It’s the middle of a long weekend here in the States, so I thought I would throw up a light posting for the time. Starting next Saturday, July 10th, I will be on a brief tour with Stowe Boyd.

Here’s our itinerary:

• July 10 - Arrive in London

• July 12 - London Symposium on Social Tools for the Enterprise

• July 14 - Amsterdam, Social Tools Presentation

• July 15-16 - iDate 2004 Internet Dating Conference

• July 18 - London, Leave for States

If anyone in the blogging world wants to meet up anywhere along those dates/places, please let me know via mail (socialtwister at gmail dot com) or post a comment.

When Pocketster, formerly Pocket Rendezvous, was announced, there was a great deal of buzz (which I aided in creating) about the potential for such applications in the real world and its potential to create new forms of networks. Things certainly looked promising.

Today, the prospect of these ad-hoc networks seems even more viable, but I’m not sure everyone will be happy about it. Apple has now updated their Rendezvous codebase to provide the functionality on both the Windows and Linux platforms.

Apple Computer has published updated source code to its Rendezvous network-configuration technology for use in Windows, Linux, Unix and Java applications.

The move is designed to entice developers to use the code to incorporate the “zero configuration” technology into their own applications. The software allows network devices to automatically connect to other components of a network and to communicate what features they have to offer. The technology competes with the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology that Microsoft has developed.

Source: News.com, “Apple updates Rendezvous for Windows, Linux”

This new release addresses one of my major complaints about Rendezvous, its availability on Macs only was very limiting. Now that the PC world can participate, there’s a huge new virtual marketplace that can tap into this resource. One question to consider is exactly what type of network will form from desktop-based networks? Will neighborhoods start to literally become “Network Neighborhoods”?.

Personally, the untethered networks are the most interesting. These can be anything from laptop users at Starucks or in the back channel at a conference to the PDA-toting crowd wandering the streets and airports. In this regard, Simedia has a nice advantage, though it could be short-lived. Since Simedia is the one of the few, if not the only, PocketPC-specific incarnations, it creates many unique possibilities.

Unfortunately for Simedia, the availability of this code could lead to some competition. I wouldn’t expect to see Apple come out with a PocketPC version of the code, but stranger things have happened. For now, I think Simedia is on the high ground, but the water’s rising.

Krzysztof Kowalczyk rekindles the case for the inbreeding of two Internet first cousins, Blogging and Wikis. Krzysztof makes some great points and I think it is definitely worth reading in its entirety. For those that don’t want to read, however, here’s the 3 second summary:

1. Wikis are excellent for managing and accessing “knowledge”, the tangible actionable snippets that we constantly refer to

2. Blogs are excellent for their simplicity, providing a strange reflective mechanism: “they are personal but oriented toward other people”

3. Installing Wikis is hard, installing blogs are easy. Both are important to to the other and should be merged (blog added to wiki more likely than wiki onto blog).

Source: Weblog Without Honor or Humanity, “Of weblogs and wikis.” via Media Guerilla

Expanding a little bit on the potential of the integration, the relationship between knowledge and commentary should be noted. Wikis surely manage knowledge in a method that is both public and instructive. Observation of the change history alone provides a nested level of information that we’ve generally lacked in traditional contexts.

Blogs, on the other hand, are “conversations” in their most empirical form - conversations between an author and her audience. Of course, a natural by-product of conversation is knowledge itself. A wiki provides an optimized infrastructure for this derived knowledge, far superior to the search-and-link ad-hoc system used to leverage blogs in a similar manner.

There’s more than one reason developers around the world are up in arms about the separation of presentation from content. Each has its own purpose and destination.

Christian Cantrell points to some new features being added to the Macromedia Breeze product. In this instance, the Breeze product is being given new features that are meant to extend and enhance the instant messaging experience.

In theory, the integration would allow a simple IM conversation to escalate to a Breeze-based interactive collaboration using the simple shortcut “breeze now”. Interested parties can glimpse this process in action here.

To date, my experiences with Breeze have been less than stellar. For the most part, these have been large, worldwide presentations conducted by Macromedia themselves. The experience lagged somewhat and there was almost too much information and not enough reasonable interaction to digest. Beyond those experiences, I have been involved in a few one-on-one sessions with better success. Though there is the ability for hundreds, that’s not a power that should be wielded without great consideration.

This direction, however, has some implications for other “blur-makers”. One example is Convoq and their ASAP product. As they describe, “ASAP eliminates the barriers to instant collaboration with powerful features for gathering the right people at the right time into a rich online meeting environment.” With Breeze moving in this direction, there is going to be overlap that will either spur innovation or compact the competitive landscape.

It’s far too early to predict where things will go - it seems more appropriate to think of time versus experience exponentially, as opposed to linearly, when trying to guesstimate the future of real-time integration.

About Weblogs.com
http://doc.weblogs.com/2004/06/15#aboutWeblogscom

via

The Problem with Free
http://gigaom.com/archives/2004/06/15/the-problem-with-free/

Every day, lately, it seems that we are bombarded with more and more ways to connect our lives, be it business or social, to the Internet at large. A huge variety of technologies from Blackberries to Bluetooth to Wi-Fi to are pressing us to form new relationships not only with the media and content delivered but also with the appliances that serve those needs.

Seeing these connections made is quite fascinating. It doesn’t require a degree from NASA to see how much the ability to connect drives people to actually engage. I’ve encountered people using technology that I never thought I would, and best of all, they don’t necessarily understand how it works in any way shape or form, however, they can extract the value in a heartbeat.

Yesterday, I got wind of a new service from Real Networks and Starz!. It is a new video download service that allows people to essentially have movies-on -demand (assuming the current lot of 100 movies merits your $12.95.

I’m quite interested in this use of technology but probably not for the obvious reason. The most interesting aspect of this service is a the new comfort level and cultural acceptance of “partially-owned” assets. Mention the term Digital Rights Management to your Average Joe, and they’ll make a face at you. Compare it to how they “rent” their seats in the movie theatre’s for 2 hour intervals for the right to imbide the media, and lights go off.

Just Think. There’s only more to come.

Last week, the announcement of Pocket Rendezvous made waves in some circles and confused or amused others. As I’ve argued, the success of Pocket Rendezvous will be mediated by the portability of the network, regardless of the network itself.

Although there are several backbones upon which Rendezvous-like ad-hoc networks could be established, the most interesting, and presently viable, would the the 802.11x networks currently used for Wi-Fi. Two main factors drive this form of adoption: speed and availability. Relatively speaking, the speed cannot be matched by any widely available consumer protocol.

From the ubiquity standpoint, annecdotally we have strong indicators that Wi-Fi is the force to be reckoned with. From its wide installed base in consumer electronics to its adoption at both business and government levels.

(more…)

Vin Crosby of Digital Deliverance has posted some interesting thoughts on the fledgling micropayment industry:

From Clickz article:

Information will never be too cheap to meter, just as water and electricity never became too cheap to meter. When the price of water and electricity declined decades ago, micropayment systems were built to transact purchases of those services. Those services never became absolutely free because someone had to be paid to produce them.

The same is true of online content. The “free” in “free content” is a fuzzy, not absolute, adjective. It simply means the price of most online content has fallen so low that it’s nearly free; it’s well below macro amounts. Unfortunately, no open and interoperable billing systems for wired online transactions have yet been implemented (although many using wireless systems are) to transact its true price.

Microtransaction isn’t a panacea for the online content industry. Its applications may not be appropriate for many, perhaps even most, forms of online content. Yet it will exist in the future, particularly if consumers want professionally produced content.

http://www.clickz.com/experts/design/freefee/article.php/3365061

By contrast, Shirky’s contention was that information will really be free, with no costs at all (neither monthly nor metered) for the consumer. I don’t think that will happen. I don’t think that advertising revenue alone will support professional production of online content nor millions (or eveb tens or hundreds of millions) or amateur blogs.

http://www.digitaldeliverance.com/MT/archives/000435.html

There is a definite battle brewing for the rights to search your desktop. Several weeks ago, news was leaked about a internal Google project, “Puffin”, that was aimed to leverage the search prowess of the Net’s number one search darling down at the individual desktop level.

For months now, we’ve heard more and more about Microsoft’s Longhorn promise and the revolutionary new methodologies being introduced by the new desktop environment.

Most recently, Ask Jeeves has entered the fray as well. News.com reports:

Dinesh C. Sharma

[from News.com, “Ask Jeeves taps into desktop search”]

“We expect that Tukaroo’s desktop search and information management capabilities will enable Ask Jeeves to deliver a seamless, end-to-end search experience across the desktop and the Internet,” Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz said in a statement.

There are two interesting things to look out for, in my opinion. First is the evolving definition of search. We’re seeing that the content base is shifting as well as a renewed interest in “hyperlinking” using non-discrete algorithms - contextual, anecdotal linking will change the way we find things.

Secondly, the social and cultural reactions to this newfound ability will be worthy of note. For many, I anticipate, there will be significant hurdles to cross as we attempt to secure attitudes, separate the public from the private domains, and cope with the loss of “forgetfulness”.

Last week, the announcement of Pocket Rendezvous made waves in some circles and confused or amused others. As I’ve argued, the success of Pocket Rendezvous will be mediated by the portability of the network, regardless of the network itself.

Although there are several backbones upon which Rendezvous-like ad-hoc networks could be established, the most interesting, and presently viable, would the the 802.11x networks currently used for Wi-Fi. Two main factors drive this form of adoption: speed and availability. Relatively speaking, the speed cannot be matched by any widely available consumer protocol.

From the ubiquity standpoint, annecdotally we have strong indicators that Wi-Fi is the force to be reckoned with. From its wide installed base in consumer electronics to its adoption at both business and government levels.

(more…)