Facebook Credits for Websites
Facebook Credits expand further: outreach to every website, going beyond Facebook Apps; http://eicker.at/FacebookCreditsWeb
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Infinite Digital Bookcase
Google: We designed a digital bookcase that’s an infinite 3D helix; http://eicker.at/Google3DBookcase
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “As digital designers, we often think about how to translate traditional media into a virtual space. Recently, we thought about the bookcase. What would it look like if it was designed to hold digital books? – A digital interface needs to be familiar enough to be intuitive, while simultaneously taking advantage of the lack of constraints in a virtual space. In this case, we imagined something that looks like the shelves in your living room, but is also capable of showcasing the huge number of titles available online – many more than fit on a traditional shelf. With this in mind, we designed a digital bookcase that’s an infinite 3D helix. You can spin it side-to-side and up and down with your mouse. It holds 3D models of more than 10,000 titles from Google Books. – The books are organized into 28 subjects. To choose a subject, click the subject button near the top of your screen when viewing the bookcase. The camera then flies to that subject. Clicking on a book pulls it off the shelf and brings it to the front and center of the screen. Click on the high-resolution cover and the book will open to a page with title and author information as well as a short synopsis, provided by the Google Books API. All of the visuals are rendered with WebGL, a technology in Google Chrome and other modern browsers that enables fast, hardware-accelerated 3D graphics right in the browser, without the need for a plug-in.”
TC: “I wrote a while back about the eventual necessity for the internet to become beautiful. The trouble is that the things in the world we consider beautiful in an informational context – magazine and book layouts, typography, etc. – are necessarily limited in the information they have to present. It’s this limitation, the known quantity aspect, that lets designers work effectively. – How should you design something, then, that presents effectively limitless information (say, all the world’s books) through a fairly limited medium (say, a web browser)? Google has one idea. Put them on a gigantic helix. … But is this really something people will want to navigate? Probably not. People like analogs in their digital catalogs, and this one seems a little bit too off the wall. … Anyway, it’s a fun little experiment you can try out here. Note to Mac Laptop users: be careful how you swipe or you may accidentally navigate off the page or invoke some arcane gesture.”
VB: “With tablets and eReaders offering a number of new ways to experience books, the browser has been relatively ignored. However, not a lot of people consider getting into a bubble bath with their nice glass of wine and a laptop book to wind down the day, but you never know. To that end, the virtual bookcase may not be a competitor to the Kindle, but rather to the book discovery service overall. It could also simply be a way to funnel people toward purchasing Google Books, but it’s still pretty cool.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Siri: Let’s Talk!
Potentially Apple’s Siri changes how we interact with computers entirely: Siri, let’s talk! http://eicker.at/Siri
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Gerrit Eicker
Apple: “Siri. Your wish is its command. – Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much, you’ll keep finding more and more ways to use it. … Talk to Siri as you would to a person. Say something like ‘Tell my wife I’m running late.’ ‘Remind me to call the vet.’ ‘Any good burger joints around here?’ And Siri answers you. It does what you say and finds the information you need. And then it hits you. You’re actually having a conversation with your iPhone. … Siri not only understands what you say, it’s smart enough to know what you mean. So when you ask ‘Any good burger joints around here?’ Siri will reply ‘I found a number of burger restaurants near you.’ Then you can say ‘Hmm. How about tacos?’ Siri remembers that you just asked about restaurants, so it will look for Mexican restaurants in the neighborhood. And Siri is proactive, so it will question you until it finds what you’re looking for.”
Wikipedia: “Siri is a personal assistant application for iOS. The application uses natural language processing to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to an expanding set of web services. The iOS app is the first public product by its makers, who are focused on artificial intelligence applications. Siri was acquired by Apple Inc. on April 28, 2010. – Siri’s marketing claims include that Siri adapts to the user’s individual preferences over time and personalizes results, as well as accomplishing tasks such as making dinner reservations and reserving a cab. … Siri was founded in December 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (VP Engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/VP Design), together with Norman Winarsky from SRI’s venture group. … It was announced on October 4, 2011 that Siri will be included with the iPhone 4S. The new version of Siri is deeply integrated into iOS, and offers conversational interaction with many applications, including reminders, weather, stocks, messaging, email, calendar, contacts, notes, music, clocks, web browser, Wolfram Alpha, and maps. Currently, Siri only supports English (US, UK, and Australia), German and French. … Siri is a spin-out from SRI International’s Artificial Intelligence Center, and is an offshoot of the DARPA-funded CALO project, described as perhaps the largest artificial-intelligence project ever launched.”
TC: “The integration with iOS seems to be just as impressive as we’ve been hearing: you can ask it to remind you to call someone before you leave the office, and it’ll automatically create an entry in the Reminders app, complete with a geo-fence just to be sure. You can also ask Siri to read your queued messages to you and make an appointment in the Calendar app. – The worst part so far? Siri indeed seems to require the iPhone 4S’s extra horsepower, because it appears to be a 4S exclusive. The kicker? Siri was originally a run-of-the-mill iPhone app. What a shame. – Siri will be a beta for the time being, as it only supports English, German, and French voice input, but there are more language add-ons and tweaks to come.”
WP: “As rumored, Apple’s doing some all-new voice-control AI stuff in iOS 5. It’s called Siri, which is the name of the app Apple bought for $200 million a couple years ago. … You can also ask Siri to look things up on Wikipedia for you, and Siri can use Wolfram Alpha to do more complicated calculations. Siri’s list of capabilities is near endless, including asking it to play genres of music for you, look up something on maps, or what the weather is. Our favorite question? ‘Siri, who are you?’ Siri responds: ‘I am your humble personal assistant.’ … The bad news? All this great stuff is only available for the iPhone 4S – Apple had to do something to force an upgrade! In all seriousness, some of this AI functionality can be incredibly processor intensive, so Siri might be leaning on the A5 chip quite heavily.”
MLS: “Siri Search, makes use of Yelp’s business ratings, thus this makes instantly makes Yelp a strong local competitor to Google Places. Yelp is now very relevant to your small business rankings. Google Places has been the big dog in local optimization or as I call it, Local Awesomeization… And your places ranking and profile completion has become very important for your local marketing.- Now, Siri, which is a virtual assistant will be able to find you anything you want… and it is using the Yelp Reviews to rank the recommendations. … Nuture your Yelp account now. Claim it, and begin getting good reviews. Local search is a science, and you have to get that information out there.”
GigaOM: “Apple’s intent when it bought Siri was rumored to be building a search engine, though Jobs defused that speculation by saying, ‘We have no plans to go into the search business. We don’t care about it – other people do it well.’ But Jobs also said earlier last year: ‘On a mobile device, search is not where it’s at, not like on the desktop. They’re (consumers are) spending all their time on these apps – they’re using apps to get to data on the internet, not generalized search.‘ – With Siri, Apple doesn’t have to get into the search game if it can use Siri to direct people to the apps, services and information they need. That’s probably not a big money-gainer for Apple, but it could put a hurt on rival Google, which relies on search advertising.”
TUAW: “Curious about the iPhone 4S’s new voice assistant feature? So were we. – [We] tracked down a set of example phrases that the new Siri voice assistant is capable of understanding. It turns out that Siri can handle many categories of voice interaction. – Without further ado, here they are, ordered by interaction category, along with Apple-supplied examples of using each category.”
FC: “Don’t let her dulcet voice and easygoing, eager-to-please manner fool you. Behind Siri, the voice-controlled personal assistant app destined to power Apple’s iPhone 4S, lies the heart of a hardened combat veteran. That’s because the technology was spun out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s high-tech research and development arm. … For now it can only respond to simple commands, but the technology underlying it is anything but. The problem with most speech recognition technology has been that it has a hell of a time with all-too human variations in speech – accents, dialects, intonation, enunciation, and slang. Tell it you want to hide under ‘a rock’ and it might tell you about ‘Iraq.’ Like the dream of the paperless office, which the advent of the personal computer was supposed to herald, speech recognition often makes more work than it saves. Siri promises to change all that, and you should thank the wizards at DARPA. While they didn’t create the technology, they incubated it. … I can’t wait to tell that to my Siri-powered iPhone, although I doubt it’ll know how to respond – not yet, anyhow.”
TC: “The most talked about element of … Apple event had to be Siri. The new feature of the iPhone 4S, born out of Apple’s purchase of the company by the same name in 2010, looks amazing. But one thing never mentioned during the keynote was a key piece of technology behind Siri: Nuance. – We first reported that Siri would be a key part of iOS 5 back in March. As we dug deeper, we learned that Apple and Nuance were involved in negotiations to make sure this could be a reality. You see, Siri does not work without Nuance. … So, is Nuance a part of Apple’s implementation of Siri as well? Yes. Though, don’t bother trying to get anyone to admit that. …Nuance is powering Siri. But Apple clearly struck a deal with Nuance which precludes them from talking about it. This is Apple technology, this is not about Nuance, is how I imagine Apple may put it. Apparently, Nuance is happy enough with Apple’s undoubtedly large check for this licensing agreement that they are willing to keep quiet.”
RWW: “Apple finally introduced the availability of the voice-command personal assistant app it paid $200m for today, called Siri. The military spin-off technology was both widely loved and often panned when it was available independently; it was either lovable Skynet or a fish on a bicycle, depending on who you ask. I tended towards thinking it the latter, myself. … But what do I want as a user – on my iPhone? I want Swype! Swype is a keyboard program available on almost every smartphone in the world except the iPhone. … It’s the fastest way to provide input on a mobile device. It’s fabulous and it’s incredible that Swype isn’t on iOS yet. I assume it’s because of Apple’s strict control over interface design and unwillingness to provide options in design. … Time will tell, but I don’t think Siri is going to be a killer app on the iPhone. Will it be used more than the current iPhone voice control? We’ll see.”
TUAW: “Since the iPhone 4S features the same A5 processor as the iPad 2, owners of Apple’s current-gen tablet have wondered if it’s possible that Siri, Apple’s new voice assistant, might be offered on the iPad 2. … Voice Control as it now exists on the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 doesn’t function on the iPad or iPad 2, but there’s a reason for that: the existing commands would be essentially useless on those devices. … On the other hand, Siri’s commands would be immensely useful on the iPad. … In fact, we’ve done some digging into Siri and found that most of the actual work of understanding voice commands gets offloaded to external servers. In essence, the iPhone 4S and its built-in processing functions determine what you said, while Apple’s servers translate that into what you meant and send that information back to your iPhone. … For the time being, Siri remains an iPhone 4S exclusive and one we have yet to test for ourselves. We look forward to putting this innovative feature under our interrogation lights once the iPhone 4S is released on October 14.”
Waxy: “In 1987, Apple released this concept video for Knowledge Navigator [the rest of the video is newer, probably circa 1996 or so, but the Knowledge Navigator part is from 1987], a voice-based assistant combined with a touchscreen tablet computer. … Based on the dates mentioned in the Knowledge Navigator video, it takes place on September 16, 2011. The date on the professor’s calendar is September 16, and he’s looking for a 2006 paper written ‘about five years ago,’ setting the year as 2011. – And … at the iPhone keynote, Apple announced Siri, a natural language-based voice assistant, would be built into iOS 5 and a core part of the new iPhone 4S. – So, 24 years ago, Apple predicted a complex natural-language voice assistant built into a touchscreen Apple device, and was less than a month off.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Diaspora Marketing?
The public perception of Diaspora is low: time for some questions regarding its marketing; http://eicker.at/DiasporaMarketing
Gerrit Eicker
Wikipedia vs. Italy
Wikipedia shuts Italian language site, fights against DDL intercettazioni (Wiretapping Act); http://eicker.at/WikipediaVsItaly
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Gerrit Eicker
Wikipedia – L’enciclopedia libera: “Dear reader, at this time, the Italian language Wikipedia may be no longer able to continue providing the service that over the years was useful to you, and that you expected to have right now. As things stand, the page you want still exists and is only hidden, but the risk is that soon we will be forced to actually delete it. – Over the past ten years, Wikipedia has become part of the daily habits of millions of web users looking for a neutral, free-content, and – above all – independent source of Knowledge. A new, huge multi-lingual encyclopedia, freely available to all, at any time, and free of charge. – Today, unfortunately, the very pillars on which Wikipedia has been built – neutrality, freedom, and verifiability of its contents – are likely to be heavily compromised by paragraph 29 of a law proposal, also known as ‘DDL intercettazioni’ (Wiretapping Act). – This proposal, which the Italian Parliament is currently debating, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image. – Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge – the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website. – Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia can directly request to publish a ‘corrected’ version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources. … With this announcement, we want to warn our readers against the risks arising from leaving to the arbitrary will of any party to enforce the alleged protection of its image and its reputation. Under such provisions, web users would be most probably led to cease dealing with certain topics or people, just to ‘avoid troubles’. – We want to be able to keep a free and open-to-all encyclopaedia, because our articles are also your articles – Wikipedia is already neutral, why neutralize it?”
BBC: “Wikipedia’s Italian edition has taken all entries but one offline in protest at a draft privacy law restricting the publication of police wiretaps. – Transcripts of his telephone calls have embarrassed Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, on trial for corruption and using underage prostitutes. – The draft law would oblige websites to amend content within 48 hours if the subject deems it harmful or biased. – Italian protesters wearing gags gathered outside parliament in Rome. … Wikipedia says it may take down its Italian site, http://www.wikipedia.it, permanently if the law is passed. Amendments would have to be published within 48 hours at the request of the person making the complaint, without any recourse to a court or independent adjudicator.”
CDT: “DDL Intercettazioni, the proposed wiretap law (see page 24, paragraph 29(a)), would require online publications and websites to publish a correction within 48 hours of receiving notice about any content that any third party believes is detrimental to his or her image, with scant safeguards against abuse or judicial involvement. Failure to publish a correction could result in a [Euro] 12,000 fine. – It is unclear how this mandate would apply to websites that enable user-generated content – for example, a social network or a blog that allow users to comment on articles. Such websites should be protected under the Italian transposition of the E-Commerce Directive for the defamatory statements made by third party users. However, you can imagine that harmed victims may simply send requests for corrections to the user-generated content platform itself. – As Italian Internet activists have rightly pointed out, this requirement could profoundly chill freedom of expression and innovation online.”
TD: “All-in-all, the Italian politicians behind this proposed legislation emerge with little honor; at the very least, the new law will cast a chill over freedom of expression online in Italy, and at worst could see the Italian Wikipedia shut down permanently – a huge loss for its users and Italian culture. – Update: Via Carl Levinson, Roberta Ranzani and Jillian C. York on Google+, we’ve learned that the controversial paragraph 29 of the Wiretapping bill has been dropped (details in Italian). It’s not clear exactly why, but the action by the Italian Wikipedia must surely have concentrated people’s minds. However, it’s important to note that the rest of the bill is still going forward – and has plenty of other changes that will harm freedom of speech in Italy if enacted.“
Gerrit Eicker
Diaspora Communications
Diaspora social communications: superusing Diaspora, the federated Web, the early days; http://eicker.at/DiasporaCommunications
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Gerrit Eicker
Diasporial: “One of the first things I fell for in Diaspora was its neat marriage of two posting methods: a unidirectional ‘blasting’ option to reach the general public and a two-way ‘sharing’ model for more intimate exchanges… sooo basically a Twitter and a Facebook. Through the proper use of aspects, posts could now either spark a conversation among select friends or publish a message to the entire Internet. … With the recent introduction of Markdown formatting, I’ve noted a increase in longer, well thought-out posts more resembling blog entries than status updates begin to appear in my activity stream, which tickles me pink… You can actually use this system to pre-publish a thought and gather comments on it before full out blogging about it… ‘But I’m a famous celebrity. What does this mean for me?‘ The benefits are surreal. You don’t have to rely on some lame ‘fan’ or ‘group’ pages: people can connect to the real you, and you can control what your subscribers see simply through carefully watching what you post as ‘Public’. Your real friends can be put into their own specific aspects where you can tell them all about your new yacht or perfume line, while the rest of the Internet will receive your public updates about book signings or that new charity you’re promoting.”
Diasporial: “I’m pretty sure that everyone on the Diaspora platform has their own story about how they found Diaspora, made friends, and got into the network. Some of us have enjoyed it more than others. Regardless, the fact of the matter is that this is a very opportune moment for a community to come together and really shine. … [T]he biggest thing about Diaspora is not its features, but the community that surrounds it. Several times a day, I’ll check in and notice great conversations going on by people that originally didn’t know each other at all. In fact, I’ve made a good handful of friends there, from all walks of life. The best part is that it’s not just a bunch of Linux nerds. There are people there that are passionate about film, technology, art, philosophy, literature, you name it. It is a community of passion, and it continues to grow on a daily basis.”
Diasporial: “The early days of Diaspora – a personal story – While writing this I realise how hard it is to put the pre-alpha experience into words. I am sure that those who were there with me at the time feel the same nostalgia and the same enthusiasm as I feel. Having been an early adopter on pre-alpha Diaspora is definitely something I am proud of. The whole look and feel of Diaspora was just great and the people I met were all very kind and loving. The software iterated with the speed of lightning and every time your account got reset you just knew that something had changed. Rather than feeling bad about the data loss, you would just sign up again as quickly as you could to find out what’s new.”
- Follow Diasporial: via RSS, on Diaspora, on Twitter
jo jmatic
»[T]he biggest thing about Diaspora is not its features, but the community that surrounds it. Several times a day, I’ll check in and notice great conversations going on by people that originally didn’t know each other at all. In fact, I’ve made a good handful of friends there, from all walks of life. The best part is that it’s not just a bunch of Linux nerds. There are people there that are passionate about film, technology, art, philosophy, literature, you name it. It is a community of passion, and it continues to grow on a daily basis.”«
Sehr gut gesagt. »Gefällt mir« :)
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Gerrit Eicker
Indeed, Diasporial is definitely a must read. ;)
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Like Button(s)
Facebook Like gets sharing granularity: hypersharing becomes (scarily) automatic; http://eicker.at/FacebookLikeButtons
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Gerrit Eicker
Forbes: “Facebook released a broad new set of social features Thursday that makes it easier for people to share a wide range of information about themselves. The new changes could boost the quantity of sharing and change the quality of information that people push through the social network. … [P]eople can now automatically share what music they’re listening to, what television or movies they’re watching, what news they’re reading and even what food they’re eating or what exercise they’re doing. It’s ‘frictionless’ to share in Mark Zuckerberg’s words. … The upshot of this is that Facebook is going way beyond enabling people to simply share their interests, to enabling people to share virtually anything they’re doing both online and offline. … The connection between sharing and actual purchases is one that Facebook is careful about, particularly after Beacon. But with all the sharing about products that people will inevitably do through the new changes, more traffic will be driven to companies’ sites where people can make purchases.”
AF: “Facebook’s annual f8 developer conference promised a lot of things today, but one cool subset of them takes the most popular interaction on the site and spins off variations. – We’re talking about the like button here. – Today, we click like when really a more specific action is involved but the thumbs-up is only option that exists. – So, get ready for buttons that could include: Want, Buy, Own, Listen to, Read, Eat, Watch, Work out… the open graph will also make people’s news feeds more customized than ever, requiring a more complex algorithm than the one that currently determines what people see on their home pages.- The algorithm that Facebook today calls EdgeRank becomes GraphEdge tomorrow.”
Mashable: “You can’t deny the success of Facebook’s Like button. Its popularity quickly skyrocketed; it took less than a month for the button to appear on more than 100,000 websites. Now it is a standard method for endorsing something on the social web. – But that’s exactly the problem – the Like button is an endorsement. … Facebook’s bet is that more people will click a button that says they’ve ‘Listened’ to a song or ‘Watched’ a video, rather than simply liking it. … It’s Facebook’s partners that will take this capability and turn it into applications that populate Facebook and their websites with these Gestures, though. That’s Facebook’s plan – to become the social layer on which the web is built. … The new Open Graph will change Facebook drastically.”
Forrester: “If there’s one thing Facebook is not afraid of, it’s change. … Facebook is laying claim to your life. Through its new Timeline feature that recaps in one fell swoop everything you’ve ever posted and lets you feature the highlights, along with its new apps that let you discover and share real-time experiences like watching movies and listening to music, Facebook is changing the social networking game. Of course you could argue that it was already acting as the online identity for many people, but this takes it to a whole new level.”
TC: “Unlike the Like button which gives you a way to explicitly share individual pieces of content, this Read plug-in (and presumably, Watch, Listen, etc, plugins) would allow third-parties to add a single button to their site to enable some of the automatic actions Facebook unveiled today. … To be clear, this button will be totally opt-in for users. And the button will also have ‘pause’ and ‘undo’ capabilities if a user decides they actually don’t want to share their activity automatically, Taylor said. – And the regular old Like button will continue to exist for users who still want to share specific pieces of content to Facebook.”
RWW: “While the focus of today’s Facebook announcements was the newTimeline profile, the Read, Watch, Listen media sharing apps have generated a lot of interest too. These so-called ‘social apps‘ haven’t been widely launched yet, but you can get a sense of what they will do by adding a couple of brand new newspaper social apps to your Facebook profile: The Guardian’s app and one from Washington Post. – Be forewarned though, with these apps you’re automatically sending anything you read into your Facebook news feed. No ‘read’ button. No clicking a ‘like’ or ‘recommend’ button. As soon as you click through to an article you are deemed to have ‘read’ it and all of your Facebook friends and subscribers will hear about it. That could potentially cause you embarrassment and it will certainly add greatly to the noise of your Facebook experience.”
Winer: “Facebook is scaring me – Yesterday I wrote that Twitter should be scared of Facebook. Today it’s worse. I, as a mere user of Facebook, am seriously scared of them. … This time, however, they’re doing something that I think is really scary, and virus-like. The kind of behavior deserves a bad name, like phishing, or spam, or cyber-stalking. … Now, I’m not technically naive. I understood before that the Like buttons were extensions of Facebook. They were surely keeping track of all the places I went. … People joke that privacy is over, but I don’t think they imagined that the disclosures would be so proactive. They are seeking out information to report about you. That’s different from showing people a picture that you posted yourself. If this were the government we’d be talking about the Fourth Amendment. … One more thing. Facebook doesn’t have a web browser, yet, but Google does. It may not be possible to opt-out of Google’s identity system and all the information gathering it does, if you’re a Chrome user. – PS: There’s a Hacker News thread on this piece. It’s safe to click on that link (as far as I know).“
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Timeline
Facebook’s Timeline: the story of our lives – and the perfect emotional advertising base; http://eicker.at/FacebookTimeline
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Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: “Introducing Timeline – Tell your life story with a new kind of profile.”
Facebook: “Since the beginning of Facebook, your profile has been the place where you tell your story. … Over time, your profile evolved to better reflect how you actually communicate with your friends. Now you can can share photos of what you did last weekend, and updates about how you feel today. … Imagine if there was an easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect all your best moments in a single place. – With timeline, now you have a home for all the great stories you’ve already shared. They don’t just vanish as you add new stuff. … Timeline is wider than your old profile, and it’s a lot more visual. The first thing you’ll notice is the giant photo right at the top. This is your cover, and it’s completely up to you which of your photos you put here. … If important parts of your story aren’t included on your timeline, you can go back to when they happened and add them. – Or go to your private activity log. This is where you’ll find everything you shared since you joined Facebook. Click on any post to feature it on your timeline so your friends can see it, too. … Now, you and your friends will finally be able to tell all the different parts of your story – from the small things you do each day to your biggest moments. What will you create? We can’t wait to find out.”
RWW: “The biggest announcement at Facebook’s f8 event in San Francisco today was a radical new profile design. Called Timeline, the new design turns your profile into a colorful, easily searchable timeline of your entire life – at least the parts of it on Facebook. The Timeline won’t go live until a few weeks, but you can set it up as a developer preview by following these instructions. This is a ‘Developer Release‘ version of Timeline, so it may be a little buggy.”
GigaOM: “‘Timeline is a completely new aesthetic for Facebook,’ Zuckerberg said. … Timeline and all its features will be viewable from any type of mobile device, Zuckerberg said, which may indicate the app is built with HTML5. … The new interface is aimed at making it much easier to get a full picture of a person by seeing more about them than just their most recent updates, Zuckerberg said. … Each user can customize his or her own Timeline, which will make each individual profile more personalized than Facebook profiles have been in the past. … Users often grumble about even the smallest of changes Facebook makes to its interface, so it will certainly be interesting to watch how the response to Timeline plays out.”
pC: “The Timeline redesign will likely be jarring to Facebook’s famously change-averse users, but Zuckerberg and Facebook director of product management Chris Cox said that the idea was to allow people to create virtual scrapbooks of their lives through Facebook. Users will be able to sort their Timelines by certain pieces of content, such as clicking on button that will display all the photos taken of you in the last year. The new Timeline will be rolling out over the next several weeks, and it will be the home for a new set of social applications.”
Mashable: “Timeline, a major re-imagining of user profiles that allows users to build what’s essentially a visual scrapbook of everything they’ve done on the site. – CEO Mark Zuckeberg showed off the new features in his keynote at the company’s f8 conference. It algorithmically organizes everything you’ve done on Facebook — from post photos to change relationship status to check in – and also allows users to fill out a ‘Way Back’ section to add details that are omitted or pre-date the social network.”
Mashable: “The Evolution of the Facebook Profile in pictures…”
TC: “Trying to display all of this content was a major design challenge, Zuckerberg noted. How do you do it all on a single page? Well, all of your recent content is shown in a new grid-view. But as you go back in time, it’s more about summarizing your content to display the most important content. The farther back you go, the less you see – it’s just the key moments. ‘This is the magic of how Timeline works,’ Zuckerberg said.”
pC: “The recent consumer trend has, indeed, been toward more personal sharing and transparency. And Facebook has been working to improve privacy controls around that. But there are also some folks growing unsettled by Zuckerberg’s share-everything mantra, wondering whether Facebook ever stops to question the inevitability of the movement. And are we already witnessing the first few signs of consumers’ social networking fatigue?”
Mashable: “Facebook Timeline sounds like a good idea. It’s your life, organized and summarized for public consumption – or as public as you want to make it. … I don’t know if anyone is ready to trust Facebook’s algorithm to decide what to show and hide as the Timeline grows. Up top is full of minutiae. Down below, it’s an outline. But what Facebook deems important: – a birth, first steps, new job – may only be the highlights… With Timeline, and to a certain extent Open Graph, Mark Zuckerberg is once again racing forward to the next big thing. Let’s hope that he doesn’t inadvertently leave his users behind.”
GigaOM: “Now Facebook isn’t doing this just to help us cherish our memories. The more data it has and the more it understands what has emotional meaning to us, the better it can target us with ads. By letting us preserve the things, activities and apps that matter to us, it gives Facebook an even better way to tailor ads that demand a higher rate from advertisers. … But Timelines can also be an opportunity to create recommendation tools for users to suggest products they might like based on their tastes and interests. … Perhaps most fundamentally for Facebook, Timeline will give people a new reason to go into oversharing mode. … This move to organize past activity is increasingly what Facebook needs to do, I think, as it exploits the opportunities in its own timeline. It is further exploring the opportunities in the future, by helping people better discover what to do from their friends.”
TC: “How To Enable Facebook Timeline Right This Second – Fortunately, enabling Timeline a bit early isn’t too difficult – but it’s not at all straight forward, either. … You probably don’t want to do this unless you’re actually a developer. Expect bugs. … Here’s how to do it…“
Gerrit Eicker
#NymWars
Google Plus‘ identity crises led to #PlusGate and escalated to a war for pseudonymity: #NymWars; http://eicker.at/NymWars
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Gerrit Eicker
Guardian: “Google Plus forces us to discuss identity – Google’s Real Name policy embodies a theory that states the way to maximise civility is to abolish anonymity. … Google Plus’s controversial identity policy requires all users to use their ‘real names’. … [P]roblems include the absurdity of Google’s demand for scans of government ID to accomplish this task and the fractal implausibility of Google being able to discern real from fake in all forms of government ID. … The first duty of social software is to improve its users’ social experience. Facebook’s longstanding demand that its users should only have one identity is either a toweringly arrogant willingness to harm people’s social experience in service to doctrine; or it is a miniature figleaf covering a huge, throbbing passion for making it easier to sell our identities to advertisers. – Google has adopted the Facebook doctrine… There could be no stupider moment for Google to subscribe to the gospel of Zuckerberg, and there is no better time for Google to show us an alternative.”
Gizmodo: “Google, Facebook and Twitter now all have similar products. But Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (somewhat inadvertently) made it clear yesterday that while all three have social networking features and make money from ads, they are in fundamentally different businesses. – At a very basic level, Google+ and Facebook are in the identity delivery business, and Twitter is in the information delivery business. That’s a powerful distinction. It reflects a fundamentally different conception of what’s more valuable: information or identity. It also gets at who is more valuable, advertisers or users. – Google and Facebook’s social products are committed to a real names policy. Both can serve someone up to a network of peers or advertisers with some degree of certainty about identity. – Twitter takes exactly the opposite route towards building a network. You can be anonymous, or use a pseudonym, or even impersonate someone else (as long as you indicate that it’s a parody). It will still connect you to others on its network, and allow you to both serve and receive data. And that’s working well, for everybody.”
SEW: “There has been a lot of speculation about why the push for real names on Facebook and now Google, with Google taking a much harder line than even Facebook, not allowing for even the simplest derivation of ‘nyms’ (pseudonyms). … Why is a company like Google taking such a hard line on something as simple as a name – even though there is no verification process for the ‘real name,’ so ultimately this policing is currently meaningless. … Google’s ambitions for Google+ appear to go far beyond social signals, marketing, and their efforts to make a better product. Dig a little further and you’ll find something called the ‘National Strategy For Trusted Identities In Cyberspace‘ (NSTIC). … A way to establish identity was never invented, so one needs to be. The difference is that companies will hold the real IDs, rather than the government – companies with ‘identity services,’ such as Google. … Maybe we have a new wrinkle in the reason behind the real ID movement, not the betterment of services for Google, but the government initiative into a real online ID system. … Real ID systems should be of concern to anyone who believes in the Bill of Rights and our freedom of speech and to not incriminate ourselves – to live a life that isn’t monitored by entities, ‘private’ or not. Is Google part of this? You have to be the judge.”
Boyle: “Thoughts on rel=author, #nymwars, ‘identity service’ – Over the past month or so, the ‘nymwars’ have become the thing Google+ is most known for among my circle of friends. This is a problem of Google’s own making: they are suspending profiles based on naive heuristics about ‘real names’ (actually typical two part western names), and demanding government ID to reinstate them. … This is not an effective defence against trolls as was initially claimed; they’re more concerned with ideas about G+ as an ‘identity service’ and a way to ‘improve our products’ than about the wishes of their users or the fact that they’re perpetuating the exclusion of minorities. … I recommend linking together your profile pages on other sites, rather than only linking everything to your Google profile. … [D]on’t just do what’s on the left here, because all those associations will be lost when your G+ profile is taken down. If you do something more like what’s on the right, other identity services / social networks and other search engines will have a better chance of presenting what you want them to present.”
Gartner, Blakley: “Google+ Can Be A Social Network Or The Name Police – Not Both – Google is currently trying to enforce a ‘common name’ policy in Google+. The gist of the policy is that ‘your Google+ name must be ‘THE’ name by which you are commonly known’. – This policy is insane. I really mean insane; the policy is simply completely divorced from the reality of how names really work AND the reality of how humans really work, and it’s also completely at odds with what Google is trying to achieve with G+. … A name is not an attribute of a person; it is an identifier of a person, chosen arbitrarily and changeable at will. … Google+’s naming policy isn’t failing because it’s poorly implemented, or because Google’s enforcement team is stupid. It’s failing because what they’re trying to do is (1) impossible, and (2) antisocial. … Google’s intention in moving into social networking is to sell ads, Google+’s common names policy gives them a lock on the North American suburban middle-aged conservative white male demographic. w00t.”
Botgirl: “Ejecting virtually identified people with active social networks shows that Google sees online relationships as illegitimate. When Google ejects you for using virtual identity it not only disrespects your privacy choice, but also the choices of everyone who circles you. Shunning the pseudonymous makes intolerance a community standard. – Today, most of the privacy we relinquish is volitional. But If we lose the Nymwars we all become permanent residents in a global Big Brother reality house. The expression of identity is multidimensional, aspects emerging and submerging in a fluid dance with the changing environment. … It’s ironic that those calling for authenticity want to make all the world a stage and cast us all as full-time unpaid actors.”
GigaOM: “Can gamification help solve the online anonymity problem? – There’s been a lot written recently about the issue of online anonymity, and in particular how Google believes that a ‘real names’ policy is necessary so that the Google+ network maintains a certain tone and level of trust. … It’s not so much that badges or other rewards – Slashdot, a pioneering geek community, has long used ‘karma points’ as a way of rewarding users and selecting moderators – cure bad behavior, or prevent trolls from coming to a site. What they do instead is make it easier to distinguish between what Slashdot calls ‘anonymous cowards’ and those who have gained the trust of the community. Over time, it becomes obvious (theoretically) who is worth listening to and who isn’t… Instead of simply trying to ban or exclude anyone who doesn’t want to use a real name, as Google is doing with Google+, why not try to design a system that rewards the type of behavior you want to see, and lets the users of that community decide who they wish to pay attention to?“
Gerrit Eicker
Education Gamification
Donahoo: Gamification in education; http://eicker.at/2l vs. Bogost: Gamification is bullshit; http://eicker.at/2m
Gerrit Eicker 10:57 on 25. October 2011 Permalink |
Facebook: “Facebook Credits for websites – We have begun working with a few developers to test the ability to offer Facebook Credits on websites, with the goal of helping them offer a more unified app experience to users beyond apps on Facebook. One early example is Collapse! Blast on Gamehouse.com. – At this time, we are focused on gathering early developer feedback. We will keep you posted as our tests continue. If you are interested in Facebook Credits for websites should we broaden the test, please sign up here.”
GigaOM: “Facebook isn’t a true PayPal competitor, but it’s taking some steps toward becoming an online payments provider outside of its Facebook properties. The social networking giant has begun testing the use of Facebook Credits on two games, Uno Boost and Collapse! Blast, both available on gaming portal GameHouse. … This could be a big springboard for Facebook to become a major payments player if it aggressively takes its Facebook Credits to other properties on the web. … I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook is eyeing this market. Mobile payments is booming now and expected to become a $670 billion market by 2015. But it starts with small tests like the one with GameHouse. … Hulett said he believes though its early Facebook Credits could be a big driver of revenue for Facebook, similar to how PayPal has become the main engine of growth for eBay. That will still be ways off, but if Facebook plays its cards right and learns important lessons along the way, it might not be a stretch.”
IF: “Facebook’s virtual currency is currently the mandatory payment method for all Facebook games on the web, a payment option for Facebook apps, and became available as a payment option to mobile app developers last week. … If the test does indicate a demand for Credits as a payment option outside of Facebook.com, its unclear whether Facebook would require developers to use its virtual currency exclusively. It could simply make them an additional payment option, the way Credits currently work for Facebook.com apps as well as mobile apps and games. … More users maintaining a balance of Credits also makes Facebook a more lucrative platform for developers. … Facebook Credits for Websites could become a significant revenue source and powerful way to attract developers.”
ATD: “Facebook is now allowing its virtual currency to be used off of its social network, a feature that some game companies are finding valuable as they seek new ways to monetize their own sites. … GameHouse is one of the first to try using Credits off of the network, but there will likely be others following. – Earlier this month, Zynga announced Project Z, its own gaming platform, which will provide a seamless game experience between Facebook and its own Web site. Despite creating a separate game network, as we wrote at the time of the announcement, Facebook’s influence will be everywhere.”
ZDNet: “Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of all revenue earned through Facebook Credits, leaving developers with the remaining 70 percent. It’s not clear how much revenue the company makes from the virtual currency, but it appears to be a growing percentage of its overall revenue. It could be massive if Facebook Credits for websites takes off.“