ISOLATR: a must in your Social Network life

All those crazy Social Networks are full of useful tools and apps. But I have found a real useful one, really scoring #1. Do not miss it.

Isolatr is what everybody needs in Facebook, MySpace or Tuenti. Are you tired of having so many "false" friends, those who wnat you only to add up to their infinite list of friends? Oh, so awful to be just a number to make somebody feel popular and loved.

Here is the answer to this problem. This very unique application allows you to block all your friends in your favourite SN. Not just one or two, it is binary: all of them. The end of this wall full of stupid updates of false friends. Hey you can have hundreds of friends blocked, as many as you have. Collect more and block them also. It is great!

Let us give it a try.

The Lemur Query Log Project

Over the years, we have witnessed a wide range of improvements on search functionalities. Current algorithms run faster than ever, and are much more effective. However, we are still far of the perfect (Web) search engine. Every day, millions of search queries are unsuccessful, and the users get frustrated as they can not even find whatever they found some time ago.

We are still lacking of more and more research on the area of (Web) search and Information Retrieval (IR). A research that dramatically relies on the availability of testing stuff, like query logs that allow researchers to improve their knowledge about users' search habits, leading to better algorithms and techniques in the IR field.

The Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval at the University of Massachusetts, leaded by the prestigious IR researcher Dr. Bruce Croft, is conducting a project to collect those logs that will allow researchers to build the next generation search tools. The project is called the Lemur Query Log Project, and features a privacy-enhanced toolbar to collect queries and related navigation and to send it to the database of queries which may lead to a massive query log for the benefit of the IR researchers community.

Useful links:

• Home page of the Lemur Query Log Project
• The query database schema
• Participate in the study

Great post about privacy @ Facebook

For the case you were thinking about it, I am not out. Just overloaded.

Zack Whittaker has written a great post about privacy @ Facebook. Do not forget to update your settings to avoid FB people using your data in other's ads (yes, ads targeted for others using your e.g. image!).