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Thursday, August 14, 2003Ben Discoe has created a system to "spider" Friendster.com and build diagrams of the results. His website points to source code and binaries, so you can dink around with it yourself:
"I wrote a spider (a.k.a. "crawler", "scraper", "robot") to browse the Friendster site, recording the following information for each person: id (e.g. 867412), nickname (e.g. "Ben"), address (they call it "Location"), type (valid or suspended), friends (array of friend IDs). My spider program starts with a given node, and walks outward through the network (breadth-first) for as long as you tell it. It writes its output to an ad-hoc text file. On the day that i first run it, i have around 14 friends and 220,000 people in my "Personal Network". I run the spider until i have around 1000 of the people (friendsters) closest to me. The spider is then tweaked to write output that can be used for graphing the friend network...."Link, Discuss , (Thanks, Rob!) [Boing Boing Blog]
1:09:50 PM
comment [] trackback [] Net views:
meet Mitch, Shelley, AKMA, JD.... Pixelview is an ongoing series of interviews with independent Web designers and developers. And Christopher Lydon has been conducting fascinating audio interviews with a slightly different bunch of people who have also been soaking in the Internet for a while. [Seb's Open Research]
12:51:43 PM
comment [] trackback [] RSS advertising and respect
No sooner did Chuq finish with e-mail, but then he turned his attention to advertising in RSS. A lot of what he says resonates with me. Partially it resonated with me because I was flipping through the September 2003 Fast Company while taking a break. Seth Godin's column (sorry, too early for a link), is titled "Contempt of Consumer: It's a Real Crime". In a nutshell, its about how companies don't respect their customers anymore, and of course, it cites spam as an example. It struck me that they way Lockergnome's client wants to use RSS isn't very respectful either. They just want to cram stuff down my throat. They don't want to cultivate a relationship with me. I'd be happy to subscribe to RSS feeds regarding products that I had purchased. Key phrase: "I subscribe". If the company could use that feed to deliver real value (not just junk) then it would go a long way toward building a relationship with me.
Companies don't get it anymore. You respect me. I learn to trust you. When I trust you, I keep buying from you. If I really trust you, I go out of my way to buy from you. I recommend you to my friends. But if you don't respect me? I had a telemarketer persistently call me about fixing my unbroken auto glass. I finally told him, "I know your company's name very well now. I'll be sure that I go anywhere except to you when I need my auto glass needs fixing". I told a Qwest telemarketer I wasn't interested. She climbed down my throat, asking me angrily "Didn't I want to save money?". I told her that if it meant having to deal with her, that I'd rather pay more. These companies are doing themselves a world of hurt, and they don't even know it.
One of the feeds that I subscribe to is More Stuff 4 Less Bargain Blog. I would *never* opt in to a mailing list like this, because in an hour I'll be getting spam from all over. But I can watch the feed, and if something looks good, I can act on it. (Note: I have not yet purchased anything via these folks, but I like them, because they get it). This is another song that has the same refrain: "If you don't have an RSS feed, you don't exist". [Ted Leung on the air]
12:26:44 PM comment [] trackback []
Web Design Postcards
This is one of the best ideas I've seen in a long time: Postcards that contain web design tips. Look through these postcards for coding, design and content tips for your own sites, and if one of the sites you visit regularly doesn't measure up, why not show them you care by emailing them the URL of an applicable card?
[The J-Walk Blog]
1:59:58 AM comment [] trackback []
Microsoft's Blogging Future revealed through employment ads ?!?
Hmm. It's only logical that MS would get involved in this. No conspiracy. Just good business sense.
"Chuq Von Rospach sends along the following employment links at Microsoft. All use the word "blog" or "blogging" in the description of the position:
# Software Development Engineer
# Software Development Engineer
# Site Manager (MSDN)
# Software Development Engineer (MSN Messenger)
Read them carefully and you get a flavor of what Microsoft is up to in this space. There's a clear intention to bake it into MSN and Messenger, and to go against AOL Journals.
Interesting, to say the least" [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
1:37:09 AM comment [] trackback []
The GNU Projects FTP-Server hacked
Article in German [heise online news]
1:31:19 AM comment [] trackback []
Nutch: An Open Source Search Engine
Anonymous Coward writes "Someone forwarded me this site working to create an open source search engine called Nutch. In the age of weighted rankings on search ... [Slashdot]
1:02:55 AM comment [] trackback []
Google and the Fabulous Googlettes
This Craigslist job posting (via Anil) describes a new initiative within Google called Googlettes: What is a Googlette? It's a new business inside of Google that is just getting started [^] the start-up within the start-up. We're looking for an experienced, entrepreneurial manager capable of offering direction to a team of PMs working on a wide array of Googlettes. You will define Google's innovation engine and grow the leaders of...... [kottke.org]
12:50:04 AM comment [] trackback []
Adam Curry: To Collect and Serve [Scripting News]
12:24:04 AM comment [] trackback []
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