Jeff Random - new media and metatheory remix

OpenMoko is a GNU / Linux based open software development platform. Developers have full access to OpenMoko source and they can tailor their implementations to underlying hardware platforms. -openmoko

Back in an old post about Mobile music & DRM I suggested that an open platform handset was a paradigm busting market opportunity.

OpenMoco seems to have gone there especially in their philosophy:

For the core team pushing this project, an open phone is not really even a product. It’s the very embodiment of their vision of technology. They absolutely, passionately, believe that something as fundamental to our lives as the mobile phone must be opened.

It seems like carrier-hopping, mesh-networking, flipt to SIP, P2P mobile apps that allow users persistent data access through dissemination networking are only a hop skip and a jump away. Especially the way the rate of change (delta) is increasing visions of ubiquitous computing loom large.

In the near term anything that helps with blurring the lines between carrier, ISP, peer, wifi access point, voice, VOIP, IM, and all of the other roles/participants in a networked conversation is welcome.

Of course all of this open opportunity means that it’s more important than every to focus on the metatheory. Whether you call them corporate constitutions or philosophy, more and more the purpose/goals of a company/platform/meme are as important if not more important than their current technological capabilities.

corporate constitutions based on theories of stakeholder justice {…} do what few strategic heuristics and frameworks are capable of in a world of growing hypercompetition, hyperimitation, and discontinuity: they unerringly guide decision makers towards defensible sources of value from which to craft revolutionary strategies. But more importantly, they define and shape purpose – which is, and always has been, the only mechanism for going beyond market advantage. - Umair Haque

It’s great to see what looks like a very serious player entering the market with a commitment FOSS type philosphies.

Viva La Revolucion!

“We”ll need to rethink a few things
copyright
authorship
identity
ethics
aesthetics
rhetoric
governance
privacy
commerce
love”

From this excellent video




Sounds exactly like what we should be considering regarding a singularity.

There is only one time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large Machine. Later that Machine may run faster, but there is only one time when it is born.

You and I are alive at this moment.

KK for Wired

Program yourself. Make sure that you have the volume turned up.

These Animated Search Engine Bot Crawl Visualizations are the result of a one year experiment on the behaviour of Yahoo, MSN & Google search engine bots.

You can click on the pictures to watch the animated visualizations from drunkmenworkhere.

MSN Bot Visual Animation




Yahoo Slurp Visual Animation

Google Bot Visual Animation


Definitely worth further study.

Quick Conclusion - For Google shorter URLs help rankings & comment spam does hurt rankings.

For you SEO types wistful for the days of chasing the green fairy, there is even a graphical visualization of pagerank in their test matrix.

The paths are similiar to natural forms. That fits with the idea that evolution is efficent search leading leading to winning forms. Perhaps we will find that the closer advanced visualizations resemble natural forms, that the visualization improves and/or the engines become.

This fantastic video

is an deft piece using the long standing adult industry marketing tradition of parody in reverse. In this case it self referentially honors and adds new media production values to adult marketing archetypes.

The site itself is a great example of what mainstream can learn from the adult industry. The site uses ‘traditional’ adult internet marketing tools, to produce an innovative mainstream offering.

This includes a warning page with age verification, the equivalent of a Free Hosted Gallery (FHG), sample movie etc. the only thing missing was a join page link.

If they were an affiliate program I would send traffic to them.

Linkology is the “50 most linked to blogs relate” according to data derived from Technorati. What makes this interesting, is the implied assumption that these are 50 of the most important blogs.

When looked at from an SEO perspective, then the value is relatively obvious. However when looked at from a PR and/or effective reach perspective then suddenly the value plummets. Part of that is audience fragmentation although that would compare well with relevancy in SEO.

Going down the list, you can almost hear the apologist defences for why some of the sites are on the list. However, at the same time, these are the sites dominating Technorati.

If you are selling advertising for one of these sites, then being able to say you are the # most linked blog certainly is a useful way to raise the percieved value in the mind of a semi niave potential advertiser. Of course if you are able to command a certain price for it, then regardless of how well informed a buyer you have established a true market value.

The takeaway? Sometimes by making people think a resources is valuable, it actually becomes valuable. This is even easier to exploit when you have single source metrics.

Previously I referenced the value of trust.

Idea - The more a network facilitates trust, the easier it is for network users to form groups.

From David Reed re: The Power of Community Building
Group Forming Networks maximize per user value and the dominant value in a typical network tends to shift from one category to another as the scale of the network increases.

If so then: Trust enabling tools not only allow your network to be group forming, but also maximize per user value in your community (Group Forming Network).

Making your brand Secure, Memorable, and Global sounds like what an IP firm, and or marketing agency should do for you. As domain names = brands more and more it’s also the properties that you would like to have your indentifier (brand and/or URL) have on the internet.

Up until now Zooko’s Triangle has argued for ‘choose any two’ in the same way that you can generally ‘choose any two’ amongst Good, Fast & Cheap.

Now Marc Steigler suggests a system for making “secure, memorable, and global identifiers to use on the Internet”

The PetName system allows unique, global, and memorable identifiers by using trusted relationships.

The metatheory extrapolates well whether you use the example of preventing paypal phishing, or apply the theory to purchase recommendations.

Viral content is content that consumers want to propogate, in essence creating word of mouth marketing (WOMM).

Roundabout is a great example of a viral marketing video for this crossfader.

TalkDigger is a great tool that lets you search conversations about a specific URL.

This is a metasearch that covers Technorati, Google Blog, Bloglines, Feedster, BlogDigger, Icerocket, MSN Search, Google, Yahoo!
You can outuput the results as an RSS feed to keep track of your sites and stay involved in the conversation.