algorithm: no voice but amplifies voices

“The new Google Blog Search is very nice. It’s a big improvement to the old one. But it’s like a lot of Google’s services. All algorithm and no “voice”. It may attract a mainstream audience the way Google News has and that’s fine. But for me, it’s not close to the value that I get from aggregators with an angle. It’s like a mainstream newspaper versus a blog. On one you get the news and on the other you get insight.”

Fred Wilson. AVC.com

Story about Donation Dashboard:

“The campus’s Berkeley Center for New Media has developed a Web site that aims to make charitable giving easier by matching donors to potential non-profit organizations based on their preferences.

The Donation Dashboard site allows new users to rate their interest in 15 sample charities. Based on their responses, the system provides a customized donation portfolio with recommendations for different organizations.

“There are so many great organizations out there and it’s hard to decide where to place your money, especially for young people,” said Ephrat Bitton, an industrial engineering and operations research graduate student, who helped develop the theory behind the project.

The pilot system currently includes information on 70 non-profit institutions, including World Wildlife Fund and American National Red Cross, among others. Depending on the amount of interest in the project, the site could expand to include more charities, said Tavi Nathanson, an electrical engineering and computer sciences graduate student who is responsible for developing the software.

“People can discover more charities because (the system) is based on their interests, not just about what they’ve heard of or what is popular,” Nathanson said.”