Disqus - Latest Comments for dtunkelang

Re: The challenge of creating a new category

dtunkelang — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:34:44 -0000

I think that part of the problem is that people conflate problems and solutions. For example, if Hunch is a way for people to get their questions answers, does that place it in the same category as Yahoo Answers? But they, why not also include Google and consulting services? Clearly a meaningful category also constrains the solution space to a class of approaches.

For all that I've read about the distinct kinds of innovation, I think reality is never so clear-cut. The most extreme statement is for a company to say it is solving a problem you didn't even know you had--and which no one else has discovered, let alone tried to solve. That is truly category creation. But I think that even most "disruptive" innovation starts from a known problem, even if it frames it using a different objective function.

Re: window office - Ad-hoc retrieval: measurably going nowhere « IREvalEtAl

dtunkelang — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:41:18 -0000

Thanks for the pointer. Of course, we HCIR junkies have been saying this for a while, but we tend to see the problem as the emphasis on batch retreival measures, not whether researchers shop around for easier baselines.

Re: Voices

dtunkelang — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:16:38 -0000

Thanks for including me in your list! I'm flattered to make it through the filter.

Re: It’s official: I now use Bing instead of Google

dtunkelang — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:08:24 -0000

Out of curiosity, what distinguishes Bing from Google on that first example? Isn't the Google result ( http://www.google.com/search?q=indian+food+98004 ) comparable?

I grant that Bing wins over Google on travel--though I'd say that's by default, since Google doesn't do travel. The real question is how Bing compares to Kayak, which is clearly its real target here. I still prefer Kayak, though I imagine some people appreciate the Farecast stuff, but I'm skeptical that it's enough for Microsoft to gain significant market share in this vertical.

You don't really comment on the other two verticals: shopping and health. I'm underwhelmed by Google on both of these, but frankly not all that whelmed by Bing either.

My early reactions to Bing and some interesting discussion:

http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/06/01/banging-o...

Re: window office - Just received my first request for a paid link on...

dtunkelang — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:08:46 -0000

Don't sell yourself short! Your blog is worth almost $2M!

http://www.pufip.com/?q=windowoffice.tumblr.com...

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter's Search Engine Is Very, Very, Broken

dtunkelang — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:07:39 -0000

I haven't had the kindest words for Twitter Search: http://thenoisychannel.com/?s=twitter+search

But I think some of the comments here are overkill. I use Twitter search regularly as an alerting service for a broad vanity query. It works reasonably well, and I've learned to live with the glitches as part of what comes along with a free service. Could they do a lot better? For sure, and I've blogged about that. But what they have now is nonetheless useful.

Re: Do Tags Work?

dtunkelang — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:57:16 -0000

You might want to take a look that my colleagues and I at Endeca did by bootstrapping on author-supplied tags for computer science documents in order to improve the overall findability of documents in the collection. The paper is entitled "Supporting Exploratory Search for the ACM Digital Library", and you can find it in the HCIR '08 proceedings (p.85):

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/r...

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/05/dont-tempt-online-mob-they-come-bearing.html

dtunkelang — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:47:20 -0000

I'm with Victor here. Criticizing a free service for poor design decisions is everyone's right. The right to *make* the decisions, however, is another story. And users believing they have those rights over a service just because they've "built the value" by voluntarily using it with no contractual obligations beyond what they agree to in the terms of service? Sorry, but that's an odd sense of entitlement that is far too prevalent, at least in the echo chamber of the blogosphere / Twitterverse. Imagine if we applied that logic to every business model--you basically destroy the conventional understanding of ownership. Perhaps that's part of the 2.0 Manifesto, but it has little to do with reality.

Re: Wikipedia Grappling with Deletion of IHT.com

dtunkelang — Sun, 10 May 2009 13:14:40 -0000

Perhaps this is a great reminder as to why many publications frown on online sources as citations. Not only can links be removed, but the content can be modified at any time. Of course, an online publication could make a commitment to permanent links and immutable content--and could even contract with a third party to maintain an archive, in the even that the online publisher goes under.

Re: window office - Facebook Quiz creation tasks Amazon Mechanical Turk.... evil...

dtunkelang — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:02:20 -0000

Wow, that's a nice scam. I do like how scammers are some of the most aggressive innovators!

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/04/are-your-writing-your-headlines-for.html

dtunkelang — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:55:44 -0000

140 characters is a lot of room for a headline. For perspective, your headline for this post is only 57 characters long. Is this really an issue?

The bigger question in my mind is whether you're writing headlines to be noticed by search engines or by human beings. To me, writing for Twitter or other social media means trying to catch someone's attention by piquing their interest. SEO for search engines is also an attempt to stand out, but catching a search engine's attention involves different strategies.

Re: Amazon Accused of Removing Gay Books from Rankings

dtunkelang — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:38:12 -0000

I can't help put wonder if this is related to their recent girl scout cookies incident.

http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/03/30/a-blooper...

Re: Tweefind Applies Google Magic to Twitter Search

dtunkelang — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:38:01 -0000

I'd be curious to see how it compares to TunkRank, both in theory and in practice.

http://tunkrank.com/

http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/13/a-twitter...

Re: Evil Marketing Ploy or April Fools Joke? ('cause it can't be true)

dtunkelang — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:56:57 -0000

Yeah, it's a marketing ploy, and maybe a little even, but I think it''s cute / clever: it's funny, and it did get you to visit the site. I'd let them live.

http://blog.slideshare.net/2009/04/01/happy-apr...

Re: window office - Amazon.com search for [girl scout cookies]

dtunkelang — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:50:57 -0000

I do feel there's an object lesson here about relevance ranking approaches that aren't transparent to the user. Though it's so over the top that I have to wonder this was just a perverse Easter egg planted by an employee. If I were Amazon, I'd post an official explanation.

BTW, the site is fixed now (it took them a week from the first evidence of someone tweeting about it--but they probably didn't hear about it until the mass attention today), but I did save a screen shot:

http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/03/30/a-blooper...

Re: Mac vs. PC: Some Can Dish It Out & Take It, Others… Not So Much

dtunkelang — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:07:22 -0000

Zato, don't you realize that it's folks like you that give Apple a bad name? I used to like Apple before I met so many Apple zealots. I still think Apple generally (though not always) produces better technology than Microsoft, but the attitude of the culty fans is a real turn-off.

Criticize MS technology all you want, and I'm with you. But go easy on the hate.

Re: Mac vs. PC: Some Can Dish It Out & Take It, Others… Not So Much

dtunkelang — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:01:06 -0000

The Seinfeld ads were disappointingly lame. This ad is good, as are the Microsoft Rookies ads. It's like Microsoft suddenly took a course in Advertising 101 and is proving to be a quick study.

Also, before I get called a Microsoft fan-boy, let me note that I work for a company that counts Microsoft as one of its competitors. Still, why bash a competitor when it does something right?

Re: San Francisco to be “Twitterfied”

dtunkelang — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:54:41 -0000

I was going to suggest that he meant that San Francisco would see a traffic increase of 752% but no sustainable revenue model. But that would be catty. :-)

Re: Wolfram Alpha — it’s like plugging into an electronic brain

dtunkelang — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:21:17 -0000

This could be as Cuil as Powerset! It's making me feel Dipsie already! Not sure he'll be able to flip it for $100M in this market though.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/1...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/mar/27/8

http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/02/17/d...

Re: window office - TREC-BLOG Track Wiki

dtunkelang — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:22:45 -0000

Sounds exciting! I'm intrigued at the assertion that it "mimics an exploratory search task"--but regardless I'm excited at the direction this is taking.

Re: If you think The Web can survive without advertising you’re nuts

dtunkelang — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:57:34 -0000

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

OK, I'm not totally crazy, and I realize that the ad-supported model isn't going away any time soon. And we actually agree on the most important point: the only way that the ad-supported model will be sustainable is if advertisers step up their game and stop pissing people off. I think that if advertisers make ads that their prospects *want* to see, then they won't care about people being able to block ads.

But you are crazy if you think I'm going to "accept ads as part of my daily life" and "stop hiding from advertising". Perhaps you mean that, if the advertisers step, I should have an open mind to the possibility that I might want to look at some of their ads. I'll keep that open mind--but I will certainly fight for a world where that choice is not up to the advertisers.

And I haven't given up on alternative business models for content. Ask yourself, what happens if advertisers don't step up? Does the media industry just die? Or do they find other ways to monetize their content?

Re: To 90,000 Twitter Followers in 30 Days

dtunkelang — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:10:21 -0000

Reach and influence matter--and not just to people trying to sell products. Anyone trying to communicate would like to reach his or her target audience as effectively as possible. I don't see a problem with people wanting to measure how effectively they or others do so. Yes, some people are more influential than others, and Twitter, like any communication medium, can't help but reflect that, Conversely, it's valuable for users to be able to understand who is influential, to whom, and why. Respect isn't completely transitive, but it's certainly propagated socially.

What bothers me about the follower count mania is that people aren't trying to maximize real influence, but rather to score points in a game they've confused with gaining real influence. It's a lot like cheating on a standardized test. It might get you into a prestigious school, but it won't make you smarter, and it probably won't make you more successful in the long run. Besides, as soon as everyone learns how to cheat, the only winners will be those who profited from the cottage industry of cheating tools while it lasted.

In short, it doesn't bother me to see influencers and would-be jockey for position. It bothers me when they waste their efforts trying to get the high score in a stupid game--and when they spam the rest of the world while they're at it.

Re: To 90,000 Twitter Followers in 30 Days

dtunkelang — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:18:12 -0000

Wow, Scoble really lost it, but I guess "status" is everything for some of these A-Listers. As a user, I do see a valid question in wondering how the suggestion mechanism is implemented--but not because follower counts have such a great value to be diminished. Follower counts are already a faux social currency: at their best, they reflect a user's celebrity or influence; at their worst, they reflect a user's determination to accumulate higher numbers for its own sake.

I proposed an influence measure - http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/13/a-twitter... - that I thought might be a first step towards discouraging this silliness because it at least discourages users following other users solely in the hope of increasing their follower counts through reciprocity. The world can take it or leave it. But I do hope we can stop competing over meaningless numbers. If we have to be competitive, at least let it be over some meaningful measure of influence.

Re: YouNoodle scores the buzz on 25,000 startups

dtunkelang — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:00:34 -0000

I keep waiting for these guys to come out and tell the world that the valuation predictor is an elaborate hoax. Tracking buzz is more plausible, though they are hardly the first to do it. Check out Crimson Hexagon and BuzzLogic.

Re: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/02/how-patent-trolls-are-a-tax-on-innovation.html

dtunkelang — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:46:16 -0000

I work with software too--I'm a computer scientist, not a lawyer. I feel that my view on software patents is more informed than most, and I have the scars to prove it!

I could be quite happy in a world without software patents. I do think there would be some negatives--as in medicine, the prospect of a limited monopoly protection is an incentive for R&D investment. Also, that same protection is an incentive for companies not to keep that R&D as trade secret. But, on balance, the harm outweighs the benefit. This is a case where I think it's worth throwing out the baby along with the bathwater.