Internet is a Good Word

Gmail (Google) will be rolling out ‘Priority Inbox‘ sorting in the coming weeks to help users determine which emails are most important and should be answered first.

This service works based on emails that a user reads and replies to most often. Priority Inbox learns a user’s preferences and delivers their interests. It is part of a coming wave of intelligent machines. Google, for example, has started scanning books, not necessarily to be read by people, but by machines to create a more knowledgeable machine.

This is happening now, and I believe there is an inherit flaw in the way prediction software is thought about. Although, I am no expert. It comes down to the idea that calibrating results based on preference may induce an echo chamber effect, helping lead to a more insular society.

That is to say, the algorithm seems to be based on what the user believes is important, but what if the user’s preference is wrong? Not in a ‘their ideas are wrong,’ but maybe in the sense that a person can never know what they truly need. Or, maybe they never realized a sphere of knowledge existed (very common in our diversity of people) . For example, my father has recently been talking about block time management and being a ’slave to email.’ It is interesting to think about if these personalized algorithms will reinforce bad habits and behavior or serve as a gentle nudge in the other direction.

Netflix, for example, has been holding a competition to improve its recommendations for movies (source). While the algorithm is designed to give an oddball every now and then, we see that this methodology could quickly become an echo chamber. It’s nice to have a computer’s help, but you have to wonder at what point the machine is thinking for you.

I believe it comes down to the principle that a machine is only as good as its operator.

In other news: Starting in January, I will be starting a business based on my existing freelance career. I will probably do something different with this site, although it is on the back burner at the moment. Technical walk troughs have been the most popular, so one of my goals is to increase the coverage of that here.

I’ve been getting into some JQuery lately and will be posting some slideshow code I’ve built. First, though – learning Python and Django has been something new to play with for the past few days. I ran into a problem getting Django to work with a database. The rest was pretty straight-forward, so if you’re looking to get Python updated and Django installed, check out this article: Install Django Official Release

MySQL vs SQLite3

I first tried MySQL because I am fairly familiar with it and it is pretty ubiquitous, but while MySQL appears simple to install at first, I ran into a few crazy errors:

• ERROR 1133 (42000): Can’t find any matching row in the user table
• django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Error loading MySQLdb module: No module named MySQLdb
• error: command ‘gcc-4.2′ failed with exit status 1

The first was solved by connecting to MySQL as ‘root’@'localhost’ – ok, great.

The second appears that for some reason Python in OS X does not include the module for MySQL. – Uhhh, well, there was this resource to install it.

Finally, I had gcc (a C compiler) installed with XCode, it was version 4.2.1, but my only explanation was it wasn’t working because it was the 64bit version and I have a 32bit Macbook.

Ok, ok ok. That’s 4 hours down the drain.

Let’s try SQLite3: This article was helpful for this part.

1. Open Terminal and see that SQLite3 comes installed
2. $ sqlite3
3. If yes, then (why did we mess with MySQL?)
4. .exit (that’s dot exit to quit back to terminal)
5. cd /your/django/project/ (or near it)
6. $ sqlite3 mydatabase.db; (don’t forget the semi-colon)
7. .databases (to verify creation and path)
8. In your project’s settings.py, use ‘django.db.backends.sqlite3′ and ‘/your/django/project/mydatabase.db’
9. Run python manage.py syncdb
10. Success!

If you found this helpful, please visit a sponsor and get me some of that google money. Also, check out this book for learning Django – I’m using it now and can recommend it: Sams Teach Yourself Django in 24 Hours.

I’ll be attending the UGAConnect conference (today) and have had a hard time sleeping tonight. Figured it’d be good to post something about what I’ve been working on. Who knows if a future employer will be looking.

Wuog.org launched a website with new architecture – Wordpress MU. With the help of some automated recording and uploading, DeeJays can display show recordings and show notes in around 10 minutes.

The new school semester is going well; it’s definitely my most challenging year.

The article about backing up Time Machine to a networked windows drive is due for and update to address notes made in the comments and to update the instructions for Snow Leopard.

The article about my chances of catching H1N1 needs to be updated because 1) Chances have raised significantly and 2) H1N1 circulated around the UGA campus, and I may or may not have contracted swine flu.

More recent in time and therefore personally relevant, my first shift at the Daily Co-Op was yesterday (Friday). I learned how to use a cash register (old-school). If you’re visiting Athens, Ga and interested in the food movement, you should pay them a visit.

Finally, I’ve decided my Halloween costume for this year – Bee Keeper!

Round um’ up!

Found lots of neat things on the internet today.

Video / Data from the Huygens probe decending onto Titan, a Saturn moon

This is a vertical park that incorporates crops, solar panels and meeting areas. Click for the full-sized image.

via space invading

“Musings on life, love and the Internet” had gotten stale and no longer described the purpose this website is serving.

With posts like the Swine Flu and NTSF backups for Time Machine getting popular, I want to focus content more on one-off sort of mashups. I like the idea of throwing stuff out there and seeing what sticks.

The phrase “Internet is a good word” applies to my general feelings on the Internet and could eventually be used as a name to do website design under.

This paper was the culmination of a semester in Speech Comm. 3300, a rhetorical critisism class. The paper conducts a full rhetorical analysis of Walmart’s new logo by describing the context of the act (the logo change), how the materiality of the store is associated, and the effect the overall experience has on the consumer.

Comments are highly encouraged. I’ve been asked to enter it into the southern states communication association (SSCA) convention writing competition and will likely do so around September. Comments will likely be used for this revision.

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Save Money. Live Better. Hypermart
“The hypermarket is already. . . the model of all future forms of controlled socialization: retotalization in a homogenous space-time of all the dispersed functions of the body, and of social life (work, leisure, food, hygiene, transportation, media, culture)” (Baudrillard p. 76).

In July of 2008, “Wal-mart” changed to “Walmart” – an unremarkable change by most standards, but Walmart’s rebranding efforts is not something the company took lightly. The visual logo of the world’s largest retailer is a calculated piece of rhetoric meant to persuade (Demos). Through this one image Walmart reveals its desires to project a persona. The repeated, unconscious and almost inescapable viewing of the logo makes it a powerful rhetorical device.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two interesting happenings:

1) My Chances of Contracting Swine Flu got a number of hits from Google and continues to do so. I’ve updated it to be relevant and more informative for those who find it.

2) I contracted Swine Flu this last weekend. Probably not. I got very sick with an upper respiratory infection that spread to my lungs. It spread very quickly and has now all but gone away now.

There are currently 3349 people in the US that have contracted swine flu.

There are also 303 million people in the US.

My chances of contracting swine flu are: .001105%

Updated March 11, 2009

Hopefully this number gives some perspective. There is also a great interactive map where you can check for local swine flu.