This was an experiment, in doing more with my delicious bookmarks. I was hoping that I could get more feedback and discussion on things I found interesting enough to bookmark by automatically posting links to them here. Many sites that I enjoy reading do something similar. But it hasn’t felt like a good fit for me.
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The $39 ones are very affordable, and got a nod from Scott Stevenson.
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Pay $5, get (only!) 50 people to vote on a yes/no question. Sounds like a lot of money compared to mturk. As always, I'm skeptical that any internet poll can be a usably-random sample.
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Author Nicholas Carr coined the phrase digital sharecroppers to describe those of us who create content on community Web 2.0 sites….He says we are like sharecroppers after the Civil War — tilling land that we don’t own, barely eking out a living, while someone else who owns the land, benefits.
But clearly facebook gives us something of value, even if it’s fun, not money. (That said, I’ve got adds blocked though CSS).
However, I think Digital Sharecroppers is an appropriate term for contributers to restrictive open source projects. The real wealth of a programming project is the code, not the final product. And licenses like the GPL don’t let contributers share in that wealth by using it in their own proprietary projects.
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The future of advertising needs to be selling – that is, enabling – relevance instead of selling scarce space, time, or eyeballs. The future needs to be about adding value – relevance – rather than selling scarcity (extracting what the market will bear). I’m not sure whether Digg’s system is a step in that direction; Batey’s right that there could be unintended consequences. But it’s worth watching. I hope Digg shares data and experience in its fascinating experiment.
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google + tag cloud for your search
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The idea is to remap Caps Lock so that while holding it, J-I-L-K work like the arrow keys to move the cursor. Since we have more clear arrow keys, I don't think that's the best use for caps lock, but ideas for using it are always interesting.
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Nielson argues that qualitative analysis is dangerously narrow.
It's a dangerous mistake to believe that statistical research is somehow more scientific or credible than insight-based observational research. In fact, most statistical research is less credible than qualitative studies. Design research is not like medical science: ethnography is its closest analogy in traditional fields of science. User interfaces and usability are highly contextual, and their effectiveness depends on a broad understanding of human behavior
The problem with qualatative "research" however is that it's not clear how to make it objective and verifiable.
Nielson makes a good point that 95% confidence ⇒ 1/20 results are wrong. But that's why scientists reproduce experiments, and why it’s so necessary to be able to do that.