples of wikis, folksonomies, mashups and social networking sites and, where possible and by way of illustration, examines instances where sociology and sociologists are featured. The paper then identifies three possible agendas for the development of a viable sociology of Web 2.0: the changing relations between the production and consumption of internet content; the mainstreaming of private information posted to the public domain; and, the emergence of a new rhetoric of ‘democratisation’. The paper concludes by discussing some of the ways in which we can engage with these new web applications and go about developing sociological understandings of the new online cultures as they become increasingly significant in the mundane routines of everyday life.
via David Beer and Roger Burrows: Sociology And, of and in Web 2.0.