Disqus - Latest Comments for Eric

Re: Democrats Abandoning the First Amendment, Part 1: The Fairness Doctrine

Eric — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:32:10 -0000

It might be helpful to consider just why some liberals (emphasis on the some, I really think it's a vocal minority here) are interested in resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine. It can be summarized by two words: Fox News

Personally speaking, I look at the media landscape today and I cringe. Far from the "vibrant and diverse media marketplace" you cite, I see one filled with propaganda and talking heads. I see commentary being passed off as news, pundits as journalists, sound bytes as coverage, and outright falsehoods as truth. I see dearth of anything that resembles real information, facts, or analysis. And while Fox News is the worst offender, CNN and its other competitors are no better. The fourth estate has completely abrogated it's responsibility to inform the public and serve as a check on government.

The fairness doctrine is a terrible idea, but I can at least understand the motivation behind it. The "free market" isn't going to solve this problem, since that's largely what got us to this point - the newsroom is now expected to turn a profit, which means attracting viewers and advertisers. Which means that Michael Jackson gets hours and hours of painstaking coverage, and (for example) proposals to bring back the fairness doctrine get almost none at all. The "market" does a hideous job of selecting for what's important and relevant.

As I said, I don't like the fairness doctrine, or any solution where the government dictates what's on the airwaves. But at the same time we can't ignore the fact that television is the 800 lb gorilla when it comes to shaping the public discourse, and the current state of television news is incredibly damaging to our republic.* That, rather than the fairness doctrine, is the real issue here.

*For a specific example, see the 2004 election. More than half of the people who went to the polls on that day did so with the belief that WMD's had been found in Iraq; around 40% believed Saddam had a hand in 9/11 - both demonstrably untrue as a factual matter. That's not something that's supposed to happen in a country with a free press.

Re: Movie Review: “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”

Eric — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 21:03:55 -0000

I think you're being a little disingenuous here. You present it as a choice between "private ratings" and "government censorship" - but why do we need either?

As you point out, there are innumerable other sources of ratings, as well as movie reviews, movie news, etc. I don't think anyone can really argue that there isn't enough information about movies out there that a five-tiered letter rating is useful. So if it simply disappeared... would anyone really miss it?

In either case though, the only real issue in my mind is that movie theaters are often contractually barred from showing NC-17 movies, and thus there's a chilling effect on movie producers - an NC-17 film just isn't commercially viable. Get rid of that rule, and let producers and theaters show whatever's commercially viable, irrespective of the rating.

Re: Movie Review: “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”

Eric — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:24:54 -0000

Well, I'll grant that as a pragmatic matter censorship is a real possibility - I'd just love to live in a world where it wasn't. It's sad that we have to worry about it in a country that explicitly protects free speech. The fact that the movie industry feels it needs a ratings system to avoid government censorship is pretty troubling in its own right.

On the ratings itself, I just think that there's enough *other* information about movies out there that the 5 tier rating system is pretty marginalized in terms of utility. It might have been necessary in the 60's given the relative sparsity of information out there. But today, there are untold numbers of professional movie reviewers and bloggers that cover movies. We have entire newsprograms dedicated to entertainment news and movie reviews. Newspapers features a movie section. Movie trailers are available online and on TV. We have IMDB. And Google pretty much puts anything else you could possibly want to know about a movie at your fingertips. What's an "R" rating according to that?

Try as I might, I just can't construct a scenario where those ratings are useful. You'd have to assume that some family managed to make it to a movie theater, knowing *nothing* about any of the movies playing, and deciding to take their kids based entirely on a movie having a "G" rating. Which seems kind of ridiculous to me.

For a more plausible scenario, I know that there are a bunch of "Christian movie" sites out there that rate and rank new releases based upon Christian evangelical values. I would imagine that the authority of those sites weighs a lot more heavily on an evangelical than the MPAA rating. And even if that site that family uses for reference doesn't review every single movie, so what? I'm sure it more than suffices for that family's purposes.

Meanwhile, someone like me pretty much ignores the ratings altogether anyway and sees movies based on buzz without worrying about their content - I just want to know if it's good or not, and MPAA ratings don't tell me that.

Were I a parent, the MPAA ratings wouldn't even serve as a "rough proxy" for me, because they're so ludicrously skewed towards the aforementioned conservative christian values anyway. Your typical "G" rated movie is jam packed with violence and consumerism, and a host of other things I'd rather not have my kids exposed to. I could care less if my kid hears "dirty words". So the utility of those ratings to me? Still pretty much nill.

Which highlights the real error with "one ratings system to rule them all" - it presumes a common set of values which just doesn't exist. Eliminating that and letting multiple independent bodies come to fill the vacuum would cure it. The conservative christians can have their own raters and I can have mine, and meanwhile the free market is the thing deciding what goes into movies and what gets shown.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Yahoo Mail is Real Competition for GMail

Eric — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:33:28 -0000

The storage thing should make Google red in the face with embarrassment, and that's the one thing that they've definitely dropped the ball on.

But I don't know how you can call Google Reader "clunky" or possibly compare it to the spartan one built into Yahoo mail. The search feature is underwhelming, but it's still better than anything Yahoo offers.

Many of the points for Yahoo are pretty meaningless - Drag and drop is also little more than a lame attempt to emulate desktop applications when it's unwarranted - keyboard navigation is vastly superior and something Google does far better - I have no need to touch the mouse when I'm in Gmail. As for support of the iPhone... it's one mobile device locked into one carrier, big whoop. I guess if I don't mind utilizing my email only in the way that Yahoo, Apple, and AT&T; can agree that I should, that's a good feature. Otherwise I'll pass.

And as a final note - Google offers free forwarding and POP downloading. Yahoo makes you pay for that feature. So Google wins, hands down, by not holding my data hostage.

I also have a big caveat with your case... if you look at the numbers, Yahoo Mail has 200 million users compared to Google's 50 million, the last I saw. Yahoo's been playing catch up in terms of features ever since Gmail lost, but it's Google who's always been playing catch up in terms of adoption.

Re: On the Comcast Kerfuffle: The Market Meme

Eric — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:44:10 -0000

Um, there are a lot of us who have a choice between Comcast, shitty DSL, or shittier dial-up.

I too, eagerly anticipate the day I can get Fios so I can drop them like a rock, but in the meantime they have an effective monopoly on broadband in a great many areas.

Either regulate the hell out of them until they're delivering the most open, best possible service to their customers at the cheapest possible price, or do something to promote actual competition and consumer choice. Because lacking either, we're at Comcast's mercy - and the lesson from this is that they're not above abusing that.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » ZDNet: “Comcast Feeling the Heat From Competition”

Eric — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:52:27 -0000

I'm still confused as to this wonderful "competition" you keep talking about.

When I look for a "Competitor to Comcast", I'm looking for "Another cable operator I can switch to".

Verizon and AT&T; both sell DSL services which barely qualify as broadband. Sufficient for web surfing and email checking perhaps, but it's really not an option for those of us who need to connect to the company VPN and actually get stuff done.

And as noted by a commenter above me - Verizon and AT&T; aren't exactly shining examples of socially responsible corporations either.

Where's the *real* competition - the guy I can switch to who offers a comparable service and is competing on quality, price, or customer service - who can advertise "net neutrality" and "privacy protection"?

Re: What’s pointless about fun?

Eric — Sat, 03 May 2008 15:24:33 -0000

> It’s an old story, actually. Culture critics have always bemoaned the fact that people would rather be entertained than informed. But that’s life, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.

I agree with everything else you wrote, but this I have to argue with.

Is it okay to prefer being entertained over being informed? Absolutely.

Is it okay to indulge in mindless entertainment now and then? Sure - we all need a break from thinking on occasion.

Is it okay to indulge in countless hours of mindless entertainment, to the near total exclusion of everything substantive and informative? I don't think so, and therein lies the criticism of our culture - when someone has the time to watch American Idol but can't seem to find the same hour a week to learn about candidates and issues, in order to exercise their duties and obligations as a citizen responsibly.

I'd be much less worried about the prevalence of "just for fun" applications and entertainment were it not for the fact that the average voter is astonishingly ignorant of very basic facts that they should be basing their vote on.

Re: Google domains going after Outlook? MSN did that months ago…

Eric — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 17:37:01 -0000

Bloggers aren't some bastion of journalistic objectivity, and I don't know any sane person that's suggested as much. It's not any big secret that Google is perceived a lot better than Microsoft, so I'd blame fanboyism before I imagined any great big conflict of interest conspiracy. The excitement over Gmail for domains most likely extends from a love of Gmail, love that in general MSN just doesn't have, whether that's fair or not.

Re: GoogleTalk updates

Eric — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:12:11 -0000

I agree with Karim. The key to great software is adding features without adding complexity. GTalk does exactly that; it just added a bunch of new features without adding complexity. It's the sort of thing that Apple builds its reputation on and Google (usually) gets right to, at least most of the time.

I think Microsoft got it with Office 2007 (and Windows Live Writer, for that matter), but it's usually something MS is way off the mark with. MSN/YIM/AIM turned me off years ago as these programs demanded more and more screen space and system resources, got ever more bloated interfaces, and incorporated more and more annoying pop up messages.

Re: Blog reading tips

Eric — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 18:53:20 -0000

I actually find myself using Technorati more and more and spending time reading "the long tail" of blogs; I just search for the story-of-the-day and see what people have to say about it. There's a lot of junk but there's a surprising number of gems you'll miss if you're only reading the "A List". Their blog finder isn't too bad either, if you're looking for good blogs on a particular niche hobby.

Actually, I find myself subscribing more and more to the long tail blogs and just getting my fix of A list blogs through Memeorandum/Techmeme. I don't think I'm missing much.

On the usability issue, I think the following things are critical (all IMHO, of course)

1. An about me/about this blog link or blurb; someone landing via a search engine should instantly know what the blog is about.
2. A standard RSS icon (or minimally, an orange RSS icon) and a word that says "subscribe" - people get subscriptions, many are clueless about what RSS is. Personally I link it to my feedburner page; a raw XML page wouldn't make much sense to a noob.
3. A search box.
4. Post permalinks should also be pretty prominent, as well as where to leave a comment (if you want them to leave comments, anyway).

Re: Bloggers have a double standard when it comes to Google vs. Microsoft?

Eric — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:59:14 -0000

Ironically, in the example you mention, "Google Maps" was changed to "Google Local Search" for a while (at the url local.google.com IIRC)

After a while, they seemed to figure out that most users preferred "maps" (by typing maps.google.com into the address bar, which forwarded to "local"), so they changed it back.

Google isn't immune to branding mistakes.

I agree "Windows Live" is better than "MSN", but I still think it's not the best brand they could have come up with. Two words is kind of bleh, and Windows itself doesn't exactly have the best brand in the minds of consumers these days. If I was MS I'd have gone with "start.com" (which I presume MS still owns?) and made it the "start menu for the web" or something like that.

And FWIW, I think bloggers are more fair minded than you give them credit for. Windows Live Writer got a fair bit of attention when it was released... because it's actually a good product, not a "me too". The MS Office ribbon has gotten attention as well. I think bloggers simply like innovation; the attention is reflective of which company they see the most innovation coming out of.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Eric — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 10:00:38 -0000

The "shared items" thing is kind of pointless IMHO, as it assumes everything you'd want to share is in your feeds. I prefer a more del.icio.us like approach, where I can share anything I find on the web. Now, if Google would build out it's bookmarks into a real service and combine the two, then they might have something.

As far as Google Blog Search - I think maybe that's another product that just isn't there. I don't get the "Search failed!" errors I get in Technorati, but Google's Blog Search is spammier and I don't feel like I get the same quality of results. (Hint to Google: Buy Technorati)

I agree that Feed Reading+Blog/News Search+Social Bookmarking would be a killer combination though - maybe we'll yet see that level of integration.

Re: Not just rich people buy Playstations and Xbox’s

Eric — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 09:20:23 -0000

Wow, I can't believe you just seriously suggested that people go into debt for a game console... I think you missed your calling as a financial adviser.

On the topic at hand though, it's not about being able to afford it, it's perceived value for your money that matters. For really hardcore gamers, $800 (console+game+HDMI cable) might be worth it. For the less than hardcore gamer though? I doubt it.

Every console in history that's been released into this price range (and there have been quite a few, inflation adjusted) failed dismally in the market. I expect the PS3 to do better than the 3DO, Jaguar, Neo Geo, and Sega Saturn. But it won't be nearly the success that the PS2 was, and that's what really matters. If Sony falls to second or third place this generation, they're sunk.

Re: Digging on Digg

Eric — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 09:29:58 -0000

Digg has systemic problems with the way it's set up. Techmeme actually does a better job of leveraging the "Wisdom of the Crowds" because (my understanding is that) the way it works revolves around bloggers, who more or less choose stories independently and blind to what anyone else is doing.

Digg, on the other hand, encourages much more of a groupthink or herd mentality - the number of Diggs is displayed prominently, encouraging you to Digg stories that already have a lot of them, you're encouraged to subscribe to the top Diggers, you're encouraged to subscribe to your friends, etc. As such, individual stories are elevated much more because of network effects than group wisdom.

Other issues include the fact that the front page doesn't even try to ascribe importance to stories - the top headline is just the one that's most recently been promoted, not necessarily the top story of the day. And if you subscribe to the feed, forget it - your RSS reader just gets flooded with junk.

There's usually some interesting links on the front page, and I'll check it out when I'm bored. I like the concept of social news, but honestly that's what I regard "The Blogosphere" as. Technorati, Techmeme, Google News, and Google Reader are all much more useful to me than sites like Digg.

Re: Hey Microsoft: look to Krugle for your search woes (at least for your developers)

Eric — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:37:11 -0000

I agree. Google kind of sucks when it comes to verticals. (And personally, I like what Technorati is doing better, but it's obvious that they need a better server infrastructure).

I think that as time goes on this is going to become a pretty big deal - searching "the web" won't be nearly as important as searching a subset of it. Code. Blogs. Science. News. Government Publications. The list is endless. A really well done resource for any of these (which would include a search function) could chip away at Google.

Or take a big pet peeve of mine. This passed Christmas season, I was shopping for a HDTV. For any given search, I was interested in:

1. Information about HDTV technology.
2. Comparative reviews on different models.
3. Price shopping.
4. Technical support for the TV I just bought.

Every search on Google I did turned up mostly retail sites with near-identical manufacturer blurbs on the things. If someone were to build a search engine that segregated the kind of information listed above, I'd probably start going to that over Google.

Re: Satellite Radio Consolidates

Eric — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 09:50:20 -0000

"What you want, when you want" isn't the panacea many people make it out to be.

It's funny - no matter how many tracks I put on an iPod (right now, around 10,000) I still feel like they get old pretty quick. And perhaps oddly, I also feel the paradox of choice with that many tracks - deciding what to listen to becomes a chore.

My XM radio, by contrast, I never get that feeling with. I just turn it on and see what's playing, and "channel surf" between the different formats I like. It works for me.

Re: The truth about traffic on the Internet

Eric — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:58:28 -0000

I've gotten (relatively) huge traffic spikes - 3,000 to 10,000 hits in a day, up from what's normally ~100-200

What I've found is that when that happens, it makes little difference. In a couple of days, traffic returns to normal, and almost none of those people leave comments, click ads, or so much as bother to explore the site. They read the linked article and then go.

Search traffic seems to bring the most activity. People who find the site through Google tend to click around a bit before leaving. RSS subscribers seem to be the best metric for an engaged audience.

Re: The MacMini HDTV revolution

Eric — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:04:04 -0000

Apple is stupid for not positioning the Mac Mini as their media center solution (speaking as someone who hooked up a Mac Mini this way over a year before Jobs released Apple TV). Seriously, the only thing it really needs is an HDMI port so I don't have to go through a converter.

But I'll say this too: I also have a Nintendo Wii, and guess which one I do most of my web surfing with?

The problem is that a Mac Mini still requires a keyboard and mouse to do anything other than use FrontRow. You just can't do that comfortably from a couch - you really can't do it in your lap, and leaning forward to use it on a coffee table just isn't comfortable.

Nintendo gave me a controller that functions as a mouse, that I can use while leaning back. For casual surfing, that makes all the difference. Apple needs to do the same thing, maybe offer up the iPhone/iPod Touch as a remote control?

Re: Microsoft=Success; Google Docs=Fail?

Eric — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:48:33 -0000

I love MS Office 2007 (and 2008 on my Mac). It's one product that I think MS has done exceptionally right.

But my workflow these days starts with Google Docs. It's simply the easiest way to keep something synchronized between my many computers. The versioning is dead simple to use, and the collaboration is nice for when someone else is doing the editing. It's only when I've finished writing it that I copy it into MS Word for formatting.

In a general sense, I'm always surprised these kind of comparisons get made, since the two offerings offer almost completely different feature sets. One is designed for collaborative editing of a glorified HTML document. The other is designed for formatting and ultimately printing.

It'll be interesting when/if Microsoft offers these kind of collaborative features (and if they'll be free to use - ie, not require Sharepoint or Exchange), and what Google will do to stay competitive.

I think everyone realizes Google Docs is far from ideal, but it does fill a niche and if you're someone that can use the features it offers, then it's a pretty great product.

Re: PEJ Social News Report Demonstrates Only That Digg and Reddit Are Highly Niche Sites

Eric — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:53:47 -0000

As I said on Reddit today about this story... analyzing the stories on the front page misses the real point about these sites. I spend far more time on Reddit (and Slashdot) reading the *comments* than I do any of the stories that get linked to. (Not so much Digg, where the comment threads seem dominated by 14 year olds). But at least on Reddit and Slashdot, the community is composed of enough knowldgeable, intelligent people that an interesting discussion emerges from almost any topic - even a picture of a stupid cat.

It's the comment threads that you find the real news of the day, context, and good information, not the front page stories.

Re: Forget Platforms And Applications, Data Is The Real Asset On the Web

Eric — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:24:49 -0000

This is exactly right, and why what Facebook is doing is actually back asswards wrong.

Compare it to Flickr, as a random example. Flickr also released a "platform" ages ago; it's the API. And today, thanks to the popularity of Flickr, there's a huge ecosystem of applications built on the Flickr data - blogs, screensavers, mashups and more. The same is true for a host of other services which have become underlying "platforms" for the web. In each case, an API gives developers access to data, whether it be user generated (like Flickr) or not (Google Maps), enabling the creation of better applications than would otherwise be possible.

The Facebook "platform" is basically a glorified widget engine; while I don't think there's anything , what they should have done (and still should do) is create an API to let other web sites leverage the Facebook data, that would let developers really build on top of Facebook, rather than within Facebook.

I think that if Facebook doesn't adopt this approach, it'll suffer in the long run and eventually fade to irrelevancy. If there's one immutable law of the internet, it's that open beats closed in the long run.

Re: How Powerful Does Google Want to Be?

Eric — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 16:46:21 -0000

There's nothing wrong with having bundled software with new computer systems. Speaking as someone that's done a fair amount of tech support, the closer it comes to "it just works out of the box", the better it is for the end user. Simply, most don't know enough to actually find and install the software they need if it doesn't (nor do they know enough to switch - which is why bundled software is so attractive to software vendors).

Google is a powerful player in the tech industry, to be sure. The difference between Google and Microsoft though is that it hasn't yet done anything that could be described as anti-competitive, a la how Microsoft killed Netscape. Google, to my knowledge, isn't strong-arming Dell into keeping Yahoo products from being bundled as well. They're not holding anything over Dell's head should Dell not agree exactly to Google's terms. Microsoft, on the other hand, essentially threatened to jack up the price for Windows OEM's for any manufacturer that dared to bundle netscape. That's what got the justice department after them, and therein lies the difference.

Google also hasn't yet tried to lock users into their services, by say, making their browser, media player, and IM application damn near impossible to uninstall, and being generally hostile towards interoperability and open formats.

And FWIW, you can also be damn sure that Windows Vista will come with some version of live.com as the start page and MS desktop search will be built into the OS. Depending on how arrogant MS gets they might even try to leverage IE 7 to "break" Google services and use "secret" API's for their own stuff.

Google also has some pretty stiff competition from both Yahoo and Microsoft (and Amazon, and Ebay, and a whole bunch of others) which generally means they don't have a monopoly to leverage even if they were so inclined. Sure, the barriers to entry for the search business are pretty high (Google has like 100k servers and probably the most powerful computing infrastructure on the planet), but on the other hand, search is far from a solved problem, and while Google has the best right now I wouldn't even call it good by any objective analysis. So I'm don't really believe that Google is either a monopoly right now or that they can't be beat in the future.

It's possible to imagine a day when Google *is* the web and can exercise totalitarian control over it, but it's also equally possible to imagine that they'll have AOL's status in 10 years time. I don't think that the Orwellian prophecy is written in stone, at least not yet.

Re: The Virtue of Undivided Attention

Eric — Sat, 20 May 2006 11:14:27 -0000

Well, I think you're right at least as far as novels and fiction goes; it'll be a long time coming before anyone can come up with a suitable replacement for reading a paperback on the beach.

There's a distinction between fiction and nonfiction though; books as entertainment vs. books as informational resources. While digitizing the novels of the world is a side effect of Google Book Search and similar efforts, I think the driving motivator (at least for Google) is the latter. How much of the world's information is locked up in books, sitting on a library shelf somewhere, inaccessible to all but a tiny few, who probably don't even know what's inside? That's where searchability, linking, etc. would be a huge gain - unlocking the untold amounts of information present in the world's books. Think of the difference between Wikipedia, with its extensive web of links between articles and external sources, vs. a dead tree version of Britannica. Without regards to the accuracy of either; I know which form it'd be easier to find information with.

Re: Why Are the Top Technorati Blogs Still Dominated by Tech/Geek and Politics?

Eric — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:55:23 -0000

Well, as you point out, Technorati's sampling is biased, first by only considering inbound links and secondly because Technorati's audience isn't representative. How many readers of that Gardening blog would even know Technorati exists?

Although I'd also point out that your comparison is a little apple and oranges. "Tech/Geek" is a broad category whereas "Gardening" is a relatively specific topic.

Re: How Has Google Changed the Software Industry?

Eric — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:44:45 -0000

The Gmail example is flawed - one of it's killer features has always been free pop access - if you don't like the Gmail interface, it's trivial to use any other client out there. I know more people that use Thunderbird to access it than people who use the web interface (Though personally I love the web interface).

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Eric — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:51:47 -0000

I'd noticed this back when I used to run AdSense. Can't say my site was every a heavily trafficked one, but every once in a while I'd get linked to by a big site (never Digg though) and witness up to 4000 visitors, up from my usual 100-200 or so. The funny thing was that despite a 20 fold increase in traffic, I wouldn't get any more ad clicks than on any other day. The only thing that my number of clicks really correlated with was search engine traffic.

Re: Top Ten Things That Suck About Google Docs

Eric — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:28:34 -0000

I'm curious what you mean by "Offline Access". Not that I've played with it that much, but can't you save any document as either .doc or .odt to your hard drive? And thus, edit it offline?

Personally I find the product handy, mostly because its an easy way to keep documents synced between the multiple computers I work on (and the Gmail integration is sweet). Mostly I just write with it though and treat it as an online text editor - formatting is just too basic and too unwieldy to be of any use. For that stuff I just drop the text into the equally free openoffice.org

Re: Can Google Transform The Entire Web Into A Direct Marketing Machine?

Eric — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:10:09 -0000

How dare you suggest that my blog on debt consolidating mesothelioma dentistry has no purpose other than to get people to click on adsense ads!

On a more serious note, didn't Amazon pioneer this like 10 years ago with their associates program? CPA advertising isn't new - Google might spur more people towards using it, but I don't think the web is going to be any different as a result.

Re: Cumulative Advantage Explains Web 2.0, MySpace, The A-List, TechCrunch, Digg, And So Much More

Eric — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:06:59 -0000

There's a pretty big aspect to this that you're missing - "Cumulative Advantage" relies on knowing how other people or voting. "Network Effects" rely on each person acting individually, not knowing how other people are voting.

I've often criticized Digg for this reason - the site does everything it can to get you to vote for things that are already popular. You see the number of Diggs next to every article, and you can even sort by that value.

But other sites deal with it better. Google's magic is based on network effects where each inbound link is a vote, as every person who creates a link is doing so pretty much independently and unaware of what anyone else is linking to. Flickr's interestingness is opaque enough that it doesn't seem to be subjected to cumulative advantage. The blogosphere is a bit of a gray area where we can see both at work.

Cumulative advantage, incidentally, is also why publishing political polls ought to be illegal in a campaign season.

Re: RSS Has No Value Without A Filter

Eric — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:37:19 -0000

The problem with RSS is the same as with HTML.

Explaining it tends to focus on single uses - RSS Readers or making web pages, respectively. These explanations tend to miss the massive versatility of both technologies though. HTML is much more powerful than your grandmother's web page, obviously. So to is RSS - it's not just for reading blogs, but it also powers widgets, holds MySpace together, brings weather and traffic info to your browser, etc.

And the key similarity is that when implemented right, the end user shouldn't even be aware of it. No one needs to know HTML to use a web browser. Hell, they don't even need to know HTML exists. It needs to become the same with RSS - people need to be able to use the applications without knowing about the underlying technology. The fact that we need a video like this says to be that the applications (aggregators, at least) just aren't there yet.

Within the use of "aggregating blog posts", I absolutely agree with you - it's too easy to wind up with a flooded reader and there desperately needs a way to filter and sort the content on something other than a by feed basis. (Yahoo Pipes comes tantalizingly close to offering this, but I just can't bring myself to run every feed I subscribe to through there).

I want to manage my feed reading the same way I do Gmail, but sadly no one has yet given me the ability to do that.

Re: Facebook: Sponsored Feed Items, Irrelevant Ads, Still Tailored For Students

Eric — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:58:54 -0000

Heck, I'm 24 and I don't find Facebook nearly as useful as I no doubt would have a couple of years ago in college. (I do wish it had been around when I was in college though, because it would have been useful to me then). I use it, but my life doesn't revolve around it the way it does for some of my younger college-aged friends.

What it says to me is that there really isn't "one social network to rule them all". I don't think that Facebook can change itself too much with losing some its appeal to its core of college students. So I suspect that there's probably room in the market for one or two more runaway hits that cater to different demographics - my prediction is that we'll see it emerge in the next year or two, as many of the "facebook generation" graduate, enter the real world, and find their social networks have changed.

Re: To Beat Google, Yahoo Needs To Change The Game

Eric — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:33:08 -0000

What's funny is that I thought this is where I thought Yahoo was going two years ago when they started buying web 2.0 sites like Del.icio.us and Flickr with strong tagging components.

I'd assumed they were looking to build a "social search engine". Searching on Flickr already blows away any image search engines on the web. The data about what links people are saving with Del.icio.us, and how they're tagging them, should be invaluable to search algorithms (to say nothing of the fact that the links I've personally saved should rank higher when I do a search). Results from Yahoo Answers should show up. Data from MyBlogLog should be used. Etc.

Maybe now that Semel's out, they'll finally execute on that.

Re: Why I Didn’t Buy An iPhone: The Network

Eric — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:55:08 -0000

I agree, that's the thing that made me cringe way back when he announced the thing in January. AT&T by far has the worst network of any wireless provider, for voice and for data.

And then one has to wonder - his solution for third party apps is essentially "web 2.0", yet they don't even support 3G...

The only thing I'll say in fairness though, Verizon is merely the best out of a pretty pathetic bunch. The mobile web will be a revolution... when it happens. It's not a device that'll cause the revolution though - it'll happen when the first mobile carrier gets their head out of their butt and offers true unlimited data plans, at true broadband speeds, for a reasonable price (competitive with wired broadband). As it stands now we're in the stone age.

Re: Deconstructing Facebook Platform

Eric — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 13:32:37 -0000

Personally, I don't have any great desire to use applications within Facebook. What Facebook has become for me is kind of a glue holding together the vast majority of the web 2.0 apps I use.

In the case of Twitter, I update Twitter the same way I normally do, but it shows up in my friends' news feeds - even of those who don't use Twitter themselves. That's valuable to me.

Similarly, I have no desire to use Digg/del.icio.us/flickr/last.fm within Facebook. But it's great that they're all on my profile page, where my friends can see them without needing to join those services or friend me on those services.

I agree with you that a deeper level of integration would be nice, but meh, it doesn't really bother me.

Re: Deconstructing Facebook Platform

Eric — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 21:03:16 -0000

Hashim -

The thing is, all these apps are only a tab away anyway. It's no extra work for me to go to Del.icio.us or Twitter in a tab to do what I need doing, where I get a better, more full featured interface than can possibly be offered in a widgetized Facebook application.

What I appreciate about this stuff is that anything I do in these applications are automatically updated on my Facebook profile. It streamlines information sharing.

Re: iPhone Reality Check

Eric — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 11:38:46 -0000

I just wish I had your experience with Verizon. I was on AT&T a couple of years ago, and I'll grant that Verizon is better, but everything's relative. I wouldn't use positive adjectives to describe either one.

Re: Nielsen Replaces Page View Ranking With Time Spent, Swaps One Problematic Metric For Another

Eric — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:45:33 -0000

Exactly how do they come by time spent, exactly?

Just thinking about it.... I have something like 20 tabs open in Firefox right now, but I'm only looking at one. And I think I opened this one probably over an hour ago... just because it's been open an hour doesn't mean I've spent an hour looking at this page. (No offense - I mean I like this blog and all, but sheesh...)

Anyway, I think you're absolutely right here. Why doesn't "user action" count for more? Once I'm done typing this comment I'm going to close this tab, as opposed to say clicking elsewhere on your site (again, no offense). But I'd think that kind of behavior is what advertisers would want to know about.

Re: Memo to Google: Buy Yahoo!

Eric — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:12:58 -0000

I got one word for that scenario: antitrust.

I don't care how right wing and big-business friendly the federal government is these days - there's simply no way they'd let a merger go through given that the combined entity would control 80+% of the search market and some similarly large share of the online advertising market.

Re: Revealing the Location of Your Photography Through GPS Coordinates & EXIF Metadata

Eric — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:07:51 -0000

Personally, I make it a point to geotag all my photos, and I share the location of every single shot I've posted to Flickr.

The reasons I do this are many:

1. I think it's neat to be able to display the photos on a map.

2. It gives another way for people to *find* my photos.

3. Other than the extra manual labor of doing (at least till cameras have built in gps receivers), what's the reason not to?

I get the privacy implications, but I figure that anyone who really wanted to know where I lived could figure that out anyway. I'm not giving anyone that much more than what was already out there.

4. There's also a principle of reciprocity. I increasingly utilize Flickr's maps to find new places I'd like to try shooting, so this is how I give back to any other photographer doing the same.

I honestly don't see any reason to keep a location a secret. My reaction is exactly the opposite of yours: my desire to share a location increases with the effort I put into finding it or getting there. That some other photographer might want to shoot it later in no way detracts from my own work. In a way I'd actually take it as a compliment.

Re: Creative Commons, Only As Good As Those That Use It

Eric — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:23:59 -0000

I agree that the Creative Commons organization desperately needs to define what a "commercial use" is under the terms of the license. Though personally I don't consider merely displaying a photo on a blog with advertising as a commercial use - and that seems to be the unofficial consensus on the subject.

But that aside, "all rights reserved" has the same problem of only being as good as those who observe it. If merely attaching a license to content solved these problems, then the RIAA wouldn't be fighting a war on its customers and DRM would never have been conceived of.

It's not a problem with either license. Or to the degree that it is, it's because the licenses don't conform to the social norms and normal behavior surrounding intellectual property.

Re: Reader Question: Do you use Aperture or Lightroom?

Eric — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:32:41 -0000

Lightroom. Primarily because it's cross platform, as I have a workhorse PC running Windows and a Macbook Pro for a laptop. Lightroom runs on both and makes it pretty easy to sync the two. (Plus, there's just the reality that a laptop hard drive is insufficient to hold my whole collection of RAW images; I only ever keep a subset on it).