Everything is Miscellaneous

Class trip tag cloud

David Weinberger — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:21:08 +0000

David Silver on his blog reports on a four day trip to an organic farm he took with his students. At the end, there’s a tagcloud from the various posts that emerged. Snow, food, nature, and octagon all loom large. As does, rather mysteriously, Francis :)

There are pictures and links to the students’ posts. Fun to read.

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Open Science Directory

David Weinberger — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:29:43 +0000

Can you guess what the Open Science Directory might be a directory of? Score 0 points if you guess “open science sources,” but subtract -10 if you guessed anything else… [Tags: science open_access ]

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My Tweet cloud

David Weinberger — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:53:04 +0000

A wordcloud of words I’ve used while Twittering…

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Booklamp maps ‘n’ matches

David Weinberger — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:18:32 +0000

Booklamp is a technology demo that analyzes the text of books along multiple lines (action, density, description, dialogue, etc.) and then uses that info to find other books with similar patterns. Right now, it’s only got a handful of sf books under its wing, so it’s purely a demo, and they’re trolling for sponsors who might be able to support their effort to gets lots of books included.

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Censored metadata

David Weinberger — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 14:04:28 +0000

Apparently, “abortion” is once again a searchable term at the Popline medical information library. It had been removed by government officials because apparently there were a couple of articles in the database that were actually pro-choice.

Censoring of search terms is the censoring of metadata which is the censoring of information. When the Chinese do it, we are scandalized. When we do it, I hope we are more scandalized.

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Two questions for Google Maps

David Weinberger — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:06:58 +0000

Google Maps now (well, I just noticed) lets anyone add a place marker that is visible to all other users. Their example is a spot in a SF park where there’s open air dancing.

I’ll be interested in following two questions: 1. How will policy evolve to handle abuse and edge cases? 2. How will the system be hacked?

1. What controls is Google going to have to introduce to keep maps from being polluted with markers such as “Best pizza in town,” “Marcie the Slut lives here” and “[enter your choice of slur]town”?

As of now, Google lists two types of controls. First, some listings are protected, either because they’re hospitals or government buildings, or because the owners of a business have “claimed” the listing; Google does some form of verification before awarding ownership. Second, there’s a “report abuse” button which sends the listing to a moderation process.

I hope that that’s sufficient. But what about edge cases? If grieving parents mark the spot on the road where their child was killed, will Google count that as abuse and remove it? Historical markers? Celebrity homes? Notices of where events will be held? Treasure hunt clues?

2. Related to the first: How will people creatively hack the system, not to bring it down (the bad hacking) but to use it in ways Google didn’t anticipate (the good hacking)? For example, maybe citizens will mark potholes, possibly giving the text a distinctive, findable tag. Or educational walks. Or the rankings of public schools. Or all the places there was a death by gun. Or a link to a Flickr query that aggregates photos from that spot. Or the ten million better ideas that everyone else will have.

It’ll be fun to watch. [Tags: google google_maps everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Wikipedia in the vicinity

David Weinberger — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:42:16 +0000

Simon Willison has a Fire Eagle app that shows you (presumably on your mobile phone) the five places mentioned in Wikipedia that are nearest you. Fire Eagle (in beta) lets apps know where you are, while protecting your privacy. It comes from the irrepressible Tom Coates…

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TopicMaps in Oslo

David Weinberger — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:02:57 +0000

April 2-4, I’m going to TopicMaps, a conference that may be particularly interesting (to people who are particularly interested in it, of course):

The basic idea is simple: the organizing principle of information should not be where it lives or how it was created, but what it is about. Organize information by subject and it will be easier to integrate, reuse and share – and (not least) easier for users to find. The increased awareness of the importance of metadata and ontologies, the popularity of tagging, and a growing interest in semantic interoperability are part and parcel of the new trend towards subject-centric computing.

The organizers have let it be known that there’s still room… [Tags: conferences topicmaps oslo everything_is_miscellaneous]

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12 unexpected Wikipedia debates

David Weinberger — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:01:04 +0000

The Onion lists and discusses 12 surprisingly controversial topics at Wikipedia. [Tags: wikipedia onion]

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Experts vs. the rest of us

David Weinberger — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:52:47 +0000

Slashdot discusses the Newsweek article that says paid experts are coming back.

My reaction is: 1. The Newsweek article acts as if the Web is either/or. In fact, it’s more of everything. 2. The slashdot discussion is a pretty good case example of the strengths (and weaknesses) of letting amateurs go at it.

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