http://blog.alessiosignorini.com Tech, ideas, and cool stuff that go through my head every day... Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:52:24 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2012/01/easily-stop-internet-piracy-making-people-pay-for-bandwidth/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2012/01/easily-stop-internet-piracy-making-people-pay-for-bandwidth/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:52:24 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=722 In the last days there have been so many debates and threads about the PIPA/SOPA legislation. Sites went black (even Wikipedia), people added “STOP SOPA” banner on their avatars, and the technology news is overwhelmed with those messages. There are tons of people who say that this legislation will destroy the web, freedom of speech, and innovation. While I do not have a particular position on the topic, I do think that there could be a much easier way for the government to stop Internet piracy, which does not require any form of censorship: obligate service provider to make people pay for bandwidth instead of a monthly flat rate…, pretty much like they are already doing with cellphone data.]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2012/01/easily-stop-internet-piracy-making-people-pay-for-bandwidth/feed/ 0 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2012/01/peer-to-peer-online-jukebox-with-songs-from-each-user/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2012/01/peer-to-peer-online-jukebox-with-songs-from-each-user/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:53:55 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=720 Today we have Pandora, Spotify, GrooveShark, and a dozen other sites to listen to music online. Each has its own caveats, does not really let you hear the music you want, has ADs or a subscription model, … I often wonder why nobody created an online peer-to-peer Jukebox… where each user contributes with some songs. The songs will be played/streamed directly from the each other’s computers, so if only one user has a particular song, who wants to listen to it will have to wait its turn in a queue.]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2012/01/peer-to-peer-online-jukebox-with-songs-from-each-user/feed/ 0 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/10/photos-in-the-cloud-geolocation-auto-tagging-virtual-albums/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/10/photos-in-the-cloud-geolocation-auto-tagging-virtual-albums/#comments Sun, 02 Oct 2011 16:48:51 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=696 Yesterday I was thinking to my next photocamera…. I want it small but with some buttons (no clumsy touchscreen), capable of taking pictures at night, waterproof, with integrated GPS, and capable of backing up the pictures automatically when I get home. Unfortunately, I do not think that it exists yet. Then I started thinking about how I would like the computer to help me organize my photo collection.]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/10/photos-in-the-cloud-geolocation-auto-tagging-virtual-albums/feed/ 0 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/07/facebook-should-show-users-what-is-tagged-before-publishing-it/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/07/facebook-should-show-users-what-is-tagged-before-publishing-it/#comments Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:49:54 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=679 I think it is time for Facebook to get privacy right. The thing is that I do not think it is that difficult. A simple change could make almost everyone happy because they will be in control of what is published about them. When a user is tagged in a video, picture or post, Facebook should not publish the tag immediately but send the user a notification. At that point the user should have the option to: (1) make the tag public, (2) make the tag private or (3) remove the tag.…]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/07/facebook-should-show-users-what-is-tagged-before-publishing-it/feed/ 1 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/07/forget-the-filter-bubble-personalization-done-right-will-just-hide-what-you-really-dont-like/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/07/forget-the-filter-bubble-personalization-done-right-will-just-hide-what-you-really-dont-like/#comments Sat, 02 Jul 2011 17:04:32 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=636 In the last month more and more of my friends are talking about the negative effects of personalization for news websites and search results. Eli Pariser even wrote a book about it and sold lots of copies. The points made in “The Filter Bubble: What The Internet Is Hiding From You” are correct but certainly not new. Most of the personalization systems today are based on collaborative filtering, a technique made famous in 2007 thanks to a paper by Google.…]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/07/forget-the-filter-bubble-personalization-done-right-will-just-hide-what-you-really-dont-like/feed/ 0 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/05/more-effective-email-use-smart-folders-and-tags-in-thunderbird/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/05/more-effective-email-use-smart-folders-and-tags-in-thunderbird/#comments Thu, 26 May 2011 20:05:25 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=584 Email overload is common between who works in technology. Launching a new Startup with my co-founders located in other parts of the US exponentially increased the number of messages that I/we receive and send every day. While our email is maintained on Google Apps servers, I still prefer to use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client. Starting from version 3 they added two functionalities that can become pretty handy if you use email as your main medium of communication: Tags and Smart Folders.…]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/05/more-effective-email-use-smart-folders-and-tags-in-thunderbird/feed/ 1 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/01/google-bing-time-to-use-classification-to-improve-results-pages/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/01/google-bing-time-to-use-classification-to-improve-results-pages/#comments Sun, 30 Jan 2011 16:33:24 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=527 I have been saying “users don’t think, they google” for a long time now, and every day I find new examples that confirm my theory. Since users are this way, I wonder why Google and Bing aren’t showing many steps towards this. Sure, they inject news and images into the results here and there, but you can do it much better and in a smarter way.…]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/01/google-bing-time-to-use-classification-to-improve-results-pages/feed/ 0 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/01/twitter-similar-to-allows-you-to-discover-people-with-matching-interests/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/01/twitter-similar-to-allows-you-to-discover-people-with-matching-interests/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:10:37 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=536 I just realized that Twitter now has a “Similar To” panel in the profiles pages of the users. I am not sure how they compute those but it is a pretty cool feature, which allows you to expand the people you “follow” beyond the most popular ones. If I had to build that service (or a competing one), I would probably use as similarity factors: a signature of the most discriminant terms that each person uses in their tweets the links they posts (or at least the category) the social network (who they follow).…]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/01/twitter-similar-to-allows-you-to-discover-people-with-matching-interests/feed/ 0 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/01/use-skype-to-go-to-forward-google-voice-calls-to-an-international-number/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/01/use-skype-to-go-to-forward-google-voice-calls-to-an-international-number/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:15:21 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=528 I like Google Voice a lot, especially when I am outside of the US. With any data-plan, I can see text messages and listen to voicemail left for me to my US number. Since the international call fares offered are reasonable, I would love to transfer the calls to the international number I am using in that moment. Unfortunately, that is not possible at the moment.…]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2011/01/use-skype-to-go-to-forward-google-voice-calls-to-an-international-number/feed/ 9 http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2010/12/here-is-why-you-should-not-try-to-build-a-new-search-engine/ http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2010/12/here-is-why-you-should-not-try-to-build-a-new-search-engine/#comments Sun, 19 Dec 2010 17:37:55 +0000 Alessio Signorini http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/?p=508 If you are thinking to build a new search engine, stop now. If you endure, you will be able to exploit domain authority and relevance, but likely not much else. In the end, you will build something close to the old Lycos or Altavista, which can not compete against big giants like Google or Bing. It is not by accident that other pioneers (e.g., Ask.com and Yahoo!) of the search engine world shut their door recently, and the explanation is simple: they did not have enough traffic.…]]> http://blog.alessiosignorini.com/2010/12/here-is-why-you-should-not-try-to-build-a-new-search-engine/feed/ 1