Our discussion of search engines today really piqued my interest. I was curious about how information and social networks might be related and read about “social search” which is being pioneered by companies like Delver http://delver.com/, a “ semantic social graph search engine”. Delver is principally interested in improving search quality by better understanding user […]

In a simplified view, the public Internet can be viewed as a large interconnected network.  If Node A in the network is able to connect to Node B and vica versa there must exist a path between the two nodes.  This path undoubtedly passes through other nodes in the network (unless Nodes A and B […]

In a study at Kansas University conducted by Michael Vitevich, an attempt is made to map out the words of our vocabulary as they are represented in the human brain. What Vitevich hopes to learn from charting out our vocabularies in the brain is how victims of brain trauma regain their language skills, but […]

http://www.slideshare.net/faberNovel/social-network-websites-best-practices-from-leading-services?src=embed
A recent study by FaberNovel (the results of which are published in slideshow form), a management consulting firm, highlights aspects of prominent social networking websites and point out some broad principles for understanding them and concludes with case studies on online matchmaking websites and business networking websites. While we haven’t discussed all of these principles, […]

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2007/04/general-economic-equilibrium-in-world.html
Although the market of each server in World of Warcraft is very large, the market is simplified by allowing direct exchange between players in an auction house. The auction house is a place where players can put items they don’t want up for sale, with a starting bid and buyout price, for other players […]

In our class, we had discussed the mechanism of the second price or the Vickrey auction and how the dominant strategy for each bidder was to bid the true value that the he has for the object. One feature about the second price auctions we talked about was that there was only one round of […]

As learned in class, eBay functions as a second-price sealed-bid auction where bidders submit bids, and the “winner” pays the second highest bidder’s value. In such an auction, the bidder’s dominant strategy is to bid his or her true value—how much the item is worth to him or her. The underlying logic is […]

The Game theory, which we learned in class, can be applied to athletes with doping. The game played is similar to prisoner’s dilemma. Say there are two athletes, A and B. A thinks if B doesn’t take any drugs, then it will be in A’s best interest to take them. A taking the drugs will […]

No, it is not just my productivity secret. If you haven’t stopped already, perhaps this website might sway you:
http://www.coolwormvirus.info/w32-blaster-virus-w32-worm/w32-blaster-virus-w32-worm.html
I admit, I was apprehensive at first about clicking on a link that had the word “virus” in it three times. But I figured, I’m in a public Cornell computer lab, what’s the worse that can happen […]

The average company attains the services of a shipping company to move products with hours of telephone calls and patience. The Mars corporation does it a little different though, they instead use the Internet and game theory. Mars has devised an online auction house, Freight Traders, that brings shippers and carriers together. Tenders, or oligations […]