Month: January 2006

I blogged last April about the idea tha del.ici.ous might work as a means of creating categories, that could include inherited catgories, and that by adding such links the non-hierarchical taxonomy could just evolve from the links.

I noticed on a search cross-hit that Greg, John and Fritz at Freshblog had a detailed summary of ways to exploit del.ici.ous for this purpose. Must follow-up this idea.

Categories was the only reason I moved from Blogger to WordPress. Would I switch back to blogger if I fixed this ? The Swicki (in the header) is part of my experimenting with informal / evolving categories.

Is near the core of my agenda – life’s complicated enough – just enough that is to make it a serious error to work with an over-simplified view in any context, in any environment, in any organisation. Anecdote here has a video link to a presentation on the subject by Michael Crichton (Yes, that Michael Crichton.). [via Johhnie Moore]

His 60 minute talk (plus Q&A) focuses on the topics of fear, misguided predictions and the impossibility of managing the environment with a mindset of linearity. Using the environment as an example of the ultimate complex system, Crichton exposes the inadequacies of conceiving the environment as a predictable and stable system. (Just substitute ‘the environment’ for the name of any large organisation.)

I guess the key caveat must be to stress the qualification of “impossible” and “predictable”. Not possible with the wrong rational objective (linear, static) world view. Roll on Dynamic Quality.

Anecdote looks like an interesting blog itself.
[Post-note – I see Anecdote are a small Australian organisation, with IBM and Dave Snowden / Cynefin connections. The web-linking plot thickens. I see their ideas of Adams and narrative humour refer to Scott, rather than Douglas (DNA) Adams. Pity :-)]

I see Johnnie has more recent posts on imperfection [perfection kills engagement] and trust [experts can miss the obvious] – a running thread here, didn’t I blog that last link a little earlier ?

Interesting further, is this title of a book chapter contributed by Johnnie “Simple Ideas, Lightly Held” – a play on the strong opinions, lightly held idea (also via Johnnie). In the context of the complexity post above, what this is saying that simple ideas are useful and pragmatic, but it’s dangerous to get too wedded to them, because they are almost certainly flawed – oversimplifying reality in any fundamental sense. Same problem with holding a fundamental metaphysical view of an ontology of subjects and objects.

I’ve always used my site monitoring s/w “Site Meter” as a means of identifying cross-links, who’s looking at my site, in the sense of, where have they come from; other web-pages and institutions of interest. I’m rarely interested in spotting individuals physical locations or IP addresses, that would be sneaky, unless the link leads to further contact. The cross-linking of search hits provides me with valuable sources of new links on subjects common to my blog, however useful the hit has been to my visitor.

For a long time, most hits were just that: search engine hits, and if the user has not followed the link to more than one page, I really had no way of knowing if pages were really being looked at or not, unless people commented or corresponded.

Anyway some interesting stats (for me). I had’t really noticed, but compared to about a year ago (this is year 5) everything is about doubled. Averages are running at 60 hits a day, with over 2 page views per hit (120 page views per day) and each visit now over a minute, (and that’s averaged over the whole life !) so increasingly people are actually looking at my site content, not just having their search engine hit it. (That means the averages over 5 years are about twice those over 4. You do the maths for the 5th year. Must do some total stats over current periods, out of interest.)

Thanks folks.

Thanks to a search cross-hit, I picked up this link to Lynn Curry’s Onion Model on Learning Theories. You may know I often use the “onion” for my view that everything comes in layers (even layers), though I have to say when I think Onion I tend to think many layers – onion-skins.

Pirsig and Maslow scholars will understand how I was intrigued that Curry’s Onion involves four layers. Interesting, even though it doesn’t map directly.

Cringley has delayed his 2006 predictions to put up this thought on Google, given that they’ve made a splash at CES.

The key thing is that whatever Google does, it is enabling it to serve content targetted more granularly, and charge premium rates for that granular targetting. It already works with G-Mail, and other Google offerings. And, as IP and TV channels merge, this targetting will be sold into main media streams, not compete with them. targetted ads on your TV or future commercial media device. How granular can you get ? (Part of the capability to get close to doing this locally in real time is what is behind their massive distributed server containers reported earlier.)

Incidentally, Google’s beta-releasing of unannounced new products, and withdrawal if they fail, is visible as a designed strategy of “fast failures”, rather than over-hyped, disappointing late, white-elephant flops.

They aren’t afraid to try new things, and having tried them, also aren’t afraid to shut them down if they don’t seem to be working as intended. All of this is by design. Google has turned beta code into a weapon, creating “beta” programs that in the case of Gmail had more than three million testers signed-up before it went from beta to production. A beta test is a wonderful thing because it can be ended with a whimper but not with a lawsuit. Betas for Google are sometimes real statements of product direction and sometimes not, but Google competitors have no way of knowing which is which until they, too, have devoted resources to competing with something that may have no long-term existence.

As Cringley says, the speculation is not all his. Managed granularity has been an aspect of my info-modelling quest for the last few years.

Apparently,

Thanks to David Gurteen for the link.

Liked this quote.

Some visitors, hardened by years of dealing with double glazing salesmen and Seventh Day Adventists, can smell a sales pitch diluted down to one part in sixteen million.

If you have a short attention span feel free to cut the crap and click on the highlights button. [via Rivets]

Georganna, over at Writer’s Edge has prepared an e-Book “How to be a Succesful Writer“, the focus of which is how to get your writing succesfully published.

Only one chapter is about the writing itself, the majority is about the “business of writing”. Knowing how the business works is a part of that, but Georganna reminds us that deciding on your criteria for success is a key part of the process.

As a blogger, you may be happy that your words can see the light of day anyway, but are you really satisfied with that ? Do you aspire to see your book-length words in print ? Do you aspire to making a dent with your work, or a commercial success for your pains ? Don’t give up the day-job just yet, it’s a hit and miss business, but Georganna has collected some useful hints on how far down that road you can get, what publishers and agents actually do, how to deal with them, and a great collection of references (hyperlinks) to other sources of information and ideas. Oh and some great fun illustrations courtesy of WriteSideOut. What can I add ? If you’re going publishing, bring some of that humour with you.