This online simulation game (http://www.indiana.edu/~istdemo/) created by the University of Indiana, has at its heart, the premise of exploring how information is transmitted across a network. By using a created narrative of getting different teachers at a fictional high school to adopt a new pedagogical technique, it focuses many topics of discussion including the way […]

Background Information: The degree of separation in a network is equal to the average length of the shortest path between pairs of nodes. Extracting the degrees of separation for a large network is computationally demanding. The computation involves averaging the degrees of separation of each individual node in the network. Thus, the time required to […]

Stephanie Rosenbloom of the New York Times wrote today on new features of familiar social networking sites like Facebook, Friendster and MySpace. She writes that these websites are increasingly becoming platforms for job searching and professional contacts. Modernizing Mark Granovetter’s hypothesis in his paper “The Strength of Weak Ties” - that many people […]

In this election, the candidates have taken advantage of using social networking sites to promote their campaigns. With supportive groups on facebook (One Million Strong for Barack Obama) and some candidates like Mitt Romney getting an account himself, the candidates have sought a whole new area fight over: the internet. Using social networking sites allow […]

Scientists have found that the brain works like a social network or the internet. The brain carries information from one area to another in the same way that information is spread on the internet or through a social network. Information spreads through small networks of nodes and to get from one node to another only […]

In class we discussed the spread of epidemics and its relation to networks. This branching process is very similar to the spread of viruses on the Internet, or even the spread of mobile viruses via smartphones. The article “Mobile viruses, a ticking bomb” explores the rising epidemic of mobile viruses. The spread […]

In class, we spoke about how search engines like Google rank websites and how to make a webpage more popular than another.
Jon Regnerud, of Enterpreneur.com, has come up with some interesting ways to get your website indexed by google within 24 hours.  However, there are also a few steps that are needed to be […]

There is an interesting article in the MIT technology review about a research project called “Reality Mining” that was tangentially related to our discussion of disease today in lecture. In partnership with Nokia Research, Nathan Eagle, a doctoral student, and his advisor, Sandy Pentland use mobile phones to collect data about user behavior. This data […]

In today’s internet-dependant world, network redundancy is a must. Network integrity often demands multiple bridges within networks and to the internet to prevent catastrophic downtime caused by a single edge failure (ie cut cable or power loss to a switch). The problem encountered […]

Well, one thing’s for sure: Adam L. Penenberg didn’t take Networks from Cornell. He recently wrote an article exemplifying Andreessen’s “Ning”, which is basically a Content Management System that allows users to create social networks really easily (it’s related to Facebook like phpBB and bbBoard are to forums). A counter article then appeared in TechDirt […]