The Dynamics of Viral Marketing (.pdf): about person-to-person recommendation networks, the propagation of recommendations and the cascade sizes, how user behavior varies within user communities de¯ned by a recommendation network, how the recommendation network grows over time and how effective it is from the viewpoint of the sender and receiver of the recommendations.
(Found via Kris Hoet)

COST 298 Conference: The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected: "The main objective of the conference is to create new knowledge about users’ creativity and facilitate their empowerment in a broadband information society." Conference: 23rd-25th May 2007 in Institute of the Information Society, Moscow, Russian Federation.

I'm a Ford Mustang!

You're an American classic -- fast, strong, and bold. You're not snobby or pretentious, but you have what it takes to give anyone a run for their money.

"Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

(via 7seconden - especially for Kris Hoet - check out his iblogmustang.com)

The Happiness Project: Tips for liking someone better (or disliking that person less): "3. Give that person a brief touch. " Eeeewww! No, thanks.

Friday Poll: What Type Of RSS Reader Do You Use? at Read/Write Web.
The results show that web-based rss readers are clearly on the rise:

1. Web-based (e.g. Bloglines, Google Reader, Rojo) 55%
2. Desktop (e.g. FeedDemon, NetNewsWire) 18%
3. Start page (e.g. Netvibes, Pageflakes) 14%
4. Browser (e.g. Firefox Live Bookmarks, IE, Flock) 7%
5. Portal-based (e.g. MyYahoo, ThePortNetwork) 2%
6. Email-based client (e.g. Thunderbird, Newsgator) 1%
7. Other 2%
8. emails from individual blogs 0%

Would be interesting to do the same poll in 6 months, to check if the IE7/Vista user adoption has boosted browser-based rss reading.

Uglynet: Ugliest Countries in the World!: "1. New Zealand. 2. Australia. 3. United Kingdom. (...) 54. Netherlands. (...)162. Belgium."

My Life As An RSS Junkie: "To be honest, I’m not sure there’s a chance I’ll ever fully recover. "

The Joy of Tech - Steve Jobs Cartoon: "There's a whole world out there! (...) Explore! Do! Live!"
Reminds me of William Shatner trashing Trekkies show at an 1987 Saturday Night Live. Still laughing :-)

Google 2084: Yes you can search new things by then.

In My Language @ Youtube: "The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not."
A strong statement on different ways of thinking and interacting, dedicated to all who are considered non-persons or non-thinking.

The IPO prospectus document of Google is said to have contained the motto Do no evil. It later evolved into Don't be evil. And the sixth of Google's Ten commandments is still: You can make money without doing evil.

But what if Google really is evil? Enter Gevil.org, "the website dedicated to educating the public about the Evil nature of Google and the inherent flaws prevalent throughout their business model."
I was the 3rd person to subscribe to their feed - and hope many more will follow.

YouTubers to get ad money share according to BBC. 3-second pre-roll ads PLUS revenue sharing with the YouTube power users. It'll be interesting to see how the audience reacts.

Save the Internet @ YouTube: Net neutrality campaign. Of course everybody wants Net Neutrality. In fact, everybody still wants free internet (remember those days). Free as in "for free", not as in "liberated" :-)
But I fail to understand why so many people (on both sides of the argument) spend money and efforts in the lobbying around it. Or is that whole legal mumbo jumbo around it a typical US thing?

Robin Wauters of Marketingblog.eu and Citytips.be fame has just launched a new blog: web.2point0.be (feed). Yet another web too point oh site? Not quite - this one focuses on "profiling, reviewing and sharing relevant information about Web 2.0 applications and startups originating from Belgium".

Woord van de week: Techno-sexual (Dutch): "U bent zodanig geïntereseerd en geobsedeerd door technologie en kunt u zich urenlang verdiepen in het openen en ontleden van code en hardware dat u slechts overweg kunt met vrouwen of mannen die dezelfde passie hebben of ze zeer goed begrijpen."
Definition much along the lines of Wikipedia: Technosexual. But be careful: one could also interpret it as "a person with a sexual attraction to machinery, as in the case of robot fetishism." Because, for example, even an iPhone has multiple uses we hadn't thought of at first (found via i-wisdom).

A chindogu Clock for Procrastinators: a clock that fast and sometimes not. Why? Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Because you never know whether the clock is telling you the right time or not. Click here to try it out. Great idea for a desktop widget!
By the way, Chindogu is "the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem." Have a look at this Chindogu website (shame it's in Flash)

Babelgum, in bèta of course :-): "blending the lean-back experience of traditional TV with the interactive and social power of the Internet." Go have a look - this one has all the january 2007 buzzwords in it.
Interesting line-up, too: "Babel is a private company, with headquarters in Ireland and offices in Italy, the UK and France."
Any Joost.com bèta testers out there who'd like to compare both?

The Death of Search Engine Domination in Web2.0:
"The flaws in search engine that caused the evolvement of Social Media sites:
a. Search engine results cannot be updated instantly.
b. Keywords based traffic. We needed Tags.
c. No value to user developed content. Many times search engine considered such content as duplicate content.
d. Search engine robots and their algorithms rated the content of website.
e. Search engines inability in re-using the same traffic effectively."
I was attracted to this article by its title, but the content kind of disappointed me. There must be a lot more reasons to find why search engine results, and the way they bring traffic to blogs and other publishing platforms, have been so disappointing lately. Search Engine Marketing has become a Dark Art, and webmasters/bloggers depend on it because they depend on the traffic for their GoogleAds income (you know, the few 100 dollars a month that you don't have to report for taxes).

The Connection Between Short, Modular and Open by Tim O'Reilly: "It's easier for people to collaborate around small chunks, and to build up larger works piece by piece, than it is for them to work together on a large, complex project with many dependencies."
Seamus McClauley doesn't agree: How the Internet has lengthened our attention span: "Broadband, and broadband's killer ap BitTorrent, has changed all that. TiVo, Teleport TV and Sky+ have changed all that. Hell, DVDs changed it a bit."
O'Reilly is right about the link between short information and the current collaboration culture - the clue is to serve up content in small chunks so it can serve as currency in social networks. McClauley touches a different point: the current success of repackaged niche content, like the "Lost" and "Sex in the City" dvd boxes.

Even More Turns

More Turns (by Bill Sullivan show everyday people, photographed at exactly the moment they enter the subway station. Same situation, very different people, and still they all look the same.
(via blography)
UPDATE: Bill Sullivans e-mailed to announces that there is a new site that includes several new series of work. He writes: "There is a current show of paintings of New Yorkers - People I Know. In the Works 1,2, and 3 series these works are pure digital. They are an attempt to create certain kinds of optical texture and for me they are about the phsychology of contrast - how we react to the texture of things."

bathduck: "electric bath duck - suicidal tendency - one use only": reminds me of my bathtub plug. To be honest, this little duckie looks like more fun.

Marni: Leggings Are the New Must-Have: men wearing leggings? As if women wearing them wasn't enough :-)

Special K - Another TV Search Call to Action: "At the end of the spot the voice over urged users to go to Yahoo! Search and search on "Special K.""
A campaign with a rather unusual call to action. And a bit tricky, too: imagine you'd do the same with Google search, and someone decides to undermine your campaign by google bombing... Unless you deploy the tv ad so fast there's no time for bombing?

ZonTubeβ: "See Amazon music with YouTube videos / Amazon & YouTube mash-up site".

Robbie Williams - She's Madonna HQ @ YouTube: I love the interview mixed into this music video. It's got Robbie Williams pretending to have multiple personalities disorder but while he's at it he's saying some really interesting stuff about how he sees the "difference" between the artist and the "real" person.

Get a First Life: a One Page Satire of Second Life: "Fornicate using your actual genitals"
UPDATE: Darren Barefoot's backstory on Get A First Life.com, along with a really witty proceed and permitted letter from Linden in the comments.

Things My Boyfriend Says:
"me: Your fly is open.
e: I'M ADVERTISING."
Boyfriends say the darnest things!

Where I Had My First Kiss .com - where was your first kiss?: "We're currently fixing some devious bugs that are preventing you from sharing your first kiss."
Damn now I can't tell anyone where I had my first kiss.

The blogger Links Benefactor - I Link To Blogs For Free: 2000 Bloggers: "I wanted to bring a whole bunch of bloggers together on one page. 2000 bloggersto be exact!". Linkbait of course, but nicely done.
UPDATE: I'm one of the 2000 bloggers. Find my pic :-)

You know the Bible 74%!

 

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn't slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

Tag or Label?: "When Google started gmail, it used the term label instead of the term tag. When Google developed the new version of Blogger, it also again used the term labels instead of tags."

Amy Winehouse trivia: "Winehouse's favourite cocktail is a Rickstasy (three parts vodka, one part Southern Comfort, one part banana liqueur, and one part Baileys). “By the time you’ve had two of them you’re like, don’t even try and go anywhere. Sit down and stay down, until the birds start singing.”"

The revived Six Degrees.org charity website actually contains a video of Kevin Bacon relating to his role in the six degrees of separation theory (!)

Hypebusting: Against widgets - Valleywag: "A page only loads as fast as the slowest widget."

You Are A: Kitten!

Cute as can be, kittens are playful, mischevious, and ever-curious. Like you, kittens hate getting wet. Kittens are often loving, but are known to scratch or bite when annoyed. These adorable animals are the most popular pets in the United States--37% of American households have at least one cat. Whether it is your gentle purr or your disarming appearance, you make a wonderful kitten.

You were almost a: Monkey or a Bear Cub
You are least like a: Groundhog or a DucklingWhat Cute Animal Are You?

The Camera Phone - the gadget that perverts, vigilantes, and celebrity stalkers can all agree on: "First there was Prince Harry's Nazi costume, then the shaming of Kate Moss, then the Michael Richards racist explosion, but, for some, Saddam's hanging marks the low point for Kahn's creation."
They are forgetting this picture, taken somewhere in 2004 I think. Images of torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, often taken with cameraphones, changed the public opinion on Bush's war in Iraq.

Made With Molecules: "gifts inspired by science". via BoingBoing.

Damn no rss feed for the Second Life channel at Machinima.com. I love watching those videos - I think we'll see more of those in pop culture, advertising, mainstream media etc in the coming years.

Web Based Feed Readers - How do they stack up?: "Bloglines is by far the most popular feed reader, and Hitwise data also support this."
I've been using Bloglines for a couple of months now and I love it. Before that I used Google Reader but after the last update it became to slow. And why browser-based? Because I change machines often, e.g. a Mac at home and a PC at work (with no admin rights, etc).

http://www.careerbuilder.com/age-o-matic/: "1. Upload photo. 2. What will your job do to you? 3. Preview. 4. Say something. 5. Send to friends." Very impressive and well-made!

The iPhone ringing (.mp3) sounds like holy angels peeing...

Compressive Imaging: A New Single Pixel Camera being developed at Rice University to take on digital photography, which is considered too wasteful. They do have a point there.

Warholizer: Turn youself and your friends into pop icons! (via Stijn Vogels)

Five Ways to Develop a Dialogue With Key 'Influencers': for a minute I thought I recognized myself - I'd love to be seen as a key conduit of information but then it went:
"[Influencers] are well-traveled, almost always have a religious life, are often leaders (civic, business, nonprofit), and generally hold an activist approach to life. Almost always, they have a general sense of optimism because they believe in the power of good, they like people, love to orchestrate ideas, and they tend to be (but not always) great at building relationships."
I don't get the thing about religious life: most independent, influential thinkers I know are strong enough to build or be their own religion. And there may be really good reasons for not being well-traveled, like having children who go to school here, etc.

Nuclear, climate perils push Doomsday Clock ahead (Reuters photo): "The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock on Wednesday moved it two minutes closer to midnight -- symbolizing the annihilation of civilization -- adding the perils of global warming for the first time to acute nuclear threats."

Unrequited love can be a 'killer': "People can die from a broken heart."

Monumentenstrijd: Mechelen. I live around the corner of this monument. I can see the church tower from my bedroom window. So make my day, get that beautiful clockwork up and VOTE.

Study finds wireless users want short video clips, not television programming: "Mobile television services on cellphones have had little commercial impact so far and that's likely to continue in 2007 despite a significant amount of money invested in the technology"

The Girl With a Boy's Brain: "AS is a condition on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. Its sufferers are successful in many realms of life but tend to have obsessive interests. They have trouble reading people and connecting with them. And they can have faulty sensory processing systems that leave them confused in hectic or unfamiliar settings."

Pentium M-based Intel chip at heart of Apple TV: "Apple TV can join a wireless network in one of two ways -- over 802.11n wireless technology or through high-speed 10/100 terrestrial ethernet. However, it won't function as its own wireless router nor will it support Apple's AirTunes technology. Similarly, it doesn't include Bluetooth." OK, I get it now, it's not a TV it's a wireless streaming media device , or rather set-top box that will stream audio and video content from up to five iTunes libraries to a enhanced-definition or high-definition widescreen TV. Funny to see how "tv" is becoming a synonym for "a big screen in your living room". The content on this screen doesn't have to come through the tv distribution channels we've known for the last 50 years.

Wikiseek - Search Wikipedia and its external links: a good alternative to Google's natural search results, who have become subject to spam (sometimes fishy) SEO schemes. Hope they can keep this one clean for a while.

Best of craigslist: Why nice guys SUCK: "Don't be a spine donor all your life."

MuseStorm: "gives publishers the power to easily distribute their content to blogs, social networks and web sites as hyper-cool Widgets."

Milo - midlife rocks!: new magazine for the baby boomers. Pity they forgot rss feeds in the online version.

Dreaminder. Remind yourself of your dreams: "Write down your dream and send it to yourself in the future". Weird. I like it.

Why the Most Important Success Ingredient Has Nothing to Do With Google!: "[The Wright Brothers] discovered that when you're building an airplane, the wings are more important than the engine." Interesting point of view on Internet Marketing from Perry Marshall.

Banksy: Shop: "Serving suggestion: Prints look best when done on gloss paper using the company printer ink when everyone else is at lunch." (via YesButNoButYes: Banksy vs the eBay Pirates)

Clo just got Owned: replace subdomain by any loser's name for some innocent fun.

RSS Tools and Services - The Best Picks From Sharewood found via Marketingfacts.nl.

You Are 88% Addicted to the Internet

The internet is your life - seriously. You spend so much time online, you should be a dot com millionaire!

Are You Addicted to the Internet?

How White and Nerdy Are You?

Love Poem Generator: and you can print it in the shape of a heart, too.

Urban Photography - We Shoot Men Beautifully: "Take 12 fit sexy lads, strip them naked, get them to do your housework, then hang them on the wall". Marvellously sexist and very funny (September made my laugh out loud).

Internetfenomeen Second Life: twee miljoen mensen op zoek naar een betere wereld: I'm going to buy my copy of HUMO magazine tomorrow. Peter is in it! With picture and "VAN WIJNAERDE (lacht)" and all!

How to Get rid Of Stuff.com: "Girlfriend got you down? Think it's time to break the bad news to her but not sure quite how to do it? Don't worry, we're here to help."

Program yourself to be happy @ YouTube: I tried but it was too fast for me! So not happy after all.

Flickr Photo: Corporate World Meeet Web 2.0: "Quakr 2.Oats" :-)

Belgian Retro Advertising: for Belga cigarettes, Spa, Parein Petit-Beurre, Maes Pils beer and others. From a time when drinking on the job and smoking in public was still ok.

God, Inc - Episode 3 video @ YouTube (haven't watched yet)

Would you hire this man? Great parody, also at Fanpop.com.

Wii sex @ LiveVideo.com: or, as we would say in Flemish, Wiif sex :-) (via iBLOGthere4IM)

Mock-up: What if Google Made a Yahoo-like Start Page?: "it gives you an idea of how Google really is a "portal," and how well all its apps fit together into a more work-oriented Yahoo start page"

iProduct.gif: "Apple iProduct. Your life. In a small, plastic case." (found at ExperienceCurve blog)

Connecting First and Second Life video: the first application I've seen since the Second Life client became open source.

Edelman Study: Blog Readership in Asia Far Outpaces US: Edelman research on the Global Blogosphere talks about the situation in Japan, South Korea, China, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and... Belgium. From p18: "More Belgians are spurred to action by blogs (43%) than respondents from any other market. Fewer Belgians read blogs (14%) than in any other market." And hey, they mention Skynet blogs! (via Kris Hoet)

Apple TV: If it's on iTunes, it's on TV.: " Its built-in, superfast 802.11 wireless capability syncs your iTunes library to any Mac or PC in the house." I think I just found the perfect excuse to throw out my old TV set and buy a shiny new flatscreen. Could I use this as the single "living room screen"? Hook up the kids' nintendos etc...

Yahoo! Go: "the various Yahoo! Go widgets: your own personal channels for email, local info & maps, news, sports, finance, entertainment, weather, Flickr™ photos and search."

SEO Is About To Change: "Search engines, diligently tweaking their results for the end-user based on location, search history, and personal preferences, will create an entirely new, largely unpredictable search environment." Or in other words: web 2.0 (= the new, empowered consumer) applied to SEM.

Interview with Microsoft Live's Kris Hoet @ Google Video: Kris looks George-Clooney-style sexy in this one! If he doesn't get famous from this video, he can still get rich by selling the business card he got from Hugh McL on eBay ;-)
UPDATE: He's already famous! Look at the subtitle with the pic in this news article in El Mundo (published one month ago): Llevar la Red al móvil

Older Demos Get Social: "the vast majority of users logging on to some of the most popular social networking sites are over 25 years old"

Tickle Me Elmo On Fire @ Google Video: although it's "just a toy" this video will make you sick to the stomach.

Second Life on VRT - één @ YouTube: yes, that's me (and Miel and Bert) being interviewed inside Second Life (timer: 2:43 etc)

Skynet Blogosphere: "I especially liked the market research and the statistics about the Belgian blogosphere" *blush*

Online autoruiten krabben en de feesten/het jaar van Josiane: "We kregen van het bedrijf, meer bepaald van het team van Extenseo, een ijskrabber om de ruiten van onze wagen ijsvrij te maken."

How do I use a custom domain name on my blog?: "To take care of this, you need to create a CNAME record for your domain with the DNS, associating your domain with ghs.google.com" I want to do this. But what will happen to my e-mail?

Pew Internet: Social Networking and Teens report: "More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites. (...)For girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends."

Vatican comes out of the closet and embraces Oscar: " We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars"

AirForce '04 @ YouTube. Air Force Academy Prep School. Six of them. Bare chests. Acting silly. I won't sleep well tonight.

Christina Aguilera: A Model of Restraint. Or, as Fark.com puts it: "Christina Aguilera demonstrates how to exit a limo without making the world your Gynecologist"

Faces of the Dead in Iraq - New York Times: "Each (...) service member (...) is represented by a small square to the right. The squares are ordered by date of death, with the most recent deaths appearing in the upper left corner." Very impressive way of organising a lot of visual information AND the accompanying meta data.

DO NOT PRESS or you'll hate yourself for doing so. Horrible.

Second Life Sketches: Two Worlds - Fame and Infamy: more on the Anshe Chung and the flying penises incident.

In the dark ages, how would babynox die?

She would be drowned, suspected of being a witch. On the upside, her innocence would be indisputable.

'How would you die in the dark ages?' at QuizGalaxy.com

The Nine Billion Names Of God: "Now, the internet is a part of Google"

The Shat: "Worn as a shirt - Wear it as a hat!" Great for the summer festivals.

The Blasphemy Challenge - do you have a soul you're not using?: "You record a short message damning yourself to Hell, you upload it to YouTube, and then the Rational Response Squad will send you a free The God Who Wasn't There DVD." More at Beliefwatch: Blasphemy @ msnbc.

Hydro-therapeutic stimulator: "The spa according to claim 1, further comprising a vibration generator adjacent to said seat, said vibration generator being adapted to selectively transmit vibration energy through said seat to said female user seated within said seat to stimulate said stimulation points."

Learn a language with podcasts: dumping link here to remember download a French course for my son.

Movie Poop Shoot: Wonder Woman backgrounder: "Once Marston had pulled in the readers with Peter’s lurid bondage art, he had a captive audience on whom to proselytize his feminist agenda." Interesting :-)

BlogHer Business '07: "News flash: Your business might not need a blog. [...] BlogHer Business '07 will strip away the hype and hyperbole and answer some questions that most businesses are still asking about social media"

Luc Van Braekel op Skynetblogs: great way of reacting. Maybe we could use this blog to collect ideas for his book?

When is a blog too personal?: "the "water cooler rule". If a topic isn't something you'd talk about with your supervisor hanging around the water cooler or coffee station at your office, it's probably not appropriate for your professional blog either."

Choosemyname "Fastest, Finest Freshest Fastest": "That's how I may just be introducing myself one month from today." Dunno about this one: he's going all commercial about the coffee before they even paid him for it.

Funny new web series "God, Inc." by film maker Francis Stokes: Episode 1, Episode 2.

Venice Project would break many users' ISP conditions: "The software is also likely to transfer data even when not being used. The Venice system is going to run on a peer to peer network, which means that users host and send the programmes to other users in an automated system."

Strangest Advertisement Ever for Microsoft Zune: "I understand this its saying, There is the “Thing” #1 who has no eyes (?Music?) then it finds the “Thing” #2 who has alot of eyes (?Music?) Then #2 gives #1 an eye (?a song?) and shares" I agree with the comments: What the Fuck?

7 Sticky Sites & Their Secrets Revealed: "The [Yahoo] homepage manages to be clear despite the vast quantity of content"

Winner-Take-All: Google and the Third Age of Computing: "It turns out that owning the starting point on the Internet is really, really valuable."

How to Get Out of a Car Without Showing Your Knickers video @ videojug.com. OK, off to practice.