Showing posts with label Website. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Website. Show all posts

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Medium: Kind Of Like Pinterest

What does a "re-imagined" publishing platform look like? A bit like Tumblr, with a pinch of Pinterest and a sprinkling of Reddit's ranking system. .... "Our ideas are much farther along than our product. Medium is only a sliver of what it could be."

takes submitted content such as text and photos and organizes related items in collections that multiple people can review and add to. Instead of being listed chronologically, posts getting the highest user rating will appear at the top

a collaborative, lightweight way to express themselves online with images and text ..... people should be able to publish without “the burden of becoming a blogger” and worrying about developing an audience. The layout looks a lot like Pinterest, but contributions include both pictures and text. .... Currently, anyone with a Twitter account can read and provide feedback on the new platform but only a limited group of invited friends and family can post.

Medium is seemingly put together with parts from other sites: posting is simple and template-based, like Tumblr. Posts are organized into collections, like Pinterest. And within those collections, the posts are promoted by readers, like Reddit.....

The site's interface may be its strong suit.... As for written content, the site is fundamentally no different than Slashdot. .... Obvious used a Tumblr post to announce Branch, a tool designed to facilitate conversation online.

Web-based discussion site Branch...... a simple way to post to the Internet without taking on the responsibility of a personal blog brand. .... combines "the intimacy of a dinner table conversation with the power of the Internet." .... hopes to turn Internet monologues into online dialogues ..... By allowing users to pick who they want to talk to, Branch opens the diversity of the Web but prevents the discussion from turning into Internet noise. .... "We want it to be a place for you to talk about all the things that are happening in your world."

called "the next big thing in Web publishing" .... The reason this is different than the tools around today, like Tumblr or Twitter or Word Press is that it supposedly values quality, while also lowering the barrier to being a blogger. .... Medium will make the Internet easy, beautiful, and high quality all at once. .... Who gets the book deal for the Been There, Loved That, for example? ..... Medium looks and works like Pinterest, Tumblr and Reddit. Tech blogger Mathew Ingram called it "a cross between Tumblr and Pinterest" ..... "Right now it just seems like a Frankensteinish PinTumblReddit," wrote Gizmodo's Mario Aguilar. It's a blog that sorts things differently than blogs out there today. ..... "There are seeds of a backlash against the beautiful chaos the web hath wrought, the desire for a flight to quality. There will be new ways beyond ease of use to harness the creative powers of the audience," writes Benton. Even if Medium doesn't define that revolution, it reminds us that the Internet is not dead, and that it continues to evolve.

Both platforms seem to be very optimistic in nature, aiming to get each and everyone of us to share our ideas and thoughts in a clean and productive way.

With Medium, they aim to inject a dose of collaboration into Web publishing and distance it from print publishing practices. They also want to raise the quality of content.

Through Medium, readers and contributors alike, are able to interact with one another at a “level of contribution they prefer.”

an embeddable discussion platform called Branch. .... he is widely credited as the inventor of the term “blog” itself .... Obvious focuses on Internet software and “systems that help people work together to make the world a better place”. Besides developing its own projects, it also invests into promising, “philosophically aligned” start-ups, such as Beyond Meat – the company which aspires to perfectly replace animal protein with plant protein. ..... The project mixes blogging and social networking, borrowing ideas from Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter and pretty much any other successful Internet media platform. Posts can contain text and pictures, and are displayed using modern, minimalistic design. .... Medium aggregates posts by topic instead of by author, and assembles them into “collections”. Every post can be rated by users, and highest-rated posts will always appear on top of a collection. ..... should be equally appealing to both the casual readers and dedicated bloggers. .... Branch – an online discussion platform that has been described as “Twitter with no character limit”. Branch can be embedded to any website, and host discussions or comments on any topic. But the most interesting feature is that any conversation can “branch” into separate posts. .... it is interesting to note that some features and the overall design of Medium look somewhat similar to recently relaunched Digg.

They inspired a boom in self-publishing with Blogger, then turned the world to 140 characters with Twitter. Now Ev Williams and Biz Stone have launched two new websites – Medium and Branch – in what they hope will prompt an "evolutionary leap" in online sharing. .... people can read, view and vote on content without worrying about developing their own audience. .... Branch is the place for Twitter users to have more in-depth conversations with each other. You can start your own "branch" and invite other Twitter users to join you. There is no need to set up a separate Branch account. .... "Between articles, blog posts, and tweets, the internet is dominated by monologues. So we want to build a home for dialogues online, by combining the intimacy of a dinner table conversation with the power of the internet." ..... Branch brings the simplicity of Twitter and a more expansive, specialist conversation that can be found on Quora. Its success is more likely to be judged on the quality of conversations and return rate of its users, rather than the number of sign-ups. ..... Medium is not meant to be a repository for the badly-lit photos of a bazillion users. ..... What will be interesting is how both Medium and Branch affect Tumblr, the lightweight blogging platform whose biggest threat is being overwhelmed by low-quality content posted without a second thought.

"While it's great that you can be a one-person media company, it'd be even better if there were more ways you could work with others." .... Williams, Stone and Goldman were also investors in Branch Media, a New York startup that came out of private beta Monday. .... Stone, meanwhile, has a side project: He's signed with camera-maker Canon U.S.A. to work with acclaimed Hollywood director Ron Howard to produce one of five short films that will be based on photos sent in by consumers.

Is Medium going to be as revolutionary? That seems unlikely — but it’s still interesting. .... collaboration and the crowdsourcing of quality content are two of the core principles that Medium is based on .... What else is Pinterest but a collaboration platform .... while the Obvious founders say they want to make it easier for people to publish and share content, you could argue that Tumblr pretty much has a lock on that phenomenon ..... Of course, both of the things Evan Williams is famous for also looked either unnecessary or unimpressive, and in some cases both. Blogger was cool if you were a geek and wanted your own website, but it was far from obvious at the time that self-publishing was going to become something huge or crack open the media industry in a fundamental way. And Twitter looked so ephemeral (not to mention the ridiculous name) that many people dismissed it as a plaything for nerds that would never amount to anything. .... it looks a lot like a mashup of Pinterest and Tumblr. .... one of the things the platform does that is unlike both Blogger and Twitter is it subverts the notion of the author as the most important thing about the content. .... Medium is focused more on the value of the content, regardless of who is producing it or voting on it. .... it feels like a mashup of all the other tools that are out there rather than something with a compelling feature of its own .... certainly an interesting piece of an ongoing puzzle.

Obvious–a sort of idea incubator that’s “more of a philosophy than a company or product”

it is based around well-designed templates like Tumblr, and can be heavy on images, like Pinterest. ..... For now, Medium sounds like a potentially large collection of online forums, not much more. Yet, given the meteoric track record of its developers in the past, Medium has a much better than average chance of success. Indeed, it will be interesting to see if Medium can reach anywhere near the level of success that Twitter has enjoyed.

[With apologies to Wallace Stevens, the finest poet to ever serve as vice president of the Hartford Livestock Insurance Company.] .... Obvious is the most recent iteration of the company that created Blogger, Odeo, and Twitter. .... Odeo was a podcasting service that never really took off — 20 percent ahead of its time, 80 percent outflanked by Apple. ..... the underlying structure of Medium, which upends much of how we think about personal publishing online. .... When the Internet first blossomed, its initial promise to media was the devolution of power from the institution to the individual. Before the web, reaching an audience meant owning a printing press or a broadcast tower. It was resource-intensive, and those resources tended to congeal around companies ..... The political blogosphere — the cacophony of individual voices on both left and right circa, say, 2004 — evolved toward institutions, toward Politico and TPM and The Blaze and HuffPo and the like. ..... Personal publishing is like voting. In theory, it’s the very definition of empowerment. In reality, it’s an excellent way for your personal shout to be cancelled out by someone else’s shout. ..... That was when a few smart people realized that there was a balance to be found between the organization and the individual. The individual sought self-expression and an audience; the organization sought sustainability and cash money. ...... What’s most radical about Medium is that it denies authorship. ..... it degrades authorship, renders it secondary, knocks it off its pedestal ..... The shift to blogging created a wave of new individual media stars, but in a sense it just shifted traditional media brands to a new, personal level. ..... Sites like Buzzfeed are built largely on reshuffling the Internet, rearranging work into streams and slideshows. ..... When you click on an author’s byline on a Medium post, it goes to their Twitter feed (Ev synergy!), not to their author archive — which is what you’d expect on just about any other content management system on the Internet. ...... “Instead of adding a category to a post, you add a post to a category.” .... Medium’s posting interface brought back super-pleasant memories of Blogger’s old two-pane interface. Felt like the Clinton years again. ..... The mass of quality content is much higher too, of course, but it’s surrounded by an even-faster-growing mass of not-so-great (or at least not-so-great-to-you) content. ....... Medium believes in editorial judgment — but everyone’s an editor. ..... good stuff being buried beneath something inconsequential posted 20 minutes later ..... Branch is based on the idea that web comments are shit and that you have to create a separate universe where smart people can have smart conversations. App.net, the just-funded paid Twitter alternative, is attractive to at least some folks because it promises a reboot of the social web without the “cockroaches” — you know, stupid people. Svbtle, an invite-only blogging platform, is aimed only at those who “strive to produce great content. We focus on the writing, the news, and the ideas. Everything else is a distraction.” ....... modernized with nice typography, lovely textures, and generous white space ..... the white flight argument — the idea that the privileged flee common spaces and platforms once they stop being solely the realm of an elite and become too popular ..... That the web’s pressure to Always Keep Posting New Stuff leads to a lot of dumb stuff being posted. It’s a critique of pageview chasing, a critique of linkbait, a critique of content farms, a critique of SEO’d headlines — a yearning for something more authentic ..... Is this Blogger or Twitter, or is it Odeo?

Branch I find more intriguing. I don't know what it is.

Collaborative publishing might save Medium. That might be the opening.

I might share photos on Medium to see if they rise up the ranks! Once they allow me in, that is.

This is the best commentary on Medium of all that I read.

Nieman Lab: 13 ways of looking at Medium, the new blogging/sharing/discovery platform from @ev and Obvious


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Friday, November 19, 2010

Tim Berners-Lee: Long Live the Web


Scientific American: Tim Berners-Lee: Long Live the Web: The world wide web went live, on my physical desktop in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1990. It consisted of one Web site and one browser, which happened to be on the same computer. ..... We take it for granted, expecting it to “be there” at any instant, like electricity. ..... Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights. ....... Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource ...... The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. ...... Yet people seem to think the Web is some sort of piece of nature ..... The Web should be usable by people with disabilities ...... from a silly tweet to a scholarly paper. .... A related danger is that one social-networking site—or one search engine or one browser—gets
Tim Berners-LeeImage via Wikipedia so big that it becomes a monopoly, which tends to limit innovation. ..... many companies spend money to develop extraordinary applications precisely because they are confident the applications will work for anyone, regardless of the computer hardware, operating system or Internet service provider (ISP) they are using—all made possible by the Web’s open standards. ....... The iTunes world is centralized and walled off. You are trapped .... For all the store’s wonderful features, its evolution is limited to what one company thinks up. .... It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers, and the techniques for doing so are getting better all the time. ..... as we saw in the 1990s with the America Online dial-up information system that gave you a restricted subset of the Web, these closed, “walled gardens,” no matter how pleasing, can never compete in diversity, richness and innovation with the mad, throbbing Web market outside their gates. ...... The Web is an application that runs on the Internet, which is an electronic network that transmits packets of information among millions of computers according to a few open protocols. ....... the Web is like a household appliance that runs on the electricity network ..... In 1990 the Web rolled out over the Internet without any changes to the Internet itself, as have all improvements since. And in that time, Internet connections have sped up from 300 bits per second to 300 million bits per second (Mbps) without the Web having to be redesigned to take advantage of the upgrades. ..... A neutral communications medium is the basis of a fair, competitive market economy, of democracy, and of science. .... Although the Internet and Web generally thrive on lack of regulation, some basic values have to be legally preserved. ..... snooping. In 2008 one company, Phorm, devised a way for an ISP to peek inside the packets of information it was sending. The ISP could determine every URI that any customer was browsing. The ISP could then create a profile of the sites the user went to in order to produce targeted advertising. ...... In France a law created in 2009, named Hadopi, allowed a new agency by the same name to disconnect a household from the Internet for a year if someone in the household was alleged by a media company to have ripped off music or video. ..... In the U.K., the Digital Economy Act, hastily passed in April, allows the government to order an ISP to terminate the Internet connection of anyone who appears on a list of individuals suspected of copyright infringement. In September the U.S. Senate introduced the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which would allow the government to create a blacklist of Web sites—hosted on or off U.S. soil—that are accused of infringement and to pressure or require all ISPs to block access to those sites. ..... In these cases, no due process of law protects people before they are disconnected or their sites are blocked. Given the many ways the Web is crucial to our lives and our work, disconnection is a form of deprivation of liberty. Looking back to the Magna Carta, we should perhaps now affirm: “No person or organization shall be deprived of the ability to connect to others without due process of law and the presumption of innocence.” ...... Finland made broadband access, at 1 Mbps, a legal right for all its citizens. ..... the latest version of HTML, called HTML5, is not just a markup language but a computing platform that will make Web apps even more powerful than they are now. The proliferation of smartphones will make the Web even more central to our lives. Wireless access will be a particular boon to developing countries ...... devising pages that work well on all screens, from huge 3-D displays that cover a wall to wristwatch-size windows. ..... linked data. Today’s Web is quite effective at helping people publish and discover documents, but our computer programs cannot read or manipulate the actual data within those documents. As this problem is solved, the Web will become much more useful, because data about nearly every aspect of our lives are being created at an astonishing rate. Locked within all these data is knowledge about how to cure diseases, foster business value and govern our world more effectively. ...... The information necessary to understand the complex interactions between diseases, biological processes in the human body, and the vast array of chemical agents is spread across the world in a myriad of databases, spreadsheets and documents. ...... They posted
Tim Berners-Lee at a Podcast InterviewImage via Wikipedia a massive amount of patient information and brain scans as linked data, which they have dipped into many times to advance their research. In a demonstration I witnessed, a scientist asked the question, “What proteins are involved in signal transduction and are related to pyramidal neurons?” When put into Google, the question got 233,000 hits—and not one single answer. Put into the linked databases world, however, it returned a small number of specific proteins that have those properties. ........ The investment and finance sectors can benefit from linked data, too. Profit is generated, in large part, from finding patterns in an increasingly diverse set of information sources. ..... We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.

I am not worried. I never thought the web was about to die. Apple does not scare me. The iPhone app warlordism does not scare me. The web is part of an ecosystem. It is the biggest fish, but it does not have to be the only fish.

Monday, September 06, 2010

Privacy Anxieties And The Web Of Intent

GigaOm: The Web Of Intent Is Coming (Sooner Than You Think): more robust content filtering tools and the Web of Intent will arrive sooner than you think, based on the implicit messages in users’ actions..... The Web of Intent will be largely driven by consumers’ actions and interests..... They will be able to quickly transform their content operations beyond articles and blog posts into data and interest-centric publishing structures that allow consumers to follow topics and ongoing stories of interest. ..... a Web of Intent rich in data and profiling based on their audiences’ interests. ...... will offer newer and more robust targeting opportunities and will ultimately provide publishers new opportunities for monetization beyond pure advertising ..... make their sites more “intent-friendly”

This intent talk is at the other end of the privacy spectrum. You do want the site to know who you are, what your interests are, what you want, so the site can better serve you.

We want privacy, but we also want the web of intent, and I don't see a clash there. Just like it is possible to be for economic growth and for the environment at the same time.

Privacy is a value, but it is also a technological challenge. The web of intent is a major technological challenge. Now all websites pretty much have blogs, and Facebook and Twitter presences. The web of intent will similarly permeate.

We will get to keep our cake and eat it too, for the most part. There are always some standard deviations.

Privacy, Digital Literacy, Technology, Social Values

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Friday, May 22, 2009

Best Way To Increase Traffic To Your Blog


Mark Penn says in his famous Wall Street Journal article that at 100,000 unique visits per month, a blogger hits 75K in income. There is a suggestion that there is a direct correlation between how much traffic you get and how much you make as a blogger. So how do you go about increasing traffic for your blog?

There are three kinds of traffic:
  1. Search Traffic
  2. Referring Sites
  3. Direct Traffic
If you focus solely on content creation and engage in no other marketing effort, all your traffic is going to come from search engines. If you become inactive for any length of time, you are still going to get residual traffic. Most of that likely might be search engine traffic, except if you get residual traffic of the other two kinds from your previous marketing efforts.

It is fundamental that you use Google Analytics or a similar tool to see how much and what kind of traffic you are getting. The tool also tells you of the keywords people use to feed the search engines to end up at your site, and what pages they visit. This helps you discover your niche, and to create ever more content for that particular niche. For me right now that seems to be Android.
More specifically "donut android" and "cupcake android." For those two phrases my blog for now shows up on the first page of Google search results. That is prime real estate. The reason I have to hone in that niche makes sense at many levels to me.
  1. When I write new blog posts on Android, content creation and marketing are not two different activities. They are one and the same.
  2. Android is no cottage industry. It is not some sub sub sub topic. It just might end up being the top technology news for this year.
  3. Android so totally fits into my IC vision and my startup. The more I learn about Android, the better for me. I don't mind getting paid to learn. (Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures) I plot every day to go back to working on my startup full time. Android is fundamental to the IC vision. The ground - operating system - itself has to move for the vision to become reality.
I feel lucky that the topic in technology that I find most fascinating right now is also my blog's prime niche according to Google Analytics. And I got told of that niche right after my first Android blog post. I find that amazing. My respect for Google's algorithms grew. And when Google gave me the number two spot after my first Donut Android blog post, my respect for the search engine really grew. (Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android)

Search engine traffic I think is the best kind, but working on the other two does not take away from your search engine traffic, quite the opposite, so don't ignore the other two either.

If I am a tech blogger, it makes sense that I visit TechCrunch, for example, or Mashable. And if I am going to visit anyways, why not participate in the comments sections? It takes but a few seconds. And because your name gets hyperlinked to your blog, those comments sections start sending a little traffic your way. What is there to complain?

Contrary to the stereotype, blogging is a social activity. You have to belong to blogging and online communities around your interests. You have to forge friendships in the blogosphere. And forging friendships with bloggers who are not so big name increases your chances of them putting you on their blogrolls. After traffic, those backlinks are what jack up your google rank. Those backlinks are key. And content creation alone will not do the work for you, especially during the early stages when you are still wondering how you hit 1,000 page hits a day.

Twitter is micro-blogging. And there is another: that would be the comments sections of other blogs. Got to participate.

Twitter is another great place to socialize. Don't just have a list of people you follow and followers. Got to make some time and visit their profile pages and respond to some of their tweets. These are real living, breathing people. Get to know some of them, or many of them if possible.

And there is direct traffic. Feedburner lets you put a box at your blog that gives visitors the option to subscribe to your blog with their email addresses. Seth Godin claims that mailing list is how he gets most of his traffic. But he probably became a star blogger first. But before you become famous and other people know you, when you are a small fish blogger, there are people you know. Once in a while it is okay to send out emails to people you know sharing a blog post or two with them. Look Ma, no hands!
  1. Focus on great content creation.
  2. Find your niche, and create great content for that particular niche, but also constantly be diversifying. You don't want to go out of business when one rainy day Google revised its algorithms and your blog ended up in Siberia.
  3. Blogging is a social activity. Be in a habit of visiting other blogs and participating in their comments sections in meaningful ways.
  4. Strive to generate a band of loyal visitors, people who want to lap up every blog post you put out because, oh, you are just so wonderful.
Google: Tweet Me Baby One More Time
Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android
Hitting Number 4 For Google Search Results on Cupcake Android
The Big Money Is Not In Blogging
Google Analytics Says I Am Paul Krugman Friend, Cupcake Android Expert
What Does Your Resume Look Like Today?
Content Is Queen, Marketing Is Princess
Content Is Queen
Blogging: Monkey Business?
Blogging = Learning + Teaching + Churning + Entertaining
Spamming Om Malik


Digg Button, Twitter Button For Your Blog Posts
Blogging Several Times A Day
Blogging Tips
A Blogger Is Also An Editor
Blog Daily
Where Have You Placed Your Ads?
Sites That Pay You To Blog

On The Web

SEOmoz | 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
The Best way to increase traffic to your site
Whats the best way to increase traffic? - Authority Blogger Forum
What's the BEST way to increase traffic to your blog? // Blogging ...
Blog Traffic - 15 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic
WikiAnswers - What is the best way to drive traffic to your website
Web Site Marketing - Lead Generation and How to Increase Traffic ...
How to Use Blog Sites To Increase Traffic To Your Blog | eHow.com





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Monday, April 27, 2009

David Gelernter: Manifesto


"Everything is up for grabs. Everything will change. There is a magnificent sweep of intellectual landscape right in front of us."

How is that not like saying the internet is a new country? (Where is the Internet headed?) A Web 3.0 Manifesto, The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream

David Gelernter

The Second Coming: A Manifesto
We tend not to believe in the next big war or economic swing; we certainly don't believe in the next big software revolution. ..... computing transcends computers. Information travels through a sea of anonymous, interchangeable computers like a breeze through tall grass. A dekstop computer is a scooped-out hole in the beach where information from the Cybersphere wells up like seawater. ...... The real topic in astronomy is the cosmos, not telescopes. The real topic in computing is the Cybersphere and the cyberstructures in it, not the computers we use as telescopes and tuners. ...... Browsers fasten users to remote computers, to "servers" on the internet...... Today's operating systems and browsers are obsolete because people no longer want to be connected to computers — near ones OR remote ones. (They probably never did). They want to be connected to information. In the future, people are connected to cyberbodies; cyberbodies drift in the computational cosmos — also known as the Swarm, the Cybersphere. ........ The future is dense with computers. They will hang around everywhere in lush growths like Spanish moss. They will swarm like locusts. ....... the Net will change radically before it dies .... The Web makes the desktop impotent. .... Desktop power will inevitably drag information out of remote servers onto desktops. ..... The computer mouse ... Like any device that must be moved and placed precisely, it ought to provide tactile feedback; it doesn't. .... The computer screen is the window of your vehicle, the face-shield of your diving-helmet. ...... Under the desktop metaphor, the screen IS the interface — the interface is a square foot or two of glowing colors on a glass panel. In the landscape metaphor, the screen is just a viewing pane. When you look through it, you see the actual interface lying beyond. ...... Computers are fundamentally unlike file cabinets because they can take action. ....... If you have three pet dogs, give them names. If you have 10,000 head of cattle, don't bother. Nowadays the idea of giving a name to every file on your computer is ridiculous. ........ You shouldn't have to put files in directories. The directories should reach out and take them. If a file belongs in six directories, all six should reach out and grab it automatically, simultaneously. ....... A file should be allowed to have no name, one name or many names. Many files should be allowed to share one name. A file should be allowed to be in no directory, one directory, or many directories. Many files should be allowed to share one directory. Of these eight possibilities, only three are legal and the other five are banned — for no good reason. ....... In the beginning, computers dealt mainly in numbers and words. Today they deal mainly with pictures. In a new period now emerging, they will deal mainly with tangible time — time made visible and concrete. ....... Elements stored in a mind do not have names and are not organized into folders; are retrieved not by name or folder but by contents. .... A "lifestream" organizes information not as a file cabinet does but roughly as a mind does. ....... to stop building glorified file cabinets and start building (simplified, abstract) artificial minds ...... Many websites will be organized as lifestreams. ..... The lifestream (or some other system with the same properties) will become the most important information-organizing structure in computing ...... Today's operating systems connect users to computers. In the future we will deal directly with information, in the form of cyberbodies. ...... Your computer's operating system will make as much difference to you as the voltage level of a bit in memory. ..... A lifestream is a landscape you can navigate or fly over at any level. Flying towards the start of the stream is "time travel" into the past. ..... You can walk alongside a lifestream (browsing or searching) or you can jump in and be immersed in information. ...... A well-designed store or public building allows you to size up the whole space from outside, or as soon as you walk in — you see immediately how things are laid out and roughly how large and deep the space is. Today's typical web site is a failure because it is opaque. ....... Movies, TV shows, virtual museums and all sorts of other cultural products from symphonies to baseball games will be stored in lifestreams. ...... Your car, your school, your company and yourself are all one-track vehicles moving forward through time, and they will each leave a stream-shaped cyberbody (like an aircraft's contrail) behind them as they go. These vapor-trails of crystallized experience will represent our first concrete answer to a hard question: what is a company, a university, any sort of ongoing organization or institution, if its staff and customers and owners can all change, its buildings be bulldozed, its site relocated — what's left? What is it? The answer: a lifestream in cyberspace. ........ A software or service company equals the employees plus the company lifestream. .... The company's lifestream is an electronic approximation of the company's memories, its communal mind. .... Software can solve hard problems in two ways: by algorithm or by making connections — by delivering the problem to exactly the right human problem-solver. The second technique is just as powerful as the first, but so far we have ignored it. ...... Lifestreams and microcosms are the two most important cyberbody types; they relate to each other as a single musical line relates to a single chord. The stream is a "moment in space," the microcosm a moment in time. ..... We'll know the system is working when a butterfly wanders into the in-box and (a few wingbeats later) flutters out — and in that brief interval the system has transcribed the creature's appearance and analyzed its way of moving, and the real butterfly leaves a shadow-butterfly behind. Some time soon afterward you'll be examining some tedious electronic document and a cyber-butterfly will appear at the bottom left corner of your screen (maybe a Hamearis lucina) and pause there, briefly hiding the text (and showing its neatly-folded rusty-chocolate wings like Victorian paisley, with orange eyespots) — and moments later will have crossed the screen and be gone. ....... If you have plenty of money, the best consequence (so they say) is that you no longer need to think about money. In the future we will have plenty of technology — and the best consequence will be that we will no longer have to think about technology. ..... We will return with gratitude and relief to the topics that actually count.
Web 5.0: Face Time
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter

This manifesto is mind-blowing. Blew my mind.



I came to the David Gelernter name earlier today by way of Outlook: Cloudy: Floating up into the cybersphere.

I Get Twitter

David Gelernter is my kind of guy: he is a big picture person. Weird first time I am hearing of him.

The ClueTrain Manifesto





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Friday, April 17, 2009

The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing



The Pioneer plaque.Image via Wikipedia

Web 1.0 was, well, offline you had posters, online you had websites. That was so rudimentary and geeky, cheesy. That was early stage.

Web 2.0 has been way more exciting. we realized the web was meant to be populated by human beings. People like you and me. The ordinaires.

So it bothers me when people talk of a possible Web 3.0 as a way to get back to machine language. They talk of the semantic web.

Web 3.0 has to be even more about people than Web 2.0. That is a vision worth fighting for. The vision war has to be won. People matter.

Web 2.0 has been 2D, Web 3.0 has to be 3D. People are 3D. The rectangle on the screen is too confining. We ask for liberation.

What would Facebook be today without its 200 million people? Facebook is no spaceship to oggle at. People matter. We are the web.

Each human being is unique. That is a scientific truth. No two snowflakes are alike. The web is poorer for every human not yet online.



https://twitter.com/ScienceTweets/status/1547445376

Web 3.0 is about getting more and more people online. 3.0 is about getting every human being online. 3.0 is about seeing the vital center.

Web 4.0, I don't know. I call it next generation software. I don't have the foggiest idea. Web 5.0, though, is face time. Circle complete.

All along, through 2.0 and beyond, what we were really trying to do is communicate, to reach out, to meet, to talk, to converse, to express.

We were trying to hear, to be heard, so we should really value it when we do meet. Web 5.0 is face time. Face time is godly.

In physics there is nothing faster than the speed of light. On the web there is nothing past Web 5.0, past face time. Semantic web is 2.1.



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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

NY Tech MeetUp Mailing List Web 5.0 Controversy


OMGICU



I have been active with this mailing list only since the last MeetUp (NY Tech MeetUp: 02/03/09), been barely a week, and so far I have not got into the thick of it much, but right now I logged in to look at today's daily digest, and boom, there it was splattered all over the place. Before proceeding to read all the emails, I took this screen shot. Seven of the 20 emails are about my Web 5.0 post.


I am going to read all the emails, and I am going to respond. But before that I wish to respond to an email from Michael Mellinger. (Conceptually Diligent: Web 5.0 Is Repackaging Hello)

In his last email Mike wondered if there will be a Web 6.0, and a Web 7.0.

Web 5.0 And The Speed Of Light

In physics it is said nothing in the universe moves faster than the speed of light. In my classification, Web 5.0 is the same way. There is no Web 5.1, there is no Web 6.0, there is no Web 7.0. Web 5.0 is the ultimate.

Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb
Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition
Conceptually Diligent: Web 5.0 Is Repackaging Hello
Defining Web 4.0
Web 5.0: Face Time
A Web 3.0 Manifesto


Clarifications

I think earlier classification systems have made the fundamental error of thinking of the web only as the software behind the websites. In my classification system the web is the software, the hardware, the connectivity, and, most important, the people, the netizens. How can you miss the people after Web 2.0?

Read

Now let me go read and answer other queries and curiosities.
Nicolas VDB: Stay tuned, web 36.0 coming soon on Paramendra's blog

Tim Mattison: The whole original post feels almost computer generated. I'm so confused. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

James Gillmore: I think the message to be taken away from Paramendra's posts should be a recognition of the enthusiasm, passion and idealism for a subject matter we obviously all love or we wouldn't be here. It doesn't need to illicit jaded "web 2.+ is so cliche" responses. However, Paramendra, I think what you're saying is far from reality and how things will actually pan out--and it's a little to poetic for a lot of us. It's also not very specific. I'd love to see a post from you about simply what technical advancements on and offline you forecast in 2009 and 2010, regardless of what point oh they fall into. What are your predictions for the next 2 years?

Andrew: wahahahaha *snort* *sniffle* ...... ahhhh PB, thanks for the Monday chuckles, Chuckles.

Matthew Zito: Glad we cleared that up. Unfortunately for you, I've already invented the New Web 1.0, which will supplant all versions of Web x.x

Andrew to Matthew Zito: Sorry, but we only recognize Web 1.0 as defined in ISO/IEC 3282-1:1993.
My Reaction

I guess it has not been the controversy I first thought it might be. There is irrational, illogical derision and dismissal. There is mild amusement, but no real technical critique. I should learn to ignore most of the fluff. Perhaps this is not the right venue to be expecting a discussion.

Creating Ground

There are people who don't buy into the Web 2.0 term itself. At one point Google CEO Eric Schmidt was one of them. He dismissed Web 2.0 as a marketing term. I would have to fundamentally disagree. Web 2.0 is very real to me. Web 2.0 was when the web got populated, it became alive, it became dynamic.

And then there are those who think of Web 1.0 as read, Web 2.0 as read-write, and Web 3.0 as read-write-execute. That is a fairly elegant classification. It is not right or wrong, I feel it is misguided. It only makes sense if you think of the web only as the software that powers websites, which I don't.

I look at the software, the hardware, the connectivity, and the netizens, like I said above. There are four components. What others might propose to be Web 3.0, I have proposed to be Web 2.1.

You could disagree with my basic premise and argue but the web is only about software. Or you could take my holistic approach and come up with a different classification system. But I have not seen any so far, and this mailing list perhaps is not the place to look.





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