Scott Rosenberg's Salon article on SuperNova..

Scott Rosenberg wrote in Life on the edge:

The danger here is that the dynamo of the Silicon Valley boom-bust cycle, in its hunger for Next Big Thing fuel, will seize upon Wi-Fi, blogs and Web services and then spit them out, chewed-up and spent -- before they've ever had a chance to mature and show off their potential.

Scott may be right. However...

The biggest breakthroughs may been made and identified already. UserLand has been a font of architectural innovation, and the other toolmakers have created moderately usable and lively social experiences for the text and keyboard crowd. But independent adoption may have found some natural limits. The rate of Livejournal subscriptions seem to be slowing some while manila (an enterprise blogging tool) seems to be taking off.

Modest amounts of cash injected without major disruption may allow blogging systems to reach a wider audience:

• improved reliability and scalability;
• serious user experience testing, redesign and reengineering;
• off-the-shelf training and other enterprise adoption materials;
• increased integration with Microsoft software, Sony cameras, Nokia phones and other leveraging products;
• and BigCo-ready sales and support teams.

How do you go from 1 million users to 10 million? to 100 million? Are the needs of the many reflected by the pioneers? Or does the toolkit need to change at its core? I'm reading The Chasm Companion: A Fieldbook to Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado. This seems like one of those times.

Only clueful VCs will buy blogging; it is very early and populated by many craftsmen personalities and curmudgeons. (I could be wrong.) Portals and ISPs - and others who value loyal visitors and community building - have a vested interest in coopting the blogosphere. Will GM be the first company to bundle a blog with every car? Since Earthlink became a Trellix customer and Interland bought the company, see others launch environments where everyone gets a blog. Where interests lead, money follows.

[a klog apart]

Good article on the possible future of blogging.
11:14:15 AM  #  comment []

iSpeak It 1.0. iSpeak It will convert any document it into an MP3 in iTunes using a Mac's built-in text-to-speech capabilities. Users can then listen to it at their leisure or transfer it to an iPod and listen to it on the go. [AppleScript Info]

This might be great for English as Second Language learners!
10:43:12 AM  #  comment []

Radio Wishlist - More firewall support..

Dave Winer reports a new "Radio" feature: Proxy Exceptions. This opens up intranet ftp sites and RSS feeds when I tell Radio to ignore my org's proxy service for servers on an exception list

Excellent for klogging!

Now I want more:

1. Let me share/publish my exceptions list. Perhaps as an opml file? An RSS file?
2. Let me subscribe to one or more exceptions lists.
3. Let me publish an aggregated exception list combined from my own entries and my subscriptions.
4. Autodetect urls that don't have a known top level domain (.com, .uk, etc.). Perhaps confirm with the user that it isn't a typo. Ask if I want to add this server to my exceptions list.
5. Validate that exceptions can still be reached and found.

[aka Blue Sky Radio]

[a klog apart]
10:40:22 AM  #  comment []