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March 23, 2007
Geeks Paradise: spotted a PDP-12
This computer is 38 years old. I found it at the Dept. of Psychology, University of Dundee, with a big "DO NOT DISCARD" sign taped to it. Psychologists at Dundee have moved on to later models - this one is a PDP-12, a "Laboratory Instrumentation Computer" produced by DEC.
Posted by dr at 3:23 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2007
Strange signs: Alcohol on Mosque grounds
Is there anything wrong with this sign?
I've asked a non-representative sample of English speakers who didn't agree in their assessment. Elaine said that she'd learned to ignore oddities in signage, because they are fairly common. And of course "rubbish" and "bin" are rather British, as Theresa noted. But Charles hit the nail on the head.
If you read out the signs aloud, you should have a tendency to stress words that are underlined. That's good - because written emphasis should mark whatever needs to be stressed.
The linguistic analysis of where people put stress in spoken language isn't complete, and the rules are rather messy. But linguists agree that context plays a role, and that normally, you would emphasize elements that represent new information rather than already-known details, or information that applies to the proposition at hand as opposed to an imaginary alternative. (cf. e.g., Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990, and Steedman 1991).
And that's what's strange about "No alcohol to be consumed on mosque premises". Just underlining "no" is odd - because "no" does not bear any content that would distinguish it from the contrast set of various possible signs such as "no smoking", or "no joking". Underlining "consumed" is even more odd - would the salient alternative be to sell some wine, or to bring a beer bottle along? Would the Imam be happy with me brewing some beer in his courtyard? I doubt it!
Of course, the licensing law is super-important in the UK. UK pubs allow you to consume alcohol, but not normally out in front of the pub: you have to stay on the premises. But if that's what is meant here, I would have underlined "on mosque premises", as in: we'll happily sell you some booze, but you'll have to drink it elsewhere. But that's most definitely not the case. At Edinburgh's Mosque, they do yummy lamb and chicken curries lunches, and imported middle-eastern soda.
The next question a linguist would ask: is this confusion due to the producers of the signs being non-native speakers of English? Is, say, Arabic information structure differently marked?
Be it as it may, I'd underline "no alcohol". That's because consuming curry and tea is what's tolerated instead.
Posted by dr at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)
March 2, 2007
Craig's List's Jim Buckmaster about his local affair
Want to make a bargain online? These days, your best bet comes from someone like waister88, with a random address somewhere in Hong Kong. Why care who you're dealing with if you can deflate the inflated high street prices? The internet geek's only problem with that might be that you can't bid on a new girlfriend on eBay. And you can't get a squash partner among your favorite Flickr photographers. The solution to that is pleasingly simple: stay online, but go local.
That's what Craig Newmark thought back in 1995, when he just moved to San Francisco and was desperate to keep up with the goings-on in town. Newmark founded Craig's List, and the rest is history.
Craig's List is basically a site of classified ads: users can sell their old refrigerators, look for a nanny or buy those hot concert tickets off someone who can't make it there on Saturday. Of course, Newmark wasn't thinking of de-personalized, neutralized, commercialized big shot web sites back then. He wasn't thinking about a non-corporate counterpoint to eBay or Orkut. The beginnings of Craig's List weren't best laid plans: "just do it" was the motto, and so, Craig had to process every single ad on the site personally.
Nowadays, things are a bit more organized - but that's really just a bit. It's Jim Buckmaster who runs the site that ranges in the top ten busy sites online, the publication that carries the most classified advertisements on the planet. The other day, Jim stopped by here in Edinburgh for a chat about what makes Craig's List special, hosted by our Entrepreneurship Club.
 Photo: Ewan McIntosh |
His involvement began around the year 2000. Back then, Jim had made it half-way through medical school, had studied classics for a while and finally ended up in Newmark's office after putting up a job ad on the site. Six years later, he's the CEO of a company that could easily run for an "online audience award" if there is such a thing, at least in the United States.
Soon after Jim Buckmaster arrived, his team began to spread its wings and new, small Craig's Lists turned up in other cities. How did they do that? "Our approach as been to exclusively rely on word of mouth - in countries, where we're not well known, that's a slow process", says Jim. Word about the site spread among friends rather than attracting interest by means of ads on/offline. The result is a tightly knit community with a common interest.
Craig and Jim prefer to keep it that way. When a random bystander came up with an add-on search engine that allowed people to find classifieds on Craig's List across the globe, they were quick to shut it down. Buckmaster: "This sort of thing under-cuts the basic essence of Craig's List as a series of local sites where local people can meet and conduct local business." In other words, CL is not eBay. Similarly, Google and co. will point you to the top-level pages of Craig's List - but they won't index the actual ads.
When hurricane Katrina drove millions out of their homes, people used Craig's List to look for missing persons. Weeks later, they remembered the site when they were looking for jobs. The 9/11 attack had a similar impact on New York's Craig's List site.
Buckmaster is not your typical Silicon Valley CEO. VC financing? Return on Investment? Viral marketing? Click-through rates? Jim's vocabulary of the usual business speak is rather limited. He's a silent, no-bullshit guy in his early 40's, who has probably never bought into the idea of selling oneself. There's no need to.
The site has six billion page views a month, it's well-loved among urban hipsters and if it is any indication, the authorities read it, too. Buckmaster: "Friendly inquiries from law enforcement agencies are nothing unheard of - from secret service (about an ad for selling plutonium) to local police". That's what happens when people joke in their ads: "I'll assassinate the president!"
But how does Craig's List survive? Again, the answer is not conventional. "Users are not fond of banner ads, or even text ads." The site's major revenue source is a levy on job and commercial accommodation ads in some big cities. And: "We keep our costs down." The trick to achieve that is surprising: Thou shalt "not seek maximized revenue", Buckmaster says. Because big revenue costs big money in the first place, and without the big expectations, "we don't need sales and marketing people."
"Open source software is a big part of it - it's free, and it's getting better and better with no input from us." Hardware cost is going down. "At this point, we're running on 200+ servers, each of which is much more powerful than the single machine that we started out with." Electricity has been a money drain and an annoyance: "We've been driven out of one of our co-location facilities because they couldn't provide enough power."
CL's local nature has allowed the company to opt out of typical business aspects. Buckmaster: "People have norms and instinctive behaviors that keep them out of trouble in the real world. But in online communities? The people you encounter on the internet are the same ones that you encounter in the real world. Other than in the early years, people aren't more affluent or educated on the internet, because computers have become much more ubiquitous."
One day, Jim hopes, users will do their part in learning, too. At this point, "people are afraid of giving out addresses - but that's actually quite public information, it's in the phone book. Yet they're perfectly happy to take a lot at face value said in a chat or a bulletin boards, even though they don't know who's talking."
But with their site, Jim and Craig count on people's real-life social abilities. There is no rating system that gives users brownie points for well-done transactions. Trust comes from the sheer fact that you're dealing with locals. Who needs an online payment system, if you can pick up that second-hand bike from a couple of blocks down the road?
So what's next? It sounds like the team of 20 is going to keep running the site. Big plans? Nada. Mobile devices, maybe? Jim: "Users don't really request it. Most requests we're getting seem to come from companies which are in the business of adapting web sites to mobile devices."
So, future improvements will be subtle. A better search, and step-by-step expansion to new cities. His principle is to do what the user says. Where a number of users get in touch to request a local Craig's List, their wish may be granted.
Unsurprisingly, Craig's List could have sided with the big boys. eBay and Kijiji knocked on their doors to buy them out. That didn't quite happen, and the eBay corporation only got their hands on a quarter of the Company. Now, Jim likes to think of it as a partnership. "They have no day-to-day involvement. We collaborated on consumer protection. They're experts on dealing with scammers - and it seems like they learned a thing or two from us, too."
But in 2007, Craig's List isn't eBay, and it isn't in danger of becoming one. "One of the first things internet companies do", Jim says, "is to get a logo. Users don't seem to care about logos!" Their logo says "Craig's List", spelled out in simple letters. In short, still don't have a logo. And they don't need one.
Posted by dr at 5:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack