The marvelous Captology Notebook updates us on Current and Ongoing Projects, including the Mobile Jokes Project:
In our increasingly mirthless world, it's sometimes difficult to know what's funny. Relief is on the way. Our lab is creating a free service that will play jokes for you over the phone – any phone. Waiting in line? Stuck in traffic? Need to appear busy? Just call in, listen and (we hope) laugh. However, the project isn't just fun and games, it's hard research. Once callers listen to a joke, they're asked to rate it. Once we have enough ratings, we'll start to analyze the data to determine which jokes are funniest to people in general, which jokes college students like, what jokes do women prefer, and more. You get the idea.
So what's the point? First, we're exploring how humor can persuade callers and/or reward them for specific kinds of behavior. The second purpose is to create a new system for evaluating content. Our first evaluation system was deployed on the web last year and it's proved extremely useful. As a result, we've decided to extend this evaluation to capture data from mobile phone users.
When our joke engine service is ready, we'll send out the phone number.
Great idea
Dear Professor Froomkin,
I’m a student learning information management in Sheffiled University in the UK. Now Im doing my dissertation research on Using Weblog in higher education around university teachers. I just found your blog through Rhetoricas professors who blog. Could you share with me your experience on blog(s) for the purpose of teaching or research in higher education? It would be much appreciated if you would spend a few minutes answering the survey questions. Or it will be great if you can email me directly to have a further discussion in general or on some specific questions you are interested. Thank you very much!
The survey link is:
http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?id=102204
Best regards,
Xiaoxiao Ru