Jeff Random

musings and metatheory


Meta-Theory of Optimization

Meta-Theory of Optimization

Optimization is the discipline (art/science) which is concerned with finding the maxima and minima of functions, subject to constraints.

In Meta-Terms, Optimization does not necessarily mean finding the optimum solution to a problem. Often this is not possible (constraints), and this is where the balance (heuristics) is used to make principally accurate judgments factoring in given circumstances. Then these are tested and refined to a degree that is itself part of the Optimization, which grows into a self-referential diminishing curve.

Knowing what questions to ask (your metrics), what tests to run (your data), and what to do with the information (analysis) is the Art of Optimization.

This is a definition in progress. What do you think? Let me know

Published by r8ndom, on February 21st, 2006 at 1:36 pm. Filled under: Metatheory,Optimization,PostsNo Comments

Secure, Memorable & Global

Making your brand Secure, Memorable, and Global sounds like what an IP firm, and or marketing agency should do for you. As domain names = brands more and more it’s also the properties that you would like to have your indentifier (brand and/or URL) have on the internet.

Up until now Zooko‘s Triangle has argued for ‘choose any two’ in the same way that you can generally ‘choose any two’ amongst Good, Fast & Cheap.

Now Marc Steigler suggests a system for making “secure, memorable, and global identifiers to use on the Internet”

PetNames

The PetName system allows unique, global, and memorable identifiers by using trusted relationships.

The metatheory extrapolates well whether you use the example of preventing paypal phishing, or apply the theory to purchase recommendations.

Published by r8ndom, on February 9th, 2006 at 6:44 am. Filled under: Integrated Marketing,Media 2.0,New Media,Posts,Search,TrustNo Comments

Viral Marketing Example

Viral content is content that consumers want to propogate, in essence creating word of mouth marketing (WOMM).

Roundabout is a great example of a viral marketing video for this crossfader.

Published by r8ndom, on February 2nd, 2006 at 10:35 pm. Filled under: Content,Media 2.0,New Media,Posts,Videos1 Comment

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

This is almost too much to be believed.

I say almost because whenever you have legislation written to the specifics of a market or technology, by lawmakers with little or no understanding of the market or technology there are bound to be mistakes.

Let’s hope this is simply a mistake, as opposed to the end of privacy on the Internet.

Published by r8ndom, on January 13th, 2006 at 2:21 am. Filled under: PostsNo Comments

Beyond Backlinks -Search Conversations

TalkDigger is a great tool that lets you search conversations about a specific URL.

Talk Digger

This is a metasearch that covers Technorati, Google Blog, Bloglines, Feedster, BlogDigger, Icerocket, MSN Search, Google, Yahoo!
You can outuput the results as an RSS feed to keep track of your sites and stay involved in the conversation.

Published by r8ndom, on December 29th, 2005 at 1:07 am. Filled under: Integrated Marketing,New Media,Personalized Content,Posts,SearchNo Comments

Glad to get a Virus?

With reports that a “New Worm Chats with Users on AIM” link and even goes so far as to respond “lol no its not its a virus” when questioned it’s not too far of a leap to imagine personalized viruses.

Don’t imagine the personalized viruses tailored to your DNA that many sci-fi novels talk about, but instead think the evolution of Spear-Phishing.

This kind of an attack could use the information it gathers about you (contact names, frequency of contact, online purchase history, emails, IM history etc) to masquerade as a “trusted” contact to everyone you know. If it wasn’t too intrusive, then it would be difficult to even notice if your system had been infected.

Imagine that instead of trying to steal your credit card numbers, or other information that has a lot of attention focused on security this “personalized” virus simply pretended to be you occasionally.

It could IM/email your contacts, and suggest products or services. If it only chose things that you would recommend, or have purchased (think of Amazon’s suggestion engine), to the type of people who would be interested (search for keywords in email/IM interactions), and could do it in your ‘voice’ (copy phrasing from IM/email) it would be very effective. Perhaps it would even place VOIP calls, and remix your voice for maximum effectiveness.

Whatever the mechanism, the fact remains that eventually one of your friends would say ‘Thanks for the heads up on that (stock pick, book, software package, membership website etc)’ and it would come out that you didn’t actually tell them about it.

The question is – would you mind?

Think of it this way – If someone had a website with EXACTLY the news that you were interested in, and nothing else you would be very happy to read it. It wouldn’t matter that the site was a splog newsmaster site, or the product of a great news team. Either way you are happy with the end result.

By the same token, you really would like to let all of your friends know about the products and services that you think would improve their lives. It would be even better if you were able to do so without taking any effort on your part, and it just “worked in the background”.

By making itself unobtrusive, and even helpful you would have very little incentive to track down and remove the bot. From there it’s just a short step to reminding you about appointments, screening phone calls etc. After all if it’s doing a good enough job, you might even want it to help you to manage your relationships a little. Imagine being able to delegate those obligatory chats to your Fetch* .

As I have discussed before the revolution in personalized content may well evolve from search engine spammers. That is just one niche in the digital ecosystem. In order for digital life to evolve there needs to be competition and consequences. With anti-virus, anti-spyware and other types of competitive software in the mix only the fittest will survive.

I can’t wait to see what comes out from this.

* Fetch = autonomous adaptive software agent or knowledge based agent.

Published by r8ndom, on December 8th, 2005 at 1:10 pm. Filled under: Content,Metatheory,Personalized Content,Posts,TrustNo Comments

MMO games are formalized reputation economies

Trust + MMORG = Reputation Economy

new reputation economies will pervasively reshape culture as dramatically as the invention of money. Entirely novel kinds of human interaction will spawn new social classes, power structures and lifestyles. Reputation economies will be abstractions of relationships, in the same way that money abstracts material wealth and labor.

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Published by r8ndom, on December 1st, 2005 at 10:04 pm. Filled under: Media Economics,Metatheory,Posts,TrustNo Comments

FHGLink Adult Webmaster Freeware

FGHLink is a windows based tool to make HTML code out of the data from sponsors in the adult business. If your sponsor provides free hosted galleries with descriptions or thumbnails (small pictures) you can make HTML links with this tool.

Published by r8ndom, on November 29th, 2005 at 12:25 pm. Filled under: Adult Webmaster,Affiliate Marketing,Posts1 Comment

MetaData, SEO FireFox Plugin

About This Site FireFox Plugin

“About This Site” is a plugin for Firefox that makes it easy to check:

* Alexa traffic detail and related sites
* Del.icio.us linkbacks
* Google related pages, cache and link information
* Kinja site readers
* Netcraft reports
* Open Directory site listing
* Popdex search for citations
* Technorati link cosmos
* Wayback Machine archive
* Whois query
* Yahoo linkdomain

This plugin to show metadata is very useful for SEO as well as SEM.

Published by r8ndom, on November 24th, 2005 at 5:17 am. Filled under: Posts,Search,SEM - Search Engine Marketing,SEO - Search Engine OptimizationNo Comments

Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Google Analytics launches. Lot’s of features including “Funnel Visualization” that have been lacking from easy to use free stats packages.