Disqus - Latest Comments for bertilhatt

Re: Did You Delete Your Facebook Account?

bertilhatt — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:55:04 -0000

I'm surprized at how few people actually left, compared the the scare-mongering traditional media felt the need to pull. Most of those who did appear to have done it by lack of any things to do.

Re: Understanding Open Stack, the Connective Tissue of the Social Web

bertilhatt — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:34:07 -0000

Thank you for pointing out at all that, and trying to simplify it. As much as I'd love to encourage you, I've been trying to synthesize these approaches for quite some time, and if anything, they are changing. Most ideas started vague and promissing; they evolved a lot since — generally towards the direction of the general understanding. For instance: OpenID and OAuth appeared very different from the point of view of thse who developped them; anyone who sees them things they are the first and second step of a logical concept — and this is precisely what they became.

If you think time is ripe for a report, fine — I still have many questions about several features that don't seem to be well integrated yet. I trust that the comments will be able to be pooled (although RSS hasn't been able to do it for years); I'm not so sure context-awareness is so well understood or even manageable by the developpers of such technologies, and I'd bet that it will break the current model, or make it the most spectacular social revolution ever. Therefore: starting a report is a fantastic idea; but unless you are ready to have an obsolete analysis before it is out, arm yourself with patience; so far, it's mostly an enthousiastic and fascinating conversation.

Re: Why ‘Friending’ Will Be Obsolete

bertilhatt — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:44:52 -0000

I guess what you are saying is that the awkwardness of formally accepting someone as a relation will disappear. I don't know if this mean physical-like contact will be the model, and I doubt it. Facebook and Google have been quite efficient in using your browsing history — and I guess something along the lines of a list of suggested people you might want to call, write to, meet with, etc. based on your actions, and the possibility to explore those previous interactions would make sense. The fading formalism with help the current main problem that is hard-to-accept banning or un-friending — but I'm afraid more pervasive recommendation won't help with balkanisation.

Re: What’s after the Social Web?

bertilhatt — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:35:12 -0000

I believe what will come next has been preparing for a long time, and is clearly identified as Web 3, or Semantic Web: a finer understanding of document's structure. Video, image and speech-recognition, sentence harversting, etc. would be the technologies at stake — because they allow far more insightful interpretations.

One aspect that will come with that is that your communications will be heavily dependent on filtering and relevance algorithms. Such algorithms will become too important to trust increasingly large Web companies with, so service modularity will expand, decentralized processing too and semantic description too: you'll be able to choose, and have on your personal devices layman-understandable programs that will help you sort privacy, relevancy and social concerns.

One of the key features to appear will be along the lines of a map of local friends you should call to meet-up with — however, the key aspect will not be positioning (GPS+Maps), the friend list (Social Graph) or where to meet (aggregated suggestion) but an activity, calendar, current focus that automatically sort between people who'd be interested in your latest adventures, against those going through a harsh time. For instance: finding in the sea of FriendFeed comments someone saying he would like to know more about a company who's pitch you just saw, correlating it with the fact that his wife is jet-lagged, so he probably won't dine with her, etc.

You don't need to know about his wife's travel, but he could have a high availability score based on private details that is not visible per se, but that he'd share with legitimate pings from your own FriendSearch feature.

Re: Google is missing an important marketing angle: video demos

bertilhatt — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 22:06:30 -0000

Apparently, there already are some demos about some functionalities on Gmail.

Re: Billy Jones notes my copyright is being infringed on

bertilhatt — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:34:18 -0000

Robert,

Explain the situation in a short, comprehensive mail to:
abuse(a)google.com, abuse(a)adsense.com, abuse(a)yahoo.com and abuse(a)live.com

Checking takes two clicks, which is less than most usual frauds.

This not should prevent them not from existing, but from being either findable, or earning any ad-money.

If those come up everyweek, look for the text of the first line of your last posts; check it's a splog and send another mail. Blog about it. Repeat until the teams there realize who you are, and how many person you represent.

What they need to do is to add a feature that checks the texts of two feeds are very close. If you have several feeds that you write, you will need a tool to declare declare them as legitimate copies.

IMHO, Ad-Sense would be the more efficient corner.

Tony,
If you can automate that process, or obtain trust from the big ones to check for them and just send them a URL-to-ban list, you are rich.

Re: Gmail team, you out there?

bertilhatt — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:24:53 -0000

Scoble,

The main reason I don't like journalist (and I prefer bloggers) is that they tend to write about problems they don't understand (in my own little Europe at least); the bloggers (whose stream I read) tend to stay on topics they master. From my point of view, you are getting closer to that line; do more background work: the less and the better your post, the more appreciated your blog.

I've been active on most Gmail Help forums, and they are two things you learn from there:

- most users are really clueless, and a fair share is pissed and plain rude: I mean, more than the usual forum. I'd love to reply "RTFM" most if the time, but there is little doubt most won't get it, and in any case, it wouldn't help; typing always the same advice, and instead of getting thanks, having more newbies yelling their ignorance out (instead of reading previous post) is boring--this tends to get on everyone's nerve. I am studying user's appreciation, so to me its a goldmine, but for the coders, it must be though; their response pattern tend to concurr that too (nice, nice, not so, not, away for a while, and back nice).

- most demands are watched, very rapidly, but usually without comments: instead of explictely caring about individual users, Google approach is very much not "humane": they do it, in the code---because that's the fairest, simplest way to do it, and the obvous one for developers. Make a fine product, make it better; no need for PR if you are doing your job. I tend to prefer this approach: I don't want to pay more (or have more ads in that case) to have a guy that failed a carrier in marketing explaining to me what I should do when I am simply mentioning a clearly isolated bug (and hope nothing but ot have it corected whenver it tops a priority list that has to be secret). And I realy prefer to know a good coder is working on something no one can replace him with. Most users complain about this attitude: no phone lines, no human speaking. I try to reasure people, and tell them they are listening---but they are not coming back with a smile, nope.

They are tricks though: if you mail about an error, you get an automated message; most people seem to get upset by geting a receipt confirmation. If the problem needs help, someone usually explain that replying to this message will get you "a real person" (That ridiculous, as the first message has been red already, simply not replied to).

In this particular case, Google is not responsible: that person probably got a key-stoke logger, an easy-to-crack password... Neither case is covered by any digital service. What update should any service do in that instance? What line of code to change? Gmail developpers are certainly useless in that case. What proof do they have that the plaintiff is actually the user? Hint: they are not allowed to look into the account at any case, and the hacker knows about the private question, and all the messages.

Their apparently are heavily under-staffed: how many more people will they need to hire (and they have issues hiring, because of their demanding process) to deal with a problem they are not responsible for? On a Beta service that comes wihtout any warranty?

Of course legal is for a**hole lawyers---but it's more than that from Google point of view: they claim, they know the product is not fully ready---and that case proves it is not. They might need to come up with additional security for a service most people will use for storring all they really sensitive info.

On the short term, or without such a solution, should they lower they hiring standards because their users are clueless about computer security? I'm not trying to be offensive, but to underline teh debate.

Their way to do it is (as they have done already) make the simplest and decisive advise on how to avoid those problems; the day someone abide those and get into trouble, they will adapt. So far, their legal waiver pages have been the only one I read; they care about making those things clear.

They think in large numbers---and they have to---do they think about the one? I don't know: if they do, it's behind the scene (I received private messages from them, not important stuff; but the point is they do it.)---but I beleive they do, as all cases tend to go quiet after less than a week.

On a personal note: I am very upset to read someone who thinks that she can bother someone as busy as a VP for a problem anyone can appreciate. Senior executives are for though calls; this demands at most interviews to identify the hacking technique. Three days is long whit your ID stolen---but not from a over-worked professional point of view. Sending 11 applications won't help that--it simply sends the message "I'm not ready to deal with that serious situation cold-headed", i. e. the wrong messsage. If I had to deal with several of those issues, I'd prefer to have this case wait for her to cool down. I know it's wrong: I actually tend to go for the most upset first, in the forum and in life---but you can't blame folks from Google for their attitude and come up with a bad one.

Last point: all the cases of suspected Gmail ID theft that I have hear about on the forum are related to Paypal; I think that is odd---and I'd like to have an idea on witch one is the easier to compromise, and some statistic on how many of those had the same password for both.

Re: Gmail team, you out there?

bertilhatt — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 23:21:52 -0000

I am not sure the phone thing would work for any country: remember it's a global company---they have to consider phone lines being spied on by totalitarian regimes, for instance; but such an opt-in feature might help (and I can imagine from other deatils that their already are moving there). Hackers tend to know they should use IP shells.

But again, I'm definitely not a security consultant. If you have a clear idea on hos this works, you certainly can offer them to use that (in a very cold and anonimous on-line form): the average suggestion to update time is extremely short.

Oh: and, for Google, "customers" are called "users". I was not trying to put them down, but to offer a possible developper's perspective, and mostly to point out that Gmail was facing a unique situation, of having people ready to store all their personal information in one place---while the closest equivalent, Paypal, can rely on a banking system that can react, Google see yet another limit to being such a lean company.

They certainly need to come up with a solution, but I for one would rather have Sheryl Sandberg think about how to make a sensitive long-term solution, that spending the same time quieting someone upset. The irony is that the Google Toolbar anti-phising feature as saved thousands of other sites.

Re: Gmail team, you out there?

bertilhatt — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 23:34:09 -0000

Last (Sorry to take so much space)
I can't find her being anywhere around Gmail-User, the official help forum you can reach by clicking on "Help" in Gmail, or find with a simple search.
There she might have noticed that several uses have been experiencing some access issues.

Re: Gmail team, you out there?

bertilhatt — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 02:24:01 -0000

Kamal,
You misread me: I was not trying to say Google's attitude is right, or the best--just that they see things differently. Their perspective collides with an increasingly personal on-line information. I certainly never though of anything close to "highly qualified PhD employees do not deal with low level customer service issues": they do, in what they think is a more efficient way.

They want to organize the world's knowledge and only have a few thousand employees: no way to handle that without pushing automation and algorithms to their limit. Using Google is assuming an CS PhD can do better because his code is brilliant, and with a more functional UI, because few company have such a large of they efforts toward that. What proved relevant for search (e.g. against Yahoo! human inventory and inded thematic indexes) demands a different attitude regarding bugs too: you need to write, and accept a better answer demands more time. Bad patching is faster, but not preferable. Coders don't answer the phone: they do the job silently; with intimacy involved, this can trigger very violent reactions. Sending 11 reports for one incident is the kind of attitude that kills the direct relation with the developpers Google pionnered, and pushes toward more red-tape.

Saying "Look: she's not happy!" misses that aspect. I'm not neglecting the consumer rage, or the effort to educate them; I just think these need to be compared to what they trigger. And I'd be happy to measure how much Google taugh to common users and compare.

Take the recent Facebook trainwreck: if they'd try to calm down, abide the demands, come right away to the window, the idea of having feeds in a SNS would be dead. They prefered to go in favor of the best service (because, somehow, they were able to know better) and think about it, and code like mad for three days---and come up (a little late) with the over-all best solutions. Some users still wanted to have the whole thing shut down; but instead of going for the loudest, they went for what they experience told them was the long-term.

People complain Google maintains things in Beta "too long": this could be one of the reason why.

What I would be tempted to think is that there are some updates on Gmail security procedures, not all go so well, and some log-ins don't work (see the forum); what goes behing the scene might be too big for this isolated case to get the priority. She also might have over-interpreted a failed log-in; this won't prevent here from receiving a personal response--but not just now, maybe.

I do not want to say anything personal about Microsoft patches policy, or customer relations; but anyone around me (including my computer-illiterate mom) could tell you that what you describe is very very different than most people's experience. Or rather, to sound positive: let's say the quality of Microsoft products lead me to learn far more on computer inner workings than I would have expected.

(Funny enough, I've been looking on Hotmail.com, and couldn't find any form to fill in case of a ID theft)

Re: Gmail team, you out there?

bertilhatt — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 13:51:04 -0000

Rebellin Woman had her PayPal account hacked, witch had the same password as Gmail. Google safety features were never breached. I appreciate everyone has too many accounts to use different passwords, but having a different one for your bank and for the place where you store everything, that sounds like the bare minimum to me.

As they cannot look into your mail (for both legal and technical reason) there was no way to get out of there, except close the account: taking four days to make such a big decision, and to be sure the account was actually hacked and not just experiencing security issues, that doesn't seem much to me.

Now the question is: should a mail provider, offering life-long archive, keep an access to your mail?
I'd rather not.

Kamal: the problem I have seen the most is a computer completely stuck (hence no way to surf or mail) with a non-existent hotline. Those lucky to have a friend writing on behalf of them received a reply that they were not entitled to spend someone else's assistance allowance.

Re: Wordpress wins big Le Monde.fr account

bertilhatt — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:21:23 -0000

And it was very much needed, as LeMonde was crappy.

Pierre: not sure LeMonde (center left) users would have done anything following Loïc Lemeur's opinion, as most of the French blogosphere nailed him for openly saying he favors N. Sarkozy (the liberal right wind Home Office Minister). This is election year here!

I've been hesitating on what platform to use for setting up my blog anytime, and this says it all.

Re: Shhh, don’t tell anyone…

bertilhatt — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:18:12 -0000

Mmmh: can't you put all those mails into a personal file (.pst) and then read them with Entourage? I'm not the Microsoft geek I used to be, but this sounds feasible to me.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

bertilhatt — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 07:14:26 -0000

A heated debate: I guess the teaching for tech companies is not to send anything, but have the potential blogger fill in a form like:

[] Send me the disk (and a return envelope)

[] Send me your product with supporting platform :Wink:

[] I'll buy it, just allow me to do so in advance

Re: “Default” racism

bertilhatt — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:15:43 -0000

Scobble,

Their are several ways to understand your statement:

1. People tend to assume they view is the default one (what psychologist call the "ego-bias", and it is significantly stronger in the USA then in other western society); saying "I'm no racist but he has no chance" could be interpreted as a revealing mechanism -- and shows racism indeed.

2. People acknowledge that a share of voter are racists: you can blame them to face that without a urge to change it --- and it's a milder form of racism, that can be justified by a very broad definition of "Freedom of Speech": "I disagree with you, but I will fight to death to allow you to say it" famously said Voltaire. Some countries have laws against that; it is illegal not only to suport, but also to consider Nazism acceptable as a political doctrine in France, and I think Germany, but not USA I believe.

3. You can reckon many people understand why such a statement "make somehow sense" (Black people historically were given less responsibility) --- unlike: "American will never vote for a President with a name starting by vowel." that would puzzle anyone. However void for anyone, this issue still stand: it's a mechanism first described by Thomas C. Shelling (Nobel prize in Economics 2005). It explains very well financial bubbles: no one thinks such equity can be actually worth that much, but people agree that they can buy it anyway, as someone (with the same reasoning) will buy it at an even higher price.

A similar issue plays in current presidential race in France, but against historic prejudice: the socialist candidate might be elected, and, though few consider her being a woman is a relevant issue, they anticipate this to influence votes towards her. Why? No real reason, but as people prefer to support the winner, it will probably have a significant impact in her favor.

The odd part is that Obama wouldn't be considered black, here -- but that is another issue.

Re: Pissing off the blogosphere…

bertilhatt — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:05:36 -0000

Robert,

The idea that 40 minutes of video can be bulky is interesting. I never had a TV and most of video content I watch is academic talks, so I couldn't comment --- but I think I have an idea:

Last night, I watched a TV series (a teen flick, not supposed to be on YouTube): before and after each 30 minute episode, there was half-a-dozen of key clips, each one sentence long, to summarize and tease:
- "You don't love me? [Frown]"
- "This is getting *so* not were it should... [They kiss]"
- "You slept with her?! [Angry looks]"
- etc.

Thirty minutes of drama and bad acting, all rolled in less then 10 seconds. Very efficient stuff. What PodTech could develop (and I have a friend looking for VC money to develop something similar for instruction videos) is:

- Easy-to-make summarizes:
add a line to a video editing bench to indicate what segment should be used in a shorter version;

- Click-able video:
a shape with some text on screen could link to a precise moment later in the same video.

Even better: coordinating a text description with these segments. But that sounds like significantly more work for the editor.

Regarding disclosures, I would try to have a list of key-words ("Intel", "Bezos", "iPhone", "throwing chairs", etc.) that trigger automatic Disclosure statements at the end of each of your post: "PodTech does consulting work for Intel/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft.", and, like a signature in an e-mail, you could edit them out if they are not relevant. I don't think your being paid would have curbed your enthusiasm in any way, but if you want to play with grown-ups, that is a required, easy to automate, element.

And, on the issue at stake: I disagree with Endgadget's editorial decision; but as it's not the first time, I'm not paying attention to their feeds anyway. As you were an interested party in that matter, it was not up to you to point it out. That's a second thing grown-ups don't do; though the other extreme solution, having another blogger pretends he found that out by himself while he actually is posting under the dictation is bad too. "I was talking to Robert and he pointed out to me that Endgadget. . ." sounds like the best disclosure, grown-up thing to do.

Did you sounded like a wussy? Yes -- but that is what blogging allows.

I'm off, so that I can be comfortably home to watch that 'boring' video of yours.

Re: Did Calacanis just call me fat?

bertilhatt — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:25:48 -0000

Don't drop the chocolate, drop drop the duck with sauce. Just tell me where to send you a Wii. And your shoe size, so I can bundle that with the coolest pair of tennis ever.

Re: Danah is confused by Facebook’s fans

bertilhatt — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:00:50 -0000

> it’s the first time we’ve been able to see what our friends have loaded on their machines

Well actually, I met two entrepreneurs from Amsterdam who offer something that did just that — but I digress.

On the problem at hand, I beleive that Networks need to be reconsidered and though through.
About your own personal issues:
- with the limit on the number of friends, I'm not sure it makes sense to share private details to that many person, and not prefer to define a closer circle; if you do sincerly have an argument for not having less then that many invites to your birthday party, I assume Facebook will try to suit you; I just can't imagine reasonnable symetric relations on that scale;
- apps aren't perfect; but more importantly, there should be one for your kind: call it Fan, Star or Very Interactive Person, and make it suit your needs: an asymetric relation between a very vocal & open host, and his very numerous guests. People would subscribe either as member of a Rock-Star/Band/Guru, or as a Follower.

Any one around to do that?

If you do

Re: This guy just won a “mint”

bertilhatt — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:44:30 -0000

Two concerns about Mint:
1. It will have a very hard time getting out of the US: money is managed very differently here and elsewhere, and unless their hire a cultural consultant very early (like Google did) there are in for a "What the fµck is PayPal for?" and local competition.
2. It doesn't appear to be a social service: unless they set up BillMonk-like features, you don't have any interest in having it adopted by your relatives, and attacks are increasingly likely if it grows (Safety will probably increase too).

Therefore, certainly a great stuff. I probably won't ever use it.

Re: How late adopters get into social media

bertilhatt — Sat, 03 May 2008 11:48:57 -0000

Here comes the late commenter/economic teacher:

- a recession is a temporary reduction in economic output; 'temporary' is defined by US authorities as 'two consecutive quarters' — as it's been eight months, you have all the official blessings to use the word;
- a depression is a sustained reduction in output — USA might be starting to experience one, but you have to wait for more bad news to say so.
There is no official limit between the two, although after year, you hardly can expect a speady recovery.
What is not well defined is an economic standstill, or rather a growth not significant enough to be considered positive or negative; Scoble, you seem to be assuming this is the current situation: it is in many countries, but not in the USA.

- having your money representing less is called 'an inflation'; the opposite is 'a deflation'; the word itself doesn't assume anything about why;

- if the prices on a market drop, it is a deflation; 'why' requires assumtions :
* because of a bubble, then it is a 'bust';
* because of a real, sudden change in economic value, in which case it is a 'drop caused by exogenous event'.

Your pick is: was it reasonnable to have 15$/bar. oil in 2003, when billions opposed the Iraq invasion in vain, describing how violence in the region never lowered oil prices?

As you can see, what you describe seems contradictory: are prices going up or down?
Suburban real-estate is complementary to oil: its consumption, and therefore value, is moving in the opposite direction of gas prices. What might be a better measure of USA's economic situation is the output without oil "artificial" (exogenous) increase — and it should be far worst then what is officially described; sorting price effects on the rest of the economy draws an even grimmer picture.

Both of what you describe are only true for the American market: if you look at the wheat-to-gold or the oil-to-gold ratio, the prices are significantly going up, but not in the proportions you describe. The global total real-estate investment, has been historically high, and what you have seen recently is nothing more then a cooling, a deceleration. The current situation on the American market are not news to anyone who realised no country can borrow trillions and not produce anything with it.

All these situations can legitimately be called with other words (including you anagram) most of which I would refrain to use — but if you want to be simple & accurate, talk about "a recession caused by exogenous inflation".

Regarding "late adopters" or "mass marketing", either expressions imply a given relevant market — and there are currently orders of magnitude of difference between the PC (Facebook) and the mobile (Twitter) users. I wouldn't use them, but rather define their asset and skills.
What seems to be missing in your Google-world is YouTube, and e-mail. The company is still unanimouly leading among people with access to internet.

Re: Mike Arrington is wrong about Google search

bertilhatt — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 06:10:01 -0000

Spam? Spam! Let's give Google some spam to see how they'll manage it. . . Gmail and Blogger have proven quite efficient in removing it — I think more spam (hand-sorted by the user, as comment-feedback is likely — can't test it as the feature isn't active from my location) directly on Google property with nice IP attached to it will mostly help Google search and destroy more of it and identify links faster, including on other platforms.

Truth be told, I don't use Google search engine explicitely anymore: I get information from Zemanta, twitter, etc. I won't come accross a great definition-site like Wikipedia or Urban-Dictionnary throught the search engine, too bad; but I'll get recommendations to it, for sure.
I spend most of my time on Gmail and G-Reader, Google Street View — were this spam won't appear, but the analysis of the comments will probably find a way rapidly.

Finally, like all features: making it an option is essential (opt-in or -out is certainly decisive, but I personally don't care) and having it available word-wide woudl allow me to use it.

Re: Facebook screws iFart author

bertilhatt — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:30:16 -0000

I would like to know more about the non-whales being kicked out: so far, all the stories I've read (I can't go through 600 comments without a headacke, sorry) are about people who were borderline spammers: messages to large groups, many invites for an event, etc. Someone mentionned you being a McCain supporter: have you sent any political message recently? Even to people part of a like-minded group? (These groups confuse opinion and issues, and that is really unconfortable for people who would like to correct misunderstandings.) Such messages can annoy some people very fast — and a few of your friends might have signaled that message rather then un-friend you because they have too many friends to remember, and didn't recognize you as one of them. It often happens to me, and I have less than the average number of contacts.

I think Facebook already has a 'jail' feature: instead of showing your photo with bars, it hides your profile and prevents you from using your account, but this is blattantly meant for the same reasons as what you are calling a 'jail' for. Simply, you all seem to neglect that most closed accounts are actually spammers, and letting them access their account to harvest their list of gullible friends, or keeping their message visible is the last thing you want. Facebook needs a way to sort spammers from constructive people that is less work-intensive, and so far, it doesn't seem to be very efficient.

Two features might be intersesting, though: allow your friends who go though your page (presumably with a direct link) to vouch for your humanity, or answer a few questions about yourself to prove that they've met you. Limiting how many times you can vouch for someone might help limit fake accounts, although I wouldn't say this feature can be as straightfoward as I describe it. Maybe include a status message: "Is John Smith a spammer?" with a link to a page describing the most common scams. That's a great pretext to target gulible users, and explain to what are the threats on-line, and how to spot them; a few statistics might also help Scoble-readers to quiet down and realise that Facebook is doing that for a reason.

Another one is certainly more controversial: make power-users, or whales, *pay* to have more contacts, or a fan-page, or a dedicated hot-line. I'm not sure it is a sufficient business model for the entier site, but it's a revenue stream. I would be in favor of similar paying options for larger events, groups — but I do realize those demand more thinking then it seems; for instance: should Facebook limit member totals or daily adoptions?

Re: The power of ubiquitous media - UCLA Police on YouTube

bertilhatt — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 12:20:38 -0000

The main consequence of this video, invisible from LA, is that foreign students will hesitate before coming to USA. I am a PhD student with a lead for spending a semester in UCLA, and I am truly concerned now: I'm white, but with a weak heart.

The only common point between every story that I've heard about friends going in America is an ID-check that went really wrong for no reason: most of my friends were Army officers taking a PhD program, not unruly, uneducated suspicious-looking guys. Several of them had a gun pointed at them either because they made stupid jokes, or because of their bad understanding of "Cop"-English: who else says "Freeze" and "Vi-icawl"? What does it mean, and what is wrong with asking? Isn't the "wheel" one of the four large rubber things that support the car? These were before "non-lethal" weapons.

The official statements don't seem to help that: it seems there are more concerned by the safety of the students around while the crowd is clearly sympathetic to the person tasered. (Anyone complaining about being disturbed by too much noise for ten minutes around 11pm? Or any concerns about going to a university were the computer room is not perfectly quiet?)

What I would like to understand is why the officiers didn't resolve to carry him: nothing seemed to prevent them, and riot polices whom I know do that all the time.

Ewan,

This French rule is actually a medieval tradition (that then spread to the nacent Oxford and Cambridge) after a XIIIth outburst of "scholars" (read: sex-hungry theology students, sic) threatened to "cross the Seine" (Sorbonne is a ten minutes walk from the Louvres, were the military power was). The dean knew they were just upset; the marchal feared they were armed (with "knife and cisors", for eating and correcting spelling mistakes). Because the marchal reaction made such a fuss, he obtained that no armed force should enter University ground without his express acknowledgement.

(I know because a friend studying medieval history mentionned it last year, during the student outburst about a job law.)

This rule was critical in 1968 and last years riot, because it is interpreteed by the academics in charge as a failure to resolve a mostly internal crisis. Arguments to opening the gates "has" to be of academic nature, and takes time: e. g. rare books being burned last year. The Police prefect doesn't like it too, because they get blamed for abiding little-know rule and waiting, while their are usually judged on taking swift decision.

What to remember is that students are unruly, and should be treated with a special understanding. This case proves it once again.

The rule still applies, and it is the reason why we have Rent-A-Cop's in our Univesrities.

Re: Leverage The Power of Scarcity for Social & Viral Marketing

bertilhatt — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:19:04 -0000

More then scarcity —that is difficult to measure, short of a product definition (which information lacks) and a exchange institution (that you are trying to set up)— I'd recommend you consider giving information only to people who have someone to share it with.

Viral marketing has made marketers focus on the circle of social ties, instead of the usual built attention pipes. Scarcity makes sense if you consider all the information source and their audience, but why care about how the information is spread in the population when you take an individual's point of view? From there, the only scarcity is: who do I know that doesn't know this and would like to learn it from me?

The benefit of social marketing is offering a new angle to people's attention: some news are acceptable, interesting only if you share them — what's the point in knowing this is cool if you are the only one to believe it is? This drives in a new problem: what makes an information acceptable to share? So far, being fun and dorky has proven rather universal, but you need to focus on that level — where scarcity is not defined by anything else then isolated “Have you heard that. . . ?”

Re: Viral Tweet Test Results Part 1: Trending Topics and Forking URLs

bertilhatt — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:32:44 -0000

I believe the forking comes from the fact that many Twitter clients the four I use, at least) have nothing convenient for simple forwarding: you can't even copy-paste the tweets on some!

You might also want to check if people were not using different names in there 'RT': some might have called it ‘just a test’ or ‘go there’ — your page was rather explicit.

Re: The 20 Words and Phrases That Will Get You the Most ReTweets

bertilhatt — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:12:34 -0000

I'm sorry to come so late to the party — and to bring not just flowers, but you know how us academics are: something is only good after we've spent a few hours bitting it to pieces. . .

So, as usual in seminars: Fantastic work — but:

* You are assuming that if twits with "please" are more re-tweeted, adding it will encourage re-tweeting; it certainly is interesting it is, but I'd rather interpret is as a signal from the author that this is a a cause worthy of interest beyond his circle; to be more blunt: no one knows what it re-tweetable better than the original poster.

* In more recent posts (I went anti-chronologically, sorry) you mention vectors, seeders: you must have seen the debate between Duncan Watts who though those were too changing to be identified and. . . was Gladwell the leading figure "for" seeders? Well, you might as well be it. I'd love to see more higher-level thinking about that issue, before your followers start to stalk my idol Stephen Fry for endorsement & RTs.

* That is certainly next steps, but I'd love to see more about timing, hashtags and the clients used: from my experience, the design makes one's behaviour completely different. E.g. I don't care about posting lame comments if I filter by keywords most of what I look at.

More generally, if you publicly encourage a behaviour (and you are becoming increasingly popular) then many would copy and the community will develop copingmechanism. It's good to remind people that common politeness is effective to signal a re-tweetable post; this will become ineffective when marketters will abuse it to the point of being synonymous with optimised advertising.

Finally (I didn't wanted to end on a critic): I'm assuming that you are familiar with graph concepts like centrality, clustering, etc. Those would be great to include in your analysis.

More generally I would love to spend more time, probably off-line, to talk about methodology — if you care for some NetworkX code-sharing ;).