mostly research stuff
now this is a strange ass idea…cellphedia is trying to get people to share their gray matter via cellphones, but they seem to have forgotten that we americans are (usually) paying to send and receive those short messages (aka ‘sms’)…it’s the brainchild (a bastard child no less!) of a thesis project created by limor garcia in his grad program at nyu, billing itself as the “the first ubiquitous social encyclopedia“…basic idea: create or join a group and then send around your questions and answers - kind of like yahoo or elGoog groups, but without those pesky penis enlargement ads…
from the site, “cellphedia is a cell phone application that promotes the sharing of knowledge. It allows users to send and receive encyclopedia-type inquiries between specific, pre-defined groups of users, through Text messaging. Users can register on this site and start building the quick-reference Cellphedia-type encyclopedia entries, by asking other users and answering other users’ questions where-ever cell phone service is available.”
if you’d like to see an example of what people ask about and what people have to say in return, take a look at the archives, which act as the “point of the project” (for example: “why do tennis balls have yellow fuzz?” answer: “!257 the optic yellow color is the most visible color especially on tv”)…
so yeah, limor will be waxing poetic about cellphedia at wikimania (the first big wikimedia conference, don’t you know?)….and he’s gotten some recent mob attention to boot…but as you might suspect, i’ve got some concerns with this thing…it’s supah-clevah, but we’ve already learned from elGoog’s sms service for mobile users that (as mentioned above) people are not really inclined to add cost back to using the internet for research (again, we’re all paying for sms..message to cellular carriers: wake up today or lose us all tomorrow to the first totally free sms option)..
this blog is mostly safe for work, though i sometimes throw around a 'fuck' or two. you'll find a bunch of my articles from CI Magazine, SCIP online, other research pieces and some other crap. enjoy. there's lost of content here related to getting information about, around, from and through people and organizations...
Shree
August 2nd, 2005 at 9:31 am
Limor Garcia is a “She”…not a “He”…that was quite funny!
Penis Blog
August 3rd, 2005 at 1:51 am
Mobile Encyclopedia
The last thing anyone needs is penis enlargement ads on their mobile….