Social Software Explored

Yeah that’s right, you heard me I want every interaction with every website that I have ever done back. It’s mine isn’t it. Even with an article that you right for an online (or not online) publication, you have the right to own a copy of it.

Here is my thought, I have a blog, I have some images that I post on Flickr, I have some links that I keep on del.icio.us, I have some entries that I keep in my Google Calendar or Google Documents and let’s say I have some interests I keep and comment on at one of my new favorite sites Wis.dm.

Now I really want to get involved with a new site Dandelife but I am just getting sick of all the URL’s all of the passwords all of the different UI and bits of information that I have out there. All of the sites that I interact with are all a part of me (jeez I did not even mention YouTube). They make up the collection of information out there that is me and what I am interested in and what I know and who I interact with. I want it all back. Yeah that’s right, it’s mine and I want it back.

So I know that the ebb and flow of the Internet follows many patterns that have been on going in technology in general. Terminal Computers - VT 100 (Centralized) then Personal Computers (Distributed) then Thin Clients like Flash, Flex and even Ajax applications (Centralized) …

The number of “social networking” sites out there is so staggering and the landscape is so saturated it is hard for good ideas to get any real traction. There are more applications out there then there is attention time available. Participation applications are popping up all over the place and it becomes more difficult each day to spend quality time interacting with your peers on particular subjects.

Solution - lets shift the paradigm here. Let’s get this whole home computer piece working in the reverse direction. Let me keep all of my data on my machine in my on way. My videos, my posts, my pictures, my responses etc… After all they are mine. Then let me choose to share this information with other sites. Like this:

I go to my mikull.com and find a post or a discussion thread of interest that I want to participate in, I add my comments or my thoughts and instead of the information being stored on his blog on his computer the information is on my computer in my house. The applications would talk to each other and essentially what I would be giving mikull.com is the ability to subscribe to my thought. Essentially, an RSS feed of my thought with a uniqueID (URL) would be given to the post or discussion thread for it to display. In the process, some sort of service level agreement would be made between the two trusted systems which would give me rights to my thought with mikull.com having rights to display the thought as they see fit (essentially a copy of the thought). This way I would keep a record of all of my interactions with the web sites out there (maybe my home computer would enter into an agreement with mikull.com so that I could have a copy of the post for reference).

I like this idea, a lot, who is with me?

Blogging, Friends Sites, Service Oriented Architecture, Social Bookmarking, Social Software, Software Development, Web 2.0

Yeah you heard it here first (although trendwatching.com is predicting it for the month of January) this year will see the advent of connecting on line as the premiere method for communicating with people that are both located in and out of our immediate proximity.

Don’t get me wrong the connections we have made without technology will not go away, we will just enhance those connections through tools on the Internet.  You will learn more about the world through people then you will the Internet.  What you get from these new web 2.0 applications that are popping up is trusted views of what is out there.  Your Aunt Jenny’s web links will be available through her del.icio.us account and your long last friends blog will let you know what he was up to over the last 10 years.  This is the year.

Today I was contacted by three people within the course of an hour and a half via LinkedIn to connect with them.  I know that may not seem like such a strange occurence but take into consideration that the last time I was contacted from someone on LinkedIn (after they found my profile) was over 2 months ago.  3 people contacted me within an hour and a half.

My question, and the krux of my post, did they read the article posted at trendwatching.com (or similar prediction from someone else) and think to themselves “Hey you know what, they are right I need to connect with some people” or better yet did they say “If this is THE thing to do this month, I better get a head start and not be left behind, nobody likes to be late to the fad party”.

Either way I am satisfied because like a good glass of beer, no matter how that pint got into your hands, eventually you will like it.  I am glad to see that people (in the mainstream) will be using these tools for communication with their networks, proves that our applications work.

Social Software, Software Development, Web 2.0, What I am reading, society, trends

I read an interesting post over on Alex Faaborg’s site today about microformats and how Firefox 3.0 will be using microformats to change Firefox into a “… an Information Broker.”

Much in the same way that operating systems currently associate particular file types with specific applications, future Web browsers are likely going to associate semantically marked up data you encounter on the Web with specific applications, either on your system or online. This means the contact information you see on a Web site will be associated with your favorite contacts application, events will be associated with your favorite calendar application, locations will be associated with your favorite mapping application, phone numbers will be associated with your favorite VOIP application, etc.

This is going to change the way we interact with data on the Web, and it’s something that I am going to be blogging about all this week, stay tuned.

I find this to be as exciting as it is frustrating, all in the same breath.  Ok, so microformats could be the future, it could enable us to truly “write once - use everywhere”.  Some of the examples from the article which get me heated are:

For instance, if you want to sell something, you can blog about it using an hListing, and a site like edgeio will find it when it aggregates classified advertisements across the Web.

Similarly, the microformat hReview allows the creation of review aggregation sites, and XFN (XHTML Friends Network) allows the creation of social network aggregation sites.

When I first started to understand the search process (back when you had to “tag” your sites on Yahoo with a form and Webcrawler was the only “spidering” web site out there) I was promised that we would be able to place “xml” style tags or “semantic” markup in our HTML which specialized sites and search engines would pick up and treat differently.  For instance, a site that would go out and collect information about products would be able to compare 10 online book stores prices for a book if we put something like <isbn-10>1590593812</isbn-10> in our HTML.  The web browser would ignore it but the site would catalog the results and offer comparisons.  That was in 1996.

Now take some more semantic style searches like say at a government site.  I worked with APR Smartlogik on a great project which highlighted Europes advancements in standardization.  Essentially, the UK governement mandates that all pages on a governments public facing web site have meta content which complies with eGMS standards.  Compliant pages have special meta tags which have content tagged against the IPSV taxonomy which allows smarter search engines to index content better.  If you have every tried to find information about when trash is picked up or where the town compost drop off is located then you know what I mean.

I guess my real gripe is that this is all good but let’s get there already.

Blogging, RSS, Web 2.0, What I am reading, firefox, standardization, web design