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 Friday, January 16, 2004
Social Networking Software. John Robb wrote recently about its value and limitations (think of these as opportunities):
It contains solid (but private) contact information on all members.
Profiles are available on each member (on LinkedIn you can put in a resume).
There is a safe, formal method of requesting contact with other members you don't know. This is like UserLand's spam free e-mail.
The connection info (you know D through B and C) is more of a gimmick than something that provides real value. There is a small amount of comfort involved in knowing how you are connected to other people (you can also get info on how many people they are connected to, which is like a PageRank for social networks). This is the part of these networks that confuses everyone.
There is a search function for finding other members based on information in the profile (interests, company, job title, etc).
Now that we have demystified social networking software, let's think about how to apply the features in an open system that works in conjunction with weblogs. The current systems are too closed and limited to be of much long term value. Here's my thinking:
Solid information on weblog authors. It would be great to have standardized weblog profile and contact information. Currently, contact and profile information on weblogs, if it is there at all, is all over the map. It really sucks. Sure, you can read what someone is writing on their weblog, but you often need ESP to determine who they are, what they do, etc.
A safe way to share contact information. Way too many people publish their e-mail address in the clear on the their weblogs. There should be a way to restrict that (via a spam free e-mail feature) that would allow the weblog's author to release solid contact information (e-mail, phone, address) to readers that they authorize.
Search!! This is a simple and powerful feature. Want to find Microsoft or Google webloggers? Why wait for someone to build a list that may or may not be out of date? A search function on social networking profile information derived from weblogs would solve this quickly and with much more accuracy than a random Google search.
Categorization. Have a look at Jon Udell's lists of CXO webloggers on the right hand side of his weblog. How easy would this be to create if you had solid contact information contained in a social networking system. In fact, you could build directories on the fly customized to your needs based on good profile information.
Community and portability. The advent of open profile information would allow people to create custom communities. There is a lot of power in creating ad hoc communities of members using this type of information. It could also be used to allow members of that community to build contact lists in other applications (e-mail and IM) that are constantly and automatically updated (a new role for Newsgator -- creating auto updated contact lists for e-mail apps).
OK, this would be very, very easy to do in the weblog world if we start right now. All that is needed is a simple standard for an XML profile that can be published by weblog authors in a form on their weblog tool of choice.
[E M E R G I C . o r g]
I want these. Some very neat ideas. 11:04:47 PM 
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Academic publishing and monopoly pricing. Via Cosma Shalizi, a very nice article on the economics of academic publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors provide compelling empirical evidence of a large differential between the price of commercial journals and the price of journals put out by professional societies and academic presses, which isn’t explained by journal quality. The graphs almost jump from the page - there are dramatically different relationships between price and number of citations, depending on whether you are looking at commercial or non-commercial journals. Furthermore, according to the authors, the differential between the two has increased over time. Commercial journals are lousy value for money - but they’re apparently hard to displace in the marketplace.
The authors’ wider argument is also interesting - and worrying. Increasingly, academic publishing is moving towards a model based on the licensing of electronic access to a bundle of journals to universities and other research institutions. The authors’ model suggests that site licensing of journals by commercial publishers will leave scholars worse off on average than if each scholar purchased individual licenses to the journals that she wanted to read. While site licences to larger groups are more efficient, these efficiency gains are more than absorbed by the sellers, if the sellers are profit maximizing firms.
Economists who are interested in new economy issues, like Brad DeLong, usually focus on the massive productivity gains that we can expect from information technology. While these are important, so too are the distributional consequences - the ways in which new technologies affect who gets what. Even if new technologies, such as electronic publishing, are more efficient in some broad sense of the term, the efficiency gains may be distributed in ways that are difficult to justify. [Crooked Timber]
This is an important paper. It amply demonstrates what I ahve been saying. non-profit models for journal publication (by professional societies, PLoS, etc.) will destroy the profits of the commecial publishres. The paper demonstrates that libraries can work together to reduce the price of site licesnses to the average cost, rather than the maximal profits these companies have been able to use before. Here is the last paragraph from the paper. It hits the nail on the head.: For nonprofit journals, the problem [university library pressure on pricing] disappears: the incentives to the academic community at large, and those of individual university libraries, operate in the same direction. The scientific community benefits, and individual universities benefit, if libraries purchase site licenses and make access freely available to their faculty and students. In fact, since the scientists often are the members in the societies that do the publishing of the works the scientists produce, everyone, including the publishers, operate in the same direction. This is how the world will read science in the future. 10:59:37 PM
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Mad cow as bioterrorism?. Scientists worry that US gov't classification of BSE prions as 'select agents' could hinder research [News from The Scientist]
Great. An infectious agent that takes 5-20 years to show itself is an agent of bioterrorism. While I could conjure up some food fanatic using prions to destroy our trust in the meat industry, I believe the industry is perfectly capable of destroying trust all by itself. And, if the industry examined cattle as throughly as the airports examine us, we would not have to worry about any infections. I think this is spedcious and an example of the non-science attitude (perhaps even anti-science attitude) of this Administration. Are they going to prevent collaborations with the French? 10:45:21 PM
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Bottom-Up Phenomenon. I have posted a great deal about the bottom-up phenomenon. Socialtext embraces it both in how our product works, how we sell it and how we run the company. David Kirkpatrick writes in Fortune about the Bottom-up Economy that I... [Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
Bottom-Up is the way to go. For companies to succeed in the new evnironament, they will have to adopt these techniques. At least the successful ones will. 10:37:00 PM
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Bloggerstorm. Check out Bloggerstorm for on the ground coverage of the Iowa caucus, written by you and us. This is a great example of blogspace doing what it does best.... [Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
Great use of technology to funnel a huge amount of information. The blogs are not chosen because they endorse Dean. They were chosen because they are from bloggers who are writing from the trenches. This is journalism at its newest and is something that no other technology can do. This will be part of the future of dispersing information. 10:30:10 PM
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Inept Cato analysis of Dean Net policy. The Cato Institute has just released its analysis of Howard Dean's "Plan for the Internet." This is one of the sloppiest pieces of thinking I've ever seen from an organization named after a Roman. The author, Adam Thierer, begins by quoting from the Principles for an Internet Policy on the Dean site. He interprets "No one owns the Internet[sigma]. It is ours as citizens of this country and as inhabitants of this planet" as meaning " [G]overnment must treat the Internet as one giant collective resource and regulate accordingly." Wow. (For the record, here's the sentence he leaves out: "The... [Joho the Blog]
Read the entire article which completely debunks the Cato Institute report. I am sure the report will be picked up and used to misrepresent not only Dean (who has no Net Policy) but any one else who does not believe that someone should 'own' the internet, allowing them to make money off of it, simply for 'owning' it. These are the people we will be fighting pver the next generation. It will get ugly because they hold most of the weapoons. 10:21:40 PM
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An Immature Computing Environment. Marshall Brain finds that--if he is billing his time out at $30 an hour--the annual self-labor-cost-of-ownership of maintaining his own computers is $4,080 a year. Marshall Brain's Blog: During the month of December, I tried an experiment. Every time something went wrong with one of the computers here in the Brain household, I made a note of it in my blog. My goal was to see how much time I waste in a typical month on computer problems/maintenance. Prior to this experiment, I had a vague notion that I was spending a fair amount of time on this kind of stuff. This experiment has brought the actual amount of time into sharp focus. Having done the experiment, it is amazing to me how many problems a tiny home network can create. Over the course of one month, I logged 21 different errors/problems/activities that wasted time. Here they are: Mom's printer driver -- time spent: 1 hour Random error in Window's Media Player, had to reinstall -- time spent: 20 minutes Windows XP security updates -- time spent: 1 hour Another Windows XP security update -- time spent: 20 minutes Microsoft Outlook crashes about once a week, but cannot update it... [Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]
I keep trying to tell people this but it is nice to see some numbers. My Mac simply does not have these problems. 10:05:43 PM
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George W. Bush Celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday. George W. Bush celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday by giving Charles Pickering a recess appointment as an appeals court judge: Salon: Charles Pickering... his dismal record on race begins with a law school article he wrote defending anti-miscegenation statutes. In the 1960s... "Pickering worked to support segregation, attack civil rights advocates who sought to end Jim Crow, and back those who opposed national civil rights legislation, above all the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Or, in the words of a public statement he signed in 1967, Pickering wanted to preserve 'our southern way of life,' and he bitterly blamed civil rights workers for stirring up 'turmoil and racial hatred' in the South." In the 1970s, as a state senator, he voted to appropriate money to the the Sovereignty Commission, a group dedicated to resisting desegregation... The Republican Party's commitment to civil rights and equal opportunity for all Americans is unshakeable. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Say no more, say no more. God knows there are many reasons in America today not to be a Democrat. But they pale to nothing compared to this reason not to be a Republican. UPDATE: The smart and incisive Lawrence Solum misses the point,... [Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]
Statement on President Bush's Recess Appointment. DES MOINES--Governor Dean issued the following statement on President Bush's recess appointment of Charles W. Pickering:
"This is a polarizing move showing the President’s utter disdain for constitutional checks and balances.
"It is especially offensive that the President made this decision on the eve of the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday, and one day after his photo op at Dr. King's grave."
"Today's egregious appointment is another reason why we need a President and an administration in Washington that stands up for all Americans." [Blog for America]
Nice Birthday present. Serves to send the message he wants to. They do nothing without direct consideration of its political effects. They have to win everytime and to remind everyone that they do.What do you expect from an Imperial Presidency. 9:59:08 PM
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Well, it only took a couple of days. They will not resupply the Hubble telescope next year, dooming it. Not only will the investment be gone but they will leave $200 already spent on instruments on the ground. All because they do not want to use a shuttle. They will spend $300 million to develop a rocket to bring the telescope down. this is the first step in the dismantling of any NASA program that does not directly fit into the new progam. Kennedy doubled NASA's budget in the first year of his program. Then doubled it again the next year. Bush proposes cannablizing all the good science NASA does so he can move to put a base on the moon. I think this is the single worst decision since the Shuttle. I expect this to drive out even more scientists from working for the government. That is what they want so they can fill the remaining spots with their ideologues. 9:46:29 PM
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The Bottom Up Economy. When I was an undergraduate, I spent a lot of time studying negotiations and bargaining situations - often in situations where there was little to no trust between the parties. The end results of such negotiations always turned out to be much better when they opened up and weren't done in a "us vs. them" or top down manner. However, it was very difficult to get over the hurdle of the "we're telling you how it is!" thought process to the "let's lay everything out on the table" process. Such a lesson doesn't apply only to direct bargaining situations, but almost any type of transaction between multiple parties. The more open the process is, the more likely everyone can come to a resolution that makes people happy. This is starting to show up in many aspects of our lives, and even the folks over at Fortune have noticed the trend in our society to move to a "bottom up" world where participation and openness are expected and encouraged - rather than the top down method of someone making a final decision on how things will work. Now, whether it's the media we consume, the software we use, the products we buy, and (apparently) the candidates we elect, people are recognizing the power of the bottom up approach.
[Techdirt]
When dealing with the complex problems that too much information brings, a bottom up approach works best. Humans have evolved unique abilities to see patterns, to solve problems. The more humans involved, the more likely a solution will be found. The organizations that use this approach will be more successful. Those that are not able to adapt will fail. 8:26:25 AM
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4' 3". Chris Brooke reports that BBC Radio 3 are to broadcast a performance of John Cage’s 4’ 33” this evening. At the time of the Mike Batt copyright row I recounted on my old blog that I had attended a school performance of 4’ 33”. We all sat completely silent. No-one coughed, no-one shuffled. At the end of the 4 minutes and 33 seconds the pianist turned and berated us for giving such a poor rendition of the Cage’s work. He explained that “the point” of the work is to attend to the sounds produced by a restless and impatient audience and that, by sitting so quietly, we had sabotaged the “performance”. What he didn’t know was that a week earlier, rowdy behaviour by boys during a lecture from an explorer recently returned from the Hindu Kush had been savagely punished by the headmaster — several boys were caned — as a result, none of us had dared to make a sound for fear of further beatings. [Crooked Timber]
How many people want to really returm to the good old days when boys were caned? Probably many more than owuld actually admit it. 8:12:26 AM
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Life imitates Vance. I’ve always admired the science fiction of Jack Vance; he has a baroque yet precise prose style, like steel draped in velvet. But one of his novels, The Killing Machine, rests on a premise that I always thought was a little silly. The money of Vance’s future society cannot be forged; fake-detecting machines can invariably tell the real banknotes from the bogus. The hero of the novel finds out why - the paper of real banknotes is crimped in a manner that is spaced “in terms of the square root of the first eleven primes” - and he’s able to print himself up a small fortune worth of undetectable forgeries. This sort of legerdemain always seemed rather implausible to me.
No longer. Now I discover via Ed Felten that
some color copiers look for a special pattern of five circles (usually yellow or orange in color), and refuse to make high-res copies of documents containing them. Sure enough, the circles are common on paper money. (On the new U.S. $20 bills, they’re the zeroes in the little yellow “20”s that pepper the background on the back side of the bill.) Markus called the special five-dot pattern the “constellation EURion” because he first spotted it on Euro notes.
[Crooked Timber]
So, if you could hack a high res copier, could you make undetectable copies? Science fiction always provides the questions. WIll we provide the answers? 8:10:16 AM
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4' 3". Chris Brooke reports that BBC Radio 3 are to broadcast a performance of John Cage’s 4’ 33” this evening. At the time of the Mike Batt copyright row I recounted on my old blog that I had attended a school performance of 4’ 33”. We all sat completely silent. No-one coughed, no-one shuffled. At the end of the 4 minutes and 33 seconds the pianist turned and berated us for giving such a poor rendition of the Cage’s work. He explained that “the point” of the work is to attend to the sounds produced by a restless and impatient audience and that, by sitting so quietly, we had sabotaged the “performance”. What he didn’t know was that a week earlier, rowdy behaviour by boys during a lecture from an explorer recently returned from the Hindu Kush had been savagely punished by the headmaster — several boys were caned — as a result, none of us had dared to make a sound for fear of further beatings. [Crooked Timber]
How many people want to really returm to the good old days when boys were caned? Probably many more than would actually admit it. 8:09:18 AM
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Life imitates Vance. I’ve always admired the science fiction of Jack Vance; he has a baroque yet precise prose style, like steel draped in velvet. But one of his novels, The Killing Machine, rests on a premise that I always thought was a little silly. The money of Vance’s future society cannot be forged; fake-detecting machines can invariably tell the real banknotes from the bogus. The hero of the novel finds out why - the paper of real banknotes is crimped in a manner that is spaced “in terms of the square root of the first eleven primes” - and he’s able to print himself up a small fortune worth of undetectable forgeries. This sort of legerdemain always seemed rather implausible to me.
No longer. Now I discover via Ed Felten that
some color copiers look for a special pattern of five circles (usually yellow or orange in color), and refuse to make high-res copies of documents containing them. Sure enough, the circles are common on paper money. (On the new U.S. $20 bills, they’re the zeroes in the little yellow “20”s that pepper the background on the back side of the bill.) Markus called the special five-dot pattern the “constellation EURion” because he first spotted it on Euro notes.
[Crooked Timber]
So, if you could hack a high res copier, could you make undetectable copies? Science fiction always provides the questions. WIll we provide the answers? 8:08:40 AM
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4' 3". Chris Brooke reports that BBC Radio 3 are to broadcast a performance of John Cage’s 4’ 33” this evening. At the time of the Mike Batt copyright row I recounted on my old blog that I had attended a school performance of 4’ 33”. We all sat completely silent. No-one coughed, no-one shuffled. At the end of the 4 minutes and 33 seconds the pianist turned and berated us for giving such a poor rendition of the Cage’s work. He explained that “the point” of the work is to attend to the sounds produced by a restless and impatient audience and that, by sitting so quietly, we had sabotaged the “performance”. What he didn’t know was that a week earlier, rowdy behaviour by boys during a lecture from an explorer recently returned from the Hindu Kush had been savagely punished by the headmaster — several boys were caned — as a result, none of us had dared to make a sound for fear of further beatings. [Crooked Timber]
How many people want to really returm to the good old days when boys were caned? Probably many more than owuld actually admit it. 8:07:31 AM
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