Jeff Random

Nivi offers a great metaphor for understanding the benefits of granularity for RSS content.

The RSS is the TCP/IP of Web 2.0 is a very interesting read, as is Nivi in general.


—

RSS is like an API for content. RSS gives you access to a web site’s data just like an API gives you access to a web site’s computing power. Most important, RSS gives you access to your data that you have locked up on a web site.

Every Web 1.0 company will have to decide what content they will open with RSS. For example, Amazon already makes their content like their book catalog available through their API. But will Amazon open up user-contributed content through RSS?

Will you have access to

• Your explicit content like your purchase history and reviews you’ve written?

• Your drive-by content like the books you have recently browsed on Amazon?

• Other user’s content such as book reviews?

I believe I heard Jon Udell say that the winners of the Web 2.0 orgy will be the sites that don’t lock up user-contributed content. Instead, the winners will create a compelling ecosystem for you to store your content and bring in your content from other sites via RSS. Food for thought.

Note: This is Part 3 of a continuing series called RSS is the TCP/IP of Web 2.0. You may also like Parts 1 and 2.

Metadata that reconstructs the file via the web – exactly what we need these days. The more granular content gets the better this works.

There needs to be a standard so that it’s completely unambiguous just what one means when one says “Copy Optimized DVD Audio disc”. It’s that clear specification that will make embedded players and perfect peer-to-peer network copies possible. A disc containing such files could be popped into your home stereo DVD player and made to play, copy and share with no more user intervention than hitting a button…

Via Boing Boing

“DJ’s are like collaborative filters – but the best ones are also sources of novelty. Noise, if you like, – but good noise. Filters that can jump from peak to peak – from things I might like now, to things I will like when my preferences will evolve (or, better yet, that evolve my preferences). Algorithmic solutions don’t do this yet – and probably won’t for a while, because it’s a (really) hard problem. But it’s also a (really) big market gap.” link

You don’t need an algorithmic solution when you can have your users brute force it for you more accurately, and also introduce novelty.

The question becomes where are you going to get a dedicated group of users who are willing to invest their time, efforts and attention into your system?

Untold numbers of music fans & teenagers seems like a good place to start.

“MTV Hits, an MTV offshoot channel in UK, will turn into a fully interactive service, encouraging viewers to choose playlists and influence the on-screen look of the network.

From later this year viewers will initially be invited to create their own home pages on MTV.co.uk, with features including personal blogs, all-time favourite track lists and current favourites.” –link

Would you like porn with that?

Mobile phone retailers in China are offering free adult video clips as a value add for handset purchasers. – Link

This has almost entirely replaced my use of the SEO Open plugin. It’s incredibly useful when exploring potential link partners for offpage optimization.

One of the most useful extensions for Firefox it will show you PageRank, Alexa Rank & now Compete Rank for each page.

Working for AVN in the Adult Entertainment Industry teaches you the value of relationships. The AVN media network spans magazines, tradeshows, and websites. IMHO the following quote applies to all of them:

Originally by Carlo from MobHappy

There have been plenty of people, err… pumping up the mobile porn market, not the least of which the mobile porn sellers themselves, billing the content as the ever-elusive “killer app” for mobile. The numbers have been a little suspect all along, whether it’s saying half of Korea has accessed mobile porn, or the supposed billions mobile porn will pull in. But a piece in the Guardian does some calculations, and comes to the conclusion that maybe things aren’t as big as they’re made out to be (no pun intended).

If you buy in to the analyst prediction that mobile porn will be worth $2.3 billion in 2010, there’s a few takeaways: first, that’s not tremendous growth in dollar terms from the $1 billion market they say mobile porn will be this year. Second, there should be well over 3 billion mobile users by 2010, compared with 1 billion today — so porn spending per subscriber won’t even hold steady. Finally, that $2.3 billion would represent just 5% of the overall mobile content market, hardly making it a killer app.

There will always be porn consumers. But it’s hard to believe there are that many dedicated enough to want porn on their mobile phones, as opposed to the TV or internet. As Mike points out at Techdirt, porn helped cable and satellite TV, VCRs, DVD players and the net thrive, mainly because each successive technology offered an improvement in the viewing experience. The only benefit mobile porn offers (alongside a few drawback) is portability, but how many people want to watch porn when they’re on the go, out in public?

But the most interesting comments come from one Julia Dimambro, the MD of mobile porn purveyor Cherry Media, who alleges operators are playing down porn because they don’t want to be seen as promoting it. While carriers do have a love-hate affair with porn, their restraint appears to have more to do with reality about the level of demand setting in than any puritanical leadings, and Ms. Dimambro’s numbers about the popularity of her company’s site seem to prove this.

She said back in February it was getting 1 million hits per month. Now, the Guardian says it gets 300,000 hits a month. The fact that hits are a useless metric aside, the figures raise two possibilities. Either the company’s playing fast and loose with its numbers to try and make the market look bigger than it really is, or it’s seen a dramatic drop over the last six months. Whichever is true, neither one reflects too well on the company or the mobile porn industry.

The real problem here is too much focus on immediate revenues. IMHO the smart play currently for mobile is to worry about building your audience first and cashing in later.

Kottke make a great case for the web as the next operating system here

Compared to “standalone” Web apps and desktop apps, applications developed for this hypothetical platform have some powerful advantages. Because they run in a Web browser, these applications are cross platform (assuming that whoever develops such a system develops the local Web server part of it for Windows, OS X, Linux, your mobile phone, etc.), just like Web apps such as Gmail, Basecamp, and Salesforce.com. You don’t need to be on a specific machine with a specific OS…you just need a browser + local Web server to access your favorite data and apps.

It raises one of the major obstacles facing the idea of Web as Operating System – Lameness

One thing that might deter you from writing Web-based applications is the lameness of Web pages as a UI. That is a problem, I admit. There were a few things we would have really liked to add to HTML and HTTP. What matters, though, is that Web pages are just good enough.

With the introduction of ifthen YubNub could be a solution to the “lameness” of web pages as user interface.

Just as using CSS allows separation of the content from the presentation, Yubnub allows separation of the interface from the application.

This allows for the hypothetical “WebOS” to have the advantages without suffering from “lameness”

Jeff from BuzzMachine says:

– Link

Trust in network environments
The need for a cognitive model of trust
The socio-cognitive model of trust
The beliefs of trust: what X thinks about Y
The “Motivation belief” of trust
Yin-yang trust
Internal and external trust
The sources of trust
Trust and irrationality
Degrees of trust
Trust and risk
Trust and delegation
Trust and control
Trust and adjustable autonomy
The dynamics of trust
Trust and experiences
Trust elicits trust
Trust atmosphere
Trust as a three parties relationship: contracts and authorities
Trust as a communicative act
Trust as a fuzzy network
Trust in contract nets
Trust, security and technology
Trust and technical knowledge
Trust and knowledge management

Originally from Smart Mobs at August 19, 2005, 03:55

For a few years now, my social circle has used the expression:

“If you don’t have a phone you aren’t a person”

Without the flexibility that near instant communication brings you need to block out specific times & ensuring nothing changes en route for every meeting. This raises the ‘cost’ of making plans to an unacceptable level.