What's new with technorati.com?

... now that they're 3 years and 6 days old.

David Sifry says:

• [They've] added in lots of features to help [users] make sense of the blogosphere, including Discover, which is topic-based, Favorites, which gives [the USERS] the power to pick [their] favorite blogs, and Popular, which algorithmically derives the most linked-to items in the last few days.
• [They've] made some big changes to blog profiles - allowing [users] to get stats about any blog that Technorati tracks, including the tags used, posting frequency, traffic, and Technorati ranking.
  

Are tags on their way to taxonomies?

Unlocking the wealth of the "poor"

... or how to turn invisible social/cultural capital into visible private capital.

Tom Borrup makes a very incisive (IMHO) analysis of the book "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else" by Hernando DeSoto (Basic Books, 2000, 276 pp.)


He cites for example (indirectly making reference to Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase) that: "…the value of things can be increased by reducing the costs of knowing them and transacting with them".

The internet has made this downright possible.

Contextual next steps: Go to pinoykultura and help unlock the wealth of pinoys. We may never pass this way again. Just a thought, among so many others ...

Ties that Bind

Ties that Bind
Originally uploaded by Gir Interrupted.

But I'd like to call this "Strength of Weak Ties". It takes more of less to create the long tail. So much for the old media. As Chris Anderson says:

Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.

More of his seminal ideas here.

Once again, so much for the old media.

I blogged superficially about this earlier.

It was about discussions on the future of blogs and social software in education. Full article is here. My realization: By the time I finished reading the article, it became increasingly clear that classroom learning necessarily needs to move towards e-learning, blended learning, c-learning, or what I'd like to call p-learning (participative learning).

Time to look more seriously at social software across the curriculum.

Plugging time again.

"You have to join me on e pluribus unum (aka forevergreen). There's an event calendar, profiles, forums, and photos. If there were anything else to do here, I might just explode. Give it a whirl here!"

Blog on its way to a brand.

Here is a list of blogs with flesh and blood, but with something unique to offer. They all seem to be naturally building a "social contract" with their respective audiences.

Nash Toledo, look for the royal orange mascot.
JP Loh, his rants pull in a lot of readers, check out his ClustrMap.
Ralph Tirones, I sense something emerging here. Started barely two months ago, yet could sustain about 30 comment exchanges at any given time.

More to follow, time and mood permitting.

Quote of the Day.

"What makes an outstanding teacher is when she or he makes his or her students outstanding."

- Patrick Ocampo, First Awardee, Most Outstanding College Teacher, DLS-C

Mutatis Mutandis

"I still remember the first time I used the Internet. That was in ___________, and I was using something called ________, a network of [academic institutions]based on____________. ____________ was an acronym for '_______________________.' I was just a curious kid starting to work in the _________________ at the __________________ andour [systems programmer] didn't want to teach me how to use it. So he basically told me to just write '_________________________ ' -- and along came some documentation and I was on my way. And I was fascinated that, when I sent thatcommand to __________________ (which, I think, was a server at _________________ ,) suddenly I was a member of a global community of people who were talking to each other and helping each other out around technology and other issues. I guess I just continued doing that, and continued to be fascinated by the evolution and the need to understand how businesses and society should react to it. "

Adapted from: The Economics of Technology Evolution, Espen Andersen on strategic IT management, European vs US management styles, and Andersen's Two Laws of the Internet. More here.

"Long tail" and religion

Here's the "long tail" from a business perspective.

Now here's the long tail from a children's ministry and culture perspective.

Perhaps you can make your inferences.

Internet killed TV programming

At least that's what Michael Arrington appears to imply when he reported that Gotuit Furthers TV's Demise.


Reminds me of the first MTV song " ... killed the radio show" some 20 years ago.

Can Social Media really empower the masses?

Good Question. And Ulises Mejias provokes more questions than answers. He explores the debate between the idealists and the critics of Social Media here.

A quick note: Mejias masterfully makes an exegesis of C. Wright Mills' book "The Power Elite" (1956) and its description of the features of a Democratic Public Sphere, fifty years hence.

1) Balance between the ability to produce and consume ideas
2) Affordable and effective means of producing ideas
3) Translation of ideas into action.

Good framework.

Bottomline: Get a happy blend of "wisdom of crowds and wisdom of individuals".

This seems like an allusion to Pinoys.

Here's an interesting find via boingboing.net:

"Economists study how naïve people subsidize cut rate hotels

New York Times has an interesting article about the work of two university professors from Harvard and MIT/Princeton who say savvy people take advantage of good deals by avoiding the hidden costs that suckers pay." More here.

The town is under attack!*

Heard of Payperpost.com?

I call it mercenary blogging. Read more of my thoughts here. Yes m'lud!*

*(with apologies to the makers of Warcraft II)

Giving hackers the respect they deserve

Here's an open call for Eyebeam research fellows:

"The terrific Eyebeam art/science/tech atelier in New York
City is holding its second open call for research fellows. All work created as
part of the program will be free under open licenses, without patents, released
under GPL, Creative Commons, and documented in the form of DIY guides. This is
an amazing opportunity for makers/hackers. "

More here.

Plugging time

A social software to harness the power of teams. Feel free to take it for a spin here.

FYI

According to PEW Internet Life (based on US survey):

• 55% of bloggers blog under a pseudonym, and 46% blog under their own name.
• 59% of bloggers spend just one or two hours per week tending their blog. One in ten bloggers spend ten or more hours per week on their blog.

More here. Via boingboing.net.

This is a private service to our Philippine politicians.

Elections are coming around in a little less than a year, so you'd better start considering more creative ways of reaching out to your constituents, especially the friendster-savvy ones. To understand the point I'm driving at, click here. Just don't know how effective the effort can be. Time to bone up on words like "o.p.", epal, 'la lang, asteeg!, etc.

Economics of health care, or why there is a strong demand for nurses(?)

Aren't diseases too profitable to prevent or cure?

Mike Adams offers some more thought-provoking arguments here.

Gartner's Hype Cycle Report, 2005


Found it only now. Can't wait for version 2006.

More here.

Beta Way, Desire Lines, Story-telling and Blockbusters

Beta Way
Originally uploaded by _helen_.

Here's a classic Philippines version of a desire line that was adequately "addressed". (Note: U.P. College of Engineering building across the Liberal Arts building was completely erected in 1951)

Speaking of desire lines, John Truby argues that:

"One element essential to good storytelling is a strong desire line. The main character wants something very specific and with great intensity. This desire line serves as the spine of the story.

In blockbusters, this desire line is almost always positive; the hero wants to solve something or create something of value. In 'Star Wars,' Luke wants to save the Princess and restore the Republic. In 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' Indiana Jones wants to find the Ark before the Nazis use it to become invincible and take over the world. In 'Forrest Gump,' Forrest loves Jenny and wants to marry her. In 'Outbreak,' the hero wants to defeat the virus and save the town."

For what that was worth. Oh next time, please remind me to resist temptations to stray too far.

Here's something for audio enthusiasts.

"The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs." Could be useful to aspiring DJs.

Woohoo! Finally got a hit from California!

To be sure I have already snagged visits from the valley of celebrities long before, but I only managed to set up Clustrmaps on July 5, 2006.

Now I wonder when I'll get hits from the African continent.

Any truth to the incidents behind these (funny) items?

But someone is having a field day here. I am looking for a Philippine counterpart.

I'd like to call this "Death of Blockbuster movies"

No-Man's Land by teifii

A fading loyalty lingers
On the fringes of desire;
What is to be a furnace
Is but a little fire.

And reason still is cool enough
To scatter through my mind
The foretaste of the ashes
That later I shall find.

When cold congeals upon the soul,
Flames quenched and passions fled,
I shall search the ashes, but I know
The phoenix will be dead

Ever heard of the "long tail"?

More on desire lines

Inidoro
Originally uploaded by joelogs.

Could also be "Aversion Lines and Fringes of Desire"

"Thomas Paine in Common Sense distinguishes between society and government almost exactly with the distinction between positive and negative liberty: 'Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our
happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by
restraining our vices.'" From wikipedia on negative liberty

Filipino Ingenuity

Image031
Originally uploaded by pherrin2001.

You see anything innovative here? I'd like to call that Innovation in Motion aka Da Jeepney! featuring an overhead CD-ROM drive.

Outline Shadow

Outline Shadow
Originally uploaded by Rey Nocum.

A very interesting insect. Anyone seen a similar creature lately? How about transparent humans?

Desire Line

Desire Line, Peckham Rye Common
Originally uploaded by Fin Fahey.

Common people express their desire line by "voting" with their feet. Hence the term "power to the people." (Sounds proprietarily familiar). Now when the empowerment is dictated from the top, I wonder how effective the results will be.

memory booth (instructions)

memory booth instructions
Originally uploaded by jeangenie.

This was tagged "crowdsourcing". I see some shades of "wisdom of crowds". I figure this was designed to produce and preserve a collective soundscape. I'd like to call the output as a "sound cloud". Still trying to figure out some utility for the project. Any ideas?

Quote of the Day: On Creativity and Innovation

It would be great if we could all be innovating, constantly breaking the rules and questioning assumptions. But it's also nice to think that progress can be broken down to a steady structure, that can be managed (perhaps with software) for better results. - Joseph Weisenthal

Web 2.0 tools anyone?

This is a bit outdated (by internet time standard)

Vintage February 2006

David Sifry observes in State of the Blogosphere, Part 2 Beyond Search that:

• Blogging and Mainstream Media continue to share attention in blogger's and reader's minds, but bloggers are climbing higher on the "big head" of the attention curve, with some bloggers getting more attention than sites including Forbes, PBS, MTV, and the CBC.
• Continuing down the attention curve, blogs take a more and more significant position as the economics of the mainstream publishing models make it cost prohibitive to build many nice sites and media
• Bloggers are changing the economics of the trade magazine space, with strong entries covering WiFi, Gadgets, Internet, Photography, Music, and other nice topic areas, making it easier to thrive, even on less aggregate traffic.
• There is a network effect in the Technorati Top 100 blogs, with a tendency to remain highly linked if the blogger continues to post regularly and with quality content.
• Looking at the historical data shows that the inertia in the Top 100 is very low - in other words, the number of new blogs jumping to the top of the Top 100 as well as he blogs that have fallen out of the top 100 show that the network effect is relatively weak.
• The Magic Middle is the 155,000 or so weblogs that have garnered between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. It is a realm of topical authority and significant posting and conversation within the blogosphere.
  

As you can see it only takes at least 20 inbound links to become an "authority" in anything. Does that mean that if all 2.7 billion links that technorati is tracking were shared equally among actual and potential bloggers, you are looking at 135 million experts?

Academic library 2.0 concept model

Academic library 2.0 concept model
Originally uploaded by habibmi.

"One approach to adapting Web 2.0 technologies to academic library services is to examine how these technologies already fit into student life and then determine the library’s role in this picture. [This model] introduces one conceptual framework that applies this method. This model analyzes the libraries' position as a physical place in student life and then draws parallels with libraries' possible position as a virtual place. The model is based on the concept that most of student life is divided between the social and the academic and that physical libraries have traditionally provided a unique location that mixes the two."

More of this here.

OK, so friendster won a patent for its social networking application.

But that begs a very basic question. In hindsight (ca. 2003), read on:

"Jonathan Abrams of Friendster raised some eyebrows a few months back when reporters asked him about business models and he started ranting on and on about the patents they planned to get. So now, Hoffman and Pincus have teamed up (without Abrams) to buy the old patent that SixDegrees had many years ago. They're basically hoping to use it as a defensive tactic against any patents Friendster gets. I'm still wondering just what's so innovative about any of these services that deserves a patent, but that's a different debate. [snip] ... this focus on patents, rather than actual innovation, business models or customers suggests some of these services are already on the downswing. The "space" itself hasn't even figured out a revenue model and new sites are showing up every day - and the focus is on who gets the patents? "(emphasis supplied) Source: techdirt.com

This just in (22).

Business Blogging Bogged Down
Originally uploaded by Ross Mayfield.

From Ross Mayfield: Business Blogging Bogged Down

Corporate public blogs

Jupiter Research's claim: 34%
eMarketer's claim: 5.8%

Now which is which?

Life's simple pleasures (4).

Here's my little inventor wearing the T-shirt he won from instructables.com for his "LED torch light saber". As you may well realize, the new innovation model does not even discriminate whether you are in 2nd grade, enrolled in college or working for the likes of Xerox-PARC.

Innovation Models

Innovation_models
Originally uploaded by Juan Freire.

Linear vs. lateral, you be the judge.

More on Phatic Relations

Phatic Interactions
Originally uploaded by erin_designr.

How's the weather today? What's up? Pacquiao won! High Interaction, Low Intimacy. My observation is that Southeast Asians are typically not too keen on this.

Amadeo 034

Amadeo 034
Originally uploaded by The Hobbyist.

Just thought I'd promote this. My way of giving back to my community. More on this at this other site.

Collaborative Innovation Schematic Diagram

Thanks to Dion Hinchcliffe for the concept map. Should amplify talking points on the use of Web 2.0 in an academic environment.

Upside-down Tomato Planter System

Upside-down Tomato Planter System
Originally uploaded by NineInchNachos.

Very interesting indeed! Yeah, why not use gravity to keep the vine in vertical position?

Power Law of Participation

Power Law of Participation
Originally uploaded by Ross Mayfield.

How many forwarded messages (via sms and email) move around on any given day? I find that practice in the middle of the graph. Is that a reflection of engagement levels of people in our loop? (Do I hear "Whatever!"?)

Scale-free?

Scale-free
Originally uploaded by melted_snowball.

From popularity of websites, the wealth of individuals, the popularity of given names, the frequency of words in documents, sexual networks to filesharing, genetics to leaders of business organizations, and even dryness. More popular concept is "power law".

The Medium is the Message is the Means

Teaching Social Software with Social Software
Originally uploaded by Looking For Fish Tacos At ELI 2006.

Teaching Social Software with Social Software is one fine example of "Beyond Blogging", a Social Affordances course taught by Ulises Mejias.

Perhaps I should book a paper presentation next year for iBlog3 in Manila as early as now.

Using Web 2.0 to leverage the innovative drive in your organisation

E-consultancy offers some prescriptions for big corporations.

1. They can recognise that somebody is responsible for taking a decision to do this. The marketing director. The CEO. It doesn't matter. Just do it.
2. They can learn to listen to their colleagues.
3. They can react, and react more quickly.
4. They can embrace experimentation and innovatation.
5. They can stop worrying about risk, and start worrying about missing opportunities.
6. They can fast-track feedback, and streamline development cycles and processes.

More here. And here's how those prescriptions were demonstrated in a classroom setting about 3 months ago.

Emerging education models

A Futurelab report suggests that:

"Current visions for education include the themes of personalisation, collaboration and learning to learn and the report suggests that in order for these to be fully achieved, the use of digital technologies is required. This could bring about a change from 'e-learning' to 'c-learning' - community learning, communicative learning or collaborative learning. In order to bring about such change action is required from the policy, practice and developer communities." More here.

But I have long decided that we can't be far behind. So I looked into "Web 2.0 as a toolset for teaching creativity and innovation."

Cellphone is a lightning magnet

A week ago, I read that:

Lightning may be a cellphone hazard

Boston Globe

June 26, 2006

Lightning might pose a threat to people who use mobile phones outside during a thunderstorm, according to a case study reported in this week's British Medical Journal.

A trio of senior London doctors recount the case of a 15-year-old girl who was struck by lightning while using her mobile phone in a large city park during a storm.

The girl had an instant heart attack but was revived in time. She lost all memory of the incident, although the lightning strike was witnessed by other people.

A year later, though, the patient had become wheelchair-bound, suffering from physical, cognitive, and emotional problems as well as a badly perforated eardrum in the left ear, the side where she had been holding the mobile phone.

The physicians, Swinda Esprit, Prasad Kothari, and Ram Dhillon, who work at Northwick Park Hospital in northwest London, say they found three press reports of people being killed by lightning while using their mobile phones outdoors. These incidents took place in China in 2005, in South Korea in 2004, and in Malaysia in 1999.

No similar cases have ever been reported in medical literature, they noted.

Any risk from a mobile phone would come not from the radiation that it emits but the metal components it contains.

The US National Weather Service says on its website, that cellphones are safe to use "because there is no direct path between you and the lightning."

Today I read that:

Lightning strikes Quezon village chief dead
By Delfin Mallari Jr.
Inquirer
Last updated 05:58pm (Mla time) 07/04/2006

LUCENA -- The village chief of San Vicente, Tagkawayan town in Quezon province was fatally struck by lightning while using his mobile phone Monday afternoon, police said Tuesday.

Senior Police Officer 1 Justino Legaspi, Tagkawayan police investigator, identified the victim as Reynaldo Magpantay.

The victim, who was talking to someone on his cellular phone, was overseeing the survey of a portion of his village in the company of the municipal agrarian reform officer when lightning struck him, Legaspi said. (emphasis supplied)

Perhaps people should read news from the Internet more often.

Guess who said these:

1. I would incubate more products outside of Microsoft for a longer period of time.
2. I would actually start a new company that’s designed to destroy the old one.
3. I would put a single person in charge of naming and fire (sic) anyone who didn’t listen to the dictator.

More here. Thanks Patrick Cormier.

Word of the day (Thanks for the idea JP).

Neutricide. For more on this, click here. You will have to take sides on this.

Here's something that might be useful

... to those who might need to create project timelines (aka Gantt Charts).

It's called the online Gantt chart generator.

1-1-1

1-1-1
Originally uploaded by joaqy.

According to "joaqy": "Coffee making - farmstyle. One portion coffee, one portion sugar, one portion water. Served in a glass or mug. Amadeo, Tagaytay, Philippines."

Note: Drop the ground coffee into the vat only when the water boils.

Amadeo Coffee, si solamente por los niños.




circa 1996.

Just thought I'd share this.

Starts with a question: "Have you done your personal SWOT analysis lately?"

It could actually end with the question: "Quo vadis?"

Now, I wonder where I could plug in an element of "desire lines".

Looking for a pdf converter that you do not have to download?

Don't forget to include the keyword "online".

Here's what I got. My idea of empowering the "long tail".