"I find myself using weblogs as a great sources of information. Although they are personal opinions, they're also good filters on certain topics. I regularly visit a collection of weblogs that together cover the span of my interests. Each weblog filters out the relevant information from the web and hands them to me in handy format. Anybody who read David Gelernter's book "Mirror Worlds" (see a small review here) must recognize the similarities with what Gelernter calls "the trellis". The trellis is a dataflow architecture, a little like a stack of filters so that the users at the topic are not bothered by the massive amounts of small details but are able to get the information they need. With weblogs these filters are actual humans, and they are way better at sorting information than any piece of software. The way Radio Userland offers users the oppertunity to subscribe to eachothers weblogs (and automatically incorporate the other's writings) is an excellent example of the similarities. I built my own trellis out of the weblogs on the topics I'm interested in. These weblogs in turn might use other weblogs etc. In my eyes this is a very powerfull idea and that is why I'm a big proponent of weblogs...
but...I have the feeling we can do more for users."
Unfortunately, I am too much of an NT (non-techie) to understand what the heck Berco is talking about throughout the rest of his rant, but it seems like a wonderful experiment. Take a look at 2blog. (from Daypop Top 40)" [via "steven"]
Oh...I get it. Actually, I've thought of this concept myself at an extremely high level. (Not to steal any of Berco's thunder on the idea.) I'm searching for the post to my weblog on the subject. (hmmm....no luck)
Anyways, I originally conceived the concept as a 'portable device' contaning your blog software and data. Portable meaning anything capable of storing both the application and the data and being accessible from a widely different number of devices. Berco improves this concept to include as well other services based applications (~ GoogleAPI searching). Even better yet, appearing to be somthing of a programmer, Berco's also got a working prototype.
With Bero's setup you carry your applications & data on a Disk on a Key (a glorified USB memory chip) and plug-in the chip to any USB compliant device and presto - access to the services stored on the chip running in it's own device independent (relatively speaking) web service based application.
It's kind of like being able to carry around the hard drive that contains your copy of Radio and then plugging it to any PC you want and being able to access the software from that PC. That's actually a very crude look at it though. The real power of this concept is that the portability of the data itself. Not just the device that it's on.
Exciting stuff!
9:00:15 AM 
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