It’s been quiet here, because my word press account got hacked, so I’ve been archiving, researching and upgrading. Cross your fingers, folks. Update: It just hosed my theme. I’m super depressed…

While you are waiting, check out Facebook Lexicon, which lets you search the popularity of words that appear in Facebook Walls. Here is a graph of Clinton and Obama. Many of you will know how about my feelings towards the awesomeness of word frequencies.

Image source: flickr

David Weinberger gave a description of a link in a panel last year at the Hyperlinked Society Conference. A link is a conscious act of generosity. These acts is moral, and they form the architecture of the web. He goes on to explain that the syntax of a link (i.e. the href HTML tag) has no meaning within itself, it is merely an instruction which points to another location. The meaning of the link, which can be agreement or disagreement, is found in the text surrounding the link.

While these links have no meaning, they do have value, which is the reason by creating a link performing generosity. Google ranks pages by the number of links other sites point to a page. Appearing early in a search result clearly has value over a later listing. You can only have a reputation if other people can find you. A page and her owner’s reputation then relies on the generosity of others linking to her page. If an author disagrees with the contents of page and wishes to dispute it, linking to the page adds to its value and reputation. The author is then left to not link. However, this practice which the status quo forces people to use still leaves the reader at a disadvantage.

There have been suggestions to create a newer kind of syntax and link taxonomy which would add to the current binary options of link or no link. The simplest system would be to have three choices, positive link, negative link and no link. This system would actually be very easy to for users. All you need to do is add a tag to the link.

Flipping forward one year, I was struck when Jonathan Zittrain pointed out in his talk last Saturday, the use robot.txt files for telling search engines not to spider a file or directory started in the early age of the web as an adhoc measure by individual which became an internet standard. Today, it is much harder to get a standard adopted, but the story of robot.txt reminds us that it is possible to create grassroots change in internet standards. Endorsement links allude to aspects of the Semantic Web, but frankly, I’m not sure if it will every come. Contextual syntax might evolve over time with gradual implementations.

The idea of rated links get even more interesting when you consider how search engines might use links that interpret reputation and authority. Of course, gaming the system would occur, but that happens now and should not deter the implementation of a link taxonomy. It might also encourage search engines to become open to annotating listings, as Frank Pasquale has suggested. Generally, search results are given by relevance or time of creation. New categories could be ranked in terms by agreement, disagreement or even controversy. The end result would be better ways for author to link, for readers to under the context of the link, and for searcher to usage links in the aggregate.

So, many it wasn’t the Chinese government re-directing Google, but domestic ISP, who may or may not have been doing it intentionally. RConversation does a good job at pointing out how the speed of the blogosphere tends to amplify rumors and let gut reactions bubble up. After the first reporting of the Baidu redirects last week, I wonder how many people followed up to find out what really happened, or did they just move to the next media blitz with th e rest of us?

Image source: usgs.gov

My last post to flowtv.org described the work by Kevin Werbach, a legal professor at the UPenn’s Wharton School of Business. I first heard about him at this year’s Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. He is looking at how the different forces pull the Internet together as well as pushes them apart. I wrote about how it got me thinking about how the Internet is fractal, and how important is it to have models like Werbach’s to help explain it.

At first, because the Internet works so well as a decentralized network, Werbach’s suggestion of the idea of a fragmented network comprised of archipelagos and walled gardens seems unlikely and unwanted. However, Techcrunch is reporting that in China, attempt to access Google and Yahoo are getting redirected to the homegrown (and approved) Baidu. A chance of this kind of fragmentation is quite real, which could also mean that the ICANN testing of non-Roman language domain names might be too little, too late.

With the fad-ish nature of social networking and online communities, I’m wondering how long people can manage long term, daily usage.

If I had many more of readers than I do, I would probably do this in survey monkey or something. However, I don’t so, I can just do it low - fi.

Here is my question, how long and when were you obsessed with a social networking site or online community?

It’s informal so, please interpret these as you wish and feel free to keep it short.

Linked In - obsessed in July and August 2007 , now only use it occasionally for work

Face Book - still checking multiple times a day for the last two months

MySpace - log in about once a year, usually coinciding with a musician’s record release

Friendster - created a profile around 2004, and never went back

IM - (any, all flavors) still log on daily to AIM, yahoo, msn, google, first starting in 2003, except for 2005 when it was banned in my office.

Second Life - one month in January 2006

Plaxo - never used, it always felt like spam

Usenet - lurked through the 90s, it’s a bit of a blur

IRC - heavy usage in mid-90s until web-based chat killed it.

For your convenience, here are the site you can cut and paste into a comment. But free feel to add any sites I left out.

Linked In -

Face Book -

MySpace -

Friendster -

IM -

Second Life -

Plaxo -

Usenet -

IRC -

Thanks!

The threshold everyone in telecom was waiting for, looks like to have arrived, as mobile users overtake landline users. Mediamark Research Inc. announced the results of a study, finding that 84.5% of people surveyed have landlines in their homes, while 86.2% have at least one cellphone. Further, only 12.3% of the participants only had a landline, while the people who solely used mobile phones was 14.0%.

I don’t think that landlines will be going away time soon. Especially for businesses that require stable and high quality voice service. I can see home landlines usage to continue its decline. This move toward mobile-only usage raises interesting questions on how infrastructure in residential landlines will evolve, and the reactions by the telecoms and the FCC.

Image source: fcc.gov

I got a little behind writing here the last week, because my spare time writing was taken up by finishing my flow column on Kevin Martin, the chairperson of the FCC.

It’s up, so I thought I’d link to it.

What is the blog etiquette on cross-posting?
Good thing? Bad thing?
I’d be curious to hear your opinions.

Two nice work office related new items hit recently about what people who at work when their not working.

The first one tries to estimate the cost of playing fantasy football during the work day. Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc came up with the number of US$435 million per week in labor is spent on people playing fantasy football while they should be working, or only US$275 million per week if they only spent 10 minutes a day thinking about it. Of course, they also point out that similar productivity is lost due to a host of activities, like smoking breaks and off-topic web surfing.

Another article on Wikipedia made the internet circuit on tracing back changes to entires to various companies and organizations. A lot of fuss has been made about people at Walmart and Congressional offices altering pages about themselves. However, I thought the more interesting findings were the people editing off-topic pages from work.

Someone from the CIA corrected lyrics used in a musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. There seems to be Democrat party employee who loves tennis, and keeps tabs on the soon to be retired Tim Henman page. But the best example has to be someone at the Minnesota Republican Party who replaced the entire Harry Potter entry with a one-liner spoiler of the last book.

The exact theme of this blog keeps on changing, and I’m getting tired of re-writing this page. The coverage tends to be broad, touching upon technology, design, policy, work / home life, travel, and even some leisure too. But, it seems to mostly be about networks, telecommunications, and their cultural effects but also about information, marketing, and popular culture.

I’ll be honest and say that it’s mostly about whatever is on my mind, even if it is off-topic. Oh yes, sorry in advance for the typos.

Enjoy.

- Ray Cha.
ray at weatherpattern dot com

Post Script: I also write for popgadget.net and flowtv.org. I used to post at ifbook, a blog hosted by the Institute for the Future of the Book.