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Serendipity

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Trends. Serendipity. Serendipity means a "fortunate happenstance" or "pleasant surprise". It was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to a friend Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes, he told his correspondent, were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”.

The notion of serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of scientific innovation such as Alexander Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928 and the invention of the microwave oven by Percy Spencer in 1945, the invention of the Post-it note by Spencer Silver in 1968. The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages.[2] Etymology[edit] The structure of serendipity[edit] Business and strategy[edit] M.

Toward a local syzygy: aligning deals, check-ins and places. Three significant trends in the local sector — deals, check-ins, and place pages — are on a bender and headed for an exciting convergence. When they meet we will see one of three things: a train wreck of incompatibility, an awkward confluence, or a very powerful alignment. I’m hoping for the latter, a sort of local syzygy, because a well-conceived orchestration of these trends will benefit the consumer and it has real potential to take us entirely out of the Yellow Pages era and into exciting, unexplored territory.

This is a two-part post: here I look in more detail at check-ins, deals, and place products (including, briefly, the adventurously named Facebook Places) with an eye to what might follow. In a following post I will discuss how we may more actively ease their convergence with linked data and some basic adherence to extant standards, specifically how these efforts will affect the local consumer. Place pages and check-ins Get it here: the deal Part 1 wrap Related: Information Flow: Web of Constraints on Giant Global Graph | The Phaneron.

It’s been almost two years since December 2, 2008 when I published the first use case for Open Government: Linked Open Data. It’s great to see the wide-spread interest that’s emerged as well as the early adoption that has begun to take place. There was a time when it wasn’t clear that it would. In those two years both the US and UK governments have incorporated Linked Data into their datagov approaches, RDFa-like languages have been adopted at Google and Facebook, and membership in Semantic Web Meetups has skyrocketed. The broader technology community is getting its first exposure to Linked Data. When Tim Berners-Lee published the W3C Linked Data design issue in July of 2006 he introduced four rules that foster a “post semantic” Web. The rebranding continued in November of 2007 with introduction of the term Giant Global Graph (GGG).

In Working Ontologist, Dean Allemang and Jim Hendler introduce the AAA Slogan: “Anyone can say Anything about Any topic.” So, how will this all happen? 1. iTunes - Ping: Social Network for Music. Why Ping Is the Future of Social Commerce: Tech News ? Apple announced on Wednesday a cornucopia of new hardware and software: sleek iPods, a brand new Internet-enabled video streaming device and new versions of its iOS software and iTunes 10. However, the most impressive to me by far was Ping, the music-only social network that Apple is opening up its 160 million existing iTunes users.

No, I’m not blown away by the 160 million number. What I’m impressed by is the thinking behind Ping. Ping may function like a cross between Facebook and Twitter for iTunes by allowing you to follow celebrities, create social cliques and get artist updates via an activity stream. I think it could have tremendous impact on social sharing and commerce. From a content perspective, there are three different types of media we love to talk about: movies we seemusic we listen tobooks we are reading These are accepted social norms. This click-and-go-somewhere-to-download model of affiliate links can never match a unified experience. Search Tech: Entering the Age of Personal Discovery. The Web is transitioninginto dynamic, real-time aggregation.

This real-time aggregation and personalization of content is known as "discovery. " True discovery will tie together all of your information -- what you have liked, purchased, viewed, discussed, browsed -- into a real-time aggregator that provides actionable recommendations on any category of your choosing. Web 2.0 (everyone's favorite 2007 buzz word) heralded the age of social networks and powered a fundamental shift in the Web: filtering out excessive noise while building connections to friends, organizations and communities.

Creating a Facebook profile (and later a Twitter handle) became a way of passage to keep up with friends and connections, monitor social trends and follow topics of personal interest. Fast-forward to 2010 and 800 Facebook friends later, and the noise is back. Discovery Explained Although discovery is not a new concept, it is just now being defined in relation to the online experience. Twitter-crc. Welcome to bee.tv. Worio Search. Find movies, TV shows matching your taste & watch online - Jinni. Home - Inveni. The Art of The Found. The Five Stages of Filtering, Relevance and Curation. Tonight's news of Gmail taking on information overload directly, using a combination of intelligent algorithms and your own feedback to build in box personalization is yet another hallmark move to taking on the increasing deluge of content approaching us from all directions - be it our e-mail, static Web pages, audio and video, or the many different social streams which we have subscribed to.

There is no question that content creation and sharing is exploding and people are completely incapable of giving every single message and item their full attention. And many smart folks are looking to bring solutions to find the best and ignore the rest. As I see it, there are five major ways companies and individuals take on the topic of relevance. 1. Loose definition: I am the smartest person. Of course, it is easy for an individual to be a curator. 2. Loose definition: The will of the people can be trusted, and they will decide what is most important, thanks to the most votes. 3. 4. 5.

Why Online "Noise" is Good For You. Blogs, RSS, IM, Twitter and FriendFeed - the number of sources of sources of information online can feel like it's multiplying exponentially every day. It's easy, natural even, to feel overwhelmed. Especially when we are more familiar with the tightly controlled editorial policies of mainstream media. The social media space is noisy, though. There are many times when filtering that noise effectively makes a lot of sense (some tools discussed below) - but there are also many times when noise is just what we need.

Experiments in Noise Control There are many ways you can roughly cut down on the noise in your information stream. The most recent entry into the noise filtering scene is probably FriendFeed's new "best of" feature. Other services that are good for filtering out noise are del.icio.us popular for a particular tag, AideRSS and Google Reader's overly friendly shared items from friends feature.

One way to break down two ends of the spectrum, by Hutch Carpenter. On the Beauty of Noise. Mapping Startups & Services Filtering For Relevance In A Matrix by. After looking at the different approaches to filtering for Relevance, I have been seeking a way to map them visually. There are many different startups competing in this space along with the giants, and a way to map them in a matrix would help us see the big picture of how the battle for relevance is evolving on the social web. What are the fundamental ways in which these approaches and startups differ?

These could form the axis around which we can then proceed to map them. The Popular – Personalized Axis Filtering either works by showing us the most popular stuff being shared online, or by understanding our individual preferences and surfacing personalized content. The Serendipity – Search Axis You either search for content or you see it serendipitously without seeking anything specific. The Filtering for Relevance Matrix (FORMAT) We combine these two axes to form the backbone of our visualization.

Let us now look at each quadrant closely. Popular – Search Quadrant How does FORMAT help? Comparing Approaches to Information Filtering for Relevance by. In a previous post, we looked at the big shift From Numbers To Relevance. There are dozens of apps/sites that are focusing on filtering information today, but which of them will succeed? To attempt to answer that question, let’s first look at the different approaches employed by such apps/sites today in the search for Relevance. This is a topic that is usually the subject of scholarly research papers in academia; this is only a layman’s overview.

The different approaches I observe are: Algorithmic FilteringFiltering Based on Social GraphHuman FilteringCrowdsourced FilteringShared Sources Filtering (Meta)Influence FilteringSocial SearchLocation Filtering Algorithmic Filtering If you tell us what you want or like, our software can show you what you will like. The predominant use of algorithmic filtering is in web search, where Google has dominated and driven the web economy for the past two decades. Pros: Highest relevance when searching for information. Filtering Based on Social Graph None. Google vs. Facebook - How Will Google Build Its Serendipity Engine? Google CEO Eric Schmidt wowed the crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt Sept. 28 with talk of autonomous search and serendipity engines that deliver search content to users' mobile phones without the user having to do anything but walk down the street.

What Schmidt didn't say was how Google would build its serendipity engine. Given Google's penchant for leveraging algorithmic search, we can logically assume these results will be auto-generated by the sprawling Google search engine, proving a major efficiency boost over Google Instant predictive search, which now provides a major efficiency boost over traditional type-query-hit-enter search. Paper is about serendipity, the Web about determinism — so far. Paper is about serendipity, the Web about determinism — so far It’s kind of weird.

I am on my way back from the Online News Association conference in DC, and the reading of a $6 Sunday edition of the New York Times is just reminding me how great is to immerse myself into a paper news experience. The founding publisher of one of the oldest online magazines (Café Babel), today the strategist and partner at the freshly awarded OWNI media startup, and on a journalism fellowship at the geeky Stanford University with a focus on nothing less than Augmented Reality, there’s no doubt I’m a sort of digital media dinosaur and admittedly technophile. Picture by Skeddy in NYC (Flickr) Yet, being forced to sit for five hours in a crowded (and uncomfortable) United flight just made me reconsider a couple of things on the way consuming media affects our knowledge skills. Take the compelling personal story of an ‘helicopter mum’ surprisingly struggling to cut the cord with her freshman daughter.

Eric Schmidt On The Future Of Search — A Move Towards A “Serendipity Engine” Today at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Google CEO Eric Schmidt took the stage to give a speech about his thoughts on the future. It was a very interesting talk which spanned a variety of topics. Naturally, the most important topic that Schmidt talked about was search.

“We want to give you your time back,” Schmidt said. He noted that we live in an age of information overload, where we all have too much to do. The first step in getting your time back is Google Instant, the realtime search feature that Google recently launched, Schmidt said. While the feature may only shave a couple of seconds off of any search, in aggregate (Google is doing 2 billion searches a day), this is a huge amount of time saved. The next step in search is a move towards more personal results, according to Schmidt. Beyond speed and personalization, the evolution of search will lead us to search occuring when you’re not even using the search engine — autonomous search, Schmidt said. Is Google building a Serendipity Engine? Will Google's search engine eventually evolve into a serendipitous, omnipotent entity? Well, Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes that his company remains on track to build an "augmented version" of humanity.

"[We envision] a future where you don't forget anything. In this new future you're never lost. We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time," Schmidt said during a keynote speech at TechCrunch Disrupt transcribed by Technology Review. "[For example, say] I'm interested in history [and] as I'm walking down the street in San Francisco I want my mobile device to tell me about the history here...Just think of it as a Serendipity Engine. " Schmidt also noted that smartphones, which he referred to as "defining iconic devices," were already capable of operating as real-time translators for speech.

"We can now demonstrate and are getting ready to ship products that let you speak in English and have it come out of a phone at the other end in German. Heightened Serendipity- Video Blog - Edward Harran. The Subtle Art of Provoking Serendipity. {*style:<i>You don’t reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings … serendipitously. </i>*}- John Barth, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor A teacher of ours at the GreenMBA , Julianne Maurseth, likes to say, “People gather and things happen.”

And what is the most wonderful thing that can happen when people gather? That would be serendipity. Serendipity is the emergence of desirable novelty from a chance encounter, the discovery of something wonderful, unknown and unpredictable. It is the act of unexpected cross-pollination, the seed of something new. Much of lasting value comes into being serendipitously. As Isaac Asimov said: Serendipity is fundamental to how the universe works.

So how do you best generate serendipity? Seek originality in each person, as that amplifies the creative potential of the network. Bring people together with shared values, focus, and high cognitive diversity. Related posts: Being a Network. €œThe Internet is a serendipity creation machine” Google Serendipity and Augmented Humanity #SEWatch. News out yesterday was that bans on texting aren't reducing car accidents. Well, luckily, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has the answer: computers should drive the cars. Aside from that odd sci-fi tangent, Schmidt spoke yesterday at the TechCrunch Disrupt event about where mobile and search is heading in the near future at Google. His big concept was permission-based autonomous search. "Based on history, as you walk down street. Tell me things that I don't know. Tell me things I would be interested in.

Schmidt said the goal is to give you your time back. "The explosion of information is so profoundly large, it's so much larger than anybody expected, that you need help navigating," he said. Yes, Google wants to tell you what to focus on next with their serendipity algorithm. "Games, movies, videos -- we can suggest, again, what you watch and what you know. Pretty soon us augmented humans won't need to do much of anything. "Your car should drive itself. Not creeped out enough? Increasing serendipity by recommending items of users extraordinary interest | xlvector - Recommender System. Serendipity Engine « Rob's Weblog.

Choices, Compromises, Serendipity and Sh#t. The design of serendipity is not by chance. Serendipity is unexpected relevance « BuzzMachine. Serendipity finds you. Who to follow: serendipity or segmentation? | Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero. Swimming In The Social River « The Nimble Blog. Tumbl.in. StumbleUpon.com: Personalized Recommendations to Help You Discover the Best of the Web. Serendipity 2.0 « Hans de Zwart: Technology as a Solution…

Serendipity in the Closet: The Principle of Ancient Discovery: - Marc-Alexandre Gagnon. Serendipity meets discovery with Tumbl.in and FriendShuffle. The Future of Search is Mobile, Autonomous & Serendipitous, Says Google CEO. Design for Serendipity. Eric Schmidt On The Future Of Search — A Move Towards A “Serendipity Engine” Serendipity Cost. Web 2.0 Expo NY 09: Chris Brogan, "The Serendipity Engine"