Tagging and the Semantic Web

David Galbraith writes:

When you tag an item with a keyword such as “turkey”. what you are implicitly saying is “category=turkey”. The problem with this is that sometimes “category” is not enough context for a tag. Meaning always requires context. Wists allows you to label the context of a tag with anything (where the default is implicitly “category”). In the above example you could label something as “food=turkey” or “country=turkey”. These groups of tags, “metatags” allow you to indicate the context of a tag and give tags greater meaning and less ambiguity. Popular metatags that people have already created include location= for places and fav= for people’s favorite movies and books etc.

By allowing people to create metatags and attaching these metatags to their own ‘namespace’ you allow for the possibility of formally defining groups of metatags as an RSS module for a specific industry. In theory one can create a marketplace for RSS modules where the people creating the modules need not know or care about the technicalities of what this means. In other words if people involved in apartment rentals start to tags things in the following manner: rooms=3 square_feet=2000 monthly_rent=2000 etc., one has the beginnings of something that could be formalized as a standard module for apartment rentals with elements defined in a standard namespace.

It is possible that these early steps in grass roots classification via tagging could evolve into something more along the lines of what the original aims of the semantic web promised.

Always On World Components

Dana Blankenhorn writes:

There are two types of chips key to the Always On world. These are sensor chips and RFID chips. Both contain tiny radios. The two can also be combined.

Always On applications will use all these types of chips as clients on WiFi or cellular networks, with applications located on gateways that run at low power, with battery back-up, and have constant connections to the Internet.

So here are the parts of an Always-On solution:

* Sensor or RFID chips as clients pumping data.
* WiFi or cellular networks that transfer data.
* A robust, scalable low power server that can run applications for thae wireless network, using data from sensor or RFID chips.
* Software to provide the service and user interface.

Transforming this from an industrial into a personal mass market is the task of the Always On industry.

Mobile Marketing

The Pondering Primate has a wake-up call for search engines:

Think of just a simple SMS alert from People magazine that I get. I opted in to receive breaking news on celebrity gossip (yeah I read InTouch magazine too but only for the pictures).
People magazine with a two inch square got my attention and will provide me with something of use, and in return they send me relevant texts.

Heres what I see happening. Let's say Procter Gamble decides to offer a breaking news service, or they do a joint marketing deal with FOX News. Send an SMS to XXXX and put in the subject "financial news alerts". Now Procter Gamble is sponsoring an SMS alert to your phone. They can include an advertisement to shampoo along the side.

Everybody wins. I get relevant news alerts, PG gets to advertise their product and FOX News because your news service of choice.

My point with all of this. Once the Procter Gambles, FOX News realize if they create a great mobile campaign, they won't need to be spending money on keywords thru a search engine. Procter Gamble and FOX News already has access to me.

So I say WAKEUP search engines, once mobile marketing companies start introducing some great campaigns (i've got some great ideas), the link between consumer and brand is created.

Watching TV Makes You Smarter

The New York Times Magazine has an article by Steven Johnson:

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ''24'' episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all.

I believe that the Sleeper Curve is the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down. And yet you almost never hear this story in popular accounts of today's media. Instead, you hear dire tales of addiction, violence, mindless escapism. It's assumed that shows that promote smoking or gratuitous violence are bad for us, while those that thunder against teen pregnancy or intolerance have a positive role in society. Judged by that morality-play standard, the story of popular culture over the past 50 years -- if not 500 -- is a story of decline: the morals of the stories have grown darker and more ambiguous, and the antiheroes have multiplied.

But another kind of televised intelligence is on the rise. Think of the cognitive benefits conventionally ascribed to reading: attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads. Over the last half-century, programming on TV has increased the demands it places on precisely these mental faculties. This growing complexity involves three primary elements: multiple threading, flashing arrows and social networks.

Technology's 10 Most Inexcusable Failures

David Berlind has a list. Among them:

How many times have you received an appointment request from someone who doesn't share the same e-mail system? How many times have you had to cut and paste a bazillion times from the e-mail message to your calendar?

Are your appointments replicated to some place other than your primary system? A system at home for example? A PDA? A Smart phone? Having my calendar available to me (and others) at any time and in any place is a huge advance. But here's the rub. I'll be in a meeting, and my calendar pops up a reminder. When I dismiss the reminder, why isn't it then wiped out in all the other places where my calendar is replicated?

TECH TALK: Good Books: The Daily Drucker (Part 2)

An additional benefit of “The Daily Drucker" is the foreword by Jim Collins, author of “Built to Last” and “Good to Great.” This excerpt is via 800-CEO-Read:

Drucker’s primary contribution is not a single idea, but rather an entire body of work that has one gigantic advantage: nearly all of it is essentially right. Drucker has an uncanny ability to develop insights about the workings of the social world, and to later be proved right by history. His first book, The End of Economic Man, published in 1939, sought to explain the origins of totalitarianism; after the fall of France in 1940, Winston Churchill made it a required part of the book kit issued to every graduate of the British Officer’s Candidate School. His 1946 book The Concept of the Corporation analyzed the technocratic corporation, based upon an in-depth look at General Motors. It so rattled senior management in its accurate foreshadowing of future challenges to the corporate state that it was essentially banned at GM during the Sloan era. Drucker’s 1964 book was so far ahead of its time in laying out the principles of corporate strategy that his publisher convinced him to abandon the title Business Strategies in favor of Managing for Results, because the term “strategy” was utterly foreign to the language of business.

There are two ways to change the world: with the pen (the use of ideas) and with the sword (the use of power). Drucker chooses the pen, and has rewired the brains of thousands who carry the sword.

Drucker’s genius shines best in the short paragraph or single sentence that cuts through the clutter and messiness of a complex world and exposes a truth. Like a Zen poet, Drucker packs universal truth into just a few words; we can return to his teachings repeatedly, each time with a deeper level of understanding. This wonderful collection presents these pearls of insight in one place, where you can reflect upon them one at a time, without having to read all 10,000 pages.

Buying a book is easy – spend a few hundred rupees and you have it. Reading it is harder – it requires a commitment of time. That is why many books are bought but few are actually read. Drucker’s book goes one step beyond that: it is one which makes you stop and ponder. It forces you to introspect and wonder about the way you’ve been doing things – and suggests changes. This is a book which needs deep introspection on how our management styles need to improve – these books are amongst the hardest to read, because they make us look inward. “The Daily Drucker” is a must read for each of us – it needs to become a daily habit in our lives for reading and action.

Tomorrow: Welch on Winning

Related Entries:  [All]
TECH TALK: Good Books: Beautiful Evidence and More Than You Know [November 3, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: Winning Decisions [November 2, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: The Go Point (Part 2) [November 1, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: The Go Point [October 31, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: In Spite of the Gods (Part 2) [October 30, 2006]