richardholden.info

Tag: internet

A ‘good’ blog post

In posts on 13 November 2008 tagged humour, internet, Onion, video, YouTube with no comments

From the Onion (who else?): YouTube contest challenges users to make a ‘good’ video.

Because the idea of making a good video is new to so many of its users, YouTube offered a list of suggestions including:

• Have some reason for making a video other than ‘I own a camera’.
• Make sure the subject of the video can be seen, and
• Shoot the video while sober.

Link

Google flu

In posts on 13 November 2008 tagged Google, internet, medicine with no comments

Google are using search trends relating to flu to predict the spread of the virus.

We’ve discovered that there is a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening, and are therefore good indicators of flu activity. Our estimates, based on up-to-date aggregated Google search data, may indicate flu activity up to two weeks ahead of traditional flu surveillance systems.

It’s kind of reminiscent of Kevin Kelly’s ideas of the future of science, based on finding patterns in the huge amounts of data generated every day (rather than the traditional experiment):

In large bodies of information with many variables, algorithmic discovery of patterns will become necessary and common. These exist in specialized niches of knowledge (such particle smashing) but more general rules and general-purpose pattern engines will enable pattern-seeking tools to become part of all data treatment.

Link

There’s always one (in 12.5 million)

In posts on 10 November 2008 tagged internet, spam with 5 comments

A study has found that only 1 in 12,500,000 pharmacy spam emails on the Storm botnet actually leads to a purchase.

According to Wikipedia, over 100 billion spam emails are sent every day, of which approximately 13% are health related. This means that about only about 1,000 purchases are made as a result of these messages every day, translating into less than half a million purchases every year. Is this really enough to make the whole thing worthwhile?

Link

Local idiot to post comment on Internet

In posts on 6 August 2008 tagged humour, internet with no comments

“Later this evening, I intend to watch the video in question, click the ‘reply’ link above the box reserved for user comments, and draft a response, being careful to put as little thought into it as possible, while making sure to use all capital letters and incorrect punctuation,” Mylenek said. “Although I do not yet know exactly what my comment will entail, I can say with a great degree of certainty that it will be incredibly stupid.”

Link

Telescopic text

In posts on 5 August 2008 tagged internet, text with 1 comment

Telescopic Text, or, how I managed to hit the word count in every essay I ever wrote.

[thanks to Richard]