3.07.2003

Ross Mayfield has a post about "multi-modal communication tools in meetings" which gives flesh and blood to Cory Doctorows fictional ad-hoc leadership who back channels and pings each other's whuffie during committee. The only thing missing of course is that software tool for Whuffie. But I guess for now people can boink Google and Whois for background. (you might even find more info then you want or need.)
see photo of one such meeting
This link for Pandorabots.com sent to me by Josh [Photoblur.com/KeyLime design] who is stopping by this weekend before his flight back to Seattle. (I have a little pea berry of a treat for you and the wifey.) I saw some sort of custom emailable robot that you could record your voice to at MP4.com Vivendi Universal's pet project video clip site (atomfilms rip) awhile back so I know it is not exactly new, but this is so cool.
I had also heard about the A.L.I.C.E. project, but never really understood it. The artificial intelligence while in the early stages (HAL 9000 circa 2001) is still pretty good. I sat and had a conversation with my prototype chatbot Deardra today for a long time. I want her to become my secretary but I think I could spend a year programming her by myself. You can rent an Oddcast chatbot for your website from v-host SitePal. But the examples are really poor as they are not interactive at all. According to the BBC news chatbots with the face of your medical specialist could be the newest craze. via blogdex

3.05.2003

hypertext links are blog currency?

While smart web developers figured out early on that affiliate programs and link exchange were smart marketing. Bloggers have taken it a step further with blogrolls or lists of links as a form of "currency". Following a trackback, I found this post by mac software developer Rainer Brockerhoff at his blog billed as a "Stochastic Aleatory Ontological Expostulations". It appears that he sees links as a form of Whuffie, "hey 'huckleberry thats a mighty large blogroll your hefting theya". His large list of links gets him a ranking of 108th most prolific linkers at The Blogging Ecosystem.
To borrow from wordsmith Tim Oren at Due Diligence: I am not sure if blogrolls are "fungible". Meaning it is not a goods or commodities that is freely exchangeable. Really anyone could just take an entire top 500 (of 101,617) links and blogrol them onto a page. This would likely build some traffic. But to me when I scope a blogs 'linkum, I expect it to have some relevance to the content. I especially like when they categorize or define the hyperlinks. My blogroll is a small list of blogs that I regularly visit and that seem to share some of the interests that I have. Then again I do not spend much time in the "social blogoshpere" that teens munge about in, with blog titles like "my sucky life", and posts like "I am having my period today." These blogrolls tend to be links of their friends who have blogs, a smaller network of buddies. While, I try not to blog about blogging as too many sites exercise this masturbatory behavior, I think the idea of social networking and it's complex application in the blogosphere is worthy of study. Check out this cool graph and indepth study from Ross Mayfield's Blog. [UPDATE: Also see Technorati's David Sifrey's archived post about this.]

Whuffie legwarmers the new cyber fashion?


While it all strikes me as a peek at Kelli Osbourne's wardrobe, it is interesting to see the style of things to come. It is almost as if the clothing is transforming the wearer into a cartoon character. visit technokitty.com and peruse their fashion. I did not notice any "neck cowls" though.

3.04.2003

Your good reptation is worth 7.6 percent in a retail transaction?

Yes according to Frank P. Ramsey and Richard Zeckhauser.
Ebay is the new model under a proposed Harvard study seeking funding on reputation economics.
A previous study using 13 million pages of Ebay data shows that the reputation system was employed. It also showed that 99% of feedback was positive.
Harvard proffessors say "These electronic markets must be understood. They are going to become much more a part of our lives,"
[Article here via boingboing]