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Wednesday, March 19, 2003 |
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Sunrise 6:09am (10 minutes ago) Back Bay Newport Beach, California. 8:56:44 PM  trackback []
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Oh Man... I am ready to cook this up right now even though I just had dinner! Source: The Aardvark Speaks; 3/19/2003; 1:55:14 PM Aloo Gobi. Pretty much a standard veggie curry. Aloo is potato and gobi is cauliflower, so you get an idea what it's like. Serves 3.
Quarter the cauliflower, remove the trunk, then cut or pluck into smaller pieces. Peel the potatoes and cut into small pieces. 8:32:53 PM trackback []
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Source: Marc's Voice; 3/19/2003; 1:56:58 PM Open Standards Efforts - status report #3. Back in January - I started writing about "how cool it would be" to have some open standards that moved our world beyond linking. In other words a grass roots, ad hoc semantic web. The idea was that with some new kinds of "micro-content" and some open source servers to act like "semantic DNS" servers and a bunch of hosted, shared, open databases - our industry could establish shared reviews, identities, topics, conversations and media. I have been spending allot of time since then, talking to people - finding out what's going out there - including lots of stuff completely compatible with my ideas! In fact Phil Pearson released the Internet Topic Exchange - the day after my birthday - so I've always considered it a gesture of kismet. Talk about coincidence! And last Thursday - Seb Paquet posted an excellent essay on "structured blogging" - which more or less puts into words - everything I've been saying about open reviews standards. So here's a status report - as of March 16th, 2003 - going over all the important stuff I've found about, relevant efforts, some successes and a whole lot of schmoozing...... OpenIdentity.org Nic Nyholm of Ascio and I have been theorizing as to what it would take to establish an OpenIdentity.org for linking various identity systems together. As of today, I have talked about these ideas to Adrian Scott at Ryze, Doc, Joi, Scoble, Mitch, Paolo, Dave Sifry, Eric/Bryan/Andre (of SourceID), Mark Graham of iVillage, Ross and Pete (of SocialText), Jason, Chris, Karsten, Lisa, Kevin, Jonathan and a bunch of other people too! Here's how it would work:
Joi's going to help us make sure it's got all the right PETs (privacy enabling technologies) embedded in this standard, if end-users wish to have that sort of secruity. And we'll also make sure we bake in SourceID into the system, to enable all sorts of business oriented transactions and relationships. So think of this standard as the MetaPeopleAPIs. Internet Topic Exchange Meanwhile Phil Pearson's ITE is doing great, with Joi's Emergent Democracy channel and a pretty vibrant Social Software channel as well. One interesting sidenote is that bunch of espanol channels are formed (Estoy apesadumbrado, pero mi español no es muy bueno.) Matt Mower is also doing some great stuff with LiveTopics and some cool new stuff with Paolo, as well. Having some sort of anchorNode based upon topics would be cool, which we all could use to ricochet new kinds of interaction, collaboration and micro-content off of. Whether it is knowledge management, topic maps or new ontologies, this is definitely a hot area and it all leads to a MetaTopicAPIs spec. All sorts of cool things could be done with this open standard. Open Media I've spent most of MY time pitching the concept of an Open Media standard. The current pitch entails three pieces of open source technology, which would be pitched differently to three sets of constituents. 1. First we need a nice wrapper "object model" to enable inter-changeable media from all sorts of sources, locations, tools and systems. Imagine being able to select OPEN and have the entire Internet Archives at your disposal. OR every piece of media in the Creative Commons. 2. We'll then need an open source redirect server (or whole bunch of them - implemented on top of different platforms - all supporting the same protocol MetaMediaAPIs), to act as a DNS for all media. In the object model mentioned above - one key field would have a 'redirect' pointer in it, pointing to a giant, standardized redirect database. This DNS-like database would provide a wide range of tool, client or service interfaces to access compatible media (wherever that media resides) - via a uniform protocol. This takes the world beyond http - into a "namespace" perfect for the semantic web. 3. Finally we'd then create a wide range of jukebox and album user interface software - which would be implemented in Java, Javascript, Flash, Laszlo, Dreamfactory, Curl, QT, wxWindows or any other user interface system. These interfaces would talk to the giant databases of media and offer up an amazing on-line collection of audio, video and photos - we ALL can use! Needless to say these interfaces also support the standard media object model, which will bring standardized meta-data to media. A. The mainstream media folks are not necessarily going to like this - at first. They won't see anything in it for themselves, and it directly attacks the current LOCK-IN, proprietary format mentality - that they've lived on since their inception. Trust - I know all about this strategy - I helped create one! So the tools folks (Macromedia, Adobe, Avid, Discreet), the streaming platforms (Microsoft, Real, Quicktime), the download services (Pressplay, Musicnet, Rhapsody, MovieLink, iFilm), the storage facilities (Ofoto, Shutterfly, Fotki) and the consumer hardware vendors (Sony, Matsushita, Phillips, Samsung, etc.) will all be asked to support this format. But they won't though. At first - at least. I really hope Jeremy and Kevin would support it first! B. It'll be the "personal publishing" platforms (blogging and journaling tools) that will most benefit from this open media. All of a sudden huge libraries of BLOGART will be unleashed into the blogosphere - everything from border and frame themes, to company and meme logos, to background scenes and nature shots to famous people, places and things to advertising trends, and fashion do's and don'ts - and needless to say, a wide range of iconography of every shape and form. And fully animated versions of almost everything in .swf format. None of today's blogging tools feature real asset management systems, jukeboxes or photo albums. By providing them with free source code and interfaces and huge libraries of built-in content to propogate those interfaces - let me tell you, it's gonna be VISUALIZATION time in the old town, 2 night! C. But of course, the greatest beneficiary of these new open media technologies - will be US! The new kind of tool vendors - the folks who are pushing the envelope and can imagine 100 new things to do with these new open standards - will love this stuff the most. That's what we're doing at Broadband Mechanics - grooving on the idea of what we can do. So these are the MetaMediaAPIs. Which will CERTAINLY lead to all sorts of cool things. Multimedia Conversations The folks at SocialText and Joi put on some cool 'happenings' utilizing some new code that Pete Kaminski wrote. It's going to evolve into something even better which could certainly be considered a new form of conversation. I myself am captivated with the notion of multimedia conversations - and I've also participated in extended discussions of IM based conversations, combining with media and tele-conferencing. So there's no lack of activity in this area. We plan on FINALLY releasing our first product within a few weeks, so I'm heads down in this area right now! In fact - since this was the first standard I fantasized about - I can say I've probably done the least amount of work here. God bless Joi, Scott and Pete - 'cause lots of awareness is rising here. Let's hope they call their stuff the MetaConversationAPIs. :-) Shared reviews Which brings us up to last Thursday, March 13th, when Seb posts his incredible treatise on the importance of feedback and notion of going beyond topics. It seems to me that we should draft Seb to be the CEO of all these dot .orgs, and make sure all this work gets done right. Me and Joi will make sure that all the schmoozing and partying cements the relationships necessary and there are plenty of nerds out there to write the code. In case you all don't know what I'm talking about - just go read Seb's pitch and then come back here....... OK - so here's what's missing from Seb's pitch (just to be nitpicky): Seb left out some key attributes you'd want to collect with music reviews (like style of music, band, or other musical meta-data), while he should, at the same time realize that restaurant reviews need to support ethnic cuisine categorization, indoor decor photos, service quality ratings or proximity info. Hair dresser reviews, car mechanics, doctors, media devices, resorts and all sorts of "things" ALL need their OWN review types. We have to make sure that we capture enough meta-data with these reviews to do cool "semantic" things. And call everything the MetaReviewsAPIs.something or other. I'd also like to see more implementation details - as to what particular architecture Seb would use to implement these "shared databases". But besides that - Seb really hits it out of the park! So now I can go asleep and wake up and keep going towards these ideals. Tomorrow I get to learn all about XPertWeb, Longhorn and what Apple is up to. Lord knows I'm sick and tired of figuring out REST vs SOAP. BTW I also recently saw an excellent movie "Revolution OS" - which is a documentary on Richard Stallman, Free Software, Linux, Open Source - with all the major players being interviewed. I highly recommend it to anyone wishing to grok open source and what's up with these open standards efforts. Rent it on DVD today (via Netflix or whatever.) Original Links Status Report #1 8:20:58 PM trackback []
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Wherever your name appears in any identity system listing, little word-icons would appear, surrounding your name - pointing to the OTHER identity systems you were a member of. For existing members of these systems, this serves as a shortcut - while for non-existing members, it serves as a way of introducing them to the capabilities and features of these new systems - they might be familar with.
Technically an open identity system would work as a sort of DNS, acting as both a hub and gateway into particular APIs while connecting to other compatible systems via other hubs. |
Source: The Scobleizer Weblog; 3/19/2003; 12:02:18 PM Joi Ito continues the conversation about emergent democracy. He says that his whitepaper already answers my concerns. He also asks "was Woz an expert?" That's an interesting question. I even asked Woz a bit about this myself in my first interview with him almost 15 years ago (has it already been that long? Dang). I asked Woz "how could another Apple happen" (ie, how would an entrepreneur get another big company off the ground). He said something very interesting. I'm paraphrasing here, but it's close to what he said. "An Apple can happen every decade or so. Only when the existing business elite or intelligence ignores a new category." Then he told me about how he developed a new kind of personal computer and showed it to his bosses at Hewlett Packard and Apple and how they decided that it wasn't a good idea for their business to try. You know the rest of the story. He sold his HP calculator to start Apple. He WAS (and still is) an expert on personal computers. The problem was, back then no one valued his expertise. As more and more people came around to Woz's vision of the world, yes, his expertise became more valueable. He laughed at people who try to get rich. He says he didn't develop the Apple I with any thoughts of becoming wildly rich. He just wanted a personal computer. So he built one. He thought it was something other people would want too. It's as simple as that. Which touches on the themes of the day. 1) I'm doing my weblog cause I love to, not because someday I'm expecting a big payoff. That's quite unlike the gold diggers who do weblogs only to try to make money. 2) Great new ideas are pushed through by single people or small groups, often working against the needs of the majority. Really what Woz (and the other guys who did early PCs like the Altair) did was a revolution. Our political system is great cause it allows for revolutions. Imagine if you went back 200 years in time and told the average citizen "oh, in 200 years abortion will be legal, it'll be illegal to own slaves, everyone will own the equivilent of a printing press for $40 a year or less, and it'll be illegal to smoke in bars and restaurants." You'd be run out of town as a heretic. The real problem with Internet-based democracy? The fact that the technology allows us to be anonymous. That's starting to change, but most chat rooms, most newsgroups, most email, is sent by folks you don't know (and you don't know what skin they have in the game). If you look at the negative parts of what's out there on the Internet, it's because you can post while being anonymous. Of course, that's also what makes it so exciting too (and, even, lawless). You know, one thing I like about weblogging is that the process of writing requires me to think. And think hard. This is what disturbs me about Alan Cooper's comments about weblogging. I think I'm gonna call him up and ask him for more insight about why he thinks that he couldn't add something to the weblogging space. [The Scobleizer Weblog]8:05:35 PM trackback []
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Last update: 12/26/2003; 8:04:31 PM .
