Don't you love to see social networking research get play in the major journals?

2006, I have decided, is the year that I'll make it big. I'll get a promotion. I'll be wildly popular. And in order to do this I'll meet lots of people and make them my friends.

So imagine my delight when I find a study about [social] networking in my inbox at the start of the week.

Duncan Watts finds that you are 30 times more likely to meet a friend of a friend than a friend of a friend of a friend. Apparently this is extraordinarily interesting. Don't get it? What's important is that we know it's 30, not 29 or 31. Woo hoo!

My resolution to schmooze is probably pointless: for all I know, my new friends are about to sever the very ties and influence I covet in them.

To be honest, this comes as a relief. I'm more comfortable being the cynical loner.

Looking for the point of seemingly pointless research.

Decius wrote:

Cell Phone Call Record $110

Give us the cell phone number and we will send you the calls made from the cell phone number.

I like this part:

This report is for informational purposes only. This is not for use in court. If you need the records for court, you will need to subpoena the records directly from the carrier.

The whois records are pretty opaque:

Registrant:
Ist Source Information
ATTN: LOCATECELL.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447

The site appears to be fairly new; the record was created on September 26 of last year.

UPDATE: You can read a recent Chicago Sun-Times article, "Your phone records are for sale", about Locatecell. This article was posted to the cryptography mailing list, which is probably what prompted the MemeStreams thread.

This was covered in the Washington Post more than six months ago, "Online Data Gets Personal: Cell Phone Records for Sale."

"This is a person's associations," said Daniel J. Solove, a George Washington University Law School professor who specializes in privacy issues. "... It's a real wealth of data to find out the people that a person interacts with."

The company that operates Locatecell is Data Find Solutions, and they are located in Knoxville, TN.

I like this part of the Locatecell order form:

Phone searches are provided by third party, independent search experts. These experts are independent researchers and Data Find Solutions Inc does not know how they do the research or what databases they access.

As the news articles explain, EPIC has asked the FCC to investigate. EPIC offers a compendium of 40 Websites Offering Telephone Calling Records and Other Confidential Information (PDF).

Looking for startup capital -- or a business model? MemeStreams could put the social network information behind a walled garden. But would anyone want in?

UPDATE #2: Politicians call for better phone record privacy

Cell Phone Number Research

It's time to drop the apocalyptic rhetoric about a split root file and start looking beyond the age of a U.S.-dominated Internet. Breaking up is hard to do, but in this case, the alternative would be worse.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

I haven't read this yet, but it seems worth a look.

In groups people can accomplish what they cannot do alone. Now new visual and social technologies are making it possible for people to make decisions and solve complex problems collectively. These technologies are enabling groups not only to create community but also to wield power and create rules to govern their own affairs. Electronic democracy theorists have either focused on the individual and the state, disregarding the collaborative nature of public life, or they remain wedded to outdated and unrealistic conceptions of deliberation. This article makes two central claims. First, technology will enable more effective forms of collective action. This is particularly so of the emerging tools for "collective visualization" which will profoundly reshape the ability of people to make decisions, own and dispose of assets, organize, protest, deliberate, dissent and resolve disputes together. From this argument derives a second, normative claim. We should explore ways to structure the law to defer political and legal decision–making downward to decentralized group–based decision–making. This argument about groups expands upon previous theories of law that recognize a center of power independent of central government: namely, the corporation. If we take seriously the potential impact of technology on collective action, we ought to think about what it means to give groups body as well as soul — to "incorporate" them. This paper rejects the anti–group arguments of Sunstein, Posner and Netanel and argues for the potential to realize legitimate self–governance at a "lower" and more democratic level. The law has a central role to play in empowering active citizens to take part in this new form of democracy.

A democracy of groups

Before you click through, try to guess the missing word.

Eric E. Schmidt explains the company's astounding success in **** ... by suggesting that **** should be interesting, relevant and useful to users.

"Improving **** quality improves Google's revenue. If we target the right **** to the right person at the right time ... we win."

This proposition, he continued, is applicable to other media. "If we can figure out a way to improve the quality of **** on television ..., we should do it," he said.

While he is watching television, for example, "Why do I see women's ****?" he said.

Is it memes?

Google Wants to Dominate [You]

Today's theme is elegant underdogs: the devices or solutions that don't lead their markets but are in many ways more admirable than the ones that do.

What Do TiVo and the Mac Mini Have in Common?

In a curious twist, Wind River's latest advertising campaign evokes 20th-century agitprop style.

This week, Wind River introduces a revolutionary suite of products, services and partnerships to enable companies to develop device software faster, better, at lower cost and more reliably. The hero of the revolution is Device Software Optimization.

You might also be interested in a new graphic history of the Wobblies.

Wind River Propaganda?

The June 2005 issue of IEEE Spectrum is filled with articles about the technology revolution in China. Most of the feature articles are publicly available; the editorial column, "Spectral Lines", entitled All the Tech in China, is available only to members, but here are two excerpts I wanted to highlight:

China today is the dragon in the living room of the world market. And everyone in that market has to come to terms with it.

This year China will graduate more than 300,000 engineers, so many that it has a glut of technological talent. All the current members of China's Politburo Standing Committee, the highest tier in the Communist Party, are engineers. Can the United States make a similar claim about its political leadership or the size of its technology workforce?

China's Tech Revolution | IEEE Spectrum

Decius wrote:

I think this decision is a lot less important than most people are making it out to be. From a consumer perspective, nothing has changed.

I think this matters a lot more to Intel than it does to Apple. But Jobs is flashy and fashionable and Intel is just a chip company, so they let him do the talking. For now, anyway.

The collective spin on this story is interesting; Apple steps out loud and proud with a "Death to the Power PC!" message, while Intel sits in the back of the room, silently taking in the reactions.

According to standard practice in the semiconductor business, this was Intel's deal to announce to the world. In industry jargon, it's called a design win. Precedents abound: Transmeta, AMD, and many others.

Here's an excerpt from a pre-Jobs-announcement interview that Macworld is running today. (The Computex exhibition in Taipei, where the interview was conducted, ended on June 4.)

Chandrasekher: We always talk to Apple. Apple is a design win that we’ve coveted for 20 years and we continue to covet them as a design win. We will never give up on Apple.

IDGNS: What would you be willing to do in order to win Apple’s business?

Chandrasekher: Well, nothing unnatural that we wouldn’t do for other design wins. It’s got to make sense from a business standpoint. We would do what makes economic sense. If we can do that and still get the design win, we’d do it.

Translating the Intel-Apple Deal

How many of the 20th century's greatest engineering achievements will you use today? A car? Computer? Telephone? Explore our list of the top 20 achievements and learn how engineering shaped a century and changed the world.

1. Electrification
2. Automobile
3. Airplane
4. Water Supply and Distribution
5. Electronics
6. Radio and Television
7. Agricultural Mechanization
8. Computers
9. Telephone
10. Air Conditioning and Refrigeration
11. Highways
12. Spacecraft
13. Internet
14. Imaging
15. Household Appliances
16. Health Technologies
17. Petroleum and Petrochemical Technologies
18. Laser and Fiber Optics
19. Nuclear Technologies
20. High-performance Materials

Greatest Engineering Achievements of the Twentieth Century