Category: Random, But Interesting

He might have the FBI on his tail…(thanks to SEGuide)

(via IP) I am constantly amazed by the business models made possible through the Internet. Turnitin.com is an anti-plagiarisim site – the student’s work is submitted to the site, the site then makes a “digital fingerprint” of the work and compares it to thousands of others. It feels eerie and somehow wrong, and a student at McGill University agreed. CNN reports he won a university review case regarding the use of the system.

Is this a search-related story? I think so. Turnitin.com has to search the web for papers, apply their algorithm, then compare submitted papers against their database. Newly submitted papers add even more to the database. Given the site has contracts with 3000 universities, this database must be massive. Trusting Turnitin.com’s algorithms to determine what is “unique” without some level of review and transparency strikes me as insane. In my own classes, i’d never force my students to use such a system. But then, perhaps it would have helped the NYT in the Blair case….

But for how long?

$11, if you believe that eBay provides a perfect market….(Thanks to Bo)

When Friendster started, it was something of a first of breed. It was a club that you had to know about to get in, I’m told (by Scott Rafer, with whom I shared coffee and chat yesterday afternoon. Scott was one of the first few hundred or so into that particular club). It wasn’t like a million people rushed to sign up – no one knew about it unless they were told by someone else. It was a true Friend of a Friend network, growing organically. There was no need to put a velvet rope at the door – only those who knew where the door was could get in anyway. Friendster remains a place you can sign up for without an invitation.

Now, fast forward to today. There’s simply no way that Orkut could launch with the same approach. Too many folks would rush the door, and they’d swamp the system, which has to scale up from somewhere. Hence, Orkut is by invitation only, and in the past few days, an invitation into Orkut has been a something of a quiet wish for many in the Valley.

Now that I’ve poked around for a couple of days, it’s quite interesting to see how the network is growing. Not surprisingly the folks with the largest networks are nearly all employees at Google, who must have been testing the system for some time. This makes Google the Eden, of sorts, the point from which the entire network will grow (yes, for those of you reading closely, I chose Eden on purpose). It makes for an interesting anthropological study, in particular to watch how Google employees’ networks metastasize outwards to the Valley and beyond. I hope for history’s sake, someone is recording this progression.

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Joi Ito is at Davos, as are a lot of folks (including Orville, my Dean at Berkeley). About this time I get Davos regret, as I am invited each year but simply don’t want to spend the dough, nor (this year) do I want be that far from my new baby. I went in 2001, when I was a GLT, and I am sure I’ll go again, once things settle down here. In any case, this post from Joi was interesting, as he teased out some thoughts from Sergey on the role blogs play in PageRank (net net: Sergey doesn’t think they should be treated as distinct from any other web page). Davos also had a panel on blogging, Joi has a post on that here.

Esther Dyson of Release 1.0, PCForum, et al, has a blog now. It’ll be a day or so before she’s hectored into getting an RSS feed!

Update: as a reader astutely posted, she does have one: http://weblog.edventure.com/blog/index.xml

And does a fine job, noting interesting, lesser known examples. Sheesh, Circuits might actually be getting better – this week anyway they seem to be more focused on culture/policy and less focused on gadgets. Good move.

The piece covers the SEO world, quotes Danny, talks about other engines as well. Apparently some libertarians are hard at work making the IRS the #1 SERP for the phrase “organized crime.” They have a way to go.

An interesting meme in the piece: The growing popularity of Google bombing can’t be a welcome development for a company that is expected to begin selling stock to the public in a few months.

As I’ve said many times, it’s always good to see something you care about live on, no matter what the form. Matt is now bringing guest bloggers (so far, all were connected to the old Standard in one way or another) to The Standard. Don’t get all excited (or don’t sharpen your knives, whichever works for you), it’s still under the control of IDG.

I just got Ronco spam! This marks a special moment in the the maturation of the Web – Ronco has taken its marketing tactics to email. Sure, I know they’ve had a site for a while, but man, ain’t it great to see it shine online? The spam was lame, the site is lame, the marketing tactics are lame – it’s simply wonderful!