Other write-ups

Today I was playing with a few social networking applications that offer location services. Why? I want to stop posting only cryptic status messages in Facebook and sometimes really say what am I doing as my friends do (real friends, not only facebook friends), plus I also want to post some location information in my profile and keep track of trips.

One of the most important features to me was compatibility with FireEagle, which is a broker of location information to be used by other applications and social networking sites, that will give me a low entry/exit barrier. I also wanted something that can write to my Facebook profile, as I use Facebook a lot. The resulting setting was a non-trivial data flow that I had to draw to understand:

There are a few sites that are designed to handle location information in a social networking setting. The one I liked the most, from the ones I visited, is Dopplr which is a place for frequent travellers to boast about how many places they have been and where are they going next. Dopplr can read/write from FireEagle and has a nice application for Facebook. The Dopplr site is also pretty neat, I must say, and the Raumzeitgeist has a very cool look.

Then there is Plazes in which you can name a place, put it on the map, take a photo of it, etc. I like the "radar" function that can scan places around your location (it found that stupid club down the street the "Macarena" which is a tourist trap like many others in Barcelona). Now, Plazes has only write access to FireEagle, and that is too bad, BUT it can write to Twitter, which I found very good, given that I know a lot of people use Twitter, even some friends who are subscribed to my feed, but I haven't used it much. If I start using Plazes, then I will start using Twitter, that is 2 for the prize of 1.

To tame a bit all this mess I also "use" Plaxo. I say "use" with quotes because I really do nothing there, just register a set of data sources, I like it a lot because it can aggregate very well from different sources: it reads the RSS feeds from my blogs/sites and also has hooks for delicious, Amazon, Flickr, last.fm and many other sites I use and like. It integrates very tightly with Twitter, as it can read/write the status line, and it reads the "posted items" in Facebook which are useful -- I usually see ~45 clicks briefly after posting an item.

With respect to Facebook, Twitter and Dopplr have Facebook applications. The Twitter application can read Twitter status feeds and post them on Facebook, and the same with Dopplr.

A priori, I do not dislike complex stuff, I even like complicated things, but I do not want to spend a lot of time on this. Looking at the data graph to find if there is any source that can reach all the nodes, I see that if I post my location to Plazes it should propagate to the other services. I will try that, and after playing a bit, I will tell you how it went. Perhaps I can post an update to Facebook.

Or Twitter? Or Plaxo? Or somewhere else? :-)

15 years ago in this same month I was completely focused in studying for the PAA/PCE, which was like the SAT exam in the US. It had two main subjects in the PAA part: maths and Spanish, and several subjects in the PCE part: maths, physics, chemistry, biology, history, etc. I studied like crazy for the maths part using an old physics book that included a lot of math problems.

I knew I had a chance for getting a top score at this test, I just had to focus and avoid making stupid mistakes. But I failed. I said that -1 had 1 square root: i and failed to count -i, so I had one of the 90 or so questions wrong. There were 2 or 3 guys who tied in the first place in maths and I was not one of them.

As a consolation price, I got the best score in physics, answering all 50 questions or so without errors. It was a consequence of studying maths with a physics book.

In the interview clipped here, I say that I work at the Young Men Christian Association (YMCA) with children -- at that time I thought you could be a Christian-Atheist, but that's a long story :-). I also say that the PAA/PCE favors rich students as they are able to pay for lessons outside the high school to prepare themselves better.

I also say that I want to study to become an Engineer (I did) and I say --and I did not remember this-- that I would like to work independently as an entrepreneur.

In retrospective, these 15 years make sense. I did not want to study more physics, and I am OK with that. I wanted to become an Engineer, and I did. I also wanted to become an entrepreneur, and I also did, but at some point I had to leave that to focus on finishing my PhD. Academia was not in my plans 15 years ago, it appeared later on, and that's fine too. With 16 years, you cannot predict so well your future :-)

(Thanks to Cristian O. for sending me this newspaper clip!)

The Travelogue of Chile 2007 is ready and available. This time and as many suggested, I've written a bit more details about the places.

In August 2007 I traveled to Chile for holidays; these were five very intense weeks including a couple of weeks of work and three weeks of holidays with friends and family. At the beginning I'm always quite nervous because of all the long time spent without seeing each other, but after a moment you can feel at home very quickly more >>

Si encontramos que La Gioconda (La "Mona Lisa") de Da Vinci es un bello cuadro, o que el David de Michelangelo es una bella escultura ... los encontramos bellos porque los expertos dicen que son bellos, porque están en famosos museos, porque son obras famosas, ¿o porque realmente son bellos?. Si no fuera por todo lo que rodea a estas obras ¿las apreciaríamos?. Puesto de otro modo: ¿podemos apreciar el arte sin el contexto apropiado?.

El Washington Post hizo un interesante experimento para esto. Los protagonistas: el metro de Washington y uno de los más prodigiosos intérpretes de violín vivos.

Joshua Bell es un violinista consagrado que ha recibido numerosos reconocimientos y tocado con las más prestigiosas orquestas. Su educación musical comenzó a los 4 años de edad (!), y entre sus premios destaca (por lo inusual) un Grammy.

El experimento se realizó el día Viernes 12 de Febrero del 2007, a las 8 de la mañana. El violinista interpretó un concertino de 45 minutos, y su instrumento fue el mismo que utiliza para sus demás actuaciones en público: un violín Stradivarius que tiene 300 años y está avaluado en 3 millones de dólares.

Durante su performance, 1097 personas pasaron delante de él (ver video más abajo en el artículo). De ellas sólo unas pocas se detuvieron a escuchar, y el total de propinas que recibió fue unos miserables 32 dólares y 17 céntimos.

Para el experimento, se pidió a la gente su número de teléfono para una encuesta, poco después de pasar frente al violinista, indicando que se trataba de una encuesta sobre el metro. De las 40 personas a las que se llamó ese día en la tarde para preguntarles si habían visto algo inusual, sólo una pudo reconocer que el violinista que había escuchado en el metro ese día era excepcional:

"There was a musician playing at the top of the escalator at L'Enfant Plaza."

Haven't you seen musicians there before?

"Not like this one."

What do you mean?

"This was a superb violinist. I've never heard anyone of that caliber. He was technically proficient, with very good phrasing. He had a good fiddle, too, with a big, lush sound. I walked a distance away, to hear him. I didn't want to be intrusive on his space."

Really?

"Really. It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day."

Las restantes 39 personas ni siquiera mencionaron al violinista como algo especial visto en el metro ese día.

La conclusión del experimento fue bastante clara: necesitamos un contexto para apreciar la belleza. La opinión de expertos, la fama, el glamour, el escenario, y todas las demás cosas que rodean a una pieza de arte, son tanto o más importantes que la pieza en sí.

Existen 61 tipos de persona de acuerdo a la clasificación usada por Mosaic-UK de Experian. Los tipos principales mezclan aspectos económicos y culturales muy interesantes. Estos tipos son mucho más detallados que la típica definición de clases sociales que se usa en Chile (A=ricos, B=profesionales, C-D=técnicos, E=obreros, F=pobres) siendo ABC1 en nuestro caso el segmento a que la mayoría del marketing apunta.

La lista de 61 perfiles de Mosaic-UK, junto con estadísticas de cuántos votantes/compradores hay en cada grupo, dónde están y cómo convencerlos, es usada por políticos, marketeros, y cualquiera que quiera vender algo y quiera saber cómo y a quién dirigirse.

Los grupos Mosaic más básicos son estos:

• Grupo A: Símbolos de éxito.
• Grupo B: Familias felices.
• Grupo C: Comodidad en los suburbios.
• Grupo D: Comunidades pequeñas.
• Grupo E: Inteligencia urbana.
• Grupo F: Al borde de la seguridad social.
• Grupo G: Viviendo de la municipalidad.
• Grupo H: Empresarios de cuello azul.
• Grupo I: Subsistencia en la penumbra.
• Grupo J: Perspectivas grises.
• Grupo K: Aislamiento rural.

La lista completa está en un documento que se puede descargar de Mosaic UK. Es sorprendente (y sí, un poco decepcionante) ver que todos podemos ser encasillados en 61 clases bastante claras.

Por ejemplo, estuve buscando donde entraríamos mi esposa y yo en la lista, y creo que sería dentro del tipo E, probablemente el tipo E28: mezcla contra-cultural. Profesionales jóvenes viviendo en el centro de las ciudades, con tendencias políticas de izquierda, gastando más que ahorrando, con un cierto desprecio por la cultura de consumo masivo, construyendo su propia identidad, y por tanto en tránsito, etc.:

Demography

Counter Cultural Mix is a mix of young urban professionals, many with left wing sympathies, people of Caribbean and Bangladeshi origin, recently arrived Hispanics and a residual population of old people often living in small pockets of housing association or council owned accommodation.
[...]

Consumer Values

Many people in Counter Cultural Mix have, for one reason or another, rejected conventional consumerist values. This includes rejection of the political system, rejection of standard family values and the rejection of the conventional materialist lifestyles that most marketing communications promote. This rejection can result in apathy but more often in active engagement in counter cultural activities, hence the success of The Big Issue. Clearly not everyone is these neighbourhoods shares this orientation but it is does affect a large enough minority to have a major influence on local business.

Consumption Patterns

Counter Cultural Mix represents a poor market for most mass-market consumer propositions but offers significant opportunities in the entertainment and leisure sector, particularly for avant-garde films and radical artistic enterprises.

[...]

They also enjoy spending money and may not always think too carefully about spending, especially when tempted by new offers or when using credit cards. They may well over-stretch themselves to satisfy their hunger for life; whether that be funding a full and varied social life in the trendy bars, cafes and pubs where they like to hang out with their friends or, perhaps on a larger scale, funding foreign travel and holidays off the beaten track to exotic destinations. Spending rather than saving seems to be the norm here. They are unlikely to have savings and investments, although they may be starting to pay attention to financial products with an eye to the longer term future.

Estuve mirando las otras clases para ver el futuro que podría o querría tener. Convertirse en un E31 parece probable en el corto plazo. En el largo plazo, probablemente termine convertido en un A5 o A6 y con suerte en un A2. Quién sabe.

Vía: WIRED.