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January 29, 2006
We are made for complimentarity
Remember Mexico?
Here is his voice again. (Thanks, Howard!)
Posted by Xiao at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2006
A car driving by
Posted by Xiao at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2006
"The Economics of Open Content"
Mary is blogging this : "MIT Open Courseware, Intelligent Television is organizing a two-day symposium at MIT on "The Economics of Open Content," on January 23 and 24, 2006" (Thanks, Jerry!)
"This project is a systematic study of why and how it makes sense for commercial companies and noncommercial institutions active in culture, education, and media to make certain materials widely available for free—and also how free services are morphing into commercial companies while retaining their peer-to-peer quality. "
Posted by Xiao at 07:56 PM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2006
Not All Web Recommendations Are Welcome
From The New York Times "Like This? You'll Hate That": (Thanks, Howard!)
At NetFlix, the online DVD rental company, for example, roughly two-thirds of the films rented were recommended to subscribers by the site - movies the customers might never have thought to consider otherwise, the company says. As a result, between 70 and 80 percent of NetFlix rentals come from the company's back catalog of 38,000 films rather than recent releases.
Similarly, Apple's iTunes online music store features a system of recommending new music as a way of increasing customers' attachment to the site and, presumably, their purchases.
Recommendation engines, which grew out of the technology used to serve up personalized ads on Web sites, now typically involve some level of "collaborative filtering" to tailor data automatically to individuals or groups of users.
Some engines use information provided directly by the shopper, while others rely more on assumptions, like offering a matching shirt to a shopper interested in purchasing a tie. And some sites are now taking personalization to another level by improving not only the collection of data but the presentation of it.
Liveplasma.com, an online site for music and, more recently, movies, graphically "maps" shoppers' potential interests. A search for music by Coldplay, for example, brings up a graphical representation of what previous customers of Coldplay music have purchased, presented in clusters of circles of various sizes.
Posted by Xiao at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
梦想－歌
从芝加哥来的歌手们
在雨中高唱.
Posted by Xiao at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)
Panopticon
From "Control and Surveillance":
The original Panopticon, proposed by Jeremy Bentham, is an architectural design for a prison which has a central tower in a circular building that is divided into individual cells. Each cell extends the entire thickness of the building and has both inner and outer windows. "The occupants of the cells ... are thus backlit, isolated from one another by walls and subject to scrutiny both collectively and individually by an observer in the tower who remains unseen". The final goal is for the inmate to internalise the mechanism of surveillance that the building establishes. The actual and imagined inspections act to reinforce each other in the minds of the prisoner. As Bentham describes it, the "... apparent omnipresence of the inspector ... combined with the extreme facility of his real presence". Surveillance is continuous in its effects even if it is discontinuous in its actions.
Now compare this concept of nineteenth century to this one.
Posted by Xiao at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)
January 15, 2006
Podcast: The Writing Show Interviews Nick Wilson
Podcast: The Writing Show Interviews Nick Wilson on the topic of "Writing the Killer Blog".
If you can't listen they have been good enough to transcribe the whole thing.
Posted by Xiao at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)
Mociology?
This word sounds terrible. Joe should come up a better name than this:
Joe Trippi likes to open his lectures with a question. "How many mociologists are there in the audience?" No one raises a hand. He then asks, "How many of you have got mobile phones?" Every hand goes up. "You're all mociologists," Trippi says. "You just don't know the word yet - just like you didn't know the word 'blog' five years ago.
"Mociology refers to how mobile and wireless technology has changed the way we do things: downloading music on to a mobile phone, for example, or getting the football scores texted through on a Saturday afternoon. To Trippi, however, its potential lies in how it can be used for political purposes - just as he saw and exploited the possibilities of blogs for political campaigning while running Howard Dean's unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
Posted by Xiao at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2006
Clay's New Class
SOCIAL FACTS: (Thanks, Dave!)
Social Facts centers on two questions. The first is, how do groups get anything done? ...... Getting a group to accomplish anything means getting its members to set aside enough of their autonomy for the group to function as a relatively cohesive unit.
The second, related question core to the class is, what effects does, can, or should technology have on the way groups get things done? We are in the middle of a revolution in the creation of group value. The ability to use new
technologies, especially communications technologies, are altering the way groups form and function.
The question of technological effect is partly descriptive (What is happening with group use of technology now?), partly predictive (What will happen?) and partly normative (What should happen?) ...... The goal of the class is to uncover interesting but as yet unachieved possibilities in our increasingly mediated group life.
Posted by Xiao at 03:47 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2006
Who is Citizen Journalist?
- "The citizen journalist who owns a digital camera or a camera phone and sends shootings to a news organization during a major event (tsunami, London bombing …) or a local car accident."
- "The citizen journalist who wants to cover its local or virtual community and produce targeted content.
- "The citizen journalist who is a militant and campaigns for political reasons. How Eason Jordan was fired from CNN by infuriated bloggers in January 2005, was a good example of biased citizen journalism.
- "The citizen journalist who is eager to participate to a conversation with professional journalists and bloggers. News is just the beginning, says Jeff Jarvis and, in some cases, it is true."
Posted by Xiao at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)