I just read an interesting story about technology from a startup called Invidi that delivers targeted ads to cable TV viewers. The targeting is based upon user behavior, and like Tivo, the system maintains privacy by never allowing behavioral data to leave the digital set top box (DSTB). This means that any personalization has to […]
OK, I finally cleared up what was bothering me about those long tail graphs, prompted by Phil’s comment and helped a lot by this article.
The issue is that long tail graphs have an x axis comprised of items ranked by their y axis value; e.g. for a social bookmarking site we can graph users […]
I stopped by the OMMA West show, among other things to see John Battelle talk about search, blogging, and media. Lots of interesting stuff there, but what got me to bring it up here was a panel discussion where Shelly Palmer made the point that metadata associated with media data is particularly important, because media […]
I recently read a couple of articles that suggested “automatic” 401K and IRA signups and a “sensible default portfolio” as a way to increase the low savings rate in the U.S., and it reminded me of an impressive feature of the Rails web application framework, which is essentially that of “smart defaults.” This is touted […]
In a previous post, I mentioned some interesting graphs that could be made from public URL tagging data such as that at del.icio.us. I keep wanting to see these graphs, so I figured I’d post some details and issue a request / challenge / wheedle to the real hackers out there to slap something together. […]