Archive for the 'internet' Tag
Why Whrrl is So Awesome
If I’ve talked to you since I started working at Pelago last month, chances are that I’ve told you to go join Whrrl. Apart from not having an “i” in its name, Whrrl has many traits, which usually get condensed into the one-liner description of “location-based social network”. Unsurprisingly, that isn’t immediately interesting to most people, given the number of existing options, so I thought I’d use this space to showcase some of what makes Whrrl so unique and powerful.
Millions of places, and they’re all on a map
Google Maps was a revolution in 2005 because it took the useful-but-boring maps we were accustomed to on the web and made them fully interactive, allowing you to pan and zoom the map by simply moving your mouse. Whrrl takes that a huge step further, by putting every public place in America on the map itself. Instead of having to search for a particular place that you’ve already heard of, you can easily discover new places around you.
The map is yours
Of course, with all of those places to visit, you need a way of knowing which ones are interesting. Rather than showing you the general-purpose ratings and reviews you’ll find at Citysearch or Yelp, Whrrl tailors your map to the opinions of your friends, allowing you to make decisions based on the opinions of those you trust. The places on your map will be green if your friends have rated them highly, or red if they generally dislike a place. If you’re new to Whrrl, your map will be prepopulated with the opinions of Top Whrrlers, who are the most active users in your city. What’s more, if your friends choose to share their location with you, they’ll also show up on the map whenever they’re checked into a place.
Helping you discover new places and events
Apart from simply clicking on any one of those places, if you’re looking for something in particular, you can do really deep searches depending on your current mood and preferences. I’ve found that Whrrl’s location search is more powerful than any other site I’ve used before, and it’s in part because Pelago has a data team that’s on a mission to actually call every restaurant in America for accurate and relevant information. For example, it’s 1am in Seattle as I write this, and Whrrl can tell me about 300 places nearby that will still be open in an hour.
It’s at your fingertips
Not only is Whrrl on the web, it’s also accessible from every mobile phone via SMS, so you can discover places on the go. If that’s not enough, you can download full-featured Whrrl clients to many phones, including iPhone and Blackberry devices.
Note: If it isn’t already obvious, even though I work for Pelago, there is no transitive relationship between this blog and the company. Read my full disclaimer here.
July 20, 2008 | no comments | tags: internet, socialnetworking, technology, whrrl, work
Net Neutrality for Web Browsers
Now that planning for Firefox 3 is well underway, Asa Dotzler, Mozilla Corporation’s Director of Community Development, has restarted the public discussion about what features should remain, go, or be added in future releases of Firefox. Among other questionable ideas, such as removing the “View Page Source” feature and “Character Encoding” menus from Firefox’s default build, he suggests that a version of AdBlock be included.
While I respect the idea that people should view content as they want to, such a decision by Mozilla could take us down a slippery path towards moderated content for two reasons:
First of all, this is impeding on a fundamental relationship between content publishers and their viewers. The web browser’s job is to simply deliver content between the two. Who is Mozilla (or anyone else, for that matter) to unilaterally decide that online advertisements should not be seen? What process would the use to decide which ads to block? Keep in mind that this discussion differs from blocking pop-ups or phishing scams — those practices are undeniably harmful to users. Thinking beyond advertisements, should your web browser be making any decisions to block sites based off of their function or appearance?
Secondly, because much of the Internet relies on ad revenue, it would be quite irresponsible for an organization like Mozilla (whose mission is to promote the Internet’s continued health) to encumber the creation and distribution of content that’s funded by online advertisements. Publishers are able to make things available for free because of an understanding with people that advertisements will at least be passively seen, if not clicked. The vast majority of us understand that money is needed to create and deliver our web experiences, and that it can effectively come from ads. I hope that an organization as influential as Mozilla doesn’t make a choice that disables this immensely valuable process.
Of course, I’m not saying that people can’t go install AdBlock on their own choosing. Isn’t that what extensions are for in the first place?
August 29, 2007 | no comments | tags: firefox, internet, media, software
Yesterday afternoon, Engadget published a (false) rumor that Apple was going to significantly delay the release of iPhone and Leopard. Apple’s market cap fell by $4 billion within 6 minutes.
May 17, 2007 | no comments | tags: internet, technology
Defining and Implementing E-Research Techniques
research, n.1
1. The act of searching (closely or carefully) for or after a specified thing or person. [oed]
If E-Research is simply the use of the Internet in research methods, it could be any of the following:
- using an online card catalog to find relevant books
- using Google to find relevant web content
- using any number of other webapps for experiment execution or analysis
Unless the object of study is actually the Internet, or some phenomena occurring on it, it doesn’t seem like these tools actually change research methods more than they aid them, by providing unparalleled access to information and analysis of just about anything, whether it be the last hour’s news or an eighteenth-century scientific survey.
On the other hand, E-Research could involve the study of online representations of any subject, through methods such as link analysis and usage studies. This latter definition seems to be what the VKS is focused on.
A study of wayfinding practices like the one we are planning can easily incorporate all of the above. In the first context, online research tools can be used to find previously published information in helping to design and substantiate a research plan. That plan can in turn incorporate an online component, such as a study of how people use some technology to aid their wayfinding behavior.
May 2, 2007 | no comments | tags: amsterdam, internet, research, studyabroad, wayfinding
Wayfinding Online
In looking at how people interact and “move” in the online world, there are infinitely many places to look for examples to evaluate.
First off, a user’s browsing patterns are clearly and intimately visible on the page of any active del.icio.us account. Not only is a viewer given a clear idea of the user’s personal interests, one can infer how a user moves between noteworthy sites through both time and cyberspace.
Taking a more social look at online browsing patterns beyond bookmarking, we can note the shift from a static web to what is now known as Web 2.0, where users become active participants at almost every website. This has possibly brought the shift from us following links in static web pages while keeping a definite goal in mind (just as we follow “see also” citations in encyclopedias), to an extremely transient movement pattern by way of links in blog posts, blogrolls, and randomized searches. Furthermore, sites like Digg and Technorati make evident the temporal popularity of ideas, as people discover, visit, and discuss interesting news and websites in a simultaneous and collective fashion.
This brings about yet another question: how has the dramatic shift from static to dynamic online content affected wayfinding patterns on the Internet?
April 11, 2007 | no comments | tags: amsterdam, internet, studyabroad, wayfinding
Richard Clayton from the University of Cambridge suggests that there are only a few large gangs responsible for most of the spam on the Internet. Tracking them down could be a much easier task than finding the supposed thousands of small spammers. (via Schneier)
April 11, 2007 | no comments | tags: internet, spam
Following in the footsteps of Flock, Mozilla is developing The Coop to add social networking functionality to Firefox.
April 5, 2007 | no comments | tags: internet, mozilla, software
Questioning the Internet’s Social Implications
A large component of the trip to Amsterdam consists of social research in the region. We will be working with the Virtual Knowledge Studio, which is a relatively new Dutch think tank concerned with the evolving use of technology in research.
I’m particularly interested in how technology usage patterns differ in various regions of the world. For instance, the use of mobile phones differs greatly between most continents. These differences are especially evident when looking at their use in various regions of the developing world. While we’re not surprised to see a twelve-year-old carrying her own pink RAZR, it’s common for multiple families to share a phone and even a single email address in many parts of the world. Other ideas contrary to our usage patterns, such as airtime rental have created new markets for trade elsewhere and are allowing rural areas to connect with the rest of the world.
Ideas
The very advances in connectivity that are brought through new developments in communication technology carry the potential of modifying the way societies operate. People’s online behavior generally mirrors and extends their offline concerns, as is visible at any community website or forum. Online social networks have struggled with appealing to more than a small subset of the global population, as these concerns vary greatly between regions. For this very reason, Google’s Orkut has seen great success in developing regions such as Brazil and India, while Facebook is ingrained in the everyday lives of American college students.
Leading off of this issue is the fact that people have begun spending a significant amount of their social energy in online interactions – this means that people no longer have a need to connect with their neighbors for social stimulation. I suppose that this could make it more difficult for a tolerant society like ours or Amsterdam’s to promote assimilation and intercultural understanding, as individuals would be less likely to interact with others who have differing interests and value systems if they can find people similar to themselves online.
Questions
- How do cultural differences in interpersonal interaction affect the way people use and expect technology to function?
- Has the Internet’s emergence reduced cultural tolerance in Amsterdam due to the ease of long-distance communication?
Evidence
In order to study the effects of technology, it would be necessary to first determine the usage patterns applied in a region. These could be determined through surveys and interviews of end-users, as well as discussions with people who teach the use of technology, such as librarians. Interviews of the general population could be used to determine what is expected of technology, and how it is used on a day-to-day basis. To answer the second question, the above methods could be extended to gauge the general sentiment regarding Internet use and its consequences.
April 2, 2007 | 4 comments | tags: amsterdam, culture, internet, society, studyabroad, technology
Sunil’s got a blog
In the past few years, the blogosphere has gone from zero to sixty million. My goal for this blog is not to simply add more noise to the deafening crowd, but to publish something relevant to a significant portion of the general public.
As Lawrence Lessig writes in Free Culture, an internet created and moderated by users like ourselves carries the potential to revolutionize the way we seek and value information:
The Internet has unleashed an extraordinary possibility for many to participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that reaches far beyond local boundaries. That power has changed the marketplace for making and cultivating culture generally, and that change in turn threatens established content industries. The Internet is thus to the industries that built and distributed content in the twentieth century what FM radio was to AM radio, or what the truck was to the railroad industry of the nineteenth century: the beginning of the end, or at least a substantial transformation.
I strongly believe in the Internet’s potential as a resource for humanity, through the proliferation of useful user-created content. We’ve already seen this through numerous blogs or, more notably, Wikipedia.
This is my try.
I hope that you’re able to get something out of this. Thanks for reading.