Pattern Cognition » Things to watch

Conga or break dance: will iphone loose market share to the nerd herd?

michaelsevilla — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:49:37 +0000

Readers of this blog can recount the pain I experience with my iphone. Actually, not with the iphone but with AT&T’s horrible 3G service here in Denver.

Upgrading to the new 3GS was non-issue to me based upon the primary “better speed” promise. I didn’t upgrade to the new 3GS because that’s like buying a Porsche to sit in a traffic jam.

Michael Arrington of Techcrunch is giving up his iphone as is Om Malik albeit for different reasons. Will the nerd herd follow suite and give up theirs?

Screenshot from Techcrunch

Ditch caffeine and recharge your brain

michaelsevilla — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:21:16 +0000

Can 5 minutes a day recharge your brain and make your mental acuity sharper?

Why not try it and let me know. I started today.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Data mining on the cheap

michaelsevilla — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:25:46 +0000

This is old skool data mining.

In the UK, the Guardian Newspaper put 700,000 documents of MPs’ expenses online for review. Rather than employing text analysis software, the Guardian is relying on humans to read, decipher, and flag suspicious spending for further review. As of 5 am (MT) 80% of the documents were reviewed.

Nothing like the possibility of salacious or euphemistic mis-classification of dubious expenses to fire up the inquisitive nature of the common man.

I can’t help but wonder what this type of forensic illumination this may bring to the democratic process. How would MPs or members of Congress spend and behave if they knew the public might scrutinize line by line every reported expense? Would there be more accountability or would this lead to more creative methods by lobbying firms to buy influence?

Perhaps both.

Twitter’s growth flatlines

michaelsevilla — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:01:18 +0000

Mashable is reporting the sudden flatline of Twitter’s phenomenal growth.

Image from Mashable.com

Even though I use Twitter, I do so reluctantly. My life and thoughts are not, quite honestly, so exciting nor profound that I need to broadcast every action and thought to my followers. I find Twitter beneficial for following some thought leaders or a general monitoring of the Twitter stream for information.

This Harvard study reports on what I’ve suspected yet lacked the background data: 10% of Twitter users create the vast majority of the content. And when you look at the content created by these uber Tweeters, there is so much crap and self-aggrandizement, many followers drop off out of frustration. In essence, Twitter has become a communication/broadcast medium for a community of followers rather than a conversational medium.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. Part of Twitter’s huge growth may be attributed to a voyeuristic satisfaction of peering into a person’s daily activities via Tweets. Perhaps the majority of followers have realized that in the end, their own lives are more interesting than those they follow.