Remember i posted that January was all about verticals? So… this week i’ll be mostly talking about travel and social media… to be more precise, tomorrow in Austria at the ENTER 2008 conference. The pain is that there only seems to be one flight in and out each day according to BA, oh well a bit of snow and fresh air never hurt anyone although i might cough up a London air-filled lung.
Travel is probably one of the most advanced areas when it comes to social media; review sites, communities, weather checks, and videos of shabby hotels in Greece all help us make judgement on where we end up heading on holiday.
So with a keynote from Eric Basha at Microsoft with a focus on the future, i’ve decided try and get people thinking about the future possibilities if you get just a little creative and use the technology we already have available.
I’ve been testing the new QDOS Beta, which attempts to measure your digital status based on an algorithm presented in 4 factors as you can see in the pic here. You can then compare yourself against various celebrities/personalities, so i did…. and i have a higher QDOS score than Eamonn Holmes whatever that means.
To do this you need to let the system know your profile names for facebook/linkedin/your own site etc. Based on the amount of friends, incoming links, how often you blog etc, this will be refined over time after you first claim your profile.
At first i thought this was a bit of a waste of time, but i was intrigued as it comes from Garlik, the creators of Egg and first direct….. I think this could be a glimpse at the future in terms of a new type of ‘credit score’. How you control the information portrayed about you online and your resulting ‘QDOS’ score, can be controlled with a degree of knowledge due to this system and essentially this aids you becoming your own reputation manager. Hopefully it will be a good wake up call to all those people who publish crazy amounts of personal information online only to be a victim of fraud or rejected for that next job….
You’ve heard of Virgil Tracy, meet Virgil Griffith! Virgil is a student of CalTech that has caused uproar by developing a Wikipedia Scanner that reveals who edits Wiki articles, via a system where it scans the I.P address and cross-references it with the I.P. directory.
Brilliant! and there’s been some real shockers in there, for example:
- Microsoft tried to cover up the XBOX 360 failure rate;
- Apple edit Microsoft entries, adding more negative comments about its rival;
- The Vatican edits Irish Catholic politician Gerry Adams page;
- In the 9/11 Wikipedia article, the NRA added that “Iraq was involved in 9/11″;
- Walmart changes negative paragraphs of underpaid workforce.
Classic! There’s a full list of interesting edits at Wired, but you should really try the Wikipedia Scanner for yourself, it gives a whole new insight into what companies really think.
I got pretty excited about the new Microsoft Surface computer when i saw it. It looked pretty cool and it was one of those times when i thought ‘I NEED ONE OF THOSE BADBOYS’. I managed to rally the troops and get the guys in the office excited as well, which lead to it becoming a hot topic over a pint at our Friday lunch session (let me point out we sometimes do have non-geeky conversation, this just wasn’t one of those times).
Wow we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we could order more drinks or our food from a virtual waitress on our Surface as opposed to waiting for the one waitress that was serving the whole restaurant that day….
This is the power of marketing, Microsoft-style. It takes someone to bring you back down to earth, like this video i saw on Jackie Danicki’s blog, which is absolute class. Enjoy!
Remember i posted that January was all about verticals? So… this week i’ll be mostly talking about travel and social media… to be more precise, tomorrow in Austria at the ENTER 2008 conference. The pain is that there only seems to be one flight in and out each day according to BA, oh well a bit of snow and fresh air never hurt anyone although i might cough up a London air-filled lung.
I’ve been testing the new 
You’ve heard of Virgil Tracy, meet 
