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I came home early, exhausted. I rode my bike on the trainer outside for a little bit, then napped. Napping is not a particularly easy thing for me, but i needed it. After dinner and a TV show, i tried to prepare my desk for the work day, but was in bed by 9. I didn't get up early today, either.
As an index of mental health, i could consider my lost item list. It now includes: [1] my black mesh crochet bag with a skein of really nice wool bamboo blend yarn for a mother's day gift (last seen 29 Jan), [2] bluetooth headset (last seen 3Feb), [3] retractable micro USB cord (last seen 7 Feb).
I think it would be cool to create a data mining tool for semi-structured data. Once upon a time there was a tool called Zoe that actually made an effort to datamine your email for you. I don't think i'm likely to do it myself, though. And i can imagine the challenges.
On the other hand, one of the interesting developments in the identity space is the idea of personal data banks. The proponents are imagining a regulatory space that requires businesses and services that collect data about you to make that data available to you in a machine readable format over a secure method. Your personal data bank, then could collect your data in one place, controlled by you. If you wanted to keep it secret, you could do that. The bank metaphor points at "keeping it in your mattress." But if you chose to "loan" your data, you could do that.
A corporate impetus is that the telephone companies are forbidden to datamine your telephone transactions. If, however, they were able to give you your phone transactions and then you were able to choose to share back, the phone companies would be able to enter the similar economic spaces as Facebook and Google.
I can imagine making a choice to share a great deal of my data with Kayak. (I've grown to trust them more with my travel data than TripIt and find them more useful than Dopplr.) Kayak could mine, say, the aggregation of my communication records, my address book, perhaps even data collection that shows interests (Amazon purchases, search histories).
An automated data mining system might start with the address book, looking at where my contacts reside. It might augment that with phone records to identify places i make phone calls. If the bank was smart enough, it might be able to take other communication records (email, chat logs) cross that with the address book, and geo-locate other places i communicate with often and provide that to Kayak. Kayak then could notify me when there are good travel deals to places i communicate with frequently. That could be useful.
Let's say, then, that Kayak starts working with conferences and shows. My Amazon interests would show an interest in crochet; google searches might show an interest in Agile development practices. Kayak might be able to alert me that in the Orlando metro area (where i have extended family) there's an Agile conference and a yarn show, and here are the good travel deals for the time period around the show. Kayak would know what my travel preferences for flights would be, and wouldn't show me flights, say, that left the west coast after noon (although might provide me with information that i could see other deals at some link).
The point is that Google and Facebook have this sort of information to mine already. The Personal Data Bank folks are advocating putting it in individuals' hands and allow us to change the mining from "stalking" to both a place where the individual has control and where the data can be more valuable to the companies.
As an index of mental health, i could consider my lost item list. It now includes: [1] my black mesh crochet bag with a skein of really nice wool bamboo blend yarn for a mother's day gift (last seen 29 Jan), [2] bluetooth headset (last seen 3Feb), [3] retractable micro USB cord (last seen 7 Feb).
I think it would be cool to create a data mining tool for semi-structured data. Once upon a time there was a tool called Zoe that actually made an effort to datamine your email for you. I don't think i'm likely to do it myself, though. And i can imagine the challenges.
On the other hand, one of the interesting developments in the identity space is the idea of personal data banks. The proponents are imagining a regulatory space that requires businesses and services that collect data about you to make that data available to you in a machine readable format over a secure method. Your personal data bank, then could collect your data in one place, controlled by you. If you wanted to keep it secret, you could do that. The bank metaphor points at "keeping it in your mattress." But if you chose to "loan" your data, you could do that.
A corporate impetus is that the telephone companies are forbidden to datamine your telephone transactions. If, however, they were able to give you your phone transactions and then you were able to choose to share back, the phone companies would be able to enter the similar economic spaces as Facebook and Google.
I can imagine making a choice to share a great deal of my data with Kayak. (I've grown to trust them more with my travel data than TripIt and find them more useful than Dopplr.) Kayak could mine, say, the aggregation of my communication records, my address book, perhaps even data collection that shows interests (Amazon purchases, search histories).
An automated data mining system might start with the address book, looking at where my contacts reside. It might augment that with phone records to identify places i make phone calls. If the bank was smart enough, it might be able to take other communication records (email, chat logs) cross that with the address book, and geo-locate other places i communicate with often and provide that to Kayak. Kayak then could notify me when there are good travel deals to places i communicate with frequently. That could be useful.
Let's say, then, that Kayak starts working with conferences and shows. My Amazon interests would show an interest in crochet; google searches might show an interest in Agile development practices. Kayak might be able to alert me that in the Orlando metro area (where i have extended family) there's an Agile conference and a yarn show, and here are the good travel deals for the time period around the show. Kayak would know what my travel preferences for flights would be, and wouldn't show me flights, say, that left the west coast after noon (although might provide me with information that i could see other deals at some link).
The point is that Google and Facebook have this sort of information to mine already. The Personal Data Bank folks are advocating putting it in individuals' hands and allow us to change the mining from "stalking" to both a place where the individual has control and where the data can be more valuable to the companies.
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