Pascal Van Hecke – Daily Links

… people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle”

Google Analytics online learning center and test for GA certification

A quote from Mark Zuckerberg when announcing the FB redesign:

"We think that as it becomes easier to connect and share across the social graph, people—as well as companies, governments and other organizations—will share more information about what is happening with them. As this happens, the world will become more open and people will have a better understanding of everything that is going on around them."

Another illustratation of the web geek creed: "more sharing -> more open -> more good thinks will happen"

jQuery plugin generates that sparklines (small inline charts) directly in the browser using data supplied either inline in the HTML, or via javascript.

Wikipedia traffic stats and trends:
"Wikirank shows you what people are reading on Wikipedia. It’s based on the actual usage data from the Wikipedia servers, which the Wikimedia foundation makes available as a public service."
Nice visualisation!

"No longer are you working with Googles search volume estimates trying to predict click through rates – Wikirank lets you see exactly how much traffic a top ranking result might send."

"We present a framework for analyzing privacy and anonymity in social networks and develop a new re-identification algorithm targeting anonymized social-network graphs. To demonstrate its effectiveness on real-world networks, we show that a third of the users who can be verified to have accounts on both Twitter, a popular microblogging service, and Flickr, an online photo-sharing site, can be re-identified in the anonymous Twitter graph with only a 12% error rate."

Although data sets are anonymised, it is possible to derive user identity by comparing social graphs from Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
(Similar research succeeded in identifying a big part of the anonymous Netflix data set by comparing preferences for movies in both Netflix and Amazon reviews)

"callto:" is a "pseudo-protocol". The actual standard is "tel:".
Since "callto:" is being used by Skype and Netmeeting, and "tel:" is recognised natively by most mobile phones, you better use them for desktops and mobile sites respectively, depending on browser user agent detection.

"two ingredients are now slowly getting into place to turn another privatization attempt of the railways into a success:
1. Full dynamic and open transit data
2. Seamless transit payment"

Richard Stallman targets javascript usage:
- should be accompanied by a readable (non-obscured/compressed) version of the same script
- "free" browsers should have the possibility of modifying .js libraries or replacing them with other libs of their own choice
- suggests a notation for alternate url + licensing url

A significant portion of search queries are or contain proper names. Given its high pagerank, twitter will further dominate the SERPs for these queries.
Worth noting that Facebook and Hyves in the Netherlands took similar steps recently.

FireEagle-Twitter mashup.
Use Twitter to explicitly broadcast your location to FireEagle, which can feed it into all kinds of other social media.
More from the creators at http://www.sprxmobile.com/we-launched-wheremenow/ :
- we believe in explicit location updates instead of implicit
- Location updates use too much battery
- you want to regulate degree of accuracy
- Location Updates when automated are not a social gesture

"I can’t see how I could be prevented from creating a heads-up display [...] But I’ve got a hunch that those magic glasses are going to be controversial."
(Jon Udell in a posting an a service that modifies web pages in a Greasemonkey-like fashion based on entitlements you get from InfoCard-proven membership)

Presentation [Slidy!] by Daniel J. Weitzner basically saying that traditional privacy controls ("privacy by obscurity") have failed and are unsustainable in an era where everyone is a publisher.
Instead, he suggests a system of complete transparency where everybody abuse of knowledge will be recognised and punished.
(BTW: I'm extremely sceptical)

Alper Çuğun’s writeup of his arguments pro public availability of public transport (schedule) data in the Netherlands

User-generated collection of funny or remarkable Streetview sightings. Placed on a Google map of course.
Online just a few days after Google Streetview launching in the Netherlands.

Inventory of business models depicted with a simple set of 10 building blocks
(http://www.boardofinnovation.com/2009/03/19/how-to-build-any-business-model-with-only-10-blocks/)
(developed by young Belgian innovation consultants Nick De Mey and Philippe De Ridder)

"free web-conferencing service that has screen-sharing, chat, notes, videos, presentations and a whiteboard between collaborators"
- access each other’s computers screens with permission
- only requires flash player
- give a presentation

Brilliant, somewhat sceptical review of "Us Now", "… a film that is likely to attract accusations of naivety: at its heart is the premise that trust can be enhanced by the human interconnectivity allowed by the net."
"Us Now is intriguing not least because it captures the zeitgeist of the interconnected times we live in – the frontline being sharing and transparency versus the old order of guarded secrecy…. For those not deeply immersed in the online world ‘Us Now’ is a fascinating primer in the aspirations of the net generation"
"How mainstream all of this is to the gestalt of our social and political lives is the big question. "
‘Us Now’ is currently being screened in Canada and Europe and will be on Google Video next month.

Answer to http://ciscofatty.com/ – the story of a young woman that tweeted she had landed her a job at Cisco but only did it for the fat paycheck (and actually didn't like the job).
Her (public) tweet was picked up by a Cisco employee, which cost her the job. "Cisco Fatty" became an internet meme in no time. Note that she put her profile to private but that the tweet was available at search.twitter.com for a long time… (has been removed meanwhile).

GoogleLookup function in Google Spreadsheets uses an automatically-generated database of facts to find answers for questions like "What's the population of Quebec?" or "How many employees does Google have?"
It's not surprising that this _can_ be included in Google spreadsheets, the surprising thing is that Google has the audacity (or the nerve) to insert answers to search queries as actual facts in their spreadsheet…

Google Image Search has a new option that lets you restrict the results based on their color.
You need to tweak the search results URL:

http://images.google.com/images?q=bird&imgcolor=red

Short comparison of public sources of website traffic numbers: Alexa, Google Trends, Statbrain, Compete, QuantCast, Google Ad Planner
(Google Ad planner comes out best)

Just like Firefox, Chrome supports profiles – it does require bit of manual work for the time being.

WP plugin for JanRain's RPX hosted remote authentication service.
Adds passwordless sign-in and commenting to any blog using OpenID, Facebook, MySpace and Windows Live ID.

"calendar-publishing service that can extract structured calendar information from semi-structured web pages"

"In this post I will cover the major categories of enhanced share types — audio, images, video, news, blogs, games, documents, and multimedia — and walk through how site owners can stand out on shareable platforms"

EFF deplores opt-out (but admits opt-in was maybe not a realistic expectation) for behavioural advertising yet is positive about Ad preferences manager and Advertising Cookie Opt-out Plugin.

"50-minute documentary produced in 2007 that tries to explain Google's extraordinary success by analyzing its principles and idiosyncrasies."
See video online at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6256146808037867455 , via http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/google-thinking-machine.html

Automatic filtering of best stories in a certain niche:
- start from your favourite blogs in that niche
- see what they've been tagged with @del.icio.us
- find other top sources for that combination of tags
- run these sources through AideRSS/Postrank
- splice (Yahoo Pipes) and burn (Feedburner)

"What seemed like a simple gun possession case became an undeclared war over reality: Was Officer Ettienne a diligent cop who found a gun after chasing an ex-convict weaving through traffic on a stolen motorcycle? Or was his story a “devious” facade in keeping with the ruthless character he revealed on social network Web sites?"

Instructive legal case:
- the real world does not distinguish personas: you are held accountable for what you write online as a civil person, even if you do it in your spare time. Having a private life as civil servant or law enforcement officer becomes impossible
- the more you produce content online, the higher the risk some of that content will be used out of context against you.

"Youtube for sensor data"
"service that enables you to connect, tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments around the world. The key aim is to facilitate interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual."

Collection of resources (North-American POV!) on:
Privacy
abuse
basics
commerce
intellectual
privacy
risks
social
speech
By the NC State university

What it says

15-part introduction to JQuery javascript library
(free series – Nettuts has a freemium model where you get source files and bonus tutorials for a monthly subscription)

7 principles, by Torley Linden, the Linden Labs screencasting guy.
1. Understand audio engineering
2. Indulge in templates
3. Focus on using eye candy to enhance learning
4. Learn from the best screencasts in the world
5. Practice narrating and love your voice
6. Be codec-smart, context-aware
7. Continually explore delivery mediums

The DoubleClick offering is being extended to the whole Adsense network.
Not a surprise, what else would they have acquired DoubleClick for?
On the other hand, giving insight about stored preferences to a users just based on the cookie (without requiring registration) is a new and positive development.

A wiki debate visualization tool that lets you:
* present the strongest case on any debate that matters to you;
* openly engage the opposing arguments;
* create and reshape debates, make new points, rate and filter the arguments;
* monitor the evolution of debates via RSS feeds; and,
* share and reuse the debates on and offline;
"public implementation of the underlying Debatemapper software developed by Australian company Thoughtgraph Ltd"

Upload a pdf form or provide the direct url in order not to have to print it out and fill it out by hand.
Business model unclear, not sure whether I want to use it for sensitive information :-S