eponymousX

I Love Word Clouds

Brian Caldwell — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:32:24 +0000

Ever since the tag cloud became part of the UI existence, I’ve been fascinated with the visual representation of ideas via dynamic word interfaces. I just like words.

With Wordle.net you can create interesting word visualizations from a few simple inputs.

Input options include:
1. Entering a group of words that you hand pick
2. Entering an ATOM or RSS URL
3. Providing your Delicious.com username

It took seconds to create these clouds:

Me on Delicious.com

wordle.net - delicious.com word cloud

The Web 2.0 Expo

Web 2.0 Expo Word Cloud

I can see myself using this simple tool when creating presentations or posting online.

Social Weavers – How Do You Define Attention?

Brian Caldwell — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 03:32:04 +0000

We interweave every day, application to application, to web page, etc. Yet we don’t just VISIT something, we DO something, we have intent, purpose, machinations even.

We can track certain aspects of this weaving, we can try to label that tracking as “attention”, but it’s not really. Attention involves more than the process of weaving our lives together, we have a mind with synapses that form on new concepts and apply thought to determine a desired outcome.

Interestingly, attention can be defined as a courteous act indicating affection; “she tried to win his heart with her many attentions”

In many ways this applies to the landscape created by the disparate parts of our online social interaction.

We try to influence the external world of people places and things by our presence; when online our digital ghost provides an influencing framework through a continually contextual presence interacting with our social wake and bow wave. Our acts of attempted influence is our attention, just as much as our attention, when speaking in the language of quantum physics, creates our reality.

Google Blog Alerts can defeat Live Journal’s privacy settings?

Brian Caldwell — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:54:50 +0000

Today I was reviewing my Google Blog Alerts and spotted a posting that surprised me. I was surprised because the post obviously may have an impact on the person who posted it because it contains some sensitive information that could have negative ramifications if it were made public.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

I was curious, so I clicked to visit the Live Journal page that Google had obviously crawled. I logged in using my OpenId, but was stopped from viewing the post via Live Journals privacy settings on the post.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Now I’m wondering how Google was able to see the post, why they would crawl private posts at all and how this might impact users if it were made public. So I’m making it public. What do you think of this revelation?