Central Perk

luni, 27 iunie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 05:10 PM PDT

Demotivational posters are hilarious takeoffs of the motivational posters that many schools and workplaces post all over the place and make people generally feel ill. I think that a nice big dose of de-motivation is needed for us all. Check out my anti-motivational posters!

A new selection of funny demotivational posters.

Yoda is Named World's Ugliest Dog

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 04:56 PM PDT

Meet Yoda, man's worst-looking best friend. A 14-year-old Chinese-crested and Chihuahua mix was declared World's Ugliest Dog at California's Sonoma Marin Fair. Yoda clinched the unorthodox beauty contest with his poofs of hair, hairless legs and overall unsightliness.

Yoda weighs only 1.8 pounds and his owner says she first thought he was a rat before learning he was really a tiny dog. Yoda has been the family's pet since he was two years old. He was found abandoned in a field.

Source: dailymail

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

The Ethical Issues of Personalisation Online

Posted: 26 Jun 2011 01:36 PM PDT

Posted by Hannah Smith

It feels kind of negative to start a post with a warning, but you’re all busy people and I’d hate for you to waste your time – so here goes: Today I’ll be talking about the ethics of personalisation online, and the potential issues which might arise as a result. As such I won’t be offended if you decide this isn’t quite your cup of tea and decide not to read on.

Still with me?

Thanks for sticking around, you look lovely by the way...

So this post was prompted by a seminar I attended this week where I was lucky enough to see Eli Pariser present on precisely this topic. He’s very passionate about what he calls ‘the Filter Bubble’ (i.e. the effects of online personalisation) so much so he’s written a book on the subject. So, what’s the deal with personalisation? Well, as Cyrus highlighted in his recent Personalised Search post:

“Google’s personalised search means nearly every result returned within a browser is altered one way or another. It’s rare that two different people on Earth ever see the exact same set of search results.”

What’s wrong with that? Google personalise results so people see the things which are most relevant to them. Normally we’d see relevancy as a good thing... Personalisation is the future – improved user experience – hurrah!

But wait - Eric Schmit says:

“It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not been tailored for them.”

That sounds a little sinister... It’s going to be hard for me to see stuff that hasn’t been tailored for me? Why? I thought your algorithms were being used to show the ‘best’ results...

Well, it turns out that they are, it’s just that ‘best’ is subjective – ‘best’ is based on your point of view.

“Increasingly online, it’s becoming impossible to escape your own point of view.” - Eli Pariser

Fortunately my point of view is 100% correct. I am never wrong. Ever. I really like being right because I get a natural high thanks to the dopamine which is released by my very clever brain. It’s awesome when you see your own views reflected right back at you via the magic of the interweb.

But what if I’m not right? What if I’m never again exposed to a contrary point of view?

And what happens when other sites get in on the act? Oh hai Facebook!

“A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.” – Mark Zuckerburg.

Uh oh – it’s beginning to feel like you’ve got me wrong... I want to hear about important stuff. I might not ‘like’ hearing about stories like that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think that they’re important.

Pariser refers to this as ‘the psychological equivalent of obesity’. The personalisation filters which are currently being used may bias the content which you see – for example, if you mainly spend your time online seeking entertaining content which doesn’t seek to challenge you in any way (drunk party pictures on Facebook *like*) then that might soon be all that you see.

Now clearly, if people are going to head to Facebook for their daily dose of real-world news then mankind has got itself some massive problems. But if people are going to Google for news and are still only seeing a one-sided view of the world which just so happens to coincide with what they already believe is that really the ‘best’ result? On the face of it, it might seem to be a ‘good’ result from the user’s perspective – but is it for the greater good?

Here comes the ethics question – Is it ethical for search results to be personalised in this way?

In my view, it’s really not ok. Most people (i.e. those who work outside of search) don’t realise that their search results are personalised. Plus, as Cyrus quite rightly highlighted “...Google made sure it’s darned hard to turn off.” Much as it might comfort me to only view results which sit comfortably with my own politics, is it good for me? We’re handing over control to an algorithm that by design does not strive to provide a balanced mix of results.

This scares me.

But, is it reasonable to expect a corporate entity to act for the greater good? Particularly if providing users with a more balanced SERP results in them high-tailing it straight into the warm embrace of the competition? In any case – wasn’t it always this way? Before the internet people consumed news only via whichever media sat comfortably with their own political affiliation. Plus of course, even if a more balanced mix of results are shown, you can’t *make* people click through to read something they don’t want to.

So, what do you think? Should we be afraid of personalisation? Should we push for easier ways to turn it off? Should there be more ‘balanced’ results for certain types of queries? Should I get myself a tin foil hat, cancel my broadband, flush my smartphone and hide under my desk?

Over to you mozzers, I’d really like to hear your views – especially if they don’t coincide with my own.

Image credit: Lucky Lager - http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/5281358464/sizes/m/in/photostream/

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Seth's Blog : A relentless race to the bottom

A relentless race to the bottom

They're shutting down Jimmy Wang's store. Shutting down a succesful little business.

Walgreen's is moving into town, my town, a town with three or four small drugstores and plenty of places to buy stale cookies, thank you very much.

I've written about Brother's market before, an anchor in my little town. The only place to get hand-picked fresh food, pretty much, and the sort of market you could imagine moving to town just to be near. Remember those little markets where they actually care about the produce they sell? In a world filled with bitter cash register jockeys, Brother's was different. A smiling face, a family member mentioned, a don't-worry-about-the-pennies sort of interaction.

I've probably shopped there a thousand times, and every single time it brought a smile to my face.

The problem is that while Brother's was in a race to the top, a race to create more and better interactions, Walgreen's is in a race to the bottom. They exist to extract the last penny from every bit of real estate they can control. That's the deal they made with their shareholders.

The landlord who owns this land lives in another state. He doesn't care. He can ignore the protests and the petitions.

And Walgreen's won't even notice the community outrage. We can write letters or call or boycott the new store (or all their stores) and the local manager, the local region manager, the state-level manager, the head of store operations--none of them care, of course, because it's just a job to them.

Real estate is the soul killer here. You can't have a beloved local market and a public drugstore chain occupying the very same spot. Pundits like me can talk all we want about being remarkable, about leading and about making connections, but when a public company wants your spot, when it can extract a few extra pennies per square foot, you lose.

The internet has opened the door for millions of businesses to do things differently, because there are other assets now, assets that can transcend location. Your permission to talk to customers, your reputation, your unique products--you can build a business around them online. But that doesn't work so well if you depend on local (and leased) real estate, if you're selling watercress or radishes, apparently.

One by one, store by store, the chains expand, earning a few more dollars a share and further insulating themselves from the communities they used to serve. No, my neighbors and I don't need another drugstore, we have plenty. That's not going to change Walgreen's mind, and it's not going to help Jimmy and his team, either. My heart goes out to them. Thanks for everything you did for our community, guys.

The race to the top continues. It's just a lot harder if you have a landlord.