Food for Thought

Google AdSense as an Activist platform

I was thinking could Google AdSense be used as a platform for activism or protest. Moveon.org could buy keywords that would help expose their movement or act as a counter weight to their opponents. I know that it could be expensive but imagine how targeted you could be. I bet there will be a political campaign consultant that specializes in using Google (if there isn’t one already) to win the swing or undecided voters. Now I understand that Google might have an issue with that.

Then I thought what if Google wanted to provide equal time for searches that were of a political nature. Google could also donate AdSense budget for movements it thought were important. The more I think about it, Google could use its position to influence people one way or another. Imagine every search result page having a small space for activism or protest.

Its a good thing Google isn’t evil.

Sunday Favorite

Sunday Favorite: Isoleret blomst

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Isoleret blomst, originally uploaded by Jacob Bøtter.

Sunday Favorite will feature a favorite piece of media. This just happens to be my favorite type of flower.

The photo was taken by Jacob Bøtter. Its a a wonderful photograph. Enjoy.

attention

Bones in Motion Location aware (attention) application builder

I was at JavaOne back in May and I stopped to talk to the folks at the Bones in Motion booth. They were showcasing their J2ME based application that lets you record your jogging and up load it to their site. The site provides you with splits, route maps (Google mash-up), elevation changes, calculates calories burned, allows for you to share your routes, blog about your routes, see recommendations from others, and search for new routes. It is a fee based service (9.99/month) that is conveniently charged to your cell phone bill. In talking with the person in the booth it sounds like this application is the first in a series of Location aware applications. I even find the name of their recorder application interesting its the “Life recorder”.

My question for Bones In Motion can I remove my uploaded data If I choose to leave or share less?

There are a whole class of phone based solutions that are about to explode on the market. If you are a jogger it looks to be an interesting application.

As a side note:
Sprint/Nextel seem to be the only really capable platforms right now. That seemed to be the consensus (Informal non-scientific survey) around JavaOne. Not Surprisingly, only applications signed by Sprint can have access to the GPS services on a handset. I asked Sprint and they said (I Paraphrase) that GPS usage adds costs and they just want to recoup those costs. Nextel doesn’t require that its applications be signed. I think its carrier mentality, protecting their turf. The carriers are fully aware of the value of location aware and integrated applications, they simply want more than just the revenue from the data traffic.

Links:
BIMActive by Bones in Motion

General

The Automakers new revenue stream

I read Jonathan Schwartz suggested the automobile companies could give cars away free in exchange for a subscription to their telematics service (like On Star). So I thought about the possibilities and there are a boat load. Advertising and product placement (where does Starbucks put the next store) based on attention data gathered from the telematics system. A car could be collecting information on the radio shows you listen to, when you change channels, and know what roads you frequent (I’m sure Infinity outdoor would love that information). The telematics system could provide the radio with geolocated advertising like advertisements for the doughnut shop you are about to pass.

So it goes, sell them the car, require a subscription to telematics, gather data, sell the data to advertisers, funnel advertising into the car and put companies like shadow traffic out of business. The opportunities are limitless.

General

DNA a form of Attention and Gesture

I was listening to WBEZ public radio and there was an article on the creation of a DNA database at children’s hospital. Now there is nothing more basic than the gesture of life. The weird thing is that the DNA database will be used to create cures for diseases, those cures will be patented and then sold for a profit by some company. Who knows it may be sold back to a member of the DNA database that contributed to its creation. This is similar to use of biopsy wax blocks by Genomic to prove their product. The number and size of DNA databases are growing by the day. I have a wax block somewhere at the University of Michigan for use in a specific study. If one of my genes is the basis for some treatment or cure should I not be compensated? Should I at least be included in the patent as co-inventor? How does one protect and monetize their DNA?

The real issue is that we must be vigilant in understanding how our attention/gesture data is being used and when it is being collected.

blogging, question, tomcarroll.org

Question: To edit or iterate

I have been writing my blog in some form since about 2003. At first the having a blog was just meant as a trial of the format that I had been enjoying for years. Now that I post a bit more regularly, I have been thinking about how I write/ create content. I don’t claim to be a skilled writer just an eager one. I have struggled with how formal my writing process should be, how much prep, how many drafts ect. So I have come to the point where I am going to treat my writing as an iterative process. each post as an iteration trying to improve generally and possibly re-working previous ideas.

So here is my question:
How do you approach writing your blog, is it more edit or more iterate and why?

attention, Food for Thought, Technology

A life Connected

As we become more connected in our daily lives we are going to become more dependant on online cognitive models. These online cognitive models will become our primary conduit for knowledge. Today the primitive online cognitive models consist of a composite sets of applications, their rules and their data. The applications range from email to our cell phone, all providing some mechanism for us to be attentive to information. The models today stop short of proxying our understanding of the information. We are still faced with internalizing almost all the information we receive and then formulating some understanding. As that happens we will be forced to create mechanisms to maintain our situational awareness, and at the heart of that awareness will be our online cognitive models.

The models enabling situational awareness may be capable of representing our understanding and acting on that understanding. This may all occur beyond our site based on rich collections of attention/gesture data and rules. I think of email filter rules, pop-up and download permissions and IM presence rules as just the first step in creating the building blocks of composite online cognitive models.

Technology

Google personalized homepage with Google Reader is great!

I have kept my reading list in Google reader from the day it was announced at Web 2.0 in October. I have to say the product has come a long way. I would keep my list in Reader and then export to OPML and then import the OPML into thunderbird. Well that practice has come to an end. I just started using the Reader integration with Google’s personalized homepage and I love it.

Google Reader Feature Request:
I would like a way to create rule based filters.

attention, Technology

Attention and Gestures require an honest broker

In information centric economies, value is a function of trust. The role of the honest broker is to provide a well understood and transparent point of reputation for attention and gesture information. The information economy we see growing around links and clicks is driven by the reputation of a few silos in the economy. Google, eBay, Yahoo and Microsoft are major reputation providers in the link/click economy. I would never call any of these parties honest brokers, though some are closer to honest broker than others. These reputation providers are by no means neutral and each defends their reputation silo fiercely from competition. That defense can make the reputation less accurate as it is never clear where the interests of the provider end.

In the Attention Gesture information economy an honest Broker is required to facilitate the exchange of and valuation of information. Similar to financial scores, the honest broker provides the unadulterated reputation of an attention/gesture provider allowing the attention/gesture consumer to value the information and then provide the attention provider with some sort of value. The honest broker never has a hand in determining the value of the transaction, but by ensuring that reputation of the provider and consumer are well known to both parties it ensures that each party can trust the valuation. The honest broker provides reputation for both attention/gesture providers and consumers, allowing both parties to identify the value of the attention data.

This honest broker service might be free as part of a network collaboration or it may be a fee for service model similar to credit card industry. Regardless, an honest broker is required to defend the attention/gesture pools from fraud and hijack. The honest broker will become a mechanism for maintaining experience continuity across a long running set of interconnected actions and exchanges, in a life connected.

As we move from an attention economy to a situational awareness economy honest brokers will be woven into the fabric of our online cognitive models.

tomcarroll.org

RSS feed Fixed

I have received some complaints (Angry Penguin) about my RSS feed only sending article summaries. I just want to clarify that I wasn’t trying to force people to the site, it was just an oversight on my part. It was a simple config change in wordpress. I hope the new config makes your subscription a bit more enjoyable.