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Steve and I have been exploring the online reference site, The Book of Odds. Some of the site’s key functionalities are still in Beta, but for over three years they’ve been compiling odds to create a large database of “the odds of everyday life.” You can sign up for free and provide a little profiling information to begin exploring statements of probability related to your profile, or to anything you want to look up.
The idea is to explore the odds of something happening, and then to calibrate the probability in a comparison. If the topic you explore is included in the database (the four main current topic portals are Health & Illness, Accidents & Death, Relationships & Society, and Daily Life & Activities), you’ll get confirmed probability data on that topic, but you’ll also get leads on unexpected connections, as you compare unrelated events by their likelihood of occurring.
The site also has social and learning functions, and content aside from the odds database (newsletters, blogs, related links, etc.) We’re just getting started exploring this resource, and brainstorming about how we can apply it to our day-to-day reference needs. It’s actually pretty challenging to think about life in terms of probability statements – thinking up queries to get started. But once you dig into the site, there’s quite a bit to learn – not only the small bites of data, but how to calibrate probability, and new approaches to classifying and comparing phenomena.
Brian Solis and JESS3 have published an updated version of their “Conversation Prism.” This infographic charts the many ways in which online and real world interactions are evolving, and the primary applications we use to communicate. In its current form, I find this to be a good resource for introduction/reminders about services for different channels, but if periodic updates continue, I can see this becoming a great tool for brainstorming and decision making.
Link to a mostly readable image
From their blog, “Using the Conversation Prism , we can visualize and map the shifting landscape of social networks and micro communities to observe and conduct our initial fieldwork through digital anthropology. The process reveals everything, from measurement opportunities to participation strategies to the specific infrastructure changes necessitated by the new proactive and reactive process of engagement in the social Web.”
Is the growth in the E-book industry driven by online social sharing?
With the fairly recent release of the new and improved Amazon Kindle, increased promotion through iTunes, advancing reader applications for the iPhone, and more frequent PR and media about readers’ social networks’ growth, is the e-book medium finally revving up?
Scribd is one of the leaders in readers’ networks, and they’re now partnering with major publishers to offer more bestsellers, in addition to the many “paperbacks,” magazines (can’t you get those online in another format?), and business, legal, and government documents. Even the Obama campaign and administration have utilized this service to share documents. Yet despite high purported membership and use, the application is not widely known. This partnership at the very least signals that publishers are treating the network and its related web tools like a platform for distribution, not just a promotion and testing ground.
It will be interesting to watch how this channel is adopted by the commercial book and literature world. If Amazon consumer reviews, Facebook reader applications, adoption and interest in the Kindle, and microblogging through social networks like Scribd are any indication, we can expect growth and advances in the way information about books is shared.
Personally, I would always rather read a bound hard copy of a novel or nonfiction work. I welcome the break from the flashing light screen; I will likely revisit the book at some future date at least in reference; and in my opinion, the content can lose much of its ability to communicate human emotion.
Several years ago when e-books were first being offered online in an experiment in channel, I read Jack London’s Martin Eden while toiling away at mindless deskwork (a previous employer, of course). While I was able to follow the plot and enjoy the language, I didn’t feel the frustration and despair that I got when I re-read it in a physical copy. Sure, maybe one may not want to willingly empathize with frustration and despair specifically, but the thing that concerned me was that the communication suffered. It was clearly not just the case that a re-read was necessary to “get it” – the medium itself failed me. But hopefully these companies on the upstart are also addressing the reader (consumer) experience.
Additional news on this front: Wired Epicenter
I periodically engage in an on-and-off conversation with a writer friend about the challenges creative types face in balancing consumption and productivity. This conversation spins off in several directions, depending on how much coffee and/or beer we’re drinking: the differences between consumption of information and learning; the differences between entertainment and art; re-appropriation and the instinct to seek or disregard “newness.” This dialogue is really all over the place and rather heady but can frequently spark a new line of thinking for me, or at least consideration of a new perspective.
I am a creative and productive person, but when it comes to early adoption of web technology and trends, I am more of an absorber of information than a generator of new insight or perspective. I am a big fan of tools that can aggregate sources of information and trends, and lay out the basic information for me. At least giving me the ability to “catch up” within a click or two. I don’t typically engage in the early seek-and-trial behavior that many early adopters do, but I like to know what’s out there.
YouNoodle is a resource that aggregates data on startups. I believe they launched in the middle of last year, but through partnerships and promotion are really starting to swagger recently. Their Startup Predictor decision making tool is a sharp first product, and seems to be helpful to beta testers. However, my main utility here is their Scores directory, compiling data on startups from news sources and indexing each with a quantitative metric to enable easy display on category, industry, and publisher top standings lists.
As an added bonus (for me), you can easily click through any of the startup names on the lists to learn more about them. This will not only give you more in-depth detail on their YouNoodle data, but will simply let you know what these trendy rising-star sites and appliations are. Easy aggregation and easy consumption of information.
For those of you who aren’t already familiar, in a few short months, Twitter has gone from a site used by a small circle of people constantly flooding the world with useless information about their day to a prime communications and information sharing tool. Or, as our friend Mark might put it, the conversation has become broader and deeper, more nuanced in a way that it’s hard to believe we’re doing it with less than 140 characters at a time.
So now, it’s being used for everything from telling everyone about your experiences in the here and now, to letting people know there is new stuff out there (we’re even doing it with our blog @W5Insight. It’s also been used in recent months to express group outrage with a viral advertising campaign.
While some of the biggest signs that the conversation is becoming more nuanced include the recent explosion of Twitter applications from seeing what others tweeting via the Twitter Grader and Twitturly to expanded content sharing through websites such as Twitpic, and the fact that everyone from CNN Anchors like @Rich Sanchez to mainstream corporations like @SouthwestAir are using it; the biggest sign of Twitter’s acceptance might be found in it’s recent Phishing incidents. Also interesting is how breaking news has a way of hitting Twitter minutes before it ever hits mainstream news feeds or even live television
While using Twitter might not make you more profitable if you’re a company or change your life as an individual, it’s become a conversation the rest of the group is having. On the day of the inauguration, follow some of the live updates for a prime example of the undercurrent.
What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think Google? Kroger? The Home Depot?
Noah Brier at the barbarian group put together Brand Tags, a web app that asks thousands of visitors this very question for hundreds of different brands. Results are compiled into tag clouds, giving visitors a visual representation of the words most often associated with these brands. While I certainly wouldn’t say the results are scientific, they are nonetheless interesting.
To see how brands stack up against one another, see Battle Mode.
