You know those compressed movie barcodes that we saw last week? Here's a Python script by Benoît Romito to make your own. Run a .avi format movie through, and voila. Free gift idea: digitize some old home movies and make a personalized barcode for your family.
Our “Basset Hounds Running On The Beach†post was such a success, we thought, wait a second… there are probably hundreds of dozens of photos capturing the brilliance of a basset hound running.
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You know the drill: E-mail this to your Mom so that she can spam her co-workers with the link.
Our labor force is increasingly dominated by so-called metaworkers who analyze the work of others and get paid more – often enormously more – than the people who actually work.
Facebook Comments could be the most disruptive feature released by Facebook. Why? Comments are one of the largest sources of meta content on the web. Our conversations provide a valuable feedback mechanism, giving greater context to both users and to search engines.
The Walled Garden
Using Firebug you can quickly locate Facebook Comments and determine how they’re being rendered. Facebook Comments are served in an iframe.
This means that the comments are not going to be attributed to that page or site nor seen by search engines. In short, Facebook Comments reside in the walled garden. All your comments are belong to Facebook.
This differs from implementations like Disqus or IntenseDebate where the comments are ‘on the page’ or ‘in-line’. One of the easier ways to understand this is to grab comment text from each platform and search for it on Google. Remember to put the entire text in quotes so you’re searching for that exact comment phrase.
Disqus Comments
Here’s a comment I made at Search Engine Roundtable via Disqus.
Here’s a search for that comment on Google.
Sure enough you can find my comment directly at Search Engine Roundtable or at FriendFeed, where I import my Disqus comments.
Facebook Comments
Here’s a comment made via Facebook Comments on TechCrunch.
Here’s a search for this comment on Google.
In this instance you can’t find this comment via search (even on Bing). The comment doesn’t exist outside of Facebook’s walled garden. It doesn’t resolve back to TechCrunch.
I thought of an edge case where Facebook Comments might show up on FriendFeed (via Facebook), but my test indicates they do not.
Comments and SEO
Search engines won’t see Facebook Comments. That is a big deal. Comments reflect the user syntax. They capture how people are really talking about a topic or product. Comments help search engines to create keyword clusters and deliver long-tail searches. Comments may signal that the content is still fresh, important and popular. All that goes by the wayside.
It’s no secret that search engines crave text. Depriving Google of this valuable source of text is an aggressive move by Facebook.
Is this on purpose? I have to believe it is. I can’t know for sure but it’s curious that my Quora question has gone unanswered by Facebook, even when I’ve asked a specific Facebook Engineer to answer.
Comment Spam
Comment spam is a huge problem. You know this if you’ve managed a blog for any amount of time. Google’s implementation of nofollow didn’t do much to stop this practice. So Facebook Comments is appealing to many since the forced identity will curtail most, if not all, of the comment spam.
This also means that the meta content for sites using Facebook Comments may be more pristine. This should be an advantage when Facebook does any type of Natural Language Processing on this data. A cleaner data set can’t hurt.
Article Sentiment
Extending this idea, you begin to realize that Facebook could have a real leg up on determining the sentiment of an article or blog post. Others might be able to parse Tweets or other indicators, but Facebook would have access to a large amount of proprietary content to mine page level and domain level sentiment.
Comment Reputation
Facebook can improve on sentiment by looking at comment reputation. Here’s where it gets exciting and scary all at the same time. Facebook can map people and their comments to Open Graph objects. It sounds a bit mundane but I think it’s a huge playground.
Suddenly, Facebook could know who carries a high reputation on certain types of content. Where did you comment? How many replies did you receive? What was the sentiment of those replies? What was the reputation for those who replied to you? How many Likes did you receive? How many times have you commented on the same Open Graph object as someone else?
You might be highly influential when commenting on technology but not at all when commenting on sports.
The amount of analysis that could be performed at the intersection of people, comments and objects is … amazing. Facebook knows who is saying what as well as when and where they’re saying it.
PeopleRank
Facebook Comments could go a long way in helping Facebook create a PeopleRank algorithm that would help them better rank pages for their users. If I haven’t said it recently, Facebook’s Open Graph is just another version of Google’s Search Index.
In this instance, Facebook seems to be doing everything it can to develop an alternate way of ranking the web’s content while preventing Google from doing so. (Or am I projecting my own paranoia on the situation?)
PeopleRank could replace PageRank as the dominant way to organize content.
Traffic Channel Disruption
The traffic implications of Facebook Comments are substantial. By removing this content from the web, Facebook could reduce the ability of Google and Bing to send traffic to these sites. The long tail would get a lot shorter if Facebook Comments were widely adopted as is.
We’ve seen some anecdotal evidence that referring traffic from Facebook has increased after implementing Facebook Comments. That makes sense, particularly in the short-term.
The question is whether this is additive or a zero-sum game. In the long-run, would implementing Facebook Comments provide more traffic despite the potential loss in search engine traffic via fewer long-tail visits?
For publishers, the answer might be yes. For retailers, the answer might be no. That has a lot to do with the difference between informational and transactional search.
Even posing the question shows how disruptive Facebook Comments could be if it is widely adopted. It could be the true start of a major shift in website traffic channel mix.
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My latest selection of six science stories, picked up by David Bradley Science Writer @sciencebase.
Six science selections is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog
Ah, the life of an experimental physicist. Long hours of mind-bending labor, all in service of those few precious moments in which you glimpse one of Nature’s true secrets for the very first time. Followed by the moment when your bosses tell you it was all just a trick.
Not that you didn’t see it coming. As we know, the LIGO experiment and its friend the Virgo experiment are hot on the trail of gravitational waves. They haven’t found any yet, but given the current sensitivity, that’s not too much of a surprise. Advanced LIGO is moving forward, and when that is up and running the situation is expected to change.
But who knows? We could be surprised. It’s certainly necessary to comb through the data looking for signals, even if they’re not expected at this level of sensitivity.
Of course, there is something of a bias at work: scientists are human beings, and they want to find a signal, no matter how sincerely they may rhapsodize about the satisfaction of a solid null result. (Do the words “life on a meteorite†mean anything to you?) So, to keep themselves honest and make sure the data-analysis pipeline is working correctly, the LIGO collaboration does something sneaky: they inject false signals into the data. This is done by a select committee of higher-ups; the people actually analyzing the data don’t know whether a purported signal they identify is real, or fake. It’s their job to analyze things carefully and carry the whole process through, right up to the point where you have written a paper about your results. Only then is the truth revealed.
Yesterday kicked off the LIGO-Virgo collaboration meeting here in sunny Southern California. I had been hearing rumors that LIGO had found something, although everyone knew perfectly well that it might be fake — that doesn’t prevent the excitement from building up. Papers were ready to be submitted, and the supposed event even had a colorful name — “Big Dog.†(The source was located in Canis Major, if you must know.)
Steinn Sigurðsson broke the news, and there’s a great detailed post by Amber Stuver, a member of the collaboration. And the answer is: it was fake. Just a drill, folks, nothing to see here. That’s science for you.
When the real thing comes along, they’ll be ready. Can’t wait.
Last year I wrote about how Craig Venter and his colleagues had inscribed a passage from James Joyce into the genome of a synthetic microbe. The line, “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life,†was certainly apropos, but it was also ironic, since it is now being defaced as Venter’s microbes multiply and mutate.
Turns out there’s an even weirder twist on this story. Reporting from SXSW, David Ewalt writes about a talk Venter just gave. Venter recounted how, after the news of the synthetic microbe hit, he got a cease-and-desist letter from the Joyce estate. Apparently, the estate claimed he should have asked permission before copying the language. Venter claimed fair use.
Man, do I wish this would go to court! Imagine the legal arguments. I wonder what would happen if the court found in the Joyce estate’s favor. Would Venter have to pay for every time his microbes multiplied? Millions of little acts of copyright infringement?
It's easy to forget just how big some countries are. For example, China:
China is now the world’s second-biggest economy, but some of its provinces by themselves would rank fairly high in the global league. Our map shows the nearest equivalent country. For example, Guangdong's GDP (at market exchange rates) is almost as big as Indonesia's; the output of both Jiangsu and Shandong exceeds Switzerland’s.
Select among GDP, GDP per person, population, and exports. There's a similar interactive for the United States.
[The Economist via Strange Maps | Thanks, Elise]
I have seen tons of elegant flatware but none of them as ingenious as this! The Magic Spoon is a delightful set of spoons, knives and forks that have built-in clasps at the end. Yes, exactly the hairpin kind! You can cleverly cling it to your plate while clearing out the dishes, seal pouches or simply be this show-off with cool cutlery!
Magic Spoon is a 2010 Kitchen Tools Winner!
Designer: Ivan Erkic
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