Tech, Research and Life

Blog Moved to blog.alessiosignorini.com

Alessio Signorini — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:57:02 +0000

This blog has been moved to

http://blog.alessiosignorini.com

please update your bookmarks!

Top Shared Domains on Twitter, February 2010

Alessio Signorini — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:58:54 +0000

Twitter announced this week that it receives more than 50 Million of tweets per day. Lot of those are spam and I am trying to demonstrated that in my next paper. Meanwhile, the following table shows the 100 most shared domains on Twitter.

I was expecting to see YouTube among the first domains but not Facebook. The winners among photo/video sharing sites are Twitcam, Tweetphoto and Twitpic. All the tweets about Amazon contain referral code. BBC is the most shared news website, followed by the New York Times, Huffington Post and CNN. The most popular tech blog is Mashable, which wins over TechCrunch and Engadget.

[Table and full post at new address]

Why Twitter Clients still lack Classification, Clustering and Ranking?

Alessio Signorini — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:02:24 +0000

On Facebook the average user has about 130 friends and I believe that the average user of Twitter follows a similar number of people.

So I wonder: why Twitter clients (e.g., TweetDeck, Seesmic, …) do not learn from news products (e.g., Google News) and start adding classification, cluestring and raking of followers/tweets?

With 41 Million tweets per day (39% containing link, for the majority spam) we could already take advantage of smarter Twitter Clients.

[Full post at new address]

Average Query Length on Major Search Engines, February 2010

Alessio Signorini — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:37:04 +0000

Here are some query length statistics from 2006, 2007, and 2009.

But how good/bad are people in writing queries today? What is the distribution of the lengths? Does it vary between search engines?

This morning I decided to investigate that. After the analysis of some log files, here are some updated statistics as of February 2010.

[Full post and table at new address]

Facebook’s Email could really Take Down Gmail Supremacy

Alessio Signorini — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:53:18 +0000

Today, I read about Facebook’s idea of launching their own email platform: it is a genius idea.

Just a few days ago Facebook reached 400 Million users, and most of them log in every day. They definitively take a look at their Walls, the homepage, and check their messages. Facebook does not have to do anything more than setting up a few SMTP/IMAP servers, tell everybody that they now have an email @fbmail.com and the deal is done.

For Facebook, this is a great move. They will be able to look into your email stream and figure out what your interests are to improve their targeted advertising.

[Full post at new address]

Most Used URLs Shortener on Twitter, January 2010

Alessio Signorini — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:24:30 +0000

According to my studies, in January 2010 the Twitter crowd produced about 41 Million tweets per day and of those about 38% contained an URL. Pretty impressive, considering that a few months ago there were only 26 Million of tweets per day and 22% contained URLs.

The table below shows the top 100 most used URLs Shortener and their relative percentages of URLs in the Twitter stream for January 2010.

[Full post and table at new URL]

The Boulder Creek Inspires People..even to Pee!

Alessio Signorini — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:34:48 +0000

Today, walking by the Boulder Creek, I saw some people doing a photo shoot. It happens often around here, especially when young couples take their engagement pictures. It was inspiring.

Apparently, I was not the only one inspired by it. The man in the orange coat (in the picture) decided to pee in the river next to the couple’s photo shoot in full daylight!

[Full post and picture at new address]

Free Wifi and Toolbars are Used to Monitor the Pages you Visit

Alessio Signorini — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:55:58 +0000

If your browser sports a toolbar (e.g., from Yahoo, Google, MyWebSearch, …), you are using Google’s Chrome browser or the free WiFi that they offer in Airports an planes, somebody is gathering data on the pages you visit, how long you stay on them, and what else you do online.

[Full post at the new address]

Blog Moved

Alessio Signorini — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:36:56 +0000

I moved my blog to

http://blog.alessiosignorini.com

Please update your bookmarks and your RSS feed readers.

Prostheses Technology, the amazing progresses of last years

Alessio Signorini — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:07:50 +0000

Luckily, other people are doing that and their progresses blew my mind. If you did not do that already, go read the article “Bionic Legs, i-Limbs, and Other Super Human Prostheses You’ll Envy” in this months’ Fast Company. Its amazing to see the progresses in Prostheses Technology of the last years.

[Full post at new address]

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/142/super-human.html