gregword

Ross is the man; I’ve been loving his weekly posts summarizing the weekly goings-on of the DC tech community. Now he’s taken it one step further: DC Tech Events Weekly, a site dedicated to summarizing the next 7 days of what’s happening in DC tech stuff. Simply awesome.

And check this, Ross goes into a bit more detail on the inner-workings of DC Tech Events:

In January I posted about an idea I called the “Editorial Calendar Aggregator“, but I hadn’t really connected it to any particular task I needed such a tool to accomplish….Things started to fall into place after I set up a database and a thin web interface to edit events with. Now I find myself almost there– The system currently pulls in event data from 21 different groups automatically, and I can annotate the events that come in as I see fit. I want to support a few more calendar formats, add an approval queue (so I can subscribe to more general event streams, like searches from Upcoming.org and Eventful, without accepting every event), and publish in one or more forms of output that are actually reusable, but none of those things are much of a leap from what I have now.

I’m hoping to have some time to play around with the Netflix recommendation data, time permitting. The terms stipulate that one can’t use proprietary thrid-party information, which I’m hoping just means that you can’t attempt to force Netflix to buy something you’re selling to work your solution.

To me, the biggest problem with Netflix recommendations (and I’m quite obsessive about filling them out) is that they will often include a lot of stuff that is related to a movie I rated, but not really related to why I liked the movie. So, if I say I like Caddyshack, the presumption is that I like the original goofball comedies, when really I just like Bill Murray. This is where having access to my blog (or blogs) would come in extremely handy, because I’ve probably said as much at one point or another in some old post that would really help narrow down the recommendation and pinpoint what aspects of a flick I find interesting.

I did think of alternative recommendation solution that I think would pretty much work regardless of the user. Here’s how it works:

1. User rates any movie.
2. Netflix asks: “OK, have you seen The Shawshank Redemption?”

Some good (and informed) discussion going on over at Greg Linden’s blog.

Now is a good time to be getting into podcasting. You’re market is going to get a whole lot bigger.

Will you be able to purchase an iPod at the Ford dealership? There’s two demographics that just totally clash. Why are you buying a Ford to begin with?
I can’t figure out why the auto companies aren’t developing WiFi-enabled stereos that sync with your home computer when you pull into your driveway.
Please, for the love of all that is sacred and good in this world, let this be done in an open fashion, so that other MP3 players can hook in as well. Is that too much to ask? Have we learned nothing? Probably.
Meanwhile, iTunes is still completely unusable.

Gabe’s in town. Circle the wagons.

On a related note: am I the only one who sees “techmeme” as “Tech-Me-Me?”

Via FeedBlog: VisitorVille is a three-dimensional web traffic visualization app.

Reminds me of the scene from Jurassic Park where the hacker girl Lex saves the day by using a 3D filesystem navigator to lock out the hungry velociraptors. While typical Hollywood copmuter user interfaces often resemble Flash apps geared towards teenagers, in this case, they used an actual product: FSN (pronouced ‘fusion’), a freeware app available from SGI.

The web traffic app looks cool, but as for filesystem navigation, I’ll take a shell prompt any day of the week. Especially if velociraptors are involved. ;)

Fusion might be the single most overused product name/marketing device, almost always used as a way to connote the merging of functionality from disparate applications, often resulting from media/market concerns over a organizations lack of focus or vision. A few notable examples: Google Fusion, Oracle Fusion and, the one I’ve had the most experience with, Aether Fusion. I’m sure there are a hundred others.