“i am a drop. i am a stream. i am a river. i am an ocean. i will be mist.” – Sull, Aug 30, 2010

Related posts:

1. Is River of News enough? (Scripting News)

But in order to have a presence on the vast Interwebs, we need to rely on some corporate power. Our ISP. and most likely, a Web Hosting Service too. Sure, you can host your stuff directly from your home/office using just your ISP (if they allow it). But typically, you will have an account with one of many Web Hosting companies. I’ve used many over the years but have stuck with Drreamhost for my little projects and tinkerings. We pay for this. For our web space, email, databases, shell accounts and even domain registration/management.

That being said…. What would happen if Facebook or Twitter got into this business? What if they purchased Dreamhost? Or another well-respected Web Hosting Company? Facebook would be the host of my efforts to become dependent of Facebook? How strange. And at this point, Facebook can either acquire or become their own traditional Interweb Hosting platform and circumvent the whole issue of being the evil data silo. They would just offer paid services (or even free) to those who want to have that deeper level of ownership and control. And they would know that the magority of their 500+million users would not even bother… yet they would appease the vocal evangelists of Open Federated Interoperable Networks.
And besides, Facebook is already planning to launch its own Gmail competing product. Expect to see Fmail (Facebook Mail) at some point soon.

This applies to Twitter, Google and any other behomoth that wants to be host to your social profile, activities and graph.

The downside is…. They would have to provide adequate customer service… call centers… and quality service with proper uptime etc. This is a new game from the free service arena with mostly non-existent customer support. But this type of move would entail call centers to be setup or part of the acquisition(s). Truth is, most of it would be outsourced and out of mind.

If I were Facebook, I’d get this going just to have all my bases covered towards continued world dominance

Yeah so… anyway… just was an interesting mind wandering thought process. figured i would log it here for a told ya so moment in 6-12 months. heh.

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1. Alternatives for Facebook Haters
2. Evolutions & Revolutions: Google Reader (Writer?), Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, rssCloud
3. The Open Web is on Twitter’s Tail

Datasift seems to be a great accomplishment that tackles an enormous challenge in Realtime content flow. Right now, the focus is specifically the Twitter “Firehose” but I imagine that as they scale to handle Twitter they will also try to handle and connect other pipelines (Facebook, Google Buzz, PuSH Feeds etc). Datasift is like a FaaS – Firehose as a Service or more appropriately…. RaaS – Realtime as a Service. Developers/Companies can leverage the Datasift tool (currently a web interface) to power their own services/products (e.g. build a new custom tweetmeme). Certain terms and licensing costs are applicable depending on how Datasift is used.

Datasift is essentially a service that you’d expect Twitter itself to offer but since Twitter is focused on scaling and dealing with scope creeping more fundamental public functionality, Datasift has been able to step in and step up the game of Realtime Data Management. Twitter will settle for the ease of just charging for usage of the raw Firehose like Google and other companies already pay for. I am not sure what deal Datasift has in place with Twitter or other partners. I imagine their being a deal in place that keeps alive potential acquisition offers, maybe after Datasift has proven itself by investing in the necessary hardware and staff to keep such an ambitious project up and running for the hundreds or thousands of services that will surely be lined up to use it.

Datasift has its own API Query Language. It looks like this (taken from Scoble’s video):


twitter.user IN ("scobleizer", "nickhalstead", "whoever")
AND
twitter.text contains "google"
AND
rule "noswearing"


As you can imagine, the flexible query language will allow for a wide array (unlimited?) of data set results as long as that data is a part of a tweet’s object metadata. A tweet of course has a bunch of metadata beyond the “message” content. Datasift was built to leverage this valuable data. It will be even more interesting once Twitter Annotations is officially supported.

Datasift being an API means that developers could also choose to create their own UI for a tool with custom functionality instead of using the official Datasift.net version. Very flexible and open and that’s what happens when you begin by creating an API to provide a Service as opposed to building just the “app” alone.

I’m reminded of a few posts here on vocal.ly that I wrote last year that reflected on Realtime streams and the concepts of Stocks and Flows:

http://vocal.ly/2009/09/18/stocks-and-flows-and-the-real-time-web/

http://vocal.ly/2009/09/03/pondering-the-realtime-web-and-rapid-intelligence-collecting-thoughts/

I believe i signed up a few weeks ago for Datasift so I hope I can at some point gain access to this service for experimentation, research and possibly for use with my own projects. We’ll see how all this evolves over time but I commend the vision and willingness to spearhead this issue like Nick and his team have done. Very cool!

Update:
A good summary of DataSift can also be found here:

http://www.skepticgeek.com/socialweb/datasift-curation-engine-aims-for-relevance-in-real-time/

Related posts:

1. Pondering The RealTime Web and Rapid Intelligence – Collecting Thoughts
2. The Open Web is on Twitter’s Tail
3. Evolutions & Revolutions: Google Reader (Writer?), Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, rssCloud

Seriously cool compliment from the awesome Amber Case! Thnx.

Some who know me well know that I am a sucker for cool domain names.
Not a typical domain squatter though. Usually, I have an idea and if I want to move on that idea I tend to make it more real by having an actual domain to house it. The benefit is a form of motivation and a nudge to keep moving that idea forward and present it. Or maybe that’s just a well-formed excuse for being a domain junkie
It does work sometimes so theirs something to it.

I also let many domains expire when the idea or project is no longer applicable or front and center in my mind. I recently had very few domains but then I started thinking about expressing social gestures virtually but doing it with open standards and protocols instead of just some app on facebook or whatever. Semantic URLs are core to this thinking. It’s not a new or entirely original idea to use domain hacks in interesting ways but commendable efforts seem non-existent. I work with people who once envisioned this stuff with me. But focus shifted away from that long ago. For me, I have had a rejuvenated interest in making something work and have chosen to focus mainly on common human social gestures as shareable digital data objects. Also some gaming concepts that are less “gesturely”. Like anything I do…. it’s a side side project done in my spare spare time. But a simple nod of approval from a brilliant mind like Amber Case certainly helps to carve out more of that precious time to tinker.

Stay tuned, always.

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2. Fingerhook – A Webfinger Experiment
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nudges_quickie_demo1

I’m not going to go on about this. But it is interesting (ironic?) that the distributed nature of email is the holy grail of achievements in the federated micro-messaging and social networking space. I do agree and support these new efforts. Salmon, Webfinger, RSSCloud/PuSH and in general, DiSo. But I cannot let go of Email and how using it intelligently makes it so much more useful. So that is why I point out simple uses like this year old example of mine.

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1. Email is Pervasive
2. Fingerhook – A Webfinger Experiment
3. conversations in the cloud

I don’t want to speculate in this post where everything might be heading or delve into all the intricacies of “Open” and Federated Networking. This post is just to reference a quick experiment that I whipped up over the course of a few nights to express an idea that uses Webfinger, a Personal Web Discovery protocol that leverages IDs that are email addresses or at least look like email addresses (e.g. XMPP JID). Webfinger latches on to the belief that the email address resonates with people as their IDs more than URLs do. This is an interesting debate. I believe this is true but I also find it hard to believe that people can not eventually think of a domain/url, which typically would be their profile page of choice, as being their “ID”. A profile page should be synonymous with ID. And often is usable as an OpenID even if the user has no idea about what that means. So the problem is the state of Public Profiles and Federated IDs on the Interwebs. And Lock-in. Today, half a billion people have Facebook accounts. In 3 years, maybe that number will have dropped 30% or rather, maybe people who use Facebook do not use it as their trusted ID and instead depend on Google or some other service such as their own web host or domain registrar that has the capabilities built-in. So the URL as ID today is too unstable. And by this I mean the ID that people actually identify with being their ID. Now that was a weird sentence to write

So today, a group of people have been driving the idea of Webfinger, based loosely on the original Finger protocol, to be the common technology today for Federated IDs and User Discovery. It is making email addresses “readable” by attaching public metadata to them using agreed upon standards (still being modified). The result is the ability to lookup email addresses to find out more about the person or company behind it.

Ok, Back to my experiment. It is called Fingerhook. Or at least it is the first project/feature of Fingerhook. That depends on whether or not I continue to tinker in this area. I might want to host a Webfinger Profile/Cloud server and Fingerhook could be used for these other services. But for now, I will refer to Fingerhook as this experiment that i’m about to point to.

Fingerhook.org

Briefly, Fingerhook is a Webfinger Lookup Service that accepts requests via Email (SMTP) and auto-responds with results containing any discovered public metadata about the email address. In order to make this work, I experimented with what is called Subaddressing which is simply adding tags to an email address as a way to filter and organize messages. So, a subaddress is an extension of the primary address and you can have anbd use unlimited subaddresses as long as your service provider supports it. Typically a Subaddress uses the plus character (+) to segment/divide the local part of the address. Here is an example:

sulleleven+info@gmail.com

The “+info” is added on to my actual email address (sulleleven@gmail.com).
If you were to email this address, you should get an auto-response with my info form my Google public profile page. Feel free to try it.

The way Fingerhook works is quite simple actually. This is not so much about the tech as it is about the idea that I wanted to express. And I felt that showing in addition to telling was appropriate so dedicated some spare time to setup this project and possibly further discuss with those interested in Webfinger.

Over on Fingerhook.org, their is a blog with some screencasts published that demonstrate the experiment. So i’ll let that info on that site fill in the blanks and leave it at that. Feel free to comment here or over there or on the Webfinger mailing list – http://groups.google.com/group/webfinger.

@sull

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1. webfinger gains google support, but is telnic a better option?
2. more thoughts on digital global identity
3. Facebook Web Hosting Service

Wait. So how would it start? Someone has to say something at some point, unprompted. So, I am envisioning it like this. Either their is the moment of creation…. a message from “god”. No not that God. Ok so god has spoken. Next, everyone else creates accounts and they reply to the god message and reply to others who have replied to the god message. You can quickly see how this would spiral and branch out into some organized chaos. but the point is, everyone is responding to everyone. Their are no blatant messages addressed to nobody specifically. The UI and the system would be designed around this limitation. A Social Network Comprised Entirely of Conversations!

Would this cut down on the mundane status update message, ads, automated feeds and spam? Some of that just would not fit. But of course a response can be considered these things. Though you would look foolish and be voted down to the point where your messages are muted and eventually account is destroyed.

But this is absurd. What do we have here? The worlds longest discussion thread? Those used to popup in message boards over the years just for fun. Is that what this proposes then? An official Worlds Longest Discussion Thread?

Alright maybe then it works like this…. Each day, god posts something new. And that starts it all over again. A daily message from god that unlocks itself to the community for discussion. Then the thread locks up at the end of the day (timezones considered). Yes! Thats the ticket (to heaven)!

Ok taking that concept further. Scratch the idea of the god message. Well, maybe the very first message is by god but then everyday, every user is allowed to post a single message that is not in response to another user. This is their own god message that creates their own daily thread. Maybe nobody responds. Maybe a million people respond inside it (stemmed from your initial message). Either way, you as a user still get to see everyone elses (or just your friends) god messages and can respond in those threads.

So why have I even entertained this concept? Because Twitter kind of sucks. I mean it’s cool. I love it and have tweeted over 4,000 times in 2+ years. I’m glad Twitter exists. But the thing is… Most of the 20 BILLION TWEETS are not part of real conversations. It is spam or imported feeds or mundane things that though cute and all… just dont add much to the fundamental ideas of discourse. Facebook is a little better, or different at least, in this regard. But the same problems exist. And always will. but that is why their is room for some ridiculous experimentation like what I have proposed here.

It’s time to end the absurdity that is this blog post.
Carry on.

@sull

Related posts:

1. conversations in the cloud
2. smtp micro-messaging – circa July 2009
3. keeptrackof.it | Google Groups

As HTML5 was ramping up in the real world (i.e. the video tag), we started to see good momentum for OGG. Firefox supported it natively. Wikipedia and DailyMotion and other sites provided OGG formats. OGG verses H.264 was a popular debate in the Tech Blogosphere. Etcetera.

Then Google bought ON2 and have since open sourced the VP8 Codec under the wrapper name WebM.
This to me pivots away from OGG being meaningful and relative. Not entirely, but enough for me to personally abandon a project I had running at the domain ogg.ly.

ogg.ly was initally just another URL Shortening service but it was specifically intended ONLY to be used for OGG files and the interface did not allow any links unless they were a direct link to a valid OGG File. I mirrored the service to work exactly like bit.ly. I even added the cute shortcut to ‘info’ pages using a plus (+) sign at the end of the short URL. The purpose of ogg.ly was to get a loose community around distributing OGG (primarily Theora video) and tracking the momentum and several other data points of OGG usage.

The idea was good at the time but was also built around idealism and Open Media as opposed to real world importance (Like most of my experiments).
Other projects have tried to encourage and promote OGG for years with little success. And now Google has released what Is supposedly a better codec than Theora (I dont want to get into a tech debate about Ogg Theora verses VP8). So unless OGG somehow evolves away from Theora and wraps the VP8 codec technology, then really I cannot justify spending time on ogg.ly. Even if the OGG wrapper continues to be relevant, I am personally not as interested in this area as a developer or evangelist or user. This is partially a fault in my personality. I move on and move around a lot with my side projects of interest. But at the end of the day, it’s about learning and experience. I am not starting businesses here…. just experiments. And getting my hands dirty is the best way to learn and slapping a name on an idea is the best way to motivate (for me). Besides, a .ly Lybian domain costs $75 a year and this blog post is being published on the other one that I have (vocal.ly) so I really need to cut my costs anyway

The other project was behind the domain Intermix.me. It was something I threw together to demonstrate using the web as an interactive audio visual instrument akin to VJing. A sample screencast can be found here:

http://sull.blip.tv/file/1440571/

I’ll probably host this off of http://vastmachine.com in the future but I let my .me domains expire (intermix.me and willkill.me). More cost savings! Not easy being a domain junkie you know!

I’m not ready to articulate my latest side interests yet. Still realizing them myself. But I am tinkering with building a new API based on some ideas and then as the ideas mature and the API is ready, I (and others) could build an application using it. More later.

Keep experimenting!

Sull

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2. Fingerhook – A Webfinger Experiment
3. How to Fix URL Shorteners – My Take « tweete.rs blog

I agree with Julian about the tools not being right.

There was a lot of talking in 2005, before YouTube was launched and then before it was obvious how it was going to take over the world, about tools for online video that would make it easy for the community to grow. I was a big fan of ANT (and then FireANT). It had its limitations, but it was the only tool I knew of that focused on the social aspect of the video, rather than the TV aspect, which is YouTube’s model (although that is gradually changing into something else).

I want the kind of content you’re talking about Clintus – personal, small documentaries about people’s lives. That shit blows my mind. I watch it even when I don’t have time to post myself. There is an audience, but it feels dislocated. Watching normal TV while posting to Twitter feels more social.

I like 12seconds a lot, but I think 12 seconds is too short. Their idea of constraints is good, but the constraint is too tight, as though Twitter only gave you 50 characters – the difference between 3 short sentences and 1.

What kind of tool should we make for people who want to make and watch this kind of material? It’s not YouTube, that’s not what YouTube was ever for. It’s not blip either, I don’t think, or Vimeo, as useful as they are for hosting video. Nor is it Miro – that’s a great video player, but like blip, it’s all about watching “shows”, and that’s not what I’m looking for.

It’s NOT TV!

So I replied with an adhoc idea that could be the solution. Here is my comment:

just a thought i had even if not totally practical.

youtube + gmail

disable youtube comments.
disable video comments
disable ratings
unlist video
allow embedding and syndication

add the youtube link in your email message. the youtube player will be added/embedded as a media attachment after it is sent.

use a google group or not.

if not looking for an audience outside of those who are members of the list/group, then i am hard pressed to see why this approach would not work

@sull

Dee replied:

@sull

I like the idea a lot, but it’s important to me that videos be easily findable. I guess the group would be easy to find, so you could join in, but not really on one-video basis.

Interesting, thanks.

And my response:

indeed, that is important to most. and this can also be accomplished. for example, the RSS/ATOM feed from a google group can be parsed on a page or on many pages by multiple people…. and that would be indexable by search engines. also, a google group can be open to public for reading but not posting and that is also indexable. and of course each user can choose to embed thei videos on their own blog/site as they normally would. i dont think findability would be limited by creating this alternate more intimate community in conjunction with the standard practices of online video publishing.

Dee again replied:

yes, you’ve convinced me. It’s a great idea. In many ways (spam notwithstanding) e-mail is still the killer social media. If I want to make certain I don’t miss something I have it arrive in my inbox.

and on the Videoblogging yahoo Group Thread:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/message/78082

As I said beyond, I think this is a super idea. The more I think about
it, the more I like it. It perfectly answers elbows’s requirement of

“If you want intimacy and certain people creating certain sorts of
video, you
just have to connect with those people, get a little momentum going, and
make a
space which is sheltered enough to let the intimacy flourish.”

> i’ve babbled enought for now.

yeah, go and make your mailing list

I wanted to log this here because it is an interesting discussion – “The Video Blogger is Dead” so check the links I posted here if interested in more context. And the idea I propose, though certainly imperfect, does seem to make sense to me (and Dee and does it show us that the Internet’s ‘original’ technology (email) still serves us best? Sure, I am talking about mixing the old with the new here… and it would not be as fun if the videos were not embedded in the messages as Gmail now does with all youtube links found in the message (by default, no labs plugin needed). But I predict that many email services and client software will catch on (some have already) and certain urls will initiate rich content inside the message interface. So mailing lists, which imo are very intimate especially in comparison to broadcasting networks like Twitter, can be a smart way to have a video sharing community without all the noise and dependency on companies trying to monetize you in every and any way that they can. I know this is not totally pure of that… afterall Youtube embeds can contain ads and Gmail has textual ads. But hey… its a means to an end. Youtube/Gmail/Google will be around forever unlike say… some random person who puts up a forum on their site where you can embed video and then a year later, they decide not to renew the domain or pay for hosting or in general screw things up and the thing crashes too often etc etc. Step up from that are the new tiny startups who wither fail or get aquired and shut down or just start to suck. Email is what it is. It is decentralized. It is pervasive. It is near real-time. And you can output it all as feeds for the web if you wanted to. It is inevitable that media handling, both attachments and inline media links, in web-based and client-based apps will evolve to provide users with the experience they deserve in these modern times that inundate us with rich content. So lets give email video sharing a try. Get a Gmail account if you dont already. I know Facebook is already developing this type of stuff too. Chime in with thoughts and info on other services/products that can handle media in email messages.

Thanks.

Related posts:

1. keeptrackof.it | Google Groups
2. A Social Network Comprised Entirely of Conversations?
3. Fingerhook – A Webfinger Experiment

So this is interesting –

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

http://www.appinventor.org/

No, this will not reduce the need for Android Developers. Yes, this will allow for students, hobbyists and hackers to have fun and learn by creating real working apps for their own Android phone and share it with others too. They may even want or need to go further and delve into writing code too.

I think the time is ripe for a new WYSIWYG Visual Authoring Tool focused on the plethora of Android Devices that are on the market and will become even more pervasive in the coming months. We’ll even see normal computers running Android and expect to hear about Android running on just about everything you can think of. It’s great to see AppInventor being made available to more people now (it’s been developed for ~a year and used at select Universities).

I’ve been involved in discussions about Digital/Transmedia Storytelling and often we talk about HTML5 or the latest (touch screen) mobile devices and how to author more immersive and interactive works that go beyond “flat media” like the simplified default media playback experience that seems forced upon users. AppInventor is probably going to be leveraged as a powerful tool for content creators who have been discouraged by discovering the rigidness of actual application development for Android and Apple. Content creators want smoth authoring tools that are visual and logical without all the hassle. This is exciting news for many who have been eager to create for these new devices. The barrier to entry just dropped significantly. So it seems.

Developing for the mobile web is something I encourage. But that comes with its own set of problems too and it’s not a walk in the park. Ideally, AppInventor would handle both web(html5) and native app export with the proper compromises handled during and after development of the app. This would allow for cross-platform aware deployment. I’d also like to see a WebView Component so the app can wrap in a web page or full site.

I read much of the documentation tonight and though their are some missing pieces that will be missed initally and cause frustrating limitations or at least additional effort to accomplish some goals… I do think that it is fairly comprehensive and most of the bases are covered. As far as I can tell, you can build a sort of FourSquare or Loopt GeoLocation service (with geofencing func), A twitter client, media player, basic “video games” or apps with SMS and other communication utilities integrated (i.e. phone calls, email) and realtime notifications. In fact, when you look at all the built-in functionality and the forthcoming enahncements, it becomes easy to imagine the realization of many many ideas that can come to fruition quite quickly.

Then again, what to do about the spam and more innocent but still crap apps? Let them bloom! Who cares. Most of them will never invade our lives and not be submitted to app markets. For those that do end up in the Android market or other 3rd party app stores… let the reviews do the talking (or lack thereof) and expect Google to fix things up so that what bubbles up wont be the spam and crap apps that have been somewhat of a problem. Their is always going to be a fine line and I do prefer Google’s more hand-off approach to Apple’s elite authoritarian approach. Their needs to be a smart middle ground. But that my friends sounds like another blog post for another day.

So what do others think? I admittedly have not read too many articles (too bust reading the actual documentation). But from scanning, it seems like the consensus is positive but somewhat cautious too. It depends on what angle they approached this at. Since I love and respect Dave Winer, I did catch his post. Totally see his point in referencing the past. And maybe somewhere out there he there were some hyped up articles about AppInventor that made bullshit claims about the end of Android developers and 5 year olds building the next great app etc… Whatever. For those that matter, we know the deal. Dave threw some cold water on any sensationalists. I’m sure he will write again about AppInventor too. For what it’s worth, here is a more positive toned comment I had added over on his blog post:

http://scripting.com/stories/2010/07/12/anEnduserAppDevelopmentToo.html

I think with this type of stuff, you need to think about apps with some hierarchy of complexity. Sure, some apps can never be properly built with drag&drop. But many apps can be built with a predefined subset of functionality, especially when it is for a specific OS for smaller screened devices (Android Phones).

Also, it is 2010. We should expect to have simple tools to do some cool shit on todays popular mobile devices in a native way (not just the mobile web). Their comes a time when what was once laughable (your examples) needs to become a reality. Advancements in tech result in these types of mini-revolutions. Consumers usually are the ones that benefit but when creators can benefit too… it gets interesting and potentially changes everything. Spam notwithstanding, empowering creators (not just app creators but content creators) to efficiently get out their ideas without the clunky workflows, tools and processes associated with native languages and confusing SDKs and IDEs…. it can be remarkable. Think of the content creators too

So why is is more plausible today to have a so-called App Inventor app?

One is the fact that the Internet has evolved and a plethora of simple APIs exist so data in/out is fundamental to how the masses consume and create “data”. Hooking the new breed of mobile computers to this vast machine is essential, obvious and non-complicated. To the point that Drag&Drop GUI can be used to do CRUD and beyond.

Another reason is the small screen and standard set of device hooks that are most commonly used for most types of apps (Not related to 3D Video Games etc). In other words, their is only so much that a Drag&Drop GUI needs to provide to the author in order to empower them to create variations of applications and rich storytelling experiences (not just a video, audio, image but a more immersive navigation for example).

Another thought is something you have talked a lot about Dave. The loosely connected concept…. with focus on RSS + Social Status Clients. Imagine their being several if not hundreds of variations of these types of clients for your Android device that can connect to each other (p2p), suck in RSS feeds, twitter, facebook etc and imagine that if you dont like the apps avilable, you can make your own version of it and connect it to the network. Maybe eventually, that will be possible with ease

Sull

For me, I look forward to playing with AppInventor. I’ve taken the time to learn the process involved for developing on Android and though it is not rocket science by a long shot, it is clunky and not optimal for most people who are not used to the intricacies and annoyances of platform development and the associated IDEs, SDKs and WTFs. I welcome a more visually fun way to do stuff, as long as it works well enough. Hope to try it out soon.

Sull

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Here is the deal. I don’t enjoy using WordPress. I never did. I gave it a chance for 12 this time. Does the job. But rather than explain it, I will just say that it is not for me. And I am moving on.

Vocal.ly may be re-purposed or I may continue to use it for blogging. But I am experimenting again with audio blogging…. voice memos from my mobile phone shared up on vocal.ly. I am using Posterous again. Always have respected that platform. Love posting via email. Built my own Posterous too. Might use that.
Or I may use Vocal.ly for another side project… A sort of Twitter for mainly voice messages and photo support and link sharing. Personal use mainly.

Or not. Might just deal with WordPress and write the occasional blog post.

Whatever happens, this is the post that acts as the official notification…. of something different, possibly. or not.

Stay tuned, always.

@sull

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Now i’m starting to hear about existing and proposed projects that offer allternatives to Facebook.
I’d like to know if their are others… let me know.

http://www.joindiaspora.com/
http://www.collegiatenation.com/

I’m not too interested in getting into anti-Facebook. I don’t really like the service myself and only use it to be in touch with friends who are not active anywhere else online. I manage my privacy and dont care much about what gets exposed…. i’m a twitter user and occasional blogger and mailing public list contributor so no time to hung up on privacy. But I DO like open & distributed systems more than a single company (or two) being the centralized controller of data and terms etc etc. So I support Status.net, WordPress and anything that at least has an option to self-host/multi-host nodes on the web. Its important for the simple sake of the future web…. not to make a billion people happier. Because most will always be happy with FB or the next big MainStream social network that mostly sucks.

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There was once a time… when a group of technologists digitally congregated to discuss current happenings in the industry, they would distribute the content as audio (mp3 etc) and even called it a podcast for a while.
Was that system so broken that today, as an example, the Gillmor Gang has to be distributed as video only on Youtube? First, it is largely useless for the consuming geek not to mention a waste of bandwidth. Bandwidth efficiency funny to you? Sure, it’s easy to waste water so wasting bandwidth is no surprise. Maybe once the axing of “unlimited bandwidth plans” are more a reality… we can chit chat on that one some more.

I enjoy the Gillmor Gang. But it’s not easy to be part of the audience. So when I did finally get around to catching some discourse hosted by the omnipresent (but unpredictable) geek god, I had to laugh when the visual on my screen is this:

Maybe this is intentional… but it amazes me that the Gillmor Gang has no single consistent destination and is scattered all over the web with no cohesion. The only constant is of course, Steve Gillmor. I suspect this is deliberate as a way to keep it organic and like smoke… dispersible. disposable. the Gillmor Gang gathers at will. Their should be an ad-hoc little web service that tracks when a new show is published and alert subscribers AND provide an audio extract of the damn youtube video.

That is all.

Related posts:

1. Gmail, Google Groups and Youtube = Intimate Video Sharing Community?

GeoLocation-Based Services, Media, Games…. They are buzzing this year.
We mainly hear about Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp and Loopt as leading the pack of dozens of other similar services/apps floating around. I’m not really interested in talking about what they are exactly…. I mean…. they are social networks. Some are persistent and some are disposable. But they all are GeoAware at the core. The idea is to reward people for going to places (check ins) and to observe the activity of other people so that you can meet-up IRL or passively socialize or benefit from reviews and tips. Shit like that. Most include obvious gaming mechanics to make it more fun and so that an incentive platform exists for businesses to tap into. You get points, badges, rewards which translates to special offers based on your achievements. Ok, I said I didn’t want to define them here but there you go…. that’s at least the gist of what most are doing today.

As a user, I initially pointed out that these services were not interesting to me and did’nt provide enough fun to keep me engaged. Granted, I work from home about an hour north of NYC so I’m not the target audience. But when I am in the city or out and about… I’ve found the imperfections in these services to cause the necessary simplicity to be lacking. For instance, I am at a place but the GeoDetection thinks I am a few hundered meters away and cannot check in…. or I can check in manually but might need to create the place first. And then once I do check in, I get my points/badges but am left with wondering why I just bothered. Granted, it’s very dependent on the place in order to have good metadata and user activity/input to view… And many of these services just don’t have a large userbase, especially outside of big cities. I get that… Like I said, its targeted towards the early adopting urban geeksters. That includes your everday teens and twenty-somthings as well as older tech-minded conference-attending social-media folk. So where’s this going? Here’s what Silicon Valley Insider Dave McClure thinks:

Without financial incentives or discounts, there is absolutely no reason on god’s green earth to “check-in” for your stoner cousin, your luddite penny-pinching aunt, and certainly not your clueless grandmother. they could give a rat’s ass about your stupid little iPhone app with the pretty pictures and clever auto-discovery that barely works while draining the hell out of the battery… that is, until you give them $5 off their next beer or 5-dollar foot long…. at which point guess what?

HELLO, MAINSTREAM CONSUMER MARKET!
via http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/04/checkins-are-coupons.html

Sure, we can rocket launch the core issue of sustainability and monetizable questions and stack it up against the Mega Corporations. Let’s face it, today it’s not easy being the next big thing when so many markets are being covered by just a few monster companies… and ultimately, you get bought out or burned out. So are these LBS’s paving the way for Facebook and Twitter and Google and Apple to get in and do Location right or do they have the right kind of momentum behind them now, making deals on Main St. and connecting with users in fresh new ways that maybe the big guys don’t know how to do anymore with their spunk-diluted feature-bloated services?

Whatev.

We can speculate all day. But let’s bring it down a notch. Fuck Location Wars. Yeah I know, Foursquare and Co get assimilated and/or die. Location features are commodities anyway. It will all be pervasive. Everything from web pages you’re on to email messages you send to the places you walk by or shop at or eat at…. “Share Location?” “Save this choice?” I suppose I’m getting into Ubiquitous Computing and Context-Aware Pervasive Systems, GeoFencing and so on. But their is absolutely no denying the fact that things are heading this way…. Location is such a core component of the future of our connected culture. Pervasive! And it’s not so boring to think about once you get past the cute little check in apps with delightful badges and the ability to be considered a Mayor of a place. Booyah!

Personally, I have been having fun researching GeoLocation Technology and how I can apply it to my own ideas in gaming and the socialsphere. Even if I personally wouldnt play a game I conjure up…. it’s great fun to scheme and so many new services with friendly developer APIs make building prototypes feasible and inviting innovation. So as a creative developer, I have to admit that I am sold and want to play in this sandbox. I suppose a more realistic discussion on Location Wars is not to consider what the Behemoths are going to do but instead to look at what Zynga is doing and the success of casual social games like Farmville that leverage FaceBook, Twitter etc to reach the largest audiences.
My point is, their are a lot of opportunities in Location-Based Services that blend gaming, marketing, socializing and consumerism. And their will not be any exclusivity among businesses… platforms will/do exist to integrate “offers” into your service/app/game just like any other advertisement.

To end this rant…. Yeah, “Check In” has been at the heart of the hype. But soon, you’ll be able to “Check Out” a lot more!

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1. Gmail, Google Groups and Youtube = Intimate Video Sharing Community?
2. content packaging tech explosion — Lucas Gonze’s blog
3. Mac OS X Automation: Services

We’ve spent hours on phone to deal with this mysterious administration error with bank proof etcetera. I wish I could honestly say that this is unbelievable. But I have heard these stories before.

Not only that, but the legitimate expenses I owe are way more than I ever imagined. Ambulance not covered ($1600). Hospital Admission not covered ($500) and several copay costs for all the various tests they wanted to do on me. We’re looking at nearly $3,000 that is not covered and we pay $550 a month for health insurance since the small startup company I work for does not provide benefits (after almost 4 years but thats another story).

Middle Class America is so fucked!

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The target audience were obviously Artists. The nice thing about the word Artist is that it can blanket a range of people who involved themselves in the culture of creatives. Whether you make clothes or websites… This was intended to be a juxtaposed community that would eventually, if success and logic were clear, expand to more cities around NY and beyond.

Their was organized structure with intention for official Collaborative Projects that would financially assist both the community and the AJ Project as a whole. Performances, Films, Merchandise etc…

And the Web would allow for community cohesiveness where so much content and media assets and profiles and resources and project collaboration tools would be available. Remember, this was 10 years ago. Though it would not have been the first online collaborative space, it was certainly a time of early and innovative thinking and experiments where many software solutions were coming out of University Labs and not startup companies. A time when blogs were unknown and the web was more saturated with Message Boards or sloppy web sites (GeoCity etc).

It was very ambitious and forward thinking and required deep dedication of a core team with excellent people skills in order to get the momentum it needed to have success that would make it possible to complete the early phases. This core team was very difficult to form. I ended up trying to solely do too much and unable to influence local businesses to share their space as part of my lofty concepts.

Over the years, I used the domain artistjoint.com for related purposes and made a second attempt sometime in 2003-2004 period. But mostly, nadda.

And today I received a reminder to renew the domain, 10 years after I registered it. That sparked this blog post:

And also i stumbled upon a noteworthy thread in Google Buzz today:

http://www.google.com/buzz/ericrice/dmcby6qYSTy/Empty-but-for-sale

This comment stood out as it closely resembled the thinking of The Artist Joint as local active and vacant theatres were the main target for acquiring/sharing space:

History aside, today I am still very interested in the future of IRL Spaces that cater to not just consumers of media but to creators of all kind to intermix and commingle and collaborate…. and casually drink and eat and relax… and showcase and perform and speak and influence and teach and cowork. Multifunctional spaces that can be leveraged for income and are not
“fixed” in appearance and layout…. but that can be useful to rent out for conferences and various events as needed. Even a place to rent Media Rooms where you can watch the big game with friends without taking over your living room to your wife’s displeasure

It’s an interesting discussion, still.

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I have had powerful self-induced experiences in my life. But this natural blackout… which comes down to a lack of oxygen to the brain… this direct effect that amounted to me losing a gap of my life, even if only a short gap…. it seems to have had the deepest impact even compared to extremely powerful chemical reactions that my brain has experienced in the past. To lose time and have no memories makes me feel violated. No control. Vulnerable. Powerless. And the persistent thought that when its over, its over. Shutting off a light. Circuit closed.

Now going into this, I was not a believer in anything in particular about what happens after we die. I am not religious at all. I don’t even put much time into thinking about Atheism or Agnostic tendencies. I dont need those labels either. Based on my time here and willingness to experiment over the years, I’ve tended to think that their is a vast pool of energy and that it is possible to become a part of that pool when we die. But that too can be the same as what we perceive as a dark and lonely nothingness. If we don’t carry with us any bit of our consciousness and memories and emotions, then energy or not… it does not seem to be anything to get excited about.

Being at peace with such realizations is our best chance. Being fulfilled with your life, everyday.

So, I am 35 and though something serious happened to me, it appears I am mostly healthy. I will be seeing additional doctors to continue observation and testing. Whether or not what happened to me is classified up there with more life threatening health issues, the experience as a whole is still something that forces me to reflect about the stuff that confuses, amazes and haunts us all until our end.

No related posts.

This and many more points are what makes blogging difficult to commit to. With that said, it’s also OK to take breaks and come back with fresh ideas.

This post is essentially me logging in upgrade WordPress and several plugins and deal with spam comments etcetera.
So I might as well post something, right? The question is…. what will I post next?

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1. Time to move on yet again
2. I’ve been increasingly using this blog …
3. thinking about what my next (macro)blog …

We all know the technical struggles that Twitter continues to go through in trying to maintain a huge centralized messaging service used by millions of people and many 3rd party services that plugin to it’s API. But since gaining mass attention around the world, they are an undeniable global force in social networking. And they have enough money to rapidly fail, repair and improve. Twitter may eventually be too big to fail. Or at least fail totally and quickly. Sound familiar? That’s the recipe at this point. Unless The Open Web also continues to evolve and upgrade itself to modern day requirements and accessibility.

Twitter is not going away. At least not for years to come if they do at all. After all, we still have Friendster out there. I’ve made the snarky comment that twitter could be the next Friendster. That happens when competition catches on and catches up and the playing field balances. Except in this case, the competition is the Interwebs itself. RSS, Atom, Wave, and still old dinosaurs like SMTP. Injecting Real-Time into the Open Web has huge potential influence on some business plans…. like Twitter’s plan to be “The Pulse of the Planet” with a user-base in the billions.

I think back to AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe in the 1990′s. Email used to be contained inside those silos. Eventually, CompuServe was first I believe to host a relay server so that users could send and receive email across the Internet to non @compuserve.com addresses. I remember how big that was for me as I was able to communicate with my girlfriend’s .edu address using my CompuServe account. On the other hand, The Internet’s evolution did not help CompuServe survive. Note this quote:

“The wall we eventually hit was the opening of the Internet to general public use,” Lambert said. “When that happened, our own private network had diminished value. We no longer had a captive audience.”

Twitter is open. But they are centralized. Email is a distributed decentralized system. It would never work for the masses if it were centralized for technical and legal reasons. Twitter is currently a micro-messaging platform and serve a different use case. But both are messaging utilities. Email is far from perfect but Email has no single point of failure or single company responsible for running it. Email has no terms of service. Email is not a company. Twitter will be to micromessaging/microblogging as Google/Yahoo/Microsoft and every ISP is to Email. They are all providing Email services. Now we need MicroMessaging Service Providers on top of Open Protocols. This might not help Twitter just as the evolving open Internet did not help CompuServe, Prodigy and AOL at the time. But this is only in relation to it’s current incarnation. Twitter will have to evolve. In fact, it will start to resemble Facebook more over time. They need to reinvent to survive. Because the Open Web is relentless. The Real-Time Web is upon us and we don’t need to rely on any particular company to leverage it. Facebook seems to know this. And they have less to worry about. They have an enormous user base and a complete service offering. Twitter has very little to offer beyond it’s current mass appeal. And we all know how fast that trend can change. Friendster had it. Myspace had it. Twitter is enjoying it and may be blinded by it. Or not. They should be smart enough to grok this.

So looking forward, we’ll have our Real-Time RSS and other forms of Twitter clones. The blogosphere itself is getting rejuvenated. Meanwhile, Twitter has to deal with building anti-spam technology, security exploits, targeted attacks, infrastructure, legal issues and finding a path to profitability for all of its investors… a list that keeps on growing. And to all the companies thinking of signing deals with Twitter to run your microblogging business…. I would sit back and wait and watch how fast the Open Web catches up…. and you’ll see that you don’t need Twitter. You just need the Web. It’s getting better and faster and smarter. Save your money for data analysis, content re-purposing, archiving and analytic services

It looks like Twitter has raised another $100m. I think on the surface, it’s a mistake. On the other hand, the investment itself is strategic. Twitter spends money slowly. The investment almost works more to secure a valuation than it does to accelerate towards an exit strategy where investors profit. And in order to even scratch the surface of bringing in a revenue stream, they need to do things that users/developers won’t love. Ads. Restrictions. Throttling. Fees. Once it is seen that Twitter no longer offers a unique service and only really ignited a shift on the web towards microblogging and link sharing… users will start to migrate away. Or at least use other services in conjunction (cross-posting). This won’t happen overnight, but unless Twitter becomes something much more than what it is today….then it will just be a long slow demise. You might see some investors get impatient and get their money back as they abandon Twitter. You might see big mistakes along the way. It’s happened before. Twitter would not be unique in it’s failures. And the most notable concern for Twitter is it’s competition. Facebook, Google and even Microsoft and Yahoo are not going to make this easy. Not to mention the next phenomena in Internet startups. Some think that maybe it will be FourSquare and others to steal the limelight away from twitter. And if Twitter’s early adopters leave, they will be left with less valuable users in my opinion. Celebrities will even grow tired of it and move on. Nothing is secured.

The Open Web is on Twitter’s Tail…. And that’s not all they have to worry about.

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So let me officially refer to this insightful article authored by Common Craft’s Lee Lefever.

Common Craft Blog
Introduction to Stocks and Flows in Online Communication (parts 1, 2, 3)
By Lee Lefever

http://www.commoncraft.com/archives/000593.html

http://www.commoncraft.com/archives/000599.html

http://www.commoncraft.com/archives/000601.html

Probably the most interesting aspect to the discussion of the real-time web is not speed of human consumption but rather speed of machine consumption. Correction. This is not necessarily true. People are filters too. Very good filters! In fact, I once started a blog called SpreadTheMedia.org in 06 and the core idea was “Spreading Human Filtered Content”. I valued the human touch that would bubble up content for others to consume. What I meant to point out was the difference between the speed of consumption and the speed of filtration. Machines equipped with smart algorithmic tech will do much of the real-time filtering…. Google, Bing and the other usual suspects as well as new entries to the market. These engines will need to do anti-spam, relevancy, source ranking etc. And in mere seconds so that the intended consumers can get their filtered data.

Rapid Failure, Rapid Intelligence
In a recent post here – http://vocal.ly/p4l – I touched on this stuff a bit.
The notion of rapid failure came to mind as a way to compare how content and content sources need to go through some checks and balances and if their is a rapid failure log recorded, then the filter becomes more efficient and therefor more intelligent. It was not a perfect analogy but the point is clear… Nobody wants to get spam, worms, hoaxes, rumors or any inaccurate data. Nobody wants to spend time fact-checking. The system should handle this for us. And when it does, it will have a nice ripple effect on the infosphere. This doesn’t come without some issues that will breed skepticism and controversy, however.

Trust Analytics
It’s going to be important to rely on the intelligence of the real-time data crunching machines as well as people who act as filters themselves. But in both cases, their will be flaws and corruption contaminating results. It is probably inevitable that their will be stocks formed from the flows that are biased info repositories that will cater to certain minded folks. Many people are set in their ways and like to believe what they want to believe. What i’m getting at here is…. Their will always be layers of filtration and many networks of real-time streams. No different than TV, really. Some will watch Fox, some will watch CNN. I see that i’ve narrowed this down to news gathering. Suppose that makes good sense though. “News” makes up much of the real-time stream. Even if accompanied by a comment, it’s mostly a link and a headline.
So how do look at this filtering point? How does it not become any different than the faulty filters we have already in place on current mediums like TV, Radio? I am reminded of the recent US Presidential Elections and the CPD that make the Debates nearly impossible to qualify for if you are a 3rd party candidate. To me, that is a filter that does us no good. Or the fact that the MSM also does not give fair airtime to candidates unless they are the front-runners, thus maintaining the front-runners status for the duration of the elections. That is a filter that does us no good. Or how about subtle changes to bills that are not reported on so that they can slip through without an outcry? These are just a few examples of bad filters that exist in the world.

Will the web’s real-time filters be an improvement? How many filters will there be? How will we look at these filters? How will they compare to traditional streams of content? Will the Flows be more important than the Stocks or vise versa? At the end of the day, does the landscape change at all? Does The Real-Time Web bring us more noise or can it bring us more signal?

It will be interesting to watch this play out.

And to clarify, The Real-Time Web will be more of an umbrella term as it bleeds into more things. The popularity of Microblogging (Twitter) brought Real-Time content to the forefront, even though twitter isn’t really any more real-time than email or RSS set to poll the server every minute. But it’s the micro chunk data that caught on and the illusion of real-time that got people talking more about it.

Twitter as a service is people powered. People often post links to new pages on the web… news articles, blog posts etc. These people are probably first alerted of this new content via RSS or Email. Someone inevitably is first to re-post content to twitter alerting their followers and anyone who re-posts… the gossip propagates quickly. This is what some will refer to as Real-Time Web. And that’s acceptable.

Other’s will point out that Real-Time Web is how content from one service immediately flows to other services. A great example is Twitter data instantly hitting Friendfeed.com. Twitter does have a data “Firehose” that they let some partners tap into. Usually the technology involved in capturing the data is called long-polling or http streaming. So Twitter is involved with Real-Time technology but it only truly is exposed via the Firehose, not the consumer side where people are using twitter clients to monitor their streams (thats just like email or rss readers).

The Real-Time Web is also effectively now related to RSS and Atom feeds with the advent of rssCloud and PuSHb. Now we can be notified faster when sites with Real-Time RSS feeds are updated. How Stocks and Flows will apply to this will be seen in the next breed of RSS Readers where you can organize your subscriptions more intelligently using filters and groupings etc. These types of features already exist but will become more important with Real-Time Feeds.

I’ll stop this here since i’m sure this is getting a bit unfocused. Check out Common Craft articles and Chris Messina’s Dog analogy!

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2. Datasift – Realtime Twitter Query & Curation for Developers
3. Pondering The RealTime Web and Rapid Intelligence – Collecting Thoughts

http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3555/theres-reason-rsscloud-failed-catch

This is good because it fleshes out important issues and realities. I personally think that Aggregators that live in the cloud (ie. Google Reader, Brizzly, LazyFeed) are the first to benefit from real-time protocols since they do not have the firewall related issues that a local desktop application may have in communicating with cloud hubs on certain ports.

Cloud-based RSS Readers are fine with me. I have not used a desktop app for RSS in a long time. But regardless, it’s important as it relates to the crop of twitter clients that may end up supporting real-time RSS and most twitter users use these apps as opposed to web apps.

I have more info and thoughts to share but short on time today. Will continue this soon and I hope more posts like the one I have referenced bubble up soon.

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No wars here. It’s all good. If the Open Web benefits, then everyone wins. Well, except for those who want to control the Massive Rapid Data moving in the cloud. That is to say… they won’t benefit unless they choose to benefit. And they can and they should. And they will?

I’m glad that i’ve supported rssCloud since earlier this summer (http://nudg.es) when Dave Winer started to reboot the concept, especially after PubSubHubBub came about. It inspired me to take a close historical look at the origins of RSS and related technologies. I’ve used RSS since it’s inception and more so back in 2004 when I helped to launch ourmedia.org which had deep emphasis on RSS for video and audio blogs and making use of the enclosure element (podcasting). We early adopted the new Media RSS spec that was lead by Yahoo to provide more enhanced feeds. And the videoblogging movement really latched onto the concept of RSS and I was at the heart of those pioneering days. So RSS is very familiar and very awesome. I love it.

In the past year+ I have been very interested in the topic of Scaling Twitter. It was the result of Twitter’s technical problems that Open MicroBlogging became a focus of technologists/developers/students. An OpenMicroBlogging protocol was introduced and a twitter clone built on that protocol was launched (identi.ca/status.net). Other proposed protocols and ideas started sprouting as students and professionals weighed in.

Point being… The incredible growth of Twitter put much needed focus back on balancing data control. By that I mean…. Not putting all our eggs in one basket. Not having centralized services at the heart of the web. Not getting drunk on the hype of these new social net brands and their features. Getting back to basics, and back to our blogs. Dusting off some old tech and upgrading the de-centralized web. Speeding up RSS with rssCloud is an important step in this direction.

It’s great that we have our Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. But the Open Web needs to evolve too and cannot be mostly dismissed by a small group of Tech Giants who re-invent the wheel, disgard standards and limit their open data policies. Their services are ours to leverage, not to sell our souls to. Obviously, this speaks more to content creators than it does to those who are primarily content consumers. But it benefits everyone. Because at any point, someone can decide to become a more serious content creator, setup a website and a blog and off you go. To have a strong and stable Open Web to go to that competes and coexists with any proprietary offerings with terms & conditions is critical.

So what’s so important about The Real-Time Web? That’s another blog post. But the quick reply is… If you like getting Email in timely manner, then you will like The Real-Time Web.

Here are some of today’s blog posts on the news of rssCloud + WordPress.com integration:

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/09/07/teaseTeaseTease.html

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/09/07/anyWordpressBlogCanBeCloud.html

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/rss-in-the-clouds/

http://staynalive.com/articles/2009/09/07/dave-winer-to-bring-realtime-rss-to-millions-via-wordpress-com/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wordpress_just_made_millions_of_blogs_real-time_wi.php

http://blog.lazyfeed.com/2009/09/lazyfeed-will-integrate-rsscloud-and.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/wordpress-enables-rsscloud-in-post-feeds/

http://mashable.com/2009/09/07/rsscloud/

Oh and maybe you’de be curious to know how I found out about todays news?
I actually had hopped into the FIRST rssCLoud enabled aggregator/publisher that was not properly mentioned in any of the above posts The service I speak of is at http://MyStatusCloud.com and is being developed by Jeremy Felt (@jeremyfelt). His blog is at http://www.educer.org/2009/09/07/its-all-happening/.
He has been in 5th gear playing around with the concept of rssCloud and I think he has done a great job implementing it. Take a look and try it out yourself!

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/09/rss-isnt-dead-just-ask-executives.php#comments

Their are a few ways to frame and respond to the tabloid-like headline “RSS is Dead”.

One is to directly compare RSS with Twitter. This is a mistake unless you clearly point out that what you are actually comparing is Reader/Aggregator software, the differences between a centralized and de-centralized messaging/headline/link sharing system and the mechanisms of efficient delivery of this data to subscribers or general content consumers.

The more accurate approach is to compare software that consumes content…. whether that be content from social networks like Twitter or Facebook or from Blogs and Websites or even for media like video and audio (poscasts). RSS is NOT software. Google Reader is. My Twitter stream is NOT software. Tweetie is. Whether a desktop application or a website wrapper… a UI for managing data/content and how efficient that software… which methods it uses…. is the real debate. Push/Streaming and Pull/Polling and App2App Notification protocols are at the heart of the issue.

One of the benefits of a centralized system like twitter is its built-in ability to provide more immediacy to users once new content is posted and available in their stream. The storage, delivery and notification system is cohesive. Obviously, the synaptics of the platform are going to be more coalescent and efficient in data handling. Though the Open Web (which includes search engines like google and bing) will better compete now that an entity like twitter has brought this issue of massive rapid micro-messaging (and link sharing) to the forefront.

You also have an enormous amount of people participating, doing the work of an army of ants…. propagating headlines, links and short messages. Mixed in with that you have your soundbyte culture and truly authentic interesting conversations.

The blogosphere also is involved in this activity with trackbacks/pingbacks/comments/blogrolls/bookmarks and of course the blog posts themselves that can contain several links within the article. In a way, links are the currency of the web. But the difference is the barrier to entry. Even though setting up a blog is easy today, it’s also about the avoiding… the void. joining a built-in community of people, for many, is more fun than being the lone blogger out there on the wild web. So, several blogging services have focused on this to make it more appealing. And their is a bit of momentum returning to blogging. But still, everyday people DO like the AOLesque Facebook and the Twitter phenomena snuck up on everyone as a cultural realization that bursts of messages are useful, easy and fun.

Twitter started out as a mostly mobile-centric app for self-status updates but has evolved into emulating RSS headline and links, albeit the proper headlines are too often replaced with useless comments. Not to mention the link itself is almost always hidden by a short url so you go in blind. That and a total lack of associated metadata… In a way it becomes the Poor Man’s RSS. But it’s faster. You give up some signal, and you get fast noise. If you are well trained, lucky, bored or just OCD about info consumption…. then you can pick out the gems. How often does it truly matter to a normal user if they hear about something before others? It’s a rare situation. And if it’s your business to know the news and monitor the pulse of the internet, then you you likely have a formula that crosses many tools, services and methods to help you achieve an advantage for “breaking stories”. More power to you.

If you were to compare just the data alone, RSS is no worse as it provides headlines and links… and can be better because it also provides rich metadata and even the entire contents of a content item. RSS is data/content. Twitter is data/content bundled with a social wrapper controlled by a single company. It should be getting more clear now why you cannot simply compare the two without more in depth analysis and explanation… We can do without the glossy tabloid style headlines. We have enough of that everywhere else. It would be great if tech can stay clear of such antics and worry less about page views and tech gossip and grow up.

The de-centralized open web syndication can and will keep up with the speed of twitter because the underlying tech does not care whether data is from a twitter stream (which generates RSS itself) or if that data is in a blog or if that data only exists as an RSS document. It DOES NOT MATTER. Most Twitter clients pull in content by polling the twitter API. That is not different than Email or RSS Readers. But its not efficient. So Push Email and Push RSS/Atom and Push anything else is preferred from a technical perspective and exciting from a users perspective. Excitement does not equate to a need. But it’s an advancement, one that was accelerated due to the popularity of Twitter and it’s delivery speed. And advancements in consumer tech are good.

Yes, real-time data is not new. But the notion to have this effect for anyone on the Internet is powerful. But Twitter alone is not the story. Twitter was a spark to shift focus on consumer services that can offer massive rapid content sharing. It’s wrong for Twitter to think that they can always be at the core of this future. They can be part of it… maybe a large part… but the Open Web will balance this and that is where RSS/Atom comes back into focus. And that should matter more to some tech writers who gloss over the big picture and use trite headlines and concepts to lead into a rash article. But hey, they open the door for others to clean the mess by blogging more in-depth perspectives.

So as we soon see more demonstrations of faster RSS…. at least as fast as you’de expect your Email to arrive… The uniquity that Twitter held will continue to dissipate. It will be just another big social network. People may tire of it. People may evolve as most of this becomes normal and ask themselves – why am i using this service when i can do the same thing on my own website or via email or some other cooler service that has better features etc etc. That’s right. Features. At some point, Twitter will need to care about features to stay relavent because everything else is quickly becoming normalized. Choosing between Twitter and Facebook will seem strange. Especially as the content is cross-posted, which is another issue that is ongoing.

It’s also good to keep in mind other emerging technologies like Google Wave and how that may impact our connected digital culture.
I have not been too impressed with Wave so far but I admittedly have not give it a fair chance yet. I see its potential.

And since I have mentioned Email a few times here…. It’s also good to think about the future of email. We already have Push Email on mobile devices which in and of itself is as fast as a centralized Twitter. But email is de-centralized. So what happens when we put together Mailing Lists with Push Email? I think we’ll find out

Related posts:

1. RSS isn’t Dead… My comment
2. A Good Day for RSS and the Open Web
3. The Open Web is on Twitter’s Tail

I don’t know if those who have proclaimed that RSS is… you know.. the D word… actually believe it to the core or if they just wanted to push buttons with tongue in cheek.
Or if they just irresponsibly use “RSS” as an umbrella term for labeling the opposition to the more, faster, smarter, better hype that is going on related to real-time web/push-button web etc. It’s like so many other things where people feel the need to have a black&white issue to pound on. The notion that something must fall for something else to rise.
Childish, really.

Here are some perspectives…

Many people were not ready for adding RSS Readers to live along-side with their “Email”. With the exception of joining mailing lists, a typical person does nto concern themselves with the idea of subscribing in order to get content. And despite the ease in which this subscribing process is done (auto-discovery, orange buttons, copy/paste a url, pre-populating feeds, one-click subscribe options in the software etc etc), these few extra steps and the fact that their is another interface for managing an “inbox” deterred many from full adopting content syndication via RSS. Email software that incorporated an RSS Reader (ie. Apple’s mail.app) helps but it’s still added complexity.
Many people just find it simpler to rely on a few webpages (which prob use RSS).

But RSS is more than this idea of Reader software.

RSS made it easy to let one website add content from another website. So it’s usefulness was not solely for consumption by individual users but also to spread content across the web.

RSS is used by search engines for improved content discovery and therefor, improved SEO. The new breed of search engines heavily use RSS feeds to parse rich multimedia content and output to a users search results. That was some of the motivation behind new namespaces such as “Media RSS” driven by Yahoo! in 2004. And anyone adept in Search Engine Optimization knows that submitting a Media RSS feed to search engines is a standard and crucial step. After all, it’s well-formed machine-readable content.

Media RSS also bleeds into the world of audio and video syndication/agregation (commonly referred to as podcasting). Take a look at the data inside my blip.tv RSS feed: http://sull.blip.tv/rss

That’s some rich metadata.

Does twitter offer that? No and it was never intended to. But twitter will evolve and its feasible that it will eventually resemble RSS more as it becomes realized that metadata and machine-readable formats are fundamental requirements that add value.

RSS is also commonly used to run multimedia presentation software such as Flash audio and video players. Adobe’s own AMP (Adobe Media Player) uses RSS and other XML flavors to load playlists, social connections, advertising, branding and UI elements. Their are other examples of RSS being in the mix for these types of uses as well.

RSS is often used as part of web application APIs. One service can make use of another service’s RSS feed and include the content and important links or widgets into it’s interface. These web service mashups thrive and are part of the web culture today. RSS is not the only format used but it is a common and simple format to allow for easy cross-domain content sharing.

RSS is also used for alerts, notifications, data backups, filesharing and short messaging.

RSS is so pervasive that many people don’t see it or know its part of whatever it is that they are looking at. And that’s the way it should be for most people.

So where is the failure, exactly? Mostly, you could blame software for aggregating RSS feeds. It was setup to mimic email. That made sense since you did not want to create an nusual experience for people to consume this content. The email experience is the most common of all. But that also allows for the vulnerability of feeling overwhelmed with “unread items” and managing all the content. So, more “view modes” are important…. especially the “river of news” mode that let’s you casually skim headlines. There are other designs that work too. Inevitably, a user has unique preferences and they should be allowed to easily create those view modes that work for them.

Google Reader has evolved a lot this year. Though I still think it’s a clunky bloated confusing experience… it is at least more interesting to me. I can see it continuing to evolve to the point where it becomes more inline as a direct competitor to Facebook. But they need a new UI or like I said, multiple view modes.

Even with Google Reader’s shortcomings and attributing those to the whole RSS is …. you know… the D word…. it’s foolish, it’s rhetoric. it’s getting drunk on the real-time buzz which is like… the new drug of choice.

So enough of this. If their is a concern about the image of RSS (very few of us geeks would really care), then just post intelligent articles mentioning RSS where applicable so people learn an understand it more. I don’t think we need to grab hold of the drama headlining of this is dead that is dead this is the future and that is old news etc etc.
Stuff like RSS is not Fashion. It’s cold hard tech.
This debate is a fabrication based on personalities who happen to have reach and some could argue… influence.

Once a Faster RSS is demonstrated (rssCloud, pubsubhubbub etc), everthing else will be moot, anyway.

Related posts:

1. RSS, Twitter, People, Power And The Negligent Tech Bloggers
2. So let me get this straight. RSS is dead because… – Louis Gray – FriendFeed
3. conversations in the cloud

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_real-time_web_a_primer_part_2.php

In particular, this paragraph:

For those prone to theorize, there are many fascinating questions to ponder. For example, the uncertainty principles states that the position and velocity of an atomic particle becomes less certain as that of another becomes more certain. If the analogy holds true, then does the veracity or truthfulness of news become less certain as the velocity of interest becomes more measurable. Likewise, what effects will the integration of the real-time stream have on the outcome of events, and how can conditions be influenced to ensure specific outcomes.

I recalled a few somewhat related comments I had made on friendfeed some time ago. So i’m collecting those and posting them here (again). This is helpful to me at least. And hopefully interesting to a few out there for good measure

Tom Foremski
The Problem With The Real-Time Web – No Google Juice

http://ff.im/5Fu7S

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/07/the_problem_wit.php

My comments:

tom’s post points out the obvious. “You’ve got to do both. If you abandon your static web presence for your real-time activities you will find it harder to build your overall social media capital”. of course a single micro-message is not *typically* going to have any weight as it’s often just a pointer to the real content value. the largest percentage of the so-called real-time messaging going on today are links with a bit of context and/or opinion. it’s a medium to connect more people with more content. this broadcast medium itself is secondary as it pertains to actual content. so yeah, their is a lack of google juice but it’s not nec a problem. unless we are talking about aesthetically pleasing tweets of the poetic variety

i also think real-time is a feature of the larger evolving digital infosphere. in a way, realtime is like rapid failure…. meaning… the speed and volume of the data flow to analyze and grade and filter and stock… the greater the value realtime offers to intelligent systems (ie. google). slower data flow translates to a slower realization of what content is not only generally good but also what is accurate, what is Legitimately trending and what is Actually being requested by millions of user search queries. Realtime Find is more important than Realtime Search.

The other day, @bitlynow gave me a link about someone who died. my first thought was… hey it’s bitly, they are good at what they are doing so i gave the tweet artificial value by reposting it only to realize moments later that the link and story were part of a hoax and possibly part of a worm. perfect example of why faster realtime data flow and analysis are critical to avoiding bad data from propagating.

Related posts:

1. Datasift – Realtime Twitter Query & Curation for Developers
2. Google Code Blog: Towards a programmable web: PubSubHubbub for Google Alerts
3. Stocks and Flows and The Real-Time Web

Echo won’t kill comments — they’re already dead.

echo does not present a problem that cannot be logcially and easily handled.

echo should work in tandem with traditional comment option. the UI could handle this in different ways such as a few tabs beneath the post, using a sidebar or even a popup.

echo should not replace your own comment system.

every blogger should want to have control over comments. this is not very different than the topic of owning control of your short tracker urls and using your own domain etc. comments are important enough to control in the same way.

in addition to trackbacks/pingbacks, echo can co-exist. just dont disable your own comment system, even if moderated.

Related posts:

1. You’ll notice that I have started to re…
2. How to Fix URL Shorteners – My Take « tweete.rs blog
3. Gmail, Google Groups and Youtube = Intimate Video Sharing Community?

Oh, RSS Is Definitely Dead Now: Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo To Become Twitter COO.

wanted to point out how i never liked feedburner and encouraged people to manage and own their own feeds themselves. in a nutshell…. feedburner could have and should have been replaced with a few really good tutorials on how to make RSS or edit existing RSS (ie on wordpress). feedburner took advantage of the lazy blogger and attempted to monetize the fuck out of it with a fallover of simply controlling one of the most ubiquitous and pervasive components of the web.
feedburner BURNED RSS and those who were too lazy to own it themselves.

in essence, this is similar to twitter. twitter is for the lazy blogger as well. and now the plethora of mainstream users who never likely would have blogged or maintain a website for free expression etc… yeah twitter is all that noise. not that there’s anything wrong with that

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3. RSS, Twitter, People, Power And The Negligent Tech Bloggers

How to Fix URL Shorteners – My Take « tweete.rs blog.

Good thoughts.

The idea of mapping the short tracker domain to an about page or redirect to the users preferred url is a good suggestion for providing some form of identity on the urls that are being generated.

A subdomain, as you point out, would work for this. However, adding a clear subdomain that actually is immediately identifiable without becoming too long (defeating the purpose of a short url) could become a challenge. And you basically get into name squatting, spoofing and impersonation issues just like everywhere else. Though that could be moot since its a universal problem.
The subdomain does allow for a good technical separation of ownership.

A more casual approach without subdomains could be to just append a short url with an ID for example – http://my.su/Ru6_sull where ‘sull’ is my id and http://my.su/sull or http://sull.my.su could be my about page on the service or itself a redirect to my preferred url that identifies me such as my sull.tel domain This casual approach could work in conjunction with your subdomain idea and allow for preserving a domain’s vanity appeal without interrupting it with a subdomain. for example, if i had the domain jmp.to, i might not want to have to add an ID subdomain to it (sull.jmp.to/Ru6). It just messes up the vanity appeal. so instead, jmp.to/Ru6_sull means the link is by sull and a user could check me out at sull.jmp.to.

As for your other points, they are important and as you noted they are being considered by the likes of Brian Hendrickson’s rp.ly, adjix and tr.im as well as any self-hosted DIY system. I’ve pointed to Yourls.org a few times in other blog comments (i have not used it myself) and at least a half a dozen WordPress plugins and many more tutorials and scripts floating around.

I personally lean towards suggesting DIY solutions in this space. But a good mix is the next best solution. I plan to test out rp.ly etc and compare to my own software/techniques. I like the adjix experimentation with s3. My software also depends on static files with XML (ie. RSS) feeds for exportability and mirroring (and could involve importing to s3 account without giving shared access to the buckets).

Though I don’t agree with some of the methods involved in the adjix recipe (ie. meta-refresh, requiring subdomain/CNAME etc.) I do love the experimentation and willingness to delve into helping Dave Winer and others with the issue of data ownership and branding.

These are good community efforts and yourself, Joe Moreno, Brian Hendrickson, Eric Woodward, Dave Winer, Marshall Kirkpatrick and others are all socially available participants. In a way, that’s the best part of this whole silly url shortening debate.

Related posts:

1. rp.ly: add a microblog & vanity-url-shortener to #wordpress blogs #wp « rp.ly blog
2. Make Your Own URL Shortening Service – url shorteners – Lifehacker
3. Web Host Provided One-Click Software Install – Url Shortener

I had then googled to see what else took similar approaches to generating RSS or other XML. I came across one little script that a student had written. Found some references regarding XSL that had similar methodologies. But overall barely anything. Until just now which is the spark for this blog post.

In my research on the commentAPI namespace and how I might want to re-purpose that for rssCloud @replies, I was hanging around bitworking.org. I’ve been there before and I have been familiar with commentAPI of course (it is silently pervasive) but what struck me was Joe Gregorio’s experiments with commentAPI which seem to be in line with what I want to do with rssCloud…. but also I was taken back by his blogging platform called RESTlog which is what bitworking.org runs on. This is what it sais in regards to RSS construction:

How does the server side work?
Items are stored in individual files with their name being their ID number. They are stored as xml files. Specifically they are stored as ‘item’ elements from RSS 2.0.

Why? Well first note that this file is conveniently formatted so that it can be easily placed inside an RSS file directly as an item which will speed up the rebuilding of the index.rss file each time an item is modified. Also having each item in its own file makes the system more robust, if one of the files becomes corrupt I have lost as most one item not all of them. I ran into this problem when working on Pamphlet, my as yet unpublished weblogging tool. The items in Pamphlet are kept in monthly archives which has the weakness of potentially losing a whole months worth of posts if a single file gets corrupted. Luckily I keep good backups.

The HTML main page ‘index.html’ and the RSS file ‘index.rss’ are served up statically. That is, they are static files that are only updated by the server side script when items are added or changed. Each item has it’s own permalink and that permalink is served up dynamically through the RESTLog.cgi script, but this only uses a crude string substitution templating mechanism.

This work occurred back in 2001/2002. Here is the RESTLog Spec

Now I can discount this for being antiquated methods that have no place in today’s space. But that is never smart or accurate. In fact, the more I look back, the more I feel that we are not nec in a clean and clear time for technology and innovation. We see a lot of end results that appear innovative or mass adoption of services that in return make us assume that their is innovation… but I feel like their is a lot of bloat and black magic out there. It’s not nec a bad thing as it relates to a learning and experimentation phase on the Interwebs. Messes are inevitable. Meanwhile, their is a strong fortitude to push semantics and standards to the forefront of the most important and influential discourse happening today. A balance is needed between cool results and solid practices.

So back to this little gem. Well, Joe Gregorio is today celebrating 2 years at Google, Inc. So it’s safe to assume that a solid mind was behind RESTLog. And for now, i’ll take the idea of Fragmented Flat File RSS Construction and move forward with it

Related posts:

1. MAFF day — Lucas Gonze’s blog
2. conversations in the cloud
3. RSS isn’t Dead… My comment

On Twitter, it is easy since that is a centralized service. It started as an ad hoc @ symbol in front of usernames which is how it is often done elsewhere such as IRC. Twitter formalized the functionality and enhanced it with inReplyTo so if a reply link is clicked (as opposed to just arbitrarily typing @username) the thread can be properly constructed so others can view it in context. In other discussion systems like Blogs and Forums, it’s obviously baked into the software. Not so in the decentralized rssCloud network.

Let me also point out that their will be variations to what is published and how it is published with support for rssCloud. The initial focus for me and I think others is on microblogging. These posts can technically be created from any software (like WordPress, Drupal, TypePad etc) or from any other system that generates an RSS feed (ie. any twitter clone or open microblogging software such as laconica etc) which all can contain a reference to an rssCloud hub. That means, it is feasible that a comment system will already exist on a permalink page for each post. This can be considered the answer to my question. But I want to look at this from a more raw perspective. One that does not yet involve such aforementioned publishing software with comment systems and permalinks. I want to focus solely on the RSS feed as the only source of content. In fact, this is how my prototype currently works at http://nudg.es. It is an email based RSS feed generator with support for rssCloud. I want to think about how two such feeds can reference each other’s items with comment text.

So let’s setup a scenario. Two people have their rssCloud feeds loaded with several short messages. It would be nice to rely on using just the web to view a nice direct output of the feed using XSLT (see nudg.es feeds in Firefox) but being unreliable across all browsers, let’s assume the feed is being viewed in a specialized application such as Google Reader or some other RSS aggregator software. I see a post that I want to reply to in the rssCloud feed. Let’s say the feed url is http://myrsscloudfeeds.org/johnsmith/mobile. It’s a short message with a photo attached (enclosure) sent from John Smith’s phone. I like the picture and want to comment on it from my RSS aggregator. How do i do it? How do I associate my short message reply to John’s short message?

So to reiterate, all we have is a feed inside something like Google Reader being read by someone who wants to reply to one of the feed items. How do we get it done? One curious thought I have had involves the RSS channel sub-element called “textInput”. Here are reference links:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html#lttextinputgtSubelementOfLtchannelgt

http://www.w3schools.com/rss/rss_tag_textinput.asp

As it states, it is basically support for a simple form submission. Dave Winer noted at the time of writing (~2001) the following:

The purpose of the element is something of a mystery. You can use it to specify a search engine box. Or to allow a reader to provide feedback. Most aggregators ignore it.

Can this be used for handling conversations across the rssCloud network? Possibly. Let’s delve into it’s potential for a minute.

First we need to keep in mind that this is a CHANNEL sub-element so it’s not associated with each ITEM. Originally, I thought that killed the idea of using this for decentralized @replies but then i felt that…. if a new breed of RSS aggregators need to sprout in order to properly support stuff like rssCloud, then it’s ok to expect these aggregators to support anything that is deemed useful and certainly stuff that is part of the RSS 2.0 spec. So if an aggregator, such as Dave’s own River2, can support the “mysterious” textInput element then things could get interesting. Here is what I am thinking…..

An rssCloud feed can define a base form handler url in the channel textInput element. The form handler would likely be a self-hosted open source script but could also use a cloud service where the script is hosted (another discussion). The form could/should be aware of the feed info and could/should possibly also be aware of the subscriber info (ie. rss url, username etc). Again, this depends on how smart the agregator software is (ie. Google Reader, River2, Web UI etc). Since this is a base url, the script would need some required data passed to it so that it knows what feed/item this comment/reply is referring to. The form handler url would need to be appended with parameters such as the item guid or some other means to identify the item that is being replied to. So, the aggregator would take the base url specified in the feed’s textInput link element and use that as part of a “reply” feature that would likely be exposed in the UI as a “reply” hyperlink next to each feed item. The link would be appended with the item guid + feed channel link, author, managingEditor or other combination of feed data to make sure it is a unique global identifier.

If the subscriber wants to add a comment but does not have their own rssCloud feed/blog then they can login to twitter or facebook or some other preferred centralized service to post the reply. If the subscriber has their own rssCloud feed then they can opt to post the reply to their feed and have it be associated to another feed’s item. It can possibly use the RSS “comments” element to point back to the feed item. How exactly that url would be handled and formatted needs to be discussed but let’s focus on one thing at a time.

Their are other details and of course plenty of discourse to be had around these approaches. But the key is to not have to rely on a centralized service for cross-feed conversations and to also not mandate that certain blogging/CMS software be used in order to achieve this commenting system.
The only software that should be used is a simple form handler script that adheres to RSS standards and facilitates the reply posts accordingly. This could be a role for the rssCloud hubs with the option of self-hosting the form handler app (maybe as a failover/fallback etc.).

What other ideas do people have on this topic?
Please punch holes as I know this has only touched on the surface.

Thanks.

Sull

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