Seems the folks over at WikiMedia are getting more and more clever as time goes on. First there was Wikipedia, now there’s WikiNews.

Unlike Wikipedia, Wikinews will present original material rather than just compiling and summarizing information found elsewhere, according to the news site’s organizers. For future submissions, organizers also want to set up a system for accrediting Wikinews reporters who have actively participated in the project.

[…]

“The incentive for behavior in a wiki is to write in such a way that your writing can survive,” he said. “The only way it can survive is if your writing is acceptable to an extremely wide audience.”

Wired.com, “Wikipedia Creators Move Into News”

I’m troubled by WikiNews on two levels. First and foremost, there’s an outright competition, if you will, between WikiNews and the Blogosphere at large. The notion of WikiNews, as mentioned, is to provide original material as opposed to compiling “news”. Clearly, there are two Blog Entry Archetypes implicated here, the Opinion/Commentary Entry and the Thought Leadership Entry.

Already, there are millions of bloggers generating this form of original material and they are tied into an active community and distribution network. Naturally, the proverbial power law still prevents many of those voices from being heard. The implication here is that WikiNews becomes a clearinghouse for original material, the CNN of Bloggers. The primary question is at what cost it comes. See the next point.

The second issue is the community filtering of this material. I’m firmly convinced that Blogging took off as as a social phenomenon because it provided the masses with an outlet for expressing their thoughts and emotions without a filter. Fundamentally, I agree with the spirit of Wiki as it provides a unified community for reaching collective decisions. Of course, the interpretation of the events from around us is not one of the arenas that seem to benefit greatly from filtering - think Big Media. Surely many will contest that the community will act in the best interest of information; however, the community is no greater than its inherent biases.

After all, some might argue that Big Media also presents information “in such a way that your writing can survive”.

I heard about this experiement a few weeks ago actually and was quite interested in the possibility of systems like this. Carnegie Mellon students have crafted an interesting WiFi, Peer-to-Peer, Location-Based (had enough yet) system that allows for networking (on many levels) between students based on their movements throughout the University. As reported:

The objective of this study was to leverage contextual information to support Semantic Web P2P scenarios. The study was conducted on Carnegie Mellon Univesity’s campus, leveragring the campus’s Wireless LAN (WLAN) and the MyCampus Semantic Web environment developed by the Mobile Commerce Laboratory over the past few years. Within this environment, users can access a variety of context-aware applications and services from PDAs over the WLAN. Examples of contextual attributes include user location (acquired through location tracking functionality running over the WLAN), calendar information, a variety of preferences (e.g. food preferences, topics of interest), weather information, social information (e.g. classmates, teachers, etc.).

Source: InfoBridge: Peer-to-peer location-aware virtual posters

Though these systems are intriguing in this one direction, they still are rather scary when pushed in the other direction - you know, where the system reports back on my positioning for others to see.

Sunday night, the Chaj and I worked on our third official Beercast. It gets easier each time we do it and (we think) we’re learning more and more about what it will take to make it succeed. I still recommend everyone to try it at least once.

One important aspect of our show, unlike traditional Podcasts, however, is the real-time involvement of total strangers. For the most part, Podcasts to date seem to mimic the radio format from start to finish. We’re doing more of a “Feet on the Street” kinda thing which brings us into contact, one way or another, with total strangers.

Sunday, I recruited two young women sitting besides us to answer a pretty straightforward question about men, women and mixed signals. We recorded their opinions and then discussion drifted the Beercasting itself and we chatted about why we were doing it and those kinds of things. Towards the end, however, I was cornered into providing a business model by the feisty, 24-year old marketing student.

Initially, my reaction was quick and incomplete. I decided to just write it off as an experiment, a work in progress, a living prototype - that sort of thing. I’m not sure, but I think she was laughing at us because we weren’t out to necessarily make money right off the bat - because we didn’t have a marketing plan.

What struck me the most, and led to this post, was her assertion that nothing on the Internet happened by accident. She cited EBay, Amazon, and others as all these other big shots as proof that she was right and we were crazy. The Chaj told it to her best: “Well, you read that somewhere so we’re not gonna argue with you.” Of course, everyone out there on the Internets knows that statement is categorically wrong. Though it’s true that most experiments don’t mature into solid business models, it’s also quite evident that what starts as a simple trial can easily grow to something quite more.

The moral of the story is that you can’t trust everything you read in books either. Sometimes it takes putting your nose to the ground to smell the rain and not just the Farmer’s Almanac’s prediction.

OK. So the experiemental phase is over. I tried a BeerCast with some of my friends a few days ago and though the content was good the sound quality was for shit. Last night, however, we made a switch to using MiniDisc to do the recording and the results were nothing short of phenomenal. More importantly, however, was the involvement of the passive audience.

When you BeerCast, you do it in a public environment and its inevitable that someone is going to sit next to you. This happened tonight while Chaj and I were speaking. We actually ran out of juice and needed new batteries. So as he ran across the street, I realized that we might have been loud so I explained to our neighbors what we were doing. Suddenly, there was a new excitement to deal with. It was immediately obvious that we needed to involve these nice folks and so the first guests were invited in.

Chaj and I have been mentally sparring on how long one of the BeerCasts should be. So far, we’ve managed to not go any less than 1:30:00 (an hour and thirty minutes for you out there). This reminds me of that Mark Twain saying, “I started to write you a short letter, but I wrote you a long one instead”. The insight being that it’s 1) hard to be concise and 2) almost innatural.

I am of firm believe that if you’ve listened an hour, you won’t care how much longer it goes since obviously there’s a conversation at work and you would hate to not know the ending. I could be wrong.

In any event, we went from us 2 to 5 and the conversation only got better. We’ve already got 2 new guests planned for the next show and hope to make it the unspoken rule for all shows going forward.

I hope you’ll be able to tolerate it all.. and if not, tell me when we should have stopped. We’re DESPERATE for feedback.

Date November 11, 2004 Location Mexican Radio Hosts ReRe Chaj Nads Tubie aka Grubie Bunyan Topics (0:02:06) RULES (0:02:55) TECH: Tivo, the new Xerox - It’s Portable Dammit. (0:19:50) Beer change (0:21:55) NEWS: Arafat is dead, Bush was elected. Freedom Haters. (0:33:30) NEWS: The Pope is Dead (0:34:50) NEWS: Cabinet Gets New Doors (0:35:30) NEWS: Elian Gonzales For Cabinet (0:36:20) SOCIETY: Don’t Take Pictures (of anything) (0:44:00) SOCIETY: Airport Insecurity (0:53:32) Beer change (0:54:20) SOCIETY: *$ (0:55:05) SOCIETY: Tips, WTF? (1:05:22) SOCIETY: Smoke outside, you bastards. (1:07:30) WOMEN: Flirt For Nothing (1:11:01) WOMEN: Maybe She’s Bi-polar (1:20:01) RETAIL: *$ vs. Timmy-Hos (1:24:01) FOOD: Meat is Neat (1:24:46) TALES: Halloween Hooch

I had dinner with my new business partner on Sunday evening. We were discussing some of the extreme differences in the generations and how they are using technology. She asked me a simple question to prove her point: “When you ring the doorbell, which finger do you use?”

Naturally, being the 29-going-on-40-year old I am, I raised my index finger. She asked me to guess what finger the kiddies were using. Guess what the answer was? That’s right, the thumb. I can see the headline 100 years from now, “Anthropologists discover past generations learned to use their opposable thumb in early 21st century”.

Unfortunately, most of my current social network does not include too many people in this age bracket (that’s a lie.. I’ve got 49 first cousins (I’m second from last) and all their kids are in that group but I don’t know who they are) so I have to wait till the babies that also seem entertained by the flashing lights of my cellphone grow up to fill me in. However, the little exposure I have had to their use of real-time scares me in all kinds of exciting ways.

Considering Stowe’s Continuous-Full-on Attention to this matter, I’ll close with a quote from his most recent observation:

The communitarianism of Gen Y manifests itself in many ways, but one is that quick response mentality that Dina alludes to. It fosters close social ties to remain in contact with and responsive to your social net. And, it turns out to enable a communitarian productivity increase, although not a personal one. So what may be veiwed as laziness from traditional, boomer eyes, may in fact be the outcome of social bonding. Like the European explorers of yesteryear judging tribal people the world over as inferior and lazy, the declining boomers might be spending the next twenty years whining about this lazy, shiftless, and tribal group, who will be motivated by an as-yet-uncaptured communitarian manifesto, living and working on a real-time beat.

Source: Get Real, “Gen Y and the Coming Communications Revolution”

So the question is, when you ring the doorbell, do you use your thumb?

This is really not on topic at all, except that it highlights the strange new circumstances Social Networking provides. Yesterday I heard about the tragic events surrounding Victoria Snelgrove’s death in the Fenway Park area. Apparently,the 21-year old was hit in the eye and died from the injury while celebrating after the Red Socks victory. This is not the first time riots have broken out from a sporting victory

I was talking to Jimmie last night about how strange it was to me that these things were happening. Today, I got another link from someone relating to this Red Sox victory, and I gotta tell you I am beyond words (not to mention laughter). Here they are:

F*** my wife for red sox tickets. - mw4m - 33

if anyone is willing to give up 2 red sox world series tickets, game 1 or 2, i will let you fuck my wife. she: 27, blond, blue, nice boobs, tight. serious only please this is no joke

What are you willing to do for two pressbox seats at the series? - m4w - 27

I’m a PR officer for Major League Baseball, and I’m very connected to say the least. I’ve got my tickets to the series, but I’ve also got the ability to put two people in a pressbox in either game 1 or 2. You would be sitting with a group of 10-15 VIP’s, mostly family members of the team owners. I’ve sat with this type of group before, and they tend to keep to themselves, so you won’t have to explain how you got your seats. They will just assume that you’re someone important and leave you alone. It would be helpful to dress nicely though, to make sure you don’t look too out of place.

If you’re a woman (or two women, even better!) between 18 and oh, 35, attractive and well-built, send me an e-mail and pictures of yourself to be considered. Tell me what you would be willing to do for these seats. The best proposal wins!

I have a Bleacher seat for you… - m4m - 28

…If you are a straight married man willing to do a self-dildo show for my brothers bachelor party while 10-15 men masturbate on you. Party will be video taped so don’t be shy. All the men are straight but enjoy watching homosexual shows. Party will be Saturday night and we will all go to the game together on sunday! Depending on the success of the show we may pay for beer and hot dogs at the game. Please send photo.

For anyone that has been, anxiously, awaiting the formalized spamming of your cell phone, get ready. OK. It’s (probably) not that bad.

Interspot is rolling out a new system that allows for interactive web-based banner ads that push a variety of coupons out to your mobile phone. As their marketing site claims:

The InterSpot Campaign Manager is an advanced software suite that enables you to configure and report on your outgoing messages. These messages can be changed on the fly during the campaign. InterSMS banners allow the reader to initiate an immediate response. Conventional banners typically use a landing page. This transition often breaks the sales process and looses the readers attention.

Source: Interspot Web Site

The system uses Flash for the front-end solution and, guessing, an SMS gateway on the server. I am still a bit curious why this method of transfer is sensible. The primary use case that I can see is for in-store promotions. The idea being that a retailer might push to you a special coupon that can be used in a retail store (imagine that a short code is sent that serves as a coupon).

What uses do you see this having? Would you ever opt into this?

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life networking with people all across the planet. As my buddy Jimmie claims, I’m just a Connector from start to finish. One of the most important tools in that lifestyle is the business card.

About a year ago, I started the SparkCard Company. Things have been running under the radar for some time but the unveiling is getting closer and closer. For anyone that doesn’t know what it is, feel free to check out OnlineCameo.com to see how it’s designed to help single folks.

About 4 months after I got started, I realized the full potential of the product and even more importantly, how it would change the way everyone networked. When all is said and done, the SparkCard will also be an evolution of the business card.

All that being said, I’m curious what kinds of things you’re putting on your business card. More importantly, I am curious what you DON’T use, but proboably would. Lastly, what are the constraints you’ve got that prevent you from putting more? As a corrolary, what’s in your sig file?

Here’s what’s in mine:

Business Card

• Front

  SparkCard
  
  Gregory Narain
  CEO/Founder
  
  917-4xx-6xxx
  greg AT sparkcard DOT com
  

• Back

  The SparkCard System provides you with
  a quick, convenient, and safe way to build
  your contacts and interact with your ever-
  evolving social network.

Signature File

Gregory Narain
CEO/Founder

Phone    917.xxx.xxxx
Mobile    917.xxx.xxxx

AIM    MxxMxxxNxx
ICQ    1xxxxxx

E-mail    greg AT sparkcard DOT com
Web    http://sparkcard.com

The Spark Card Company | Ignite the Moment

Clearly, there’s an obvious difference.

I’ve only seen X1 once before, but since Jason Calcanis is just mentioned it and is offering up some free licenses to people that link back to his coverage.. I figure why not. (thanks Pete).

Let the Desktop Wars begin!

I tried yesterday to get the Google Desktop Search to work, but of course, my laptop is filled to the brim and the beast requires 1GB - yes, 1GB - to install so I didn’t get past the warning that I was not worthy.

I’m really curious to hear from anyone that’s installed it and got some use out of it. Can you send screenshots? Tell me how effective it is?

Inquiring minds want to know.