At the close on Thursday, all we were hearing on CNBC was about how DOW 6,000 was in the bag. Today, with the market up strong for the second day in a row, traders are more optimistic: We just need to see how the market digests Obama's stimulus package and the Citigroup bailout...and then we'll know whether this rally is real.

Allow us to make a prediction: Optimism that the rally is "real" will increase every day that the market goes up. And, every day that that happens, you will get more and more worried that you missed the bottom. And then one day, when you just can't take it anymore, you'll pull the trigger.

Meanwhile: For long-term investors, stocks are still undervalued--even now. Buy now, and you have a good chance of earning a better-than-average return over the next ten years. Sure, if the rally isn't real, you will temporarily lose your shirt. But fund manager John Hussman argues that valuations going into the weekend were as low as they were in late 1931. And the market did pretty well from there.

John Hussman:

Below is an update of our 10-year total return projections for the S&P 500 Index (standard methodology ). The heavy line tracks actual 10-year total returns (that line ends a decade ago for obvious reasons). The green, orange, yellow, and red lines represent the projected total returns for the S&P 500 assuming terminal valuation multiples of 20, 14 (average), 11 (median) and 7 times normalized earnings.

I trust that investors no longer shrug off data prior to 1950 as outdated evidence that ignores the 'New Economy,' so I've included data points back to 1925.

Note that in the Great Depression, valuations did not reach present levels until late-1931. The market would ultimately decline until mid-1932, so in the unlikely event of a second Great Depression, we would experience more weakness still (probably not without a few powerful 'bear market rallies' of 20-40% even in that event). Investors should also note that actual total returns in the decade following the 1932 low were reasonable, but on the lower end of expectations because valuations also plunged in the early 1940's as World War II unfolded. It's interesting that even an investor who went 'all-in' well before the bottom, at triple the level of the ultimate 1932 low, would still have earned positive total returns over the next decade (mid single-digits, outperforming both long-term bonds and Treasury bills).

In overvalued markets, risk-management is generous in the sense that avoiding risk costs very little (or nothing) in terms of foregone long-term returns. In undervalued markets, favorable valuation is generous in that it forgives even the most abominable timing of purchases.

See Also:
Stocks (Almost) Officially Cheap!
Market In "Uncharted Territory"? Only If You're An Idiot
Scary, Scary, But Stocks Still A Buy
Grantham: Stocks May Fall Another 50% But Still Time To Buy

Intuit is announcing on Monday a Flash-based Web service that companies can use to geographically visualize their customer data and business activity.

Customer Explorer is being unveiled at this week's Adobe Max conference in San Francisco. Customer Explorer, available at the Intuit Workplace, imports QuickBooks data and overlays it on a live map.

Users can view where their customers are clustering or which regions generate the most revenue. They can also generate time slices of the data, much like a moving weather map, to see how their business has been evolving. And they can overlay regional demographic information, such as median household income.

This free version of SpatialKey was created by Universal Mind.

This map is animated and shows customer density growth over time.

(Credit: Universal Mind)

The app is more than eye candy. Any business owner trying to get a handle on where he or she is successful--and where the business' holes are--can learn something from the service.

The app is also an interesting hybrid service. While it uses QuickBooks users' data, which is stored on their computers, the visualizer melds that data with geographic and demographic information from Web servers to create maps that are displayed via Flash in a browser. It's an interesting and fairly seamless mashup of various public data sets with the user's own data.

On this map, the circled numbers represent clusters of customers, and the shading is demographic data: median household income.

(Credit: Universal Mind)

Previous coverage: Intuit getting into the hosted app business.

Each application in this round has its own page which describes the application and a contestant generated video about the application. Below are screenshots of each of the pages. This part of the contest is extremely important as the 5 finalists will be given $225,000 each in non-recourse grants. There are currently 25 applications that are being voted on including:

• BarTab - Send a drink to a friend, with Facebook! BarTab allows users to send real drinks to each other for only $1. Drinks are redeemed through the user’s cell phone at partnered bars and restaurants.
• Black Drumm -Black Drumm develops applications that helps users organize events with friends. Whether it is going to a local concert, or planning a trek on Kilimanjaro, the application seamlessly coordinates offline activities; no more chains of emails to sort through, or spreadsheets to maintain.
• Bottle Rocket - Bottle Rocket helps users pick the perfect bottle of wine. Users can compare wines with friends on Facebook or on the Bottle Rocket iPhone application. Bottle Rocket then analyzes the wines users have liked with ratings from their friends to make informed recommendations.
• Check My Campus - Check My Campus makes the college search process easier, better and more fun. The application allows current college students to share photos and videos about life on their campuses, giving high schoolers an inside look at what real life is like at these different schools.
• Daikon - Daikon enables users to build powerful applications on the Facebook platform without writing a single line of code. Daikon produces applications that focus on increasing the enjoyment and productivity of the Facebook experience.
• Faithfeed - FaithFeed is an application where users can share about their journey of faith with friends. Through the application, users can share praises, prayer requests, resolutions and the details of what God is teaching them. Users can also keep each other accountable and support each other throughout the week.
• Good Call Sports LLC - Good Call Football is an app developed by Good Call Sports that allows users to predict each offensive play during a televised football game, in real time, and compete nationwide based on the accuracy of their predictions.
• GroupCard - GroupCard lets users rally their friends to sign the same printable online card to celebrate any occassion. Each friend can add a message, upload photos or audio, and even make a gift contribution. GroupCard started at Stanford, and is already used by thousands of groups worldwide.
• HitGrab - MouseHunt, a HitGrab creation, is a game of epic proportions. Players are hunters, hired by the king to trap mice that infest his kingdom. For each mouse caught, users will find a reward, bringing them closer to being the best MouseHunter in the land.
• Kontagent - Kontagent is the leading viral analytics platform for social network application developers. Kontagent analytics provides deep social data visualization and analysis that delivers actionable insights delivered via a hosted, on-demand service.
• Koofers - Koofers helps students create and share information that helps with classes. Users can share old tests, quizzes, and study guides; view current and past grade breakdown and average GPA for every class and professor; review professors and read ratings before signing up for new classes, and get help from other students in the same class.
• Newsbrane - Newsbrane recommends news stories and other online content to users based on their interests. Vote items up and down and Newsbrane learns the stories a user wants to see.
• Party Buzz - Party Buzz is your source of information for what’s happening offline amongst your friends. Check out your friend’s events, discuss weekend plans, and find the best parties. Bonus feature: for each event check the median age, guy-to-girl ratio, number of singles, and more!
• Pongr - Pongr is a mobile price comparison service that lets you check prices online and at nearby stores. While shopping, users can share items with their Facebook friends. Pongr mobile apps, texting, and image recognition makes bargain shopping fun!
• ProfessionalProfile - Professional Profile leverages a user’s existing social connections into a professional network.
• RealGifts - RealGifts is a social gifting application that allows users to send their friends real, tangible gifts in the mail, without needing to know their friends’ delivery address.
• Socialfly - Be twice the friend in half the time! Socialfly lets users write their own notes about people, set reminders to talk to friends, and plan fun activities together. Socialfly will soon be available on both Facebook and the iPhone.
• Teach the People - Teach the People is an open educational platform. Teachers get the tools to share their expertise, allowing their knowledge to go viral, attract an audience, and be monetized effectively. Students get access to high quality, low cost education in Facebook’s social environment.
• The Game Creators - The Game Creators built Social Arcade, an application which users get creative and design their own game from shoot-’em-ups to platformers to racing games and more. Users can give friends the gift of a game and even personalize it.
• TrailBehind - TrailBehind helps users find great places to hike. Avid hikers can explore maps, plan trips, log their travels, and work together to build better maps of the outdoors.
• Twenty20 Cricket - Twenty20 Cricket was created for cricket fanatics around the world to connect and share their passion via an exciting online cricket manager game. Users compete to be the best team by training their players, and then challenging their friends and other team managers!
• vDream Racing - vDream would be Henry Ford’s favorite application on Facebook. vDream offers users access to real cars, real parts, real performance specs, and the ability to connect and compete with other car enthusiasts.
• WedSnap - WedSnap created Weddingbook, a social network on Facebook for those preparing for a wedding. Brides and grooms meet on Weddingbook to get advice, support, and inspiration during their engagement and wedding planning process.
• Wildfire - Wildfire enables consumers to discover, share and engage with interactive promotions like contests, sweepstakes and give-aways and enables companies to easily create their own attractive, branded promotions that are automatically integrated with Facebook’s social features.

To vote go install the fbFund voting application. Remember that you can check back daily to vote. Best of luck to the fbFund participants!

CodeWeavers are the people behind the free and open source implementation of the Wine project. Most Linux users are familiar with this project because this is how they can run Windows programs in Linux without needing any kind of virtual machine. Well, the same people behind Wine also develop a more professional-grade product called CrossOver Pro that’s available for both Mac and Linux. One of the largely added benefits of CrossOver vs. Wine is a slightly more extensive list of compatible programs & games.

Good news… you still have a few more hours to grab their software for free (regularly $70 for the Professional version). Their site is currently suffering from the enormous amounts of traffic, but all you have to do is enter in your email address and you’ll receive a serial number over the next few days for the product(s) you’re requesting.

Why are they giving the software away for free? Here’s what they said in their press release:

In July, CodeWeavers – whose software lets Mac OS X and Linux users run Windows programs without having to Microsoft for a Windows OS license – launched the Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge (lameduck.codeweavers.com) to encourage President Bush to make the most of his remaining days in office by accomplishing a major economic or political goal by January 20, 2009.

The goals focused on President Bush making specific positive accomplishments in areas such as the economy, home values, the stock market, the war on terror and other key issues. Specifically, one goal called for President Bush to help down bring average gasoline prices in the Twin Cities to $2.79 a gallon.

On Monday, Oct. 14, gas prices in Minneapolis and St. Paul did just that.

“That morning, I was filling my tank at Big Steve’s Gas Palace in St. Paul,” said Jeremy White, president and CEO of CodeWeavers. “I had just finished my morning corn dog and 64-ounce Dr. Pepper when I looked at the pump and noticed gas was at $2.79. I screamed ‘Woohoo,’ then I yelled ‘Oh, crap!’ as I realized every American can now have my software for free.

What other goals are on the list? If any of these goals are met by January 20, 2009 they will once again offer their software for free:

• Return the stock market to it’s 2008 high
• Reduce the average price of a gallon of milk to $3.50
• Create at least one net job in the U.S. this calendar year
• Return the median home price to its Jan. 1, 2008 level
• Bring Osama Bin-Laden to justice

Thanks CodeWeavers for living up to your word!
Get CrossOver Pro for Mac or Linux

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CodeWeavers CrossOver Pro Free Today Only

Related Posts:

• CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac To Be Released In July/August
• Linux Users Might See World Of Warcraft
• Will Microsoft Really Release Office For Linux?
• CrossOver Mac Beta Released To The Public
• Windows Users Can Easily Switch To Linux Xandros

Social Median is a new site that, at first glance, looks like another life streaming site, but digging a little deeper uncovers some unique features that give Social Median a lot of potential.  What makes Social Median different is its focus around news and news stories instead of every event going on in your life.

It also has characteristics of Digg, because users can “Clip” stories as a way of voting on them. I think it is hard to fully describe Social Median, but I’m sure an overview of the features will do a better job of explaining how Social Median is trying to be different.

Making News More Social

Why would making my morning or evening news more social help me?  The idea is to get into a group or groups of like-minded people in order to get a cleaner stream of news.  How much of the morning paper do you read?  Do you just read the business section or the sports section?  If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better if your newspaper was only business or sports news?

Getting a more focused stream of articles about the topics you really care about allows you to be more informed on those topics and get through your reading faster, since you don’t have to look very hard to find the stories you want.  For this reason, Social Median might replace some people’s newspapers in the future.

Submitting News

Social Median makes it easy to submit the stories that matter to you.  They give you four options: a bookmarklet, email, from other social networks or adding a story directly from their website.

The bookmarklet is super easy to use.  Just click on it when you want to submit the page you are looking at to Social Median.  There is also a nifty shortcut with the bookmarklet.  If you highlight some text, then hit the bookmarklet that text will be used as the summary for your submission.  This makes it even quicker to submit the news that matters to you.

News will also get submitted automatically from the other services you add.  Social Median makes it easy to add all of your other social networks.  It even detects them for you.

News Networks

Social Median allows you to make or join various groups called News Networks.  These networks are great, because you get to control all of the information you see in them through a few different controls.  Being able to control the groups is an area that makes Social Median really stand out from its competitors.

The first way to control the content in your groups is through a Noise Level. The Noise Level allows you to zero in on your group’s topic or broaden it out a little.  This is great, because it allows you to be very specific about the news you want to consume.

Topics is another area in News Networks that allows you to customize the content of that network.  As you can see, you can vote topics up or down for your group as you see fit.  You can also add other topics in order to expand the scope of your network.

In addition to the topics option, there is an option for sources.  The sources are the blogs or websites the stories come from, and you can increase or decrease their importance in the same way as the topics.  You can also add that underground blog you love so much as well.

In addition to joining News Networks, you can make your own.  This way, if you don’t like the way other News Networks are set up, you can make one that is perfect for your needs.

News Alerts

This is one of my favorite features, as it really lets Social Median function like a newspaper.  Social Median allows you to set up your notifications to function just the way you want.  You can get them “With my morning coffee”, “with my breakfast and dinner”, “three meals a day” or “I’m a news junkie.”  You can also turn your news alerts off, but that isn’t as much fun.

I really like the idea of getting all the news in the morning, because it really does function like a newspaper then.  This may not be as good as Google Reader for really big news junkies, but I really see the potential for Social Median to attract the more average user for its ability to deliver the news you want and nothing else.

Conclusion

Social Median shows a lot of promise and potential and could become a great news source for many Internet users.  I’m not sure this will take the power user away from Google Reader (me included), but the less serious people will definitely find lots of value and save lots of time with Social Median.

Technorati Tags: social median, lifestream, news, news stories, reader, bookmarklets, networks, alerts, notifications

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Be sure to check out my latest posts on Make Use Of.

As opposed to traditional fundraising, the fbFund awards leave the teams with 100% equity, although Facebook and its partner investment firms have first rights to invest should the companies go on to raise more money. In all, Facebook says more than 600 different teams applied, a process that included business plans, actual application development, and video pitches. The 25 winners (with descriptions from Facebook) are listed below, and we’ll have further review and analysis of some of the winning apps later today:

BarTab - Send a drink to a friend, with Facebook! BarTab allows users to send real drinks to each other for only $1. Drinks are redeemed through the user’s cell phone at partnered bars and restaurants.

Black Drumm - Black Drumm develops applications that help users organize events with friends. Whether it is going to a local concert, or planning a trek on Kilimanjaro, the application seamlessly coordinates offline activities; no more chains of emails to sort through, or spreadsheets to maintain.

Bottle Rocket - Bottle Rocket helps users pick the perfect bottle of wine. Users can compare wines with friends on Facebook or on the Bottle Rocket iPhone application. Bottle Rocket then analyzes the wines users have liked with ratings from their friends to make informed recommendations.

Check My Campus - Check My Campus makes the college search process easier, better and more fun. The application allows current college students to share photos and videos about life on their campuses, giving high schoolers an inside look at what real life is like at these different schools.

Daikon - Daikon enables users to build powerful applications on the Facebook platform without writing a single line of code. Daikon produces applications that focus on increasing the enjoyment and productivity of the Facebook experience.

Faithfeed - FaithFeed is an application where users can share about their journey of faith with friends. Through the application, users can share praises, prayer requests, resolutions and the details of what God is teaching them. Users can also keep each other accountable and support each other throughout the week.

Good Call Sports LLC - Good Call Football is an app developed by Good Call Sports that allows users to predict each offensive play during a televised football game, in real time, and compete nationwide based on the accuracy of their predictions.

GroupCard - GroupCard lets users rally their friends to sign the same printable online card to celebrate any occassion. Each friend can add a message, upload photos or audio, and even make a gift contribution. GroupCard started at Stanford, and is already used by thousands of groups worldwide.

HitGrab - MouseHunt, a HitGrab creation, is a game of epic proportions. Players are hunters, hired by the king to trap mice that infest his kingdom. For each mouse caught, users will find a reward, bringing them closer to being the best MouseHunter in the land.

Infrablue Technology - Twenty20 Cricket, a Infrablue Technology app, was developed for cricket fanatics around the world to connect and share their passion via an exciting online cricket manager game. Users compete to be the best team by training their players, and then challenging their friends and other team managers!

Kontagent - Kontagent is the leading viral analytics platform for social network application developers. Kontagent analytics provides deep social data visualization and analysis that delivers actionable insights delivered via a hosted, on-demand service.

Koofers - Koofers helps students create and share information that helps with classes. Users can share old tests, quizzes, and study guides; view current and past grade breakdown and average GPA for every class and professor; review professors and read ratings before signing up for new classes, and get help from other students in the same class.

Newsbrane - Newsbrane recommends news stories and other online content to users based on their interests. Vote items up and down and Newsbrane learns the stories a user wants to see.

Party Buzz - Party Buzz is your source of information for what’s happening offline amongst your friends. Check out your friend’s events, discuss weekend plans, and find the best parties. Bonus feature: for each event check the median age, guy-to-girl ratio, number of singles, and more!

Pongr - Pongr is a mobile price comparison service that lets you check prices online and at nearby stores. While shopping, users can share items with their Facebook friends. Pongr mobile apps, texting, and image recognition makes bargain shopping fun!

ProfessionalProfile - Professional Profile leverages a user’s existing social connections into a professional network.

RealGifts - RealGifts is a social gifting application that allows users to send their friends real, tangible gifts in the mail, without needing to know their friends’ delivery address. Combining “virtual gifting” and eCommerce, RealGifts is the most convenient way to send real gifts to your friends.

Socialfly - Be twice the friend in half the time! Socialfly lets users write their own notes about people, set reminders to talk to friends, and plan fun activities together. Socialfly will soon be available on both Facebook and the iPhone.

Teach the People - Teach the People is an open educational platform. Teachers get the tools to share their expertise, allowing their knowledge to go viral, attract an audience, and be monetized effectively. Students get access to high quality, low cost education in Facebook’s social environment.

The Game Creators - The Game Creators built Social Arcade, an application which users get creative and design their own game from shoot-’em-ups to platformers to racing games and more. Users can give friends the gift of a game and even personalize it.

TrailBehind - TrailBehind helps users find great places to hike. Avid hikers can explore maps, plan trips, log their travels, and work together to build better maps of the outdoors.

vDream Racing - vDream would be Henry Ford’s favorite application on Facebook. vDream offers users access to real cars, real parts, real performance specs, and the ability to connect and compete with other car enthusiasts.

WedSnap - WedSnap created Weddingbook, a social network on Facebook for those preparing for a wedding. Brides and grooms meet on Weddingbook to get advice, support, and inspiration during their engagement and wedding planning process.

Wildfire - Wildfire enables consumers to discover, share and engage with interactive promotions like contests, sweepstakes and give-aways and enables companies to easily create their own attractive, branded promotions that are automatically integrated with Facebook’s social features.

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Facebook Developers: Apply Now for fbFund
Poor fbFund Applicants. Deja Vu, Anyone?
Facebook Will Not Sign NDAs for fbFund
MySpace’s New Business: Startup Incubator?
Facebook Announces Great Apps Program and FBFund Winners
PayPal Searches for the $10,000 Facebook App
Mashable Web 2.0 Expo Winners Announced

Facebook has announced 25 recipients of $25,000 grants from the fbFund, the $10 million pile of money earmarked for the social network's developers, funded by by Accel Partners and the Founders Fund.

The list (below), is tilted in the way you would expect -- heavy on fun and games -- but Facebook has also chosen a number of apps with real utility: Ones that help users find the best deal, make the most informed choice, help plan outings, etc. And even the fun ones are deeper than the usual Facebook app fare.

In December, five of these apps will get tapped for another $225,000, this time based in part from input from actual Facebook users. Given that hard or impossible-to-monetize projects like social networks app look like endangered species right now, this is valuable money.

We'll break out our favorite ones later, but for now, here's the list:

• BarTab - Send a drink to a friend, with Facebook! BarTab allows users to send real drinks to each other for only $1. Drinks are redeemed through the user's cell phone at partnered bars and restaurants.

• Black Drumm - Black Drumm develops applications that helps users organize events with friends. Whether it is going to a local concert, or planning a trek on Kilimanjaro, the application seamlessly coordinates offline activities; no more chains of emails to sort through, or spreadsheets to maintain.

• Bottle Rocket - Bottle Rocket helps users pick the perfect bottle of wine. Users can compare wines with friends on Facebook or on the Bottle Rocket iPhone application. Bottle Rocket then analyzes the wines users have liked with ratings from their friends to make informed recommendations.

• Check My Campus - Check My Campus makes the college search process easier, better and more fun. The application allows current college students to share photos and videos about life on their campuses, giving high schoolers an inside look at what real life is like at these different schools.

• Daikon - Daikon enables users to build powerful applications on the Facebook platform without writing a single line of code. Daikon produces applications that focus on increasing the enjoyment and productivity of the Facebook experience.

• Faithfeed - FaithFeed is an application where users can share about their journey of faith with friends. Through the application, users can share praises, prayer requests, resolutions and the details of what God is teaching them. Users can also keep each other accountable and support each other throughout the week.

• Good Call Sports LLC - Good Call Football is an app developed by Good Call Sports that allows users to predict each offensive play during a televised football game, in real time, and compete nationwide based on the accuracy of their predictions.

• GroupCard - GroupCard lets users rally their friends to sign the same printable online card to celebrate any occassion. Each friend can add a message, upload photos or audio, and even make a gift contribution. GroupCard started at Stanford, and is already used by thousands of groups worldwide.

• HitGrab - MouseHunt, a HitGrab creation, is a game of epic proportions. Players are hunters, hired by the king to trap mice that infest his kingdom. For each mouse caught, users will find a reward, bringing them closer to being the best MouseHunter in the land.

• Kontagent - Kontagent is the leading viral analytics platform for social network application developers. Kontagent analytics provides deep social data visualization and analysis that delivers actionable insights delivered via a hosted, on-demand service.

• Koofers - Koofers helps students create and share information that helps with classes. Users can share old tests, quizzes, and study guides; view current and past grade breakdown and average GPA for every class and professor; review professors and read ratings before signing up for new classes, and get help from other students in the same class.

• Newsbrane - Newsbrane recommends news stories and other online content to users based on their interests. Vote items up and down and Newsbrane learns the stories a user wants to see.

• Party Buzz - Party Buzz is your source of information for what's happening offline amongst your friends. Check out your friend's events, discuss weekend plans, and find the best parties. Bonus feature: for each event check the median age, guy-to-girl ratio, number of singles, and more.

• Pongr - Pongr is a mobile price comparison service that lets you check prices online and at nearby stores. While shopping, users can share items with their Facebook friends. Pongr mobile apps, texting, and image recognition makes bargain shopping fun!

• ProfessionalProfile - Professional Profile leverages a user's existing social connections into a professional network.

• RealGifts - RealGifts is a social gifting application that allows users to send their friends real, tangible gifts in the mail, without needing to know their friends' delivery address.

• Socialfly - Be twice the friend in half the time! Socialfly lets users write their own notes about people, set reminders to talk to friends, and plan fun activities together. Socialfly will soon be available on both Facebook and the iPhone.

• Teach the People - Teach the People is an open educational platform. Teachers get the tools to share their expertise, allowing their knowledge to go viral, attract an audience, and be monetized effectively. Students get access to high quality, low cost education in Facebook's social environment.

• The Game Creators - The Game Creators built Social Arcade, an application which users get creative and design their own game from shoot-'em-ups to platformers to racing games and more. Users can give friends the gift of a game and even personalize it.

• TrailBehind - TrailBehind helps users find great places to hike. Avid hikers can explore maps, plan trips, log their travels, and work together to build better maps of the outdoors.

• Twenty20 Cricket - Twenty20 Cricket was created for cricket fanatics around the world to connect and share their passion via an exciting online cricket manager game. Users compete to be the best team by training their players, and then challenging their friends and other team managers!

• vDream Racing - vDream would be Henry Ford's favorite application on Facebook. vDream offers users access to real cars, real parts, real performance specs, and the ability to connect and compete with other car enthusiasts.

• WedSnap - WedSnap created Weddingbook, a social network on Facebook for those preparing for a wedding. Brides and grooms meet on Weddingbook to get advice, support, and inspiration during their engagement and wedding planning process.

• Wildfire - Wildfire enables consumers to discover, share and engage with interactive promotions like contests, sweepstakes and give-aways and enables companies to easily create their own attractive, branded promotions that are automatically integrated with Facebook's social features.

See Also:
Who's Going To Get Money For Facebook Apps?

The Best Of The Best: The Most Interesting fbFund Winners

Date/time functions -- DATE, DATEADD, DAY, DAYABBREV, DAYNAME, HOUR, LASTDAY, MINUTE, MONTH, MONTHABBREV, MONTHNAME, NOW, SECOND, TIME, TODAY, YEAR

General functions -- COL, COUNT, ROW

Math function -- ABS, CEILING, EVEN, EXP, FACTORIAL, FLOOR, LOG, LOG10, MAX, MIN, ODD, POWER, ROUND, SQRT, SUM

Statistical functions -- AVE, MEDIAN, MODE

String functions -- CONCATENATE, LEFT, LOWER, MID, RIGHT, UPPER

Trignometry functions -- ACOS, ASIN, ATAN, COS, COSH, PI, SIN, SINH, TAN, TANH

Stan wrote earlier this morning on what Berners-Lee told the BBC in an interview over the veracity of information on the web:

Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation…Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.

Stan seemed to think that we as humans are capable of judging for ourselves whether or not information should be trusted or not simply based on the brands associated with the information we’re looking at. There are some serious problems with that assumption, but perhaps even more problematic was the dismissal provided by Andy Beal over at Marketing Pilgrim today (emphasis added):

Do I have to keep repeating myself on this stuff? Why does the web need labeling? And, who’s to say which site is authoritative and which is not? Why can’t the web simply exist, grow, and morph into what masses decide? What happened to the “wisdom of crowds” deciding what’s credible?

Berners-Lee is absolutely right in his premise - there is a glut of disinformation continually growing on the web, and I think that the root cause of the issue are certain aspects amongst the social nature of a lot of the web-based network structures we’ve been growing in the last year or so.

Wisdom of crowds is a highly over-used phrase, though, and this is one of the many cases where it simply doesn’t apply to the types of situations Berners-Lee is talking about. In the article I wrote on this topic last Wednesday, one of the commenters suggested I pick up a copy of The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. I’ve actually got that book on my shelf, so when I saw the Berners-Lee topic come up today, I went and dragged it down to get some direct quotes on some pertinent parts.

When Wisdom = Stupidity
In case you aren’t familiar with the Wisdom of Crowds principal, I outlined the whole concept in pretty big detail in a piece I wrote for Mashable last October, as I looked at the philosophy and architecture of Digg and analyzed whether or not I thought it to be utilizing Wisdom of the Crowds or just simply a social voting mechanism loosely based on the concept:

The anecdote that is the genesis for the concept of wisdom of crowds I’ve heard many times over is the story of scientist and statistician Francis Galton from the late 1800’s, who was surprised that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the butchered weight of an ox.

What made it interesting was not that any one individual came close to guessing the actual weight, but that the crowd did. When their individual guesses were calculated to the median, the resulting number was much closer to the ox’s true butchered weight than the estimates of most individual crowd members, and perhaps most surprisingly also closer than any of the estimates made by cattle experts.

I surmised that for the specific case of Digg, you couldn’t say that this was a working example of Wisdom, since instead of looking for objectively verifiable answers out of crowd wisdom, the social news promotion system at Digg is based on hypothetical question with only subjective answers (Which items are news, and what spin should dominate?).

This is one example of the type of situations where Surowiecki says the Wisdom of Crowds will fail. His list of problematic structures include where the crowd is too homogeneous, too centralized, too divided, too imitative, or too emotional.

The Politics of Hope and Fear
As I re-read the section having to do with emotions and crowd wisdom, I was struck by the parallels to my earlier piece about politics in the social web, and how almost no real information was being conveyed in the bulk of the debates I saw taking place. When you look at the larger framework of debate in America, though, you start to see the root causes to this, and see how they’re a major contributing factor to the breakdown in real communication and the proliferation of disinformation and misinformation.

On the one hand, you have a politician who’s buzzwords are “hope” and “change,” both being rooted either directly in emotion, or an emotive response to the previous administration. The other side has run a very emotional campaign thus far rooted in images of previous disaster or fear of how the other side might run the country into the ground. 

With these as starting points for the debate, everything that flows forth is defensive against that, and very quickly devolves to the realm of “well, my candidate could beat up your candidate,” and never really touches the issues that each candidate represents and brings to the table.

Social media, though, built partly on the precepts of Wisdom of Crowds should be able to counteract that. We’ve certainly seen that in the past. As I mentioned the other day, 2004’s hallmark online debates were all  factually based and truth was derived from bi-partisan cooperation.

Why Don’t Existing SocNets Do the Job?
From what I can see, whether it’s from the overbearing need for everything to be “open” or because we’re just at cutting edge of the social web and no one’s really thought this out yet, but none of the popular tools really have the implicit catches in place to compensate for these issues.

Take for instance discussion facilitating networks like FriendFeed and Twitter. They are the very epitomizing of Suroweicki’s failure points of homogenization and imitativeness. Follow and friend groupings take place primarily between people of like-mindedness, and the peer pressure to think alike is very high. Those few that do speak out with contrary opinions are easily ganged up on, and once the pile-on starts, the perceived need for those with the majority-held position to back up their words with logic or facts is minimal.

Systems like Digg and YouTube have worked to mitigate these effects with the voting up or down of comments and the discussion points themselves, but due to the populist nature of the system, only the most controversial of topics tend to rise to the top. Elements of controversy commonly walk hand in hand with the disqualifying factors for the wisdom of crowds to truly be applied in an effective manner: emotional or divisive topics. 

Within the Digg and YouTube communities exist sub-communities that make clear an honest debate even harder.  There’s the long fabled “bury brigades” on Digg that group along ideological lines and will bury anything that contradicts their world-view before it has a chance to be seen by a wider audience.  On YouTube, this behavior is best exemplified by the “Twoofer” movement, which will flock to any video with the a keyword relating to 9/11 and effectively dominate any discussion with their talking points and conspiracy theories. Any opposing viewpoints are usually shouted down, buried or marked as spam.

Again, What Can Be Done to Solve It?
I posed the question at the end of my article last Wednesday, and got a number of interesting responses. I agree with Berners-Lee that something must be done, but I’m not particularly convinced that the badge system is the way to go.  Berners-Lee’s wheelhouse these days is Semantic Web, and he’s very big on the idea of using semantics to solve all problems.

The proposed badge system seems very reminiscent of Tipper Gore’s music album ratings system - not effective for what it proposes, and very subject to interpretation. Unless applied ultra-carefully, it could spark as much controversy as the content itself, and applied too carefully, the process could be too bureaucratically complicated to be even as effective as the content ratings system that Microsoft tried to make part of Internet Explorer years ago (remember that?  Probably not, because no one paid any attention to it or submitted their site for review).

For it to actually work requires thought to be put into the system before it’s engineered. I can’t imagine the sort of feat it’s going to take for Kevin and Jay to put the toothpaste back in the tube with Digg and re-align it to something that isn’t simply a more effective tool for spin, PR and propaganda propagation.

Crowd wisdom has this sort of philosophical feel that “cloud computing” does. It’s a catch all term that broadly describes the bulk of what’s produced in the Web 2.0/social media world. I think the best thing that can be done to solve the problem is for a more thorough understanding of crowd wisdom to be kept in mind by those who design these systems in the first place (that is, if they are designing these systems to be anything more than white-noise generators).

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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Google Testing Wisdom of Crowds
Inkling - The Wisdom of Crowds Returns
Vizu - Polls For MySpace, Blogger and TypePad
SocialPicks - Social Stock Picks
Avanoo Emerges from Limited Beta: Aims for 100M Wisdom Deposits
Yahoo! Tech Buzz Game Tests Wisdom of Crowds
Does Digg Pursue Wisdom or Profits?

More recently, Allen Stern stated on FriendFeed “i think sharing on google reader is finished - the value for so many sharers has continued to drop from my perspective” which garnered a number of contrary responses.

The real issue as I see it is that the value offered by various services has not been lessened rather it has been altered since the emergence of mashups with data from multiple services all feeding in to each other.

Isolation

Prior to aggregation services such as FriendFeed we looked at other services in isolation and everything had a set perceived value; you knew exactly what you were getting from your RSS reader or your social networking service.

Now we have aggregation and lifestreaming and it is becoming less clear where the boundaries of any function begin and end.

Distinctions

Lifestreaming is an over used term and is often employed when we really mean aggregation. Lifestreaming is traditionally more a Truman Show type experience (literally your life streamed) rather than aggregation which is the collection of your actions on different services in to one location, but what exactly is our stuff? Is our stream a record of our actions or a share of the content of others?

Are there now distinctions between sharing, aggregation, social bookmarking and the like or have they all merged in to one process? When are you just bookmarking as opposed to sharing? As Alexander said: it’s about your intention but, with the way services like FriendFeed operate, is intention enough?

The social contract

I discussed before about the implied social contract of blogging which has caused a number of arguments over exactly what bloggers owe their audiences and perhaps we should be asking if an implied social contract should extend to the way we utilise sharing and aggregation services.

One aspect of FriendFeed, as an example, causes a big divide in opinion and that is the way in which it handles multiple instances of the same item.

Consider the following scenario:

• User A has their Google Reader and Delicious streams fed in to FriendFeed
• User B has their StumbleUpon and Social Median streams fed in to FriendFeed
• User A shares a specific item in Google Reader and also bookmarks that item in Delicious
• User B stumbles the same item and also clips it on Social Median

Two users have between them now created four instances of the same item within FriendFeed and other users will create further duplication upon sharing the same item.

Is this enabling a wider audience to discuss the same item leading to wider ranges of opinion or is it leading to a fragmentation of the conversation and cluttering peoples streams with useless duplicates?

Intention

With isolated services out intention was clear - we would bookmark something for our own reference or share an item to our link blog but now just about any action we perform becomes a ’share’ if we have our online activities aggregated. This leads to a number of new questions:

• do we share things differently based on where we know the share will be seen?
• does our potential audience affect the actions we take on our subscribed services?
• should we be tailoring our behaviour to our online environment and the community that we are a part of?

Prevously, a single action would have one consequence but with aggregation thrown in to the mix we set off a chain of events. A bookmark or a Digg is no longer just that, it also becomes a share which contributes to the duplication on our aggregation services so should we be asking ourselves whether we need to perform the initial act based on our environment or whether we actually need to have these streams aggregated in the first place?

If a number of our ‘friends’ have shared an item and it already has multiple conversation threads do we hold back so as not to muddy the waters or do we go ahead with the share to boost the item up the rankings of a particular service (ReadBurner for Google Reader shares for example) but at the risk of clogging up our streams with further duplicates?

Is this a conflict of interests? Should we help an item gain more exposure or should we accede to the implied social contract and not clutter the streams of those subscribed to our updates?

Social dilemma or over-analysing?

What do you think?

Related Posts

• Who is our audience and what do we owe them?

Image by Andy Woo.