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Track your Memes on Twitter!

Here’s some fun news: this afternoon I decided to figure out how to use the Twitter API, which is decidedly simple and functional. Anyway, if you’re a twitterholic, you can now get your dose of technology, automotive, environmental, or sun microsystems news via twitter - each of my memetrackers now merrily posts all of its front-page updates to a twitter account for your enjoyment!

TechWatching (tech and web): http://twitter.com/techwatching
SunMeme (sun micro): http://twitter.com/sunmeme
WheelScore (automotive): http://twitter.com/wheelscore
PlasticBasket (environmental): http://twitter.com/plasticbasket.net

On a sidenote, I’m appreciating the utility of Twitter more and more every day as a broadcast medium and selective news filter.

memetrackers, plasticbasket, sunmeme, techwatching, twitter wheelscore

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One more thing: PlasticBasket.net

Are you concerned about environmental issues? If so, get your hourly dose of breaking green news/issues/views at PlasticBasket.net.

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Follow Stories with Cluster Permalinks

I just rolled out a minor but important new feature across the memetracker network that I’m building (TechWatching, Wheelscore, SunMeme, PlasticBasket) - story cluster permalinks.

For background, a “story cluster” is a group of stories around a certain topic - a “meme” or summary of a blogosphere discussion. A story cluster permalink gives you a permanent URL for viewing story clusters - so if you’re following Cadillac’s hybrid motorbike or Fred Wilson’s views on Triangulation, you can follow that story today, tomorrow, a month from now, a year from now - whenever, not just when its still on the front page.

To get to a cluster’s permalink, just look for the “PERMALINK THIS CLUSTER” link at the top of each cluster.

So - enjoy!

plasticbasket, sunmeme, techwatching wheelscore

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Experiments in Corporate Intelligence: SunMeme

Sun Microsystems is if not unique then at least rare in the robustness of its internal blogging community, and the willingness of the corporate legal department to make that community public. Indeed, Sun has almost 5000 publicly readable blogs - from the CEO to the developers in the trenches, from all around the world.

I think its great - I’ve been a long term advocate of internal blogging and the knowledge sharing and growth spurs. There’s more though: a corporate blog community as robust as Sun’s presents a great opportunity for aggregation and memetic analysis: so, I copied and pasted TechWatching onto SunMeme.com and pointed the system to Sun’s blogosphere and let it off its leash.

So far its tracking 683 Sun blogs, of which its actively processing stories from the 182 most active. From what I can tell, it starting to produce some good output - story clusters building around the new UltraSparc processor, for instance, or a NetBeans talk that took place in SecondLife.

There are challenges in tackling the Sun blogosphere too, however; keyword analysis is difficult as some keywords (”java”) are omnipresent, and can’t be used to link together stories. I’m convinced that there’s workarounds though, and the deeper SunMeme gets into the Sun blogosphere, the better the output is looking.

Anyway, enjoy. And if you work at Sun, please feel free to share your thoughts!

memetrackers, sun sunmeme

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Malaysian Sensation

Yesterday was some day. Our overnite bus down the east coast of Malaysia broke down at 5:00 AM, stranding us in the middle of nowhere. A ludicrously expensive taxi (by Malay standards: 100 ringgit = 33 USD = 2 hour cab ride) got us to the airport a comforting 10 hours early. Due to the grim nature of the town hosting the said airport, and the presence of great food and A/C at the airport, we considered this to be a good thing. A short flight to Borneo, and here we are in Kuching.

Were staying at Singgashana Lodge - a spot I’d recommend to anyone exploring in Borneo. Best part? Free Wifi. Until you’ve backpacked asia, you have no idea how much of a treat this is. I’ve taken today (Connie’s exploring the city) to catch up on some ideas - like a “feed quality” ranking system for TechWatching - a big relief as the human overhead of sorting the 50 or so new feeds that the system identifies every is too hard to keep on top of. Predictably there’s some hurdles, but I’m hoping automated sifting of feeds will improve the focus of the front page and the quality of articles therein.

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Follow me through Asia on Twitter

I’m finding Twitter to be alarmingly useful for quick posts from the road or my phone, so you’ll see my Twitter volume increase, and (as you may have noticed!) my TechFold blog be updated intermittently (apologies).

Anyway, you can follow me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/dreadsword
or read our travel blog: http://venturefar.wordpress.com
and follow our pics: http://flickr.com/photos/dreadsword

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Wheelscore: Automotive Meme Tracker is live

Wheelscore is a second deployment of the TechWatching algorithm, now live and alive at http://wheelscore.com. If you’re into cars, you’ll like it. Feedback appreciated!

As noted on Twitter, there’s three more memetrackers in the works for launches in the next few weeks as well - stay tuned!

Btw - I’m out of Bangladesh, currently in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia where wifi is plentiful!

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Today’s the day…

That we take off for Singapore and the start of our grand adventure. So I’ll likely be out of touch for a bit… don’t take it personally.

Catch you from the other side!

-Rod

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TechWatching vs. MacWorld: MacWord 1, TechWatching 0

TechWatching is now serving more relevant results and better links, and is doing so more frequently, thanks to a new & improved algorithm behind the scenes, prompted mainly by the MacWorld disaster.

I say “disaster” because the volume of stories related to MacWorld was the perfect storm of relevancy overabundance - the prior version of TechWatching could not scale to sort the volume, and the site quickly devolved to a huge mish-mash of barely organized, repetitious, muddled posts.

The new ranking & relevancy algorithm is actually a lot simpler than the old one: I ended up cutting code length by about 30% to get better results, and more efficient db use means that I can pump up the update frequency without melting down the server - all good.

If you stop by the site, you’ll see better “topical roundup tags” at the top, and more complete story clusters down below.

As always, your feedback on the site and the recent changes would be very appreciated.

techwatching

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A quick followup on “no more metrics…”

One other reason to remove metrics-indicators (feedburner count, technorati authority, etc.) from your blog is that user’s tend to form an impression of credibility based on readership volume as much as the actual quality of what they’re reading. i.e.: if you stumble across a blog that’s new to you, on some level you’ll read its content different if it has 15,000 RSS subscribers compared to 15. i.e.: If all of these people appreciate & read this blog, I should too.

Which in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad inference; but, FWIW, I think it perpetuates the hive mentality hold that the a-listers have over the blogosphere. Not that I have that problem here - my inconsistent posting ensures low readership. That being said, I’m content to have my content stand on its own without any “reputation aid” from compelling site metrics.

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