Google’s increasingly faster re-branding efforts. Google Bard is now Google Gemini. This was fast. I asked Gemini to gather all rebrandings after I saw and lost a twit making fun of Google’s rebrandings. Google AdWords → Google Ads: Streamlined for a broader understanding of its functions. DoubleClick Digital Marketing & Google Analytics 360 Suite → … Read more
Academic Informatics conferences were led by “the father of Turkish Internet,” Mustafa Akgül. After his death in 2017, the annual conferences stopped after 2019. I was happy to hear that the meetings would start again. A few days ago, I participated in one of the AI and Social Life panels at Istanbul University. Here is … Read more
Reflektif is an open-access journal published by Istanbul Bilgi University Press. You can access the special issue here. Our launching event is on YouTube now. Two reports from our AI literacy projects are added to this volume. I had my “AI for Social Good” report translated into English so you can have a look! You … Read more
I just came back from Ankara. Sinem and I love Ankara, so whenever we have time, we stop by Ankara. This time, we mostly settled in Çankaya, in our favorite hotel, Hotel Jinnah- but unfortunately, this will be the last time we will stay there as the hotel has been poorly maintained. Anyway, my excuse … Read more
I wasn’t a person to travel a lot. In my first two years in Houston, I saw only a few places except the Rice campus. In order to motivate myself to see more places, I began to collect local newspapers at that time. But I changed a lot. I wouldn’t call myself a traveler, but … Read more
It was the third documentary I appeared at BluTV. The first one was a short series on TikTok. The second one was a piece on sleep. Last week, a short video on OnlyFans content producers in Turkey appeared: Müstehcen [Obscene] I was quoted briefly, and I argue that OnlyFans and related platforms may be good … Read more
It is in Turkish but a detailed summary here: “Exploring Free Software and Artificial Intelligence with Orkut Murat Yılmaz Detailed Summary for Kendi bilgisayarımda çalışan yapay zekâ by Merlin Video Title: Exploring Free Software and Artificial Intelligence with Orkut Murat Yılmaz 00:04 Orkut Murat Yılmaz is a free software developer and will present about the … Read more
I believe that the moment they changed their name from “Savage Minds” to “anthro{dendum}”, the decline started. Over-reliance on (political) correctness is a kind of (political) purism that never ends well. (I do not claim all contributors are like that; I actually like some of them very much). Life is rich, and anthropology is the … Read more
I heard the news that this building will be demolished. Its architectural style was unique in İstanbul. I would admire it when I was a child. It was futuristic when it was first built. I had been inside once when it was used as a private high school building. But it was first used as … Read more
We have organized a full-day event about “Artificial Intelligence for Social Good” at Istanbul Bilgi University. It was part of the AI Literacy Project, supported by Google Turkiye. The meeting was held in the Energy Museum. If you wonder about the setting in the photo above, The first part was for a group of students, … Read more
During the pandemic, I started to follow TikTok. It was the first social media platform where I could not become a real content producer. However, it has become a good venue to follow so much stuff and popular trends I would miss otherwise. A few days ago, I thought, why not list what I have … Read more
Last week I was in Eskişehir attending the 5th New Media Studies Conference. The conference is organized by an association, Alternatif Bilişim Derneği. I have been a member from the outset. The association, which is not too active nowadays, was a pioneer in internet freedom causes and now organizes biannual conferences and publishes ebooks with … Read more
I already use VEED to edit my videos from time to time but with the VideoGPT by VEED that is operated through Chat GPT. This was exactly what I was looking for and hopefully I will more videos to come:)
Since last summer, I have been directing a project on AI Literacy. Google Turkey sponsors the project. However, I and my colleagues are the sole creators of the project content. So far, we haven’t had a public event, but one will take place on 5 December at İstanbul Bilgi University. The Artificial Intelligence Literacy … Read more
The new minister of Internal Affairs, Ali Yerlikaya, delivers daily news of police raids and clampdowns on gangs and mafia entities that flourished during the previous minister’s reign. Based on the recent news and TikTok self-representations, I created a map of connections between the various gangs. It is not a definite map and relies on current … Read more