I followed a link to an interesting wiki aimed at cancer sufferers and their families and friends. The wiki hosting company has signed up for Google Adsense. Guess what kinds of ads the Google servers place on the page?
Forbes on Networks
Forbes.com has an interesting series of essays on networks.
Useless (but interesting) statistic
According to this presentation, over 2.7 billion searches are performed on Google every month.
Quote of the day
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
John Milton: Areopagitica
The case for the blogosphere, in a nutshell.
Jack Valenti RIP
I missed the news of his death. Larry Lessig has written a generous tribute.
The postmodernism generator
Jon Crowcroft found this…
The essay you have just seen is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator. To generate another essay, follow this link. If you liked this particular essay and would like to return to it, follow this link for a bookmarkable page.
I could have used one of these when I was an undergraduate.
Twittervision
Bill Thompson and I had a hilarious conversation the other morning with an incredulous former newspaper editor in which we tried to explain why Twitter might be interesting, even if it is currently just leading-edge uselessness. Afterwards I thought that perhaps a movie might help. So I made one.
Later… Martin Weller pointed me in the direction of Flickrvision, in which David Troy (creator of Twittervision) does the same thing for photographs.
Still later… Liz Lawley has some interesting thoughts about it, e.g.
What Twitter does, in a simple and brilliant way, is to merge a number of interesting trends in social software usage—personal blogging, lightweight presence indicators, and IM status messages—into a fascinating blend of ephemerality and permanence, public and private.
The big “P” word in technology these days is “participatory.” But I’m increasingly convinced that a more important “P” word is “presence.” In a world where we’re seldom able to spend significant amounts of time with the people we care about (due not only to geographic dispersion, but also the realities of daily work and school commitments), having a mobile, lightweight method for both keeping people updated on what you’re doing and staying aware of what others are doing is powerful…
Google tactlessness
Idly doing a crossword today I concluded that the only possible solution to a particular clue was ‘Lothario’. I Googled it to see whether it was plausible — and then noticed this ad, carefully placed by Google on the right-hand side of the screen.
It’s the kind of thing that got Lord Browne, the former CEO of BP, into trouble.
Retired colonels go online
Well, well!
Who’d have predicted this — the Torygraph encouraging its readers to dip a toe into the Web of iniquity?
Ministry of Silly Walks (Royal Division)
One of these chaps won’t be going to Iraq, ‘cos it’s too dangerous, apparently.
Nice hats, don’t you think. Perhaps they’re thinking of joining the Orange Order.