Category: Tools We Use

Follow us on Mastodon

Follow us on Mastodon

Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, there has been an exodus of “Twitter executives on the front lines of protecting safety, security, speech, and accessibility. Some were fired, others resigned.” Most of the employees tasked with enforcing and designing these policies have been fired or quit as well. For these reasons, we at anthrodendum no longer feel comfortable promoting Twitter as a way to follow or engage with our account. I personally have already deactivated my Twitter account and moved to {+}

Roam If You Want To

Roam If You Want To

You already know how to use Roam Research, the new note taking app taking the internet by storm. You don’t need to follow the #roamcult hashtag on Twitter, or watch the dozens of YouTube explainer videos in order to start using Roam. If you’ve used Wikipedia (with its web of interlinked definitions), an outliner (with information organized by indented bullet points), Twitter (where you can find subjects by #hashtags), or any desktop computer (where items can exist in multiple locations {+}

Learning From Design Researchers: Jan Chipchase’s Field Study Handbook

Learning From Design Researchers: Jan Chipchase’s Field Study Handbook

Jan Chipchase is a leading design researcher. Some of you may have come across his work on the anthropology of mobile phones. I discovered it by chance while flicking through a copy of Wired magazine some years back. That Wired piece became a core reading for students when I taught a Business Anthropology module at Manchester. It opened my eyes to a wider world of anthropology. Jan has extensive experience of working with interdisciplinary teams to carry out field based {+}

Roll Your Own QDA (Working With Text 5)

Roll Your Own QDA (Working With Text 5)

Many social scientists purchase expensive qualitative data analysis software to code their field notes and interview data, but I want to show how you can accomplish the same thing for free using Dynalist or Workflowy. Neither app is truly free, but they both offer generous free plans that allow you to do a lot before you would need to pay for a subscription. We are also going to ignore most of the features offered by these apps, such as outlining, {+}

Lazy PowerPoint (Working With Text 4)

Lazy PowerPoint (Working With Text 4)

We all know we should bike to work, but sometimes the weather is bad, or we are late, or just feeling lazy, and so we take the car. Similarly, we all know that we shouldn’t use use PowerPoint, or if we do use PowerPoint we shouldn’t stuff them full of text and bullet points but instead use illustrative pictures. But sometimes we are running late, or just feeling lazy, or maybe even have a good reason1 for using text-heavy slides, {+}

Text-laundering (Working With Text 3)

Text-laundering (Working With Text 3)

Ever copy and paste something that should be a solid paragraph of text only to have it end up looking a mess? You could fix it using Regular Expressions, or if you prefer not to have to muddle around with code, there are a number of tools out there which can automate this kind of text cleanup for you. {+}

Mobile Apps for Ethnographic Research – #RoR2018

Mobile Apps for Ethnographic Research – #RoR2018

Ethnographic research is difficult. It’s a challenge to find the right assistants, get access, recruit the right people, keep a schedule, make time for note-writing and transcription, and be self-motivated through it all. In Dakar, I depend on a number of mobile apps to help me keep the project together. Some of these apps may or may not be available on your phone or where you do research, but as I have done with these apps, I recommend finding something {+}