Social networks are being used to recruit for gangs.
I suppose that it's not terribly surprising, given that the majority of people that view my LinedIn page are recruiters of some sort. Although this is no laughing matter, it is at least somewhat funny to imagine someone listing their CV of mayhem and destruction in the formal LinkedIn or Facebook format:
Interests: Petty vandalism, violence, drugs, alcohol.
Previous (gang) experience:
Prisons served time at:
Thanks to Mukund for the tip.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
The Straight Talk Express Runs Both Ways
From Techpresident
Approximately 50 comments were posted on Hillary, Obama, and McCain's blog and the only ones that were allowed to remain visible were those posted on McCain's.
I like that.
This is exactly what I was talking about earlier in terms of conversation and the importance of reciprocity. Social media is rewarded for its authenticity, and censoring all but positive feedback results in something that is blatantly inauthentic.
Not only does that silence important voices of dissent, but it serves to devalue the content that is left on the site - both in terms of posted content by the blogger(s) as well as the comments that have obviously been vetted and found to be satisfactory.
The mindset behind this censorship indicates one of two things:
1) That the people censoring comments think very poorly of their audience. Their censorship suggests that they believe that the people are unable to critically evaluate and synthesize information in order to form an opinion. Instead, they must be force fed meticulously crafted and vetted content without deviation.
Or
2) That the censors are so insecure with regards to their candidate's stances on issues that they can't afford to let people comment freely.
Either way, why would someone want to vote for that candidate?
Approximately 50 comments were posted on Hillary, Obama, and McCain's blog and the only ones that were allowed to remain visible were those posted on McCain's.
I like that.
This is exactly what I was talking about earlier in terms of conversation and the importance of reciprocity. Social media is rewarded for its authenticity, and censoring all but positive feedback results in something that is blatantly inauthentic.
Not only does that silence important voices of dissent, but it serves to devalue the content that is left on the site - both in terms of posted content by the blogger(s) as well as the comments that have obviously been vetted and found to be satisfactory.
The mindset behind this censorship indicates one of two things:
1) That the people censoring comments think very poorly of their audience. Their censorship suggests that they believe that the people are unable to critically evaluate and synthesize information in order to form an opinion. Instead, they must be force fed meticulously crafted and vetted content without deviation.
Or
2) That the censors are so insecure with regards to their candidate's stances on issues that they can't afford to let people comment freely.
Either way, why would someone want to vote for that candidate?
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Blogging and the Fourth Dimension
The fourth dimension being time, of course. The most important thing about comedy.
In this case, it is certainly an important element of blogging - but certainly not the most important. Far and away the most important element of blogging is the quality of published material. Whether it's a recipe, a personal experience, or commentary; engagingly and well-written content will help your blog to be successful.
Obviously timing plays a role in that.
A recipe for Christmas cookies in April, or for a Thanksgiving Turkey in February will not be viewed as particularly salient or timely and thus as unimportant.
A personal experience will probably be conveyed with more clarity and emotion if it happened this morning than if it happened 20 years ago - however much you were able to ruminate upon it in the interim.
Commentary - unless a novel take on a historic event - is also unlikely to turn heads if the event is no longer interesting.
I think that there is an important caveat to that third point. There are some blogs, by virtue of persistence, luck, or what have you, are newsbreakers. They get their hands on a story immediately and share it with the world. The other newsbreaking sites - if they haven't already received the information from the source, will quickly take your hint and repurpose it for themselves. There aren't a whole lot of sites that can do this.
For example, if five minutes from now, aliens landed in Detroit and started having conversations with people on the street (let's assume that they have vocal chords capable of producing a range of sounds audible to humans and that they have somehow learned English and that the atmospheric conditions of Earth are not fatal to their alien biologies, etc.).
People would go to CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc. for their news. They would also go to the equivalently well-regarded online news sites. News-seekers would also likely pay attention to a blogger who credibly claims to have spoken to the aliens or was there when it happened. Perhaps he is even Twittering his encounters in real time from his cell phone.
The point is that you either have to have pre-existing credibility, the product of consistently breaking meaningful news in a timely manner, or you have to have an amazing angle.
That was an extreme example.
Let's say that there is an acquisition that has been in the works for nearly a week. It is no longer extremely new when it finally occurs, but it is still being discussed because it real. It has manifested. This is like being inundated for weeks by the scientific and trivial explanations of an upcoming lunar eclipse. It's not particularly novel but people write about it the next day anyways.
As I said before, it takes a certain degree of credibility to break these stories, both new and "old" news. Credibility that many of us - myself included - lack.
The best thing that we can do is to comment on the commentators. React to the reactors. In short: blog the bloggers.
By commenting on the blogs and articles of credible sources, you add to your own credibility - assuming, of course, that your comments are meaningful.
Doing this puts yourself and - more importantly - your ideas in front of the influencers and the people being influenced. If your ideas are valid, that audience might be convinced to go to you first. Gradually your role will change from a commentator to more of a reactionary.
In a sense, this evolution is a testament to the conversational - that is to say - reciprocal nature of new media. The readers not only determine what is written, but who writes it and from what perspective.
Power to the people.
In this case, it is certainly an important element of blogging - but certainly not the most important. Far and away the most important element of blogging is the quality of published material. Whether it's a recipe, a personal experience, or commentary; engagingly and well-written content will help your blog to be successful.
Obviously timing plays a role in that.
A recipe for Christmas cookies in April, or for a Thanksgiving Turkey in February will not be viewed as particularly salient or timely and thus as unimportant.
A personal experience will probably be conveyed with more clarity and emotion if it happened this morning than if it happened 20 years ago - however much you were able to ruminate upon it in the interim.
Commentary - unless a novel take on a historic event - is also unlikely to turn heads if the event is no longer interesting.
I think that there is an important caveat to that third point. There are some blogs, by virtue of persistence, luck, or what have you, are newsbreakers. They get their hands on a story immediately and share it with the world. The other newsbreaking sites - if they haven't already received the information from the source, will quickly take your hint and repurpose it for themselves. There aren't a whole lot of sites that can do this.
For example, if five minutes from now, aliens landed in Detroit and started having conversations with people on the street (let's assume that they have vocal chords capable of producing a range of sounds audible to humans and that they have somehow learned English and that the atmospheric conditions of Earth are not fatal to their alien biologies, etc.).
People would go to CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc. for their news. They would also go to the equivalently well-regarded online news sites. News-seekers would also likely pay attention to a blogger who credibly claims to have spoken to the aliens or was there when it happened. Perhaps he is even Twittering his encounters in real time from his cell phone.
The point is that you either have to have pre-existing credibility, the product of consistently breaking meaningful news in a timely manner, or you have to have an amazing angle.
That was an extreme example.
Let's say that there is an acquisition that has been in the works for nearly a week. It is no longer extremely new when it finally occurs, but it is still being discussed because it real. It has manifested. This is like being inundated for weeks by the scientific and trivial explanations of an upcoming lunar eclipse. It's not particularly novel but people write about it the next day anyways.
As I said before, it takes a certain degree of credibility to break these stories, both new and "old" news. Credibility that many of us - myself included - lack.
The best thing that we can do is to comment on the commentators. React to the reactors. In short: blog the bloggers.
By commenting on the blogs and articles of credible sources, you add to your own credibility - assuming, of course, that your comments are meaningful.
Doing this puts yourself and - more importantly - your ideas in front of the influencers and the people being influenced. If your ideas are valid, that audience might be convinced to go to you first. Gradually your role will change from a commentator to more of a reactionary.
In a sense, this evolution is a testament to the conversational - that is to say - reciprocal nature of new media. The readers not only determine what is written, but who writes it and from what perspective.
Power to the people.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
The Internet is a Series of Tubes
Truly.
While most people are quick to write off Senator Ted Stevens' comment as testament to the inability of doddering old fuddy-duddies to understand the technological advances we see as commonplace, Senator Stevens' metaphor is far more apt than people give him credit.
The internet is a series of tubes. Great metaphor. Not just in an infrastructural sense but also in a deeper, metaphorical sense of which I only became aware recently while reading "Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope," a wonderful book written/compiled/fostered/nurtured by Zephyr Teachout that examines the role of the internet - and effectively social media - on the Howard Dean for president campaign of 2002 and 2004.
The internet is a series of tubes for the very simple reason that it moves something from one place to another. In the case of the internet, what is being moved happens to be data and the carrier is distributing electric pulses. In this very primitive sense, the Senator was right on.
In a deeper sense, he is even more correct and his metaphor holds even more water (pun intended).
The internet is a series of tubes because it provides the infrastructure to connect two complementary but disparate things: haves and have-nots.
The example about which Teachout's revelation came was in the case of a website being used to connect people in dire need of legal counsel with lawyers who wished to help needy members of the community.
Crowdsourcing is another great example of this. Many children dream of becoming astronauts. Unfortunately, most of these children become astro-nots and grow up to have everyday jobs like you and me (unless there are astronauts that read my blog about whom I am unaware). A crowdsourcing program at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Center provides a venue for us wannabe astronaut types to contribute to man's understanding of the cosmos.
The enthusiastic people eager to contribute their time and energy to science was there. As was the need of scientists for enthusiastic, eager, and not necessarily PhD-posessing assistance. The internet provided the tubes or pipes to transmit the resources of an enthusiastic work force to the exact place those resources would be best taken advantage of.
This is why social media is such an amazing medium. Instead of being reliant on our geographic surroundings, the mass media, and those people with whom we come into direct contact for the appropriate tubes into which to channel our passions, we can go out and find them online - or create them ourselves.
Ning is a great example of this, as are Facebook groups and I'm sure many other outlets.
Tubular.
While most people are quick to write off Senator Ted Stevens' comment as testament to the inability of doddering old fuddy-duddies to understand the technological advances we see as commonplace, Senator Stevens' metaphor is far more apt than people give him credit.
The internet is a series of tubes. Great metaphor. Not just in an infrastructural sense but also in a deeper, metaphorical sense of which I only became aware recently while reading "Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope," a wonderful book written/compiled/fostered/nurtured by Zephyr Teachout that examines the role of the internet - and effectively social media - on the Howard Dean for president campaign of 2002 and 2004.
The internet is a series of tubes for the very simple reason that it moves something from one place to another. In the case of the internet, what is being moved happens to be data and the carrier is distributing electric pulses. In this very primitive sense, the Senator was right on.
In a deeper sense, he is even more correct and his metaphor holds even more water (pun intended).
The internet is a series of tubes because it provides the infrastructure to connect two complementary but disparate things: haves and have-nots.
The example about which Teachout's revelation came was in the case of a website being used to connect people in dire need of legal counsel with lawyers who wished to help needy members of the community.
Crowdsourcing is another great example of this. Many children dream of becoming astronauts. Unfortunately, most of these children become astro-nots and grow up to have everyday jobs like you and me (unless there are astronauts that read my blog about whom I am unaware). A crowdsourcing program at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Center provides a venue for us wannabe astronaut types to contribute to man's understanding of the cosmos.
The enthusiastic people eager to contribute their time and energy to science was there. As was the need of scientists for enthusiastic, eager, and not necessarily PhD-posessing assistance. The internet provided the tubes or pipes to transmit the resources of an enthusiastic work force to the exact place those resources would be best taken advantage of.
This is why social media is such an amazing medium. Instead of being reliant on our geographic surroundings, the mass media, and those people with whom we come into direct contact for the appropriate tubes into which to channel our passions, we can go out and find them online - or create them ourselves.
Ning is a great example of this, as are Facebook groups and I'm sure many other outlets.
Tubular.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Crowdsourcing in Space
Whether being used to locate billions of dollars in gold for savvy mining companies or tracking online contributions to Barack Obama’s campaign it appears that my esteemed colleague Chris was correct in dubbing 2008 the year of the crowd.
I was so intrigued by the idea of successfully enlisting random strangers to do important and interesting things that I did what I do whenever something incites my cat-like curiosity. I looked up “crowdsourcing” in wikipedia.
I was surprised to see that there is an unprecedented crowdsourcing program in action at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab. My running buddy, Ryan “The Brain” Ogliore, works there, and he was kind enough to offer some insight into his project, AKA, Stardust.
<
Would you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re doing?
I'm a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Lab. I work on NASA's Stardust mission: a comet-return from a Jupiter family comet called Wild2.
What is Stardust?
The Stardust mission captured cometary particles in a low-density material called aerogel. Before the rendezvous with the comet, the opposite side of the collector was exposed in a part of space where a stream of interstellar dust travels through our solar system. This material has been viewed astronomically before, but never has a solid sample been returned to the lab for study.
What does the Stardust crowdsourcing project entail?
The interstellar dust particles that were collected by Stardust are microscopic, and they make very tiny tracks in the aerogel. To scan the entire surface of the detector would take many person-years of microscope-searching. The detector containing the interstellar tracks was photographed digitally. The logical thing to do, then, would be to program a computer to scan through these digital images and find the tracks.
This turns out to be a very difficult if not impossible problem, because the aerogel contains many imperfections and cracks that would fool an image-recognition algorithm. A person, however, with minimal training, can identify these particle tracks with high accuracy.
So Stardust@home was created as a way to have hundreds of volunteers search the microscope images and identify particle tracks that interstellar dust made in the detector. Using test images randomly given to the volunteers, or "Dusters" as they've called themselves, we determined that they were very good at this task.
The volunteers are extremely dedicated, abundant, and talented. Unlike other projects, like SETI@home, which are essentially a large, distributed electronic computer, Stardust@home is a network of human brains doing something that (at this point in time) only human brains can do extremely well.
How long has the program been in place and what have your results been so far?
The project has been going on for a year and a half and we already have something to show for it: last week, three of the candidate interstellar particles, found by our volunteers, were extracted from the detector.
The project's success is dependent on the work of the volunteers -- this is real science, unique and exciting, that was made possible by the "crowds" of passionate people, eager to be involved with the science.
I think this kind of cool space stuff appeals to a lot of people, and the opportunity to actually search for an interstellar needle in a haystack is something people jumped on: every time you log in you can see a piece of never-before-seen galactic material.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
The Stardust@home approach has proven successful and could spawn another image recognition project: instead of looking for interstellar dust, trained eyes can search for hominids.
Thanks a lot, Ryan!
(End of Interview)
Even aside from all of the amazing things that are being accomplished with crowdsourcing, I am constantly impressed by the underlying sentiment from which these projects emanate. More than anything else, I think that crowdsourcing highlights the willingness of people to pitch in and selflessly donate their time based on their desire for excitement, a challenge, or simply to help in whatever manner they are able. As much as crowdsourcing can accomplish for the original sourcer, the fulfillment and sense of purpose it provides the crowd should not be overlooked or undervalued.
To quote Bill Nye – science rules!
I was so intrigued by the idea of successfully enlisting random strangers to do important and interesting things that I did what I do whenever something incites my cat-like curiosity. I looked up “crowdsourcing” in wikipedia.
I was surprised to see that there is an unprecedented crowdsourcing program in action at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab. My running buddy, Ryan “The Brain” Ogliore, works there, and he was kind enough to offer some insight into his project, AKA, Stardust.
<
Would you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re doing?
I'm a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Lab. I work on NASA's Stardust mission: a comet-return from a Jupiter family comet called Wild2.
What is Stardust?
The Stardust mission captured cometary particles in a low-density material called aerogel. Before the rendezvous with the comet, the opposite side of the collector was exposed in a part of space where a stream of interstellar dust travels through our solar system. This material has been viewed astronomically before, but never has a solid sample been returned to the lab for study.
What does the Stardust crowdsourcing project entail?
The interstellar dust particles that were collected by Stardust are microscopic, and they make very tiny tracks in the aerogel. To scan the entire surface of the detector would take many person-years of microscope-searching. The detector containing the interstellar tracks was photographed digitally. The logical thing to do, then, would be to program a computer to scan through these digital images and find the tracks.
This turns out to be a very difficult if not impossible problem, because the aerogel contains many imperfections and cracks that would fool an image-recognition algorithm. A person, however, with minimal training, can identify these particle tracks with high accuracy.
So Stardust@home was created as a way to have hundreds of volunteers search the microscope images and identify particle tracks that interstellar dust made in the detector. Using test images randomly given to the volunteers, or "Dusters" as they've called themselves, we determined that they were very good at this task.
The volunteers are extremely dedicated, abundant, and talented. Unlike other projects, like SETI@home, which are essentially a large, distributed electronic computer, Stardust@home is a network of human brains doing something that (at this point in time) only human brains can do extremely well.
How long has the program been in place and what have your results been so far?
The project has been going on for a year and a half and we already have something to show for it: last week, three of the candidate interstellar particles, found by our volunteers, were extracted from the detector.
The project's success is dependent on the work of the volunteers -- this is real science, unique and exciting, that was made possible by the "crowds" of passionate people, eager to be involved with the science.
I think this kind of cool space stuff appeals to a lot of people, and the opportunity to actually search for an interstellar needle in a haystack is something people jumped on: every time you log in you can see a piece of never-before-seen galactic material.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
The Stardust@home approach has proven successful and could spawn another image recognition project: instead of looking for interstellar dust, trained eyes can search for hominids.
Thanks a lot, Ryan!
(End of Interview)
Even aside from all of the amazing things that are being accomplished with crowdsourcing, I am constantly impressed by the underlying sentiment from which these projects emanate. More than anything else, I think that crowdsourcing highlights the willingness of people to pitch in and selflessly donate their time based on their desire for excitement, a challenge, or simply to help in whatever manner they are able. As much as crowdsourcing can accomplish for the original sourcer, the fulfillment and sense of purpose it provides the crowd should not be overlooked or undervalued.
To quote Bill Nye – science rules!
Typical Obama Type
Forgive me for the pun.
This article discusses - or should I say psychoanalyzes - Obama's decision in type-face.
Definitely watch the embedded video.
This article discusses - or should I say psychoanalyzes - Obama's decision in type-face.
Definitely watch the embedded video.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Mobile Search
An enlightening simile from an article on iPhone:
"Searching on a computer, he said, is like going to a store, where the customers sees every product displayed, and can make comparisons, touch the products, even try things on for size. Doing the same search on a mobile, he said, but like trying to shop in the same store but "through a drive-up window." No matter how much stuff is in the store, you can only find out through the cashier at the drive-up window."
"The dilemma, left unsolved by the panelists, was how to squeeze the user through that window, past the cashier, to sample all the things in the store, without guilt, while still feeling grateful to the cashier who seemed, all along, to be standing in the way."
"Searching on a computer, he said, is like going to a store, where the customers sees every product displayed, and can make comparisons, touch the products, even try things on for size. Doing the same search on a mobile, he said, but like trying to shop in the same store but "through a drive-up window." No matter how much stuff is in the store, you can only find out through the cashier at the drive-up window."
"The dilemma, left unsolved by the panelists, was how to squeeze the user through that window, past the cashier, to sample all the things in the store, without guilt, while still feeling grateful to the cashier who seemed, all along, to be standing in the way."
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