- Canonical’s New Plan for Banshee — Canonical prepare the Linux distribution Ubuntu. They will distribute the popular iTunes-alike Banshee, but instead of the standard Amazon store plugin (which generates much $ in affiliate revenue for the GNOME Foundation) they will have Canonical’s own Amazon store plugin and keep 75% of the revenue (25% going to the GNOME Foundation). They’re legally within their rights, and it underscores for me how the goal of providing freedom from control is incompatible with a goal of making money. Free and open source software gives self-destination with software, and that includes the right to replace your money pump with theirs.
- Oluolu — an open source query log mining tool which works on Hadoop. This tool provides resources to add new features to search engines. Concretely Oluolu supports automatic dictionary creation such as spelling correction, context queries or frequent query n-grams from query log data. The dictionaries are applied to search engines to add features such as ‘did you mean’ or ‘related keyword suggestion’ service in search engines. (via Matt Biddulph on Delicious)
- Information is Beautiful Process (David McCandless) — David’s process for creating his beautiful and moving visualizations.
- Facebook for Repressive Regimes — The purpose of this blog post is not to help repressive regimes use Facebook better, but rather to warn activists about the risks they face when using Facebook. (via Justine Sanderson on Delicious)
"search" entries
Smarter search looks for influence rather than links
A Princeton search algorithm uses language indicators to measure importance.
A search algorithm being developed by Princeton University researchers parses language to determine relevance. Academic application is one possibility, but this type of algorithm could also extend to news recommendations.
Four short links: 25 February 2011
Banshee Bucks, Log Mining, Visualization Secrets, and Repression Tools
Watson's marketable skills
Jeopardy was fun, but Watson's practical applications are what's really interesting.
Aside from whipping the pants off two Jeapardy geniuses, the Watson computer is opening the door to new monetization possibilities for search.
"We need tools that can help people have their ideas faster"
Aditi Muralidharan on improving discovery and building intuition into search.
Ph.D. student Aditi Muralidharan aims to make life easier for researchers and scientists with WordSeer, a text analysis tool that examines and visualizes language use patterns.
Indexing the social signal
Charlene Li on the problems and possibilities of social search and realtime updates.
Search engines used to leisurely index static results, but the rise of social media and real-time updates has changed the game. In this interview, Altimeter Group founder Charlene Li looks at how search will have to adapt to this new environment.
In Google's "glass house," a battle with Bing looms
Commentary: Copy or theft? How Google set themselves up to get Bing’d.
Is Google's recent war of words with Microsoft a case of calling a thief out by name, or a matter of pot calling kettle black?
For social search, similarity could trump friendship
There's a difference between people you know and the people you're like.
Social search is similar to pre-Google traditional search: results feel arbitrary and unreliable. But a focus on similarity could push social search into a new phase.
Four short links: 10 November 2010
Facebook Behaviour, Multitouch Modelling, Early Ads, and Gaming Public Transportation
- Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook (danah boyd) — Mikalah uses Facebook but when she goes to log out, she deactivates her Facebook account. She knows that this doesn’t delete the account – that’s the point. She knows that when she logs back in, she’ll be able to reactivate the account and have all of her friend connections back. But when she’s not logged in, no one can post messages on her wall or send her messages privately or browse her content. Two very interesting practices designed to maintain not just some abstract idea of “privacy” but, more important, control.
- Beautiful Modeler — a software tool for gestural sculpting using a multi-touch controller such as an iPad. (via Andy Baio)
- How Telephone Directories Transformed America — this caught my eye: Less than a year after the New Haven District Telephone Company issued its first directory, it issued a second, and that one augmented listings with advertising. (via Pete Warden)
- Chromarama — a game that shows you your movements and location as you swipe your Oyster Card in and out of the Tube. Points are awarded for avoiding rush hour, visiting new stations, etc. They say they want to change behaviour, but I don’t believe people ride public transportation to collect points, so they travel when they have to and so won’t change their commute times. Would love to be proven wrong, though. (via Roger Dennis)
Four short links: 9 November 2010
A Prototyping HowTo, Decolumning PDFs, Real World Social Networks, and App Search
- How to Prototype and Influence People (Aza Raskin) — I’m fascinated lately by prototypes, mockups, tangible artifacts, and other design tools for conveying the essence and promise of something without having to build it all. This talk nails it.
- paper2ebook — Utility to re-structure research papers published in US Letter or A4 format PDF files to remove the 2 columns layout to make it suitable for viewing in an ebook reader. (via Olivier Grisel on Twitter)
- The Real Life Social Network (Slideshare) — presentation from a Google ux designer starts with a typical “social networking makes you lump everyone as a friend but people don’t think that way” set of slides, but by slide 70 it’s talking about research into how people think of their friends. I’d love to see a UI for a social network that got this right. (via Matt Zimmerman on Twitter)
- uquery — simple search engine for the iPhone/iPad app store. (via Marco Arment on Twitter)
Four short links: 24 September 2010
Crawlable Ajax, Security Lessons, Graph Database, and Toy Hardware
- Making Ajax Applications Crawlable (Google) — Google’s system for allowing Ajax applications to provide HTML snapshots for search engines. (via alexdong on twitter)
- Security Lessons Learned from the Diaspora Launch — great explanation of the programming mistakes that were in the Diaspora code, and the security risks that resulted. Again, I recommend the OWASP site if you aren’t aware of the types of security mistakes you are making.
- A Brief Tour of Graphd — the triplestore behind Freebase. Want. (via timclicks on Twitter)
- Toybots — startup working on Internet-aware hardware for toymakers: 3G, WiFi, GPS, and accelerometer waiting to be embedded in toys.