Monday, July 17, 2006
Digg and the "Wisdom of Crowds"
Digg is simply tapping the "wisdom of the crowd," says Kevin Rose, the founder and chief architect of Digg. That phrase is taken from a 2004 book by James Surowiecki, "The Wisdom of Crowds," which argues that, in the right circumstances, the collective knowledge and expertise of a large group of people lead to better decisions than those made by individuals alone." / csmonitor.com/
Friday, July 14, 2006
Wired News to Consider User-Generated Content, a decade late
Howard Rheingold writes: "Business Week notes, in regard to the purchase of Wired News by Conde Nast, that the new owners are 'deep into thinking' about giving the people formerly known as the audience the tools to create content and network with each other. This is mildly amusing and no longer painful to me and others who proposed this when we launched Hotwired, more than a decade ago." /Smart Mobs/
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Faster Brains
"A new brain-computer-interface technology could turn our brains into automatic image-identifying machines that operate faster than human consciousness. Researchers at Columbia University are combining the processing power of the human brain with computer vision to develop a novel device that will allow people to search through images ten times faster than they can on their own. " /Wired News/
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Insight Beyond Graphs
"All too often we are tasked to run reports in our favourite Web Analytics tool or present our analysis of our survey or lab usability data. Often we fall back on what Omniture or WebTrends or ClickTracks or HBX can provide, they do all make it easy to export into excel. Sometimes we will take raw data and give it a spin in excel ourselves. For me visuals that provide awesome insights come from 1) a deep understanding of the goal / objectives 2) from thinking beyond what standard trend lines or stacked bar graphs can provide." /Occam’s Razor/
Saturday, July 08, 2006
China Offers Free Chinese Language Lessons
"China launched a Web site, www.linese.com, on Saturday offering free Chinese lessons and materials to promote the study and use of the language abroad. The site includes audio-visual presentations, interactive exercises and advice for teachers of Mandarin Chinese, with photographs and descriptions of cultural icons such as the Great Wall, kung fu actor Jackie Chan and basketball star Yao Ming." /Yahoo News/
Monday, July 03, 2006
Bringing Virtual Light to Light
"In William Gibson's 1994 novel 'Virtual Light,' bike messenger Chevette Washington swipes a pair of virtual-light glasses that send information about what the wearer's looking at directly to his or her optic nerves."
San Franciso-based GeoVector is developing such "location-aware" services: "Our philosophy is the world itself is a gigantic database and almost everything out there has some kind of geolocated reference... I think it will be second nature for people to pick up any kind of mobile device and point it at something and get information from the real world. Just like now it's second nature to turn on your PC and pick up the mouse.' /WSJ.com/
San Franciso-based GeoVector is developing such "location-aware" services: "Our philosophy is the world itself is a gigantic database and almost everything out there has some kind of geolocated reference... I think it will be second nature for people to pick up any kind of mobile device and point it at something and get information from the real world. Just like now it's second nature to turn on your PC and pick up the mouse.' /WSJ.com/
Self-Driving Car
"German car giant Volkswagen (unveils) a fully automatic car which really can drive itself - and at speeds of up to 150mph." /The Daily Mail/
Sunday, July 02, 2006
South Korea WiMax at 120km/hr!
"South Korea has commercially launched its mobile broadband internet service WiBro. South Korean internet service provider KT and mobile phone operator SK Telecom have begun the service based on Intel's WiMax standard in parts of Seoul and surrounding areas. KT claims that WiBro users can get wireless access to the internet even when travelling at speeds of 120km/hour." /Digital Media Asia/
Ted Stevens' Tubes: "Surfing The Internet" Alaskan-Style
Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens explains what the internet really is: "It's a series of tubes." /Wired/
