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  • 1 min read

Interesting blog survey

Blogads has conducted a survey of people who read blogs. The results are quite interesting. One thing that stood out to me was that72% don 't use RSS (i.e. an aggregator) to read blogs. This is consistent with another finding, which is that people who read blogs typically read about 10 of them every day. When reading "only" 10, using a web browser is more than fine. Check it out, there are lots of other interesting tidbits!

  • 2 min read

[ETECH] Taxonomy of Folksonomies

There's been a lot of talk about tags, folksonomies, taxonomies, etc. Trying to make sense out of this can be confusing. At the recent ETech conference there was more than one presentation on the topic, each of which helped me understand the subtleties a little better, and organize them in my mind. [What follows is fairly inside-baseball so if you are not particularly into this topic it will probably be somewhat obscure and likely not very interesting, so you are warned!] What are we to do with this term ' Tags'? It is used in many different places, sometimes to mean the same thing and sometimes something subtly different. This is not surprising about a set of ideas that are morphing right in front of our eyes and ears. So let's look at some examples and compare them. Let's look at tags in Flickr and tags in Del.icio.us (if you don't know one or the other, you owe it to yourself to look into them.) Both have tags, but they are different in a subtle way: In Flickr I am tagging my own stuff (pictures that I've uploaded) mostlyfor other people to find. In Del.icio.us I am tagging mostly other people 's stuff (links to web pages) formy own benefit , that is organizing links of interest to me. Look at this: metataggraph.jpg One way to organize a taxonomy of folksonomies is to notice that there are two dimensions: Whose stuff is being tagged, and for whose benefit. Flickr ends up in the bottom right, and del.icio.us in the top left. But what about the other quadrants? This organization gives a new way of looking at conventional concepts like folders and directories on personal computers (my stuff/my own benefits) and Web based directories like Yahoo (other people 's stuff/other people's benefit.)

  • 1 min read

Blogging and journalism … again?

If you are a blog aficionado then you've followed this debate, ad something. I don't have any pearls of wisdom to add, but did come across this quite good article discussing the issues (via MacNetJournal)

"Or in Walsh's words, in trying to tell if a blog is serious journalism or the rant of a pajama-clad windbag, "It's kind of like art. You know it when you see it."

Hmm. I thought that was pornography 🙂

  • 1 min read

Busybodies and Crybabies

pointer to an article by Tina Brown which talks about the Eggshell Era,

"…in which everyone has to tiptoe around because there's a world of busybodies out there who are being paid to catch you out…"

I don't know why but that thought pinged a deeply lost link in my brain to an article in Time Magazine 14 years ago (!!!) about how we had become a nation of Busybodies and Crybabies.

  • 1 min read

[ETECH] Yahoo Buzz Game – Hacked!

There was some buzz here at ETECH about Yahoo Research's announcement of the Buzz Game. It's one of those online, simulated markets, ostensibly to extract "the wisdom of crowds" about Technology trends. It looks like a relatively complete immitation of a real trading site -a very nice job, and realistic. The cool/amusing development is that hours after it was announced a player called "gogogo" posted did some really clever cheating. Given that this is a game, I can't be mad, I think it's a an impressive and interesting demonstration of how 'easy' it is to hack one of these things, if you are clever and dedicated enough. He revealed all of his secrets in the associated BuzzGame Forum:

"Not satisfied with the results of registering by hand I started to work on a script to do it for me. First I found a page with open proxies, I then parsed some 900 entries into a database. I built a pseudo web browser that could imitate any browser with any operating system. Using the nations listed under the proxy list I constructed a timetable of usual times someone from that country would be using the internet. With a little scripting and about two hours of investigation I was able to build an automated buzz cheater."

  • 1 min read

First Class/Anachronism

On a lark, I used my frequent flyer miles to fly First Class on American Airlines today, heading out to the O'Reily ETech Conference. I hadn't done it in quite a while. It felt so 'eighties' to me - faux luxury dining in a tin can at 40,000 feet:

" Mr. Salas, would you like a drink before take-off? Mr. Salas, what would you like for dinner tonight? Spinach and Cheese Pasta or Chicken Kiev?"
…I am handed a heated towlette to wipe my weary brow… " Mr. Salas, is there anything I can do for you? Mr. Salas, what would you like to drink before dinner?" …I get a nice bowl of mixed nuts, heated! And my diet-coke… …Dinner is served. Linnen napkin, nice salad with capers and vinnigraite… " Mr Salas, white or red wine with dinner? Mr Salas, is there anything else I can do for you? Mr. Salas can I take that for you?"

It's just a little bit too subservient for my taste. But at least the legroom is excellent, even though the silverware was plastic.

  • 1 min read

[ETECH] A9 as a search portal – Amazon defines “Searchlets”

Jeff Bezos talked about a new feature of A9 which allows the basic A9 Search Page to be extended by anyone, using what I am calling "Searchlets." Here's an explanation… If you've looked at A9 you've seen the various "vertical " result regions that you can ask for - there are a handful built in, including for example the yellow pages result which shows you photographs of the establishments identified. A9 is now providing an API allowing anyone to extend this with their own, specialized search result engine - a cute pun on "vertical." Here's how you choose from a collection. What they are letting users do is to add "searchlets" to the A9 "Search portal." This is a very interesting move - both for the clever insight of making it extensible and for the strategic questions it raises, for example:

  • Will Amazon "unbundle " their own core search verticals?

  • Can anyone build a search portal providing this same API?

  • What does this mean to Amazon and A9?

  • What does it mean to Google and Yahoo?

Think about this: if A9's cool Yellow Pages search (which includes the images) was available as a "searchlet" and Google allows the user to add tabs using the A9 Searchlet API, then what happens?

  • 1 min read

[ETECH] Reasonableness

A memorable quote (from George Bernard Shaw)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man."

  • 1 min read

Rosie O’Donnell has a blog

Another sign that "something big" is going on here. It seems like not a day passes but that there's another article in either the Boston Globe or the New York Times about some aspect of blogging. Latest example, Need Some New Luster? Try Rosie O'Donnell's Method: Create It by the Blogful.

"Ms. O'Donnell's Web log, "formerlyrosie," began appearing late last month and is described as at the top of the page as "The unedited rantings of a fat 42-year-old menopausal ex-talk show host married mother of four."

Not that I am a fan one way or another, but, who would have thunk!