Monthly Archives: August 2011

Google plus and real names: filtering users based on their intentions

Posted on August 30, 2011 by eloone
g+

g+

This morning the topic of G+ and real names was buzzing because of  Eric Smidth’s statement:

If You Don’t Want To Use Your Real Name, Don’t Use Google+

See the source on Mashable.

It’s funny that I read that article this morning because it directly relates to the book review I had just written about “The myths of innovation”. If you read that article, you’ll see that I was reporting my breakthrough about “good” and “bad” technology. I had found that “good” or “bad” technology happens because of users’ actions, and you can’t prevent users from using badly a technology because you can’t control users’ intentions. No application can filter its users according to their intentions (no application can read your mind, yet). Well, apparently I was wrong because that’s exactly what G+ name policy is trying to do. The article reports that Eric Smidth said:

would be better if we knew you were a real person rather than a dog or a fake person. Some people are just evil and we should be able to ID them and rank them downward.

which implies that “using fake name” => “has bad intentions” => filter.

G+ is not a creative tool

For me G+ name policy just means that G+ is clearly not destined to be a creative tool. It’s rather meant to Continue reading →

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Book review: The myths of innovation by Scott Berkun

Posted on August 29, 2011 by eloone
The myths of innovation

The myths of innovation - Scott Berkun, O'reilly

So I read this book “The myths of innovation” by Scott Berkun a few weeks ago, and I’m going to review it now to see what I learned from it.

As the title suggests, the book aims at clearing all the myths we usually believe in when it comes to innovation. The book is not a history book, so it doesn’t tell the story of innovations one by one to detail how they happened. It’s rather like a long blog article, with anecdotes about some innovations and interesting insights about what innovations imply, and how they happen realistically.

Context and influence

What I retained from the book is that innovations depend a lot on the context of a period, the innovator’s network and personality, historians, journalists… Continue reading →

Posted in Inspiration, Books

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Hej Stockholm !

Posted on August 21, 2011 by eloone

Sweden’s sky and sun = the origin of Sweden’s flag

So I went to Stockholm for 5 days. I wanted to go there since last year, and recently I realized nothing was stopping me. So I went.

This time I learned from last experience in Cologne and played it old fashioned 20th century style: I bought a travel guide. Also since last time Gmaps upgraded with the offline mode, so I took the opportunity to test it in real life conditions and pre-cached the Stockholm map before leaving. To complete my serious preparation, I also stored a lot of information in the form of pdfs, notes, etc. in my phone to avoid carrying any form of paper (…other than the guide and …passport). Finally, there was nothing particularly technological about my holidays (20th century style) but I’d like to highlight these discoveries: the nobel prize, museums in Stockholm and the “lagom” principle that very much inspired me.

 ***

But first, let’s debrief about how I improved the logistics of my holidays by mentally accepting that there is no such thing as a global knowledge resource available from anywhere and anytime.

Continue reading →

Posted in Favourites, Inspiration, Discoveries, Stories, Travels, U.I, U.X

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