Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Wednesday Stanford Lecture: Peter Kollock on Social Dilemmas. Social Dilemmas and the Mythic Narratives that Frame Collective Action is the subject of Peter Kollock's lecture for tomorrow's "Toward a Literacy of Cooperation" class at Stanford. Outside participants are welcome. Can you do me a favor? If you can't view the video of the first lecture, please leave a comment here that describes any difficulty you have, your OS, browser, your approximate geographical location, and kind of Internet connection. Quicktime only -- but it should run on Windows as well as Mac. It sounds like a lot of work, I know -- but we want to be sure that people beyond Palo Alto will be able to view and hear the lectures. It's too big to post here, but here's a first draft map of the cooperation studies landscape. [Smart Mobs] 9:58:09 PM    comment []

Press release: "Apple today announced it has teamed up with Mercedes-Benz USA, Volvo, Nissan, Alfa Romeo and Ferrari to deliver iPod integration with their car stereo systems in 2005." [Scripting News] 9:57:56 PM    comment []

Gene Association Studies Typically Wrong: Reproducible gene-disease associations are few and far between. By Jack Lucentini, in The Scientist. Experiences like Crocq's, in which follow-up studies overturn an initial finding of a gene-disease association, are strikingly common, researchers say. Two recent studies found that typically, when a finding is first published linking a given gene with a complex disease, there is only roughly a one-third chance that studies will reliably confirm the finding. When they do, they usually find the link is weaker than initially estimated. The first finding is usually either spurious, or it is true, but it happens to be really exaggerated, says Tom Trikalinos of the University of Ioannina, Greece. Worse, he found that there may be no way to predict which new gene-association studies will be verified with multiple replication. Trikalinos and other researchers are working to understand why so many studies can't be replicated, and how to change this. The problem is pressing because current trends could exacerbate it, says Sholom Wacholder, senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health biostatistics branch in Bethesda, Md. New high-throughput analysis techniques, he explains, let researchers study many gene-disease associations quickly and cheaply, but also lead to more studies on associations that don't look especially likely at a study's outset. This tends to increase the likelihood of finding spurious links through chance occurrences. By contrast, he says, In the old days, it was a big investment to study a hypothesis, and only the best candidates had a shot. Nice illustrations in this piece, too. This is a case where computing technology facilitates a fishing expedition in the data, yielding situations such as Bill James described in his Baseball Abstract essay, "Drumbeats," (I think that's the right one) in the 1980's. 2:38:16 PM    comment []

A Benton Headline: FIVE GIANTS THAT DECIDE WHAT WE SEE It's simple math. For a new show to launch in syndication, advertisers demand that it be sold in the top three markets: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. But to get a syndicated product cleared in these markets requires the participation of one of five major station groups: NBC, ABC, Viacom, Fox and Tribune. "The 'five families' do control the landscape of syndication," says John Nogawski, president of Paramount Domestic Television. "If they decide a show should return, it's just one less place a new show can really get launched." Some station groups that aren't quite the size of the five giants are upping their hours of local news, figuring it is better for their stations to do more local programming than to suffer with subpar syndicated product. The new local shows include advertiser-supported segments. "The industry is trending back to localism," says on station manager. "Doing local shows like this under the old format, relying solely on advertising that came during the breaks, would be too difficult. This way, you can create a greater revenue stream and still put on a product that people care about seeing. Then you can overcome the hurdle that has always been in the way of producing more local programming." [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Paige Albiniak] (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers) 12:37:56 PM    comment []

Your Call (and Rants on Hold) Will Be Monitored. The message, "This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes," is so common that many callers assume no one is listening. But they would be wrong. By KEN BELSON. [NYT > Technology] 7:09:46 AM    comment []

Double Smart Mobs day: Parking Lot Indicatr -- distributed (photo) market intelligence. Parking Lot Indicatr combines a couple smartmobby elements: People with camphones moblog pix of the parking lots of publicly traded companies to Flickr. (Thanks, Ross!) Off-hour parking lot density is a leading indicator of stock performance. Post pictures of parking lots of publicly traded companies anytime except 9to5 M-F. Bonus points for including the day, time, stock symbol and last close in the description of the photo. Private companies and VC firms are also prey for discovery. Here's a little story on how this got started. [Smart Mobs] 7:05:25 AM    comment []

The Secret Lives of Just About Everybody. Psychologists say that most normal adults are well equipped to start a secret life and that keeping a secret is a key to healthy development. By BENEDICT CAREY. [NYT > Science] Two things going on in this piece: that secrets play a role in identity formation (you need to learn to keep some secrets in order to have a self at all), but also various dimensions of large-scale secret keeping and identity (what's involved in having two lives (or more), once secret from those involved in the other). It doesn't bring the two threads together that well, but I'm convinced that secrecy is important in that first way described, and this piece is a decent jumping in place. 7:05:00 AM    comment []

Real World Doesn't Use a Joystick. As video games get more and more involved, people are finding it difficult to switch their brains back to reality. By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News] 6:57:16 AM    comment []

NWN IN '04: A LEVER TO MOVE THE CIVIC-MINDED. Second Life as an educational tool, as a therapeutic and research medium, and as a medium for raising funds for various non-profit causes, as featured in New World Notes for 2004*... - A LEVER TO MOVE THE MIND (A... [New World Notes] 6:57:15 AM    comment []

Wifi technology is shifting power away from traditional carriers. For wireless coverage across the entire city Philadelphia chose a wireless "mesh" system, which allows the Wi-Fi cells to provide continuous coverage by sending data to each other. The usual architecture has each hot spot connecting back to a central switch or router. The mesh concept is a popular way of delivering affordable broadband to urban communities. Ultimately, you don't pay companies for phone lines when you can do it yourself. More than 100 communities worldwide are using mesh technology in some way. Mesh can cover a whole town for just $16 per user, half the price of the local digital subscriber line broadband technology provided by many phone companies. Municipal mesh networks could prove a real threat to the regional companies that dominate local phone service in the United States because the mesh networks can carry low-price voice calls using VOIP, or voice over Internet protocol. The telecom industry "lobbied aggressively" to prevent cities from offering noncommercial broadband services. Philadelphia's $10 million project clashed with a plan by the governor of Pennsylvania, to speed the adoption of broadband Internet access across the state by providing financial incentives for telecommunications companies. read original article by Robert Clark in the Herald Tribune International of Monday January 10 [Smart Mobs] 6:53:31 AM    comment []