What from all this data?

Okay: here's a basic list of the things I'm signed up to.

Blogger, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, my Amazon account for something to read etc. Keep in mind I have over ten blogs on various topics, a handful of Twitter accounts and most of my likes/dislikes listed in Facebook and MySpace, and finally my work and professional connections on Linkedin.

Here's a senario I'd like to see over the next couple of years.

I book a plane ticket. London to New York for arguments sake.

i) As soon as the ticket is booked an email arrives with a few reading suggestions - linked to my Amazon account. Even better, I'm paying a few hundred pounds for my ticket - the airline can pay for a couple of books for me :)
ii) From the existing booking list it can see which of my business contacts on Linkedin I'd be travelling with and gives me the option to either network with them at the airport or during the flight.
iii) Be able to figure out what interesting blogs and websites I'd like to see when I'm flying.
iv) Be able to figure out an in flight listening (from last.fm feeds) based on my Facebook/MySpace details and music likes etc.
v) Do I have an iTunes account? Nah, so there's a good chance that I might like to buy an iPod duty free.

A lot of this can be sourced from one point of contact, an email address. Yeah it's a bit freaky, perhaps limit it to premium customers. The technology is there..... perhaps I should create a company.

Cutting through the bull - when things just don't add up.

I have worked in IT for twenty one glorious years, never thought I could see the day. Programming languages come and go, fads, fashions, websites I've pretty much seen it all. There is one thing that has constantly cropped up in my profession, fake advertisements.

To start off with it was agencies posting fake IT positions on JobServe (and hey, it still happens). In Northern Ireland they calculated that 50% of the agency positions are made up. No shock there. But it's not just the IT job market, oh no.

If you have a Boeing 737-200 for sale, for example, you'd expect any sort of "exchange and mart" sort of sale to happen. I've got a plane, you want a plane, let's talk! No. I've got a plane, and ten brokers want a piece of the action as well. And in time and honoured tradition of the fake job ads in the IT world there's a bunch of made up aircraft for sale or rent notices as well. I'm sure it happenes in every other domain that exists.

Back to my Boeing 737. The senario is:

Owner -> Broker->Broker->Broker->Broker->Broker->Broker->End User

You could add an infinate number of brokers in that chain, it would eventually end somewhere. Each of them is trying to claw their 1% commission for referring a sale. It's the same as estate agent and just as sleasy. Letters of intent mean nothing.... neither does an NDA.

Money is not made on data alone, it is made up on the quality of data. I've used the aviation industry as an example as it's one that I know an awful lot about from the startsup I've done over the last four years. It's all about signal to noise, something I've blogged about before with Twitter and the alarming number of data I seem to amassing. To gather meaningful data is becoming more of a pain.

I'm working on some tools for the aviation sector but I am constantly aware of just becoming another signal to noise service, providing more noise and what constitutes as free advertising ("as long as my phone and email address are on the site, that's all I care about!" sort of mentality).

The question should really be how to cut out the noise.