Information Architecture, User Experience & Other Obsessions
Owner of inkblurt.com
This is nuts — and evidently done entirely with things like javascript. The only Flash I see implemented is in the fake iTunes app.
Check this out at osx.portraitofakite.com before Jobs sues them and makes them take it down.
Yanked from The Apple Blog
The Buzz Report: Five reasons social networking doesn’t work – CNET.com
I think this article kind of misses the point. Sure, social network websites as distinct businesses are dying off — I’m surprised anybody thought they’d make money doing it to begin with. It’s like selling ice in the Arctic.
The phenomenon of Social Networking isn’t dying — it’s thriving. It’s just that the whole Internet is a social network.
Once people start realizing that, and the tools for connecting people outside of proprietary “sites” have become more useful and widespread, then there’s just no need for “social networking sites” like Friendster.
The only kind that will survive are specialty sites, like dating/matchmaking services or ones where people already share something like a career discipline or hobby.
Otherwise, the Internet already links everybody.
It does make the astute observation, though, that the problem with a lot of artificial social network sites is that they don’t have anything happening once you get there. That’s why things like LiveJournal (which I’ve basically given up on, but it’s still growing like mad) and RSS aggregators linking people’s blogs are thriving.
Social networks as a money-making business plan are, though, mostly kaput.
IHT has a story about how the US has hit the watershed “majority broadband” point. US Leans to Broadband
As recently as six months ago, a majority of Americans were using dial-up connections at home. In the first quarter of this year, broadband connections for the first time overtook dial-up.
This is significant, I think, not just because of the types of services and speed that are available, which seems to be the focus of the article. But because of what might happen when a majority of people on the internet fundamentally change the way they connect to it, from a temporary “phone call” paradigm to a “permanent resident” paradigm.
There’s a big difference between dialing in to access something as a remote service and having it always there, always available. And it’s not like having cable TV always available — because that’s just broadcast content. The Internet is a place that’s always moving, always changing and evolving. A planet unto itself. Having a broadband feed means you’ve moved from being a frequent visitor to a neighborhood to having a lot and house on one of its thoroughfares.
Evidently the two book reviews I’ve written for Boxes and Arrows have been rated as “Good” here:
EServer TC Library: Authors: Hinton, Andrew
I never got reviews before!
Even though, really, these are reviews of reviews … which is kind of meta-ish. Fitting, I suppose.
This is my experiment in coining a Technorati tag.
We’ll see if this works.
I like this term “metafatigue” — it started out as “metaexhaustion” in a previous post, but I like ‘fatigue’ better, and it kind of sounds like “metal fatigue” which fits somehow.
I’ll define it here as “the feeling of enervation and frustration achieved through impossibly trying to control and track floods of information with metadata.” That’s sloppy but it’ll do.
Technorati Tag: metafatigue
Edited to add, about 10 hours later: And it worked!! Just hop over to that link and check it out. Neato.
Looks like a fab interview including John Seely Brown, at the “Supernova” conference. I haven’t read it yet, but Brown’s involved, so for me it’s a must-read anyway. Can Your Firm Develop a Sustainable Edge? Ask John Hagel and John Seely Brown
I got all excited for a minute when I saw it was connected to Wharton, but then my hopes were dashed when I realized it’s not being held there (close to me in Philly) but in SanFrancisco.
Hey… SF … what’s the deal with hogging all the excellent happenings huh?? Share a little, maybe?
ganked from Joho
I’ve been trying to tweak my weblog to make use of all the various meta resources that seem to be cropping up like chickweed. And I have a confession to make … I’m sick of it.
I know that in order to be a part of the true enlightened blogigarchy, I should have RSS feeds in every conceivable format running smoothly on all cylinders.
But even after several hours last week, I was unable to figure out what the heck Technorati actually does with tags and how it finds them. Apparently if you just post something using WordPress and use categories, the categories should automatically end up as Technorati-compatible tags. But according to Technorati, it gets these from your “Atom” RSS feed. Evidently I actually publish one of these, but when I look at it, I don’t see my categories showing up in the format Technorati specifies.
That’s just one example.
Then it occurred to me that I was burning hours just trying to be sure that I was contributing correctly to some kind of grand schema, when all I really wanted to do was write and push “Publish” and be DONE with it.
Honestly, I don’t give a flying fubar about thorough and relentless meta-tagging of all of my content. I realize that it’s the greatest thing since giving blood to the Red Cross, and that I’d be truly revolutionized if I had everything running through del.icio.us, and if I could only be a fully engaged denizen in the groundswell that is folksonomy.
But maybe I’m too lazy. I want the web to just work.
Or maybe I’m just in a crummy mood today?
Likely it’s some of each.
Technorati Tag: metafatigue ;-)
Edited to Add:
Later, I decided to change this post to “Metafatigue” … it started out as “metaexhaustion” which is too much of a mouthful. Then I posted a new post about it and watched Technorati and sure enough it came up there. This is fun. (6/23/05)
The Internet: Past, Present and Future – Internet & WWW History — an excellent history of the birth of the Internet.
Also see this timeline.
Article in Business Week, The Power Of Us, explains how Skype is the latest major example of how the vast organism of humanity that is the Internet can rise up and form emergent systems and infrastructures.
I like the language used here — it’s appropriate, I think, to the magnitude of the phenomenon. It’s evolutionary, a massive natural shift, and even super-corporations are puny in its wake.
Says Skype CEO Niklas Zennström: “It’s almost like an organism.” A big, hairy, monstrous organism, that is. The nearly 1 billion people online worldwide — along with their shared knowledge, social contacts, online reputations, computing power, and more — are rapidly becoming a collective force of unprecedented power. For the first time in human history, mass cooperation across time and space is suddenly economical. “There’s a fundamental shift in power happening,” says Pierre M. Omidyar, founder and chairman of the online marketplace eBay Inc. (EBAY ) “Everywhere, people are getting together and, using the Internet, disrupting whatever activities they’re involved in.”
Thanks to the instructions on tweaking my .htaccess file at John’s Weblog » Moved to WordPress, my bloglines link should still work.
However, while I do plan on keeping the ‘memekitchen’ domain for the foreseeable future, in order to keep all the links in the world still pointing to me, I do suggest switching to Inkblurt.com if you’re syndicating me.
Thanks!
I moved my web host from Pair.com to Bluehost.com. Why? Because it was insane not to. A cursory comparison of what they offer for the price makes it pretty obvious. (Bluehost vs. Pair)
But it’s also because I wanted to change from Movable Type to WordPress.
I really miss getting comments on a regular basis, and Movable Type has no built-in sophisticated methods for combatting this problem except for their TypeKey service, and spammers were even using that. WordPress has proxy checking and other things built in. But WordPress requires the use of MySQL, and to do that at Pair meant upgrading to a higher service level for another $100 — that’s just nuts when BlueHost is a very respectable outfit and offers better features at their basic level than pair offers even at their most advanced level of service.
I managed to get everything installed, though, very easily. I’m still not sure if I want to go about trying to be sure any possible “permalink” out there on the web will end up working for memekitchen and inkblurt, etc. I figure people can search for it on here if they get a 404 (I need to edit that 404 template — add to my todo list).
I have to say the WordPress interface is clunky compared to Movable Type, and there are some confusing things about it (for example when you’re editing or creating a regular “page” sometimes the tab tells you it’s a “post” instead, and the “post” tab/interface is used even when you’re editing other things that don’t quite count as posts) . Plus I’m hoping that a lot of functionality I was expecting might be found in their considerable PlugIn offerings.
Still, it’s free, so why not try it out?
Anyway, feel free to leave a comment. I want to see if activity can pick up now that people don’t have to register with a separate service. And I’m curious to see how much spam actually gets stopped by filtering out open proxies and such.
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BTW I also tweet at @inkblurt.
