Seb's Open Research

Thursday, February 12, 2004

Echo chamber echo Further to my post on Dean, the net, and echo chambers, I just dug up an older post, Blog groupthink and acceptable uses of weblogs, that dealt with the same topic. It seems my views haven't really changed since I wrote it... "Weblogs enable groupthink circles to form. This is only natural and mirrors any real-world social aggregation process. The nice thing about this is that it does not spoil the fun for those who seek intellectual diversity. As a reader, you get to choose your neighborhood on a fine-grained, per-person basis - and this is unlike any other social situation I've seen. You can make that neighborhood as diverse as you want. So you're not stuck with echo effects unless you want them. This is perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of weblogging from a "knowledge input management" point of view. Developing skill at selecting sources, in order to make the best use of one's limited perceptual bandwidth, is quickly becoming critical for making sense of what's really happening in our complex world. Two keywords for building a good neighborhood are diversity and quality. The corresponding skills one has to cultivate are open-mindedness and critical thinking." What do you think? []  links to this post    8:55:06 AM

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Canadian black book online If you're looking to buy or sell a used car in Canada, you might like to know about the resources mentioned in this article on finding the value of a used car in Canada. Especially handy is this link into the Canadian black book database (French version here) What do you think? []  links to this post    4:07:11 PM

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Here be research topics It warms my heart a little to get hits from (presumably) students Googling for networking thesis topics or research areas in knowledge management, or even MSNing for exciting linguistic research topics. (I like how "MSNing" just naturally rolls off the tongue... ;) This has been happening more in the last few months. I guess I should put up a page on "research directions I might like to pursue with you". What do you think? []  links to this post    1:00:18 PM   reBlogging: push-button republishing Xian Liza Sabater mentions reBlogging, a hack that I'm sure will be refined and become part of the standard syndication/publishing toolbox of 2005. Basically it enables "push-button republishing for the masses". (Perhaps there are some aggregators out there that already enable that?). From the front page: What is a reBlog? A web site republishing the best blog posts from around the web. Eyebeam's R&D department created this site as a proof-of-concept for reBlogging. Who is reBlogging? We will periodically select a guest reBlogger to pick their favorite posts and links on art, technology, and culture. How Does it Work? We developed a system that aggregates RSS feeds from around the web, a simple interface for selecting our favorite posts, and a hack that uses Movable Type to republish the content. [see the hack] If you recall my feed algebra post, this corresponds to splitting a feed (or a union of feeds) in two and discarding the "rejected items" subfeed. Build this service with a good interface (e.g. one-click instant classification into +1,0,-1 bins, best of all if integrated within an otherwise good aggregator) and I'll be happy to publicize it by providing filtered versions of my favorite TopicExchange channels. I follow them anyway, so I might as well do that to help others save time. (Note that a "rejected items" subfeeds can be telling, too...) This post also appears on channel syndication What do you think? []  links to this post    12:19:24 PM

Monday, February 09, 2004

Who's working on Personal Information Management? These are two very valuable overview documents. Many thanks to Piers Young for pointing to them, and to Richard Boardman (Imperial College London) for writing them! List of people doing research on Personal Information Management, and their projects Personal Information Management Bibliography What do you think? []  links to this post    2:15:43 PM   Do online communities need reporters? I just wrote a post over on Many-to-Many on how bloggers can be useful to non-blog communities, in particular by providing a face or personality to outsiders. What do you think? []  links to this post    12:53:47 PM   Welcome, Holly! Holly Henry-Pilkington's Research Journal. Holly studies at Columbia University in New York, and her research focuses on interactive simulation as a tool for learning. What do you think? []  links to this post    11:07:33 AM   Ferdig, Trammel: Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere' Richard E. Ferdig and research blogger Kaye Trammel have written a nice overview of the whys and hows of blogging in the educational context. If you're getting interested in the intersection of weblogs and learning, read this and George Siemens' classic The Art of Blogging, follow the links, and you'll be off to a pretty good start. What do you think? []  links to this post    8:48:41 AM

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