PassingNotes.com

okay, now this is some cool shit (from new scientist of course, just one more reason to pay top dollar for this pub)….a small firm in the people’s republic of cambridge (massachusetts) called icosystem has been working on software that blends a computer’s ability to search through information with a live sentient person’s ability to direct search activity based on what looks and feels right (aka, ‘a hunch‘)…

from the write-up, “imagine you could plug a computer into your brain and get the machine to do the donkey work while you concentrate on the creative bits…The “hunch engine” blends a computer’s ability to rapidly sift through a large number of possible solutions to a problem with human hunches for what looks or sounds right. Whether you are trying to think up a company name or find the perfect image on the web, the system does the hard work and lets you have all the fun…The algorithm behind the hunch engine was revealed at an emerging technology conference in San Diego, California, this week. Icosystem is now planning to develop the system to evolve better ways of searching the web.”

…right now they’ve been working on images (using flickr tags) and some other interesting stuff, like creating names for things (companies for example) - per the article, “To generate company names, users start by suggesting two words that describe their firm’s commercial focus…engine splits these words into their component sounds, jumbles them up, mutates them by adding randomly selected sounds and then spits out the resulting new set of names…user chooses two favorites to feed back in, and the process is repeated...”

…but if you really wanna geek out, try playing the game at the icosystem web site, it’s a powerful exercise in how intuition can sometimes fail us…oh, and very interesting, they’ve got a vertical solution geared toward recruiters…and uh, hey, why isn’t elgoog doing this? or yahoo? or microsoft? shit, i know jeeves, errrr, i mean ask will never get it, but these other guys are all supposed to be breaking ground, right? ….or are they just buying new ground?

Share This

so you might recall a while back when i was telling you all about the stygian state of callerID spoofing, in which any regular john, jane or mercedes can route a call through to a designated recipient and create any originating number to display on the caller ID box on the other end…who loves this tool? well, hackers for one - they can pretend to be tech support people who need, for example, paris hilton’s password…or bounty hunters who wanna look like they’re calling from the home of a loved one…or rogue researchers from all walks of life…but the positive side is use within the area of private investigation ‘for good, not evil’ - and many of those premium services are off limits to unlicensed investigators (oh, bummer…well, actually, think again)..

it used to be that you needed all sorts of fancy hardware and shit to make this trickery possible, but now a slew of internet based service providers make it simple and fun, and as they like to say, “for entertainment purposes only“….yahoo news just reposted an AP story covering this area and pointed to the growing popularity of two big providers: spooftel (covered them in that earlier article) and spoofcard, the latter of which is particularly interesting as they provide their services via a pre-purchased card and offer some advanced features, including the ability to change your voice as well as record your calls (ouch, can you spell t-r-o-u-b-l-e?)

..funny, spoofcard.com is so ambitious that they’ve even launched a reseller/affiliate program - and it appears that the FCC is way behind the ball on this one - they’re still arguing that, uh, actually nothing - their position isn’t even really clear (you can read some more about this particular issue)…only in alaska, according to the AP piece, is one guy pushing to make spoofing a misdemeanor…does the availability of this kind of service chill your shit? well, ask yourself this question: when you check your mobile phone voice mail, does it automatically play to you when dialing from your own number? exactly….

Share This

okay, so elGoog won’t give the government data on internet porn seekers to support COPA related initiatives, but they let their researchers do this kind of information gathering independently and share the results? i’m soooo confused…according to a bit from new scientist, elGoog scientists maryan kamvar and shumeet baluja analyzed mobile phone search queries to look at porn request patterns and then shared findings…but still zero interest in sending along data to the feds, hmm…we already know that elGoog is finding back doors to profit from porn…

…at any rate, great news for mobile porn entrepreneurs and paris hilton (remember her?)- according to kamvar and baluja, who analyzed over 1 million searches made through elGoog’s mobile search software, “they found that “adult” material constituted 20 per cent of the searches on cellphones, but only 5 per cent on PDAs. Just 8.5 per cent of searches on desktop computers are for adult material.”

…other sources examining their research add salient excerpts that build on this, “The researchers explained: The relatively high percentage of pornographic queries seen in wireless search may be attributed to several factors: Since wireless search is a newer concept than desktop search, it may indeed be following the same trend as with wired searches. The high percentage of pornographic queries may be on a declining curve; only a longitudinal study will verify this.’”

uh, what declining curve is that? slowing growth in mobile phone use? lack of interest in mobile broadband from major domestic carriers? please, spare me the promise of a porn-free world barry and sergio - and get real…apparently people see their cell phones as considerably more private outlets and you have gotta figure out how to place ads on mobile devices before you shrivel up and die on the vine in that channel…

Share This

…i wrote this article for my column (drinking from the fire hose) in Competitive Intelligence Magazine, V8, N5, September/October 2005 - published by the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals …

The Ups and Downs of Elicitation

“Baby stay clean, there’s no in between.� – Elliott Smith

In the CI industry, consultants on the sell side have a proclivity for optimism when it comes to explaining just how good they are at getting competitor’s employees to open up in dialogue. For many on the buy side, collecting intelligence through interviews and elicitation sounds excellent, exciting, perhaps even sexy . . . though insight into the mechanics tends to be obfuscated by abstract dialogue about the big intelligence cycle.

In fact, the process of gathering information through human sources remains a mystery even within SCIP, and elicitation remains a closely guarded secret by those who do this kind of work. There is minimal available training literature, and few consultants are willing to teach the subject. Perhaps things will stay this way for as long as the Rolling Stones continue to tour, but at least we might begin to explore the subject by hammering out the distinct rewards and penalties of this approach.

MANY ARE CALLED, FEW ARE CHOSEN

Though many researchers learn to talk the talk about elicitation, few appear to be walking the walk. Corny, yes, but my point is that those of us within SCIP who maintain fluency in this kind of approach to information gathering are a strange minority, a coterie of researchers with an uncanny ability to cite the entire SCIP code of ethics from memory.

Professionals within corporate CI departments who consider using primary research are often constrained by the nature of their own employment arrangements. In plain language: it is an impropriety for a corporate employee to pick up the phone and elicit sensitive information from an employee of a competitor. This can raise contentious legal issues.

Oddly, a third-party researcher making those same calls would appear to be able to do as he or she pleases (within reason). And so a corporate figure interested in understanding exactly how such an approach might be both good and bad for business is well served by reading this particular column.

THE INTERVIEWER IS AN ELICITOR, BUT ELICITATION IS NOT INTERVIEWING

To clarify all of this, let’s work with a standard definition. Primary research is generally known Read the rest of this entry »

Share This

so my best friend is living in laguna, looking at real estate (make that ‘ridiculously overpriced’ houses) and calls me to tell me about this remarkably accurate real estate data site called zillow …naturally, i was like, “shit, yeah, another one of those find-anything claims followed by slow searches and no results for whatever i want to find out about” ..but lo and behold, this site really does kick ass and puts the entire category to shame…zillow offers free valuations and data for over 60 thousand homes in the united states, and though it’s in beta, their coverage and accuracy continues to grow…

…oh, and right in time given the growth of specialty search engines…i read a great quotable bit in a recent business article where this guy says that search engines will evolve just like cable television, a channel for sports, food, fishing and so on….and we’re already seeing it (for example, you can read about the new search age myrmidons, or you can peruse a detailed bit about the category of job search engines)

…and as for zillow, it really does kick ass - plug in the address for that executive you’re profiling and you can find out what he paid and what his assets are worth, what kinds of taxes are being paid and how the asset stacks up…great for university prospect development researchers, executive search folks or any headhunters dealing with relocation discussions…or, of course, great for really nosy bastards like me who just want to learn more about what those guys at enron are gonna get for their homes when the legal retainers run dry…

Share This