Today I returned from a trip to Vancouver and Seattle. Lots of interesting activities on the Atos Origin Technology Operations Center and managing the IT of the Olympic Games. Also some good discussions with Microsoft in Redmond on BPOS, Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft Research. Some of it is under NDA, so I cannot go into much details. Other stuff will be posted in the next couple of days.
Social Search and the Integrity of the Social Graph
Image via Wikipedia
Colleague Steve Nimmons has created a blog entry about integrity in social networking. It is on the Atos Origin Blog.
Steve writes:
“…the more I am connected within the ‘graph of others’ the more likely that my recommendations and interests show up in the Social Search results of others…”.
He then argues that this process can be manipulated to a certain extend, but probably the algorithms of search engines will understand manipulation and prevent false connections.
His piece is an interesting read, but does not mention the fact that we are seeing a lot of “de-friend-ing” at the moment (check out the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine). I believe that building large personal networks is a fun game (“how many followers do you have?”) and was a trend in past years. It certainly is now mostly a phenomenon to build attention, distribute news very quickly and a personal hobby from celebrities and PR people.
For opinions and thought leadership, people are now looking for trust and relationship in quality, not in numbers. Something does not have more truth to it if more people say so. The introduction of Google Buzz shows that it is at least necessary to distinguish between different types of networks. Many people are already doing that by using LinkedIn for business and Facebook for private relationships.
I agree with Steve that complex Social Graphs do hold an element of danger for manipulation. You can build a false persona of get robbed of your (highly respected and influencing) personality. Owners and managers of social networks should be very aware of these dangers and put measures in place to protect their users.
Read Steve’s post here.
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Siri – The next chapter of the Web
Image via CrunchBase
News:
Searching is one-dimensional; actions have much more value to us. It is interesting how we are now used to using the Internet in our daily live. Most of our activities focus on engaging with this vast amount of computing power by giving it single-dimensional tasks. We search for an address, maybe for a review of a new mobile phone or any other aspect of our complex live that needs information to proceed.
We as humans are very good in taking the outputs of the internet and combining it into actions and decisions. Putting context to facts and figures enables us to make decisions and actually do something.
“…No more endless clicking on links and pages to get things done on the Internet. Delegate the work to Siri and relax while Siri takes care of it for you…” (www.siri.com)
Siri is about to change this paradigm. By combining existing capabilities with our inquiries on a mobile platform (with strong speech recognition) it can make decisions, take actions on our behalf and answer complex queries in Real Time.
“Siri – I would like to have a taxi in 1 hour…”, is an inquiry that shows what I mean. Siri needs to understand where I am, otherwise it could not dispatch a taxi to the right location. It also has to find a way to actually order a taxi.
It all works based on two starting points: (a) the Programmable Web and (b) the Semantic Web.
Remember I wrote about the fact that we are able to monitor the availability of Internet API’s? There are already dozens of API’s available that allow a process such as Siri to reach out and send commands to the web services that have an API and the number is growing fast. Because most services also have a semantic context attached to it, Siri can distinguish between a taxi or a limousine service. When other data on the web also gets a semantic context, not only API’s will be available to Siri – but also storylines, opinions, emotions and priorities.
The creators of Siri have establish an engine that can already talk with dozens of API’s. These include restaurant services, music, movie, taxi, local shopping, weather and airline services. This allows you to ask very complex questions such as: “Siri, I want to see a movie with Clark Gable in about an hour, can you order me the transport and tickets for this?” or “Siri, please order a table for 2 in my favorite Chinese restaurant, next Thursday at 9:00 pm”.
This all is run through an iPhone app with apparently excellent speech recognition and the developers have stated other mobile platforms will follow shortly.Go to www.siri.com for the full story.
I do not know if Siri is going to make it, but they have some serious money behind them as stated in their interview with Robert Scoble. Even if this particular company is not going to make it – I predict this is the next killer app for any platform and a whole new way of utilizing the power of the Internet.
Siri is being described as a ‘Do-Engine’ to explain the difference to a ‘Search-Engine’. More of these applications are emerging as Personal Assistant Apps.
Star Trek comments are allowed, but this is real now and it works.
The Future of the Internet is born
One word: Siri.
More on this tomorrow….
Olympics and tech: ‘No room to fail’
Image via Wikipedia
News:
“The trick is that we need to have zero impact on the Games in the end….”
CNET interviews Atos Origin Magnus Alvarsson on the IT tech for the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. It is clear from the interview that providing the IT (with 800 servers and 6000 PC’s) for such a large event, is no small enterprise. A lot of time goes in preparing and you are under a microscope while the Games are on. [More here…]