So, this whole blogging thing has been rather one-sided lately. You see, I read them all the time these days. I’ve been using this site called Bloglines, which takes all my blogs and puts them into a list, then lets me know when new posts are added to each. Cool, huh? I no longer need to surf to each site and check if there is a new post, because this site does so implicitly. But wait, there’s more! Bloglines also recommends blogs for me to check out based on the ones that are in my list. They give me a long list of recommended blogs, and allow me to choose the ones I want. It’s like going to the bookstore and getting to choose all the books that others think I want for free!
There’s a lot to be said for this Collaborative Filtering. Amazon and eBay use it, but imagine if it were used ubiquitously in the real world. You go to the grocery store and your handheld agent tells you that grapes are on sale this week based on the fact that you’ve bought them in the past. Ooh, even better, your agent tells you that your friend’s birthday is coming up, and here is a list of things that she will probably enjoy based on her Amazon and eBay shopping and surfing habits, not to mention her propensity to go into particular brick-and-mortar stores on a regular basis. Now, there are privacy issues here, but security is a problem for the security people, and I like to consider myself an idea person, not held back by the details.
New tangent: Happy(?) Yom Kippur. The holiday has led to a lot of introspection about religion, my new life, and my old one too. To get all this thinking off my mind, I’ve decided to go to an alternative service today, as well as to a service project. It will probably be in a food bank, but could be planting trees or something like that for all I know.
Another new tangent: I just finished my first major Design (with a capital D) assignment in grad school. I think my group’s work turned out spectacularly well. I only started to feel that way a few days ago. Before that I thought our solution was shaky at best. We put a lot of trust in the technology in order to support our users. I think that’s a good method, because there’s no use to hold good ideas back, especially considering the rate at which technology is improving each day.
This weekend will be dedicated to fasting and reading. Fasting started last night and ends tonight. Reading started last night and ends sometime out in the oblivion. Care to know what I’m reading? I’ll post links:
Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold
Interface Culture by Steven Johnson
What is Social Informatics and Why Does it Matter? By Rob Kling
Computers as Social Networks by Barry Wellman
Gates of Repentance by Chaim Stern (never realized this book had a single author!)
Oh, and probably some http://learn.perl.org