Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Sunday, July 06, 2003

Blogs in the Workplace
An NY Times article on weblogs in business that somehow missed Socialtext ;-(

..."People are starting to use Web logs to archive data that would have otherwise been lost," Mr. Tang said. He noted that much of the company's internal communications had been via instant messaging — and was lost as soon as the correspondents closed their chat windows. Now, though, employees are starting to post transcripts of relevant discussions on the Web logs, he said.

"It's not just making life more convenient," Mr. Tang said, "but actually giving us something new we didn't have before."

[via Scripting News]

6:55:17 PM    comment []

Quote of the Day
From the heckler's page:

You can often rate a conference by the quality of the offsite participation. -- JoiIto

3:54:34 PM    comment []

Heckle Me

Off to Supernova 2003. All packed up an ready to go. I'm off to Supernova 2003. Please join me in the #joiito channel on irc.freenode.net at 10am in DC (UTC -0400) if you want to heckle me during our panel. I'll be on IRC. Hopefully, we'll be able to get it up on a projector. ;-) [Joi Ito's Web]

Cool tool and a great opportunity to heckle Joi. Hey, wait a minute, Im on that panel too. This can't be a good thing ;-)

3:49:24 PM    comment []

Sonylogging
Joi cooks up a little Moblogging magic with Sony...

Sony Image Station with MetaWeblog API.  It's a moblog gateway. It receives email from a cell phone with a photo attached. The Sony team made an XML RPC metaWeblog API interface to Sony Image Station. We take the picture, talk to Sony Image Station using metaWeblog API and post the picture in a photo album. Then the gateway talks to Movable Type using the metaWeblog API to create an entry with the thumbnail from Image Station that clicks thru to the full picture on the Image Station site. The text and the title get entered into Movable Type and the category is pre-set. We are using the metaWeblog.newMediaObject (which Movable Type current supports) to send the images. Please support this standard so photo sites can use the API.

2:41:46 PM    comment []

About Blogs
About.com empowered their 400 Guides with blogs last week. Blogger and former SVP of Content Howard Sherman makes a case for significance:

It's probably the single largest addition of content to the blogosphere to date.

All of these sites are advertiser supported so it should help give credence to blogs as a viable business model.

The sites are using Moveable Type software which is a vote of confidence in Moveable Type's technology.

Another large media company -- in this case Primedia which owns About.com -- has adopted blogs as a publishing and communications tool.

The quasi-independence of Guides and structure of their site made this move easier than other traditional media outlets could do with editors. You have to hand it to them for doing it right, selecting a best-in-class tool and turning their people loose. How clueful.

The question is if Primedia will learn from this experience as the relevancy of their core business, trade magazines, is under the greatest threat from blogging.

2:19:56 PM    comment []

Second Coming of AOL
So now we know that the September that Never Ended is coming to the blogosphere. AOL Journals enters Beta this summer and launches in the Fall. I blogged before on the business opportunity this presents for AOL.

Thursday, AOL invited Meg Hourihan, Nick Denton, Anil Dash, Jeff Jarvis, and Clay Shirky to critique its upcoming weblog product, AOL Journals.

Jeff: AOL blogs!

Clay: AOL, Weblogs, and Community.

Clay frames the big questions for AOL. Will AOL Journals be a set of blogging tools or a community platform? Walled garden or open?
AOL Journals will let users blog from IM, a leverage on par with Google's Toolbar push-button publishing and a further reduction in the transaction cost-to-post. IM is more than messaging however, its a base of strong social clusters. When you think of what AOL has to leverage, its more than 40 million users, its existing groups -- which if measured by Reed's Law is of greater value. When buddy lists become blogrolls adoption will be driven by existing strong ties.
They are smart enough to speak RSS, our language and foundation for openness. Jeff also makes a strong case for opening up AOL/T-W content assets. But the backend is where new forms fourish.   Blogspace is more than individuals contributing content, we contribute code (and for the most part, get along doing so)
Jeff frames the big question for us. Will blogspace be inclusive or attempt to redicule and reject new entrants? We have a history of doing so. Heck, Jeff did with AO. LiveJournal is its own world because blogspace didn't build bridges and derides it as kiddy blogging. If we do not embrace new entrants, the culture that makes blogging work will die.
The very fact that AOL held an A-list focus group is strong sign that they are listening. Openness on the front-end and back-end, coupled with access to AOL assets, will provide AOL access to a wider market of opportunities.

2:04:20 PM    comment []

Internet Access as a Human Right
Estonia's 2000 law that declared Internet access a human right is referred to vaugely in the CS monitor and being slashdotted.

This, hot on the heels, or should I say shoulders -- of the Estonian dominance of the Wife Carrying World Championships.

"We take too many things seriously," concedes Indrek Keskyla, the mayor of Vaike-Maarja. He blames the communists who ran this Baltic nation. "In the old Soviet Union days, we had to be serious, gray people," he says. Under communist rule, the village pushed to be the best farm cooperative in Estonia. Now, it produces the best wife carriers.

12:06:54 PM    comment []

Bloomba
I am about to switch back to a Mac, just as I found the windows email client I was looking for. Bloomba, by Stata Labs, is a simplified email client that contains the power features Outlook is missing.

Namely damn powerful Search. Also RSS support, anti-spam (Consumer Reports just rated their SAproxy component best in class, it also works with other email clients) and grouping tools. Grouping of threads and subscriptions is part of the solution for Occupational Spam.

They made switching easy. Automatically copies emails from old clients to make at least a test drive effortless.

But the main thing is having Google-like search on my email client. Everybody need this.

Oh, and there is a Bloomba blog.

11:52:58 AM    comment []

Lazyriver

Had a wonderful time in Sonoma. Celebrated the 4th of July in downtown Sonoma. Parade and BBQ festival with a small town feel. Visited some family friends. Kenwood Pillow Fighting Championship (mostly a beer bust). Little wine tasting. Great fireworks.

The next day we went on canoe trip down the Russian River. Burke's Canoe Trips runs a 3 hour tour. Recomended for both the lazy crowd (mellow river, good for kids) and the cooler set (beer coolers that is).

Funny thing about how a body of water can become a social space. When enough people are in one space, wierd social conventions arise. Troll-like cannonballers and squirt gun activists.   Rights of way given to tubers. Tragedy of the common sandbar. Costumed canoe teams in co-expression.

11:38:37 AM    comment []