The following piece was sent to me by Brian MacCormick 
Interesting, so take a look and consider how you are getting your information and ask yourself, “Is this the best resource?” Consider the timeliness of data collection and reporting the next time you go looking to “Google”.
Clive Thompson on How the Real-Time Web Is Leaving Google Behind
By Clive Thompson 09.21.09
When Michael Jackson died on June 25, millions of people flooded onto Google News to find the latest information about what had happened. The spike in traffic was so massive that Google suspected a malware attack and began blocking anyone searching for “Michael Jackson.”
It’s a funny story, but it illustrates how the Web is changing. People increasingly turn to the Internet for up-to-the-minute information about, well, everything—blog postings about celebrity antics, status updates from friends, and pictures and videos of political events as they unfold, like the protests over the Iranian election. Studies have shown that these types of search requests are on the rise.
Pundits call it the real-time Web. It’s upending the Internet as we’ve known it, and it’s not something that Google can easily dominate.
For more than 10 years, Google has organized the Web by figuring out who has authority. The company measures which sites have the most links pointing to them—crucial votes of confidence—and checks to see whether a site grew to prominence slowly and organically, which tends to be a marker of quality. If a site amasses a zillion links overnight, it’s almost certainly spam.
But the real-time Web behaves in the opposite fashion. It’s all about “trending topics”—zOMG a plane crash!—which by their very nature generate a massive number of links and postings within minutes. And a search engine can’t spend days deciding what is the most crucial site or posting; people want to know immediately.
So a new generation of search engines like Tweetmeme, OneRiot, Topsy, Scoopler, and Collecta are trying to redefine what makes a piece of information important.
Some of these sites offer a Digg-like indexed front page that displays hot topics, while others just include a simple search field. But most of them rely heavily on Twitter. When a burst of tweets citing a particular subject or URL emerges, it’s a “signaling event,” as Rishab Ghosh of Topsy puts it. To make sure they’re not just getting hoodwinked by spammers, these new search engines employ some clever tricks, like crawling tweeted URLs and discarding those that land on sites containing spamlike language. Most disregard Twitter users who behave like spambots—for example, ones that follow thousands of people but have very few followers themselves.
Other ploys abound. OneRiot has a toolbar that lets users flag an interesting post immediately. Collecta actively imports blog posts and tweets so they appear in search results less than a second after they go live, rather than the hours it can take regular search engines to catalog the same info. “We want to be limited only by the speed of light,” Collecta CTO Jack Moffitt jokes.
The result is something curiously different from regular searching. If you hunt for “Michael Jackson” on a traditional engine like Ask.com or Bing, the vast majority of the links remain the same day to day. Authority changes slowly on the “old” Web. But real-time search engines deliver different, updated results almost every time.
The creators of these new engines argue that their goal isn’t to answer questions— à la Google—but to organize experience into a keyhole glimpse of what the world is doing at this very moment. “It’s exactly what your friends are going to be talking about when you get to the bar tonight,” OneRiot executive Tobias Peggs says. “That’s what we’re finding.” Google settles arguments; real-time search starts them.
Edo Segal, a pioneer in real-time search, thinks the field is going to explode as updates become more automatic, with our devices autoreporting where we are, how we’re feeling, and what we’re doing and seeing. Old-school search will never vanish, but real-time news will create a society where we have an omnipresent sense of the moment. “Google organized our memory,” Segal says. “Real-time search organizes our consciousness.”
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© 2009-2012 Mutt Media NY LLC All Rights Reserved
MUTT MEDIA WARNING! | POLITICAL COMMENTARY TO FOLLOW…..
Today’s post is a sad one, but shines a ray of hope on a region in turmoil. I am writing in green to show support for the citizens of Iran and their cause.
No doubt you’ve heard all of the rumblings about the elections in Iran. If you frequent Twitter, Facebook or any of the social networking platforms, you’ve been exposed. Here’s a timeline version of what’s been going on, taken from Reuter’s website.
“(Reuters) – Here is a summary of the main developments in the aftermath of Iran’s June 12 presidential election, which took place against a background of tension with the West over Tehran’s nuclear program.
June 13 – Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad officially wins presidential election with nearly 63 percent of the vote compared with 34 percent for reformist challenger Mirhossein Mousavi, authorities say. Thousands of protesters clash with police. Mousavi calls result a “dangerous charade”.
June 14 – Mousavi says he has formally asked Iran’s Guardian Council to annul the election.
June 15 – Seven people are killed during a huge march by Mousavi supporters in central Tehran, state media says. There are also pro-Mousavi demonstrations in the cities of Rasht, Orumiyeh, Zahedan and Tabriz.
June 16 – Leading Iranian reformist Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice-president, is arrested, his office says.
– The Guardian Council says it is ready to carry out a partial recount of ballots but rules out annulling the poll.
– Tens of thousands of pro-Mousavi demonstrators march in northern Tehran. Ahmadinejad’s supporters mobilize thousands of demonstrators in central Tehran.
– Authorities ban foreign journalists from leaving their offices to cover street protests.
June 17 – Thousands march in central Tehran.
– Ahmadinejad defends the legitimacy of the vote, telling a cabinet meeting it has “posed a great challenge to the West’s democracy,” Mehr news agency reports.
– Saeed Laylaz, editor of business daily Sarmayeh, and pro-reform activist Mohammadreza Jalaiepour are arrested, a reformist source says.
June 18 – Thousands of Mousavi’s backers rally in Tehran to mourn those killed in the mass protests.
– A spokesman for the Guardian Council says it has begun examining 646 complaints submitted after the June 12 vote.
– Iran’s English-language state television has reported eight people killed in five days of protests. The ISNA news agency, quoting provincial officials, says 88 people were arrested in post-election unrest in the city of Mashhad and up to 60 people in Tabriz in the northwest.
June 19 — Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says protest leaders would be responsible for any bloodshed if rallies continued against the election, which he said Ahmadinejad had won fairly by 11 million votes.
June 20 — The Guardian Council says it is ready to recount a tenth of the votes in the disputed election.
– Riot police are deployed in force, firing teargas and using batons and water cannon to disperse groups of several hundred Iranians who had gathered across Tehran.
– A suicide bomber blows himself up near the shrine of Iran’s revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran, Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reports.
– State television says more than 450 people are detained during clashes in Tehran in which at least 10 people are killed.
June 21 — Mousavi urges supporters to continue protests, issuing an oblique appeal to security forces to show restraint.
– Ahmadinejad accuses the United States and Britain of interfering in Iran’s affairs.
June 22 — Hardline Revolutionary Guards issue a statement saying they will “firmly confront in a revolutionary way rioters and those who violate the law”. Police break up a protest in Tehran hours after the Guards issued their statement.
– People in Tehran again chant “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) from their rooftops at nightfall.
June 23 – Guardian Council again rules out annulment of the election saying there has been no major polling irregularities.”
Just yesterday, a protester named Neda Agha Soltan was shot and killed in the street. Someone captured this heinous act with their cell phone and it’s been getting lots of play on YouTube. Video follows, but please be warned: it is violent and graphic and YouTube requires that you verify that you are over 18 to view it.
There has been so much controversy over the middle east, Iran, Iraq and the degree to which the US should get involved but I think the events of the last few weeks show us that the citizens want some sort of democracy and a fair election process. I am sure that they know the western world is on their side in this endeavor, as their continuous Twitter and other internet communications indicate. This is GREAT. Unfortunate is that lives are lost but this is an important fight and a stand that, in my opinion, needs to be taken.
All of the Tweets, photos and video footage show us that these are a people willing to fight for their desired rights – rights they have long been denied. It’s nothing short of amazing.
So maybe Iraq was the wrong venue at the wrong time, but the ideology was right on target. If only the violence would stop.
links that may be of some interest to you..
thestar.com | nytimes.com (they have a great blog that is tracking the protests and running commentary) | reuters.com
This has been your Daily Bone
© 2009-2012 Mutt Media NY LLC All Rights Reserved
Over Memorial Day Weekend I read in my favorite newspaper (as well as other news outlets) that the Iranian government has blocked its citizens from using the Facebook service. Critics of this move attributed it to the upcoming June elections.
Candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has used Facebook heavily in the past to mobilize young voters for his benefit, much like Obama did with his presidential campaign.
Here’s a video posted on You Tube that tells the story in short…forgive the ad at the end..sometimes these things cannot be helped.
No sooner did I begin drafting this blog then did Iran’s government lift the ban. From all I’ve read, this seems to be a pretty common practice; sites are routinely banned both in Iran as well as other extremely Muslim countries and in China too. When a website’s content runs in contradiction to the fundamental religious philosophies of a nation, these bans are commonplace.
Let’s feel thankful that we live in a country that allows and encourages free speech and opposing views.
Comments? Share ‘em!
This has been your Daily Bone
© 2009 Mutt Media NY LLC All Rights Reserved
This has been your Daily Bone
© 2009-2012 Mutt Media NY LLC All Rights Reserved
