6 posts tagged “my musings”
Yesterday I received my Beta invite for Spock, a new personal search site that claims to offer a smarter alternative to searching for people than through regular search engines like Google.
Tim O’Reilly recently posted a very comprehensive blog entry, “Why I’m so Excited about Spock”, marveling at the ability to gather information on people from Wikipedia and social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Spock also lets users contribute to the results area for people found through search. You can add tags of your own, vote existing tags up or down to strengthen the associations between people and topics. You can also identify relationships between people (friend, co-worker, etc.), upload pictures, and provide other types of information.
In theory, this sounds lovely. Sites like Zoom Info and Freebase don’t have these kind of features, and although the concept of users collectively contributing information on individuals was already pioneered by Wikipedia, you can’t search for “drug-related death” and find results that are as current as what you find in Spock. As people add, remove, and modify tags on celebrities and everyday people, (in theory) the more detailed and (hopefully) factual search results will be.
In theory. Like any Beta, there is still some work to do. Take my experience, for example.
Once I am logged in, if I click on my name the results are the following:
Hmm. I don’t seem to exist anywhere. However, if you search for me in Google, I believe the first thing that appears is my IMDB profile, my blog, a byline from MTV News, and my Friendster profile.
However, if you search for me in the search box, this is what appears:
My Friendster profile is displayed, but that is all. Not only that, it lists my age as 26 which is WRONG. hmph. Your profile results and search results should at least be in sync.
I tried searching for my mentor Angela Morgenstern. She is a well documented producer/strategist/visionary for both on air and digital, and if you do a Google search on her about a million things surface (ok not that much, but you get the idea). I was confident that her various keynote appearances, interviews, company profile pages, etc. would be displayed. Wrong.
The only thing that appeared was her LinkedIn profile, along with her gender and location (not correct).
So, the ideas behind Spock seem practical, in that it would be nice if I was a student wanting accurate information on a politician, celebrity, or historical figure… But how do I feel about random people adding tags for me? I may be able to modify them, but how often am I really going to be checking on that? Will Spock notify me when people modify the details of my search results? The idea of having to constantly correct the inaccuracies of my online presence seems tiring and annoying.
And now that I think of it, the functionality behind Spock seems like something any major search engine should already be offering. Why should comments I made in message boards in 1998 surface before something from this year?
On the subway ride home last night, I was staring at everybody’s ugly exposed pale feet (an unfortunate side effect of warmer NYC weather) and thinking about online video, close captioning/subtitles, and globalization.
-feet are gross
“Nerd!” “Trekkie!” “Feet Hater!” You may be shouting at your monitor, well whatevs bub. Hear me out.
ps: I know I said I wasn’t going to write in here anymore this week, but I’m at work early and well, deal with it.
Podzinger claims that it is unleashing the content within audio and video, and it is…. But for now, only from the tip of the online video iceberg. Currently, they are (correct me if I am wrong but I’m probably not) only successfully transcribing/providing click points within video/audio for English language content. Podzinger was beefing up their Spanish search/transcription capability, but as of today it’s really not that useful.
Oh. My. God. Sistas In The Pit’s Ieela Grant left a comment on my blog entry praising Girl Drummers.
I rarely indulge in dorky fan spazz-outs so, deal with it.
Click the pic to watch Matt’s footage!
“The Sistas in Denver on April 17, 2007, at the Fillmore Auditorium, opening for Iggy Pop and the Stooges. I have no idea what song this was, it’s not on their album, but oh my god did it rock. Sorry about the sound quality, it was taken by a small camera. Incidentally, I have permission from the band to post this. :)” - Matt Bentley
Thanks for posting your video comment, Matt! Set up a flickr account and let me know when all your pics are up!
Besides moving, there are a lot of other things going on in my life over the next few days so I can’t guarantee I will be blogging. I invite you to stop visiting this page until Monday, and enjoy the sunshine.
Links to Peruse
* Poptopus - via mashable
A MySpace compatible music widget that pays every time a song is played, instead of only when it’s purchased.
* Added to the Lair’s Feed: Format Magazine
* I enjoy reading these blog entries by aspiring journalists/soon to be grads.
* Brandon Fletcher’s new “we met online” series Date: Unknown
I don’t think the people he is following are particularly interesting. It’s actually pretty cringe inducing for me to watch, but some people are into that. What I do find interesting is that he’s visually documenting something that has been happening for quite some time (people hooking up through MySpace) and using the same medium to promote/distribute/find sponsorships.
* Branding yourself through Social Networks - via quicksprout
QuickSprout’s steps to branding success are (to put it nicely) no-brainers. However, for those who are aspiring artists/filmmakers/new media moguls with limited knowledge of the vast world social networking, the pointers are useful. It could even help those who claim to be experts. It amuses me how the most “honkin’-their-own-2.0-horn” sites still don’t seem to get what being Sticky actually means.
5 Signs that You Aren’t Sticky
by Daniela
1. Your site has a blog, but it is rarely updated.
2. You offer video on your site, but limited options of how that video can be shared (no RSS)
3. You have to login to view content on your site (lame)
4. Your website is as visually appetizing as petmeds
5. No one ever comments
This past weekend I moved to the Bushwick area of Brooklyn, for the second time. Like many non native New Yorkers, I have lived all over the place and find myself coming full circle. The first thing I’ve noticed is that the area has taken on a very hipster vibe, similar to the one slowly spreading in my former home, Washington Heights. Neither dissing or considering myself a hipster, my reasons for moving to Bushwick were not motivated by the fact that I can’t afford Williamsburg - Simple fate brought me back to Bushwick, or what now appears to be referred to as *snicker* East East Williamsburg.
I started reading The Fountainhead yesterday. And no, I’m not mentioning it just because I want to look literate, being that today I discovered that someone quite high up on the food chain here at the job stumbled across my blog, which resulted in an impromptu meeting. We had a nice chat about it, and it was an interesting way to finally meet one of my bosses - through my blog - and share ideas. I’ve met other people at MTV Networks through this thing too. It’s a rather surreal and definitely not anticipated result of deciding to experiment with this a few months ago. Imagine working at a giant company in the 1950’s (being a woman, no internet) - My God? How would you ever get noticed?
FYI bloggers, if you think that your co-workers aren’t reading your blog, you have been warned. Being aware that the world is getting tinier by the second, my most incriminating thoughts are pretty much reserved for a journal buried somewhere in my duvet cover 
That said, I still read my former boss’s blog on windsailing, my other boss’s blog about his music career and other interesting things, my coworker’s blog on NYC culture and music, etc. etc. It’s an incestuous blogosphere, that’s for sure.
But back to The Fountainhead.
Not really, but it was a really long double feature. I managed to keep it together and remain in my seat for the entire three hours, however many of my fellow attendees were not so lucky and ended up missing a few of the phony trailers that sandwiched Tarantino’s Death Proof and Rodriguez’s Planet Terror.
via flickr
And it really didn’t need to be so long.
Planet Terror, as my creative partner Jennifer stated, was gory fun “and at least had a beginning, middle, and end.” Unfortunately, Death Proof - although mildly entertaining in the first half thanks to Sydney Tamiia Poitier’s bitchy yet awesome Jungle Julie character - dragged through the last forty five minutes. Kurt Russel’s character Stuntman Mike starts out a bad ass psychopath and ends up a sniveling crybaby. It was totally unbelievable, even for a grindhouse flick. Lead Zoe Belle (who was Uma Thurman’s stunt double in Kill Bill), was likable but ultimately boring - I really didn’t care if she was going to live or die. I am sure others will argue me to death about this, but I really felt like Death Proof was a lame ripoff (not homage) of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.
To make things worse, (according to Deadline Hollywood), Grindhouse hasn’t been giving enough love to actual grindhouse theaters. Quote:
“I wanted to give you some insight into Grindhouse being a flop,” Seth Sonstein (photo right) emails me. “We begged The Weinstein Company for a print of this film. In the end they would not give us a print. 
Also, Dan Halsted runs the Grindhouse Film Festival out of The Hollywood Theater in Portland, and Weinstein would also not release a print to him. (Dan knows more about Grindhouse films then anyone in the country.) So I attest that the distribution was botched on this film. When your local Grindhouse isn’t allowed to screen the Grindhouse, then you KNOW that there is trouble.” Sonstein said his theater and its audience were psyched when they first heard about Grindhouse and followed its progress from Day One. “
..The Grindhouses across America are the exact opposite. While people may need Regal so they can go see films like Wild Hogs and Norbit, they will never catch a double feature of Foxy Brown and Black Samurai at the local Regal Cineplex. Grindhouse, a film that is a throwback to the great Grindhouse films of yesterday, will not be playing in a Grindhouse.”
No wonder it may be re-released as two separate films. I loved Planet Terror and the cool trailers but would not sit through another three hours in a theater just to catch it again.
