Welcome to Matt's Idea Blog!

Hi Folks,

Welcome to my new blog! In this first post I want to talk about a) what this blog's focus is, b) its goals, and c) the obligatory bit about me, and some of my interests and influences.

Origin/Motivation
I've been thinking of starting a blog for a while, but I've been putting it off because a) I didn't think I had anything to write about, and b) because I wanted to protect the ideas I've been having. However, I just finished reading Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small (a great book) and my thinking about protecting was completely changed on the subject of 'hoarding' ideas. In the last chapter (Implementing Why-Not) they look at ideas from an open source perspective, encouraging readers to 'just share it', and it reminded me of something my boss said regarding protecting ideas. The thought was that there are (at least) two phases to idea ownership - first a 'fear' phase in which you're worried someone will steal your idea, then (after others?) an 'open' phase in which you're afraid no one will 'get it', i.e., that the idea doesn't live. (Another way to look at the second phase is that you're afraid no one will steal it!) I'm to the point where I really want my ideas to thrive, so here we go!

Focus/Interests
In this blog I'll be writing about topics that are important to me, and that (I hope) I have something to contribute about. They will be mostly software related, but will also include occasional progressive political comments. The topics will include, but are not limited to :-) :

• Folksonomies, and esp. the automated (or mixed-initiative) classification of them.
  
• Personal Information Management (AKA Personal Knowledge Management), esp. as it relates to the intersection of Wikis, Blogs, and PIM tools (such as talked about here). Importantly, I'm especially interested in applications of self-structuring semi-structured data, for use in domains in which the language/structure is initially unknown, and emerges over time. My current best (but not great) application is as applied to personal
  journaling (more on this soon). Refs: Jot, Subtext Programming Language.
  
• Personal Digital Storage for Life - similar to the PIM entry above, but as applied to effectively managing a lifetime of personal data, images, etc. For example: My Life Bits. My main idea is currently called CRAM - a Contextual Relational Augmented Memory for Personal Data Mining - more soon.
  
• Creativity and Self-Organization (i.e., Getting Things Done, Life Hacks, 43 Folders, etc.)
  
• Harnessing the power of 'thousands of eyeballs' (or millions), esp. for tasks such as beginning to correct serious things the world needs help with (and to identify distractions). Here are a couple of examples done simply with graphics tools and the web: Bush Dynasty and Wall Street Scandals. Refs: NNDB, Watch Blog, Terror Futures.
  
• Countering: Increased Corporate Influence of the Federal Government. I consider this a) something that's a fundamental problem, and b) something technology might help to expose (?). Refs: Bundles
  of Influence.
  
• Countering: Increased Bias in Consolidated Media Companies. Again, a fundamental problem. Refs: Bill Moyers' Buzzflash interview on Media reform, Project Censored.
  
• Countering: Reduced Rigor in Major Media News Reports. Refs: Mainstream
  Media Fails Itself, Annenberg Political Fact Check.
  
• Social Networking Research, esp. as it relates to my work (see below).
  
• Software tools for programming for CS research, esp. as they relate to my lab (see below). Refs: Greasemonkey, SLiP - a "Sorta Like Python" shorthand for XML, Screen-scraping with XQuery, Expose-like zooming for JIntenalFrames, etc.
  

Goals
I want this blog to stimulate interest and discussion, to get feedback on ideas, and to connect with people who have similar interests and/or those who want to make an improvement in the world.

Me
I'm a research programmer at the Knowledge Discovery Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at UMass (Amherst campus). I'm helping the lab develop an open source system for relational knowledge discovery. Refs: My del.icio.us account, my Bloglines feeds.

Finally
Thanks to the people at blogger.com for providing such a great service, and thanks to you for reading. More soon!