Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

I attended the SocialDevCamp East today. It was a lot of fun and very rewarding. The event was kind of like a conference, but unlike a typical research conference it didn’t have any specific agenda or planned breakout sessions. I have attended many planned research conferences in the past, but this bar camp (bec it has free beer after 4pm) was definitely a unique experience. I would recommend future bar camps to anyone who is interested in technology.

My lessons learned from this event are as follows. First, the start-up culture on the East Coast is very different from which of the West Coast. On the East Coast, it’s difficult to find either VCs or angel investors to fund start-ups that don’t a sustainable revenue stream. Second, there is a large pool of talents on the East Coast (in the DC/MD/VA area) that is not currently being utilized to create social web and social media innovations. Third, it’s possible to get non-AI developers to be excited about the Semantic Web.

By chance, I hosted a session on the Social Web + the Semantic Web. My original intent was to get people to talk about Semantic Web technologies and businesses that are crucial to the success of Social Web applications. But, it turned out that the audiences were very interested to explore the possibility of using Semantic Web technologies as differentiators to help them to stand out in the fast-change social media world. If you missed the discussion, you can find our discussion topics in this Twitter stream. Also you can find materials covered in my Social Web + Semantic Web slides.

I’m convinced that Twitter is useful (sometimes). While I was attending the conference, I sent my wife the Twitter stream of the SocialDevCamp (#SocialDevCamp). She was able to follow my session and see photos of me in an almost real-time experience.

Some people are crazy about Twitter. I don’t. I joined Twitter when it first came out. After few weeks, my enthusiasm for micro-blogging has gone to nil.

Recently I saw Twitter discussions in few different blog posts. I wonder if I should start using Twitter again? After some thinking, my conclusion that is that it’s better for me to stay away from Twitter.

Why I gave up on Twitter:

1. Don’t want to tell the world what’s on my mind too often.
2. Posting too much Twitter messages can gave people (esp. my boss) a false impression about me being a slacker.
3. Posting Twitter messages can’t advance my writing skill.
4. Don’t feel comfortable with strangers following me on Twitter.
5. I’m already too occupied with other social media (Facebook, my blogs and gnizr etc.)

Do you share my experience? Or are you a Twitter lover and have a different perspective?

Let me know.

A Texas family recently sued Virgin Mobile phone company for using a Flickr photo of their teenage daughter Alison in a billboard ad. This photo was taken by Alison’s youth counselor Justin and posted onto Flickr under the Creative Commons (CC) license. Because CC permits for-profit commercial usage of this photo, Virgin Mobile took this photo and used it in one of its bus-stop billboard advertisement. Alison’s family sues Virgin Mobile claiming that Alison never agreed to the use of this photo for commercial advertisement.

This is an interesting legal case for social media on the Flickr web. When a photo is posted onto Flickr under the CC license, does it automatically give companies the full right to use to it? According to my research (here and here), the answer is no. Companies can only use a CC-licensed photo if the model in the photo has signed a release form. This rule applies in both the United States and Australia.

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On September 18th, 2007, the New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site called TimesSelect and its archives from 1987 to present.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

Source: Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site

The NYT is among a few old-school media companies that continue to operate profitability in the booming Internet age. Many others simply died because their paid-subscription business model failed to bring in profits. I think the NYT’s latest move is within expectation. In today’s world, news change in a lightening speed, people are often reluctant to pay for information if they can get it somewhere else for free.

Remember CNN was charging people for their online news videos. Soon after the rise of YouTube and other video sharing sites, in order to attract more viewers, CNN opens up its online video service free of charge. I think the NYT is in a similar shoe today. Yahoo! and Google continue to push for more news contents to be published on their own sites. The NYT needs to find ways to keep their readers.

The media war in the Internet age continues…

GrandCentral is a new web-based service that helps people to manage their phone calls. Users get one phone number for life. This phone number can be linked to other phone numbers (e.g., work, home, cell and office).

GrandCentral offers several interesting services:

• Screen Callers: Knows who’s calling and screen unknown callers
• ListenIn: Hear why someone is calling before taking the call
• Call Record: Record calls on the fly and access recordings online
• Block Callers: Unwanted callers won’t be able to reach you anymore
• Notifications: Receive voicemail notifications via email or SMS

Check out GrandCentral demo video.

Over the weekend, I received an invitation to try out GrandCentral beta. So far I like it. The service is very easy to use. If you want to try out GrandCentral, I still have few invitations left. Send me an email, and I will put you on the list.

The concept of self-branding is nothing new. Politicians brand themselves to get voted; movie stars brand themselves to get public attention. In the age of Google, YouTube and Facebook, self-branding is an important skill that every career-driven individuals must pay attention to.

I came across this concept twice in the past few days. First time, when reading the bookmark “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. Second time, when reading the article “Creating Brand You” by Diane Brady in the BusinessWeek magazine. What has gotten my attention is that in the age of Internet, self-branding is a strategy that is no longer exclusive for the rich and powerful, but also is available to anyone who has an Internet connection and knows how to use a mouse and a keyboard.

What is Self-Branding?

Think yourself as a product. Self-branding is to use branding tools (e.g., strategies, tactics, communication messages, blogs, photos and videos) to maximize your own image. “Brand You” defines who you are, how you are great and why you should be sought out. Self-branding is to create your reputation in a targeted population — which may be your colleagues, potential clients, future employers etc.

Why is Self-Branding Important?

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AideRSS is a RSS filter service that helps user to identify important news and blogs. This service implements the PostRank algorithm that analyzes the popularity of individual feed items on the Web, and assigns each item with a number score. Feed items with a high score are considered more important and worthy of reading.

How does it work? See AideRSS video demo.

I think AideRSS is a very useful service. Many people face the problem of information overloading. The few dozens RSS feeds that we subscribe to don’t really help to solve the problem. Sometimes I think the ease-to-use RSS technology actually contributes to my information-overloading anxiety. AideRSS’s “intelligent” filtering can help to reduce the amount of time that we need to spend on manually filtering out information noise and reading only news that matter.

Nevertheless, AideRSS is not a silver bullet. Because the PostRank algorithm relies on external information such as trackbacks, post comment traffics etc. to rank individual feed items, it could falsely assign low ranks to important news that hasn’t yet been widely discussed in major social Web sites (e.g., del.icio.us, bloglines and technorati).

I think I will try out AideRSS service in the next couple weeks and see how it works. While I see there are obvious weaknesses in this service, but it’s definitely a major step towards solving our information overloading problem.

Nielsen Media Research recently changed its rating measure for Web site popularity (i.e., the Nielsen NetRatings). Previously Nielsen rated Web sites based on page views. The new measure is based on time spent on a site. A key motivator for this change is a theory that “time spent is a better measure of ‘engagement’ with a given Web site.”

Thanks to new Web technology such as Ajax. Web sites are now able to deliver fresh content to Web pages without needing users to click through more screens to see more stuff. For this reason, it’s better to use time spent as oppose to page views to measure Web site popularity.

Interestingly, this change brought about a new Top 10 Web sites…

in May, the first month for which data are available, three new entries not on the top-page-view list cracked the time-spent top 10: Electronic Arts, because video gamers stay put for a long time; Apple, whose iTunes is more of a time-suck than a click-generator; and Microsoft’s software home page (read: not MSN.com). Dropping off the list were largely free classifieds site Craigslist, social network Facebook–all those party pics eat up clicks, not time–and Comcast. AOL goes from #6 to #1, while Google slips from #1 to #5.

Spotted on: Media Centric by Jon Fine