Archive
New Technorati algorithm..
If you are searching for new blogs to read, then Technorati is one of the best sites to start. Its top 100 blogs page reflects more or less what is happening in the web and the calculated rank is, in my opinion, quite accurate.
Moreover, during its October revamp, the site updated the algorithm for their main metric: Technorati Authority.
“…
- Authority is calculated based on a site’s linking behavior, categorization and other associated data over a short, finite period of time. A site’s authority may rapidly rise and fall depending on what the blogosphere is discussing at the moment, and how often a site produces content being referenced by other sites.
- The new Authority calculation differs from the past version, which measured linking behavior over a longer 6 month timeframe. Please note that links in blogrolls don’t count towards Authority, as they are not indicative of interest in relevant content; we stopped including blogroll links in August 2008.
…”
As Michael Arrington writes in his techcrunch post:
“… Until today, …, the top list was fairly static. Now they are focusing much more on recent data within the last month and giving blogs an authority rank between 1 – 1,000. Scoring factors include posting frequency, context, linking behavior and “other inputs.” The result, says the company, is a lot more volatility in the lists as blogs surge up and down. …”
I think that this is one more (small) step on the direction of results that reflect the real time and volatile nature of web.
Randomness in game design
An interesting presentation on randomness in game design: “Randomness: Blight or Bane?”
Tech Podcasts
According to the New Oxford American Dictionary:
a podcast is “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,” but the generally accepted definition has expanded to include video as well as audio. Originally derived from a combination of “broadcasting” and “iPod ™,” the word was declared “word of the year” when it was added to the dictionary at the end of 2005.
Podcasts have evolved during the recent years from amateur recordings using cheap microphones to programs that can be easily compared to the best radio or TV shows. They cover a wide range of genres and topics and, in my opinion, are a great (even though a little bit geeky) way to spend your time during long commutes. Most people will never understand this line of thought, but why lose 2-3 hours per day doing nothing when you can listen to this week’s tech news or a presentation about a new framework?
I have been listening to podcasts for a couple of years now and I am currently subscribing to about 10-15 (mostly tech oriented) podcasts, so I think that I have a pretty good idea on which are the best tech podcasts out there. The following list in not by any means complete, it just contains (in random order) the podcasts that I follow every week and that I think are worth mentioning:
Don’t Copy That Floppy
SIIA (The Software & Information Industry Association) released its new anti-piracy campaign [1], called “Don’t Copy That 2”.
You can find the video in youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUCyvw4w_yk
I was laughing out loud for 10 minutes after I saw the clip. I am sure that whoever is responsible for this campaign is either someone locked in a cage or he doesn’t have kids/thinks everybody is an idiot. Even the best comedian would never think about such a lousy add (in order to make fun of SIAA). As Nick Summers writes [2]: “Rap, Klingons, and Jailhouse-Rape-by-Broomstick Aren’t the Best Way To Teach Kids About Piracy … ”
In their next campaign, they should hire the guys from “IT Crowd” or even use their anti-piracy spot [3],[4] (it is a must-see). I would say that it is the funniest computer related add (with tones of money invested in it – not just a parody), but unfortunately it’s prequel from 1992: “Don’t Copy That Floppy” would easily take the “Worst Advertisement” Emmy Award.
Thou shall not repeat the same mistakes…
Today, as I was thinking (again) about the Yahoo-Bing deal, I stumbled upon one of the hundreds of posts about mistakes of tech companies:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/170337/the_10_stupidest_tech_company_blunders.html
I really don’t like the writing style of that kind of top-X-list stories and I am sure that anyone that has been around for some years and is interested in tech history could think of numerous other stories. Unfortunately, for some unexplainable reason, I cannot stop reading those articles as I find them especially amusing:
- IBM did not bother to write an OS for PCs and outsourced the job to Microsoft…
- Yahoo did not buy facebook for 1B$..
- Real Networks turned down the offer to create the ipod..
Really funny… But my interest is not focused on the past, but on the decisions made by tech companies today. I cannot understand why Yahoo gave away one of its most valuable assets: search. We are not talking about a medium company with 1-10 Million hits per month. Yahoo was the second largest search company in the world with 20% market share. And when we are talking about search, the active target group is 1 Billion users. I understand that they will keep the 88% of search advertising revenues on Yahoo-owned sites every year for the next five years, but the problem is that they have lost their focus when they decided to through away their engine and use Bing instead. They try to become a consumer of innovation instead of building their strategy using their own know-how.
What will happen in 5 years when the contract with Microsoft will have finished? Looking back a couple of years, we can see Yahoo repeating the exact same mistake. As Jason Calacanis writes:
“… Search is the most important business of the 21st century and owning a commanding lead in second place is not insignificant. At one time Yahoo was the number one search engine and portal. However, they didn’t see the value in search and decided to syndicate that piece of their business to a small company called Google. For a couple of years we all experienced Google in Yahoo’s wrapper. Our only indication of who made this wonderful tool was a tiny “Powered by Google” logo on the top right of the page. … Had Yahoo not given their search franchise over to Google back then, there is a good chance that the race for the most important business of the 21st century would be a dead heat. Certainly it would be closer . …“
I totally agree with Jason and I believe that it is worth reading his post and the counter-points by Fred Wilson and Bill Gurley.
Silly Bits (and Bytes) 