The Richter Scales have redone the Web 2.0 video with more credits to keep even their critics happy.
This may be *everything you need to know* about Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 Video redux
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Monthly Archives: December 2007
Will work for free WIFI: The New Journalism?
Scott Karp has a nice post today about the intersection of journalism and blogging. I’m glad he notes the weakness of the argument that bloggers cannot be journalists. Suggesting mainstream journalism is on firm and high ground is especially absurd in this world where yellow journalism generally trumps quality, superficial treatments cripple even the few fine writers at major newspapers, and Fox and CNN TV news parade AnchorModels chosen primarily for looks (women) or bombastic nonsense (men) or both (Anne Coulter).
I’d suggest that a key challenge to conventional journalism is not so much one of quality writing as it is *scalability*. Bloggers work for nothing or peanuts, and there are many more coming in the wings. Most blogs will continue to suck, but some will be great and this number will increase as more writers get comfortable with the medium.
It will be increasingly difficult for publishers – even cutting edge, well funded ones like Nick at Gawker who is hiring a “journalist” – to justify paying much for content. I don’t think Gawker’s decision to hire a legacy media journalist reflects a new trend, rather it reflects a fairly atypical reversion to old trends during this transition period.
Contrast Gawker’s success with the demise of Blognation, which was not even paying people. Would they have succeeded with a bunch of “real” journalists? No, of course not. Good writing is cheap and getting cheaper. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but it’s certainly an inevitable thing.
2045
I am SO very interested in how people are going to process the upcoming film about the Singularity as defined by Ray Kurzweil, which is a pretty awesome future for humans:
Within a quarter century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment, overcoming pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality …
And holy string cosmology, that’s not even the singularity part! Kurzweil predicts that around 2045, after we all become superintellects, the machine intelligences will surpass the total brainpower of planet earth by so much that it’s likely most of us will simply upload into the giant intelligent machine, or some other future we can’t know because….it’s hard to think what we’d do when we are 1,000,000,000 times smarter than we are right now.
Too optimistic? Too weird? Maybe, but Kurzweil is arguably the best thinker out there on artificial intelligence, and unlike the past where AI overhyped and underdelivered it is now clear that at least in terms of computational power and memory storage we’ll be reaching human capabilities soon.
So, are you ready?
Copy, right?
I’m writing to so many blogs these days it’s getting hard to keep them all straight. Here’s my thinking on the Lane Hartwell incident over at the Webguild blog.
Webguild is the Silicon Valley marketing and internet networking group that meets at Google every month and sponsors a couple of conferences each year. It’s a volunteer effort but run with exceptional professionalism and innovation by Daya Baran (Webguild President) and Reshma Kumar (Webguild Vice President). I’m looking forward to the Web 2.0 Conference to be held in January.
The Emperor’s New Clothes * * * *
This beautiful and clever film takes a fanciful “alternative history” of Napoleon’s imprisonment on the island of St. Helene, following a conspiracy to replace him on the throne by trading places with a commoner who looks like Napoleon. Ian Holm is magnificent in one of his best roles, Iben Hjejle is radiant as Napoleon’s thoughful and down to earth love interest. This film uses several very clever, subtle film allusions to add depth and humor to a complex storyline. The Emperor’s New Clothes is a great story and a joy to watch.
Note – this 2001 film is not a remake of film by same name about a Roman Emperor. Have not seen that one.
Google adsense discouraged quality content, Google knol is trying to fix that.
Google knol is a promising development in online information, where “experts” will write concise, authoritative articles on many topics and the community will rank and comment on those articles. It may be a great way to combine quality content with social networking, though I’m not clear if the quality content producers will be rewarded with more than just the knol-edge that they have brought more good info into the world.
Although I don’t think they’d talk much about this, I think Google has begun to understand the degree to which adsense has hurt the online information landscape – basically by rewarding those who are most clever at flooding the web with low quality content rather than those who have provided high quality content. Likewise with linking, where SEO abuses and excesses and Google decisions have made it increasingly hard to separate the information wheat from the adsense chaff.
Enter knol, which will be a community policed content system. Basically a good idea, and as I’ve noted many times before Google is masterful at doing good things that happen to help them solve some potential revenue problems. As Nick Carr noted yesterday Google’s high ranks for un-monetized Wikipedia content aren’t putting many Christmas presents under the tree for Google, and knol may shift some advertising focus back in house.
Hong Kong Harbor, Beijing’s Forbidden City, and the Great Wall of China
Wow. Planning the China Trip is really getting exciting for me. I’m going to get to see some of the things I’ve heard about for most of my life – things that are on “The List” of stuff I just had to do like Hong Kong Harbor, Beijing, and more. China’s Yellow Mountains are on my list as are is the Terra Cotta army in X’ian, but those will probably have to wait for the next trip because this one is filling up fast and, frankly, I’d rather relax and enjoy things than try to see too much stuff on my first trip over.
It now appears that the best approach may be to fly to Hong Kong. I’m finding the Hong Kong flights are in the $700 range rather than the $1000+ to Beijing, and Hong Kong is somewhat closer to Xiamen where I’ll be at the SES China conference. Also, I’ve learned that the train system in China is modern, comfortable, cheap, and extensive. I like the idea of rolling along between cities rather than just plane hopping, and since I have the time I’m thinking a good route might be this:
Fly SFO to Hong Kong and spend a few days seeing Hong Kong Harbor and the city.
Get a deluxe sleeper car for the trip to Xiamen.
Continue on the train to Beijing where I’m meeting up with friends.
Train Beijing to Shanghai if we decide to go there.
Train from Shanghai to Hong Kong, perhaps stopping in any neat places I scoped out during the earlier trip in opposite direction.
Coffee Calendar
Click here for more about the 2008 Coffee Calendar
Hey, it’s Coffee Calendar Google ranking excitement! As I mentioned in some earlier posts my wife’s Brother-in-law Ricardo has a great Coffee Calendar, a project he has worked on for some time that features some great art and history.
Helping him attain a proper Google rank for his site TheCoffeeCalendar.com offers up some neat lessons in how Google ranks websites – perhaps most importantly how blogs have come to be a very critical factor in some rankings.
Artist Mike Rohde also has a neat “Sketchtoon” Coffee Calendar he has done for 2008. Where Ricardo’s Coffee Calendar focuses more on history, Mike’s focuses on the actual coffee drinks. Both would make a neat gift for any coffee lover in your life so check them both out!
Mike’s Calendar has the top Google spot now and I think this is a good example of Google favoring blog content over an actual website devoted to the Coffee Calendar. Ricardo’s site was recently launched and thus I’m guessing Mike’s blog is given higher authority at Google when “Coffee Calendars” are getting discussed. Since this blog appears to have more authority than Mike’s it’ll be interesting to see if this post has any affect on the rankings.
In the meantime, pick a Coffee Calendar and a fresh picked pound of coffee beans as a neat gift for the coffee lover in your life.
Google’s knol project
Google’s about to launch yet another clever idea. Called knol, it will feature authoritative articles about any topic which will use community rating and input.
It will be interesting to see how this project compares to the excellent community produced content at Wikipedia, and also how Google handles the legitimate as well as scammy SEO tactics that always follow good content. Disallowing links to commercial sites would seem to inhibit an author’s ability to feature things, but allowing them opens up the chance of abuses of the type that made Wikipedia choose to use NOFOLLOW tag on all external Wikipedia links.
The good news – more quality information online – yippee!
Oink
Nick Carr over at Rough Type has one of the cleverest techno posts written in some time as he addresses the little brouhaha over enterprise vs consumer software. In fact I’d give him the tech blogging Pulitzer Prize simply for this turn of phrase:
Rubberneckers leaping gleefully onto the Techmeme pig pile
More to the point he’s talking about the silliness of the technobabbling echo chamber as well as the silliness of enterprise software folks making mostly foolish distinctions between types of software.
There is an alarming trend among mostly “old school” developers and programmers and analysts to make a variety of questionable assumptions about technology that are based on failing to recognize how different things have become. Even new school folks routinely overbuild websites and application environments simply becausae they’ve been taught that is the way you do technology. Worst is the idea that complex software is needed to run complex companies. WRONG! It is true that complex software is almost always used by big companies, but this is primarily a function of legacy issues (ie they started their systems back in the day when there were NO simple solutions) and IT turf issues (e.g pretend you are the head of Exxon’s IT division and you are asking for a BIG raise and more options. Are you more likely to get the promotion by proposing a shift to Google documents across much of the corporate enterprise, or by proposing a highly customized SAP solution only you understand? Also, it takes a kind of innovative thinking that I think is sometimes missing from the school of old timers.
Joe Duck 