The MIT Media Lab has received a $10 million committment from Twitter to examine data from tweets, writes Jordan Graham for the Boston Herald. The lab will develop technologies to analyze “all the different kinds of media, mass media and social media that make up public opinion,” explains Professor Deb Roy.
“Twitter Inc on Wednesday gave $10 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for research that would explore how people use and achieve shared goals using social networks,” writes Christina Farr for Reuters. The committment will fund a new laboratory where researchers will develop tools to analyze social media patterns.
Thanks to a $10 million committment from Twitter, researchers at MIT plan to establish a Laboratory for Social Machines to analyze Twitter messages in real time, writes Hiawatha Bray of The Boston Globe. “With this data, the lab plans to develop new communication tools to help address social problems,” Bray explains.
“With a $10 million investment from Twitter, data scientists at MIT’s Media Lab are creating a new research group that will get access to Twitter’s entire feed of real-time and archived public tweets,” writes Yoree Koh for The Wall Street Journal.
Steve Annear of Boston Magazine writes about Twitter’s $10 million committment to the MIT Media Lab to study the social network’s data. The research “will focus on developing new technologies so that researchers can better digest the logic and ‘social patterns’ in mass media, social media, data streams, and digital content,” writes Annear.
Rodrique Ngowi writes for the Associated Press about ScratchJr, an app co-developed by MIT researchers to help young children think creatively and develop skills in math and science. “Children as young as 5 can use the app to craft their own interactive stories and games,” writes Ngowi.
MIT alumnus Robert R. Morris writes about his work developing a crowdsourcing application to help individuals cope with depression. Users can post descriptions of their troubles and within minutes, “a crowd of helpers sends you anonymous feedback. The responses are often very short, but guided by techniques used in many modern therapies,” Morris explains.
In a piece for The New Yorker, Michelle Nijhuis writes about the Make the Breast Pump Not Suck! hackathon, held at the MIT Media Lab. The winning team came up with an idea for a, “portable, hands-free pump that could be used while commuting or caring for small children,” writes Nijhuis.
“Nestled in the heart of MIT’s campus, the MIT Media Lab is one of the most important storehouses of invention — developing imaginative technologies that might one day have common, everyday uses for all of us,” writes BetaBoston reporter Dennis Keohane in a piece about the MIT Media Lab.
Liz Stinson writes for Wired about THAW, a project out of the MIT Media Lab that allows screens on smart devices to interact with one another. "We don’t really think of it as a product,” says Media Lab student Phillip Schoessler. “We’ve really just touched the surface of the applications.”
Anya Kamenetz writes for NPR about ‘The Reading Project,’ an experiment co-founded by Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder and former director of the MIT Media Lab. Through The Reading Project, solar-powered computers with literacy applications were distributed directly to children in remote parts of Ethiopia.
More than 150 people attended the “Make The Breast Pump Not Suck Hackathon” at the MIT Media Lab this weekend, reports Lauren Walker for Newsweek: “The event’s goal was to give the breast pump a much needed makeover—making it more efficient, more affordable and more comfortable for all moms.”
“More than 150 people gathered at the MIT Media Lab this weekend with a single goal: ‘Make the breast pump not suck!’” writes Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. “Over two days, teams brainstormed and then built prototype designs for the machine that moms almost universally love to loathe.”
Deborah Kotz writes for The Boston Globe about the breast pump hackathon held at the MIT Media Lab over the weekend: “First-prize, $3000 and a trip to Silicon Valley to pitch investors, went to the team that devised the Mighty Mom Utility Belt, a hands-free wearable pump that can be worn under clothes.”
Katie Levingston writes for Boston.com about the “Mighty Mom” system which took the first place prize in the Breast Pump Hackathon held at the MIT Media Lab. “[T]he ‘Mighty Mom’ is a discrete, wearable and smart utility belt for breast pumping,” writes Levingston.