Unlikely Group Working Happily Together To Solve Patent Problem
People following the issue of open sourcing the U.S. Patent Database might have been surprised to read an announcement in the official business opportunities web site of the U.S. Government: Synopsis for Public Data Dissemination Sole Source Contract to Google, Inc. While the first reaction of many might be "OMG, WTF, how could they," this is actually good news, with an unlikely cast of characters working together including Google, Intellectual Ventures, and the Internet Archive. In September, the Patent Office

Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age - Part Three
The myth of personal empowerment takes root amidst a massive loss of personal control. Social technologies are cloaked in a rhetoric of liberation (customers are in control, the internet fosters democracy, social technologies propagate truth etc.) that tend to obscure the fact that never before have we h

Four short links: 6 November 2009
Red Laser -- "impossibly accurate barcode scanning". Uses Google Product Search to identify products that you scan using the camera on the phone. I remember Rael and I talking to Jeff Bezos about this years ago, before camphones had the resolution to decode barcodes. The future is here and it's $1.99 on the App Store ... (via Ed Corkery on Twitter) The Art of Community For Free Download -- Jono Bacon's O'Reilly book on community mana

Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age - Part Two
Individual perception of increased choice can occur while the overall choice pool is getting smaller This gem from Whimsley makes the point - with extensive statistical modeling supporting the argument - that our algorithm-obsessed, long tail merchants are actually depleting the overall choice pool despite the fact that as individuals we may be experiencing a sense of more choice through recommendations engines... Online merchants such as Amazon, iTunes and Netflix may stock more items than your local book, CD, or video store, but

Four short links: 5 November 2009
Heat Maps in R -- We used financial data here because it's easier to access than the airline data, but it's actually a pretty interesting way of looking at a financial time series. Weekend and holiday effects are a bit more obvious, and it's a bit like being able to see the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly closes all at once (by scanning your eye over the calendar in different directions). Includes source code. (via migurski on Delicious) BlackHat and EC2