I had to laugh at myself this morning. While meeting with my technical support team, I complimented a key individual and referred to him as "my man in Havana". Seconds later, I realized that my comment had no meaning due to our cultural differences! Having grown up in northern Minnesota … deep in the heart of America, I often use cultural phrases. However, my friend and key technical support person lives in Bangalore and grew up in India. He had no idea what I was talking about!

Thus, I quickly took time out from our technical discussions, and gave a short lecture about secret agents, old black and white movies, and why it was a compliment. After our meeting I emailed my friend two links (given below). Welcome to the global work force!

Our Man in Havana:

• Wikipedia
  Article
• Turner
  Classic Movies … Opening Clip

Have you ever wondered what is happening on the engineering campuses of America? If you've never linked to MIT TechTV, you really don't know what's up, or down! (as opposed to MITWorld or MIT Open Course WARE). Enjoy MIT PacMan!

At least when it comes to picking new locations to live … during 2008 persons from northern Minnesota never moved any father east than Wisconsin, but southern California was still a draw! Expand the image given below to see the details. My wife and I are both originally from Northern Minnesota, and are building a new home in Duluth. Thus, we found the migration patterns intriguing!

Are you curious to see outward and inward migration for any county in the United States? There is a fascinating article and interactive map hosted by Forbes.Com. It allows the user to point to any county and then activate the migration patterns from 2008. (I learned about this Forbes service via the Map Scroll Blog)

Value your freedom!

A friend of mine who works for a NGO in China (i.e. charity) just emailed. He explained the process he must go through to register a new computer domain in China:

• Apply for a domain in a normal manner (web registration)
• Apply for domain approval from the Chinese government 
• If approval is received from the Chinese government
  • Visit government office to be photographed
  • Now registered against the new domain

And you're worried about Facebook privacy??!

Many of you may have heard about or read the book by James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds. If not, the brief explanation is that one attempts to use the collective wisdom of many to optimize a process or decision (Wikipedia definition). This idea is nice in theory, but what is the result in practice? I'm sure you've heard the old phrase: "Too many cooks spoil the broth". Is this concern valid? Does crowd wisdom optimize a result?

I decided to test an actual example using search engine results. NASA has implemented a "crowd wisdom" search engine. In brief, NASA's web pages are tagged (by the system, not the user), and as the user interacts with the web site, the visitors actions are recorded and a complex algorithm decides what web content you found most engaging … and compares that to your original search terms (read the NASA search engine case study … via Baynote)

Here is my test … Google Search vs. NASA Crowd Wisdom Search for the Orion Nebula.

• Google Search Query: Orion Nebula (query restricted to NASA.gov)
• NASA.gov Search Query: Orion Nebula

You can click upon either search query and examine the results. You'll notice that the NASA.gov search results display how many users utilized a certain result, and that there are suggested follow-up links in the left hand margin. All of these data points result from the fact that NASA.gov's content is tagged, and user interaction is recorded and evaluated. Search results rankings on NASA.gov are constantly changing as users vote with their feet (or in this case … mouse clicks). Once again, see the NASA case study to learn more about this tagging process. My Google results are just the "normal" results using Google's index.

I have included two screenshots of the top five results from each search (click to maximize). You'll note that their is very little overlap in what content is served up to the user for the top 5 results.

 


Now you could dismiss the fact that I'm only showing five results, and comparing ten results. However, consider this study from Cornell University (via Online Marketing) … and your own personal interaction with search results. Once you get below the first THREE results, very few users actually click through to content (remember SEO?! … that's another story and blog post). (click upon the image shown below to view full sized).

I hope I've made you think, and perhaps consider how the wisdom of crowds (i.e. social interaction with web content) may be used to optimize content … even without the user taking any conscious action (i.e. page content that is tagged by the system, and then having the user's interaction with that content evaluated).