Facebook/Microsoft v. Google

Alex Iskold at Read/Write Web says: Google is worried, but they shouldn’t be because social networking and search are different businesses.

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch says: Google was scared off of the deal because it was too sweet for Facebook and the search company wasn’t interested in people-based search.

John Battelle says: Facebook wins because they took Microsoft’s money, but they might have a hard time living up to the $15bil. valuation.

Josh Catone at Read/Write Web says: Microsoft wins because Facebook will add a Microsoft search bar to the system, driving all their traffic to the boys in Redmond. This can only help MS, who are now the #3 search player.

In all of this news, to me the most interesting revelation is that Facebook is clearly making a play to take over the web-as-platform model. If they can make their site the home-base for not only social networking, but, with the Facebook Platform, web apps, widgets, and content, they are going to be trying to take down Yahoo as well. From that perspective, this looks like a really canny move by Microsoft.

Americans want the intenet in their brains

Zogby has released a new poll of Americans’ attitudes toward the internet.

To summarize: an alarming percentage of respondents are open to brain implants that allow them to access the internet with their minds and that allow their children's locations to be tracked, they think government censorship of online video content is acceptable, the internet makes them feel closer to God and less close their significant others - but their own identities on the internet are not very important to them. This is frightening stuff.

I guess I’m not as frightened by this as Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web (who wrote the summary above). It is interesting, however, that so many people are so open to such invasive technologies.

via Read/Write Web

The New York Times on microblogging, GPS, and privacy

Two new pieces in The New York Times by Ivar Ekman and Laura M. Holson discuss the looming possibility of our cellphones being used to track our every move. In the first, Ekman reports how Google’s recent purchase of Jaiku could set up the search giant to acquire vast amounts of information about users. Here’s a quote from the article describing what Jaiku does:

Petteri Koponen, one of the two founders of Jaiku, described the service as a “holistic view of a person’s life,” rather than just short posts. “We extract a lot of information automatically, especially from mobile phones,” Mr. Koponen said from Mountain View, Calif., where the company is being integrated into Google. “This kind of information paints a picture of what a person is thinking or doing.”

Ekman points out that it is this automation—and its connection to “what a person is thinking or doing”—in the hands of Google that worries some people.

In the second article, Holson describes one instantiation of this mobile data-collection: GPS tracking with cellphones. A number of cellphone carriers now offer a service where their subscribers can show their location to other users and see those users’ locations as well. Typically, the services allow users to add and block other individuals from seeing their location on a person-by-person basis. Holson points out that the ethics of this practice are only emerging slowly—there are some people who users wouldn’t want to know their location, like bosses or spouses, but others, like close friends, who users would never think of blocking from the service.

New Wikipedia study: Zealots and Good Samaritans

Denise Anthony, Sean W. Smith, and Tim Williamson of Dartmouth have released a new study of volunteer help on Wikipedia. In the paper, “The Quality of Open Source Production: Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Wikipedia,” the authors argue that the quality of Wikipedia articles depends on “Good Samaritans,” or infrequent posters who maintain article quality, and “zealots,” dedicated users who spend a great deal of time on the site. Essentially, Anthony et al. argue that Wikipedia maintains its quality through the quantity of its users.

Here’s the abstract:

New forms of production based in electronic technology, such as open-source and open-content production, convert private commodities (typically software) into essentially public goods. A number of studies find that, like in other collective goods, incentives for reputation and group identity motivate contributions to open source goods, thereby overcoming the social dilemma inherent in producing such goods. In this paper we examine how contributor motivations affect the quality of contributions to the open-content online encyclopedia Wikipedia. We find that quality is associated with contributor motivations, but in a surprisingly inconsistent way. Registered users’ quality increases with more contributions, consistent with the idea of participants motivated by reputation and commitment to the Wikipedia community. Surprisingly, however, we find the highest quality from the vast numbers of anonymous “Good Samaritans” who contribute only once. Our findings that Good Samaritans as well as committed “zealots” contribute high quality content to Wikipedia suggest that it is the quantity as well as the quality of contributors that positively affects the quality of open source production.

via The Wired Campus

How to geotag photos in Flickr

Gordon Haff at the CNET News blog has posted a description of how GPS data can be synced up with Flickr photos. It involves using a couple of free utilities to merge the GPS data with your photos, but it looks relatively painless. Of course, it won’t be necessary once cameras with built-in GPS are the norm.

Chronicle.com: Second Life rules!

The folks at the The Chronicle’s Wired Campus Blog has sure been interested in Second Life lately. Well, me too.

The first post describes a new “orientation island” where new visitors to the virtual world learn what it is about. The New Media Consortium has built their own orientation island, apparently because Linden Labs’ version doesn’t do that great a job in explaining some of the features of Second Life.



The second post summarizes Peter Ludlow’s interview with MIT Press. In the interview, Ludlow claims that Second Life is run by the “Greek God method.”

There’s no really set established policy, but they refuse to be completely hands off, too. So they reach in like Greek gods reaching down from Mount Olympus, and they dabble in stuff and screw around and get involved to bail out their friends. . . . It would be much better if they just stayed out completely because then there would be an opportunity for users to create their own governance structures.

This kind of outspoken political critique is par for the course for Ludlow. The Wired Campus Blog reports that he was kicked out of the Sims Online for criticizing the governance structure there.

I’m sympathetic with Ludlow’s desire to see what would happen if Second Lifers could rule themselves, but right now I wonder if the connections between virtual worlds and the real world are too close for Linden to allow something like that. They have an interest in keeping the site somewhat similar to the real world.

Michael Wesch’s “Information R/evolution”

Michael Wesch of “The Machine is Us/ing Us” has posted a new video “Information R/evolution.”

I think the thing to take away from the video is that information is now free of the desktop metaphor. Early in the video, he slams Yahoo for making a “shelf” online, and he celebrates that now information can be in multiple “places.” This is hardly a new thought, but the presentation is accessible and a good conversation starter.

However, like with “The Machine is Us,” I have to take issue with the assumptions of Wesch’s new work. He asserts that the web makes it possible to have information without materiality, going so far as to claim that “we organize information without material constraints.” I get his point—the next bit of text points out that he has put the same bit of “information” in “three ‘places’ at once”—but that doesn’t make the data immaterial. As Katherine Hayles points out, no information is immaterial; it exists as magnetic states on hard drives and has to be accessed with computers via cables.

Anyway, Wesch does interesting stuff. And the soundtrack is awesome.

via Searchblog

Computer-brain interaction

Today I saw two interesting stories dealing with computers and the brain. The first described a patent that Microsoft had applied for outlining a device that would measure brain waves while a subject tried out the company’s interfaces. The second story described a device for controlling a Second Life avatar using brainwaves. See a video of it in action below:

I think both are examples of rudimentary methods for bridging the gap between the physical world of atoms and the digital world of data. While there may be great uses for this kind of technology—who doesn’t want Microsoft to make better interfaces? who wants to use their hands to move a Second Life avatar?—both also suggest the ways that this kind of data can be mined for ends that nobody—particularly the user—can foresee. It will be fascinating to see how the public reacts to this technology.

via Boing Boing and Boing Boing

Related: Brain-to-machine algorithm

Is interest in Wikipedia slowing down?

According to Robert Rohde, editing traffic on Wikipedia is on the decline:

Since early this year, and for the first extended period in Wikipedia's history, the activity rate of the Wikipedia community has been declining. This can be seen in the rate of editing articles (-17%), the rate of new account registration (-25%), blocks (-30%), protections (-30%), uploads (-10%), article deletions (-25%), etc. Some exceptions are the article creation rate (+25%) and image deletions (+80%), but overall the community appears to be doing less now than it was 6 months ago.

via TechCrunch

Ass-mar

Apparently, doctors have a hard time treating Spanish-speaking patients with asthma because there is no word for “wheeze” in Spanish.

From The New York Times:

According to a survey conducted by asthma specialists at Columbia University Medical Center, which is situated in the heavily Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights, there is no precise translation for the word “wheeze.”

In interviews with 39 Spanish speakers, “wheeze” was translated into 12 different Spanish expressions, including “tight chest,” “suffocation,” “asphyxiation,” “snoring” and “congested breathing.” (Nine of the respondents could not come up with any translation at all). While accredited translators came up with the term “ronquido” or “sibilancia,” only 6 of the 39 agreed with that “ronquido” and none agreed with “sibilancia” (even though that seems to be the choice of many readers here; see the comments below).

Wheezing, which according to the National Institutes of Health is a high-pitched whistling sound during breathing that often occurs when air flows through narrowed breathing tubes, is a word central to asthma research and diagnosis.

Biologists create artifical life form, apply for patent

Biologists led by Dr. Craig Venter claim they have created an artifical chromosome. The Guardian reports that the process the scientists used was to inject novel DNA into an existing cell.

Mr Venter told the Guardian he thought this landmark would be “a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before”.
. . .
Pat Mooney, director of a Canadian bioethics organisation, ETC group, said the move was an enormous challenge to society to debate the risks involved. “Governments, and society in general, is way behind the ball. This is a wake-up call—what does it mean to create new life forms in a test-tube?”

He said Mr Venter was creating a “chassis on which you could build almost anything. It could be a contribution to humanity such as new drugs or a huge threat to humanity such as bio-weapons”.

via Fast Company

Evolution of Wikipedia

Brock Read at The Wired Campus has made the argument that now that Wikipedia has grown to 2,000,000 articles, the site has switched from primarily adding content to policing and editing content. According to K. G. Schneider, Wikipedia has entered its “awkward adolescence” where, Read notes, “‘inclusionists’ (who argue that the site should continue to encourage new entries) and its ‘deletionists’ (who advocate cutting articles deemed fatuous or picayune) are now engaged in a pitched battle” over what kind of content should be in the encyclopedia. Read notes an interesting example where founder Jimmy Wales’s article on Mzoli’s, a butcher shop, was deleted and then reinstated in a flurry of debate.

Inclusionists may take the evolution of the article as evidence that some quality-obsessed administrators are overstepping their bounds. But deletionists could argue just as easily that the site’s rough-and-tumble editing worked: Wikipedians decided that Mzoli’s is noteworthy, so the article lived to see another day. Are Wikipedia’s editing wars signs of a looming crisis, as Ms. Schneider seems to suggest? Or are they just examples of healthy debate?

I would argue that the debate is one over what Wikipedia is, where deletionists are fighting to keep the site in the mold of the traditional encyclopedia, while inclusionists are open to seeing the site evolve into a new kind of information depository. I have a hard time believing that the deletionists are going to win this one, or that the growth of Wikipedia is going to stall for long. When the inclusionists win—as I think they will—the site will continue to add topics covering more informational ground—local information, cultural fads, obscure knowledge—perhaps changing what we think is “ fatuous or picayune.”

Brain-to-machine algorithm

Researchers at MIT have developed an algorithm whereby paralyzed individuals can control prosthetic devices with their brains.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Wednesday that they've developed an algorithm for a neural prosthetic aid that can link an individual's brain activity to the person's intentions; and then translate that intention into movement.

Of course, other scientists have already done that, and built prototypes for neural brain-to-machine devices that can work for animals or humans. But each team has taken a different approach to the problem, such as developing algorithms for measuring activity in a specific brain region, or measuring them through EEGs vs. optical imaging.

MIT said that it has developed a unified algorithm that can work within the parameters of these different approaches. Lakshminarayan "Ram" Srinivasan, lead author of a paper on the subject, said MIT's new graphical models are applicable no matter what measurement technique is used.

via CNET News Blog

The evolution of gestural interfaces

A number of entities are trying to solidify a set of standards for gestural interfaces like the iPhone and iPod Touch. Designer Dan Saffer is calling for a gestural standard and has created a wiki for defining that standard. Here’s part of Saffer’s description of the project:

Work has been done already, of course. Robert Cravotta has done a good job with this overview in EDN magazine, and Bill Buxton has started an impressive list of new input devices and technologies. But we need to help create this shift in input devices, not just follow along behind the technology. And if we wait, well, we’ll simply find individual companies (Apple, Microsoft, Perceptive Pixel, etc. etc.) creating their own standards (as is being done now). And while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, one can easily imagine having to remember a crazy amount of movements and gestures for common actions. (“Wait, to turn on the lights do I tap the wall, or wave a hand? Is this an iRoom or MS Rume?”) We’ll get a lot of ad hoc solutions—some of which will be great, some not so much. Standards and a pattern library would help.

What we need is some sort of standards board similar to the W3 or an advocacy group like the Web Standards Project. At a minimum, we need to start collecting the gestural patterns that are emerging, much as Jenifer Tidwell (and others) did for screen-based patterns. Even something as simple as the Ajax Pattern Library would be useful. The Interaction Design Association (on whose Board I sit) would seem to be a likely home and resource for some, if not all, of these things. The question is just having designers engage with the issue.

Additionally, Apple has created a set of iPhone Human Interface Guidelines for developers. It will be interesting to see what sorts of solutions emerge to this problem. I would be surprised if the kind of board that Saffer is suggesting doesn’t get created. In this situation, there is much more incentive for manufacturers to get together on solutions rather than duke it out with proprietary solutions as with the current HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war.

via Read/Write Web

The cons of Facebook

Alex Iskold of Read/Write Web has posted a critique of Facebook. He argues that

• Facebook makes communication harder between friends because of its private messaging system and app noise
• Facebook is not for business networking—LinkedIn and Twitter are superior services for this task—because the news feed gives irrelevant info about “friends”
• Network effects don’t work with apps because of the long tail—a very few apps are used by a large number of users, a problem that is partially caused by the limited amount of profile space for displaying apps

In short, the Facebook news feed causes information overload by making too much content available. In addition, much of this content is irrelevant if Facebook is used for business networking.

Personally, I think this piece is a little hard on Facebook. When comparing Facebook to MySpace, Iskold argues that MySpace is superior because it is based around communication. However, I’m not positive that Facebook’s communication options are as poor as he makes them out to be, and it seems like—sans the news feed—his other critiques of Facebook could apply to MySpace as well.

Google bank

The CNET News blog is reporting that Google Checkout could evolve into a bank.

Google in Malaysia is offering AdSense payments to be made through Western Union, according to the Ades blog That news was noticed by Steve Arnold, author of The Google Legacy and Google Version 2: the Calculating Predator, and pointed out to Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck.

“We believe that the AdSense system is capable of morphing into a quasi-bank, particularly in regions with less robust monetary systems,” Peck wrote in a research note Monday.

Flickr and copyright

The New York Times recently posted this story on the use of a Creative Commons-licensed Flickr photo in an ad campaign by Virgin Mobile Australia. The campaign appears to be mocking the subject of the photo (the ad can be seen here), and she and her family are suing. According to the article, Lawrence Lessig, who was served papers on behalf of CC, claims that the problem is not with CC or with the original photographer, but with Virgin’s commercial use of the photo.

As for giving more advice about the rights of the subjects who appear in photographs, Mr. Lessig said that Creative Commons has to be careful not to provide “what looks like legal advice.” But, he added, “this photographer did nothing wrong when he took this photo of this girl, and posted it on his Flickr page. What he did wasn’t commercial use, which triggers the legal issues. If there was a problem here, it was by Virgin.”