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1. What's Next for Location-Based Services?

   Thanks for your comment Tive. It’ll be interesting to see how different global cities adopt Foursquare, thanks for the link to Explore Chicago. I also find it interesting to see the growing list of brand partnerships that Foursquare has: Gossip Girl, the WSJ and New York Magazine all have New York-focussed tie-ups, for example, and Vh1, MTV and the History Channel are all TV channels. LV is a complete surprise, it’s nice to see they’re getting digital to this extent. You’re right about trusting authorities – with so much history/data/heritage behind them, it’s a nice way for them to share their knowledge.

   July 14th, 2010 at 5:42 pm

2. Guardian #Activate2010

   I really really really wish I’d been there too – lucky fellow :)

   July 4th, 2010 at 2:48 pm

3. Made by Many's London Digital Event Calendar

   Thanks Mike – and done, good idea!

   July 2nd, 2010 at 1:57 pm

4. Made by Many's London Digital Event Calendar

   Hi Gerrie – thanks! Added it to the calendar.

   July 2nd, 2010 at 11:03 am

5. Made by Many's London Digital Event Calendar

   No problem Birdy – glad you like it :)

   July 1st, 2010 at 11:19 am

6. Made by Many's London Digital Event Calendar

   Hi Birdy – nope as far as I can see it’s on the 9th: http://reputationonline.co.uk/2010/07/01/reputation-online-live-navigating-the-online-monitoring-jungle/

   July 1st, 2010 at 11:07 am

7. Clay at The RSA... Yay!

   Awesome stuff Tim. I wish I could sketch as well as you do. A bit more practice and you can be one of the artists at one of next year’s SXSW keynotes!!

   You won’t believe this but check out the last line of this MxM blog post I wrote back in Feb 2009: http://madebymany.co.uk/the-power-of-the-masses-the-pink-chaddi-campaign-3-00490

   My wish came true!!

   June 30th, 2010 at 10:14 pm

8. Reviewing Amazon.com

   Hey Kitty – thanks for dropping by, and even more so for clarifying! I find Amazon’s algorithms very interesting, and it’s useful to know your views as an author and seller who tracks her sales/traffic.

   June 17th, 2010 at 10:01 am

9. Around Made by Many

   Sure – we’re all about spreading the love.

   June 4th, 2010 at 4:18 pm

10. Racking up the points...and the coins

    For everyone’s info, Tim needs to turn off push notifications – I’ve unchecked all notifications from 4sq to other networks at my end! :D

    Tive, thanks for the kind words earlier, and I like your post on WeReward. Nice one.

    Simon – glad I’ve converted yet another person, and hope you have fun with it! And you’re right – Fireagle seems to have disappeared. I guess time is the true test of mettle of a service. I’m waiting to see how much bigger or smaller Facebook and Twitter are in a couple of years’ time myself.

    Sara and Simon – yes, with 4sq now spilling into other industries, I think it’s definitely one to watch out for.

    June 4th, 2010 at 1:59 pm

11. Racking up the points...and the coins

    Tim – I’m afraid you speak an untruth (as they’d say in the days before the interwebs). I have disconnected my 4sq account from Twitter so there’s no way you’d know where I am unless you keep refreshing your 4sq app or go the site directly – in which case, my friend, you’re an addict too. Maybe you can join me in the recovery process, whenever that is.

    Sara, welcome to the club! I’m glad my post has actually motivated someone to take it up :D

    Tive, WeReward, to me, misses one key factor – that of building a community where members come together on the basis of their knowledge of each other in other social spheres (or real life). I wouldn’t add a random stranger on 4sq, for example. 4sq are a community that is NOW tapping into commercial benefits. We Reward seems to be going at it the other way around – the wrong way.

    June 4th, 2010 at 10:48 am

12. Why is Facebook so hard to love?

    ‘Some people (early adopters) will start using another service *as well*’ – that’s how I (and a lot of other Indians) chanced upon Facebook. It was Orkut all the way for most of the people I know, and then less and less of them till finally Facebook took the top spot away (http://www.watblog.com/2009/10/20/facebook-overtakes-orkut-in-india/). It could well become Diaspora, or anything else, in due course.

    However I’m very much aware that you and I are early adopters. The millions of people who form Facebook’s mass aren’t us, and even if a service like Diaspora takes Facebook’s spot, it will be at least a couple of years before that happens. And in a couple of years, a hell of a lot could happen in the interim, even in the way the social web works.

    May 19th, 2010 at 4:02 pm

13. Propagation Planning

    Amadeo, excellent questions, and thanks for taking the time to comment. Is a share button conversational? No, but it does help to propagate content. It is but one element of the propagation process, because it helps people to share good content which in turn leads to a conversation.

    True blue conversation strategies with no ‘wow’. Nice way of putting it. But I think the problem is that a lot of planning *does not* in fact have conversation built in. i.e they don’t answer the questions you’ve asked – what is the point of this? is it just to help the brand and consumer talk? Those are vital and often brushed-aside questions. It shouldn’t be for the *sake* of engaging in conversation, but to increase utility of a platform, by answering or clarifying questions and rendering the brand’s product/campaign/platform even more useful. In an ideal world! (or at least that’s what I think!).

    James – thanks for your kind words, and hope to see you adding useful stuff to the wiki soon!

    April 8th, 2010 at 4:27 pm

14. Propagation Planning

    Thanks for your comments!

    Pats, quite right – as more and more companies play in the PR/digital space, we need to get this done right, and a mechanism for that simply doesn’t exist as to stands. Hopefully we will be able to slowly develop a framework that will be executable.

    Sam – ‘the less bought space impacts meaningfully’ – you’ve hit it on the nail right there. I am increasingly fatigued by the ads I see as I surf the web daily, and the good ones can be spotted a mile away. The rest are just trash, and I see that proportion increasing as the days go by. Messaging specific co-creation is a great thought, and hopefully we’ve started something which can make that a reality.

    April 6th, 2010 at 3:01 pm

15. How Would A Robot Read a Novel?

    Hi Robbie – and thanks for your comment. It’s nice to a panelist commenting on my blog post!

    You’re right – the data that Alceste produces is likely to be much more useful to a data analyst/researcher than a literary critic. They may be useful for authors at some crude level, as you say, by assessing how biased or non-biased towards certain emerging themes a book may be, as well. But yes, data rather than literary analysis. No, it doesn’t sound woolly at all!

    Anjali

    February 25th, 2010 at 12:47 pm

16. How Would A Robot Read a Novel?

    James – thanks for the pointer to the Times Labs thing. How old is it? I guess the thing about Alceste is it tracks co-occurrences rather than mere occurrences, so that’s how it differs from Times Labs. To your other point, yes it’s sad that translation completely alters the meaning of so many literary works. Personally I find translated works excellent in that they allow me to read authors and books I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. I’m not a critic to the extent that I can make out the lack of repetition (for example) that would have worked so well in the original, but I wish I was. :)

    Asi – hey! interesting to know you worked with Kavita! I don’t know if you took a look at the PDF of the presentation they gave, but they in fact did mention Wordle. I’m mildly surprised why the LSE is only using Alceste now. There was some noise about how it was very proprietary and the actual know-how couldn’t be released – maybe they’re only catching up now?

    February 18th, 2010 at 10:55 am

17. How Would A Robot Read a Novel?

    James – thanks for the comment! Very interesting, what you said about Kafka and Gogol’s use of repetition as a literary technique. And you brought out a very valid point about words and meanings literally getting lost in translation.

    I wonder if there are any books in the last few years (post 1950ish) that use that technique.

    In response to your question – it was one of the things that was asked after the talk – nope, this computer program can’t tell the difference. It doesn’t understand meaning at all. It uses the binary system to allocate values to different words, apparently.

    Which is why we really shouldn’t get into analysing literary works, other than for a bit of fun!

    February 16th, 2010 at 5:14 pm

18. Why the Secret London Facebook group is so successful

    I actually don’t like the Facebook group (though I joined it) because I get no value out of it. Wading through the wall is something I don’t have the time nor inclination for. I’m waiting to see what the site looks like when it’s up. She says she’ll finish it within a week. Now that’s agile!

    February 9th, 2010 at 11:32 am

19. Old media vs. new media...and then some

    Hi Simon – thanks for the comment! Yes, I’ve spoken about quantifying emotions with many people, and here at Made by Many we speak about it regularly internally as well. I think there is serious potential for an algorithm that serves up quality tailored content – it’s going to be several levels better than Twitter. But I doubt it will be perfect, and it certainly won’t quantify emotions as well as we’d want it to. But unless someone tries, we won’t know. So I’m waiting, fingers crossed!

    February 1st, 2010 at 9:42 am

20. Wizards and haptic gestures

    If there was a ‘like’ button I would have ‘liked’ this post immediately. Here’s another nice opinion: http://www.theawl.com/2010/01/barack-obama-is-your-new-ipad

    You’re absolutely right when you say that it is meant for consumers of information rather than creators. They’ve targeted a niche consumer segment, and done it very well. Higgis actually mentioned this a couple of days ago: it’s for people like my mum who do some surfing, some emailing, some booking of train and plane tickets and that’s about it. Of course the iPad can do much more but you get what I mean.

    January 28th, 2010 at 1:59 pm

21. Awww... we were so analogue back then!

    Do you mean a 15-month old knows how to operate an iPod? Jeez!!!

    Thanks for sharing your lovely personal anecdotes. Very enjoyable read!

    January 20th, 2010 at 5:28 pm

22. It’s all about emotions, silly

    What a lovely, detailed comment Sara, thank you.

    I absolutely do believe that geolocational elements will be big next year. Foursquare is good but maybe people are looking for something bigger. You’re right about people wanting to know about ‘people near me’. I’m not quite sure what that geolocational app is that will do the trick like Facebook has done for social networks, but it’s got to be out there somewhere, and I think it will surface sooner rather than later.

    I don’t know about others but winter certainly brings out the feeling of wanting to associate myself with others more, in me – family and friends especially. So something that makes me see that others are experiencing snow, just the way I am – there’s something that speaks to our human instincts there. Let it snow indeed!

    December 17th, 2009 at 11:56 am

23. Personal Platforms and the Future Of Communication

    So I guess Nokia sanctions illicit affairs then. We have to come up with a better personal platform. Unless people don’t have a problem with it – who knows…….

    December 11th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

24. Branded food disasters

    some people LIKE the weird stuff. i remember we had vodka that was infused with scorpion at one office social. to some parts of the world, eating zebra and ostrich is weird as well.

    what about the legendary fried mars bars and fried pizza from scotland (which i have heard much of but never seen, not even on my last visit there a month ago!!)

    December 11th, 2009 at 5:38 pm

25. Personal Platforms and the Future Of Communication

    No the way I saw it they’re in a relationship. Committed – or at least I think so!!!

    December 11th, 2009 at 5:21 pm