rating engines...

there is a problem on the web today - it is impossible to find what might exactly match your requirements, its easy to find what everyone likes, but not what people like you like.

there are so many rating engines out there, the most used is maybe the FaceBook 'Like' engine. Rating engines in todays Web 2.0 world are very important...why?

1. the avenues for posting stuff have increased.

2. the ease of capturing information and posting it has increased.

3. its easy to find an audience

4. Because of 1, 2 and 3, the inherent vanity of people have suddenly found an outlet.

and because of all this, the amount of crap has increased exponentially on the web. but then what is crap for me, might not be for you.

so how do you find out what is not crap for you? and also how do you also find out what is not crap in eyes of people who know about this crap, the SME's so as to say.

and that is exactly why rating engines are important. the ones that i know of, simply count the number of likes / dislikes. but that has one big problem, the vote of 'i know shit about this subject' counts the same as of 'i won a nobel prize in this subject'.

so my solution, weightages. Every person should have a weightage, so if my weightage in a certain area is high, the vote i give counts for more then someone else who has less weightage.

but then how does weightage get decided for me, how does the engine know that i know more about this subject then someone else. but before that a little more explanation.

so i post a picture, or write a blog, which is liked by 100^x people (really big number meaning it was really liked), my weightage increases by x. so next time i like someone's picture or blog, my weightage is x (more then other's whoes pictures or posts were not that liked), and consequently, the picture or blogpost i am liking gets a higher rating.

but then the problem remains, how do you determine popularity based on mass liking and based on critical liking, today only the first gets importance.

So i take a picture of a cat, which is very cute and all the girls and animal lovers love it, but its not that great a picture, and my pics gets liked by 100 people (all simple beings who have average knowledge about photograpy, are normal humans), my pic gets a rating of 100. but on the other hand, if i take a time freeze pic of a cat jumping, and apply some techniques to it which makes the pic a really good photograph from a professionals point of view but not really cute. my pic is like by a couple of photgrapher who have a combined weightage of 100, but not by any of the simple beings, well both pictures then have equal weightage. Which means the most popular, and the most critically acclaimed have same weightages.

and how does the system know that i know more about photography then all the amateur photographers who just got a nice DSLR, well cyclic weightages. the total weightage given to a picture i liked will in turn affect my weightage as well, because if a picture i liked was liked by a 1000 people it basically says that my choice matches those 1000 people.

so for this to work, it has to be cyclic, the photographer liking my picture and then my pictures weightage hitting the roof later on should in return affect the photographers weightage as well, because his choice is good. Which basically means each weightage will in turn affect all the weightages in the system.

that is where the technical difficulty comes, imagine the computing power you need for this.

also as a last point, i am not sure if there should be a negative rating in the system, mathematically that is.

i would love to discuss this, its an idea which has been with me for sometime now and might be fundamentally wrong, please let me know if it is.

PS: a major problem i see in this working is discoverability, in the sense, i can like something only if i come across it. and for that there has to be a central place where i look for everything, a single platform. that today is maybe google, so the rating engine has to be built into google. maybe it already is which means as usual google beats me in implementation... :-)

also this has to work with tagging maybe, because then only can you categorize. Although am still not sure if categorization is required at all, or just the rating system will take care of it. well maybe it is, not sure.

the model derives a lot form darwins laws btw...

Secrets on FB

We all have secrets and the most ironic part of having a secret is that u wanna tell the secret out to someone...

And when u do say it out u also give out the standard '**' warning, it's a secret, don't tell anyone.

Well what if u could say a secret to the world and still keep it a secret.

That's where FB comes in, giving out secrets on FB. Well they are nothing more then ananymous status updates...but u can set the scope. So u, 'the person with the secret', post a secret, and set the audience scope as friends, then on ur firends wall, ur secret shows up, but they only know that secrets is from a someone, but not who exactly. The scope can be something like college x batch y, so it shows up on all friends in that scope, along with the scope, so friends know it has to be someone in college x batch y!!!

The comments on these secret posts won't be anonymosu, so u the, the person with the secret, can have some fun.

There can also be a guessing game with rewards, need to work the technicalities out though.

And this can be extended to having some kind of a gossip wall. write anything about anyone, anonymously, and comment on it!!! Need to figure out it'll work though!!!

Also another suggestion for FB would be automatic group creation. Scenario is that u make a new profile, and start adding friends. At some point fb should be able to determine that a lot of people ur adding are in common with a friend A (maybe because ur both from the same college / class and ur adding common friends) and FB should be able to determine that all these A has added all these friends to group Y and suggest B this group.

That ways there will be common groups.

Ofcourae what happens if A hadade special groups for some of these common firmeds thathe doesn't like and kept group names like 'the I hate club' or sth. Maybe not a great idea, but secrets on FB, that should work, any takers??

Continous authenticating Armband

I have always wondered what is the most secure and convinient way of authentication. Basically requirement should be that no one should be able to steal it, and it should be accessible to you always.
Was thinking of how bluetooth devices and automatc discovery works and the idea came. Long time back we had come up with a business idea where we implant a chip in a persons body and it continually monitors some vital stats and emits a signal. As long as ur alive, the signal is live, u die, signal changes. Going a bit further, the position of the signal can be tracked, so it works like a honing device. Good for armed forces, people into adventures, explorers et al. Am sure this must be in some Bond movie already. Anyways...
The idea now is that instead of a chip implant u wear an armband, which monitors ur vitals, not just to see if ur alive, but also for stress, like a polygraph. In turn, if the armband thinks ur normal, it emits a signal like in Bluetooth, and ur automatically logged in on devices in range.
Imagine the potential, the armband can be configured to hold ur identity. So no more passowrds for anything. Also the armband can be configured to log into services, devices of ur choice. As soon as u walk into work, ur work machine identifies u and logs u in. Ur phone is always locked, unless in range of ur armband, which is basically u. Walking into a shopping mall, the armband emits ur identity, which in turn is captured by the services in the mall and accordingly ur served with advert et al.
On the security side, since this is monitoring ur vitals, there is no question of theft or breaking under pressure, because it's basically connected to ur subconscious.
And the armband will have to be self learning, so it will start differentiating between stress levels, and will recognize ur moods.
A couple of problems...subconscious can be manipulated under the effects of medication.
The armband itself can be tampered with, or in worst case stolen, in which case u basically loose ur identity, no one can steal it, but u don't have it either.
Also am wondering if there should be a manual override, well gut feeling tells me for all practical purposes there needs to be (because the armband learning program can never be faultless), but that might cause a lot of problems, because a manual override can be misused one, it leaves the armband vulnerable.
Maybe for every armband there is a period of learning before u give full control of ur identity to the armband!!!

PS: another advantage would be airport security, the airport security systems will be configured to read the vital stats as well, and so if ur a terrorist with a bomb, they'll pick up the heightened stress level...no more full nude x-ray pics of u required. Am in a flight and just though of this!! might not work for secret agents trained to beat the polygraph though :-)