Monthly Archives: October 2007

Google: “All your network are belong to us”

This is huge, singularity is approaching fast! From Google OpenSocial To Launch Thursday:

Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. And if they pull it off, they’ll be in the center, controlling the network.

Great comment by Alex to the post:

On the other hand ALL the social networking sites will now have to open up otherwise they will lose members.

What Google proposed is, I guess since the details will be revealed tomorrow, a simple API with a minimal set of methods, something that thousands of entities (programmers, startups, companies) could have done in a similar way. The challenge is not too much technical. The challenge is social: if Google proposes an OpenSocial API, it will get adopted in seconds, if some unknown entity propose the very same API, nobody will notice it. What is happening is that Google is quickly becoming the globally recognized entity in charge or defining the evolution of the Web: Google is quickly taking the role of W3C that, according to Wikipedia, is “the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3).”

Title of the post? See All your base are belong to us page on wikipedia.

Recommender Systems conference in Minneapolis

I’ll be in Minneapolis for the Recommender Systems 2007 from October 18th until October 22nd presenting a paper titled Trust-aware Recommender Systems which is a summary of a part of my PhD thesis. I’ll be hosted by Renee, couchsurfing as usual. If you are around and would like to discuss anything, let me know, k? See you soon, on the other side of the pond!

Links for 2007 10 13

The end of corruption, brought to you by Lawrence Lessig and powered by millions of us

Lawrence Lessig is a genious. He decided to dedicate the next 10 years on ending corruption (after spending the past 10 years on reframing copyright issues), there is really an hope that a vast movement will self-aggregate around him and got an unstoppable momentum. After watching his tv interview (embedded below), I’m really optimistic a solution to this plague can be found.

Links for 2007 10 06