Tuesday, April 8, 2003

Slices of Social Software. Matt Webb offers some slices of consideration for Social Software.  A good ramble. ...There's no single defining feature of social software, no common thread. But some attributes which may or may not be shared: software which uses as data social relationships/properties; software which acts as an intermediary in social activity (conversation, decision making, wearing the same band's tshirt, clapping); software which uses human nature in the design process; software that has moved from providing an environment to providing an environment and tools, or more...   [Ross Mayfield's Weblog] The newer tools of social software will eventually change how we do things, much like email does today. It will take some time but they will become part of the basic fabric of how we interact online. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog] comments? [] 12:18:32 PM     SARS - Hey Valdis can you help?. Here is picture from Orgnet that shows the growth of a virus. Would this type of mapping help? Valdis are you working on this? Rob [Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog] comments? [] 12:07:09 PM     (Karass and Granfalloon are highly-relevant concepts from the prescient techno-sociological tome, Cats Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.) More Karass and Granfalloon. I find this syuch a helpful concept - any more thinking like this out there? Conversations with Dina. Great new weblog from India-based qualitative researcher Dina Mehta. It's filled with interesting insights and links to unusual sources for understanding cultural and social patterns. Dina has an ability to bridge cultural gaps and put complex patterns into understandable terms. Good stuff. Go grab her RSS feed. You'll be glad you did. 'Karass' or' Granfalloon' ... you choose. Neat piece by Steven Johnson in the April 2003 issue of Discover.  Talks about two types of networks - the self-organising and social 'karass' and the more bureaucratic 'granfalloons', drawing examples from personal and corporate life. He goes on to describe the role of emerging social mapping software in detecting and mapping social networks - at the workplace in large organisations and in book-buying patterns at Amazon.    Some excerpts : "Karass is that group of friends from college who have helped one another's careers in a hundred subtle ways over the years; the granfalloon is the marketing department at your firm, where everyone has a meticulously defined place on the org chart but nothing ever gets done. When you find yourself in a karass, it's an intuitive, unplanned experience. Getting into a granfalloon, on the other hand, usually involves showing two forms of ID." [...] ["Conversations" with Dina] [b.cognosco] [Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog] comments? [] 12:02:37 PM     This is indeed an extraordinarily well-researched and documented review of wikis Wiki - a new frontier for me. Wiki as a Collaborative Content Tool. Good in-depth article on wikis by someone with a background in information science. Then there's the new issue of Searcher, which includes David Mattison's article Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool. [Underway in Ireland via The Shifted Librarian via Peter Scott's Library Blog].  [Ross Mayfield's Weblog] I have not understood Wiki yet - I will see if this will help [Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog] comments? [] 11:53:16 AM     Why wifi is like air conditioning In an article about an article in the Washington Post about wifi in starbucks, Glenn writes... Here's the kicker in the story for Starbucks, not T-Mobile, which makes their saliva start to flow: And Wi-Fi service has turned him into a loyal Starbucks customer. "Having the T-Mobile has completely locked me down here, as opposed to the Cosi across the street," he said. That's nice for Starbucks, but unless T-Mobile is given an incremental per store percentage of aggregate increased sales based on the number of Wi-Fi users at any given time, this doesn't pay the T-1 bill. Which is why I say that the business model for wifi is the business model for air conditioning--not a profit center, but an amenity, underwritten by the local owner, to improve the improve the economics of the environment. comments? [] 11:22:04 AM     Sony Ericsson T68i Deal: They Pay You. Gizmodo reports Amazon.com selling T-Mobile-activated Sony Ericsson T68i phone for negative $30: This is a departure from our usual front, but I'm an extremely happy T68i user, and wanted to highlight this offer at Amazon.com. The T68i is a Bluetooth-enabled phone that can work with GSM and GPRS networks (2G and 2.5G). I use a Bluetooth adapter with a laptop running Mac OS X 10.2 with a Bluetooth adapter. The Amazon.com deal gives you the phone for $270 with a $300 rebate after you enable service with T-Mobile.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] comments? [] 11:03:24 AM     just a great graphic (interactive online) comments? [] 10:55:16 AM     Graduating in social software. social software graduate studies. Liz: "is there a need for a graduate degree program focusing on the development and implementation of social software? [...] if there is a need (and/or interest) in such a program, what should it include? What would a graduate of such a program need to look like in order to be valuable in todayís development world?" [Seb's Open Research] [Blogging Alone]   Iíd like to participate in a program like that! In addition, it will be important to include that which social software models and facilitates: social interaction, gene/meme diffusion, the ecology of ideas (in nature and society as well as on ëthe netí). Posted by Jon Schull at April 8, 2003 10:44 AM comments? [] 10:46:00 AM     "Chance Discovery" of social networks. I blogged about the work of Tyler, Wilkinson, and Huberman in regard to the detection of social networks by analysis of email patterns. Important prior work in this field has been done since 1998 by Yukio Ohsawa et al, including Featuring Web Communities Based on Word Co-occurrence Structure of Communications. In these studies since 1998, Ohsawa et al applied original techniques (e.g. KeyGraph) visualizing the structure of a document, e.g., a sequence of messages. As a result, significant words, leading people, messages, words, or web pages have been extracted. This method is already used in leading companies for discovering significant on-line communities and significant messages in them. These methods take advantage of the "small-world" structure of graphs, i.e. the clusters and by "Chance Discovery," a theme on which the American Association of Artificial Intelligence hold a symposium last fall. A summary of chance discovery methodology is more suitable for lay readers. [Smart Mobs] comments? [] 10:34:08 AM

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