So, Bing’s alphabetis unsurprisingly mainly the sames as Google’s, apart from the following, notable exceptions (I’ve excluded most of the entries that are either the same or very similar).  The listings are first (second) – and then Google’s for comparison.

• bing (bank of america) – best buy (bank of america)
• google (gmail) – gmail (google maps)
• irs.gov (itunes) – imdb (itunes)
• netflix (nascar) – netflix (nfl.com)
• orbitz (office depot) – office depot (opm)
• pogo (pandora) – pandora (photobucket)
• utube (usps) – usps (ups)
• www.google.com (walmart) – walmart (weather) 
• zipcodes (zillow) – zillow (zappos)

And for numbers:

• 2009 calendar (2012) - 2010 calendar (2012)
• 53.com (50 cent) – 500 days of summer (50 cent)
• 7 wonders world (7 zip) – 7zip (7deadly sins)
• 89 (84 lumber) – 80’s music (80’s fashion)
• 9 news (93x) – 90210 (92.3)

In summary, people who use bing are more worried about a year behind (2009 calendar instead of 2010), taxes (irs.gov), travel (orbitz), nascar instead of NFL, and finding their way back to www.google.com…

Also, bingers want to know about the 7 wonders of the world, googlers about the 7 deadly sins.  Huh.

UPDATE: Since posting this, it’s been pointed out to me that there are only 2 humans in the list (Tiger Woods and Lady Gaga, good going!), although they are both second placers.   Have a look at Mark and Darren’s excellent BLN blog to see versions from other countries.

UPDATE2:  Added some numbers and characters – and notice that Google Ads now appear in the autocomplete (try typing in 000 (i.e. three zeros) into the google.com homepage…

• amazon (aol)
• best buy (bank of america)
• craigslist (cnn)
• dictionary (disney channel)
• ebay (espn)
• facebook (facebook login)
• gmail (google maps)
• hotmail (hulu)
• imdb (itunes)
• jcpenney (jet blue)
• kohls (kmart)
• lowes (lady gaga)
• myspace (mapquest)
• netflix (nfl.com)
• office depot (opm)
• pandora (photobucket)
• qvc (quotes)
• realtor.com (reverse phone lookup)
• southwest airlines (sears)
• target (tiger woods)
• usps (ups)
• verizon wireless (victoria secret)
• walmart (weather)
• xbox 360 (xm radio)
• youtube (yahoo)
• zillow (zappos)

So what about numbers?

• 12 days of christmas (123 greetings)
• 2010 calendar (2012)
• 30 rock (3 lyrics)
• 4chan (411)
• 500 days of summer (50 cent)
• 60 minutes (6abc)
• 7zip (7deadly sins)
• 80’s music (80’s fashion)
• 90210 (92.3)
• 0 balance transfer (007)

And I guess I should do the other common characters too…

• .net framework (.net framework 3.5)
• @properties (@live.com)
• &nbsp (&hearts)
• ¬_¬ (¬ alt code)
• ?, !, “, $, %, *, ), (, ~, # etc – nothing…

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…

Wikipedia defines realtime as “when things respond to events as they occur“.  Well, I respond to events as they occur to me, but sometimes hours or days late…   Dictionary.com defines it as “of or pertaining to applications in which the computer must respond as rapidly as required by the user or necessitated by the process being controlled.”  Hm.  Well – if the user required a response only the next day, would that still be realtime?  Selecting “shutdown” on my PC shuts the PC down in about 5 minutes, which when I’ve walked away from the PC is as rapidly as required, but is hardly realtime.

It seems like the realtime I thought I knew is actually some concept which spans almost any sort of delay.  My definition would be something much closer to “simultaneous” or “directly after”. In other words, within a short enough time-period that an average observer would say that the result/response happened right after the cause. 

So if I click a mouse button to select something on screen, I expect that something to respond immediately.

And what is immediate?  Well, as an example in tests of human reaction time (often by catching a falling ruler between finger tips), the average human reaction time tends to be in the range of 0.2 seconds, or 200 milliseconds.  So it might be fair to say that anything that happens within that time period would be pretty immediate, or without perceptible delay.

So given that definition of realtime, what is ACTUALLY realtime?

- Twitter is mainly not as most updates are actually read out-of-sync
- SMS and email are mosty not, for the same reason
- Communicating by talking IS generally realtime
- Google’s search is barely realtime, if at all – it’s just very recent
- The feedback we get from machines can be realtime – from clicking on things, to turning the steering wheel, to turning on a light….

Actually, thinking through the options – there’s not much in life that is actually realtime…

1. OCZ Technology – Neural Impulse Actuator (£73)

Pitched as a gaming device, this headband combines a electromyograph (which detects the electrical potential generated by muscle cells), an electroencephalogram (which records electrical activity across the scalp), and electrooculograph (which detects electrical activity associated with eye activity).  Phew.  That’s the pitch anyway, although I think it may be simpler – it essentially detects electrical activity at 3-4 spots across the forehead, and uses software to try and discriminate between the different sources of that electrical activity: your forehead muscles, your eyes, or indeed your brain.

Various reports including this one from OC3D suggest that after a LOT of training, the headband can allow you to shoot enemies in games by slightly raising an eyebrow, or clenching your teeth.  Response times (promised as at the speed of thought) haven’t been shown to be much faster than mouse, even after quite some training.

Verdict: Unproven, probably too simplistic, but an interesting start

2. Emotiv Systems – ($299)

Emotiv have been developing their headset for a couple of years now, and it’s finally being released on New Year’s Eve.  Again, their target is console games, and Emotiv use both scalp electrical activity, and sensing of facial expressions to deliver gaming control.  Their 2008 launch was delayed because “The public demo didn’t go as planned; the device simply didn’t work in front of the media who attended the press conference”.  Hm.

As it hasn’t been launched, it seems that few independent review have been done, so the jury is still out.  However, just on the basis that it detects facial expressions, it probably has greater potential than OCZ’s

Verdict: Unproven, but facial expression recognition could be interesting

3. Neurosky Headset – ($199)

Neurosky appear to have built the biggest ecosystem around their headset – games, integration with music visualization, bluetooth cellphone integration.  However, their headset only has 1 (yes, 1) sensor, which supposedly shows your “emotional state and how you react to the world”.   This really is the most remote from believable “brain control”.

Verdict: Interesting (and smart commercially), but ultimately just a toy

Conclusion
I started looking at this area thinking I’d find a bunch of companies trying to commercialise “thought control”.  I only found three key players, and none of them represent what I can see as being a realistic attempt at getting mass-market mind control of computers.

Part of the problem is that it’s hopelessly simplistic to try and read the brain by measuring electrical activity across the scalp.    Of course, it can result in some simple communication or control of a cursor on the screen – which is a life-saver in the caseof severe disability or paralysis, where it’s enabled a patient to communicate.  However, the ability to do complex tasks just isn’t possible yet (or ever?) without invasive brain surgery – or a far greater number of more sensitive and calibrated sensors across the scalp.

However, there is hope in sight.  DARPA, for instance, has $4m in 09/10 for “Silent Talk” – a project that aims to “allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals.”  And DARPA generally does interesting things with its research budgets – cars that can autonomously navigate complex environments being probably the highest profile example.

I’m watching this space – the day we can control computers using a mix of keyboard, mouse AND thought (I don’t believe that thought will, for a long while, replace manual control) is that day that the internet becomes truly fast and immersive.  I can’t wait.

UPDATE: The crew at Neurosky were switched on enough to catch this post, and send me a whitepaper with some stats in it.  Seems their single electrode compares favorably with a Biopac, a well-used medical wet-electrode EEG system.  I don’t have time to analyse the data, nor can I verify it – but if it’s true, then good job Neurosky (I’m actually more impressed with the fact they caught this post).  I’m still unsure about how useful the technology is today, though…

So, here’s a taster of what you get:

1. Clinical Reports:  The screenshot table below is a snapshot of my risk for various conditions, such as:

• Type 1/2 Diabetes
• Certain forms of cancer
• Crohn’s disease, etc. 

They are the data that clinically 23andme are sure enough of to actually lay them out this formally.  I’ve blanked the particular conditions, but you get the gist.  Also included in this section is information on:

• Traits (such as the ability to taste certain bitter flavours, lactose intolerance)
• Carrier status of certain conditions such as Bloom’s syndrome and Canavan disease
• Drug response to such drugs as Plavix (a blockbuster heart drug)

2. Research Reports – this is analysis that “has not yet gained enough scientific consensus to be included” in the Risks section as above.  It includes things such as:

• Blood pressure
• Dependencies and addictions
• Asthma
• Headaches

3. Ancestry- this shows you a map of your maternal and paternal ancestry, as below – along with (as in all other sections of the site) a healthy dose of background and eductional material

4.  Surveys – the site has a lot of surveys, mainly health/psychological, and the results of those are both interesting to see, and obviously are fuelling 23andme’s knowledge of how genes influence all kinds of health conditions.

5. Sharing – a fascinating part of the site, and one I haven’t yet had time to dig into.   You can select to share your genome with anyone else on the site, at a basic or full level – which enables a bunch of functionality. 

The somewhat obvious extention of this is to work out what the combination of your genetic makeup and a potential partner’s will put your potential children at risk of, with the Inheritance Calculator

Now that adds something to the mate-selection process, huh. 

Actually of all the features and content on the site (and there’s a lot of it), the two elements that raise most people’s eyebrows when I tell them about the service are the disease risks, and the inheritance calculator.   As odd as it seems, I think both represent something really pretty important: the ability to help guard against future risk. 

If I know I’m at a slightly higher risk of some disease because of my particular genetics, AND I know something that I can do about it (eat more broccoli or whatever), why wouldn’t I do that?  Or prepare my kids for it?

I spend my waking hours looking at ways to work out how people behave online and use that information, and to me the analysis of genetic profile is a (long) extension of this – it’s part of the mix of technologies that will enable us to understand US better.

Overall I’m highly impressed with the site – there’s a ton of information there, and obviously by submitting surveys and detailed further information the site will improve.  Over time, they’ll add the ability to analyze and risk-profile more health conditions. 

On a lighter note (but the same topic area!), I’m about to try out facionic.com – results when I get them…

So, 5bn people aren’t internet users, versus 1.7bn who are (numbers courtesy of World Internet Stats).  A significant majority of the world’s current population who wouldn’t know a tweet from a poke, let alone who are actively using the internet for any purpose whatsoever.

Next, let’s assume that really wired internet users are members of one of a couple of key sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.  Sure, we could add MySpace, Orkut and so on into the mix, but it’s fairly obvious that the crossover between the different sites is going to be heavy – i.e. most Twitter users will have a facebook account, listen to spotify, whatever whatever.  Another high-tech infographic for your enlightenment:

(The twitter number I’ve derived from various sources, the other figures are from the sites’ own published stats)

Finally, here are a couple of other indicative statistics to keep in mind:

• The median number of tweets per twitter user is 1.  The vast majority of twitter users have bouts of occasional activity, and either give up/stop or take long periods off.  Only a few could probably be classified as very active – maybe less than 1 million?
• Even in the UK 10 million people still don’t have an internet connection.  That means 1/6th of the country who couldn’t even access it if they felt they wanted to.  And of the rest, my wager would be another 30-40million are very light users.

Obviously I’m not saying any of this to try and claim the “internet” is dead or broken or flawed.  The fact facebook has 300m accounts is hugely impressive, and a feat not achieved by any business before that quickly.   In fact, I’m saying the opposite: I’m underlining the huge potential still wrapped up in its growth, despite few people in our worlds talking about that growth, and despite the temptation to assume that everyone is equally tech savvy.

I’m fully aware that those with businesses exposed to BRIC countries know all this – and are building their businesses based on this potential growth.  But I’m also confronted daily with a significant section of the web-culture in the UK/US (including me) who can take a fully-wired society for granted.

Back in 1995 when I started my first company (a web agency) I thought then that maybe I was too late…!  Fact is, we’re still all very early to the game.

What’s even more fascinating is how we SEE the movie.  When we blink, we lose up to 10% of our viewing time.  So it’s really important that we time those blinks to moments when we won’t miss anything too important happening on the screen.  And that means that in an average movie (or YouTube clip), most of us will blink at the same time.

Synchronized blinking, in short.

A recent study discovered that it’s not always when expected (i.e. a scene break), but at points where something has completed, or the main character is off the screen for a moment.  So the result of a natural moment of low interest, when our brain calculates it can give the eyes a break.

Part of that seems obvious to me (our eyes would dry out if we waited for scene endings), but the fact that almost everyone anticipates the same best place to blink is pretty interesting. 

Watching where people blink could be a pretty strong indicator of interest not just in movies, but in video ads (if we blink when they show the brand, opportunity lost), in top-level sports (especially fast-moving sports like table tennis) in warfare (when do fighter pilots blink?), and so on.

Blinking useful.

Who cares???

I wrote a while ago about the Palm Pre (now available in the UK) unifying messaging.   It makes sense – all your messages to me are as one.   

The thing is, I don’t care how your message arrives.  If I’m at my work PC, sure a Skype message is handy, it’s right there.  In a meeting?  Email is pretty good.  On a train with just my Blackberry – well, any mobile message works.   But really, whether to message me in LinkedIn, Twitter, email - it doesn’t matter, it just makes your and my life harder working out which one to use.  We’re supposed to be in a new bright era of unparalleled communications - but, it’s actually a mess. 

Twitter?  Handy when I have Tweetdeck open.  And crazy when I get alerted to new messages by email (talk about duplication).  Can I be bothered to install twitter clients on my Blackberry so I have yet another format of message to read?  Is a tweet any more useful than a Skype IM?  Do I remember whether you told me about some new great thing via MSN rather than email?  No, no and no!

Sure, there are different ways you might want to message – just to me, just to our group of friends/interest group, or to the world including me.   But that doesn’t need 10 different platforms, 10 different interfaces, 10 apps on my iPhone (disclaimer: I don’t  have an iPhone, this guy outlines the reasons why pretty well).   It just needs a simple setting connected to the message: like a “purpose” or “audience” label.

We’re running a real risk of losing out on the benefits of realtime communication by getting caught up in new brands that merely provide a way of sending messages (I’m looking at you, Twitter), rather than ways of getting that message to me in the most appropriate, useful, immediate way. 

It’s a little bit like providing gas to my house in pipes that are colourful, light up, have cute names, and make their journey via London’s top landmarks.  I don’t care – I just want the gas that comes out of the end, and feeds my boiler and oven.  Even more than that, I just want the heating it enables, and the food that comes out of the oven.  So, even if the gas itself is replaced by some new energy source, I’d be just as happy.

It’s the message that counts, not the medium.

A company called 23andme is then going to analyze that DNA, and tell me my risks for 118 diseases, my ancestral path and allow me to navigate other people with similar DNA…

This is mainly thanks to Esther Dyson’s persuasion, who has always been enthusiastic about the service (she’s also any advisor to my Company, Cognitive Match).  And, in fact, the moment the service was proposed (which from memory was still a year starting with 19) I knew I’d be signing up at some point.  The thing is, it’s at least 50% of what defines ME, it’s my DNA.  (Although note that researchers are finding other features of our DNA, including how it is folded, could be just as important - thanks to @christophebacon for that one).

So Bill Moorier’s app (http://abstractnonsense.com/mri/), “Inside my head” caught my eye for the same reason.  If you fancy, you can use this app to navigate around Bill’s head, presented in a full set of MRI scans… No, I’m not totally sure either why you would want to see inside Bill’s head – but I wouldn’t mind seeing inside my own.  Especially if it was labelled up with facts about brain areas, comparisons with other people’s brains and so on. 

That’s only the start, of course.  Twin this data with eHRs (electronic health records) which we’ll all be getting access to within 3-5 years  (Google Health is already delivering this, and Microsoft and others are working on int), and you have an electronic record of YOU.   Then what? Suddenly, you’ll be in control of your health – all in one place, at one time. 

And the combination of that data will make some amazing things happen in medicine – your genes, combined with your medical history, your travel plans, what you eat every day… Not only will it enable huge advances in personalized medicine, but connections between your health and your life will pour out of this thing.  And ultimately, we will all be a bit healthier.

So, getting 23andme to analyze my DNA, and considering buying the recently buzzed-up FitBit is the first step along that road.  I realise many people wouldn’t find all of this healthy, and it might even be more stressful/worrying than not knowing anything.  But for now, my curiosity is outweighing all that.

I’ll let you know if it changes once 23andme is done analyzing…