Tag Archives: technology

I Write Like Analysis

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There's this nifty tool floating around the internet the last couple days called I Write Like. You put a couple paragraphs into a box, click submit, and get the name of a famous author that you write like. I was wondering how good it was, so I spent a couple hours putting in some paragraphs of famous authors to see what I Write Like would come up with.

The results were mixed. A lot of these writers write like David Foster Wallace even if David Foster Wallace writes like Ian Fleming. I found the Project Gutenberg website with the top 100 ebooks and I Write Like did pretty well with the first couple paragraphs with most of those authors. In any case, I Write Like nailed 14 of the 30 classic authors giving it a success rate of 47%. For what it's worth, Jersey Shore Nickname Generator is accurate 94% of the time. Note: The tool is fun. This isn't a fair test.

James Joyce - The Dubliners is like James Joyce.
Stephen King - The Gingerbread Girl is like Dan Brown or William Gibson depending how many paragraphs you take.
William Gibson - Neuromancer is like David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace - Consider the Lobster is like Ian Fleming.
Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is like Mark Twain.
Ambrose Bierce - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is like Robert Louis Stephenson. This is my favorite short story, by the way.
William Faulkner - A Rose for Emily is like Margaret Mitchell.
Ernest Hemingway - Hills Like White Elephants is like Ian Fleming. I was pretty sure this one would be right.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is like H.P. Lovecraft.
H. P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness is like Edgar Allan Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe - The Angel of the Odd is like David Foster Wallace.
J.D. Salinger - For Esmé - with Love and Squalor is like Arthur Conan Doyle.
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is like Arthur Conan Doyle.
Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis is like James Joyce.
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson is like Robert Louis Stevenson.
William Shakespeare - Hamlet is like William Shakespeare.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice is like Jane Austen.
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is like Lewis Carroll.
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo is like Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities is like Charles Dickens.
Bram Stoker - Dracula is like Bram Stoker.
H. G. Wells - The War of the Worlds, by is like H.G. Wells.
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights is like Daniel Defoe.
Agata Christie - The Secret Adversary is like Agatha Christie.
Beatrix Potter - Peter Rabbit is like Arthur Conan Doyle.
Herman Melville - Moby Dick; Or the Whale is like Robert Louis Stevenson.
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein is like Mary Shelley.
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy is like Leo Tolstoy.
Homer - The Iliad is like William Shakespeare.
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle is like Kurt Vonnegut.

Then, in the interest of pandering, I thought I'd look up a few contemporary writers/websites I like:
Jason Kottke is like (this surprises no one) David Foster Wallace.
The Daily What is like Stephen King.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball is like Stephen King.
Andy Baio / Waxy.org is like James Joyce.
Michael Lewis is like David Foster Wallace.
Chuck Klosterman is like Kurt Vonegut.
Bill Simmons is like Stephen King.

Now some pop culture folks:
Tracy Jordan is like James Joyce.
Don Draper's slide projector monologue is like Margaret Atwood.
The Real Shaq on Twitter is like Dan Brown.
Britney Spears on Twitter is like Dan Brown. (Probably because he uses web addresses in his writing?)
Britney Spears - Oops...I Did it Again is like Stephanie Meyer.
Jawbreaker - Kiss the Bottle is like David Foster Wallace.
Anthony Bourdain is like Dan Brown.

For what it's worth, when you put this post through the tool, it's like H.P. Lovecraft. Who did we leave out? Post your finds in the comments.

A New Use for Twitter

I'm not sure this is what Biz and Ev had in mind. Last week Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff live-blogged the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner's with 3 Tweets. Seems like Shurtleff is responding to criticism by digging in further. His latest Tweet? "Astonishing that no retweet whiner express outrage that Gardner shot 2 men in the face, & a cop; nor one word of empathy for their families."

10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account

You name your post 10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account and not am I going to click, I'm probably going to link to it, too! Click through for back up to all the bullet points. #9 is pretty important, and #4 and #1 are funny. Does anyone know what % of internet users AOL had at it's peak and how that compares to the 400 Million accounts Facebook has right now?

10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided.
9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior.
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy.
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch.
6. Facebook is a bully.
5. Even your private data is shared with applications.
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted.
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account.
2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web.
1. The Facebook application itself sucks.

Facebook Doesn’t Care About Your Privacy

Hahahaha. The motherfuckers at Facebook are doing it again. You maybe heard about their plan this week to Facebookify the web by making some social sites you're a part of more social. And just like last time, Facebook's default forces you to rely on yourself for your privacy. I don't think most people care. Hell, I don't even think I care. I DO have a pretty strong opinion of how you're supposed to do something on the web, though, and this isn't it.

Want to opt out of instant personalization? Make sure to block the applications:
How do I opt-out of instant personalization?
You can opt-out of instant personalization by disallowing it here. By clicking "No Thanks" on the Facebook notification on partner sites, partners will delete your data. To prevent your friends from sharing any of your information with an instant personalization partner, block the application: Microsoft Docs.com, Pandora, Yelp.


Newsweek Tumblr

The Future of Facebook

I've said it before, but I think in 10 years, it's even odds that people think of Facebook the way they think of AOL now. Since this column is one of the first I've seen to agree, I'm obviously going to link it.
In the world of technology even giants can stumble – or fail. Once upon a time AOL was the reigning online behemoth. At its peak in the 1990s it had 30 million paying subscribers (which at the time was a significant proportion of the online population in the US and Europe) and thought itself big enough to take over Time Warner. There was even a schmaltzy movie – You've Got Mail – based around its email service. Now it's a business-school case study in hubris.

AOL was also a study in corporate strategy from which the Facebook founders learned avidly. Initially they conceived of their service as an AOL-type "walled garden" – which implied trying to keep subscribers inside that controlled space. If one of your Facebook friends sent you a message then you had to be logged in to read it.


Early Thoughts on Netflix on the Wii

I was excited to get the email Friday morning indicating my disc for watching Netflix movies had shipped and would arrive this past Saturday. The "Watch Instantly" feature isn't one I've taken too much advantage of because I don't like watching movies on the computer unless I'm traveling. I've now used the Watch Instantly on the Wii app a couple times and have a few thoughts:

-I don't know if there was a 'Watch Instantly Queue' before, but having one now is pretty cool, especially for TV series. There's less urgency to the Watch Instantly Queue.
-Watching TV series on Netflix has historically meant having to wait for the next disc. Watch Instantly solves that problems.
-Expanding 'Watch Instantly' to a new crop of users is going to put pressure on Netflix to offer better movies. I THINK that's behind an agreement they signed with the studios to wait 28 days before offering a movie to their at home subscribers in exchange for more movies for 'Watch Instantly'. I could have all the details wrong.
-There isn't a search on the Wii app, but that's because typing sucks on the Wii. In fact, not having to log in to my Netflix account on my Wii was one of the pleasant surprises when I tried it for the first time.
-Browsing for movies on the Wii app is OK, but the movie images should probably be bigger and clearer.
-Plus, as reminded by the comment from APik below, you can manage your queue directly from the computer without having to mess with the browse feature of the Wii app.
-Am I doing it wrong, or does the movie picture always display in TV format? Send help.
-This is the future.

SO far, so good. I'm extremely satisfied.

++++
Update
One thing I forgot was fast forwarding/rewinding. The ability to resume watching from where you stopped in the middle of a movie negates this somewhat, but fast forwarding through the "Last week on" and the title sequence is annoying.

Google and Twitter Idea

Michael Wolff has a Future of the Internet piece that's infinitely better than Newsweek's 1995 article about the internet not having a future.

One question I had is, in the article, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter says Twitter would generate "a billion search queries a day in the coming yeah." So how much do you think Google would pay for a little button next to every Tweet that says, "Google This". And you could highlight the terms you want to search on Google.

Wolff also talked about Barry Diller's new media company model which could have brands owning entire shows instead of buying 30 second ads. I've been waiting for that forever. Of course, I think it will only work for a year or so, while the brand can get press for the new type of advertising, but it's worth a shot.

YouTube Adds Captions For All Videos

I couldn't tell from this article about YouTube adding captions to all videos whether you will be able to get a transcript of the video or just see captions while the video is playing. If you can get a transcript, did YouTube/Google just release a free audio transcription service? I can see uploading interviews to YouTube and then cleaning up the voice recognition mistakes. It would sure beat typing out an entire interview.

Newsweek on Why the Internet Will Fail (1995)

Every word from this 1995 Newsweek article on Why the internet will fail is gold. EVERY SINGLE WORD. I can't wait to read their 1951 article on why television will never work.

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.


Via Eric Andersen