AlwaysOn OnMedia has a series of short pitches by new companies. I came in on Vringo.com, which plays a clip of your choice when you ring someone. The Vringo guy shows a clip of the people dancing to “Shout” in “The Wedding Crashers” and of the “Whaaaaaatzup?” Bud commercial. It thus seems to be an attempt to make cellphones even more annoying.

Voodoo Vox “is pioneering a breakthrough advertising channel: In-call advertising.” [Uh-oh] They have a clickthrough rate of 14%. “Monetizing phone calls for a diverse network of high call volume industries”: Radio/TV stations, directory asistance, call centers, VOIP telcos, etc. Their site says they create “interactive audio ads dynamically inserted into appropriate spots in various types of telephone calls.” [What exactly is an appropriate spot in a call to insert an ad? I’d say it’s 5 seconds after I’ve hung up.] Their ads auto-target particular demographics. He concludes: “If you have a phone call, I can monetize today.” (Surprisingly, the firm is in North Adams, Mass., home of Ethan Zuckermans ’round the world.)

Now a panel reviews the presentations. [Tags: onmedia07 alwayson media marketing advertising ]

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AlwaysOn OnMedia is a well-run affair with great coffee, fresh fruit, and men wearing actual suits. We’re sitting in a large room in the Mandarin Oriental, a hotel so hoity-toity that its lobby consists of a person who greets you and shows you to the elevators. I feel a bit like an anthropologist here, although I do recognize some friendly faces I’m looking forward to re-connecting with.

The conference is about monetizing communications. I like money and I like it when Net companies make lots of it. It’s not my native idiom, but I have a phrase book that covers the most important areas (“Good morning/afternoon/evening. I am looking for an angel,” and “May I monetize that for you?”).

You can watch the webstream here, which is a nice service. (I’m on a panel at the end about PR on the Web. ) [Tags: onmedia07 alwayson media ]

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Siderean, a faceted classification company, has announced a patent for what it calls “relational navigation.”

Faceted classification lets a user browse a field in typical hierarchical fashion—like navigating through the nested folders on your desktop—except the hierarchy is created dynamically as the user decides which property matters to her now. So, instead of having a fixed taxonomy that first divides all books into fiction and non-fiction, and then subdivides them by language and then by year, with a faceted classification, a user might decide first to find all the works written in the 19th century, then drill down to the non-fiction, etc. It has taxonomy’s virtue of guiding navigation without its vice of having to present the user with one and only one path through the taxonomy.

Faceted classification and taxonomies both work by showing the user narrower and narrower results . That’s often what we want, but in this crazy world, we may also want to leap off the branch we’ve walked onto. Siderean’s relational nav shows context from branches outside of the path you’ve walked. Siderean refers to this as the ability to “pivot,” as in a database pivot.

Techniques that let us play with the dialectic between narrowing our focus and expanding it—searching and discovering—are all to the good. The faceted classification industry overall is up to important and exciting stuff. [Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous taxonomy faceted_classification facets siderean ]

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I’ve been using Kaspersky Anti-Hacker as my firewall primarily because it stays out of my way just enough.

But I just did some semi-controlled experiments trying to figure out why I’m getting less than a quarter the bandwidth I’m paying for (using my ISP’s bandwidth speed test, which is consistent with DSLReports‘s). I’ve tried lots of variables, but the biggest one so far is Kaspersky. If I have it set to Medium strictness, I get a third of my rated speed. If I set it to allow all (i.e., sort of off), the volume of bits almost doubles. If I go to Settings and turn the Intrusion Detection System to off, it goes up another third, getting me close to half the bandwidth I’m paying for.

In Safe Mode — yes, it’s XP — I get 66-75% of my rated bandwidth. So I’m continue to cycle through lots of the other programs that get loaded when I start up—putting them back in one by one and restarting. But, it’s in an inexact process since my ISP doesn’t deliver a steady stream of bits to me under the best of circumstances.

By the way, you know what’s a pain in the ass? Cycling through lots of the other programs that get loaded when I start up—putting them back in one by one and restarting.

Do other firewalls reduce bandwidth less? [Tags: firewalls bandwidth kaspersky]

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[NOTE: There are no plot spoilers in what follows, although I do talk about the general balance of the elements of the movie. I also assume you know the movie’s basic premise, as explained in any capsule review of it.]

Pan’s Labyrinth wasn’t simply not as good as I’d expected. I actually think it’s not good. Put differently: It’s a bad movie. In my opinion.

From the reviews and promotional interviews, I expected it to have two threads that reflect on one another: a story about the Spanish Civil War and a girl’s escape into a fairy tale world. In fact, this is a war story with a few occasional and relatively brief fantasy interludes. Neither story is worth watching.

The war story is hideously violent. Disgustingly even sadistically violent. But so is war, so this might be appropriate, except that the war story is also hideously cliched and shallow. The bad guy is one-dimensional. The brave freedom fighters manage to be even less than that. They are The Brave Hero, The Feisty Heroine, The Guy Who Stutters, The Rest of the Guys. The ending is very movie-ish. If the war story were shown without the fantasy elements, it’d be laughed out of town (except for the parts where audience is gagging).

The fantasy segments are, frankly, not all that original or interesting either. The characters are stock, which I’m sure is the point since they come from the imagination of an eleven-year-old. (There is one baddy who does something cool with eyeballs, although it will be familiar to kids who watched Nickelodeon’s Real Monsters cartoons.) But that doesn’t make it any better for the audience. If the fantasy segments were shown without the war story, they’d make a not all that arresting short subject. (The girl, Ivana Baquero, is a fabulous actor, though.)

Ah, but these two stories are intertwined, you say. They reflect on one another. The girl’s escape into fantasy is oh-so-poignant because of the violence of the world around her. The violence breaks through our softening of it via stories. That’s the theory, anyway. But it didn’t work for me. The fantasy didn’t intensify, illuminate or condition the war story. The war story was so cartoon-y already that the fantasy couldn’t touch it.

My wife and son both really liked it. It got an almost unprecedented 96% positives at RottenTomatoes . So, I’m probably wrong. But, heck, that’s what we have blogs for: To be wrong in public. [Tags: pan’s_labyrinth movies reviews]

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MetaGlossary is a definition aggregator that scrapes online glossaries and other sources. It’s got about 2,000,000 English words and phrases, and is particular useful when the words are new or you’re looking for a phrase. (Try “truthiness,” “alternative fuels“, “mission accomplished,” or “miserable failure.”)

Until today it’s been algorithmically driven. The new version of the beta lets anyone suggest a new or improved definition. You can also give a thumbs up or down to an existing definition.

It’s a good start. It’ll be fascinating to see what other social structures emerge. E.g., do we need to be able to edit existing definitions? A way to indicate that two definitions are good but need to be forked? More of a reputation system? It’ll be fun to watch this site… [Tags: metaglossary wikis dictionaries web2.0 everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Inside Google Book Search writes about a mashup of digitized books and Google Maps, that plots on maps place references in books. Click and get a snippet of the text. Very cool. (Thanks for the link, RageBoy.) [Tags: libraries books everything_is_miscellaneous taxonomy maps mashups web2 ]

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Steven Levy is looking for suggestions for the best tech writing—on dead trees or blogs—of 2006 for an anthology he’s editing called “Lesbian Blood Vampires from Mars.” (Just kidding. It’s called Best Technology Writing.) Here‘s where you send your nominations.

I have a terrible time coming up with lists. Asked a question such as “What was the best tech writing you read all year?” or “Quick, what are the four most influential sites on the Web” or “Name your children,” my brain freezes like I had just speed-guzzled a 48-ounce Slushie. I know I read some great tech writing this year. Damned if I can recall it. I get as far as Grumpy, Dopey and Sneezy, and then I’m out. [Tags: writing steven_levy]

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