August 2009
Links for 2009 08 30 →
Is this the end of the age of our social cohesion? Decline of bonding social capital in Canada.
Discrepancies in recent poll results may be a symptom of increasing fragmentation in Canadian…
The real sin: not running businesses →
Like priests looking for someone to sacrifice, Alan Mutter, Steve Buttry, Howard Owens, and Steve Yelvington have been on the lookout for the sin that led newspapers astray. For Mutter, it’s…
Welcome to CUNY →
CUNY is streaming my opening lecture & discussion with the incoming interactive journalism class at 2p ET today:
Trading compression for speed with vectorization →
Bitmap indexes are used by search engines (such as Apache Lucene), they are available in DBMSes such as Oracle and PostgreSQL. They are used in column stores such as the Open Source engines …
Tocqueville and the Tyranny of the Majority →
From Tocqueville and the Tyranny of the Majority.
Tocqueville argues that there is little toleration of difference of opinion in democratic societies.
“I know of no country in which, speaking…
Social Networking in Plain English →
I could not have not explained better! ;)
Links for 2009 08 28 →
Distance Is Not Dead: Social Interaction and Geographical Distance in the Internet Era
Paper by Jacob Goldenberg and Moshe Levy: “We argue that the opposite is the case: in our contemporary…
The Stern Broadcasting Corp. →
In today’s Daily News, David Hinckley and Talkers’ Michael Harrison speculate that when Howard Stern’s Sirius XM contract is up, he could use the internet to start his own broadcasting company.
…
To be smarter, ignore external rewards →
Last night, I watched a great talk by Dan Pink—author of several self-help books. He made a compelling point and he cited research papers. I went and read these research papers and I had great…
Links for 2009 08 25 →
The emotional content of large-scale texts: The happiness of bloggers, song lyrics, and presidents
Very interesting slides from wefeelfine guys
(tags: wefeelfine, emotional, …
Hyperdistribution →
The newspaper industry should be sobered by Martin Langeveld’s calculations, based on the Newspaper Association of America’s misplaced bragging about Nielsen internet data, that only about a…
Scifi book recommendations from my summer list:... →
Currently, I am finishing off House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. I am fascinated by Reynolds’ universe. Let me quote the beginning of the book:
I was born in a house with a million rooms, built…
Open Access: just for articles! →
Many funding agencies and some universities require researchers to publish their articles as open access. That is, research articles must be available to all, freely. The main argument in…
Three nails, one coffin →
Line by line, newspapers’ businesses are falling apart as they shrink and become less efficient for advertisers against the competition and reach of online. Consider:
* Coupon giant Valassis …
Isn’t a game content, too? →
The Associated Press is refusing to sign for credentials under the conditions put on control of game coverage by the SEC. OK, I think what the SEC is doing is silly, too, especially now that every…
The culture at Netflix →
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has a very interesting presentation, “Our Freedom & Responsibility Culture”, with some thought-provoking ideas on how to run a company. Some excerpts:
Imagine if every…
NewBizNews on On the Media →
On the Media’s Bob Garfield interviewed me about the CUNY New Business Models for News Project.
I made one error: the new news organization’s editorial staff after three…
geoTwitter and news and more →
Twitter announced a geolocation API today and it set my mind to spinning with implications that I tweeted like a Gatling gun:
* For news, it would be possible to verify that witnesses reporting…
A recipe for interesting Computer Science research... →
In Are your research papers telling original stories?, I claimed that the main benefits of the typical research paper were that:
the contribution to the state-of-the-art is clear (what did you…
NewBizNews & Hyperpersonal news streams →
We presented our CUNY New Business Models for News at the Aspen Institute and on the web yesterday. I’ve been sitting in meetings nonstop, so I haven’t had the chance to read all the reaction yet….
Do hash tables work in constant time? →
Theory in Computer Science—as in any other field—is based on models. These models make many hidden assumptions. This is one of the fundamental reason why pure theory is wasteful. We must…
Scientists and their emotions →
Science is not a matter of pure logic. Some of the best scientists lived through intense emotions—it shaped their lifes. Here are a few quotes:
Ludwig Boltzman (invented entropy): When he could…
Can we make make all advertising useful, relevant,... →
I have a new post at blog@CACM titled, “Is advertising inherently deceptive?” It discusses some of the moral and ethical qualms I have when working on personalized advertising. It attempted to…
The public life →
The Guardian asked me to write a column about the transparent life and my writing about my prostate cancer. Here it is:
* * *
In the company of nudists, no one is naked and there is nowhere…
This Week in Google #3 →
Our third TWiG podcast is up. And here’s the video.
Aspen: live →
Today we’re presenting the work of CUNY’s New Business Models for News Project at the Aspen Institute’s Forum on Communication and Society .
Here is the presentation, which uses new software…
The Nielsen revolt →
I was asked by a reporter today what I thought of TV companies revolting against Nielsen and threatening to start their own measurement company. My response:
I’ve been waiting for something like…
On the link economy →
Arnon Mishkin says he has found the fallacy of the link economy but I think his argument is itself built on some fallacies, among them:
* If links are not valuable, then fine, get rid of them:…
Picking a web page at random on the Web →
To do statistics over the Web, we need samples. Thus, I want to know how to pick a Web page at random, without making much effort. If you are Google or Microsoft, it is easy. But what about the rest…
Links for 2009 08 14 →
Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students’ Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation (Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication)
This study…
Sustaining journalism →
Finally catching up with David Folkenflik’s NPR piece yesterday about Columbia J-school’s efforts to help news companies update:
And then there’s the BBC Media Show about pay walls and…
Great opportunity for post-doc positions in the... →
Since one year together with my colleague napo, I started and lead a research group in FBK, called SoNet. Our research focus is studying Web2.0 and social networking. You can have a look at our
The small c: Stern & Imus →
I just did an interview about my cancer with Steve Langford from Howard 100 News, who really is an intrepid reporter. I told him I could certainly not describe the full details of going through this…
The Value of Social Network, by IBM research →
From http://smallblue.research.ibm.com/projects/snvalue/
The goal of this project is to integrate financial capital, human capital and social network analysis to formally and quantitively…
The small c and me →
I have cancer, prostate cancer.
When the doctor told me, he said that if you’re going to get it, this is the one to get. It made feel as if I’d just gotten an upgrade on Cancer Air. It was caught…
Links for 2009 08 07 →
Google Wave dev preview hands-on and impressions
(tags: google, wave, sonet)
A review of “Hello World: Computer Programming for... →
I learned programming on my own when I was twelve years old with a TRS-80 and Microsoft Basic. The documentation that came with the TRS-80 was fantastic. Alas, today, no vendor would ever…
Rupert charges →
The Guardian asked me for quick comment on news that Rupert Murdoch, Mr. MySpace, plans to charge for content. I pulled off the road on my way home and wrote this.
One line trimmed out for…
Links for 2009 08 05 →
How networks of trust can unlock innovation - Collaboration - Articles - News, views and events - NESTA
(tags: trust, network, collaboration, Karen, Stephenson, twit)
The Golden Link →
Thomson Reuters digital boss Chris Ahearn stands up in favor of the link economy (as opposed to someone else we know). It’s sensible talk and he suggests we have more such talk about how best…
Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the... →
World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.
Links for 2009 08 03 →
Quote 5 Words From the Associated Press? That’ll Be $12.50
If you quote 5 words or more from Associated Press, you must pay $2.50 per word. Copyright madness at time of the Web.
(tags: …
Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts →
I have two podcasts to plug this week:
* The latest Guardian Media Talk USA podcast is up. David Folkenflik, NPR correspondent, and John Temple, ex editor of the Rocky Mountain News and now a…
Guardian column: Micohoo vs. Gulliver →
My Guardian column this week on the Microhoo search lashup:
In bringing together their search traffic, Microsoft and Yahoo are fighting an unwinnable war. Worse, they are still fighting the last…
The John Henry fight of man v. algorithm →
I interviewed Josh Cohen, product manager for Google News, this week for the Guardian MediaTalkUSA podcast (out early next week) and asked him how many clicks to news sources Google News causes….
Why I hardly ever blog about my ongoing research →
When I started my blog in 2004, my goal was to blog about my research. It never happened.
You may think that I am afraid a reader could steal my ideas, or that I might worry about looking silly….