Disqus - Friends of ezu

Re: State of the Chinese Blogosphere

davidorban — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 05:00:00 -0000

Very valuable post! In the USA and in Europe there is very little understanding of how the Chinese internet works, and what are the drivers of ordinary Chinese to go online, what are their interest, and the way they face with issues.

More understanding will help better analyze what it really means that the Chinese internet today is larger than the English speaking one.

Re: IReader Uses Semantic Analysis to Summarize Linked Pages

davidorban — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:12:39 -0000

The best similar tool that I have come accross is Clearforest Gnosis that has a rich scheme to classify the type of text, and loads its classification in the sidebar.

Re: [VIDEO TUTORIAL] How to fill in your Profile

davidorban — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:17:58 -0000

Your tutorials are very nicely done. What software do you use to smoothly zoom in on details during post-production?

Actually there is a way to use a voice in podcasts that is alternative to the one you have in RL. While it is not perfect, it is getting better and better, just like the rendering of one's avatar. I use it to speak the intro and outro of my podcasts (here's one about democracy in SL, for example if you want to sample). It is the synthetic text-to-speech voice from Dragon NaturallySpeaking! You can choose male, or female, pitch, and tweak the pronounciation, and intonation just writing text that when read out by the robot sounds the way you want, even if wrongly spelled,,, or with extra commas.

I also use Dragon in SL to dictate into the chat input field, and it works very, very well, enabling me to talk faster than anybody else I ever met in-world. :)

Try it out, and let me know

'Davidorban Agnon'

Re: Better bookmarking of your inworld favorites

davidorban — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:11:53 -0000

The new protocol sedcondlife:// should be registered by the Second Life client installation in the browsers as a known one, so that it would become automatically highlighted. Or maybe through a firefox extension?

It is the case with Skype for example that it registers the skype:// protocol, and the more generic callto:// protocol which you can bind to other voip clients as well (I bind it to Gizmo, for example.).

Re: Second Life and the Blog-o-Sphere

davidorban — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:46:32 -0000

Yes, the issue is attention management: the web encourages distributed attention, and online worlds require undivided attention. The synchronous communication with avatars cannot be postponed. An other phenomenon related to this is how often an avatar will refrain from sending you an IM if you are offline, after the first line saying 'hello', even if you do receive the message in its entirety, either via email or the next time you log in.

Re: Posting to resume shortly…

davidorban — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:14:28 -0000

You might want to try speech recognition software. It has become with the latest versions very dependable. I use it a lot with great satisfaction. Maybe not for short entries, but when you want to write a long post, it will be very useful in my opinion.

Re: Posting to resume shortly...

davidorban — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:14:28 -0000

Re: BerlinBlase: Follow Web 2.0 Berlin Expo

davidorban — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 01:25:59 -0000

Brady,

it's been a lot of fun talking at Ignite :) Thanks for having me, and congrats for the great event.

David

Re: We are designers

davidorban — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 03:13:25 -0000

Benvenutissimi online con il nuovo blog di Sketchin! :) Mi auguro, anzi sono sicuro, che questo rimarrà una voce genuina e non mediata i esperienze e spunti creativi, pur essendo un'espressione aziendale. Infatti, la conversazione rimane tale solo così, evitando la sterilità ormai scoperta e inutile dei comunicati stampa. Le organizzazioni che sanno abbracciare, come Sketchin, il rischio e il coinvolgimento delle nuove forme di comunicazione sono le sole a raggiungere la velocità e l'adattabilità oggi necessarie!

David

Re: Some Conversations have shifted to Twitter

davidorban — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:55:20 -0000

Yes, this stuff is for real.
http://twitter.com/davidorban

As lifestreams grow, I am looking forward to the next generation of services, which won't be updated once or twice a day as blogs, or dozens of times a day as twitter, but hundreds, or thousands of times a day. Just as often what matters is not one post, or tweet, but the second order knowledge about them, who links to the post, who reacts and how to the tweet, in the same way, and even more so, these new services won't be for direct individual human consumption, but we'll enjoy their aggregated, and pre-digested results. Machines will generate our lifestream, and machines will read it, but humans will benefit.

Examples? Here's a couple:
#1 gps positioning data of where you are to a few feet precision, updated every minute. Benefit: search and rescue operations, dealfinder, you-didn't-know-what's-around-the-corner-you'll-like, ...
#2 health data, like heartbeats, EEG, etc. Benefit: healthcare, personal relationships, stress management, whoknows?

And of course these are just what we can think of now. The really cool ones are going to be the surprises out of left field!

Re: Principi per libertà dei dati pubblici

davidorban — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:26:27 -0000

Alessandro,

grazie di aver notato e ripreso il mio post! :)
Sono sicuro che con il tempo, eventualmente con l'intervento direttamente di un livello decisionale EU se le autorità nazionali non reagiranno, questi principi verranno pienamente adottati.

Una delle ragioni che vedo per ciò è il vantaggio competitivo differenziale che anche un'amministrazione solo un poco più efficente ha su un'altra. Con il tempo il vantaggio accumulato deve forzare quella più passiva ad adeguarsi ai metodi vincenti.

David

Re: Learning Zeitgeist: The Future of Education is Just-in-Time, Multidisciplinary, Experimental, Emergent

davidorban — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 05:35:25 -0000

I very, very much agree with your post here. Education is key to our future, and innovation in education is not only, even not mostly about technology. It is about a changing mentality and active involvement. Students and teachers alike must learn this! :)

Re: My birthday resolution -- I'm going to read Foucault's Pendulum

davidorban — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 13:21:06 -0000

If you want to read Eco, then I recommend 'The Name Of The Rose', which in my opinion is better.

Re: Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you

davidorban — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:32:47 -0000

How do you feel the role of blogs evolving? Is twitter a new medium of self expression? There are those who already have a hard time keeping up with what blogs, and the relevance mechanisms that the comments and the posts sustain. How will these people cope with our online identities further fragmenting as lifestreaming becomes the norm?

Traffic for traffic's sake has never been a good SEO advice. What is the right balance between keeping a focused theme, but still project ones all-around persona on a personal blog?

David

Re: Relief

davidorban — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:02:07 -0000

Hey, Bru!

It'll be good to see and read more of you online. I am also curious, and if you can share a URL I'll be glad to take a look. Also of course I am looking forward to read about the lessons you learned!

Congratulations!

David

Re: Scienza, società e reti a SciNet

davidorban — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:47:40 -0000

Quante sono le parti che interloquiscono? Intuitivamente potrebbe sembrare che siano due: scienza e società. Ma penso che in base a ruoli specifici ce ne siano molti altri. La politica, l'accademia, la comunicazione occupano posizioni che sono spesso in contrasto per strumenti e obiettivi.

Re: Multilingual WP and Disqus. How, if at all?

davidorban — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:38:55 -0000

That is not that much my concern... It is not likely that anybody wanting to comment were confused or stopped by the English interface of the commenting system.

I am more interested in understanding how to properly tag each comment as belonging to a given language, so that I could then generate comment feeds for one or the other, etc.

Re: Scienza, società e reti a SciNet

davidorban — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:42:46 -0000

Richi, non esitare a tornare indietro e commentare quello che ti stimolava, sperando che ci sia ancora lo spunto e la voglia! :)

Re: Le immagini volano per Interdet di Rovigo

davidorban — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:04:23 -0000

Grazie Fabrizio, anche per l'iniziativa che dimostri tra questa serie di eventi, SLcamp e altri. Sì, Andrea si è messo in contatto via email con me. Spero che potremo anche rivederci poi... Sono contento che sia venuto anche se non c'ero!

Re: Current e l’evoluzione del contenuto

davidorban — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:11:38 -0000

Grazie! Stavo rimuginando sull'applicabilità dello stesso meccanismo all'incrocio di altri medium tradizionali con la rete e ne ho trovato diversi possibili esempi. Anche nella rete stessa è possibile inquadrare in questo modo alcuni siti come Techmeme, per esempio.

Re: Current e l’evoluzione del contenuto

davidorban — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:52:43 -0000

Davide, hmm.. capisco il riferimento che fai all'eventualità di autoreferenzialità. Penso che se il particolare canale non è in grado di uscire verso un audience più ampio, allora questo si possa verificare. Ma nel caso di Current a priori l'esistenza di coloro che 'consumano' i contenuti attraverso la televisione evita l'incestuosità.

Un altro aspetto di confronto con le pubblicazioni scientifiche riguarda la maggiore trasparenza e apertura delle votazioni rispetto ai giudizi troppo spesso riservati che possono nascondere elementi non-oggettivi. Magari non verso la persona, ma verso il metodo o l'argomento, ecc. Le difficoltà delle rivoluzioni scientifiche, in quanto punti di vista sulla realtà, derivano anche da questo.

Re: Report: Al Gore's CurrentTV Offered $100 Million For Digg In 2006

davidorban — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:56:59 -0000

I recently attended the launch of Current in Italy, which is their first non-English speaking venture. Al Gore was there, and I had the chance to spend a few minutes talking to him. Yes, it is great to see a professional politician who is indeed legit. He does walk the walk.

There is also a video that I posted about our meeting on the OpenSpime website.

Re: Disqus and Seesmic Pair Up For Video Comments

davidorban — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:33:50 -0000

I think I made this happen :)
http://twitter.com/davidorb... and http://twitter.com/seesmich...
If yes, I can be proud. If not, I still can be proud that I too had a good idea.

Re: Accelerating the debate on Climate Crisis

davidorban — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:52:07 -0000

Yes, I liked the answer as well, even if it is somewhat for the moment unsubstantiated. Al Gore said that he believes a new majority will form, and that this new majority will quickly embrance the environmental concerns that the public debate raised, turning it into legislation.

That is a nice hope, but we will have and see if it happens.

Re: On becoming vegan: five good reasons

davidorban — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:40:10 -0000

Steven: yes, I want to take on more physical activity, in inverse proportion to my weight. I used to do a lot, so now I only have to revive it, and adapt it to my being 40+ instead of 20+.

I also realize that there can be fat vegetarians, and fat vegans. There are fat cows too, so there you go. This is the reason I am mostly eliminating bread and pasta too, concentrating mostly on unprocessed plants as foodsource. I don't eat sweets, and deserts of any kind. So that should help too...