Alex Kelleher’s Blog

Just recently I forecast the death of text in reading, but until that comes to pass, I’ll vent the current state-of-the art: ebook readers. I’m excluding the iPad for the moment given I haven’t seen one, and it’s not strictly an ebook (and arguably uncomfortable to read for long periods of time).

Problem #1
This is the deal-breaker for me: the screen refresh. Each page-change means watching a page that’s supposed to be a paper analog flash “black” and then “white” again. Every time. Flash. Flash.  That process takes anywhere from 1 second to about 4 on the readers I’ve seen.

Problem #2
Future versions of eInk will support colour.  I can probably wait.

Problem #3
Not all books are available as ebooks.  So, take both?  Seems heavy.

Problem #4

The “uncanny valley” describes the revulsion effect when robots get very close to being alike to humans. Actually something that is intentionally less accurate is more likely to be perceived as human-like.  Hence Avatar’s colors.

This same “uncanny valley” applies to ebook readers. They are getting close to paper, and therefore the differences (like the screen flash) stand out even more, as we jolt back to the reality that we’re not holding paper.

Problem #5
Ebook readers don’t like it when you drop them in the bath.

Problem #6
See Problem #1. If it weren’t for that, I’d have bought an eReader a long time ago.  I’ll probably buy an iPad, but not for book reading…

admin UI, Uncategorized, Usability

Twitter, for all its fans and detractors, generates a LOT of data.  It may only be a very small percentage of the world’s population who tweet a lot, but even that can be representative of interesting/important trends and changes.

Oh, and by the way, is twitter worried about this twitter.com traffic trend (courtesy of compete.com)?

But in terms of mining the human chatter that happens through Twitter, who is doing anything interesting?  I didn’t find much:

1. TweetDeck‘s  TwitScoop

Dodgy naming aside, this column in tweetdeck is one I keep switched on.  But a keyword tag cloud isn’t exactly world-shattering in 2010.  Still, it’s there, and while the screengrab above doesn’t tell me much (and I’m still not sure what/who “snead” is, even after a search), it’s a good finger-on-the-pulse.

2. TrendsMap

Now this is more like it (and a better name).  A google mashup with (another) tag/word cloud floated on top, it gives an overview or trending topics, along with a real-time snapshot of individual tweets.   And no, I’ve no idea why blasphemy is a hot topic in Ireland right now…

 3. Neoformix

Now this guy I have a lot of time for.  He’s particularly well known for his “Twitter Stream” graphs, which shows word usage trends over time, as below. 

However, head on over to his projects page, and you’ll find charts that include “time of day word correlations” (as below), “Twitter Venn” (twitter Venn diagrams) and a host of other tools. 

So, I know Jeff at Neoformix isn’t the only guy doing interesting analysis of Twitter data, but what surprises me is how few people seem to be working on it – at least that I’m aware of.  Sure, the fact that the word “drunk” is tweeted most between midnight and 5am isn’t going to change the way we see the world – but what about if a brand name suddenly takes off?  Or the word “recession” is on a downwards trend, or “flu” on an upwards trend? 

More Twitter Mining, please…

admin Uncategorized, data mining

Courtesy of the guys at Widgetbox I’ve been exploring what’s available out there to embed and add value to visitors.  The answer is, unsuprisingly, “what isn’t available out there”.   I picked up couple of examples at random that I thought were interesting.  Added value?  Well…

admin Uncategorized, Web

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This story caught my eye – quite possibly as I’m flying tomorrow… 12,000 laptops EVERY WEEK, that’s 624,000 per year, or one for every 500 people. 

What’s even more astonishing is that 70% of those aren’t reclaimed.  Is everyone feeling that flush despite the crunch?

Ironically, 40% of the lost laptops are left at the security checkpoints. The departure gate (23%), toilets (9%) and restaurants (7%) are other places worth hanging around if you fancy picking up a free PC.

The article (In PC Pro magazine) finishes up by saying that 14% of the laptops have “intellectual property” on them – which is a bit worrying, as that means 86% had nothing at all on them, or maybe just a bunch of unintellectual property.

admin Uncategorized

As an example of the data that a server can already pick up from a simple visit, have a look at the table below (visit a couple of those sites and come back and see the difference).

I’ve also added a widget to the right of this page which shows some of the other (quite simple) information that’s easily scraped from your visit – such as IP address (which can then locate you geographically, broadly), screen resolution, local time of day and so on.

None of this information should represent a privacy invasion – though you should be aware that it is collect-able (the broader mass market isn’t, generally). 

The great thing is that some of this information is actually very useful at telling a site more about you – and therefore providing you a better and more personal service. Getting the balance of privacy and personalisation is of course a challenge (and one of the most important things we’re working on at at Favy).  Right now, most of the information you see below and to the right is thrown away and not made use of.

Thanks to gemal for this script.

admin Uncategorized