Infrequent blog posting

Seems a while since I have posted here and recently I haven't posted anything here about databases. But I continue to write and post blog articles. I have been writing some articles for my new employer over at Pythian

I went through a period where I haven't had a lot of time to keep up-to-date with what has been going on and some of the sources which I had been using as a quick summary have descended badly, ahh you get what people vote for.

Prepare for a brain dump...

It is interesting to see the change in content, and also what it takes to get an article promoted to the first couple of pages, very interesting how quickly people form blocs or cliques which provide almost guaranteed high rank.

In a way purchase decisions are like voting, however unlike a slight peer pressure (hard to define is it being cool, being a "friend") your personal money is on the line. There has been plenty of work done on purchasing decisions and money management where your money is on the line as opposed to other people's money.

A long line of economists from Adam Smith to Hayek use of the idea that it is impossible to determine how people act or what priorities or self-interest plays in buying and selling, hence the impossibility of trying to set a price, I agree even agent based modeling whilst better does not capture the essence of each purchase or sale decision. Stop however before we proceed to take that idea use the relativist idea that everything is subjective. What they were saying is that the price contains many many decisions reflecting the opinions of many people.
If at a point in time you can start to model and predict purchases decisions of a majority of people, or sufficient number for a profitable outcome you have gained an edge.

I wonder if this is still true where the decision has no effect on the hip-pocket (free voting) or hidden, for example taxpayer subsidies or taxpayer funded services. There is plenty of real evidence that you get the lowest common denominator or excessive freeriders (tragedy of the commons).

Would a subscription model enable news aggregator websites a cleaner picture, would the voting be just limited to the subscribers (who are paying) and therefore fit a certain demography model? What about the places like Yahoo who use the concept of futures or shares for different areas to get a feel for the buzz.

Can we use data from purchasing decisions ala Amazon to track what is hot, most books whilst not too expensive provide at least one insight what is happening. I am not sure about you but Amazon is still a personal thing. So most of my purchases from Amazon are my purchases not a family or friend.

What other sources exist?
do new academic papers provide a clue to what could be hot or what has been hot? The purchase decision isn't so much monetary, more fundamental, normally a large investment in time by the writer(s) and also the reviewers.
Unfortunately those decisions are guided like any media by editors.

So what other sources exist?

Have Fun

Little gem found whilst websurfing

Do you still websurf?

Or is it all google and RSS and aggregators?

Is what you read presented to you as the result of a popularity contest at digg, reddit, or even google (page rank is a popularity contest)?
I am beginning to understand, partially as some of those sources signal to noise ratio decreases and partially from watching how articles become popular and how there is a huge demand for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

I was bouncing from one article to another, seeing something interesting and opening a firefox tab to read or bookmark for later digestion and came across an interesting article or transcript of Bruce Sterling about pervasive computing. A gem!

I have listened to a couple of Bruce Sterling's presentations via podcasts from ITconversations
and old Bruce has a way with words. I rate his presentations highly and feel they are actually just as effective, just hearing the voice as I guess seeing the presentation.

I am in mind expansion mode at the moment, and it is time to learn more again.

Ever see people use the word "Grok" before? If you don't the background to the word check out Robert Heinlein "Stranger in a strange land". I am not Grok-ing stuff at the moment, I am purely sucking in new concepts before I can begin to understand.

Have Fun