05 February 2003

Jon Udell mentioned BuddySpace, a Jabber-based tool which links IM with a graphical representation of presence. You can see who's available to talk, who's busy, who's out, shown on office, campus, regional or even global maps. Developed by the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University, the software is available for download. I'm interested in taking a look at how this might be implemented for virtual team chats within and across organisations. 11:20:17 PM    comment []

An interesting study (via Ross Mayfield) on the power law distribution of web site links by a team at NEC. The study says that the power law holds better in more competitive markets (eg online book sales) than in less competitive markets (eg photographers' web sites). Different online markets or genres have different patterns in the distribution of preferential links (new links are made to popular sites) and uniform links (new links are made according to the linking site's interests rather than popularity). Where links tend to be preferential, the power law applies and popular sites get more popular - these are highly competitive markets. Where links are more uniform, new sites gain a greater share of the attention. 10:52:31 PM    comment []