Internet

Prediction for Fun and Profit

~ Cheryl

Here’s a new angle on futurology. An entire web site community devoted to making bets about the future (and, of course, winning them). Of course most of what gets predicted is fairly near future, because you have to be able to find out whether you were right or not. I’m not sure that there will be much of interest to science fiction writers there. But if you happen to enjoy prognostication then it might just be the place for you.

Two Worlds

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

It is always interesting to see how one’s efforts are received around the blogosphere. Science Fiction Awards Watch, which Kevin and I launched last year, has been trucking along steadily for some time now. It rarely attracts a lot of attention, but every so often someone mentions it. With professional writers it is generally when we’ve turned up some award that they didn’t know they’d won, which is why today John Scalzi kindly described us as “increasingly-indispensable”. That should be worth a pile of referrals. As for fandom, outrage is often the order of the day. Yesterday, for example, we had the temerity to complain that Hugo voters had been “very unimaginative” in their choice of Best Professional Artist nominees. Oh Noez! Oh Horror! Cue Mike Glyer who has somehow managed to interpret that as us accusing the Hugo voters of corruption. Quite. And when the case comes to court we are going to ask for a dozen cases of genocide, treason, armed robbery and failure to enjoy the right episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to be taken into consideration, your honor.

Blogs 1 – NYT 0

~ Cheryl

Back in 2002 (or 02002 as the Long Now folks like to call it) a bet was arranged. The substance of the bet was as follows:

In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 02007, weblogs will rank higher than the ‘New York Times’ Web site

Well, 02007 is now over, so the bed has been adjudicated. The result is given here. The post is interesting both for the discussion around how to actually adjudicate the result, and also because the blogs won 4-1.

Fannish Facebook Applications

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I have Dave Langford to thank for this idea. We were exchanging email regarding the latest issue of Ansible and the inevitability of finding that something you wrote was accuracy-challenged, leading to furious protests from some corners of fandom. Dave commented that in the Facebook world what would happen is that you’d get a message like this:

David Langford has flung sackcloth and ashes all over you! To accept his grovel you must install…

This got me thinking. There could be a whole new business in fannish Facebook Applications. They might go something like this:

  • Ted White has expelled you from Fandom. To get back in you must install…
  • Ben Yalow has raised an Objection to Consideration against you. To be allowed to speak you must install…
  • Dave Kyle says you can’t sit here. To get a seat you must install…

Then again, there could be author-related items:

  • John Scalzi has thrown cat photos at you. To avoid dying laughing you must install…
  • Jay Lake has thrown cheese at you. To avoid high cholesterol you must install…
  • Jeff VanderMeer has thrown mushroom spores at you. To avoid mutating into a Grey Cap you must install…
  • Kelley Eskridge has thrown gender confusion at you. To avoid having to cross-dress you must install…

You get the idea? Go forth an invent your own.

More on Facebook

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Kevin and I have just started a Facebook Group for the Hugo Awards. I shall be interested to see how this develops, and whether we get anyone other than the Usual Suspects involved.

Meanwhile I am becoming more and more disillusioned with Facebook Applications. I occasionally get irritated by the crass sales tactics used by the likes of Microsoft and Symantec, but they are nothing compared to Facebook third party application developers. The general process goes something like this:
Continue reading →

Talking About Us

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Via John Scalzi and Charlie Anders (email) I have learned about a new, high-profile SF blog: io9. Scalzi points out that it is run by the same people who do various famous celebrity blogs, none of which I have heard of because the only time I ever notice gossip mags is when I’m queuing at the checkout in grocery stores. He speculates that the blog will be full of salacious stories about just which author had lunch which other author at Worldcon and all that sort of stuff, and gets his knuckles rapped by PNH for his trouble.

Having had a quick look at the site, the thing that interests me is that it is really about SF being more mainstream. I don’t think it will notice “the community” much at all. I expect the site to target itself mainly at people who watch sci-fi TV and movies, at comic readers, and at people who follow top-selling fantasy books like the Harry Potter series. The post on Spiderman is spot-on. Classic tabloid headline, and it is something people are talking about (I was in my local Borders yesterday and the staff were having a long and animated conversation about it).

But you know, it being about SF, why can’t it be a little bit more creative? There is this huge gap in my life due to the demise of the Weekly World News. And in SF anything can happen. So what if it is made up? I’m looking forward to posts about how Scalzi is pregnant with David Brin’s love child, and Jeff VanderMeer is secretly Bat Boy. (Stories about the Apocalypse will have to wait because, as Jay Lake pointed out this morning, it has already happened.)

Understanding Spammers

~ Cheryl

It is pretty clear that a significant amount of spam is aimed at monster truck drivers. As every girl knows, the size of a guy’s dick is inversely proportional to the macho nature of the car he drives. And ads for quick-fix cure for a petite pecker make up a substantial percentage of the daily spam volume. (They outnumber ads for boob enhancements by about 1000-1, which I guess tells you something about insecurity and gullibility differences between the sexes.)

Now, we all know that many spammers don’t have English as a first language, so they may not be able to tell our boy names from our girl names. Also they often use automated systems that don’t bother to check for simple things like gender. Which is why you see so many messages promising Jane and Linda and Sarah a larger appendage. But why, oh why, please tell me, did someone put together spam campaign promising Monster Truck Man that with their treatment he can have queen-sized dick?

You can just imagine the ad copy. “Yes, Mr. Insecure, take our treatment and in just three short weeks your girlfriend will be so impressed with your new size that she’ll say you look like a queen!”

I wish I could do cartoons.

Branching Out

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

As a result of the trip to SMOFcon (not to mention SFSFC winning its bid to host World Fantasy Con in San Jose in 2009) Kevin and I have been thinking quite a bit about marketing conventions recently. As a result of this I have taken the plunge and joined Facebook. I confess to having been a little nervous about this. That’s not anything to do with concerns about identity theft or whatever. I’m pretty well out there on the Internet, and nothing I can say about myself could possibly be as damaging to my reputation or employability as what other people have already written about me very publicly. I am, however, rather concerned about Facebook pulling nasty stunts like monitoring what I buy on Amazon and then telling the world about it. Thankfully they seem to have been persuaded of the idiocy of that little trick, but as a consequence my Facebook presence is pretty minimal and in serious lockdown. It will probably loosen up once I understand how the site works a little better. But there you are, I’m out there. Those of you who are Facebook regulars are welcome to friend me. And if you have any tips about convention promotion on Facebook I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Click Culture

~ Cheryl

I’ve long been amazed that the Amazon AdSense ads that are so commonplace on blogs make any money at all. I certainly never click on them, and I wouldn’t expect the people who read my web sites to do so either. Yet clearly some people do. Who are they? In this post danah boyd looks at some research done to try to find out. It is fairly depressing reading (in much the same way that looking at people playing slots in Las Vegas airport is depressing).

Friending

~ Cheryl

Generally I don’t use the Friends page on my LiveJournal account much. I follow people’s blogs through Google Reader, and in many ways I’d rather not know the things that people put behind Friends-locked posts. I certainly never use them myself. If I’m going to put something online I will do so publicly (and under my own name). However, I know that friend lists are important to people like writers who live by their celebrity, so I’m about to go through the process of friending everyone whose LJs I read through Google Reader. If I happen to turn up on your friends list and you are wondering why, this is the explanation. I don’t expect you to friend me in return.

Cory on Facebook

~ Cheryl

Cory Doctorow, being a big fan of the Internet, is not a big fan of web services that try to turn themselves into walled gardens. Here he has a go at Facebook. I must admit that I rather like his idea that the bigger a social networking system gets, the more likely it is that people on it are going to start dropping off because folks that they don’t want to network with start popping up there. Of course this is just another driving factor in the creation of Belief Circles, but unless some clever web developer can manage to create a system that keeps all of its users on board while allowing them to create and join their own circles it does put a limit on the monopolistic ambitions of such folks.

Meanwhile, I’m off to read some danah boyd (thanks for the tip, Cory; also Jonathan for pointing me to Cory’s article in the first place).

Privacy Law an Ass?

~ Cheryl

The BBC reports from the International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner’s conference in Montreal. Their correspondent is gloomy about the efficacy of our current privacy laws:

Critics argue that both notice and consent are today little more than legal fictions, as consumers ignore overly complex notices and shrinking technology makes it virtually impossible to obtain informed consumer consent.

And he goes on to note that many things that it was once though not necessary to apply privacy law to (e.g. details of what you buy, or even which web sites you browse) are now major causes of concern. Privacy experts are, it appears, very worried by all this.

Me, I’m more worried by the news that US immigration will soon be taking all 10 fingerprints on entry to the country, not just two. I suppose I should be pleased, as this will lessen the chances of them erroneously identifying me as a terrorist, but I suspect the primary effect is going to be much longer lines at passport control.

Measuring Memes

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Here’s an interesting idea. Scott Eric Kaufman is trying to measure how quickly memes spread through the Internet. He’s looking to see whether memes can spread quickly simply because of the volume of blogs out there, or whether they only do so if they are mentioned by a high profile blog. Kaufman favors the latter explanation, as do I. But you don’t know until you run the experiment.

You can help here. Spread the meme. Write your own blog post linking to Kaufman’s original post.

The potential flaw here is that Kaufman can only measure blogs that are registered on Technorati, and vast numbers of blogs (particularly LiveJournals) are not. But hey, no science is perfect, and this is at least an interesting start.

Oh, and just to prove that high profile blogs work, I got news of this from Crooked Timber.