Midnight posty

[da]

My brain is going a mile a minute, which is frustrating because it's well after midnight. I'm thinking about: work, upcoming visits (from a cousin, and hopefully to Ithaca), and random this-and-that.

One theme to the random is "the web as open-source organizer of ideas"...

I know lots of people who blog ideas with the hope people will jump on them. I do, and occasionally I browse websites devoted to the topic. Halfbakery was cool, but it seems mostly moribund these days. A friend pointed me at a brand-new site hosted by Reddit called SomebodyMakeThis, which made me smile. Seeing it reminded me long ago (2003? gawd!) I had posted this page of ideas. Most of which are embarrassingly quaint. "email with tags"- sure sounds like gmail; "fuzzy GPS via cell towers"- hey, google did that too, for gmaps on my phone; "video driving directions so you know what you're looking for"- I'd rather have street view, thanks google! And in 2003 I didn't anticipate GPS devices adding 3-d views (a feature I've never particularly liked, it turns out.)

On the other hand, I would still like to have "Email-sorting software." I could appreciate a gmail-sifter to find patterns in my mail: suggesting new labels, perhaps identifying things I consistently leave in the inbox instead of filing (and for what reasons?) In the end, I don't think the sifter, itself, would come up with the best patterns on its own: this would need to generalize the patterns as rules, which you could share with others, and collectively figure out which rules are useful.
And, somehow, not build Clippy for Gmail.

My apologies if reading this has put you to sleep. There may be a conservation of awakeness at work.

*sigh*

Comments

[cypherpunk95.livejournal.com]

Brad Templeton (UW, Clari.net, EFF, and a bunch of other stuff) has one I read now and again. http://ideas.4brad.com/ It's all just his own posts, though.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Heh. Like I needed another cool feed to read. ...OHAI 4brad. Nicetameetcha.

I particularly liked PETA prize should start with eggs and dairy.

[thingo.livejournal.com]

I really like the blog Ironic Sans. It's a bunch of creative stuff, including occasional clever ideas.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Love, love, love his stuff.

[beartalon.livejournal.com]

Insomnia sucks. I read this the first time at 4AM. I was not experiencing insomnia. Just after supper, I felt an incredible sleepiness, and went to bed at 7:30, waking up at 1AM, and staying awake until 4:30. Now I'm up again and working.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Sigh. ANd here I am up and not sleepy at midnight. I was up at 6:30! I should be sleepy! *grump*

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

Gmail is already looking at your mail and pretty accurately figuring out what is junk mail and what ads to show you. This seems like an easy extension of that. I hope Mr. Google reads your blog!

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Yes, they could do that.

Except that they probably don't want the perception that they are tilting your recommendations or auto-filters in order to sell you stuff. It would require some fairly firm "we're not evil" policies that intuitively seem very difficult to set up.

And that sort of "deep" knowledge probably would make people even more suspicious than they currently are. For example, I don't have the perception that they look at more than a certain thread in order to choose ads. (this may be incorrect, but it would be patently false if they were selling ads related to tag titles.)

Still. I wonder what it would look like if they *did*.