Sniff browser history for improved user experience

Posted on February 5, 2008 by mfagan

Sniff browser history for improved user experience – Niall turns what was first revealed as sort of a web browser privacy problem, into a pretty neat feature. Depending on your perspective, this is either very elegant or very inelegant 😉

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EveryBlock: A news feed for your block.

Posted on January 26, 2008 by mfagan

EveryBlock: A news feed for your block. – if anyone actually follows my del.icio.us bookmarks, you’ll notice how interested I am in the hyperlocal. While EveryBlock has very limited coverage today (three US cities), it may be the closest yet to what I am thinking towards.

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The Map Room: Toronto’s Language Quilt

Posted on January 6, 2008 by mfagan

The Map Room: Toronto’s Language Quilt – really neat map by the Toronto Star.

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how to get people to do stuff

Posted on December 31, 2007 by mfagan

I’m not going to get into all the aspects of the issue, just wanted to make one point.

To improve success at getting people to do stuff, you need to show them the consequences of their actions. Maybe that sounds obvious, but is it? It needs to be direct, personal, and specific, so that it hits peoples’ hearts and minds. Even if it is (almost) a lie; for example those adopt-a-third-world-child programs. While your donations help the lives of a third-world community, I very much doubt that they benefit only the child you have “adopted,” leaving neighbouring children in the dust.

To take a specific example, blood donation, which is in my mind since I recently did so for the first time, and it was being discussed on the radio yesterday. If you got a phone call today from someone who told you that your specific donation was the one that saved their life… do you think that would change your likelihood of giving again?

hmmn… feeling Godin-like now

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dougmccune.com » Blog Archive » Not Your Mamma’s Maps

Posted on December 28, 2007 by mfagan

dougmccune.com » Blog Archive » Not Your Mamma’s Maps – a very slick app for browsing geospatial data. Their screencast shows input through a geoRSS feed, but I am guessing that will not be freely available. Via Mikel.

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Long Bet Winner: Weblogs vs. The New York Times | Workbench

Posted on December 20, 2007 by mfagan

Long Bet Winner: Weblogs vs. The New York Times | Workbench – this is rather amusing. I remember back in 2002 when Dave Winer made this bet for 2007, a date which seemed impossibly far away. Of course, nowadays the “we” in weblogs is almost always dropped.

The conclusion is that technically blogs beat the New York Times, but at any rate Wikipedia beat both.

Via Sam.

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mySociety » Blog Archive » Please Donate to help us expand TheyWorkForYou

Posted on December 20, 2007 by mfagan

mySociety » Blog Archive » Please Donate to help us expand TheyWorkForYou – mySociety does fantastic work. Unfortunately for me, it is mostly UK- and Eurocentric, but hopefully they’ll get some volunteers from elsewhere over time.

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Path Intelligence Monitors Foot Traffic in Retail Stores By Pinging People’s Phones

Posted on December 14, 2007 by mfagan

Path Intelligence Monitors Foot Traffic in Retail Stores By Pinging People’s Phones – this is actually fairly cool. not all analytics have to be online-based.

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Pattern Finder: Standards Work Doesn’t Have to Be Contentious

Posted on December 11, 2007 by mfagan

Pattern Finder: Standards Work Doesn’t Have to Be Contentious – I’ll second that. DeWitt has been doing great work with OpenSearch.

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Ask.com Unveils Search Privacy Tool: Users Control Their Search Data

Posted on December 10, 2007 by mfagan

Ask.com Unveils Search Privacy Tool: Users Control Their Search Data – Ask.com has been making smart moves, for the most part. Being in fourth place, the onus is on them to differentiate themselves and take risks.

Privacy specifically, I think has, just in the last few months, finally hit mainstream consciousness. More and more “normal” are telling me about their online privacy fears.

In a related vein, Facebook really screwed up, and I’m not sure they’re done screwing up. I praised them a lot in some recent blog posts… it never occurred to me that they could have possibly not learned any lessons from when they released newsfeeds and minifeeds.

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