Quick

I ran across this link (Mike this is for you):

http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/blog/dear-blogger/

Where is wis.dm Webisode 2?

I have certainly been bitten by the Wis.dm bug lately and so I wanted to share with you a few of the interesting “things” going in the quite creative community which has so nicely developed over at wis.dm. To do so, I am going to introduce you to a “character” that has joined the community.

The first is George Pepper:

Sent to document and report on the pop culture of the early 21st century, I, Commodore George Pepper stepped through the time displacement portal and arrived in the year 2007. Expecting to find a time of peace and prosperity, as had been recorded in my history books, I’ve found a culture mass paranoia, military conflict, and degrading environmental conditions which will lead to mankinds doom.

Faced with customs and beliefs alien to my own, I’ve set forth to change history for the better. My only guide on this journey is Wis.dm, a research assistant from my own time, who appears in the form of an 8-Track player attached to a tripod. And so, I must scour pop culture, striving to find the people, events, and institutions that have corrupted the timeline…hoping to save this era, and my own.

 

In addition to some of his posts he has produced a video which can be seen here:

This was posted some time ago (February 12th) and I am very much looking forward to the second Webisode where I hope to meet some of George’s arch enemies like Dr. Digg and his evil henchman Facebook.

More from this later.

Not your average social networking site

I have been participating in the alpha/beta for a new site designed to connect you with your friends and help you find new ones. In addition, the site has become an excellent source for discovering new content. The site however, is very different then its predecessors in that it has stronger social tools like contacts, comments (something delicious lacks), votes (another piece delicious lacks) and just added “teams”.

The site is called Wis.dm and to be honest it is this “wis.dm” (or wisdom for you non-2.0 lovers) which truly separates this site from its collective siblings. The content on this site is actually really good and I have “met” many people who share the same love for the Internet as I do. In addition I have found many new sites (blogs, marketing sites, forums etc…) to get new fresh content from.

The changes in this site have been phenomenal over the past 6 months and its semi “organic” growth has been fun to participate in. They have scratched their “Web 2.0″ look and, while at first I was disappointed the look of the site has grown on me. What works for me is the sites functionality and while they are still in Beta I recommend you join so that you can see for yourself. Like any social networking site, you get out of the site what you put in. I will demonstrate what works (and doesn’t work) for me on the site and discuss why you should join

General Concept
The general idea of the web site is actually a few layers deep and in fact I have found it easier to participate on this site then I have with sites like MySpace or Facebook (both similar sites). For me, the idea of “hollering out” to my homeys on my website and having 145,983 “friends” that send me messages like “sorry we missed you while you were in town” is so superficial to me. Wis.dm offers a layer of networking which to me works:

1. Find a website (or post or whatever) that you find interesting and add a link to it. I use Firefox and they have created a very unique link which “pops” up a window (Figure 1) that will collect the information for the site (Title, description, tags and optional team). This tool is one of the best “add” tools out there. It really makes it easy to add links to Wis.dm.

2. Instantly your link (originally called “interests”) is available for people to see. In addition, your link gets one “vote”. While I disagree with this the nice thing about the site is that this may change (seems that the path of the site is being driven somewhat by the users which is great). People can now go to the page, vote on your link (currently +1 or -1) and add a comment.

3. Your activity on the site (links voted and commented on) in addition to the people you invite effect your “Points”. Points help you understand how active a person is (and it there is a little bit of fun watching your points increase) and how “reliable” their posts tend to be.

4. Join a Team. Just added a day or so ago, this feature is very interesting. I have been interested in Marketing lately and more specifically how marketing is changing in this new consumer content based marketplace. So, I created a group called “Marketing redefined”, gave it a description and invited some people that seemed to also be interested in marketing. The group is small but what I hope to accomplish is the ability to have a concentrated group of people that will help define my impression of what is going on today. When adding links, we can target the link to the team and hopefully we will create a small community within the community where we can invite like people. Should be interesting.

Finding Content
Another major task on the site is finding content. I will have to say that this part of the web site that I find difficult (or at least it was when I first got stated). The ideas are simple (and this is where some of the design is laking – more about this later) you tag you content (this part is easy) and so you can search by clicking tags in both your profile and the “popular” cloud. Both implement the common font size increase familiar with most link sites.

Additionally, you can “free text” search for content links by using the “Search” box which appears on each screen. The search feature seems to be pretty quick and the search results are pretty accurate (you would surely expect this at this point).

Probably the most effective way to find new content is to camp out on the “popular” page which is essentially the home page to wis.dm. This is where the most popular (currently I think all content comes through here) links are highlighted. At some point I would imagine that this feature of the site will work much like digg.com works today with the community pushing links to the top.

A nice feature that they have added is the “Recommended” option. It is designed to look at all of the content you upload, all of the links you comment and vote on and offer some example links that you may find interesting. So far, I have found some good links by keeping an eye on the box. Very helpful.

Dislikes
So of course I have an opinion (everyone is entitled to one). I think that there are a few things that don’t work so well in the site:

1. The top navigation. I know that the owners of the site are trying to build the “atypical” Web 2.0 application but I think that they have done themselves a bit disservice here. I know that craigslist has been popular by emphasizing the content vs the tools but I find their implementation of “tabs” in effective. See below – the word “Explore” is slightly larger then “my wis.dm” or “submit”. They need to have a better signification of being in a section of the site. In addition, the sub section links (which are difficult to separate) also are displayed as “on” with a different color (red).

2. Tagging. When you add a new link using both the JavaScript button in Firefox or the submit option on the site, the tag adding process is not supported with “helper” tags like you get on Del.icio.us. I am not saying that wis.dm needs to copy the process directly from Del.icio.us, but I am saying is that they need a new process. The difficulties arise the first couple of times you tag. Invariably you are going to tag something with “Web2.0″ only problem is in order to get your tag supported by others you need to make sure that you choose the correct terminology is it “Web2.0″ with one word or “Web 2.0″ with a space. Luckily they did add an option to edit the links after the fact but it becomes difficult to remember your tags and so you sometimes end up double tagging something.

3.Wis.dm team posts. I know that theonly way sites like this are successful is if they attract users and that content attracts users. Since you have people that you are already paying, why not offer incentives for them to post to the site. Sometimes what happens with these posts is they become inside jokes which eliminates the opportunity to collaborate on comments.

Company Challenges
1. Finances. What has become unclear (maybe because I have not asked) is where this company tends to make its money. Will they continue with the advertisement route which they appear to be travelling down currently (as the site is free to all users) or do they take a different approach and charge for use of the site.

2. Numbers. In either case, the number of users has to increase way beyond where they are today. Probably need 5+ million users to be considered as an elite social networking site (Facebook has 17+ million and MySpace has 100 million). The true beauty of viral networking is that the best survive. And they grow fast. We are all familiar with the explosive growth of sites like YouTube. In order for this site to grow the content and social services need to be top notch.

3. Performance. Some grumblings have been heard around the blog sphere about performance at Facebook and MySpace are attributable to their massive growth. So what happens when the site gets its 5th million user? Will their site fall to pieces. I am confident that the team they have assembled should be capable of handling this.

If you would like to join click the link below to join – I think you will find the time you spend is completely valuable.

Join Wis.dm

---

What comes after “The Gradient Era”

I don’t have enough energy to do this, but it would be cool if someone could give names to each of the “Design Era’s” we have seen come to life. But here goes:

- The Bullet Era: When I first started on the web every link had a “3-d Bullet graphic” (http://web.archive.org/web/19970724115909/www.uri.edu/artsci/artsci_home.html) [note: click though on Economics]

[Somwhere along the way we graduated to the black background sites]

- Black background sites: Some of the first major designs we did were on black backgrounds (http://web.archive.org/web/19981212030944/http://www.mewstavern.com/) [note: first CF site I ever worked on - take a look at beers]

[Missing a ton of designs - for the better of man kind I moved into development at this point]

[Eventually we got to the point where we are today]

- Gradients: If you site does not use Lightbox and have Gradient headers you just ain’t cool

————————–

Well, I can honestly say that I believe that we are finally at the end of the “Gradient Era”:

Proof1: There is actually a web site that will build a gradient image for you. Yes, I did not stutter, it actually builds a gradient image: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/gradient/. It is my recollection, that if anything ever becomes this “Mainstream” it has already met its demise. After-all, if the blinking text on my Grandma’s web page gets replaced with a gradient image then it’s all over – right?

Proof2: Two web site designs that have come out recently which don’t use any gradients. Not one.

1.) wis.dm – A social bookmarking site heavier on the “social” then the “bookmarking”
2.) mikull.com – my friends blog (yes he has some mad design skills)

So, while I can’t guarantee you won’t stumble upon a site riddled with Gradients, I can say that I am happy to ask “What is next??”.

Gotta go, off to make a few gradient images for a new menu system, I have connected Yahoo’s Menu Object into CommonSpot.

Best response ever to idiot celebrities

I can not even take any credit for this it is too genius [they have shown the Dwayne Wade injury another 4 times].

You must watch this NOW:

Tim Hardaway is a Homophobic Asshole

I want it all back!

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?

Battle for standardization continues

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.

Add-Ons for IE vs. Extensions/Themes/Add-Ons for Firefox

Before we begin we need to be clear on the definition of on Ad-on.

Ad-on’s ARE:
1.) Applications that offer time saving benifts and enhance your online experiene
2.)
Applications that are integrated directly in the browser (Developer’s
tool kit, Flickr upload tool, Sage RSS Reader, GMail account tracker,
IE View etc..)

Ad-on’s are NOT:
1.) Links to external applications from within the browser
2.)
Applications that add completly no value or have no clear definition of
purpose (this definately comes from both sides of the camp – IE:
Developers Toolbar – Firefox: US Department of Homeland Insecurity
Idiocy Level)

General
Ad-on’s are becoming a hot topic especially with the impending launch of IE 7 (which appears to be next month). Currently there are 1800+ Add-on’s available for the Firefox browser and approximately 435 available for IE7 (which is not to bad considering the browser is still in beta). The idea behind the growth of Ad-on’s is pretty simple – improve the experience of the online user. We are constanly on-line working in or around our browser. Whether we are searching for information on the web (hopefully work related) or we are using the Web to access information from various Web based applications. The Web browser is our window into the world of information.

A while ago the notion of the “Web browser as the desktop” became a popular topic of discussion and quite frankly it makes a lot of sense. For instance, right now I have at my finger tips (i.e. without leaving Firefox), the ability to check my email, look at all of my RSS feeds, post to my blog, upload pictures and find any information I want. Although I have other tools opened (One Note, Eclipse, Outlook and IE 7 – doing some comaprisons), a majority of what I need is all right here. Why would I leave.

Sophistication
The main difference between the IE7 and Firefox “tools” are the level of sophistication. Firefox has been at it longer and the developer’s community has responded. Additionally, the API’s available for the Firefox browser require “lite” programming knowledge (you don’t need to know Com Objects, Java Objects or true Object Oriented programming). I will admit, there is a lot available to you in Javascript that has an Object oriented feel (and I may be bias because I like JavaScript so much) but it seems easier to understand.

With the launch of the Windows RSS Platform, Windows and IE7 are starting to tip the scales a bit. You can details here, but the general idea is that your OS would manage a Common Feeds List. Firefox Add-ons currently can post your RSS feeds (and bookmarks) to various placess, but there is no central repository. One that I feel is important. While this Platform is interesting, the only application that is currently taking advantage of this is the “Desktop Sync” application which is not truly an Ad-on since it breaks rule number one of the Ad-on’s definition.

What is interesting though is the concept of the Platform. What I could envision are many RSS applications tied into the browser as Ad-on’s that utilize this common-feeds architecture.

Accessing the outside from within
The idea of updating a hosted Web application from the browser is not totally new. Firefox has allowed developers to build unique tools which keep users up to date with their information stored in various applications. For instance, there are a few GMail extensions available in Firefox which will notify you when a new email arrives and will even show you a snippet of that email. I am actually a bit surprised that non one has written an extension which allows for easy uploads of RSS feeds to NewsGator (would be really nice if it also notified you when a feed is updated).

IE Addons – http://www.ieaddons.com/default.aspx?cid=4&scid=79 (also available from within the IE 7 browser)
Firefox Addons – https://addons.mozilla.org/ are also available within the browser.

The edge clearly goes to Firefox here and that goes even without talking about Themes (Azerty III for me currently).

powered by performancing firefox

Windows RSS Platform

Finally, Windows has stepped up to the plate and has begun to leverage their OS to enhance their Web 2.0 offerings. As a part of the launch of IE7 (and with Vista), Windows XP will have a sub layer for RSS communications called the “Windows RSS Platform”. As RSS becomes more and more a part of our daily life (with or without or knowledge) a subsystem integrated in the OS will offer some unique benefits. NewsGator has already begun to take advantage of this with a new beta project which will constantly update your NewsGator online site with RSS feeds and notify you when feeds are updated.

From the “MSDN“:

As part of the RSS support in Windows Internet Explorer 7, users can
discover and subscribe to RSS feeds within the browser. When the user
subscribes to a feed, it is added to the Common Feed List,
which is available for clients to use in addition to or instead of
their own list. For example, in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, the
user’s subscription list can import feeds from the Common Feed List.
This enables the discovery of feeds within Internet Explorer and then
for those discovered feeds to appear in other applications.

I have been trying various approaches to managing my feeds (see the posts I had about Sage and the almost defunct News Reader from Flock). Everything from Web sites to applications. The key features for me are:
1.) Display the feeds that I subscribe to and how many new posts there are
2.) Allow me to easily add feeds to my list (this is the most challenging portion so far – without FeedDemon this is next to impossible)
3.) Let me mark either an individual post as read or an entire feed as read
4.) Display a formatted post (HTML please) in the browser pane. I prefer the full post but will settle for excerpts as long as they are longer than Digg excerpts
5.) It would be nice to post a feed item directly to del.icio.us without actually downloading the feed
6.) This would be essential – download the contents of the feed and allow me to read it off-line (this one is only available in applications now)
7.) The ability to group and order  feeds at will

When you use Firefox a lot (like I do) and you want to have a single source list of Feeds then you are out of luck unless you commit to one company for feed delivery. Sounds like the “Common Feed List” approach is the right one. “Store all of my feeds on my computer in a common directory and then add API calls to that feed list”. That way service providers (Feed Readers) can offer their features without applying a burden to the user to “constantly” import/export the feeds. Don’t get me wrong I am fan of OPML but it gets a bit annoying having to keep a constant updated OPML file every-time I want to demo a new Feed Reader.

powered by performancing firefox

Levels of RSS Knowledge

I have posted a bit on RSS and while I am not a “super” expert on RSS but I am a big fan and I have posted a bit on this topic in the past so when I saw the following link: “Levels of JavaScript Knowledge” which was based on “Levels of HTML Knowledge” which was in turn based on “Levels of CSS Knowledge” I thought – what better way to describe what I have seen lately as we hire for PaperThin.

I started talking with many smart people who were interested in joining our Web based software company. I felt that there was a pretty good litmus test for the type of individuals we wanted to hire. Banking on the theory that you fill your bus with smart people first and then figure out where the bus needs to go, I would ask our potential employees about their knowledge of RSS. While I would also ask them about their views about the web and social networking and SOA, the RSS question seemed to be the most important. From that I have derived these levels of RSS knowledge

Level 0 – “RSS, Never heard of it”
I almost thought about not evening offering this level to the interviewees but it seemed logical. Let’s understand what this person looks like:

1.) They have never visited a major news site (CNN.com, MSNBC.com, ESPN.com etc…) or if they did the orange buttons for “xml” and “rss” never intrigued them.
2.) Clearly those same people were never intrigued enough to google “rss”.
3.) Obviously they have never seen Firefox and were probably not involved in the IE beta.

Level 1 – “RSS, Heard of it but I have no idea what it is”
Ok, so at least this individual has their ‘glasses’ on which means that are not blind to the idea that something else is going on in the web world besides HTML and images. Although, they probably don’t even know that the web page which contains the “RSS” links is written in HTML. It might also not be a stretch that this individual has also never heard of Firefox

Level 2 – “RSS, Yeah I use RSS for reading my favorite blog”
Now we are getting somewhere. This individual shows some promise. They are probably someone that enjoys the web and probably spends more time reading Weblogs then they do reading the local “printed” newspaper. Ideally, this individual would be very coach-able and probably “excited” about the development of the Internet in general.

Level 3 – “RSS, Just got finished uploading my Flickr photos and posted the gallery on my blog”
Clearly this individual has been using Firefox for over a year and has more extensions loaded in Firefox then they have pure Software packages installed on their mac. This individual may also know about OPML and attention.xml and is more likely to have been the first kid in their entire extended family to have an IPod . More importantly, this user of the Internet can describe the difference between RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atoms and the ITunes podcast RSS. Future CIO indeed.

Level 4 – “RSS, ha – working on 3.0 with Dave and by the way I make 20K a month blogging”
There are really few people who understand what is next for the web and are always active. They are probably currently active as a speaker for various technology pod-casts and have been mentioned at least once on the following web sites (in order of precedence):

- TechCrunch
- digg.com
- Valleywag
- Any Web 2.0 Workgroup blog

I am certainly no where near Level 4 but I work hard.

Oh and by the way as far as the other “Levels”

HTML – closest to Level 5
CSS – Level 5
JavaScript – Level 5

I have been programming the web for quite some time and am proud to say that I learned HTML using SimpleText with a Mosaic browser.