Category Archives: Web/Tech

I hung out at the Yahoo! campus last night for the free confab they sponsored titled: Prediction Markets: Tapping the Wisdom of Crowds.

This is very, very cool stuff. The conversations were moderated by James Surowiecki of Wisdom of Crowds fame, with speakers from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and HP, as well as the master theorist of prediction markets Robin Hanson of GMU.

Here’s some background on prediction markets. Here are some notes. Here is a post about the internal Yahoo currency they use on their prediction markets. This is David Bennock’s blog (Yahoo! Research) — I’m subscribing.

I’m going to do some reading and research and will post my own notes and thoughts in the near future.

I don’t talk much tech on this blog, but it doesn’t mean I’m not a geek. Here are some applications I’ve been playing around with recently:

1. Del.icio.us — No surprise here. I’ve tagged over 2,100 items in del.icio.us and don’t know what I’d do without it. It’s my repositiry of fringe thoughts and interesting links on the web.

2. Lijit — I recently installed Lijit on my Firefox. This is super cool. As I browse the web I can see what my friends have tagged “interesting” or “useful”. For example, in Google search results there are sometimes flags next to pages my friends have found useful (or “legit”). If you want to be friends with me on Lijit, just friend me.

3. NetNewsWire — I still use NetNewsWire to manage my over 400 RSS feeds on my Mac…It’s doing OK but it’s a bear to re-organize feeds and folders. For example, it’s next to impossible to move my “High Priority” folder above my “Medium Priority” folder without my High Priority going into my Medium Priority. This bug notwithstanding, it’s still the best Mac RSS aggregator.

5. Judy’s Book — I write reviews of restaurants and cafes I eat at on Judy’s Book.

6. Jott – This is a really nifty, FREE, service that lets you call a toll free number from your cell phone and leave a voice message. An audio file then appears on on your page on their web site within minutes. Within hours, your audio file is transcribed into words. This is perfect for an idea or thought that pops into your head when driving or if you don’t have access to pen/paper.

7. PBWiki — My friends at PB Wiki have added a WYSIWYG editor which is fantastic and much easier to use. I’m now using PB Wiki to manage most of my wikis. I just wish they’d make new wikis password-optional!

If there are any other apps you think I should try out, leave a comment.

In March I did a post analyzing potential email closings (Best, Sincerely, Yours, etc). It seems like this obsession has hit the mainstream. The New York Times looks out how your email sign-off can send all kinds of emotional messages. I wouldn’t be surprised if this causes many people to opt-out of the madness and not sign their name at all, or simply preface their name with a hyphen.

Warmly,
Ben Casnocha

The only social network I use regularly is Facebook since it’s an easy way to stay in touch with all my friends from school.

One feature of Facebook is "The Wall". Each user has a public Wall and any other user can leave a message on your Wall. So instead of emailing you or messaging you through Facebook, I would leave a message on your Wall and if you wanted to respond you could leave a message on my Wall.

99% of the users leave messages on other people’s Walls as the primary way to communicate through the service. Since all Walls are public this means many previously private conversations (which would have happened through email, IM, one-on-one messages, and the like) are now public.

This creates a fascinating social effect. People ostensibly leave private, personal messages, but they are also aware that many other people will read that message too. I’ve witnessed entire conversations (four or five back-and-forths) take place on Walls and no one else joins in the conversation — after all, it is a private conversation between two people — but everyone continues to lurk.

There are two questions to ask about this social effect. The first is whether the content of the conversation changes when it’s a public and not private conversation, and if so, whether the change is good.

I believe conversations which occur on a Wall are different — not by much, but different — than those which used to happen in private. When I leave a comment on a public blog I think for a few more seconds about what I’m saying since I know it’s in the public domain.

I believe the change is both good and bad.

Good because when a conversation takes place in public the participants are more accountable and so the quality of the conversation usually rises. The comments readers post publicly to this blog, for example, are usually of higher quality than private emails I receive about my posts, and I think this is because people are more thoughtful in public.

Bad because the participants are likely to self-censor what they say in order to signal to "lurkers" (for example, someone may say "What a great time last night!" to one person in order to signal to other friends that they were at a party the previous night) and this reduces the conversation’s honesty and efficiency.

Overall, I’m a big fan of "transparency" (at the cost of privacy) in the blogging world, on Facebook, and in other venues because I believe the increase in quality of the conversation outweighs the cons. What do you think? Have you seen private conversations move into the public domain and what effect does this shift have in your world?

Will Price today touches on one of the toughest challenges any software company faces which is how loyal you stay to your delivery model. At Comcate we deliver (almost) exclusively software-as-service, but as Will mentions, we have occasionally committed "unnatural acts" to close a deal. Similarly, when a client requests custom development, we try to estimate the general applicability of the development (ie whether we could upsell the new functionality to other clients). If the general applicability is low or not on our product roadmap, we try to avoid taking on "bad revenue" business. Will concludes that "good revenue which reinforces efficiencies and scalability trumps absolutely higher revenue" and that "purity is a virtue worth aspiring to." Easier said than done… As Comcate has matured we have earned the luxury of distinguishing good and bad revenue!