Monthly Archives: February 2006

Mobilizing the Bird Watchers

It sounds more like the storyline for a movie, but this piece in the International Herald Tribune by Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “The Coming Plague”, highlights an area where technology might be able help stem the tide of bird flu: One… Read More »

Peering Into The Blogosphere

Has the blogosphere disappeared into itself, like some 18th century salon of elitists? Probably not, but sometimes I wonder. Clearly others do too. The second comment on a new website that purports to measure the Top50 bloggers is actually more entertaining than anything else on the site: The writer fires off both barrels at the… Read More »

How to Make More Use of the Vicar

In last week’s WSJ column (subscription only, I’m afraid) I wrote about how Bayesian Filters — derived from the theories of an 18th century vicar called Thomas Bayes and used to filter out spam — could also be used to sift through other kinds of data. Here’s a preliminary list of some of the uses… Read More »

The Problem With Surveys

I love BBC World, the satellite news channel, and I love offering feedback (rarely welcome, as readers will know). In the hope of satisfying both passions I joined the BBC World Panel where “users are invited to register and record their comments online and to take part in regular surveys and questionnaires specifically on viewing… Read More »