A new approach to email overload

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From one of Jon Crowcroft’s blogs…

I’m trying an experiment just now – all my e-mail is deleted – if you want to send me a message you need to put it on a web log (sorry, blog) or wikipedia, and I will get a google alert on a (private, whilelist only) mail address and will get back to you. This both rate limits how often new people can send to me, and scales my mail to google’s search/alert system, which is probably better than the university’s – of course, if everyone did it it might be very interesting!

three things one hopes to learn
a. how fast google scan/alert stuff runs
(it hasn’t found michael dales blog of my email autoanswer yet, but its early days
b. how many people care
c. if anyone thinks of an attack…

WikiMindMap

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Tony Hirst, Whom God Preserve, found WikiMindMap.

Type in a search term — like this:

and get this — instantly.

Branches with an ‘+’ can be expanded. Tony thinks that it’s not quite as difficult as it looks (and is already thinking of ways of going beyond it), but I think it’s technically sweet.

‘Friends’ in social networking

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Interesting First Monday article on the concept of ‘friendship’ in MySpace, Facebook etc.

Abstract reads:

“Are you my friend? Yes or no?” This question, while fundamentally odd, is a key component of social network sites. Participants must select who on the system they deem to be ‘Friends.’ Their choice is publicly displayed for all to see and becomes the backbone for networked participation. By examining what different participants groups do on social network sites, this paper investigates what Friendship means and how Friendship affects the culture of the sites. I will argue that Friendship helps people write community into being in social network sites. Through these imagined egocentric communities, participants are able to express who they are and locate themselves culturally. In turn, this provides individuals with a contextual frame through which they can properly socialize with other participants. Friending is deeply affected by both social processes and technological affordances. I will argue that the established Friending norms evolved out of a need to resolve the social tensions that emerged due to technological limitations. At the same time, I will argue that Friending supports pre-existing social norms yet because the architecture of social network sites is fundamentally different than the architecture of unmediated social spaces, these sites introduce an environment that is quite unlike that with which we are accustomed.

Thanks to Robert Scoble for the link.

HowToMakeMoney.com

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Nice story in WSJ.com…

Entrepreneurs Jake Winebaum and Sky Dayton were widely mocked for lavishing $7.5 million on a single Internet domain name — business.com — back in 1999. It was the single highest price paid for a domain name at the time.

Now look who is having the last laugh.

The company that grew out of business.com — a search engine used by businesses to find products and services — is now on the auction block, and could fetch anywhere between $300 million and $400 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sigh. I should have bought those Google shares when they were $85. Or Apple shares when Steve Jobs came back as ‘Interim CEO’. Hindsight is the only exact science.

Facebook as a platform

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Seth Goldstein has an interesting post in which he recalls a conversation he had with Brad Silverberg, the lead developer of Windows 95. Silverberg argued that, to succeed, a platform needed to have three things:

  • wide distribution
  • application developers making money
  • good tools

    • It’s clear that Windows 95 had all three.

    Goldstein then applies this test to Facebook:

    * Wide distribution? YES
    * Application developers making money? NO (at least not yet…)
    * Good tools? YES

    So, the question for establishing Facebook’s value as a platform is no longer whether Facebook itself can make money but whether its developers can do so.

    Hmmm…. I don’t see the “good tools” for Facebook. Wonder what Seth thinks they are.