Microsoft researcher will describe tools for data mining from Usenet

Smith

By Bill Steele

Ever wonder how much time you've been wasting on Usenet? Go to http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/, click on "Author Profile" and you can find out. You -- or anyone else -- can see how many messages you've posted to which groups over the last four years or so. You can also find statistics on your favorite newsgroups -- how many people post there, where the cross-posts went and whether activity is increasing or decreasing.

It's all part of the Netscan Project of Microsoft Research, which aims to study the social organization of cyberspace. Marc A. Smith, developer of the Netscan software, will discuss this and other projects in a public lecture on campus, "Tools to Study and Catalyze Conversational Social Cyberspaces," Friday, Sept. 26, at noon in Room G10 of the Biotechnology Building.

Smith is a research sociologist in the Collaborative and Multimedia Systems Group of Microsoft Research. He will discuss Netscan and other tools he uses to study the emergence of social organizations in online environments and the resources groups need in order to cooperate productively. He is co-editor, with Peter Kollock, associate professor of sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles, of the book Communities in Cyberspace, which investigates how the idea of community is being challenged and rewritten by the widespread use of online interaction. It explores identity, social order and control, community structures, dynamics and collective action in cyberspace.

Before joining Microsoft, Smith taught sociology at Drexel University and UCLA. He received his B.S. degree from Drexel in 1988, a masters in philosophy from Cambridge University in 1990 and his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2001.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Cornell Theory Center and the Department of Sociology. It is free and open to the Cornell community. Light refreshments will be provided.