Synergy: an unfocused approach to learning about oneself

A lot of people prefer web destinations to have a very specific focus, but it appears that I am inherently an unfocused person, and therefore my web destinations also are rather unfocused.

Most Interesting SML Flickr: Synergy in data analytics: art + design + hacks + inspiration + photography / 2009-09-20 / SML Data



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Screenshots captured by SML Bio Bot on 2009-09-20
+ 500 Most Interesting SML Flickr: Page 1
+ 500 Most Interesting SML Flickr: Page 2
+ 500 Most Interesting SML Flickr: Page 3
+ 500 Most Interesting SML Flickr: Page 4
+ 500 Most Interesting SML Flickr: Page 5


In the beginning, SML Pro Blog was just the SML Blog, and it contains pretty much everything that my life contains, until I am getting some negative feedbacks from professional colleagues who wish not have their photos appear next to blog posts relating to my gay activities, which is when SML Gay Blog was born. Then some folks who got really annoyed with my massive photography output, and so SML Photo Blog was born. Then after a while I started to have so many blogs that I cannot keep track on, so I have now reconsolidated the SML Thank You and SML Notebook back into this blog, because it soon became *very* challenging to manage them all.

Conversely, I take a very-me approach when it comes to content on Flickr. I post pretty much everything onto it: my designs, my photography, my hacks, my screenshots, and source of inspiration all bundled up together. It's me, after all. By not separating these data, I gain a much better insight into which of my stuff is good and 'interesting' to folks.

I know far too many people who keep a separate Flickr profile for their "professional" life vs their "play" life but when I view the content, I can't tell the difference and reason as to why they are separate. Consolidation is good. Just filter, and tag. I think that via my very unfocused postings, I have successfully cross-marketed my designs to people who came to my stream because of my abstract photography; or that they discovered that I am much much more than a photojournalist who run around events.

Because of this content cross-pollination, I also learned based on my data that what people find to be interesting is also very all-across the board, and that is interesting to me. I made screenshots of the top 5 pages from the 500 Most Interesting Flickr (set) and bundled them together, and it provides a great sign-post as to where I should be headed next.

Related SML
+ SML Pro Blog: Philosophy
+ SML Pro Blog: Synergy
+ SML Flickr Tags: Synergy
+ SML Wiki: Flickr Analytics
+ SML Wiki: Interestingness

Google Page Rank, Domain Names, Technology Platforms and Platform Owners / SML Analytics

Recently I did a tally of Google PageRank in the SML Universe: Analyzing a single person's Web presence on different domains, the technology platform, the platform owner, and the corresponding Google PageRank data.


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What I found especially interesting is that the highest PRs concentrated on properties owned by Yahoo, namely: SML Flickr (5) and SML Pipes (5), followed immediately by Google properties (4): SML Pro Blog (4), SML Photo Blog (4), SML YouTube (4) and perhaps Google's friends: SML Twitter (4), SML Vimeo (4).

SML Amazon (5) perhaps should be expected as Amazon is a hub, but I do find it interesting that its PR is so high since it really receives no publicity nor direct URL.

SML Facebook (0) does not get anything likely because Facebook is a close-walled garden. SML Wiki (0) failed to a zero recently which I contribute to my recent Flickr Censorship saga as I pump most of the content on the wiki via the Flickr API, and failing that means failing all my content. (ouch!) which is why I'm brewing SML Data (1) right now. As historic data has shown, generally speaking, registering a domain name will pump Google PR to at least 1. If you don't even get that, you are doing something wrong and it usually means that Google has placed you on a blacklist and you should definitely watch out.

Here's my 2009-09-18 data on Google Docs for those who prefer raw text:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t6xebhQalrxo9LpGAqo2WGg&output=html

Related SML
+ SML Flickr Sets: SML Data
+ SML Flickr Sets: SML Information Design
+ SML Pro Blog: Data
+ SML Pro Blog: Google
+ SML Pro Blog: Google Page Rank
+ SML Pro Blog: Information Design

Bug in Flickr Stats Server?

I have noticed some oddity on my Flickr Stats recently. This problem was particularly noticeable since Flickr's recent server outages happening in August. I created a related forum post about this: Flickr: The Help Forum: Bug in Flickr Stats Server?

Unknown Source Referrals

I have noticed that when I posted my photos past a certain hour (usually after 2am local time EST), my photos would pick up an abnormal amount of views all within minutes after uploads. According to the Flickr Stats Referral detail, they all come from Unknown Sources, and I can't quite get a grasp at what's going on.



If those were actual views, I have no problem with it, but just how some photo of a back alley accumulate 98 views over a minute on Flickr is close to impossible knowing my own stats history.

This is definitely a problem. I haven't tweeted about this photo, nor have I shared this anywhere with any social media sites, you can't blame bit.ly for this. Bad data makes it impossible to evaluate actual performance of the photo.

If any of you are having the same problem, please reply to the forum post: Flickr: The Help Forum: Bug in Flickr Stats Server? as Flickr appears to think that it is a localized problem which happens to only a few of the users.

As far as I know it, this does not happen to me personally. I know of a few Flickr contacts who are having the same problem as well.
+ flickr.com/atomische
+ flickr.com/numbphoto
+ flickr.com/gerryvisco

SML Data

I have been building my CMS for a while now. The idea of building a database came from noting that I have lots and lots of content that needs to be indexed. I'd like to put everything happening in my life so that I can possibility find hidden structure (emergence) within the structure. I believe that my multitudes of interests (the leaves) are preventing me to discover what I'm about (the tree).

Coming up with the database structure and figuring out an efficient way of accessing those data with unknown criteria was problematic. I'm not a database architect, most certainly lack the know-how to structure a scalable database architecture that can index everything about my life. So I decided to create my outsourced my CMS and database--free CMS database via user-generated content sites.

It works something like this:

• bookmarks: delicious
• music: acidplanet
• writing: blogger (or wordpress, haven't decided yet)
• photography: flickr
• portfolio: flickr
• flash 'experiments': still looking for a good database
• videos: you tube
• books: librarything
• book recommendations: amazon
• mails: most likely gmail
• news: probably twitter

Utilizing ugc sites to manage my content has many benefits

• My data are hosted on very safe environment, usually with very good backup systems, all for free
• Management of the content can be performed using tools specifically created for the management of those content.
• The CMS on those sites will continue to improve as the next generation comes, and I save on the need to improve my own administrative tools, which can become time consuming
• Accessing data on the services are easy through the their respectively constantly improving APIs
• The application to drive all the content become very easy to host--as the size required to host the large database is no longer an issue

Putting my data access API together is still at the works since the original idea from 2007--but the important fact is that it hasn't stopped me from content creation. One of the key problems in many startup is not having data to play with. Now that all of my 3rd-party content portals have enough data to play with, the development effort has been moving much rapidly since the original idea inception back in 2007.

QDOS = Digital presence tracking metrics

Screenshot: http://qdos.com/user/See-ming-Lee/3a0f686c608b5a3da8200b97aacdfc48/html

QDOS is an service which measures a person's digitial presence, which is a formula based on the person's popularity, impact, activity and individuality.

QDOS index fluctuates overtime, and was most evidential in my recent absence from Internet play. The charting application (not shown here) can plot a person's QDOS over time. I wish that there is a way to chart multiple person over time though.

According to today's report, I have higher influence than Julia Stiles at the moment, having a Q4916 (the higher the better) and a ranking of #2,166 out of 67,660 actively tracked profiles.

To put things into perspective, Robert Scoble has Q6064 (ranking #628) while Pete Cashmore (Q7313) is at #187. Barack Obama has a Q11733 and is the top-ranked person at the moment, followed immediately by Britney Spears, 50 Cent and Beyonce Knowles.

What's your QDOS like? Find your QDOS and post a screenshot on Flickr.

©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

Wordle.net = tag clouds with beautiful typography

More visualization goodness: Wordle.net generates typographically beautiful tag clouds via a del.icio.us username or words submitted on your own.

SML Del.icio.us Tags


SML Flickr Tags: Use http://www.fluffykittens.com/wordle/ to generate the data needed.


©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

Many Eyes = Community for data and data visualization

I found an interesting site called Many Eyes a few weeks ago. It's a collaborative environment where users can upload data sets and use one of the site's visualization module to create interesting visualization.



To create the visualization seen above, I first grabbed the complete list of tags from my Flickr account using the flickr.tags.getListUserPopular method. I then formatted the results (tags and tag count) to the format required by the site. After my data is uploaded, I chose to visualize my data using the Bubble Chart format.

Here's an interactive version where you can explore my tags in detail, or search for a tag.

In the screenshot captured above, I searched for my initials SML and highlighted all the tags that contain it. The reason there are so many instances of it being used is partly because I like to use very specific tags, such as SML.Graphic-Design and SML.Appendectomy to easily get to my stuff on the public pool without the need to use combinations or username.

©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

10,000+ views on a Flickr set

Who would of thought that my 200 Most Interesting Gay Pride New York 2007 (set) would have reached 10,172 audience since I put them up on Flickr last June?

As such I've decided to create a quick slideshow of all the photos (no audio track for now... but will try to put some grooves on it later:


200 Most Interesting Gay Pride New York 2007 / SML from See-ming Lee

Thank you all for the faves + comments as well.

©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Thoughts on Google Personalized Search Results

I did some random Googling this morning and found that my initials SML is featured on page one again (Google: SML) which is sweet. However, I noted something interesting when I performed the same search at work.

In both cases, I was logged into Google account—which technically speaking should give me the same results. Well, apparently not. I did some screenshots so you can scrutinize it:

Home: SML Flickr: Google: SML / 2007-11-08 / SML Data



Work: SML Flickr: Google: SML / 2007-11-08 / SML Data



Noting this, I can't help but wonder if Google uses algorithms to randomize results a bit to test which links people would click on in various times—a strategy that I hypothesize is being used on Flickr to determine interestingness as well.

In turn, this suggests an interesting visualization exercise: what would the results pages look like if I search for the same thing over and over again by taking screenshots of the results page? It would be a kind of a SERP time-lapse, if you will. And if the data is available, all the merrier. It would surely be nice to see search results nodes moving at real time. Now I just need two more instances of SML working on these projects while I can still live my 24-hour day.

More random searches
Additional random searches that I like to do are Google: Google SML vs Google: SML Google, which gives different results. This means that Google's search algorithm give weights to the ordering of the words. By how much? I'll let you genius programmers find out. Feel free to email me your results when you do. I LOVE DATA!

Related SML Universe
+ SML Data
+ SML Google
+ SML Search

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

SML Flickr: Google Page Rank = 5

Craig Konieczko (Google / SML Wiki) got me into checking my page rank last night, and it is my pleasure to congratulate myself for achieving:

+ 5 for http://www.smlflickr.com
+ 4 for http://www.seeminglee.com
+ 3 for http://blog.seeminglee.com

Here's a screenshot of SML Flickr with the PageRank widget on Google toolbar:



Related SML Universe
+ SML Data
+ SML Flickr
+ SML Wiki: SML Flickr

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.