If you're tired of TED...

...you may be right. Excellent review of TED, the phenomenon, suggesting that possibly the idea has spread a little too thin.

[via NotExactlyRocketScience]

Dynamic passenger WIFI

Tokyo commuters will now have access to local WiFi entertainment and information on their journeys, including being able to see carriage crowding and temperature along their train. It will be interesting to see the impact of that information on passenger behaviour. Would you sacrifice pole position for the platform exit (London Underground passengers bunch up in specific carriages in order to get off the system as quickly as possible) for a cooler carriage?

[From FuelforThoughts via Chris Heathcote]

Psychologising the iPhone 4 antenna furore

Hm, don't want to add to the millions of pixels that have been spilt on this but Graham Bower at NetImperative analyses how Apple's own marketing (explicitly promoting the new atenna design) and mass commentary on the web (focusing on the specifics of loss of reception) worked together to create a storm. Despite Bower's invocation of groupthink, nocebo effect and availability heuristic I think Apple will survive.

[via Usability News]

Rowing as a group increases pain thresholds

Reported by Not Exactly Rocket Science, research by Emma Cohen showed that rowers using ergo machines had higher pain thresholds (which correlate with endorphin levels) when they rowed as an eight, than when they rowed individually. Mindhacks concludes this may why be meetings are so 'protracted and tortuous.'

(I seem to be beset by research on the impact of groups at the moment, hence a new category.)

The reliability of user reviews

Technology Review reports Vassilis Kostakos' analysis of user reviews on Amazon, Internet Movie Database and BookCrossings. On all sites he found that a small core of users submitted multiple reviews (for example, only 5% of Amazon users submit more than 10 reviews). So reviews you read don't come from an exactly representative population (nor, of course, do the professional reviews in papers and magazines but, there, the expectation is different). However the impact of a core of active contributors seems to be a common issue for user-generated content.

The TR report mentions tools that can be used to 'frame' reviews for readers, for example, dating the review, giving user ratings of the helpfulness of the review. Kostakos suggests eliminating extreme reviews in either direction, to prevent a group effect of followers taking the lead from an extreme view, although Jahna Otterbacher (who studies on-line rating systems) suggests this might put people off contributing.

Some interesting comments beneath the main report, one of which points out that what is needed is research into the strategies people use in interpreting the reviews. I know I have many, and they vary according to the site I'm using. So, for example, using Trip Advisor I'll look at where the reviewer comes from to see whether they might carry the same cultural baggage as me. On Amazon I tend to look for any hint of a link between the reviewer and the author. A link isn't necessarily negative in my mind, indeed it can add to appreciation of the book: see this review of Keeping Mum by cousin of the author, Brian Thompson:
Although it may seem cheeky reviewing my cousin's book, I feel I must for several reasons...

Later: ReadWriteWeb has also picked up this research, with more interesting comments.
[Via Putting People First]