Filmtrust: Trust Based Film Recomendation Social Network

Right now I’m taking CMSC498N: Small Worlds, Social Networks, and Web Algorithms at UMD. In the class we basically study the structure and growth of various social networks, and what kind of information we can extract from them. Anyway, my professor Jennifer Golbeck is a PHD on the subject (shes hot too, a rarity in the CS department), and created this social networking website:

Filmtrust

The basic idea is that in traditional movie rating sites such as IMDB the rating of a movie is given as an average of every person that rates it. You might think this is a perfectly logical way of going about things, which it is, but what if the site could give you a rating personalized based on your specific tastes? Thats what this website does, based on trust relationships between you and your friends. This is basically how it works:

You rate a bunch of movies, and have a bunch of friends on the network that rate movies too.

To each friend you assign a “trust” value from 1 to 10 based on how much you trust their taste in movies.

When you look for the rating of a movie you haven’t seen, the site will give you a weighted average of the rating of the movie based on your friend’s ratings and how much you trust their opinion. So if 3 of your friends gave “Old School” 4 stars but you only trust them on a 2 level, and you have one friend who you trust a lot who gave it 0 stars, the rating will be very low. In addition, if you trust a friend, and they trust another person you don’t know, that persons rating will also be calculated into the average.

So as you can see, its a pretty accurate way of finding movies you are likely to like. The networks not very big yet, but if it caught on I think it could be a pretty awesome thing. Best of all, its for a research project and non-profit, so no annoying popups or ads of any kind! Anyway, you should join, so I have more friends on it. My username is mrmartini888, so add me. Heres the site again, in case you missed it:

Filmtrust

How To Hack

While randomly searching the internet today (putting off my impending network programming assignment), I came across this excellent article. It tells you everything you need to know to be a true hacker. Not a cracker. Not a freaker. A hacker. I don’t think I’ve really gotten to that level yet. Although I know all of the languages required, I don’t think I’ve really aquired the mental discipline and passion for problem solving required to really consider myself one. Perhaps, like he warns in the article, I’m too distracted by “sex, money, and social approval”. Its hard, you’ll see…

How to Be A Hacker