12.28.06
Posted in RSS, video, wisdom of crowds at 12:06 pm by Matthew Reinbold
Mashable, a great resource for the latest and greatest in the social software scene, has posted it’s list of 2007 predictions. While end of the year lists are vogue and mostly unfounded Pete Cashmore’s predictions actually have the weight of savvy analysis behind them. His list:
1. Online Contests Become Huge
2. RSS Won’t go Mainstream but Widgets will Explode like a Sony battery
3. Online Video Fallout by everyone not named YouTube
4. YouTube becomes bigger than MySpace (but nobody can meaure that)
5. Mobile Social takes off (even reading the description I’m not sure what this is)
6. YouTube meets dating – because cute folks aren’t popular enough already
7. Metacafe acquired
8. End of Flock? Bah, I predicted that last quarter.
9. TV Show related social networks – ugh; just give me compelling entertainment. Don’t make me work for it.
10. YouTube Celebrity Appears in a Hollywood Movie.
Full descriptions of each are on the Mashable site. Is he right? What are your predictions?
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12.27.06
Posted in business, virtual worlds at 10:14 am by Matthew Reinbold
Valleywag continues to raise alarms about 2006’s virtual media darling, Second Life:
The first thing that’s going to happen, or rather not happen, is that the regular press isn’t going go back over this story looking for real figures. As much as they’ve written about the virtual economy and the next net, the press hasn’t really covered Second Life as business story or tech story so much as a trend story. The sine qua non of trend stories is that a trend is fast-growing. The Residents figure was never really part of the story, it just provided permission to write about about how crazy it is that all the kids these days are getting avatars. By the time any given writer was pitching that story to their editors, any skepticism about the basic proposition had already been smothered.
No journalist wants to have to write “When we told you that Second Life had 1.3 million members, we in no way meant to suggest that figure referred to individual people. Fortune regrets any misunderstanding.” And since no one wants to write that, no one will. They’ll shift their coverage without pointing out the shift to their readers.
There are some great skewering of membership numbers in there.
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12.22.06
Posted in open source at 2:23 pm by Matthew Reinbold
Looking for that last minute gift for the geek in your life? The 2007 release of the Software for Starving Students compilation is available as of today. I’m friends with one of the chief poo-bas behind the project; he mentioned that the team was up until 4:00am getting the package together.
From the press release:
Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone). We’ve gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more.
More info:
* Project homepage: http://softwarefor.org/
* A complete list of included titles: http://softwarefor.org/faq.html#q5
If you’d like to help out the easiest thing to do would be to help digg the news. This holiday season its software for everyone!
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12.21.06
Posted in open source, wisdom of crowds at 8:23 pm by Matthew Reinbold
In software we’ve been able to see the benefits of open source. A community’s knowledge is tapped for the creation of software that benefits all. Can the same approach be applied to automobiles? That’s what the OsCar project is attempting to do:
For Merz, the process of collaborative design for aluminum and rubber is no different than for Linux and Firefox. Or, as Merz would have it, “hardware” over “software.”
“It’s about being modular without having too many modules,” Merz said. He’s broken down OScar’s design to six such modules: Board (the drivetrain), Body (chassis), Engines, Power, Safety, and Information Systems. Once the coupling points are agreed upon, design for each module can run independently. And as a bonus, a modular design allows the theoretical OScar driver to swap parts as needed, easily changing a passenger car to a pick-up truck.
Unfortunately applying software production to complex hardware isn’t going that well:
With open source software, contributors have the instant gratification of seeing their work validated and bundled into a rollout that’s quickly distributed to millions of users. With hardware, particularly something as complex as an automobile, the slowness and “will anything ever come of it?” perception can create an uphill battle. But the difference between designing a car and designing a browser might not be as big as people think. “Every car manufacturer tries to keep the design strictly virtual for as long as possible,” Merz said. “There’s nothing new in what we’re doing.” Once the design is complete, he’d market it to manufacturers.
So, yes or no, can an open source car make it to a store near you? Or are there just too many physical hurdles in the way?
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12.20.06
Posted in community building, open source at 6:16 pm by Matthew Reinbold
Wikipedia, despite occasional inaccuracies and flame wars, is a pretty handy resource. Now the people behind that have gone and launched OpenServing.com. The site promises to offer a wiki/blog hybrid with Digg-style article voting for any and all that want it. Communities can keep the ad revenue that they might earn.
Granted, the sites sports the painful design of many wiki sites but my initial query into customization was met with a positive response. Wikia (the commercial arm spun off from Wikipedia) promises to provide all the bandwidth, storage, and software that a person would need.
Call me cynical, but what’s the catch?
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Posted in virtual worlds at 1:10 am by Matthew Reinbold
We’ve previously touched on many of the challenges that Second Life, the virtual world, faces. IBM is one of the companies that recently made news for jumping in with both feet. The Eponymous Pickle has its impressions of an IBM get- together and it’s not that flattering:
I received an invitation from IBM to attend a tour of their new virtual islands today. This was the first time I attended a formal meeting in SL. There were about 50 or so avatar participants and maybe 10 IBM speakers, tour guides and helpers there. Not all of the participants (including me) were highly skilled at controlling their character, so there was lots of bumping, colliding and fidgeting before getting people in their seats. The interface does not lend itself to precise control. Some seated avatars were so large and strangely adorned that I wanted to yell ‘down in front’! But it did not actually matter since there was little to see down in front.
Like most SL presentations this consists of words typed in a chat box and supporting visuals. The visuals, though, require some adeptness with zooming in to a screen, also something more of an advanced technique. As a result the visuals were mostly just repetitions of the chat text. While the presentation goes on, you can IM other people in the crowd to create a back conversation, but that too can become confusing, and if you type in the wrong box, your acid comment becomes part of the public presentation!
The article correctly points out that interface issues are something that can be fixed; the idea of pulling geographically dispersed people together is good.
Has anybody else tried Second Life? How easy was it for you to get around?
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12.19.06
Posted in social networks at 2:07 am by Matthew Reinbold
As I mentioned yesterday Time Magazine made social content makers its ‘person’ of the year. Tonight, by way of the mashable blog comes Google’s list of top search terms. Incredibly four of the top 10 are some kind of social network.
The top ten are:
1. bebo (very popular in England and with anti-Myspace hipsters)
2. myspace
3. world cup
4. metacafe (anybody used/seen this one? I’ve heard of it but never joined)
5. radioblog
6. wikipedia (everyone’s favorite source of breaking info on KFed)
7. video
8. rebelde (wtf? is this some Spanish language thing?)
9. mininova (arrh! here be da pirates!)
10. wiki (while not a specific social network, its the tech behind many)
Meanwhile, in another corner of cyberspace, Khoi Vinh posits that the days of the ponderous, large social networks are numbered. From his site:
These networks will continue to thrive, no doubt, and continue to be influential. But it seems to me that next year what weÂ’ll see is the emergence of the post-social Internet, in which the tools of social networking take on the qualities of ubiquitous givens, and in which the previous style of expansive, cross-demographic digital hubs like those mentioned above are going to be joined by a score of smaller, more focused niche networks catering to narrower tastes.
And thus the rub:
The question IÂ’ve always asked is: how many of these networks can a single user remain faithful to? In this coming world where everything will include some form of social networking, I have to scratch my head and wonder if IÂ’ll be able to remain current on anything more than two or three of them. Who has the time for more, if even that many?
*sigh. I can personally relate to this. Over the course of 2006 I’ve found myself behind four different ‘communities’ – mutednoise (social media), Bloomburst (software development), MilitantGeek (TShirt and Tech Commentary), and CodeAway.org (programmer socializing and web working). To date they’ve all grown out of my natural curiosity. However, it’s really too much for just one individual to due justice to. What makes each valuable and interesting to read on a daily basis is constant updates. The obvious solution is to bring other contributors. But odds are those that are interested in writing are already off doing their own thing. Professional media networks get around this by paying for content. Of course, if the sites made the kind of money where I could pay for other authors I would be able to spend much more time on them myself. 
What’s someone with too many domains and not enough time to do? If micro networks are the future how will anyone keep up?
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12.18.06
Posted in Social Media at 1:28 pm by Matthew Reinbold
Well, maybe not you specifically. Time Magazine recently announced its annual equivalent of a PBS popularity contest, the ‘Person of the Year’. Instead of sucking it up and picking a controversial choice in a year of so-so they nominated everyone who has something to do with user generated content:
But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.
The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It’s not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution.
I will admit, social media is a big deal – I wouldn’t be writing on this site if I didn’t. However, the article reads like three day old pizza; it just doesn’t taste right. It’s typical of mainstream media coming late to the party and trying to catch up: they oversimplify and over expound.
Grandiose statements like ‘cosmic compendium of knowledge’ may sell magazines but overstate the truth; social media must be taken in context. The future is a blend of old and new ways of self-expression. Anyone who says otherwise is only seeing half the picture. The revolution was years ago – now we’re in the throws of reconciliation.
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12.12.06
Posted in creative commons at 3:48 pm by Matthew Reinbold
Growing up the holidays were always special for a number of reasons – one of them being the time off to work through a stack of library finds. Now that I’m old I don’t make it to my local library as much as I’d like to. However, through the magic of self-publishing and this distributed thingee called the Internet, I’m never left in the lurch for something to dwell on.
Via BoingBoing comes word about Blindsight. Its a Sci-Fi novel by Peter Watts recently released under Creative Commons license. You can download it from his site.
If your reading desire is a bit more practical check out Code, Version 2. This is the second version of Lawrence Lessig’s book ‘Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace’ that went through a wiki to update it for current crises.
Finally, an oldee but goodie is Rick Dakan’s ‘Geek Mafia’. Self published (with the poor editing as proof), this work is also available under a CC license. But don’t let the typos scare you off (if you’re reading this, chances are you have a pretty high typo tolerance). It’s a great geek caper story.
How about everyone else? What are you reading for the holidays?
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12.11.06
Posted in creative commons at 1:07 am by Matthew Reinbold
Creative Commons has launched a new project CC Labs. At its simplest it allows content creators to embed additional meta information in their license building process. From Lawrence Lessig’s description of the project:
WeÂ’ve begun testing an architecture that will enable people to specify (in the metadata attached to the license) where to go for rights, or stuff, beyond those specified in the license. Thus, for example, if youÂ’re a Flickr snapper, and license your photos under a noncommercial license, you can specify in the metadata who or where someone should go to clear commercial rights. (See, e.g., Scoopt)
So hereÂ’s an example. Gary New VisionÂ’s got a mySpace page. On that page, you can download some of his music. That music is licensed under a CC BY-NonCommercial license. But if you click on the CC icon, the Commons Deed now tells you where you can go to license the music commercially.
As I explain in the extended entry, this “rights beyond” link need not be to commercial rights. It could be a tip jar, or t-shirts, or even another CC license. Thus, anyone offering content under a CC-NC license should, in my view, offer an alternative licenses as well — CC-BY-SA — which would mean the content could also be included within copyleft projects. But more on that soon …
Frankly, any tool that allow content creators to easily navigate the copyright waters, sans lawyers, has to be a good thing, right?
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