05.15.07
Posted in business, wisdom of crowds at 12:23 am by Matthew Reinbold
Following quickly on the heels of their excellent ‘5 Enemies of the Future‘ Valleywag has just posted their list of ‘8 Companies We All Hate (and why we use them anyway)‘.
Rather than recapping their thoughts I thought I’d open things up. What websites/browser tech/etc. do you use despite hating the experience? Why do you continue to do so?
I’ll start and throw Hotmail out there. It doesn’t have the largest amount of free storage, is decidedly anti-geek cred, and pales in comparison with GMail. So why do I continue to use it? Because there are some people for whom that is the only address they know me by. Sure I could send out a mass mailing letting everybody know what my new(er) email address is but who honestly updates their address book after getting one of those? And, frankly, logging on once a month is easier.
Another technology I hate using but am forced to are Adobe PDFs. It’s bulky, its slow, and up until Firefox 2 leaving a reader document open in a tab would eventually crash a browser. It makes sense to put long, context sensitive information that can’t be devoured in one sitting in a PDF. However, taking a menu and linking to the pdf from your restaurant website rather than just having the contents on the website is extremely dumb.
What other web tech do you hate but can’t live without?
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01.11.07
Posted in business, wisdom of crowds at 11:59 am by Matthew Reinbold
There is a certain kind of mob mentality that can set in among certain web crowds. The blogsphere is often referred to as the ‘echo chamber’ because of the way a popular story will be repeated will little new insight or analysis on an amazing number of sites; they simply have a need for content and fill it as easily as possible. While the wisdom of crowd assumes that gathering a lot of opinions together will suss out the best ideas it doesn’t always work out that way.
Critical Metrics is not attempting to find the wisdom of crowds but crowds that are wise. It recognizes that sometimes ‘experts’ are capable of greater insight to recommend new stuff because of specialized training, experience, location, etc. The first area that they’re tackling is music; rather than algorithmic analysis to show new music that is worth listening too like Last.fm or Pandora they aggregate song lists from proven reviewers.
We’ll see how this plays out. I don’t think the future is going to be limited to either citizen or expert analysis. Instead, I think our information will be a combination of both. While standalone sites like Critical Metrics are interesting to occasionally browse I really would of liked to see it as a value add on top of one of my existing music water holes (Last.fm, Pandora, or Yahoo Music).
Via Business 2.0
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01.04.07
Posted in engaged crowds, video, wisdom of crowds at 1:32 am by Matthew Reinbold
Public TV is doing a very cool social experiment. For each Wednesday, starting tonight and for the next two weeks, they’re airing a different science program pilot. You can then go online and leave comments on which one you liked best. The best received program will start a regular run this fall. If you miss the show you can also go online and watch the bits for free.
The first entry was Wired Science, from the creators of Wired Magazine. While I had high hopes for the show, my comments were decidedly against the program:
I really had high hopes. The opening animations were slick and immediately invoked the Wired brand… then things went down from there. First off was the set – what was that? Did somebody let a four year old loose with the crayons? What happened to the bright, bold colors? There’s all this dead sea scroll stuff hanging about. Is this what happened to the house set from Blair Witch? Next, each host seemed incredibly uncomfortable; I’m sure they all have personalities in real life but here they were as bland as the meteor segment. Just when one would seem about to break into quirky humor the moment would be broken with a statement of the obvious. What made American Scientific Frontiers so great? The stories? NO! It was Alan Alda, acting like an excited child being allowed to play with big boy toys! He was infectious! And he didn’t have to do a stunt like cutting a plasma television in half either. What was that? From this bland, droning crew suddenly one is acting bubbly and saws a TV in half? The results of which we don’t even see as we cut immediately to computer animations? What? What a waste! The one point that Wired could of really stepped up and made something unique was the interview segment; with their name recognition they could pull some really interesting personalities in for a talk. But that’s only have the battle – when the interviewer asked ‘So rocket science is really rocket science?’ I wanted to throw the remote at the screen. What the hell kind of question is that? Why not just ask him ‘boxers or briefs’? The answer is probably a lot more television worthy than watching the guest blanch.
As you can tell, I was really disappointed. Did anyone else see it? What were your thoughts?
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12.28.06
Posted in RSS, video, wisdom of crowds at 12:06 pm by Matthew Reinbold
Mashable, a great resource for the latest and greatest in the social software scene, has posted it’s list of 2007 predictions. While end of the year lists are vogue and mostly unfounded Pete Cashmore’s predictions actually have the weight of savvy analysis behind them. His list:
1. Online Contests Become Huge
2. RSS Won’t go Mainstream but Widgets will Explode like a Sony battery
3. Online Video Fallout by everyone not named YouTube
4. YouTube becomes bigger than MySpace (but nobody can meaure that)
5. Mobile Social takes off (even reading the description I’m not sure what this is)
6. YouTube meets dating – because cute folks aren’t popular enough already
7. Metacafe acquired
8. End of Flock? Bah, I predicted that last quarter.
9. TV Show related social networks – ugh; just give me compelling entertainment. Don’t make me work for it.
10. YouTube Celebrity Appears in a Hollywood Movie.
Full descriptions of each are on the Mashable site. Is he right? What are your predictions?
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12.21.06
Posted in open source, wisdom of crowds at 8:23 pm by Matthew Reinbold
In software we’ve been able to see the benefits of open source. A community’s knowledge is tapped for the creation of software that benefits all. Can the same approach be applied to automobiles? That’s what the OsCar project is attempting to do:
For Merz, the process of collaborative design for aluminum and rubber is no different than for Linux and Firefox. Or, as Merz would have it, “hardware” over “software.”
“It’s about being modular without having too many modules,” Merz said. He’s broken down OScar’s design to six such modules: Board (the drivetrain), Body (chassis), Engines, Power, Safety, and Information Systems. Once the coupling points are agreed upon, design for each module can run independently. And as a bonus, a modular design allows the theoretical OScar driver to swap parts as needed, easily changing a passenger car to a pick-up truck.
Unfortunately applying software production to complex hardware isn’t going that well:
With open source software, contributors have the instant gratification of seeing their work validated and bundled into a rollout that’s quickly distributed to millions of users. With hardware, particularly something as complex as an automobile, the slowness and “will anything ever come of it?” perception can create an uphill battle. But the difference between designing a car and designing a browser might not be as big as people think. “Every car manufacturer tries to keep the design strictly virtual for as long as possible,” Merz said. “There’s nothing new in what we’re doing.” Once the design is complete, he’d market it to manufacturers.
So, yes or no, can an open source car make it to a store near you? Or are there just too many physical hurdles in the way?
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