January 2009
Universities and the recession →
Andre Vellino pointed me to this article: Will the recession affect higher education? Short answer: yes.
Interesting bites:
If you think education has historically had a hard time competing…
How Google crawls the deep web →
A googol of Googlers published a paper at VLDB 2008, “Google’s Deep-Web Crawl” (PDF), that describes how Google pokes and prods at web forms to see if it can find things to submit in the form that…
How to ask for a scholarship →
I have had some experience reviewing scholarship requests from graduate students. Here are a few pointers:
For God sake! Know why you are going to graduate school! Boring reasons include: learning…
What will be the break out bands of 2009? →
There are so many artists going to SXSW, it is hard for me to decide which bands that I’d like to see. I know I’d like to catch a band that’s on the verge of breaking out - a band that just might…
Davos09: What’s missing in journalism? →
The media machers at Davos got together yesterday with three economists to ask what went wrong in financial coverage that did not warn of the crisis.
Like others leaders from other segments of…
WWGD? on BusinessWeek’s cover →
I am thrilled to say that What Would Google Do? is the cover story on BusinessWeek on the newsstand with an excerpt about the Googley car company.
But wait! There’s more!
* Here’s…
30 days of WWGD? - What about Apple? →
John Gapper in the Financial Times reviewed What Would Google Do? today and argued against my core concept of following Google’s lead. I’d link to the review, but it’s behind the pay wall. Irony…
11870.com and Strands partner to offer the best... →
We are happy to announce that Strands is partnering with the Spanish start-up 11870.com to offer the best personalized recommendations of services and places to their users.
11870.com,…
FBK Retreat 2009 Live! →
I already posted about FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and technological research (program). Today and tomorrow great speakers will share their insights with us and with all the world….
FBK Retreat 2009 Live! →
I already posted about FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and technological research (program). Today and tomorrow great speakers will share their insights with us and with all the world….
FBK Retreat 2009 Live! →
I already posted about FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and technological research (program). Today and tomorrow great speakers will share their insights with us and with all the world….
FBK Retreat 2009 Live! →
I already posted about FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and technological research (program). Today and tomorrow great speakers will share their insights with us and with all the world….
Davos09: The Davos vacuum →
Maybe in some session at Davos or over some dinner table, someone’s discussing substantial ideas and plans for ending the mess. But I haven’t been there. Instead, I was in a CNBC debate this morning…
30 days of WWGD? - The link changes everything →
Here’s a second day’s snippet from What Would Google Do? I’m going to jump all around the book, picking bits here and there. Today’s is on advertising. But first, here’s a link to a Newsweek Q&A…
Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web... →
The Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence is now accepting submissions of research papers and special-issue proposals. Here is a brief description of the journal:
Following…
Recked presentations are online →
The presentations for RECKED, are now available online. They are all pretty interesting.
Thanks to everybody who attended Recked.... →
Thanks to everybody who attended Recked, the informal event for engineers interested in recommender systems. It was awesome. And thanks to Robert Gaal for putting the event together.
…
Davos09: A crisis and failure of leadership →
The crisis the world is suffering through now is a failure of leadership. The leaders of the world are in Davos. If the world is watching what happens here this week, it will be to hear solutions…
Since you asked, Gatehouse →
Yes, I think you’re stupid. And dangerous. And doomed.
What Would Google Do? on sale today →
What Would Google Do? goes on sale today. Yay! You can buy it it (please) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Borders. Here’s the audiobook.
I hope to continue the…
Gatehouse link stupidity reaches settlement →
Thanks to a commenter, here’s a link to the PDF of a settlement letter between Gatehouse and The New York Times Company over Gatehouse’s inane suit over links. The Times agrees to take down its…
World's fastest bug fix →
I was using the nifty developer’s API at the Echo Nest to fill out some of the data for the SXSW Artist Catalog. I encountered a bug where the API would return an HTTP response code of 500 for some…
Weinberger’s wisdom →
David Weinberger at DLD says knowledge, as we’ve traditionally known or referred to it, is singlar, binary, simple, scarce, and settled. Those properties of knowledge, he says, are, not by accident,…
What's hot this year at SXSW? →
I’ve updated my SXSW Artist Catalog to include a list of the hottest bands attending SXSW. These are the bands that are getting the most buzz in the music blogs. I’m getting this hotness value from…
Newspaper subsidy? Try this… →
Want to subsidize news, newspapers, and journalism? I have an idea I could stand behind. But it’s not this: Nicolas Sarkozy has given France’s newspapers a €600million subsidy over three…
Papers as souvenirs →
Over the last week, I’ve seen no end of stories about American newspapers printing extra copies for the Obama inauguration. The subtext is rather sad: It takes an unparalleled historic event to put…
My father, Ted Linden, 1938 - 2009 →
My father, Ted Linden, died on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, a few months after being diagnosed with brain cancer. My father valued reason and rationality above all else, which made particularly cruel…
What comes first, theory or experiments? →
In “my research process“, I explain how I proceed to produce research papers. As a comment to my most recent post, Peter Turney wrote:
I don’t usually start writing until all the research is…
FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and... →
Very interesting retreat at my research institute FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)! Here there is the program of the retreat. There are many uber-interesting invited speaker. Personally I’m really…
FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and... →
Very interesting retreat at my research institute FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)! Here there is the program of the retreat. There are many uber-interesting invited speaker. Personally I’m really…
Book bragging →
Sorry for the bragging, but I just found out that What Would Google Do? has entered its second printing (before it goes on sale next week). I hope nice people buy it….
Also, next week, I plan to…
Google, the librarian →
I was interviewed by Norman Oder of Library Journal for What Would Google Do? Snippets:
Libraries already act like Google in many ways. Or I should say instead, Google acts like libraries. It is…
FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and... →
Very interesting retreat at my research institute FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)! Here there is the program of the retreat. Let me know if you are coming!
New directions for scientific and…
Montreal Music Homework →
Monday I shall be in Montreal, giving a talk about music recommendation and discovery at Doug Eck’s Music and Machine Learning course (or more properly, ‘Musique et Apprentissage Automatique’)….
Heh →
In Gatehouse’s anti-linking, anti-web suit against the New York Times Company, attorneys for the Times presented an email from Gatehouse digital head Howard Owens — who, of course, knows how the…
Why I write bad papers (sometimes) →
My Write good papers paper gives a fairly reliable recipe to write good papers. I think it is difficult to good wrong if you follow this recipe.
How is it, then, that I can still write bad…
The Logos of Music 1.0 →
We’ve all seen Rocketsurgeon’s logos of web 2.0 montage:
But I think I prefer this image of ‘logos’ of music 1.0.:
Click through to see the full size version on Flickr. …
Campaign by the internet, govern by the internet →
The Guardian’s Comment is Free asked me to write a post about the new White House blog. I’m about to get on a plane so I’m crossposting it here before that link goes up…..
Two years ago, when I …
If frogs had wings… →
A friend sent me a link to Ethan Kaplan’s prescient 1998 advice to his newspaper employer about the internet:
The Internet is not a medium for the presentation of static pages of content, where…
Finding artists at SXSW →
Here’s my desktop this evening, using my SXSW Artist Catalog to browse The Raveonettes, seeing photos of them on Flickr, and listening to them on Spotify (with the help of Alf’s supercool…
Now more than ever →
Friend Stephen Baker, author of the wonderful The Numerati, wrote a kind review of What Would Google Do?, eloquently summarizing its key message and also making a point I hope others see: that…
Travelin’ man →
I’m flying to Munich tonight to meet with editors at Burda and at the German publisher of What Would Google Do? (Was Würde Google Tun?). Then I get to attend and participate in the great Burda…
Emotions killing your intellectual productivity →
I have written much about intellectual productivity on this blog. If we were machines running mechanical tasks, our productivity would be high. Alas, we are human beings who get depressed or…
Google gets out of print →
I’m not shocked that Google abandoned its effort to sell print ads for newspapers. When the program started, I was dubious because I said that it could commodify print brands (magazines at…
More updates to the SXSW Artist Catalog .... →
I’ve done a few more updates to the SXSW Artist catalog. I’ve spent quite a bit of time working on improving data quality - trying to make sure that we maximize the chance that an artist will be…
Emotions killing your intellectual productivity →
I have written much about intellectual productivity on this blog. If we were machines running mechanical tasks, our productivity would be high. Alas, we are human beings who get depressed or…
Ask not… →
I was talking with a good news exec who’s trying to build a new kind of local news product but it was only hours after I got off the phone that I figured out how I should have told him what he’s…
Celebration →
I was a skeptic about Barack Obama, hearing emptiness in his words and fearing inexperience in his resume. No more. I was hoping to be proven wrong and so far it’s becoming clear that I was wrong. I…
The ecosystem of news →
If I were a communications prof, I’d make this study - which is to say I wish someone would:
Take one day’s journalism in America and analyze critically what we have now so we know what we are…
The lie of print advertising (followed by good... →
First, the bad news:
Ethan Zuckerman worries that the economics of print advertising in the past are unsustainable. And he’s right. Online has exposed the lie - the fraud, if you like; the…