The Puget News

The “True Knowledge” demo of a semantic search engine looks quite promising to me. It incorporates user feedback and intelligent parsing of intent to yield search results completely impossible by Google. It’s hard to imagine where a fully adopted version of this technology could go but it would be amazing to use this in combination with Google or Amazon’s efforts to scan books into a giant database. I also wonder what happens with more ambiguous questions than the ones asked. Anyways, exciting nonetheless. Why would true knowledge demo the app prior to launch and give their competitors such a full look at the their user experience? That’s either crazy confidence or terribly naive - we shall see.

Blue Dot has in one fell swoop and has been reborn as . The improved product focuses on users being able to subscribe to topics of interest and receive customized feeds regardless of whether or not that user has friends already on the system. For me personally, this is a less valuable use case than the very social sharing experience I use the site for, but the new direction does not get in the way of my existing experience at all and could be come useful when there are more people creating content in subject areas that interest me. I think this is a really smart move for the folks over at Faves (boy is it going to be hard not to refer to Blue Dot all the time) as the changes are born out of an honest assessment of where the site was seeing success and where it was facing challenges. It looks like they’re off to a great start with a !

Similar to my recent post on the navigation changes at Amazon, I thought I’d collect a page of feedback on the new Faves.com to see what people are saying about it. How the media and bloggers are responding is below:

[Last Updated: 9:13AM, November 9, 2007]
[*** - connotes noteworthy review]

Blog Coverage

• ***: “[…] Blue Dot’s bookmarking service has remained a favorite of ours because of their consistently innovate their interface. Today, with their re-launch as Faves.com, is no exception.”
• ***Mashable: “So will all these new changes help Faves better compete with the major players? I really like the incorporation of feed management tools, along with the other ways to manage bookmarks, and leverage the community votes.”
• ***John Cook’s Venture Blog: “Seattle social networking startup Blue Dot is scrapping its name and repositioning the service — now dubbed Faves.com — so that people can create a personalized Web page populated with their favorite news topics. For example, a Seattle Mariners’ fan who also enjoys surfing and cooking could sign up to receive information about those specific topics from other users who have bookmarked related content. That puts Faves.com in direct competition with sites such as Topix.net, Digg and Stumble Upon.”
• ***Social Media Explorer: “Is this going to revolutionize social news or bookmarking? Probably not. But I can certainly see usefulness in the approach and am interested enough to try it myself. While I’ve grown weary of social news sites – I hate asking people to Digg my submissions or vote for my stories so they’ll get better traffic – there are enough interesting angles to the user experience on Faves for me to recommend you give it a shot.”
• The Global Geek Podcast: “Here is some news you can use. The social bookmarking site Blue Dot, has changed it’s name to Faves.”
• NW Innovation: “The company said that people were confused by the firm’s prior BlueDot.us domain name, so it has changed to a more mainstream domain. The firm also said that it has upgraded its service with a major release, including personalized home pages, voting, and topic subscriptions.”
• Center Networks: “Bluedot.us has changed their name to Faves as of today. I had a lengthy call with the executives last week but idiot me left all my notes at home. I have pasted their release below as a back-up. Here is the basic idea - they changed their name to more accurately reflect what they do, the .us isn’t as “trustworthy” and they are focused around topic networks.”
• Technically Speaking: “While changing a name might help a company, in this case - Bluedot.us going to and becoming Faves.com is an attempt for them to gain some new users. I hope they are also figuring out a way to get the old users coming back. Like Allen of CN, I quit using Bluedot when it became too spammy.”

Media Coverage

• ad-hoc-news: “More than 36 percent of Web users ?highly trust? the information they receive from friends and acquaintances in their online social networks, according to a new social Internet survey by Faves.com, a social discovery and bookmarking site. The same survey found that 34 percent of respondents visit a social networking site at least weekly.”

FULL DISCLOSURE: I used to work at Blue Dot as a Program Manager.

• Quiet Please: Architectural Representations of City in Science Fiction Cinema - It is exactly what it says it is, a wonderful collection of science fiction cinematic analysis pertaining to representations of cities.
• This Dilbert Blog post discusses the possibility that economists are immune to cognitive dissonance and explores a particular issue on the Bill Maher show, “Real Time” where economist Bjorn Lumberg spoke about global warming. I too watched that interview but I thought Bjorn Lumberg laid out his case clearly and beautifully. Bill Maher and the panel didn’t come to the same conclusion. Rob Thomas said the interview “…confused the shit out of me” and they all took turns taking pot shots at a guy who had just agreed that global warming was occurring but had a different, non-histrionic approach to prioritizing the issues that the others could not hear.
  

  The primary skill of an economist is identifying all of the explanations for various phenomena. Cognitive dissonance is, at its core, the inability to recognize and accept other explanations. I’m oversimplifying, but you get the point. The more your brain is trained for economics, the less it is susceptible to cognitive dissonance, or so it seems.

• Wired has a great interview with Ridley Scott where they speak about the evolution of Blade Runner and the forthcoming 5-disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition (which is on my Wish List btw!). [Tip to Bookninja]
  

  When you see an explosion that no one could have survived and the person is still running, then it’s bullshit. And that’s frequently why digital effects are not as good. Whereas when you do it physically, you’ve got to be careful — like, really careful. With digital, the painting book is unlimited; the world in, say, Lord of the Rings would not have been nearly as impressive 30 years ago as it is today.

The article is here:

In October, the online retailer Amazon.com will unveil the Kindle, an electronic book reader that has been the subject of industry speculation for a year, according to several people who have tried the device and are familiar with Amazon’s plans. The Kindle will be priced at $400 to $500 and will wirelessly connect to an e-book store on Amazon’s site.

Update: Apparently, this is a hot Amazon story today. Another blogger is reviewing the product before it even comes out.

I wish the video were more agnostic to the bookmarking services out there, but this is a great description of how/why you should use social bookmarking to store the best sites on the web.

Click To Play

If you’re interested in social bookmarking, I recommend Blue Dot!

Uh oh. Oh no you didn’t! Harper’s has gone and “done it”, granting access to 157 years of Harper’s Magazine content as part of their normal subscription price. Take that New Yorker! Infowhores unite!

(click the image for a larger look at what it looks like when you sign up and have access to 157 years of material)

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know if any of you have happened to see the Google customized logo for today but it looks distinctly like it’s missing the letter “l.” Knowing Google’s penchant for obscure mathematical, scientific, and literary references, I did a search on the word “Googe.” Sure enough, I got a wikipedia entry for Barnabe Googe, a 16th century poet mostly famous for the following line:

I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Update: Think this is nifty? Please go digg it so more people learn about it! Share the love on Valentine’s Day!

Update #2: It was just pointed out to me by one of my friends (thanks, Derek) that there’s another, even more direct reference for the day in here - Debbie Googe of “My Bloody Valentine!” Nice find, D!

Update #3: Perhaps we are reading too much subtlety into the Google design. Google’s own blog now has a post stating that “those with true romance and poetry in their soul will see the subtlety immediately.” I still like Derek and my interpretation better so neener neener!

Update #4: And now the disgusting ones from Urban Dictionary via the comment thread from the UK Register article. Warning - these are not “safe” and explicitly reference sexual practices in a “coarse” manner. And this whole post started so innocently!

“Free Books. Free Minds.” This is the Wowio slogan.

Wowio is an ebook service which allows registered users to download up to 5 ebooks a day. The site has an attractive design and their selection, while not huge, contains enough great title to make the offer very enticing. All the reading is done using Adobe’s ereader software.

And really, who are we to argue with free?

Well, if you’re smart, and I know all you folks who read my blog are smart, you WILL want to know what’s up with the “free” goodness. In this case, there is indeed a “catch.” In exchange for these books, you have to give up lots of personal data regarding your marketing preferences, race, education, and have your id verified by some fairly restrictive means (e.g. you can send scanned identification, give them a credit card for verification, or use a government/militray/state email address). In my opinion, the reward is worth it. I’ve got my data and preferences plastered publicly all over the web anyways. You’ll have to make the determination for yourself.

If you decide you’d like to give this service a whirl, let me know and I’ll send you a token so I get credit. Yeah, I’m a useless shill.

Perhaps the reason I’m so excited about this is that I was already planning on purchasing a TiVo TCD648250B Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder within the next several months (please, please let the price keep coming down) and these features just increase the value proposition of that purchase, but I also think the slickness of this end-to-end implementation is seriously enticing and poses a distinct challenge for Apple and their new Apple tv - especially since Apple’s only major movie studio partnership to date is with Disney and relies on the hardware constraint of the space on your hard drive.

• While the Amazon Unbox Store does not yet support Macintosh (grrr, what is it with everyone and the single DRM’d Windows solution?), bypassing all of that and going straight to my living room is fine.
• My digital library can sit on Amazon’s Media Library, I won’t need to buy physical DVDs (my collection is pretty huge already), and I won’t need to invest in new hardware (e.g. hard drives) to hold Gigabytes/terabytes of information. This appeals to my greener sensibilities. Amazon and Tivo should drum that angle up in the marketing.
• If I were to idly speculate (which I love), this solution gives Amazon/Tivo the option of upgrading the quality of the movies fairly seemlessly to the end-user. After all, users won’t have to have the movie on their own hard drive. Amaozn/Tivo could detect when I want to reload a movie out of my digital library and give me the option as to the quality I prefer (so I can match it to my setup). Even better, I’d probably just set a preference for the highest quality possible at any given time.

Amazon/Tivo, if you give me a rental option before the rest of the market can get there (something akin to Netflix without the mailing), I’ll be yours forever!

Disclaimer: I am a current employee at Amazon.com but I had no prior knowledge of this implementation. I do not currently possess any future knowledge about this which is not public. Cheers!

Word from the New York Times is that Wal-Mart has introduced a new video download store today, the big news here being that they’ve inked deals with all six major Hollywood studios. Clicking a link from the New York Times article, this is the site I saw:

Yowzah. I know it’s beta but shouldn’t it look a bit better than that?

Luckily, I’m a savvy websurfer and know that I need to click ctrl+F5 to refresh all the css. What percentage of users know that? Doing that did at least yield the following:

Notice that the name error is still all screwed up.

I wonder of it’s going to support Macintosh? Not holding my breath. Will somebody please create an alternative to the iTunes downloadable movie solution that works on Macs?