Smart or Dumb

This article specifically reinspired me to start working on my 'smart or dumb' blog rating system.

Its called IPad Pre-orders: For Idiots Only by Galen Grumman.

Certainly there are questions about why people pre-order a totally new product they have never touched. Any journalist could get some meat out of talking about personality types, early adopter enthusiasm, the value of this niche market as guinea pigs, the connections to other trend setters in fashion or other consumer behaviors. Gruman does not do any of that. He asks the question why, and then seems to say 'Well since I don't get it, they are just idiots.' That alone puts this in the category of anti-intellectual, uncontemplative, thoughtless, or for those challenged by big words, dumb.

However, my head exploded when I reached this part of the article:

One positive sign in all this iPad hoopla: One of my breathless local TV news stations had its tech reporter at an Apple Store Thursday night hoping to find people lined up to camp out so they could be first in line Friday morning (at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, 5:30 a.m. Pacific) to order an iPad -- the station was clearly hoping for the kind of lemming-like frenzy we saw for Windows 95 (remember that?), the first iPhone, and for fan-driven movies like the "Star Wars," "Star Trek," and "Harry Potter" franchises.

But guess what: There was no line. Sure, it looked like a few people were willing to go online first thing in the morning to order their iPads sight unseen, or even head to an Apple Store before work today to order one. But only a few. Maybe the infamous Jobs reality distortion field does have limits after all. (Yes, I know you can't pre-order an iPad at the Apple Store. Clearly the TV station's anchorwoman didn't know when she asked the on-the-scene reporter if people were lining up already. And I doubt she's alone in that misimpression.)

Yes. Thats right. Its a sign of hope that the enthusiasm for the iPad isn't beyond ridiculous in that no one lined up in Gruman's local Apple Store to buy a product that wasn't available either for preorder or purchase in said store. Yes there were only a few people who preordered. Estimates said it was selling at 20000 an hour for the first two hours, and that there was possibly 120000 sold. That doesn't really mean anything. Its all estimation based on order number sequences. As far as buying things that you can't even have for a month, I figure thats not such a low limit after all.

Still stupid or not, its on the internet, and therefore fodder for misuse. I am trying to think of a good way to begin rating blogs as smart or dumb. It would be entirely subjective. I would try to take advantage of the power of crowds to begin to build patterns. Maybe even have it so if people agree with you one thing is dumb then when a site was rated it would be based on your taste. Who knows.

To start I think maybe a simple plugin which lets you quickly hit smart or dumb on a page. Then I can let my system learn to analyze it. Who knows. There might be some universal truth available. Or maybe its just fun to be able to search for global climate change and see the top 5 dumbest articles on it.

Let me know if you want to beta.

Oh, and yes I am blogging this. Its mostly a test.