Categories
Social networking Web 2.0

Stutzman on Metcalfe’s Law and social networking

Some very interesting thoughts from Fred Stutzman looking at how Metcalfe’s Law is too simplistic when applied to social networking.

This notion of “full value” makes the mathematics of network value calculation quite appealing. If everyone on the network gets the same value from using the technology (everyone has the same options – i.e. call or not call on the phone), then valuing the network is absolutely possible. When using Metcalfe (or Reed, or Odlyzoko and Tilly’s refinement) to value a network, the core assumption is that the value we derive from the network is binary – this works for things like ethernet and telephony, but the mathematics prove to be overly crude when applied to social network technologies.

Therefore, the fundamental flaw in applying Metcalfe to social technology is its inherent lack of nuance and granularity. When people join the network, they are given more options than simply connecting; the network is worth the sum of associations and actions that are allowed in the network. We must instead think of network value in terms of a network effect multiplier, as the actual value a network adds to an application is under the direct control of the application designers.

Categories
Interactive Media Web 2.0

DHMTL/AJAX timeline creator

Fantastic open source timeline creator from MIT.

Categories
Web 2.0

Sydney Observatory astronomy blog launched

The Sydney Observatory’s new astronomy-related news blog is now live.

http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/blog

Maintained by Nick Lomb, Melissa Hulbert, Geoff Wyatt, Toner Stevenson and Martin Anderson and contributed to by their keenest casual staff and astronomers, the blog is intended to operate as a way of allowing the Observatory to quickly respond to current events in astronomy and the night sky as well as new discoveries by local amateur groups and affiliated societies.

The blog will also assist the Observatory in building a reputation as an aggregator and filter of important astronomy related news for this part of the world leading to more interest in visiting the physical site. It offers very low barriers to participation for Observatory staff and volunteers and greatly increases their ability to publish and comment on current astronomical and night sky happennings.

The blog is based on the success of other astronomy blogs, both professional and amateur, and the success of of other museums and science centres in this area.

The more web-savvy amongst its readers can subscribe to RSS feeds to receive content directly to their newsreaders as it is written.

Categories
Interactive Media Young people & museums

Gaming criticism

Great short piece from Clive Thompson, a columnist for Wired which answers the question “Why there’s no Lester Bangs of video games?”

Answer C: Game criticism isn’t economically viable enough to support traditional, professional critics.

Do the math: A serious RPG or first-person shooter or strategy game might take 40 or 50 hours to complete. Even if serious critics don’t have time to finish a game, they ought to spend at least 10 hours to experience its complexity. So ask yourself this question: If movies took 50 hours to watch, would there be any movie critics?

Nope. Newspapers and magazines couldn’t pay enough to compensate that sort of time. And how exactly would a single critic remain authoritative? Pauline Kael watched, like, 10 movies a week. You couldn’t play 10 games all the way through in a week if you tried; there are not enough hours in the day. Any attempt to do this would rupture the space-time continuum and release eldritch forces beyond anyone’s control. To cover the field adequately, a single magazine would need a stable of a dozen game critics or more.

This is another reason why bloggers and layperson enthusiasts will always be the most innovative writers on games. They’re infinite monkeys, and they’ve got the weeks to absorb themselves in a game and generate a brilliant take on it.

Categories
Web 2.0

Microsoft demographic predictor

Microsoft (who are working hard to challenge Google in the search marketplace) have just released a beta ‘demographic predictor’.

Enter a URL or search term and it will return the demographics of the users who serach or visit this URL.

The ‘official’ purpose of this is to allow advertisers to better target their advertising.

(courtesy of our friend The Lucid Librarian over the Tasman in NZ)

Categories
Interactive Media

BumpTop virtual 3D desktop

This is simply amazing. A totally new way to manage your files and utilise your desktop space.

Watch the video here:

http://honeybrown.ca/Pubs/BumpTop.html

Categories
Copyright/OCL

Microsoft & Creative Commons

Direct from Mike Madison’s blog

Microsoft Corp. and Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works, have teamed up to release a copyright licensing tool that enables the easy addition of Creative Commons licensing information for works in popular Microsoft® Office applications. The copyright licensing tool will be available free of charge at Microsoft Office Online, http://office.microsoft.com, and CreativeCommons.org. The tool will enable the 400 million users of Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel® and Microsoft Office PowerPoint® to select one of several Creative Commons licenses from within the specific application.

CC goes mainstream?

Discuss.

[update – CNet story is here.]

Categories
AV Related Web 2.0

Pitchfork’s YouTube music video selections

Ahhhh . . . . . collective ‘intelligence’.

YouTube provides the ideal place to put music videos. And Pitchfork has done a nice job of linking to what they consider are the ‘best 100’. They’ve excluded videos that were on the Directors Label series, so its the ‘best 100’ videos ever minus the top 20 best ever really.

Still, this is a nice example of community memory versus hardline IP protection (which would mean all these videos would be removed from YouTube – even though music videos are often considered by artist and label alike as advertising).

Categories
Folksonomies Interactive Media Web 2.0 Young people & museums

Who will own museum content?

Angelina Russo put me on to this interesting short think piece from The Art Newspaper Oct 2005.

Whatever solutions are preferred, the landscape looks like this: museums will ultimately embrace file-sharing, and overcome their fear of loss of authority. Curatorial scholarship will likely find its way near the top of the information pyramid, but is best served up in a more accessible format if it has the public at large in mind. Furthermore, the way forward will likely be with a combination of free content and licensable, high-resolution multimedia content, most economically built by consortia instead of by one museum at a time. The content will have to be updated, open to folksonomy protocols that encourage end users to contribute to databases, and that emphasize live features (real-time tours of shows and behind-the-scenes experiences) that people will pay a modest amount for. Museums will begin focusing on those things that younger audiences will be prepared to download for a micro-payment or subscription, alongside ample free offerings.

Have you tried the folksonomy tools on our recently release OPAC 2.0?

Categories
Interactive Media Mobile

S60 Nokia series as web server

O’Reilly on the recent open source release of Racoon – a web server for the Nokia phones that run the S60 series o/s.

The potential applications are quite exciting – even the factory-included remote camera operation is pretty nifty.

Now I’m just waiting for my new phone to be ordered so we can start testing this out . . .