broadstuff

An article in The Register shows an interesting trend. It seems that almost any "automatic" technology is susceptible to spam. The problem is that the ease of creation is too easy! Google thought they had sidestepped this by using network theory to automatically gauge the "relevance" of a web page. But the spammers seem to be catching up and Google are resorting to "electronic counter measures" to filter out the spam.

I think that getting real, good quality metadata will be a key requirement for the continued development of the Internet and Web 2.0 in particular. The obvious place to capture it is at the point of creation, but other challenges remain - how to maintain integrity and how to stop creators lying? Maintaining integrity is a technical tractable problem. Stopping people lying? That's harder and probably requires a new generation of social networking.

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An article in shows an interesting trend. It seems that almost any "automatic" technology is susceptible to spam. The problem is that the ease of creation is too easy! Google thought they had sidestepped this by using network theory to automatically gauge the "relevance" of a web page. But the spammers seem to be catching up and Google are resorting to "electronic counter measures" to filter out the spam.

I think that getting real, good quality metadata will be a key requirement for the continued development of the Internet and Web 2.0 in particular. The obvious place to capture it is at the point of creation, but other challenges remain - how to maintain integrity and how to stop creators lying? Maintaining integrity is a technical tractable problem. Stopping people lying? That's harder and probably requires a new generation of social networking.

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The 3G Mobile fraternity believes that Mobile TV is the next big thing to drive up their flagging ARPU and growth. Is it really? Do we really all want to watch TV on screens the size of postage stamps all day? And if not, what will we watch (if anything) on Mobile TV?

The omens are mixed.....small portable TVs have been around quite a while, and have not taken the world by storm - on the other hand, watching small TV-like images on PC screens is a part of the day now...and that gives a clue - these tend to be either short, to the point broadcasts or are kept as wallpaper on the screen while we work, much like radio is used (eg Ashes feed). Its harder to do that on your mobile, and less attractive if you have to pay by the byte.

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