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June 29th, 2007, 05:02pm
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Touchgraph was introduced way back in 2001, right around the time Malcom Galdwell’s book The Tipping Point came out, making applications for visually enabling network analysis (or the ability to identify and discern the relationships and interconnections between distinct units, be they Web sites or people) all the rage. The company has 3 main services available to the public: the first is a Google application that lets you type in a search term and see the relationships between the sites where the term appears – I tried this out with the term Wikinomics, search available here. There is also an Amazon application (quelle surprise)that lets you search for books, movies, and music, see the interrelations between products, authors, and actors, and artists, and (again, quelle surprise) buy any objects that might be of interest from your favourite, mammoth, open-platform-behemoth-formerly-known-as-a-book-vendor. Touchgraph’s newest little innovation, launched in February, is a Facebook browser that lets you visually map the inter-relationships between your friends…kind of like a macro version of the ‘friends in common’ feature that is a staple of the Facebook platform, but visually this version is more reminiscent of an old school kaleidoscope.
After playing with the technology for a bit it still feels a bit too slow and cumbersome to imagine it being a method I would use routinely search for information. However, given that this kind of relationship mapping is already available it can’t be long before a truly efficient means of visual information retrieval is possible . In the mean time, the technology’s redeeming feature is that it can help you succeed at games of a more old fashioned variety - for instance, very handy when trying to win at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
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June 29th, 2007, 02:13pm
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To us, sitting in North America, the battle for the dominant social network is being fought between Facebook and MySpace. However, globally the picture looks quite different. Networks such as Orkut, hi5 and livejournal have come to dominate important market such as India, Brazil and Russia. A somewhat incomplete map based on Alexa rankings was put together by a few bloggers to illustrate the social network ecosystem. One immediate conclusion is that it is unlikely for one global player to emerge anytime soon. The need for these networks to be interoperable will surface as they get more ingrained in their markets. It will be interesting to see if acquisitions or middleware will be the way they come together.
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June 29th, 2007, 10:49am
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It wasn’t so long ago that Google was seen as a, if not the key driving force of innovation and new business models on the web - and with good reason. But one of the more interesting trends to watch in the Web 2.0 is not what Google is doing, but rather the variety of new business models that are emerging to attack Google head on using collaborative technologies and the power of community.
For example, last night Powerset came out of “stealth mode” to unveil their new search platform - one that’s designed to leverage the wisdom of the crowds for development. To quote co-founder and COO Steve Newcomb:
“Imagine a mashup between Facebook, Digg and Google Apps, but you get to participate in the building of the products that sit on top of our platform. You log into a social network, like you would Facebook, and you get certified to be a Powerlabber. Once certified you can join different interest groups, such as travel, and participate in idea and mashup competitions. QA is embedded and its all bloggable.”
“Instead of being stealth mode, we are being more open than any other company has been in the launch process. If we screw up and it’s not going well, we will take the hit, and if it goes well we take that. It’s a wisdom of the crowd idea of competitions. We will build the winners and widgets for Facebook, blogs, and others”
Imagine indeed. This could be a very big deal, and Powerset is not alone in exploring this area - Jimbo Wales’ Search Wikia engine is going down a similar path. In turn, it’s at least worth wondering whether one or some new players in the Web 2.0 could eventually leave Google behind -and/or whether Google will ever respond with more collaborative, community based offerings of their own.
I certainly think that they should - which is why when Eric Schmidt asked me a little while ago what Google should be doing differently, I suggested they needed to push even harder into applying mass collaboration to their business model - including their core search capability. The full video of that discussion is available here.
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June 28th, 2007, 12:20pm
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Nintendo has recently announced the release of game development tools for their popular Wii gaming console. (Nintendo is expected to sell almost 18 million Wii’s this year, compared to 11 million of Sony’s PS3s) The game creation service, called WiiWare, will allow developers to create simple games and sell them through the Wii Shop Channel. Nintendo’s goal is to create more games for the console by enticing independent developers. This will in turn drive demand for the console itself. Nitendo’s move follows a similar announcement by Microsoft a few months ago.
For Nintendo, extra revenue from games is just icing on the cake as the company’s business model revolves around console sales. This is in stark contrast to Sony’s model which loses an estimated $240 per PS3 sold, in the hopes of making it up on games. (Microsoft makes an estimated $75 on their Xbox 360 console.) The Wii’s innovative motion sensing controller has already made it a target for hackers who have created a number of enhancements and extensions for the technology. It will be interesting to see what kinds of innovations will be created as these hackers and developers get free reign on game creation.
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June 28th, 2007, 11:11am
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Bear Sterns has been busy in the last few weeks trying to bail themselves out of the subprime mortgage / hedge fund mess they got themselves into (who would’ve thought that taking 10:1 leverage to invest in loans made to people at artifically low short-term interest rates, who couldn’t pay them back if rates merely went back up to what the long-term rate would predict, might be a bad idea?), but over on the research side a very interesting new report came out that’s built on a bit stronger of a foundation - taking a longer look at the long tail.
It’s worth reading - they’ve got some pretty interesting opinions and insights into the long tail, and a lot of fascinating numbers around TV usage, AA ratings of top TV shows relative to number of channels available, the long-term fall of the Big 3 networks, and many others.
Their survey also has some juicy tidbits - for example, an online video survey found that for “all respondents” user generated content (UGC) lagged movie trailers in terms of popularity, but came out just ahead of music videos and news… but if you look at only males 18-34 (any advertisers interested in them?), UGC blows everything else out of the water.
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June 27th, 2007, 03:23pm
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Ok, so I’m dating myself a little, but I remember how much some people complained when LPs gave away to CDs. Fans of album art were furious that the canvass available had shrunk from 12 inches square to about 5 inches square (viewers of Saturday Night Live in the early 80s will recall a similar rant by Eddie Murphy about G.I. Joe shrinkage).
Many albums from the 70s were considered classics, not just because of the music pressed on the vinyl (my daughter would have no idea what this sentence means), but also the art of the album cover. See below for an example — Houses of the Holy, by Led Zeppelin which is recommended by no less experts than Bill and Ted. The irony that you can’t make out the details of the album on this blog is not lost on me by the way.
For those people that actually purchase music on iTunes, you’ll find that the shrinkage continues. The area of the album art is now about half the size of a postage stamp. This occured to me after I bought Graceland by Paul Simon for the third time and the third medium (obsolescence and an apartment break-in played roles here). The South African art motif is displayed by a few blurry pixels.
Of course thinking about that album made me recall the slightly out-of-my-league date that I brought to the Graceland concert at Maple Leaf Gardens. [Editor’s note: the author keeps adding the word “slightly” after we remove it.] I checked to see if she had joined Facebook. She hasn’t. It ain’t stalking, people…it’s social networking.
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June 27th, 2007, 10:03am
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Hello music industry, my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again. It seems that just when I thought things couldn’t get more ridiculous in your business, you’ve found a way to out do yourself.
So for those that may be wondering why their favorite online radio station didn’t work yesterday, they were all in a day of silence to protest the royalty rate increases that the Librarian of Congress and Copyright royalty board have decided on (starting July 15th, retroactive to January 1 2006).
Oh right - the size of the rate increase. That would be about 300% apparently, which might just cause many of the stations to shut down since, oh I don’t know, estimates on total royalty payments would exceed the combined revenue of all the stations.
And the biggest absurdity in this? Well that would be the differences in the deals given to web broadcasters in comparison to AM and FM (i.e. broadcast) radio stations. You see, the latter group only pays royalties to the composers of the songs, while web broadcasters must pay these and an additional one to the performers. This latter group also brings in about $20 Billion in revenue a year, which is a wee bit more than the web broadcasters to say the least.
Seems fair, non? But at least AM and FM radio now seem to be playing on the same team… which wasn’t quite the case when FM radio emerged onto the scene. But actually I lied - that’s not the most absurd thing, as the record industry also requested that web channels offer up a minimum $500 “administration fee” for every channel they set-up, and it got passed into the law in question.
So you know how those innovative Internet radio companies like Pandora have custom channels (using an algorithm to determine similar songs that people might like) - that $500 per might be a little prohibitive for such a model. Of note, last year Rhapsody had a cool 400,000 channels on offer. If you do the math, that would clearly pay for a lot of administration.
Of course, you’d only be using Pandora right now if you are in the U.S., because they’ve had to cut off listeners everywhere else in the world due to licensing constraints. It almost seems like the music industry is doing pretty much everything it can to fight the evils of a service that helps you find music you’d like, instead of what the powers that be try to cram down your, um, ear.
The webcasters currently have an emergency stay on this big mess, as they try to get support behind a bill that would - and it sounds totally crazy - have them pay the same royalties as satellite radio (7% of revenue)! Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue of both Internet and satellite radio paid the same royalties?
Sarcasm aside, what congress and the U.S. Court of Appeals will end up on is unknown, but the pressure is mounting - apparently mail in relation to this issue ranks #2 (after the Iraq War). Ideally common sense will win out, but since it rarely has before I’m not holding my breath.
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June 26th, 2007, 10:30am
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The question posed to people in the U.K. was simple - which would you least be willing to give up for a month from the group of tea/coffee, sex, chocolate, alcohol, and mobile phone? And the result is… the English bloody well like a good cup of tea, but that’s not the reason this is being posted up here obviously.
What was interesting was that for 16-24 year olds, mobile phones were the runaway winner - 30%, versus 18% for each of tea/coffee, sex and chocolate (alcohol came a distant fifth) - while mobile phones came almost dead last for all the other age brackets. But what was more interesting was that 22% of the youngest age group said they wouldn’t give their phone up unless they were given more than a million pounds (this is probably a lie, but it makes the point), while 20% said that mobile phones actually decrease their quality of life. As the researchers summed it up:
The survey showed clearly that living without a mobile phone affects people in different ways; some participants reported feeling lost, isolated and frustrated, while others felt free from life’s pressures.
It looks like another interesting divide within the net generation - a large group of people that can barely cope without being constantly connected, and a large group of people that can barely cope with being constantly connected. While most of the research and discussion around the Web 2.0 is currently focused on the former group, companies that find a way to help the latter group enjoy the benefits of connectivity without ruining that peaceful cup of tea might be handsomely rewarded.
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June 26th, 2007, 07:58am
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On May 31st I described Jonathon Shwartz’s (CEO of Sun Microsystems) blog as one of the best around, and summarized an interesting post he put up describing how the software business is like the media business. He’s recently published some other thoughts that are related to the media industry, which are again worth reading - and to encourage you to do just that, this time I’m only going to quote how he ended his post:
Which brings me to a simple, and heretical conclusion - for which I’m sure I’ll be apologizing for years to come. But I’d rather be honest than polite.
Media company CEO’s without a CTO on their staff should prepare to be acquired or broken up - they are fighting the future rather than monetizing it.
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June 25th, 2007, 02:48pm
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As the battle between MySpace and Facebook for social networking supremacy rages on, it’s starting to take an interesting shape - that is, at least according to Danah Boyd, who in this blog essay argues that MySpace and Facebook are new representations of the class divide in American youth. The entire post is well worth the read, but the key point is made in Boyd’s attempt to delineate what we see on social network sites in stereotypical, descriptive terms meant to evoke an image (i.e. don’t interpret what follows too literally):
The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.
MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.
Of course, one could quite easily argue (and Boyd notes) that this division can at least partially be explained by the history of the two sites - since Facebook started out limited to college students, it was kind of hard for kids that don’t go to college to get on there and start poking each other. Now that Facebook has opened up to everyone, preferences could change, which Boyd is and will be watching with great interest.
Another interesting point she made was that a month ago the military in the U.S. banned MySpace, but not Facebook - and Boyd notes that typically (tied to the discussion above and the class divide) soldiers are/were on MySpace, and officers are/were on Facebook.
Such subjects are difficult to talk about and often make people uneasy, and Boyd notes she was “reticent about writing about this dynamic” due to a lack of appropriate language to describe what she is seeing, and worries that it could be misinterpreted… but it’s certainly an interesting issue to keep tabs on. For other papers and thoughts from Boyd, see here, or visit her blog at http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/.
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June 24th, 2007, 10:01am
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Lawrence Lessig’s vision of a “read-write” Internet (rather than a “read-only” Internet) is harshly and sloppily disparaged in Andrew Keen’s new polemic: The Cult of the Amateur. Lessig posted a characteristically brilliant response on his blog some time ago (which I only just had a chance to catch up with today). Lessig points out several fallacies in Keen’s book and then graciously suggests that we give poor Mr. Keen a break. Why? Because his book was a self-parody, after all!
So how could it be that a book criticizing the Internet — because the product of a standardless process where nothing is “vetted for accuracy” (as he says of Wikipedia) — could itself be so mistaken, when it, presumably, has been “vetted for accuracy” and was only selected for publication because it passed the high standards of truth imposed by its publisher — Doubleday?
And then it hit me: Keen is our generation’s greatest self-parodist. His book is not a criticism of the Internet. Like the article in Nature comparing Wikipedia and Britannica, the real argument of Keen’s book is that traditional media and publishing is just as bad as the worst of the Internet. Here’s a book — Keen’s — that has passed through all the rigor of modern American publishing, yet which is perhaps as reliable as your average blog post: No doubt interesting, sometimes well written, lots of times ridiculously over the top — but also riddled with errors. Keen’s obvious point is to show those with a blind faith in the traditional system that it can be just as bad as the worst of the Internet. Indeed, one might say even worse, since the Internet doesn’t primp itself with the pretense that its words are promised to be true.
So lighten up on poor Mr. Keen, folks. He is an ally. His work will help us all understand the limits in accuracy, taste, judgment, and understanding shot through all of our systems of knowledge. The lesson he teaches is one we should all learn — to read and think critically, whether reading the product of the “monkeys” (as Keen likens contributors to the Internet to be) or books published by presses such as Doubleday.
If you haven’t already read it, Lessig’s extended post is well worth 5 or 10 minutes of your time (which is more than I can say for Keen’s book).
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June 22nd, 2007, 05:18pm
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Text messaging, a medium comprised of encoded words and smiley faces architected out of colons and brackets (separated by a dash by those who are more thorough), rarely seems a communications method of choice for any message more serious than asking a friend where they want to eat for dinner.
That said, as one Chinese petrochemical plant learnt the hard way earlier this month, texting can also be used to coordinate affairs of a more existential nature. A protest organized almost entirely via text messages spurred the government to grudgingly shut down a billion dollar paraxylene (PX) plant in Xiamen, in response to criticisms of the plant’s effect on local population health and on the environment. Over 1 million text messages were sent out in the process, urging residents to join a street protest against the opening of the plant, comparing its inevitable impact on the local ecosystem to an atomic bomb of disaster. The message also urged recipients to pass the text along to all of their Xiamen friends, “for the sake of future generations”. The protest was also reported on by mobile bloggers, although allegedly many of the blog sites were shut down by the government in the days following the event.
China already employs restrictions on the websites and searches accessible from inside its borders. Now that the country has put its foot firmly down on the issue of web content access, can regulation of text messaging or text content be far around the corner? Use of text-messaging (at least by the Net Generation) in China is amongst the highest in the world, so monitoring sms activity for ‘appropriate use’, would be no small order.
That said, it appears China already has some of the tools to crack down, if they wanted to. According to the LA Times:
In 2004, it provoked an outcry among some Western free speech advocates by purchasing a surveillance system for cellphone messages that allowed it to filter objectionable messages and pinpoint their senders. And in 2005, Chinese authorities temporarily banned the use of text messaging after it was used to organize violent anti-Japanese protests.
So maybe the fact that the messages used to organize this protest weren’t comletely shut down means that what we are seeing instead is an era where pervasive computing technologies might actually engender a political period where Chinese officials pay closer attention to democratic movements on the ground and respond in kind, rather than trying to stamp out citizien activism. I know, sounds like wishful thinking. But then, being optimisitc is my preffered way of looking at the world. Smiley face.
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June 21st, 2007, 04:16pm
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In a ruling issued last month but disclosed yesterday by file-sharing attorney Ray Beckerman, The RIAA’s ex parte motion to compel the University of New Mexico to disclose the identities of its students has been denied, in the District Court of New Mexico, by Magistrate Judge Lorenzo F. Garcia, in Capitol v. Does 1-16.
At the same time, a University of Boston student is challenging the RIAA’s system of filing John Doe lawsuits in order to discover the names connected to IP addresses uncovered by the music industry’s investigators. This methodology is one that the RIAA is quite familiar with: file John Doe lawsuits, file ex parte applications for discovery, serve the resulting subpoenas on the alleged file-sharer’s ISP to discover the identity of the person to whom the IP address was assigned, and then offer the person identified by the ISP a chance to settle the copyright infringement claims without a lawsuit. In other words, the RIAA attempts to circumvent the judicial process while blackmailing individual parties in order to make their point. The would-be defendant never has the opportunity to answer during a John Doe lawsuit and rebutt the subpeona issued to them.
The RIAA has argued that it would suffer irreparable harm unless immediate discovery was allowed. Despite the fact that harm is caused due to copyright infringement, the harm related to disclosure of confidential information in a student or faculty member’s Internet files can be equally harmful.
“While the Court does not dispute that infringement of a copyright results in harm, it requires a Coleridgian ’suspension of disbelief’ to accept that the harm is irreparable, especially when monetary damages can cure any alleged violation.”
The remainder of the ruling can be downloaded here.
With precedent now set, the RIAA may now have a more difficult time with this type of case. The litigation process could be much more expensive and time-consuming. Those suspected of file-sharing may now be better informed from the beginning of the legal process instead of simply being notified with a settlement letter.
If the RIAA really wants to make an example out of someone, why don’t they just go after Jenna and Barbara Bush?
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June 20th, 2007, 11:48am
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Twentieth-century political communication has been described as a ‘oneway conversation.’ Instead of inclusive deliberation — the substantive element of democracy — professionally produced and polished declarations of policy were released for public consumption via mass media. For most people political debate was perceived as something to watch - or switch off.
YouTube is trying to change this by creating an interactive forum for engaging today’s youth in the political process. For starters, YouTube is giving interested citizens have the opportunity to submit questions to presidential candidates via YouTube videos over the course of the summer. CNN’s political team will then select “the most creative and compelling videos” to feature in the first Democratic debate on July 23rd. The same opportunity will be available to citizens who wish to query Republican candidates on September 17th.
YouTube is calling it “political history” which is a wee bit of an embellishment if you ask me. Having CNN screen/select a handful of citizen entries to be presented to presidential candidates is hardly an innovation in political communication.
To be sure, providing a trusted third-party venue for political debate (like CitizenTube) is a step in the right direction. But we don’t need CNN’s political team to make judgments on our behalf. Why not let the community decide which are the most relevant questions to pose to candidates. And why not compel political candidates to provide their answers on YouTube where the community can openly debate which candidates posed the most meaningful and credible answers, and where candidates can join the conversation in an active an ongoing way.
Real deliberative democracy requires a new conception of citizenship. Strengthening representation through a process of ongoing, digital discussion and consultation is not about simply giving citizens a better hearing - although that in itself would be a good start. It is about giving citizens ownership of their representation. It is about citizens as shareholders in power rather than consumers of policy. It is also about the responsibilities and obligations of being a democratic citizen within a networked society.
As New Paradigm has argued in the past, we are not envisaging a citizenry that is constantly engaged in decisionmaking, as would be required by a direct, plebiscitary democracy, but citizens who have learned to use the democratic muscles which have atrophied during long years of exclusion from the deliberative process.
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June 19th, 2007, 06:00am
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Day one of the Enterprise 2.0 conference included some interesting workshops. My favourite was lead by Michael Sampson this morning around the topic of the IT Manager 2.0. The five questions he posed to the group proved to be more than enough to keep us occupied for the two and a half hour session. After a quick discussion Michael would draw up a mind map to summarize the thoughts of the group around each question. Below is the mind map for the question “are the tools fundamentally different?”
You can find the slides, and mind maps for the other five questions posted on Michaels blog.
Links to other mind maps
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June 18th, 2007, 05:25pm
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An interesting exchange took place late last week that pinned computer maker Dell against The Consumerist, a popular blog backed by the communities of various sites such as Digg and Slashdot. The Consumerist posted a piece entitled “22 Confessions Of A Former Sales Manager” written by a ex-sales manager. The article described a few tricks on how to get the best deals and support from Dell. It received almost 300 000 hits in less than three days.
Dell made the mistake of asking The Consumerist to take down the post as they called the information contained in it “confidential and proprietary.” Instead of taking down the post The Consumerist posted Dell’s demand which was subsequently seen by 130 000 people and Dugg 3500 times on the popular site Digg.com. In a face saving decision, Dell posted a retraction of their demand along with their own confessions list admitting to their mistake of trying to control information.
A few interesting things to note about this episode. 1) The speed at which this all took place. From Thursday to Sunday hundreds of thousands of people were involved in this discussion. 2) It shows the interconnectedness of blogs and social bookmarking sites which quickly cross pollinate each other’s stories. 3) The way a large company takes into account the wishes of these online communities. It clearly underlines their growing importance and influence.
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June 17th, 2007, 03:06pm
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Interesting Wall St. Journal article illustrating how culturall questionable references carry much more weight than more academic subjects. For example, the West Wing of the White House has a word count of 1100 while the TV drama, The West Wing, has 6800 words.
Some other word count examples from the article:
The Harlem Renaissance (1,300)
The Harlem Globetrotters (1,900)
Miles Davis, jazz musician (6,000)
Miles ‘Tails’ Prowler, sidekick of video game hero Sonic the Hedgehog (6,300)
Charles William Eliot, pioneering president of Harvard University (3,000)
Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts school, ‘Harry Potter’ series (5,200)
Steam engine (7,300)
Lightsaber, fictional weapon from “Star Wars” (10,000)
Apollo 13, space mission (3,900)
“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (6,700)
Cecil B. DeMille (1,300)
Russ Meyer (3,500)
“Annie Hall” (2,500)
“Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (5,200)
Poker (1,400)
Magic: The Gathering, fantasy card game (7,800)
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June 15th, 2007, 04:29pm
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Know the experience of searching for something relatively mundane on Wikipedia, and being surprised with how little you have found? What about the reverse experience, when you search for some bizarro fact and come up with a plethora of well researched information?
A pair of comedy writers for the site Something Awful have turned this duality into a bit of a phenomenon, fittingly called ‘wiki-groaning’, termed after the sound that one might make upon feeling exasperated at the lacklustre (or alternately over-the-top) results of a wiki search. An article in the Globe and Mail today describes how wiki-groaning works:
First, think up two similar topics, one being of genuine historical or social relevance, and the other being useless to everyone but a small coterie of fans. To cite the classic example, you might pick “Knights” and “Jedi Knights.” Next, load up the respective Wikipedia pages of each pair, and notice their respective lengths. Hear yourself groan? There you go - you’re wikigroaning!
The challenge lies in finding the most egregious pairs. The game’s creators … provide an eye-opening list of groan-worthy pairs to start with: The article on “Archaeology” is shorter than the one on “Indiana Jones.” “Latin” on Wikipedia is shorter than “Klingon language.” The entry for “Women’s suffrage” is shorter than the piece entitled “List of fictional gynoids and female cyborgs.”
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June 15th, 2007, 08:55am
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One sign of the search giant’s evolution from a fast growing start-up out to change the world, to a serious corporation that occupies a contentious space, is run-ins with potential rivals. Although Google has been competing head to head with companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL it traditionally had a somewhat cooperative relationship with eBay. (eBay spends an estimated $25 million on advertising on Google) Recently, in what is looking to become a true rivalry, Google offended eBay by holding a function on the same night as an eBay event. Sounds minor, but it offended eBay to the point that the auction site pulled all their advertising from Google. It will be interesting to see how a more antagonistic relationship between the two companies affects the evolution of the internet.
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June 15th, 2007, 07:36am
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According to an article in the most recent edition of Nature, a close-up view of the human genome has revealed that its innermost workings are far more complex than originally believed. Focusing on only one percent of the human genome sequence, the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) performed roughly eighty different varieties of experiments which yielded some 600 million data points.
The major result of the initial HGP provided us with the sequence of DNA, but did not provide a great deal of understanding as to what each sequence does. It was previously believed that about 97 percent of our DNA was ‘junk’, with no evident biological function. However, this has changed, as ENCODE has noticed that the majority of the remaining genome is ‘active to some extent’.
They found that ‘junk DNA’ was being transcribed into Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) – in other words, it was being copied in order to relay information, or instructions, from DNA to other parts of the cell. (Now I’m really glad I caught that episode of 100 Greatest Discoveries with Bill Nye on TVO last Sunday).
Considered to be the next step from the Human Genome Project, the ENCODE study was the collaborative effort of eighty organizations from across the globe who communicated via the International HapMap Project.
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