2014 25
Netflix nailed it, now others please follow
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with
Netflix said I would love In a World and I loved In a World. But IMDB gives it a low rating. This says something about Netflix’s success as a recommendation engine. I don’t care what others think about a movie. I want to know if I will like a movie or not. And Netflix nails it for me. I wish there was something like Netflix for restaurants. Like my palate is so different from the average Trip Advisor restaurant reviewer that I find the app useless. Indeed my palate is quite different from that of many of my friends also, and so are other tastes like music. I think friends are an indication of what you may like, but not always and recommendation engines that are purely friend base fail for that. I find it interesting and useful that Netflix does not rely on my friends to give me recommendations. Non personalized recommendations work for people with average taste, they work when there is a lot of conformity. But if you differ from the mean you need a personalized recommendation engine. And that is Netflix for me, now what Netflix does for movies and TV series I want for:
People I can work with
Novels
Clothes
Sailing destinations
Art Galleries
Mountain bike rides
Restaurants
Neighborhoods in a new city
Museum exhibits
Music
Web sites
Children activities
Food stores
Consumer products
Conferences
Online Youtube/Vimeo type videos
Concerts
These last few days I have been spending a significant amount of time at the Miami playgrounds with Mia (3) and David (1), I have been observing the life of those under 5. I have seen that little kids, are rarely compassionate, caring for others must be taught to them, they are not generous, as Mia says “Dad, sharing is hard”, they are not organized and tend to leave toys and clothes behind, they are not clean and properly disposing of litter is not obvious to them. Sometimes little kids are even violent, today Mia got hit by a 2 year old boy, totally out of the blue. But of all the children’s shortcoming there is one evil that is lacking in them; little kids are not racist. Little kids are born selfish, rude, but they are not born hating other races, they are not born noticing other races, racism is taught to them. At the playgrounds of South Beach there is a big mix of races, but race, makes no difference, it’s not even part of the vocabulary that kids used to describe one another. Makes you think, what is it that we do to them. And what could be different.
2014 9
Facebook is not a black hole of memories anymore
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with
I used to complain that Facebook was a black hole of memories. That memories, moments, once posted, would never be found again. That scrolling your timeline forever was not a way to find anything. Before say, if I searched for the name of our boat in Menorca, Benebella I would get totally random stuff. Now I get all the posts of mine and of my friends about Benebella. Or if I search Gramofon, our cloud music player, I get all the posts of mine and my friends about the Gramofon. Still what Facebook search does not do, that Twitter does so well, is to show me all the posts that anyone writes about the Gramofon or any search term. This type of search is especially useful for companies. Facebook could do this at least on all posts written in public mode. I hope that comes soon. But at least now I can begin to find my own stuff on Facebook and that is great news.