Author: Daniel Tunkelang

Here’s the report via ChiefTech:

A small study raises questions about whether videoconferencing distorts interactions in a subtle but important way.

The study found that doctors and nurses who attended seminars via videoconference were more likely to be influenced by the charisma of the presenter.

In contrast, people who were face-to-face with the presenter were more likely to base their judgment of the presentation on the arguments that were used, the researchers said.

I’ve never been a big fan of videoconferences, but this is the first time I’ve even seen this argument proposed, let alone empirically validated. Personally, I’m more likely to tune out of a remote presentation than to be mesmerized by it. But perhaps that isn’t so different: remote presenters bear a much stronger burden of keeping the audience’s attention, which places a higher premium on charisma than in face-to-face meetings where the audience is more captive.

In any case, it’s a reminder that the way we consume information often matters as much as the information itself.

Yahoo Researcher Andrew Tomkins gave the keynote at the CIKM 2008 Workshop on Search and Social Media, entreating academics to forget about core web search, where they can’t compete on a level playing field with commercial search engine companies, and instead to focus on social media search. Notes here, courtesy of Matt Hurst.

Thanks to him and everyone else blogging and twittering from the conference!

When I decided to start blogging, I scoured the blogosphere for role models. In particular, I looked for examples of people who, despite a strong corporate affiliation, managed to create a very non-corporate, personal voice. It didn’t take long to find Dave Kellogg.

Kellogg is the CEO of Mark Logic, a company that sells an “XML content platform”. Their corporate home page links to his blog, but describes it as a place where he “rifs, rants, and occasionaly raves about content technology.”

It’s an accurate if incomplete description–I’m not sure he restricts his attention to content technology. Some of his exemplary posts:

• Web 2.0ver?
• To SaaS or Not To SaaS: That is the Question
• Category 5 Hurricane Hits PR
• Autonomy Hires Fast’s Convera Guys. Huh?

While Kellogg’s blog probably violates every rule in the PR manual, it’s his strong, unadulterated voice that makes the blog worth reading. And I suspect that his blog gives his company more ROI on marketing than any other promotion efforts.

In any case, the blog makes for informative and entertaining reading. I may not always agree with his content, but I like his style.

The HCIR ’08 proceedings are now available at the workshop website. Enjoy!

One of Endeca‘s partners, PowerReviews, got a nice write-up in the Wall Street Journal for their reviews and recommendation site, Buzzillions. They’re at the forefront of social navigation, something I think we’ll see increasingly in online retail and media.

Here’s a screenshot to get you in the Halloween spirit:

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But I do thank Jeff for alerting me to Google’s SearchWiki efforts:

The new feature is a more transparent way to personalize search results; this time, Google allows users to decide which search results are the most relevant and to share those findings with other users. Instead of bookmarking the results or saving them in Google Notebook, you can make them more visible on a search results page and find them when you search later. Unfortunately, Google’s interface will become cluttered unless Google decides to hide the new options until you click on a link like “Edit the search results”.

Of course, the big question is if / how a user’s feedback will affect result ranking for everyone else. Given Google’s experience with fighting spam, I’d imagine they’d know better than to provide an easily gamed feedback.

As some of you may know, I’m not a big fan of advertising, and I made a decision when I started this blog to keep it free of ads. In particular, I assumed that the tiny amount of revenue I might generate via AdSense would not offset the cost of annoying or even losing readers. And, back in June, I even questioned the taint of sponsorship in discussions at Mashable and WinExtra.

But last week a reader approached me with an intriguing sponsorship offer. Steve Lewis runs a startup called Hire Reach that targets job ads based on contents of technical articles. You can see an example ad below in a screenshot from the IT Inform site. Steve tells me that the system not only matches content with appropriate ads, but also provides interested job seekers with a direct contact to hiring managers, bypassing the usual HR rigmarole in large companies.

A couple of caveats:

• They haven’t worked with blog content before.
• The targeting is only useful if their inventory includes jobs that match my content.

I hope it goes without saying that I would never modify my content to suit a sponsor. I have my own biases that surely come through in my writing, but they are mine, not my employer’s or any one else’s.

So, assuming that the system would produce relevant job ads, and that I can include them using a much smaller portion of screen real estate than the InformIT site, how do folks here feel about the idea? Please be candid with your concerns, either through comments here, or privately by emailing me at dtunkelang at gmail dot com.

I just read about an experimental storefront from Amazon called WindowShop. It takes exploratory search to its extreme, not providing users with any means to search or navigate beyond scrolling and zooming. Here’s a screenshot, though you need to go the site to get the full immersive experience.

I’m usually a fan of exploratory search interfaces, but I confess I’m underwhelmed. The interface has been compared to the Borders Magic Shelf, but I think Borders achieves a much better balance of serendipity and user control. Curious to hear what folks here think.

Extra, extra: The Christian Science Monitor is abandoning its weekday print edition and fully embracing an online publishing model.

This may not seem like big news to readers here who probably abandoned print newspapers long ago. But the Monitor is the first national newspaper to make such a move. Monitor editor John Yemma says: “We have the luxury — the opportunity — of making a leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years.”

The Monitor has always been at the vanguard, putting its text online as early as 1996 and launching a PDF edition in 2001. It was also an early pioneer of RSS feeds. (Source: Wikipedia)

Just a few days ago, The Guardian, another “old” media stalwart, announced that it would make all of its content available via RSS feeds. These are certainly interesting times for the media industry.

Business intelligence analyst Boris Evelson wrote a nice post on the Forrester Blog entitled “… we had the data, but we didn’t have the information…“.

It’s a good read, but here’s the punchline for the impatient:

Many large enterprise Business Intelligence vendors have robust, scalable, function rich products, and many management consultants and global systems integrators have reference architectures, solution accelerators and other best practices necessary for successful BI architectures, applications and implementations. The fundamental IT and BI components for fact based decision making are out there, ready to be used. Now it’s up to our business and government leaders to use this information to get us out of the current crisis and avoid new ones!

I suspect that part of the problem is that most enterprise BI software languishes as shelfware, so complicated that only a few IT employees know how to use it. If we are going to realize the value of BI software, it needs to be readily accessible to the decision makers who have domain expertise but lack the time or patience to become IT experts. We need to enable Joe the Business User to make informed decisions.