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In the article:
Tweeting the terror: How social media reacted to Mumbai
it is explained how twitter, blogs and social networks gave mixed results in during the Mumbai massacre.
I particular it is said:
As Twitter user “naomieve” wrote: “Mumbai is not a city under attack as much as it is a social media experiment in action.”
But then,
as is the case with such widespread dissemination of information, a vast number of the posts on Twitter amounted to unsubstantiated rumors and wild inaccuracies.
and finally:
As blogger Tim Mallon put it, “I started to see and (sic) ugly side to Twitter, far from being a crowd-sourced version of the news it was actually an incoherent, rumour-fueled mob operating in a mad echo chamber of tweets, re-tweets and re-re-tweets.
Well, this could easily be avoided if we agree to just write the source of the information.
Just write (yourname) if you have seen something yourself.
(cnn) if you are repeating news from cnn, and so on.
Something that permits to track the spread of info to recover the original source could possibly be done directly at the twitter server level.
Some time ago I remember reading a comment.
La Repubblica, one of the first italian newspaper, holds a big internet website. As part of their initiative they have La Repubblica TV, which is a sort of television, just recorded for the net. You can download it when you want, and see it at your leisure. It includes everything: advertisments, opening music, interviews, etc.
Well the comment was discussing how that internet TV is quite dumb. Not really using up the powers of the net.
It took me as a really smart comment, and later I thought that also the lessons from the universities who are being recorded and released are still part of the old way of doing things.
And today I saw something which I thought might be part of the new way: The lessons on history from Lars Brownworth,
12 Byzantine Rulers.
Lars is a professor at a private high school, and if I got it right not even a professor in history, but history is his passion, and so in his free time he started investigating the middle ages. His lessons in pocast format really had success, and now his podcast is among the most followed on the net.
Why do I think his podcast is part of the new wave of education, and not part of the old wave:
- The lessons are not produced by a University. He did was not advertised as being an expert, and yet his succes came because of how interesting they were. How often have we followed a lesson at the university (or at high school), thinking the professor was not that good, and probably some students were actually better. Universities need to cover every class. But with podcasts there was no class to cover. He was an expert in something, he spoke about that.
- There is a great desire for real high quality content. We all recognise the power of the internet, but experts that blog about their area of expertise are still few. It is easy to find blogs and discussion forums where many amateurs discuss a topic. We are moving toward a time where the real experts start to use the internet to share about their topic. This will take away space to the amatour (it was nice to be the expert in a Taoistic forum, but am I really an expert), but real knowledge will start to flow more easily.
- It uses podcasts, and website. Cheap but high quality technology. Available to everybody
- His expertise was so great that he manage to induce an interest even in people who had no natural interest for the subject
And the conclusion of all this is that more and more material will start to flow. Up to now we have mostly seen amatours discussing subjects. While the experts would write books in the old fashion way, copyright them, and make themselves unavailable. Essentially putting a higher and higher distance between them and their public. Now an expert can teach, and if he is really good he can share not only his knowledge, but his burning passion too. The tools are available, and soon the best lessons on a subject will not be from the universities, but directly from the expert website. At that point universities will start pointing to them, and this will induce a great change in society. Maybe we might even reach the point that some website will offer lessons worth a certain number of credits. A fully decentralized university.
It is now the time to present the next project we have been working to: TagBay. And I say ‘we’, because is this project I am not alone. I did it with a friend of mine, Derek, who accepted, very patiently to code, some of the idea I have been tinkering around in the last year or so. I am speaking about how tags, and tag clouds, and distance between tags, and so on.
So, in brief we made a web site to tag material that is being sold on e-Bay. Anybody can tag any object that is being sold. Not only can any object be tagged but you can tag sellers, too (oh, we are not responsible for offensive tags, eh!).
Tags on objects can be made private or public, and you can also search among your tags, among everybody else tags, and eventually (when we code it) it will be possible to search among the tags of another user, like in del.icio.us.
Now that the summary for the people who have no time has been done, let’s try to explain the idea in the details for those who have a bit more time.
Pages:
On TagBay, right now, there are 3 type of pages: e-Bay Search Pages, TagBay Tag Search Page, TagBayUser Tag Search Page, Item Page, and Seller Page.
- Search Page: It is possible from inside Tag Bay to make searches on e-Bay on specific keywords. The user can then add tags to each object that came out, store the tags added all at once, or store the tags of a single object. The same thing can be done in the Tag Search Page
- TagBay Tag Search Page: In this page the user gets all the results for a single tag that someone have used. Nothing fancy (for now). Items where the tag only appears as a private tag will not appear here.
- TagBayUser Tag Search Page: In this page the user gets all the results for a single tag that he have used. If the user is logged in and is looking at his own tags, also the items tagged in a private way will appear.
- Item Page: Each object has its specific page. From such page any user can see what are the public tags that other users have used for that page. Also they can define their personal tags for that object, if their tags are going to be private, and the tags of the seller.
- Seller Page: And then there is the seller page, and in the seller page any user can tag any seller. The use of tag for sellers is still limited, but will be increased in the future.
The natural use of the site
- For a seller or for a shop A seller might want to use the site to tag all the objects that he is selling, giving for each object all the tags related. Thus increasing the possibility for it to be found. We suggest to list the tag in the order of importance, as soon we are going to use the order consider the importance in the search page.
Also, if a person wants to make a cool list of objects, they can tag exactly those objects, with a tag they never used, and then link to the page in their directory of this tag. Thus creating on the spot, their lists. Also sellers will want to tag their objects, and people making searches will tag objects to make lists of objects they want to follow, before jumping on a transaction. We think there is more than enough material to generate interesting behaviour. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same emergent behaviour that we are used to see. After all we are just exploring the possibilities of social folksonomy.
- A shop To the possibilities before, a shop who is selling on ebay might be interested to make sure that the shop itself (remember that you can tag sellers, and not only shops) have all the tags related to the merchandise that they are selling
- Someone buying Our suggestion for someone who wishes to buy, on e-Bay, would be to first look under the tag search, to see if there is anybody who has already tagged any object that they are interested in. This does not necessarily be someone else who is buying, but also someone who is selling. Then tag the objects they are interested themselves, to have it in their own list of objects. Then they could go to the search e-Bay page with the necessary keywords, and add the chosen tag to all the objects interesting. At that point a first selection have been made, and all the possible objects have been tagged. At this point, he could choose one or those objects, change the tags to private, and start betting on it.
- Someone suggesting And finally if someone is just trying to suggest some possible objects, he could search e-Bay for those objects, tag them with a unique tag and present the url of the list to whoever is interested.
There are many other ways to use TagBay. In a sense TagBay is a toy, and not a game. And as every good toy it can be used for many different games. We suggest here only some of them. Also TagBay itself is rapidly evolving. We have tons of stuff we are interested in including, and if you have been reading my blog, you know how my problem is always to find people to code my ideas, more than to find them. And this is why I am so happy for Derek work!
Difficulties that we found:
There were a number of issues that came out when we started developing this program.
- Public vs private tags:
Why would someone tag an object if they are interested to buy it? After all aren’t they making it easier to others to find it, by adding those tags?
This was a serious doubt that we had, and finally we decided to give the possibility to users to tag objects privately. Yet there have to be a balance between private tags and public tags, as public tags are necessary to generate the emerging folksonomy that we wish to use. So we decided for a compromise: public tags can be done from the search page, but private tags requite you to go to the specific object page. In our view (but we are ready to be proven wrong) someone would go to the search page, tag all the entries where he might be interested. Then chose one, and tag that one in a private way.
- Limitations due to the temporary nature of the objects
Considering that most object exist on ebay only for few weeks before being sold, wouldn’t this be not enough time to make a tag cloud and let all cool emergent properties that folksonomy induces, appear?
Maybe, but sellers also can tag the objects they are selling, thus giving a fresh start to all the objects. Also side by side to tagging object we are giving the possibility to tag sellers. Which eventually should survive each transaction and build up an interesting tag cloud.
- I spoke about sellers tagging their own objects, but wouldn’t this invite people to spam your site? After all, wouldn’t it be much better for a seller to add many tags to be present in many searches?
Ah ha! You think tag clouds can be spammed. This is false. Tag clouds cannot be spammed, and no one understand this. And we shall use this site to prove it. We have nothing against spammers, they are absolutely welcome in our site and spam it as much as they feel. Add all the tags they want to each object they sell. It will make ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE in the search page. Tag clouds are unspammable. And our engine will use tag clouds as its base. Everybody else uses tag sets. And this makes them easily spammable. So, no we don’t fear spammers. In fact we hope that spammers will come to our TagBay site. They are just people trying to sell their stuff, we are trying to make sellers meet with buyers. Wouldn’t be bad to single out spammers just because they are spammers.
TagBay is obviously still in beta, and there are many things that need to be coded. If you have any idea on how to make it better please do not hesitate to contact me. If you want to make a difference on what the final product will be now is the time to do it. Also all new suggestion implemented should be listed in a special page with links to the original suggester home page.
Hello everybody, I’m back.
The vacations were very good, and soon I’ll pull all the pictures on the moblog, with the descritpions and the embarassing details. Now I’m back to work in Jena.
One of the things that is happening to me at the time is that my computer is physically falling to pieces. It is an old laptop of a brand I don’t wish to nominate not to increase their visibility since it gave me all sort of problem freezing about one time a week at least. Having to look for a new model I started thinking about the products around, and I reached the conclusion that we are ready for another big jump. And generally a new product which will make a new base in the economy of Pda. (Yes I am looking for a laptop for me and I end up writing about PDA. So what? Sue me).
It seem to me that there are 4 different products on the market which really need to be integrated and when they will be integrated there will be a big jump in terms of potentiality. I am speaking of:
- Smart Phones (with Camera)
- PDA
- GPS
- IPod
Right now no product that I know of that is on the market have is really all four at the same time. There are some shy tentative to do the integration but no one has really managed.
Let’s look why those 4 instruments should all be present in one tool and what extra do we get. The smart phone will give the possibility to phone and more important to be in touch on the internet all the time. The more we go on the lower the tarif will be. In Italy is already possible to have a flat rate of 20 Euro a month that let you connect to internet anytime between 6pm and 8 am and during weekends and holidays (It is through TIM, if you are looking for it). It is very good. I wish here in Germany there was a similar possibility. With time the prices will inevitably drop. What all this mean is that the tool, that from now on I will call eBase, will have the possibility to be in contact with the internet pretty much all the time.
When I was in Prague at the European Go Congress I bought a small PDA, used, for 20 euro. It works fine and it permitted me to simply record all the official game I did. If the tool was already online I could have sent them to internet immediatly. But wait, if the tool is on internet I can also play go online directly from the PDA. Imagine, you are on your bus and you play online with someone, far far away, in a distant galaxy. And because more and more of the work is moving on internet, with del.icio.us, calendars on line, office on line, and so on, this would mean that you get all your data all the time. And this on a PDA. So on something that is big enough to actually do some work, read some web pages, and generally be useful.
And now the first critic will be, but what about making phone calls. Will not that be unconfortable? Oc course an eBasa have to be bigger than one of those miniaturized phones that are available right now. On the other hand I see more and more people using those bluetooth microphone to speak. You can still keep your eBase in your pocket while you speak.
Now PDA and phone integrated are already around. And they work quite well. In fact many smart phones are in a sense a PDA plus a phone. I use to be quite skeptic about those tools. Especially about how easy it is to write on the screen itself, but after my last PDA I had to change my mind. It works very well.
But now the last two elements, the IPod and the GPS. Already many smart phones have an mp3 reader inside. But the real novelty in the IPod is not the mp3 reader, but the memory. The fact of having 40 gb of memory means that everybody can carry ALL the music he likes with her. No smart phone that I know of offers this service. This is fundamental. If eBase have also to be a working tool it has to have a huge memory. 40 GB is the minimum. But what else would mean to have an IPod fully integrated with a PDA plus a smart phone. Well, for once it means that you can get your podcast directly on your phone. And since (see above) your phone is supposed to be on internet pretty much all the time you are getting your podcasting all the time from internet directly on your phone. Yes, we had reinvented the radio. And since this is going to have a bigger screen than a mobile (apart that flexible screens are coming out in an case), we can even consider having video podcasting with us. Essentially to have it we just would need some of the smart phone that we already have around and pack them with enough memory, and a flat rate connection to internet. Nothing too incredile.
And the last one is the GPS. We already have that too. Some smart phone have GPS included, and many can have it outside. It seem that until things are not integrated in the base object people don’t use them. It it was for me I would have never bought an external camera to use with my phone. But the model I needed had also a camera included, so I had to take it. And it ended up being what I use most, and I have the most fun with. I think the same goes with GPS. Wait until all phone have GPS. Wait until any phone can tell you the road to anywhere you want. Both in terms of streets, and in terms of physical distance (3 miles in direction 121 degrees). Wait until every picture that you make comes with the exact coordinates of when and where it was taken. And then you will have the possibility to put a picture on internet and everybody can find that exact spot (and of course you can obscure that possibility, to protect your privacy). Wait until you can make a search on internet on all pictures around a certain place. And then the integration of the internet and human beings that wish to be part of the internet can be really strong. And then you can search a post in your blog by where it was written, more than when it was written. And any document we write will not only have the date but also the location. And we start refering to places with their coordinates. Like we do now with time.
Think about it. Before the invention of the calendar people would refer to time by relating with big events. Two years before the flood. 3 years after the king got into power…
Now we have some universal ways to refer to time. 5th of October 2003. We still refer to things respect to an event (‘3 months after the twin tower’,…) but mostly we use the western coordinates. And the fact of giving to each user the possibility to know what time it was (the invention of the watch) made it possible and practical for people to refer to time in a precise way. As soon as we have some simple object that is with us all the time and that tells us our spatial position we will start to use this coordinates in the same way.
So I think those 4 objects should come together. And they will. And whoever will do it will get a big share of the market (and maybe this is why it had not happened yet, as each company keeps hold of its own patents to avoid the other being able to make the integration themselves).
I only gave here a sketch of the possibilities of such a tool. In a sense something like an eBase could be enough for a person to interact with the social coomunity. Would be enough to let someone discuss with others and participate in the emerging democracy that we seem to have finally started creating.
I am sure this object will come out. The question is not ‘if?’, the question is ‘when?’, and ‘what should I buy in the meantime?’.
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