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Cellphedia, a SMS Social Network Service
Roland Piquepaille writes "Based on ideas taken from Wikipedia and dodgeball, Cellphedia allows its members to broadcast questions to its community and receive answers, using SMS text messaging on cell phones. Here is how it works, according to "Cellphedia Melds Facts with Mobile Smart Mobs" from E-Commerce Times. First, you register for free on the site and you indicate your subjects of interest. If you want to ask a question, it is sent to all the members who expressed interest in this particular subject. Finally, the first answer received by Cellphedia is sent back to you. This means that later answers, which could have been more accurate, are discarded. But this service is still very young and its creator is working hard to improve it. Read more for some examples of questions and answers stored on the Cellphedia central server."
Based on ideas taken from Wikipedia and dodgeball , Cellphedia allows its members to broadcast questions to its community and receive answers, using SMS text messaging on cell phones. Here is how it works, according to " Cellphedia Melds Facts with Mobile Smart Mobs " from E-Commerce Times. First, you register for free on the site and you indicate what are your subjects of interest. If you want to ask a question, it is sent to all the members who expressed interest in this particular subject. Finally, the first answer received by Cellphedia is sent back to you. This means that later answers, which could have been more accurate, are discarded. But this service is still very young and its creator is working hard to improve it. Read more...
Here is a general description of this service, created by Limor Garcia as part of her thesis while at New York University.
Questions and answers are sent and received using SMS on your cell phone. And as I wrote above, only the first answer received by CellPhedia is sent back to the person who asked a question.
Interviewed for this article, Howard Rheingold, from Smart Mobs , said that Cellphedia was another example of the convergence between technologies such as cell phone, computers and Internet.
Now, let's look at some examples of questions and answers stored on the Cellphedia central server. As you can see, there are all kinds of requests.
Q: age new pope
A: 78
Q: what's a phreak
A: a phreak is someone who is highly skilled in the use of phone systems. phreaksare considered a subset of hackers.
Q: does someone know how to install osx tiger on to an ipod for later installation on an ibook?
A: not possible
Q: where can i find info on time travel?
For another point of view about this service, you can read this article from Wired News, "
Answers to questions, eh?
Such as, 'How does Roland Piquepaille sleep at night'?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Roland Piquepaille, go to hell!
You mean with his penis up timothy's ass? That could be uncomfortable I suppose.
He goes out and looks for interesting articles about new and emerging technologies. He provides a very brief overview of the articles, then copies a few choice paragraphs and the occasional picture from each article and puts them up on his web page. Finally, he adds a minimal amount of original content between the copied-and-pasted text in an effort to make the journal entry coherent and appear to add value to the original articles. Nothing more, nothing less.
Sounds almost like what I use Slashdot for.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
This message was immediately received by Cellphedia by SMS:
who iz rolex pickapal n y iz he on slashdot lol lmao
Do you like German cars?
It's just like Wikipedia only with one-sentence articles with no punctuation, every query costs you arm and leg and reading with 2-point font makes you blind in the process. I expect it to be a great success. Cellphones are truly amazing.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
just make roland an editor so we can block his stories and get on with it.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
No, really... that's what it says.
With all the advances in KM over the years, maybe a more interesting approach would be to have the system aggregate/rate responses over a period of time and respond with the top 3 or so. As planned, I would think the system described is less than useful, it would be downright obnoxious once it hit critical mass (go read every first post on
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I see a massive potential for spam.
1. Setup a SMS bridge
2. Register for all topics of interest
3. write a script that replies almost instantly with "I hear that all the time, here is an in-depth article on my website" that points to whatever porn/free ipod/whatever spam site
4. profit!!!
bash: rtfm: command not found
If you use this, how do you have any assurance that the answers you get are actually accurate? Given the number of uninformed people walking around, not to mention people who think it's funny to hand out deliberate misinformation, wouldn't this be practically useless? And you can completely forget about any questions that would attract commercially motivated answers (e.g. Where is the nearest gas station?)
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Moderators, parent is nothing more but SPAM! Look carefully and you'll see that the link in "Visit BlogAds to check the following facts for yourself" is NOT a direct link to www.blogads.com but a redirect from other domain to hide the fact that it points to a referer link to blogads! Read carefully and see that the poster actually promotes blogads saying how much anyone having a blog can earn and posts it on slashdot where many people want to earn money that way. Then the link is a paid link and the poster will get a percentage of money generated by all of us who sign up with that program after following that link. Briliant, isn't it? But it is SPAM and should be moderated as such. Instead this offtopic SPAM is moderated as Score:5! Moderators, are you blind or stupid? MOD IT DOWN!
the only reply that you ever get is "First Post!!!"
The real question is, why does Slashdot continue to accept every single one of his submissions when many of the readers see through the scam and whole-heartedly object to what he is doing?
Theory: he splits his profits with slashdot editors. He uses slashdot's users to gain money and pays a little commission in order to do that. What other explanation exists?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
as far as I can tell, http://www.thedarkcitadel.com/ is just a blog, and he is linking from auto-generated links made by the blog software.
now he does appear to have a couple text advertisement links on his blog to help pay hosting costs (maybe these links drive up his traffic and make him more money like he says about roland), but otherwise it seems rather innocent.
though it is fairly odd that he just doesn't directly link
I wonder which cell phone provider came up with this idea.
Some cell companies charge as much as $0.15 per SMS message.
If this thing catches on, they'll be rolling in cash (even more than they are now).
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Hang on, let me check...
Me: *SMS* "Y Timmy 4 teh Roland?"
sending...
1 new message...
Answer: Get cheap viagra for extra hardness
Anyone else think that this will be a race against legit answers and spam?
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Slashdot has users go out and find stories. They then copy and paste a part of the story and link to it. They then add a comments section so that people can earn karma by either stating restating public opinion on the matter or by finding fault in it, even if it requires going to ridiculous extremes. The whole time this is happening, Slashdot is posting ads. The more people comment, the more ads get served, the more ads Slashdot can sell.
What I find so ridiculously funny about this whole Roland deal is that the constant bitching about it. There's an ad being served for every rply to it. Right now, I'm seeing a Vonage ad while I'm posting this. All these efforts to bitch about Roland until he goes away are actually giving Slashdot a damned good reason to keep him around.
I've been saying this, but I guess I'll just have to keep saying this: Quitcherbitchen. When Roland stories only generate a handful of comments, they won't accept his stories anymore. It's not as fun as going on a crusade against him, but if you really care about your goals...
"Derp de derp."