Sunday, May 11, 2003

Information Flow in Social Groups "Fang Wu and Bernardo Huberman of Hewlett-Packard's Information Dynamics Lab previously published The Dynamics of Reputations and Tyler, Wilkinson, and Huberman reported on detecting social networks by analyzing email patterns. Now, Wu, Huberman, and Joshua R. Tyler have published their study (available as PDF) on Information Flow in Social Groups [link fixed], applying knowledge of scale-free networks to the dynamics of information flows in online social networks." [via Smart Mobs] Abstract from the article: "We present a study of information ow that takes into account the observation that an item relevant to one person is more likely to be of interest to individuals in the same social circle than those outside of it. This is due to the fact that the similarity of node attributes in social networks decreases as a function of the graph distance. An epidemic model on a scale-free network with this property has a nite threshold, implying that the spread of information is limited. We tested our predictions by measuring the spread of messages in an organization and also by numerical experiments that take into consideration the organizational distance among individuals." In weblogs, the social circle is not always defined physically.  We may not even know each other personally. Yet, we all subscribe to RSS feeds that provide us interesting and relevant views and information. So, let's look at this from another perspective. Does relevant information define a social circle? Does the quality and pertinance of information drive the size of the social network? 11:15:48 PM    comment []  trackback []

NEC's new handheld computer - MobilePro 900 "Rumors of a new handheld computer from NEC have been floating around for months, and now CNET confirms that the MobilePro 900 will come out later this month. It's one of those gadgets that falls somewhere between a laptop and a PDA, with a decently-sized keyboard and an 8.1-inch screen like a small laptop, and the memory (64MB of RAM, no hard drive), processor (400MHz), and operating system (Windows CE) of a PDA." [via Gizmodo] My first PDA was a similarly sized (ok... a bit smaller) HP 620LX.  The form factor was right on for 1997 technology.  It still runs, although it has developed a nice short in the PCMCIA slot. I think PDA's are going to move to two new sizes: Half Cigarette Carton sized pdas (half as thick). Not quiet a laptop, but has a typeable keyboard. NEC may be on to something here. 10:58:54 PM    comment []  trackback []