Rating and reputation in scholarly publication

We discuss systems for rating and reputation. Such systems are common in e-commerce and social networks, and we are beginning to see them in scholarly publishing.

I have posted a number of the articles I've written on my Web site, but do not track downloads or citations. Today I received an email from a journal stating:

As a service to our authors, we are pleased to provide you with a monthly report tracking readership for your article "A Framework for Assessing the Global Diffusion of the Internet":

9 full-text downloads between 2008-12-02 and 2009-01-02 29 full-text downloads since date of posting (2008-09-03).

This count came from a service of Berkeley Electronic Press, and you can read about their methodology here.

Citations are also used as a measure of the value of an academic paper, and Google Scholar provides citation counts. If I go to Google Scholar, I see that the above article has been cited by others 77 times.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the most important professional society in my field, and they also report scholarly metrics for articles in their journals and conference proceedings. You can query the ACM database and see the number of times an article has been cited by other ACM authors and the number of downloads during the past six weeks and during the past year.

These are "walled gardens." For example, ACM does not keep records on the article mentioned above because it was not in one of their publications -- they only record downloads and citations of ACM publications by ACM members. Still, they are valuable first steps in using electronic reputation systems to assess scholarly contributions.

Would you consider the rating of scholarly writing in deciding whether to take a class from a particular professor? Would you consider the student-contributed ratings at a site like Rate my professors?

New storage technologies replace old ones

In our discussion of progress in storage technology, we saw that large improvements occur when new methods of storing bits -- of differentiating ones from zeros -- are invented. Early computers used punched cards in which a one was recorded by punching a hole in a particular position on the card:

We no longer use holes in cards, but have moved to microscopic magnetized spots or pits on the surface of a rotating disk for storage. These are now being replaced by flash memory for some applications.

Researchers are always looking for new ways to differentiate between ones and zeros, and this article mentions several technologies that may take over for flash drives one day.

Do you remember computers with punched card, magnetic tape, or floppy disk storage? Does your mp3 player use a rotating disk or a flash drive for storage? Large flash drives are becoming available -- will your next laptop have a hard disk or a flash drive? What advantages would a flash drive have in a laptop? What disadvantages?

Two cool audio processing demos

We begin our discussion of audio processing with examples of speech recognition and synthesis.

I've just added two examples you might want to play around with. The first is a voice synthesis demonstration that combines text-to-speech with avatar facial animation. The second is Google's yellow page application, Goog411, which can look up a business phone number and place a call, display a map or send text information. (Goog411 is designed for mobile or desktop use).

Try the speech synthesizer. Can you understand it if someone else enters the text? Does the pronunciation change if you end a sentence with a question mark? An explanation point?

Try Goog411 and see if it can find California State University in Carson, California. Does it work well if you have an accent? For a man or woman? When there is ambient noise?

Navteq versus Tele Atlas maps

We discuss Google Maps, and the mashups Google has encouraged people to build. Initially, Google used map data from a company called Navteq, but Nokia acquired Navteq, and Google has now switched to Tele Atlas for their maps.

Note that the mapping services are not identical. Microsoft uses Navteq for their Live maps, so we can compare their map of the CSUDH campus dorm area with Google's Tele Atlas map. As you see, Navteq (right hand side) maps and labels Unity Drive and Hillside Court and they show the street addresses on Central Avenue.
This is not to imply that Navteq maps are better everywhere. Both companies have crews constantly driving the routes and updating the maps, and both invite users to submit changes online. Competition between Google and Nokia, which sells 40% of mobile phones, may lead to differentiation in map features and completeness.

Is Navteq or Tele Atlas more accurate in the neighborhood where you live? If you know of a change -- say a street becoming one way -- would you inform either Tele Atlas or Navteq?

(Thanks to Ron Jimenez for suggesting this post).

The Obama Transition Team creates ad hoc threaded discussions using Intensedebate.com

The Obama Transition Team wants input on issues from citizens, and is now hosting discussion of questions like "What social causes and service organizations are you a part of that make a difference in your community".

People post their answers to the questions, and others can post a reply, check the reputation of the person who posted the answer, or vote it up or down. In the example shown below, we see that Denise C., who has 34 reputation points, submitted an answer to the question. So far, two people have voted her answer up, and the user is invited to vote up or down.

If you follow the link to a discussion question, you will see a fairly polished Web site with a short video elaborating on the question and the ensuing discussion. The Transition Team was able to quickly create this ad hoc site with a mashup in which the video is stored on YouTube and the threaded discussion, with its reputation and rating scheme, is hosted by intensedebate.com.

Would you respond to a Transition Team question? Do you think this process will generate meaningful input from the public and that the Transition Team will read it? Will it make people feel they are being listened to? Will it change politics?

Change from Obama -- using the Internet for transparent, two-way communication during the transistion

We've discussed Obama's use of the Internet, and the difficulty of gathering meaningful input from many users.

You may recall the Bush energy policy controversy. In his second week in office, George W. Bush created the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), charged with developing a national energy policy.

NEPDG meetings were secret, and the administration refused to share information about them with Congress. This led to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, filing a lawsuit against the administration. The suit was dismissed.

The Obama Transition Team will hear from many groups over the next several weeks, and, in sharp contrast to Bush's policy, they will use the Internet to open those meetings. They have established a Web site for two-way communication with the public, where one can track Transition Team meetings, read documents presented at those meetings, and offer comments. You can read more and see a short video in this press release.

Do you have an interest in any of the meeting topics at "seat at the table?" Have you posted any comments? Do you feel such feedback will be meaningful, or is this sugar coating for one-way communication?

High definition video is coming to the Net

We have seen that new data types become mainstream as technology improves, and high definition video is now becoming available on the Internet.

YouTube is now offering "high definition" video, and NetFlix and others promise to follow soon. These still frames from a YouTube video illustrate the quality improvement.

YouTube claims their high definition video is 720p -- each image is made of 720 horizontal scan lines with every line refreshed in every frame. That would place the quality somewhere between an old style TV set (525 lines, alternatively refreshed every other frame) and high quality new TV sets (1080 lines, refreshed on every frame).

Since YouTube streams video, high definition requires a high speed Internet connection.

Would you be willing to watch 720 line video on a television set? Would you be willing to pay extra for a high speed Internet connection at home if you could watch 720 line movies and television programs? How might this effect movie and television production and distribution?

Truephone -- mobile Skype (almost)

We have seen that cellular network operators control applications and devices in order to preserve their business model, which centers on selling service like SMS messages and phone call minutes rather than unfettered Internet access.

But, newer phones with both Wi-Fi and cellular radios can run VoIP software when using their Wi-Fi connections to the Internet.

Consider, for example, Truephone.com. Truephone software runs over Wi-Fi connections on the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and other phones. As with Skype, calls to other Truephone users are free, but they charge for calls to landline and mobile phones. Truephone's rates are much higher than Skype's. For example, the per minute rate from the US to a Chilean mobile phone is $.70 on a Truephone while Skype is only $.243. The difference for landlines calls is much greater -- $.68 versus $.024.

Regardless of their rates, Truephone illustrates two points we have discussed: innovation occurs rapidly on "dumb" end-to-end networks and the Internet is a highly leveraged platform on which to develop businesses.

Truephone CEO Geraldine Wilson recognizes these points in the following quotes from a BBC article:

"There are a slew of new features we're rolling out for the iPod Touch that will let users call landlines, Skype users or send instant messages. We're talking weeks, not months, before these go live."

and

"We've decided to focus on devices that are wi-fi enabled and have an apps-store. For the consumer, there has to be an easy way of downloading an application."

They are innovating rapidly and will "outsource" distribution and sales to the Apple and Google Android stores.

Do you currently use your cell phone as an Internet access device? Would the ability to make Truephone calls convince you to do so?

Mumbai terrorist attack: the 21-hour evolution of a co-authored document.

We discuss writing for the Internet, including co-authroing composite and co-authored documents and collaborative writing by small and very large groups.

The Mumbai terrorist attack provides an illustration of a co-authored document with many authors. The Wikipedia page on the attack was started at 18:20, 26 November 2008 by a user named Kensplanet. The initial posting consisted of two sentences:

The 26 November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks were a series of attacks by terrorists in Mumbai, India. 25 are injured and 2 killed.

Kensplanet revised his initial post 5 times during the next ten minutes, then others began to contribute. By 15:44, 27 November 2008, the article was 4,780 words long with many links. During this time, there had been 942 edits. Of those, 149 were anonymous (IP address only), 199 people made only one, and 93 authors could not be identified. Two contributors had made over 50 edits. Kensplanet, who started the article, had made 57.

The organization of the article also evolved during this period. While it began as two sentences, 21 hours later it was organized into 6 major sections with 5 sub-sections:

For the story of the evolution of another Wikipedia page, see this most interesting screencast by Jon Udell.

Anyone might be a reporter with Twitter

We have seen that portable Internet access devices capable of streaming live video are becoming available. Video cameras are not yet ubiqutous, but portable devices capable of micro-blogging with Twitter are now quite common.

Here is a sad example of the use of Twitter during the terrorist attack in Mumbai.

What would be the implications for news reporting, police work and security if most people carried location-aware, mobile Internet access devices capable of Twittering, uploading pictures and streaming video?

Obama uses the Internet after the election

This New York Times article describes the role of the Internet in the presidential campaign. As we saw earlier, both candidates used the Internet for fund raising, mobilizing and organizing volunteers, videos of speeches, etc.

Now Barack Obama is using the Internet in the government transition process, see change.gov. The change.gov blog will inform the public of upcoming events, appointments, and other news during the transition. There are also descriptions of the administration agenda in 25 policy areas.

But they want the site to be more than a one-way broadcast of their message. We have discussed structured means of soliciting user input, and they have taken a step in that direction by allowing the public to "tell us your story in your own words about what this campaign and this election means to you" or "share your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country."

You can also apply for "non-career" jobs in the administration. Some of those are in high positions, requiring Senate approval.

The current site is clearly just a start. Links to the "Obama National Service Plan" and "Find a way to serve" are still under construction, and when you complete the job application form, you receive an email saying they will get back to you with a more detailed application in a few days. There is plenty of room for the site to improve, and I am confident that it will.

It seems that President Elect Obama is using the Internet to reiterate President Kennedy's admonition that you ask yourself what you can do for your country.

Can the Internet facilitate government "by the people?" Would you consider applying for a job in the new administration? Have you a story or suggestion you would like to share with them?

Amazon adds .NET support for enterprise developers

We have discussed infrastructure services – services that are intended for developers, not end users.

Amazon jumped off to a lead in this space, and many Web sites now use their virtual machines and storage services. They appreciate not having to invest in servers and the easy scalability of these services. The cost is also low because Amazon enjoys economies of scale and expertise in building and reliably running huge data centers.

Amazon has recently cut prices for their infrastructure services, added a service level agreement, and support for Microsoft .NET and SQL server. (They initially focused on Linux). These moves are designed to appeal to enterprise developers.

In focusing on enterprise developers, Amazon is in direct competition with Microsoft. Microsoft will be announcing their entry in this market soon. Rackspace, a large hosting firm, offers similar support for both .NET and Linux. They call it “Mosso,” which means fast in Greek, and claim that you can get started in only 8 minutes.

Web and enterprise developers will need to be able to use these infrastructure services in the future. Would you like to learn to deploy applications in the "cloud?"

Gross contributed product -- the value of Linux

We discuss people's motivation to contribute time and content, and speculate on the total value of contributed content, the "gross contributed product."

In a recent report, the Linux Foundation, estimates that it would cost approximately $10.8 billion to build the Linux community distribution Fedora 9 in today’s dollars with today’s software development costs. The market research firm IDC reports that hardware and software spending related to Linux hit $21 billion during 2007, and predicts that it will rise to $48 billion by 2011.

To put the size of the Linux market in perspective, we note that in the year 2007, the GDP of the State of Maine was $48.1 billion, and the GDP of 7 states was less.

How many people would you estimate are employed in Linux-related industries?

A cool, collaborative drawing tool

Most of you use or will be using Visio to create diagrams. I just came across Dabbleboard, a vector drawing service you might find useful.

It is not as capable and flexible as Visio, but it is very easy to use, extensible -- you can reuse shapes and shape libraries you and others create -- and, of course, it is a networked application.

Several people can work on the same drawing at the same time, and the drawing can be made public or shared within a limited group when it is published. You can create libraries based on your drawings, and there are also public libraries and tool kits.

If it sounds interesting, check this how-to screencast.

Dabbleboard has several features that facilitate and encourage collaborative work. What features would you like to see them add? What do you think the community of Dabbleboard users will add? When would you use Dabbleboard instead of Visio? When would you use Visio?

Non-economic motivation to contribute -- Jon Postel

The Internet facilitates collaboration, which is often voluntary. We discuss non-economic motivations for contributing time and effort to projects as well as the social and economic value of those contributions.

Jon Postel who died ten years ago today, led the development of critical Internet organizations and technologies without the economic incentive of an entrepreneur. You can read about his contributions here.

How was Jon Postel "paid" for his work? What was its value to society and the economy? Have you made any unpaid contributions -- perhaps "digging" a blog post, reviewing a product or book, or making an improvement to a Wikipedia page?

Commoncraft -- a business made possible by the Internet

We discuss the falling costs of content creation, publication, and distribution. Commoncraft has built a successful educational video business by taking advantage of these falling costs.

Commoncraft is a two-person (husband and wife) company, and they want to remain small. Low resolution copies of their videos are available for non-commercial use at no cost, and they license high resolution versions for commercial use.

As shown here, they have a very low-tech studio, keeping their investment low. Their time is the only significant cost of producing a video.



Distribution cost is also nearly zero. The non-commercial version of a video is distributed at no cost on YouTube and other video sites. They distribute the commercial version from their own server at minimal cost.

Marketing also costs close to nothing. They post a video on Youtube, and wait for users to find it and tell each other about it. They do "viral" marketing.

If it were not for the Internet, what would it cost to produce, market and distribute short educational videos? Since the cost of entry is so low, a Commoncraft competitor could easily spring up. (They even have a Web page showing how they make their videos). Would Commoncraft have an advantage over a competitor? Would they mind the competition?

Chrome benchmark: math is slow, but will improve -- bad news for Microsoft

Several people ran benchmarks when Google Chrome came out, and concluded that it was faster than Internet Explorer and Firefox. But others, for example this article on 10 things to love (and hate) about Google Chrome, found Chrome to be no faster. Relative speed depends upon the benchmark.

I created a Google Spreadsheet that computes 200 sines, cosines, squares and square roots. Recalculation was noticeably slower with Chrome (23 seconds) than Firefox (2 seconds) or Internet Explorer (10 seconds).

The bad news for Google is that they will have to improve the efficiency of their math libraries. The good news is that Firefox has demonstrated that it can be done. More good news -- the user will not have to install new software when it is ready. It will automatically download when the application is used.

The bad news for Microsoft is that they too will have to improve the speed of math calculations in Internet Explorer. That will not be difficult for them to do, but doing so will have a bad-news side effect -- it will narrow the speed gap between Excel and Google Spreadsheet.

This is just one example. Microsoft will be forced to improve Internet Explorer to keep up with Google, Firefox and others. But every time they improve Internet Explorer, they chip away at the advantage their dedicated Office applications have over the network applications of Google and others. The performance gap between desktop and network-based programs narrows.

Can you think of other new technologies that painted an old technology into a corner? If you were running Microsoft, how would you deal with this situation?

Encouraging Android and iPhone application developers

We discuss the importance of building communities of users and of developers.

Google and T-Mobile just announced the availability of the first phone running Google's Android operating system. Android is strategic for Google because it is bundled with their applications, and they are entering the mobile Internet access market along with the Apple iPhone.

Both companies are trying to attract application developers for their platforms. Apple has established a $100 million venture capital fund for start up companies with ideas for interesting applications and has an iPhone Developers Program where developers find tools and technical and business information.

Google also understands the importance of developers to the success of Android, and they have allocated $10 million for awards for innovative applications. The first set of winners has been selected, and the second round of competition is under way. The ten top applications in the first round are here.

Apple has created an online store to help developers sell and distribute their applications, and Google has announced their intention to do the same for applications that run on Android phones.

To encourage development, Apple distributes free applications at their store, and charges a reasonable commission on commercial applications -- they hope to profit by selling more Apple hardware. Google will be selling advertising, not hardware, so they hope their store will encourage both software developers and handset manufacturers to adopt the open-source Android platform.

Finally, and this is highly speculative, Android is Google's operating system for mobile Internet access devices -- might they one day release a full-scale version for the desktop, competing directly with Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple OS X? Microsoft and Apple adapted their desktop operating systems to hand-held devices -- might Google be planning to adapt their hand-held operating system to the desktop one day?

Is Google truly competing with Apple? Does it help or hurt Google if someone buys an iPhone instead of an Android handset?

17 percent of European households now use VoIP

We discuss VoIP in class. A recent market research report shows VoIP growing rapidly in Europe. At the end of 2004, 1.9 million VoIP lines were in service, equivalent to just over 1 percent of European households. By the end of 2007, Europe was up to 25.3 million lines and 17 percent of households.

As shown here, VoIP service is growing faster in Europe than in the US, and is eating into the traditional switched circuit revenue of the phone companies.

Do you ever use VoIP? If so, do you use an Internet program like Skype or do you get your service from a phone company?

Fiber now connects 3.76 million US homes

We discuss home connectivity. Today, DSL and cable are the most commonly used home connectivity technologies, but we expect that, in the long run, we will have fiber links to our homes. Today, that is far from the case. A recent market research report estimates that fiber now passes 13.8 million U. S. homes and 3.76 million are broadband subscribers.

What percent of US homes is 3.76 million? Providing fiber links requires investment in equipment and trenches and installation -- which neighborhoods will operators focus on first? Will all neighborhoods eventually be served?

Synchronizing data for offline work

We defined network applications, as opposed to stand-alone applications, as those in which either the data, programs, or both are stored on the network.

All network applications store data on a server, but some also store copies of the data on the client. That enables a user to work when off line -- perhaps when traveling -- and automatically synchronize the data on the two machines when the client re-connects to the network.

This short video illustrates offline editing while using Zoho's Writer word processing service, and you can read more about it here.

Note that it uses Google Gears, an open source program that must be installed on the client computer.

Google wrote and supports Gears as an open source project -- what is their reason for doing so? Why is Gears strategic for Google?

Miniature projectors

We discuss technology progress, which, when significant, can lead to completely new applications.

A year ago, we noted some newly developed technology for miniature projectors. 3M has now announced a projector using that technology. The list price is $359, the display resolution is 640 by 480, and it is reportedly bright enough to project an 11 inch image in a lit room. This projector is a stand-alone device designed to connect to a laptop or PDA.

Other companies are working on similar products. If that leads to continued technology improvement -- lower cost, smaller size, higher resolution and brighter displays -- we may see projectors bundled into phones and PDAs.

What technology barrier may keep that from happening?

Senator Kohl questions cellular competition

We discuss the competitive nature of the US cell phone and ISP markets. Generally speaking, ISPs and cell phone companies oppose regulation, arguing in favor of private enterprise and competition. Is there competition in these markets? Let's look at text messaging.

In 2005, each US cell phone company charged 10 cents to send or receive a text message. No doubt they had different cost structures and strategies -- you might have expected one of them to cut their price to try to win new customers. Well they did change their prices -- today they are all charging 20 cents.

Do you find that surprising in this competitive marketplace? Do you suppose their costs rose during those years? Its only fair that they cover their costs, right?

Text messages are transmitted in 140 byte (1,120 bit) packets -- 1,120 bits delivered for 20 cents. How much would it cost to deliver a recorded song at that rate?

Let's be conservative and assume the typical song is 2 minutes long. If it were encoded at 256k bits per second, the rate Apple iTunes uses for premium recordings, that would be roughly 30,720,000 bits -- the equivalent of 27,429 text messages. If a music vendor like Apple charged the same rate per bit as a text message vendor, a song would cost around $5,486 to transmit, yet Apple manages to sell and deliver songs, and make a profit at $1.29 per song.

US Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, recently asked the presidents and chief executive officers of the four largest wireless telephone companies to justify their text message rates. In a letter, Senator Kohl requested an explanation from Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, which collectively serve more than 90 percent of the nation's cellular phone users.

Do you think the cellular market is competitive? The Internet access market? What do you think Senator Kohl is planning to do?

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Update 3/13/2015

WhatsApp reports that it now has 700 million monthly active users sending 30 billion messages a day. For comparison, the global SMS system sees about 20 billion messages a day.

Here is the decline of SMS in several nations:

Senator Kohl's call for action went nowhere, but he needn't have worried -- no monopoly lasts forever.

Will Google Chrome paint Microsoft into a corner?

Google recently announced their Chrome browser. They released a beta version that lacks many of the planned features, but they claim that it is more stable and secure than the competition, and explain why that is so in this neat comic book presentation.

They also say JavaScript programs run very fast when using Chrome. Chrome trounces other browsers when running benchmarks that Google designed. In some other benchmarks, it is still faster than Firefox and much faster than Internet Explorer.

When does JavaScript speed matter? We discuss dynamic Web applications, in which programs are downloaded to the client when the user visits a Web site. Those programs are typically written in JavaScript, so they will run much faster on Chrome than Internet Explorer.

Google is betting on network applications, and speed is critical if their networked word processor, spreadsheet, and other programs are to compete with Microsoft Office. A networked word processor or spreadsheet program has advantages over a stand-alone program like Word or Excel, but also has disadvantages, one of which is being slow. If Google Docs runs a lot faster with Chrome than current browsers, it will appeal to more people, and perhaps eat into Microsoft's very profitable Office sales.

If Chrome is a lot faster than Internet Explorer, customers will adopt it. But, ironically, if Microsoft counters by improving the speed of Internet Explorer, they will hurt Office sales.

Microsoft Office is sold by their Business Division, where fiscal 2008 consumer revenue dipped 2 percent, or $80 million. Microsoft analyst Joe Wilcox thinks this is the start of a "gradual, but later rapid decline." Faster browsers will accelerate the decline.

As communication technology improves, will Google's network application strategy gain or lose advantage over stand-alone software? How about improvement in storage technology? How about improvement in electronic technology?

The Internet and the presidential election

We eventually learn to use new media, but at first we mimic old media. For example, this 1952 presidential ad for Eisenhower is like a radio jingle with crude animation:



It seems goofy today, but was made by intelligent, creative people at the time.

Many people feel that John Kennedy was the first presidential candidate to effectively use television. Checking his commercials from the 1960 campaign, we see sincere statements by the candidate, attack ads and celebrity endorsement ads as well as Eisenhower-era jingles. Kennedy also had the ability to speak directly to the voter as shown in this clip:



Earlier, Franklin Roosevelt broke new ground by communicating directly with the people in weekly fireside chats on the radio.

The Internet is today's new media. Howard Dean and John McCain pioneered in using the Net for fund raising during the 2000 and 2004 elections, and both of the current candidates are using it for position papers, fund raising, community formation, video, instant messaging, Twitter streams, email, etc. this year.

In this interview, Phil Noble of the consulting firm Politics Online says Obama may be to the Internet what John Kennedy was to television and the New York Times published this excellent article on the importance of the Internet in the campaign on the day before the election.

For more examples of presidents using radio and television, see the archives of presidential speeches at the University of Virginia and presidential campaign commercials at Living Room Candidate.

Have you registered with either (or both) the presidential campaign sites? Have you contributed to a candidate on the Internet? Have you created blogs on either campaign site? Do you see differences in the way Obama and McCain are using the Internet?