Tech stuff and randomness
Microsoft have used their MSN network to study the Six Degrees of Separation theory and seem to think the average number is about six after all. Which I could have told them anyway…
The good news is my Six Degrees Facebook application gets a mention at the bottom of the Guardian article.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Study revives six degrees theory
Proof! Just six degrees of separation between us
Six Degrees of Separation on Facebook
I’ve been working on my Six Degrees Facebook application on and off the past couple of weeks, partly as a way to get to know what the new platform is capable of, and it seems to have paid off. For the first time I’ve gone over 300 thousand installs, and daily active users is up to 4000 for the first time since before Christmas.
Possibly optimising it for the new profile has helped, but I’ve also updated everyone’s profile boxes, changed the icon, published a news story to users… It will be interesting to see if it continues.
I was on the marketing panel at the Social Media Business School last Friday (27th June). In the main, I was there as a Facebook application developer and to talk about how to design and grow an application. The day was fairly interesting for me, although perhaps less valuable for Social Media (the company, not the general concept) as hardly anyone was there. But there’s a photo of me on this page.
Social Media Business School
This e-mail from Bill Gates when trying to install Microsoft Movie Maker from 5 years ago is an interesting insight into not only what Gates did at Microsoft, but just how frustrated he seems to be with the usability of Windows at the time. There are some excellent quotes in there that echo questions we’ve all asked: “Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO8l-Bd1O4]
Mostly funny.
Another year, and another Eurovision is over. For me, this one will be remembered for a lack of any real event (since we didn’t have a get-together), a few reasonable songs, a few awful ones, and possibly the most predictable voting patterns yet.
Indeed, the voting was so bad that even Terry Wogan is thinking about packing it in. The show itself may be entertaining, but the hour of Balkan block-voting that follows is pretty redundant nowadays. I’m not sure I’d put it down to political reasons (as I’m sure Russia wouldn’t have turned off everyone’s gas or invaded if they had not have won), but there’s obviously more population migration between a lot of those countries, and more common cultural tastes.
Of particular note this year, Spain had one of the worst songs (although one of the more entertaining biographies), but didn’t do so badly, France’s was surprisingly good musically, and didn’t do that well, and the UK’s entry was one of the best for years, again with a “real” song, but picked up very few points. Azerbaijan had a devil and a falsetto angel and did much better than they deserved, and Greece’s Britney impersonation was doing remarkably well in the voting, pushing Russia all the way, until I went to the toilet and somehow they were miles behind by the time I came back. In the end, Russia just had too many friends (and is it in Europe anyway? I’m confused), and I’m fairly sure people weren’t voting for the big-nosed bloke on the ice-skates.
Although the semi-final format was adjusted this year to get a few of the western european countries through it’s still all too predictable. At least there’s a couple of hours entertainment in there, and I’m sure it’ll be just as disastrous for the UK again next year, whether they tamper with the voting again or with Terry running things or not. I’m sure I’ll still watch anyway, and be just as disillusioned afterwards.
Facebook have posted a link to a tool they’ve built to track the popularity of different words and phrases within wall posts. It’s available here as the Facebook Lexicon. Basically, type in one word to see its popularity, and then type in another after a comma to compare. I compared Olympics and Tibet and it’s rather interesting.
It’s quite a fun tool, and not without some commercial value to Facebook should they get it right: Yahoo have been able to track that kind of trend information for years, and it’s highly valuable to some industries. (How many people are talking about a new Madonna album/film/whatever? etc) That kind of large-scale anonymised data collection is one of the big ways I see social networking sites being monetised, and I’m sure it’s also the reason behind AOL’s acquisition of Bebo. If they integrate chat and Bebo they’ll be gathering a huge amount of information as to what the “youth of today” are talking about, as they’re talking about it.
Okay, I went to Girona last December, and it’s taken me over three months to put the photos up, but stop complaining… Anyway, there was me, Paul J White, Neelesh Sonaware and Deborah Causton (are you reading this Google?).
Paul, pretending to be Borg, or Dalek, or something… Shot glasses stuck to his head, anyway:
I don’t remember this bit much, but I took the photo so I must have been there. It was on the way out of the bar:
This jogged a memory when I saw the photo, and I’m glad the motorbike didn’t have an alarm on it. (It wasn’t ours, by the way.)
The Girona skyline was quite impressive with the cathedral lit up at the top of the hill:
The next day we went for a wander. This is the abbey:
More of the abbey:
Ruins of the castle on top of the hill, although how all that stone got up there I have no idea. I thought things usually fell down, not up, but maybe it’s different in Spain.
A scenic courtyard:
The same courtyard:
The cathedral, from the top of the hill:
The town wall is quite immense and there’s a surprising amount intact that you can walk along:
Looking down on the town wall from one of the towers:
Girona cathedral and the landscape beyond:
Neelesh inspecing the wall for, err, some reason:
The side of the cathedral:
Another church near the bottom of the cathedral:
Some gates. Girona was great for just wandering around and finding interesting bits and pieces:
What the town wall looks like from the bottom:
Some very intriguing steps halfway up the town wall. Not quite out of reach of the ground, but not exactly useful either:
A most excellent sign:
The place was a bit of a maze and created some amazingly rich residual spaces:
A view out from inside the old city wall:
Paul’s wildlife photography. I think the cat can probably see him:
A Spanish cat:
The cathedral doorway:
The cathedral itself. Although not a great piece of architecture its sheer volume was quite impressive. It sits like a stone cube on top of the hill:
This road obviously isn’t a main arterial route. Ho ho ho:
It wouldn’t be a foreign visit if I didn’t see a church covered in scaffolding:
Paul attempting to have a face-off with a tree. As far as I know, they’re still at it:
Like many continental parks, the one in Girona consisted mostly of trees and dust. The avenue makes a nice photo, but there really isn’t a great deal there if you’re not really into gravel:
The view back from the park to the cathedral and churches was worth it, though:
Just what you like to see on holiday: festering bones:
Their idea of christmas lights was slightly strange. They seem to have covered barbecue grills in fairy lights, and that’s about it:
Our apartment was at the end of a timewarp:
Neelesh and Paul, travelling through time:
While I was in Washington last week (as one often just happens to be, obviously), I had a few hours in the morning to wander around. Assisted by being still on UK time which meant I could get up very early and not think much of it, of course. But here are the photos:
The Washington Monument. If you can see this, it’s impossible to get lost. Strangely, for its size, you can’t actually see it from that many places.
The same monument from near the Jefferson Memorial:
The Jefferson Memorial is, like a lot of the monuments around Washington, quite interesting as a grand gesture to be seen from a distance. It doesn’t really stand up to close scrutiny in terms of detail.
The statue of Thomas Jefferson:
The same status from one of the entrances to the memorial. The light was good at that time of the morning as it was only about an hour after the sun had come up.
The Lincoln Memorial, from a distance. As grand landscape gestures go, this run from the memorial to Capitol Hill is as big as they get. It was far too far to even think about walking to it.
Capitol Hill, again from a distance (due to laziness):
The back of The Whitehouse (which is the interesting-looking side):
The front of The Whitehouse, which looks rather ordinary, it has to be said. Strangely, after years of living in London I don’t think I’ve ever seen a major politician anywhere, but as I was on my way back the taxi was stopped for Dick Cheney’s cavalcade to go past.
The new feed forms available to Facebook applications look like they could be interesting, although I’m wary of any documentation that contains text like “Now when the user submits the form, a little magic happens.”