McGee's Musings

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!.

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet (Permalink: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/08/a_sonar_ping_of.html) results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google (or Technorati) for all blogs that participate in this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

* (1) I found this experiment at URL: http://www.zylstra.org/blog/archives/001379.html
* (2) I found it via Newsreader Software or Browsing the Web or Searching the Web or An E-Mail Message”: Newsreader Software
* (3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.mcgeesmusings.net
* (4) I posted this on date (day, month, year): 03/08/04
* (5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 11:10:00
* (6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Chicago, Illinois, USA

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

* (7) My blog is hosted by: olm.net
* (8) My age is: 51
* (9) My gender is: Male
* (10) My occupation is: management consultant
* (11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Radio Userland
* (12) I use the following software to post to my blog: Radio Userland
* (13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 22/10/01
* (14) My web browser is: MyIE2
* (15) My operating system is: Windows XP Pro

[Ton’s Interdependent Thoughts]

Strange Attractor

More good insights to follow.

Strange Attractor.

Suw Charman joins Corante blog family with Strange Attractor (RSS feed) exploring patterns in the blogoshpere:

If you could visually represent the ebb and flow of my thoughts, you’d find a lot of swirly folded patterns emerging. The cause? Blogs – my very own strange attractors.

But blogs have a far wider effect than just making me think in swirly folded patterns, they are perturbing the business world as well. A disruptive technology that is more often than not smuggled in through the back door by evangelist employees, blogs are helping to unite previously scattered communities of interest.

Like instant messaging, blogging is gaining such a strong foothold amongst business users that by the time the management realises they have been infiltrated, they no longer have the power to switch it off. The corporate cat has to sit back and watch as the Trojan Mouse struts its stuff.

Loved the title: although there are not many formulas left in my head from my first degree in mathematical modelling, I still think about the world in terms of strange attractors and bifurcation points 🙂

[Mathemagenic]

The Definition of a Great Blog, Example #1

Kudos to Jack for this endorsement from Dennis Kennedy. Jack used to post great comments on my blog and drop me an email from time to time. I kept twisting his arm to start his own blog, which he finally did about a year ago. Now we all benefit from his insights.

The Definition of a Great Blog, Example #1

I am such a fan of Jack Vinson’s blog, Knowledge Jolt with Jack, which covers knowledge management and work practices.

Here’s how good it is.

Jack writes a post called Annual Ammonia Symposium. Not only do I look at it, but I read it, think about how it might have application to me, and now I am blogging about it.

For me, Knowledge Jolt with Jack is a blog that matters. Jack has earned my confidence and trust with his consistently excellent posts and now I’m ready to follow his interests wherever they lead. That’s a pretty damn good blog.

Today’s example: The Information Snowflake and Snowballs.

New O’Reilly magazine: Make

While I have no time for it, sign me up anyway.

New O’Reilly magazine: Make. Today, at OSCON in Portland, Dale Dougherty and I announced a new O’Reilly magazine called Make. It’ll be a quarterly, full-color magazine filled with fun projects and hardware hacks involving technology. (Dale is the editor and publisher, and I’m the editor-in-chief. Thanks to BB’s own John Battelle for getting me involved!)

Make will have 5-minute tips you can use to improve your gadgets, networks, and computers, as well as much longer projects that might take several days (or weeks) to complete. The first issue is coming out in January. If you’re interested, visit the web site and sign up for the newsletter. I’ll also be running the Make blog on that page. I hope that a lot of BB readers become Make contributors, too. Please send me your ideas for hacks, tips, tricks, workarounds, neat things to build, useful tools, etc. Link [Boing Boing]

Adams on Murphy

The corollary here is that the harder something is to get at or repair, the more likely that it will fail at an inopportune moment.

Adams on Murphy. Adams on Murphy —

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”
— Douglas Adams (1952 – 2001), Mostly Harmless

(From Quotes of the Day – The Quotations Page.) [Frank Patrick’s Focused Performance Blog]

Dvorak on disruptive technology

John Dvorak has just discovered Clay Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma and figures it’s a good excuse for a rant. Like many who’ve used it as a launching pad for their own purposes, there isn’t a lot of evidence that Dvorak has bothered to read the book. Here’s Dvorak’s conclusion:

The concept of disruptive technology is not the only daft idea floating around to be lapped up obediently by the business community. There are others. But the way these dingbat bromides go unchallenged makes you wonder whether anyone can think independently anymore

Including Dvorak I suppose.

But then he isn’t really interested in advancing the dialog, just in getting us to read and link to his columns. Traditional media at its best.

I still think the Innovator’s Dilemma and its companion The Innovator’s Solution are easily among the best business books written in the past 10 years. But you do have to read them and then think about what they say. Sorry about that.

The Myth of Disruptive Technology. People love a good, unified explanation for the ways things are. [PC Magazine: the Official John C. Dvorak RSS Feed]

Mind Mapping for Results

Looks interesting. I’ve been a long-time proponent of mindmaps and a user of MindManager for a while now. I’ve downloaded the trial version. We’ll see where it leads.

Mind Mapping for Results.
I’ve just finished the second of two delightful and informative web-conference calls with Nick Duffill of Gyronix. Nick and his associate have developed ResultManager – a powerful add-in to MindManager that allows it to be used as a visual project management tool. I must admit that I had initially looked at ResultManager as just a great collection support tool; however…
[Eric Mack On-Line]

Denham on Anywhere – Anytime knowledge??

Once again, Denham is spot on in his analysis. This is another instance of where organizations engage in magical thinking in lieu of the real thinking needed to tackle how to improve the way they support and leverage knowledge work.

Anywhere – Anytime knowledge??. Many organizations have pinned their hopes on delivery of knowledge anywhere, anytime, just-in-time. Time to share some thoughts: In many ways, this latent desire parallels the technology vs. people schism in KM. Almost all the talk and writings are about… [Knowledge-at-work]