Valdis Krebs: What's Your Google Number.
Interesting piece on creative uses of Google - for reputation
assessment, reference checking, etc. Google can tell a lot about you,
including things you may not be aware of yourself! The best part of the
article is under the heading "Associations".
Several months back I had two very similar inquiries about mapping
supply networks. Putting each inquirer through Google, I found
information about them individually. But putting both of them together
through Google – “John Smith” AND “Jane Doe”[not their real names] – I
found that they worked at the same large consulting firm, and that they
had co-authored a white paper a while back. They knew each other, but
had lost contact since both left the New York office over 5 years ago.
Now they were working across the Atlantic from each other. How
surprised they both were when I mentioned they should call each other
about supply networks.
I find the aggregate number of man-hours invested on both sides of the curtains in projects like these astounding...
Now, here's an idea: embed genuine open problems into such games, and let the hobbyist masses solve them collaboratively while under the impression that they're playing a game.
Nice Wired article on Philip K. Dick
that highlights how, nearly half a century ago, he explored many of the ideas
surrounding reality manufacturing and hacking that are becoming quite
popular these days. It quotes his essay "How to Build a Universe That
Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" that I blogged about last month.
At
a time when most 20th-century science fiction writers seem hopelessly
dated, Dick gives us a vision of the future that captures the feel of
our time. He didn't really care about robots or space travel, though
they sometimes turn up in his stories. He wrote about ordinary Joes
caught in a web of corporate domination and ubiquitous electronic
media, of memory implants and mood dispensers and counterfeit worlds.
This strikes a nerve. "People cannot put their finger anymore on what
is real and what is not real," observes Paul Verhoeven, the one-time
Dutch mathematician who directed Total Recall. "What we find in Dick is
an absence of truth and an ambiguous interpretation of reality. Dreams
that turn out to be reality, reality that turns out to be a dream. This
can only sell when people recognize it, and they can only recognize it
when they see it in their own lives."
Hmm. I knew Koreans were among the most wired people on the planet, but I wouldn't have guessed that about half of the top 20 websites were Korean. Daum.net currently ranks third, right after Yahoo! and MSN. (According to Alexa.com's stats.)
If you're reading this in a browser (as about one-third of my readers
appear to do), you might have noticed that I'm now syndicating content
from the Many-to-Many weblog on social software in the right sidebar. As time goes by I'm probably going to rotate between blogs I like.
Nowadays I often begin the day by loading up Alf Eaton's playlist (Real, WinAmp).
8 tracks' worth of undiscovered, diverse musical goodness, hand-picked
by someone with a similar taste in music to mine, streamed directly to
my headphones free of charge and without any waiting. What could put me
in a better mood?
