Positive Technology Journal

Re-blogged from Smart Mobs

Technnorati has posted the State of the Blogosphere, October, 2006. [via Joi Ito]

As of October 2006, about 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there was a slight decrease quarter-over-quarter in the number of new blogs created each day.

...The total posting volume of the blogosphere has leveled off somewhat, showing about 1.3 million postings per day, which is a little lower than what we were seeing last quarter but still about double the volume of this time last year. ...

The following is a paid review

ReviewMe is a service that pays bloggers to write about advertisers’ products. It's similar to PayPerPost (an automated system that allows users to promote their web site, product, service, or company through the PayPerPost network of bloggers) but with better payouts and a focus on reviews. Actually, bloggers must disclose that the review is a paid advertisement (as I have done at the beginning of this post).

To determine the importance of a blog, ReviewMe  uses an algorithm based on Alexa, Technorati and charges a different fee for each blog based on the calculation. Blogger payments range from $30 - $1,000 per post. The factors considered include the theme, estimated traffic, link popularity, and estimated RSS subscribers.

Also, advertisers can purchase posts, but they cannot require that a post is positive. The blogger can choose to write their honest opinion without fear of not being paid. The only requirement is that the review must be a minimum of 200 words.

Reviewme is giving away $25,000 today to pay bloggers to write about the service.

Here are the four simple steps you have to follow in order to get paid to review products and services on your site:

1. Submit your site for inclusion into our ReviewMe publisher network.  
2. If approved, your site will enter our ReviewMe marketplace and clients will purchase reviews from you.
3. You decide to accept the review or not.
4. You will be paid $20.00 to $200.00 for each completed review that you post on your site.

The company is backed by TechCrunch-sponsor

A great catch by the always-interesting NeuroFuture:

BrainWaves is a musical performance by cultured cortical cells interfacing with multielectrode arrays. Eight electrodes recorded neural patterns that were filtered to eight speakers after being sonified by robotic and human interpretation. Sound patterns followed neural spikes and waveforms, and also extended to video, with live visualizations of the music and neural patterns in front of a mesmerized audience. See a two minute video here (still image below). Teams from two research labs designed and engineered the project; read more from collaborator Gil Weinberg.

Via Mind Hacks 

Ogi Ogas, a doctoral student in cognitive neuroscience at Cognitive and Neural Systems at Boston University, has applied techniques from cognitive psychology to win $500,000 on the show 'Who wants to be a Millionaire?'. 

These techniques take advantage of well-studied psychological processes such as such as priming and the structure of associations in memory.

Read how he describes his method in an article appeared on Seed Magazine:

The first technique I drew upon was priming. The priming of a memory occurs because of the peculiar "connectionist" neural dynamics of our cortex, where memories are distributed across many regions and neurons. If we can recall any fragment of a pattern, our brains tend to automatically fill in the rest....

I used priming on my $16,000 question: "This past spring, which country first published inflammatory cartoons of the prophet Mohammed?" I did not know the answer. But I did know I had a long conversation with my friend Gena about the cartoons. So I chatted with [quiz show host] Meredith about Gena. I tried to remember where we discussed the cartoons and the way Gena flutters his hands. As I pictured how he rolls his eyes to express disdain, Gena's remark popped into my mind: "What else would you expect from Denmark?"