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 Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Finding Information in Blogosphere. Tom Coates applies Duncan Watt's Small Worlds ideas to blogs and states: "For any given body of information on weblogs, no matter the rate of replication of information or the number of people who post exactly the same comments, close to 100% of the available insight can be reviewed by reading a disproportionately small number of sites - sites that will - as a rule - be among the first that they stumble across through their normal browsing and research patterns." [E M E R G I C . o r g]
It seems that in a well connected network, information will get around without the need that every single weblog must be read. Redundancy of information and overlapping spheres of interest will make it work. I think what is more critical is the spread of memes and the development of a tipping point that causes a phase shift in viewpoint. An example may be the NYT archives thread in the blogosphere. This was first discussed over a month ago. Then we recently got a second wave of interest, with a wider dispersal and more forceful presentation of ideas and viewpoints. I expect the next one will be even stronger. The resonance just gets stronger and stronger, like Jimi Hendrix guitar feedback, until things shift. Weblogs are not passive and the ideas they present are not either. It is the interactions of many weblogs that disperse information until knowledge in created. I think too many people view weblogging as a passive event. I put up my ideas and they kind of lay there. But, it the ideas are worthwhile, the get picked up and examined by others. Molded and stamped with their views and then passed on. It is this dynamic process that many people miss. It is what makes weblogs so unique and so powerful. 10:49:00 PM 
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Disposable DVDs Go to the Dumps. Environmentalists consider Disney's plan to sell DVDs that can be watched for two days and then thrown out 'illogical' and 'absurd.' Many consumers don't see a need for them, either. By Katie Dean. [Wired News]
I just do not think this will be a very popular idea. These DVDs are going to wind up in a land fill, even if they paid to get them recycled. I can get money for recylcing aluminum cans but how many people actually do? This quote pretty accurately describes the conunfrum: If the company is offering this product to consumers who don't want to make a return trip to the rental store, it's illogical to assume that those customers would then go to a post office and mail back an obsolete DVD. But then Disney does not really care. They just want to squeeze another buck out of the system. 10:37:27 PM
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A nice discussion of the effects of information overload. Many of the problems come from an inability to filter out noise. Better social tools should help with this. I do love one of the quotes because I absolutley believe it is true:[Gerry] McGovern quotes author Frances Cairncross from his book The Company of the Future: 'The most widespread revolution in the workplace will come from the rise in collaboration and the decline of hierarchy.' Collaboration will help us filter informaiton, create knowledge and make better decisions. 9:37:31 PM
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Consumers Lose Themselves Online. We all know identity theft online is a problem, but a new study has come out predicting that it's growing very quickly from a big problem into a tremendous problem that will bring down "businesses, entire economic sectors, and governments." They're predicting losses from identity theft to total over $2 trillion in just a few years. Not very comforting.
[Techdirt]
I wonder if identity theft will be viewed as a terrorist activity. If the government databases are not any more secure than they have been, it may be pretty easy to steal identities. 9:03:36 PM
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BusinessWeek Technology Editor: 'this is going to be the summer of Mac'. "Few on Wall Street are predicting much more upside for Apple this summer. But let me be contrarian: I think this is going to be the summer of Mac, one of its best seasons in a long time -- one that might even provide a nice lift to Apple's stock price. My logic? Several stars are set to align for Steve Jobs & Co. Although Apple won't talk about it, IBM has confirmed that it's developing a new set of chips for the Mac. Desktop publishing and graphics software giant Quark is hinting... [MacDailyNews]
Apple kind of led us into the tech turndown. Maybe it will be lead us out. I sure hope so. I'd like to be excited and confident about the economy again. 8:15:18 AM
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Get up to US$225 credit on old iPods when trading up to new iPod models. "It's unheard of in our industry. It's like taking your Armani suit back for a trade-in," said Don Mayer, an entrepreneur known for taking his Vermont company, Small Dog Electronics, off the beaten trail in a press release.
Mayer was describing his new iPod trade-in program. Customers can trade in their original 5GB, 10GB, or 20GB Apple iPod when they purchase a new iPod digital music player from Small Dog Electronics. This way they get the latest, coolest technology in their... [MacDailyNews]
Should I do this or not? A 30 Gbyte iPod would store just about every tune I have. Cool. 8:12:42 AM
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I don't remember when the last time a network series let its major stars go in cost cutting measures. These guys were not apparently fired due to increased salary requests, as is normally done. They were let go less than a week after the network fetted them all at a media event highlighting next season's shows. I guess no one is safe in this economy. While this does not affect me very much (I am a recovering TV addict, so I work hard to limit my TV watching), my wife may be worried. She was not happy with where some of the characters have been going but she began watching this show because of Dylan. I wonder what will happen next year. It will be a very different show. 8:06:29 AM
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I wonder what it means when a company says it will eliminate 2300 jobs but add 6800. Then it became clearer when HP said it had expanded its operations in India. My conjecture is that most of the jobs lost will be in the US while many of the jobs gained will be overseas, say in India. They can pay programmers there a lot less. While there is nothing wrong with this from an business viewpoint, it is not something that companies like to mention. In the long run, we will have to come up with new ways to get people off the unemployment rolls. Working for a company who is building a commodity will not necessarily do this. These companies will always look for the cheapest employees they can. During an economic downturn they will take any advantage to lower costs, as they should. But it will not necessarily create jobs in the US. My guess is that companies that purely follow the bottom line will make poor decisions when it comes to really innovative solutions. They will be market followers, not leaders, because we are in a period where the innovative solutions will be the ones that solve our problems, not 'business as usual.' This is true not onnly for businesses, but for any group. The world is changing so rapidly because of technology. Groups that can not make creative decisions will have a hard time surviving. 7:59:32 AM
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I think there is something wrong when Poindexter's baby is not altered at all except to change the name from Total Information awareness to Terrorist Information Awareness. They are creating scenarios where they will be able to harass law-abiding citizens who have done nothing illegal but who fit a pattern. We already have seen several instances where law officials firmly believe that someone is guilty because they fit the profile, even if their is no hard evidence. It is so easy to fool yourself when you are sure you know the answer. If this goes the way they want, they will have a huge amount of information . I am willing to bet that their filtering systems will not be precise enough, sweeping large numbers of people into their sights. Once the government has the ability to easily intrude into people's lives, you can bet it will. It will go after people for terrorism but will only convict people for much more minor crimes. This is exactly was has happened so far with the limited informtion they now have. It will escalte when the government has more data to deal with. 7:44:25 AM
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So the Fed is more worried about deflation than it is about inflation. This is amazing since inflation is the dragon that Greenspan has fought since he became its head. Although they can cut interest rates, they are already so low that their is not a lot of room left. Deflation is very tough to get out of and is something that the Administration should be working as hard as possible to prevent. We shall see. 7:34:43 AM
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SUVs rolled by rollover tests. SUVs are often promoted by making claims about their safety, either explicitly or implicitly. However, a new report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has examined 2003 model SUVs and found that none of them deserve a good rollover safety rating. No SUV achieved more than 3 out of 5 stars for rollover.
An interesting thing about rollover is that it is practically impossible to roll a regular car on a flat even road, no matter what you do. It takes some sort of unevenness in the surface (i.e. hitting something or sliding on a dirt road with a small mound of dirt building up next to the wheel) to make a car roll over. That doesn't seem to be the case for SUVs in which extremely sharp fast turns can be enough to roll one. (Some SUVs now have stability control systems - because the makers know how easy it is to roll one!)
More from the wires [David Harris' Science and Literature]
This has been one of the big problems with SUVs. You may survive a collision in good shape, but you can more easily roll the vehicle. This is especially a problem with less experienced drivers. You had better be wearing your seat belt. 7:23:01 AM
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The idiocy in charging for online access to newspaper archives. Dave Winer:
Pfui. The [New York] Times can't possibly be a factor in Google searches for the simple reason that the Times archive is not accessible to Google. It's behind a for-pay firewall.
...
There's basically a very simple rule. If you want to be in Google, you gotta be on the Web.
The traditional media still don't understand what the Web is about, sadly. [Jinn of Quality and Risk]
The NYT, and others, make money by keeping the archives closed. And it helps Lexis-Nexis continue their business model. Even if some of them do understand the Web, convincing the money people would be like talking to a brick wall. I just do not see a for profit compnay giving up this revenue stream without something else to replace it. It is often because of this that companies can not deal with disruptive technologies. It takes a lot of courage for a company to remove one source of income before another has replaced it. But it will be the courageous companies that survive in the Information Age, especially if their basic business model is the dispersal of information, like the NYT. 7:19:40 AM
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