As a member of a research group at UW, I've been helping with some of the work on a really cool project that takes a look at both professional and citizen journalism looked at California's Proposition 8 last year. A key element to this type of project is content analysis.
We looked at a lot of YouTube videos and followed a rigorous coding protocol that identified inter-coder reliability and all kinds of other stuff. We also pulled hundreds of newspaper articles from several California daily newspapers. The text of those articles will be analyzed with computer assistance. Getting that text into a format the analytical program is somewhat of a challenge, in that it needs to be formatted into a spreadsheet for importation.
Excel was not being all that cooperative in ways that would really inhibit progress. So we turned to Google Documents spreadsheet application. This was, in the big picture, a really good and workable solution. A key benefit was that we could see what one another was doing, identify problems and share solutions. I think they call that collaboration.
It's also called cloud computing. And that, in itself, is a really handy thing to be able to do. I realize that I am a little behind the world in using this technology, but I still found it really cool. Sitting with another grad student, while setting up our spreadsheets, I could watch as she tapped away on her computer, altering the same spreadsheet I was looking at on my laptop.
What made this even more cool, to me, was that I could take this show on the road. Literally. Tom and I had a lot of driving planned for last weekend, and we'd be staying in various boondock locations in Michigan for four nights. As long as one has some kind of internet connection with decent speed, one can work on a Google document anywhere. With my Verizon mobile broadband gizmo (of "WiFi in my pants," a I like to call it) I could work use the time in the car to cut and past news article text into our master document.
So there I was, as Tom drove along on I-294, cloud computing. I must have told him a dozen times how cool it was. He turned up the radio after the third time. Amazing. I was emailing back and forth with one of my research partners, and she could see what I was doing. In the internet. In the car.
Cloud computing. Google docs. Way cool.
Well, almost. We also discovered that Google Docs do have some limitations. Like their spreadsheets tend not to perform all that well when you have thousands of rows of data. And they tend to bog down when you go too fast, since each entry and alteration has to post in real time to make them collaborative. And sometimes real time takes, umm, time.
By last night, exasperated as I tried to fix a flaw of my own making, I allowed my love affair with Google docs to end. Like an unhappy ex-partner I took to slagging Google Docs in snarky Facebook posts.
By this morning, I had decided to make up with Google Docs. One of my friends put it in perspective when he asked, "What do you want for free?" Good point.
Cloud computing will only get better. As for improving my ability to manage my own expectations, that remains permanently in doubt. But you knew that already.
One of the most hyped nonconference games in the history of the Kohl Center certainly did not disappoint Wednesday night.
