The Taste Blog

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…

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…

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….

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…

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…

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…

Our third TWiG podcast is up. And here’s the video.

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…

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…

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:…

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…

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…

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…

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