Grooming my Social Graph

Google Buzz peaked my interest in my social graph. I knew about Google's Social Graph API but I never looked into it before. It turns out that it uses XHTML Friends Network, XFN for short, to declare links between various services. The entire system is built on top of the existing web and uses links that are already in place. When a person links to another person's page, they describe the relationship using the "rel" attribute. There are several defined ways you can describe your relationship using a link that are shown in the following table:


Depending on how you want to describe your relationship, there will be different values used in the rel attribute. You can also use multiple to describe a single relationship. For example, if you have met someone and are their friend you may use rel="met friend" in a link.

Right now there are a growing number of sites that are using their existing data and simply declaring these relationships. The power comes when big companies such as Google index these pages and can then surface and analyze this information.

The only real way to use this type of information at this point in time is to correct your social graph. When I looked at mine using Google's Site Connectivity tool, I noticed that all of my profiles were not all linked together. When you enter in a URL of on of your profiles on services such at Twitter or Digg or the URL of your personal home page or blog, it uses the public data to connect to all of your other services. Even though I had a lot of established links, it simply was not fully connected.

What I needed to do was update all of my profiles so they provided a two way link using the "me" relationship. This mean each of my profiles on the various services needed to link to one of my pages that I was claiming to be me, I choose my blog because it is where I have the most up to date content. This is just half of the link that is required. A link from my blog would need to be traced back to each profile. This way both ends are in agreement and can substantiate the same claim. The link does not need to be direct and can pass through several nodes. For example if my Twitter account claims my blog, my blog claims my Google profile, and my Google profile claims my Twitter account, this provides the same authority as two profiles claiming each other.

After adding and updating links between all of my profile pages my graph was corrected, but was not updated. Luckily Google provides a tool to force a recrawl of updated pages to correct the graph. The pages you can recrawl are those claimed on your Google Profile, so if you want to correct a link just add it and force the update. I did this for several pages that I then removed from my profile. They were linked to on other places in my social graph, but I did not want them listed on my Google profile.

While it is not yet useful, as more sites support XFN, this may change the way we use the Internet. There are valid concerns about privacy, but the potential applications are very exciting. I'll leave the explaining up to Google:

Importing actions into Facebook

Yesterday, when looking through my Google Reader I noticed a Facebook entry about a new feature: A new way to share with friends

Basically, Facebook is now going to allow content from external sites to be directly injected into the Mini Feed. This is great because it doesn't require an application be installed. I have added my Flickr and Digg account into my mini feed. I will likely add del.icio.us once I start using it.

This is really great because my Facebook profile is really the combination where all of my online activities meet. Even this blog post on Blogger will be automatically turned into a Facebook Note, which is the only way many of my friends ever see my blog posts.

I am glad my Flickr posts and Diggs will now appear in my Mini Feed and therefore appear on some of my friends News Feeds. As Facebook will undergo major updates to the profile pages soon, I hope this will be a major part of that process. I know many of my friends do not use Digg or Flickr and by having this content appear seamlessly inside of Facebook makes it a powerful social networking tool.

Overall I am really pleased with the direction that Facebook is taking in developing the platform.

XKCD: Christmas Back Home

"There were no sounds of stirring save the click of a mouse."



W00T!

I guess I'm just having a good break... This is the first story that I've submitted to Digg that has be "homepaged". I was on XKCD at midnight and noticed no one submitted the new comic yet, so I went over to Digg, typed in a title and description. When I woke up the story had over 680 Diggs and was on the homepage!

So far I'm having a great holiday break! I'm running out of geeky things to accomplish for the first time... Yay Digg!

read more | digg story

I now have 1,000 Diggs!

It seemed only appropriate for a computer geek to Digg his own blog as his 1,000th digg.  I have been just below 1,000 keeping a close eye on my counter for the past few days.  Today, I have finally reached a momentous milestone. 

While I doubt this is news for other people, it seems that I have become very accustomed to getting my news from Digg.  More and more of my friends, even the non computer geeks, are getting their news from Digg.

I have found it is especially useful at making small talk when there is nothing to do.  Having very popular stories of the day as conversation topics has become common place in my life.  It is truly amazing.

Obviously nothing major is going to happen because I have now accumulated exactly 1,000 Diggs.  However, I expect it to take far less time for me to reach the 2,000 mark as I have slowly increased the amount that I have dugg over a year.

Lastly, thank you Digg for a great year of news!

Cassie submits Sicko story to Digg

This is really geeky...

Basically, I watched Sicko and really wanted Cassie to watch it.  She didn't want to at first but she finally did.  Then she blogged about it in her post: Health Care Doesn't Care That totally took me off guard because she never blogs, although I'm trying to encourage her.

Then she submitted it to Digg a while after she posted it.  Health care doesn't care (Digg)

I was just talking to her on Skype and she sent me this...

"I about died when I checked it and saw I had 6 diggs."

As of the time that I posted this article her story now has a total of 7 diggs.  That is definitely more diggs than any story I ever submitted to Digg.  It even has three comments! (Although one of them was mine.)

I am slowly converting her into a blogging, digging, computer geek.  My plans are progressing nicely... ;)

Cassie was actually really excited about the fact she gained attention on Digg.  Although she probably won't be homepaged, I promised her a cake if she ever does become homepaged.

I can't wait and see how many diggs it has tomorrow.  It is not the fact that it was submitted by her that is really great, it is the fact she wrote the blog entry.

It's official: Google has bought FeedBurner

Both companies just posted that the rumored acquisition has in fact happened. No mention of the rumored price of $100 million. See also FeedBurner post (http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2007/06/feedburner_google.php ) and why this is smart (http://tinyurl.com/2uwx7r )



read more | digg story

(VIDEO) Bill Gates Shows Off Microsoft's Touch Table

Billy Gates was on the Today Show this morning showing off his fancy new table. Want to see it in action rather than just in photos? Check the video for all sorts of goodness of it being used for all sorts of applications, such as playing with photos, wirelessly pulling photos off a camera, and ordering and paying for food using credit cards.



read more | digg story

The new Microsoft Surface Announced

The launch of Microsoft Surface marks the beginning of a new technology category and a user-interface revolution. Surface, Microsoft’s first surface computer, provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural hand gestures, touch and physical objects. Surface computing breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology.



read more | digg story

Blogging Law

I've been blogging for just over a week and when I started legal issues were not at the forefront of my mind. However, yesterday I found this posting on Digg: 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know

The posting linked to an article posted on Aviva Directory about the laws surrounding blogging. While some of the things did not apply to my blog at the moment, several things I found of interest.

First, the advice about (point #2) deeplinking was very interesting and useful. Before I read this post, I had no problem linking directly to the page which I wanted to reference. The first tip was to not claim other people's work (pages) as your own. This is just common sense. The other point which I am going to try to do a better job at is indicating that your linking to an outside website (you'll notice above I linked to both the blog entry and the main blog for the article I am talking about).

The next point of interest (point #3) was about using pictures. The first problem that arises was using pictures that are not your own. I'll never post a picture that I did not upload to blogger. The problem that arises is copyright. While it is not likely that legal action will be taken against my blog, it is still something that I will consider in the future. The good news is, using thumbnails is legal. The only thing I need to take into account, is that for a picture to be considered a thumbnail it needs to be a standard shape and side.

Other points the article talked about include copying other's posts, infringing on trademarks, handling the content (specifically comments) submitted by users, and liability. I have a feeling this article made it to Digg because of the HD-DVD code that was being posted on hundreds of blogs and other websites. It was submitted to Digg once before and was not homepaged.

Since my blog is not that popular I am not going to make any major changes. From what I have read, I have been doing several things right. I'll just keep in mind the legal issues that are involved in blogging.

Internet: The only thing more popular than the iPhone is...

a seemingly random string of hex characters, but that is not the entire story.

I posted earlier about Kevin Rose's comment he made on an article. Well, he eventually changed his stance and allowed the HD-DVD encryption key to be posted on Digg. Heck, he even submitted the most popular story which includes the key.

Just as a little explanation according to Jared: in order to get the move off of a HD-DVD (same thing also applies for DVDs and BlueRay, except it has been cracked for DVDs for a while now) is a key to basically "unzip" the movie. That is a bad term to use, but in simple terms the data on the disk is garbage. Without the decryption key it is meaningless. The problem with the system is that the players that consumers buy have this key built in (but well hidden) and it is just a matter of time before people find it. Now, this key alone does nothing, but coupled with software means that the DRM that the MPAA "depends" on is not basically useless.

The official response after everything at Digg went crazy can be seen on Digg's Blog. Their first response was that they were legally required to take down the submitted articles in question. This is when things went crazy. Basically, there is the type of spam you get in your inbox, then there are thousands of angry computer geeks all posting creative ways of having the "illegal number" in an article. At points, it was actually quite funny.

My favorite was definitely the post that linked to the Wikipedia article about IPv6 (which just happens to have the same number of characters as the decryption key). I can't seem to find it on Digg at the moment (and no wonder the amount of diggs in a short period of time must have broke some records). In the comment of the post, more or less, said that a specific IP address was available for use in the system. It doesn't take many guesses to figure out what that IP address was.

After the madness continued for hours, a new blog article was posted on Digg, by Kevin Rose this time, which basically said Digg was going to go down fighting and leave the articles up. This was directly a result of all of the anger over people claiming their accounts were being banned and articles actually disappearing left and right for a while. The decryption key was even included in the title! Kevin's comments are so important I quoted them below:

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

Back to the point I was first making, Earlier today this story only had about 18,000 diggs (I say only in jest). The article about the announcement of the iPhone had, and has had for a while, 22,000 some diggs. I just checked a little while ago, and as of the posting of this entry, the article (posted by Kevin) has over 30,000 diggs! (I am sure the 30,000 it has now will seem like a small number as the diggs continue to accumulate.)

This can be seen on Digg's top stories of all time (assuming it has not been a year since I have written this or something tops this event).

Anyone that is observant will notice I did not post the decryption key, nor a picture of the key, nor a URL said key anywhere on my blog (although the key is only 1 click away). I have a feeling the legal fallout from this event is going to be interesting. I am just opting to use my free speech to not post what has been posted, by now, thousands of times. Also, I don't need Google taking down, my still brand new, blog.

Just to geek out a little about this subject. It was interesting using Digg during the event. I would even go as far to say that Digg suffered the Digg Effect! I posted an article, and it did not appear to be on the site at all and I actually had to go to my history to find it. It was in-fact there. Also, many of the stories I dugg did not appear on my profile until many hours after I dugg them. I sincerely hope that Digg releases some technical information about the event. Another observation was, that even on a fast computer, navigating a page with 900 comments is not very fun (or fast).

Ironically, in the end this might prove helpful for Digg. They are now going to receive wide media coverage because of this digital riot. As long as they are not sued out of existence, I think things will be better in the end for the site as a whole.

I'm just glad to see that now every article on the front page (Digg article) is not about the same topic.

:D

Kevin's Response to Digg Taking Down Story

This was really hard to find so I thought I would post it here:

Hi all, just wanted to post about this...
Almost every week we receive cease and desist letters from attorneys. With 6-7,000 new stories being submitted every day, we are bound to link to illegal content from time to time. So we get these notices. It happens.

Today we were notified about a story that linked to intellectual property that is protected under the DMCA. We contacted our attorneys, and they gave us their advice: remove the stories. If we don't, we can be held liable for damages, and by damages I mean enough to shut us down.

This is difficult. We are a small company with handful of employees, and we don't have the resources to fight a battle. I don't want risk a lawsuit that could end up with digg being shut down, so we removed the stories.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the DMCA and any DRM'ed media (including HD-DVD). I'll talk about this in detail on the diggnation episode airing May 12th.

-kevinrose

This was barried on this article.

The whole situation at Digg right now is crazy. Basically, there is no way that the number is going to be lost now. The interesting part will be the lawsuits that follow. While some people think that Digg's actions were not justified, they did consult legal advice and the user response was strong to say the least.