Thoughts from ThePef

Newsvine Day

Wanted to post this for prosterity sake.  A screenshot of the Newsvine home page 6/23/06.  The arrows point to stories that I created over a 24 hr period.

Clearinghouses vs. Blogs

A recent post of mine on Newsvine:

In the beginning of the net, there were individuals building sites that aggregated information. For sake of this article lets call them the "aggregators".  The sites brought value by grouping collected information onto one site that typically focused on one topic. 

Once the big bang of the late 90s occurred we saw the rise of "directories". An attempt to categorize sites based upon the information they contained. Yahoo! in the early form was the prime example. There were some attempts at the creation of search engines, i.e. hotbot, excite, altavista, etc. But the results and the user maturity was not at sufficient level to take over the "directories".

Then came Google.  The dawn of the age of the "searchers". Advanced algorithms that understood rankings based upon links came into play, and the value of search came to the forefront. Now searching returned relevant results, though it may not be exactly what you were looking for. Once again the web continued to grow at a phenomenal rate, and the relevancy of search is diminishing. It is actually considered a prime skill to be able to construct search queries that return relevant results.

Now we have a new animal in town, and in part it is due to the age of collaboration. Wikipedia can be considered the founding example of this new age. An age where people create the relevancy, and the content. In the case of Wikipedia, it is far more efficient to search within the wiki for items like "Paleozoic Period" or "Cumulus Clouds" then it is to use Google. In fact, Google will probably return an entry in Wikipedia. Likewise, for news, I believe Newsvine is a "Clearinghouse" for news information. A centralized repository that focuses on a particular set of informational types. Wikipedia is encyclopedic, Newsvine is newsworthy, what is next?

Because of the vastness of the web, these "clearinghouses" will act as the first source to turn to for informational types. They will rely upon a collaborative environment where everyone is a participant. Topics can be augmented, fed, and commented on by the community. Additionally, the topics themselves can be exposed as a feed enabling other sites to supplement their content. Because these sites are communal, the users themselves will generate reputations, and will be a source of referral for questions. The users, as much as the entries will carry value, and that reputation will be global.

Stumbled upon StumbleUpon

I love this site.  I stumbled upon Stumbleupon through hits on a site a manage.  I started using it, after logging my preferences, and damn if it hasn’t turned me on to site after site after site that I found relevant and useful.  2 out of every 3 clicks I literally stumble upon another site I didn’t know about, and it helps me immensely.  I suggest that you also stumble upon Stumbleupon.com, it will change the way you browse the Internet.

God I love this tool!!!

COFU Building

Composite “On the Fly” UI, or COFU.  The ability to generate structured UIs from relevant information.  Just like a child knows how to build a house out of building blocks, application UIs should be built in the same manner. 

The user determines the blueprint through a request.  The blocks are contained in the registries that hold api type and location, and datastore information types.  These are the needed building blocks to form the house.  Each structure is returned to the user based on relevancy match to the original request.  The user then selects the appropriate blueprint, and the UI is assembled upon tags, and order algorithms.  The form at this point may be a composite view that allows changes to multiple data sets. 

(click on thumbnail for full view)

Google Maps Mania

If you are trying to keep up on the wild wild world of Google Map mashups, look no further than the blog googlemapsmania, at blogspot.  They do a terrific job of listing the mashup services as they come online.  Here are just two of the many links that are highlighted on Maps Mania:

Google Maps Package Tracker – Isolates Fed Ex and UPS data and displays it as a nice tracking map

and

Google Mapping Project of U.S. Election Donors – Just how private is our information?  Well, if you donate to the Republican or Democratic National Committee, not very.  There is full and available disclosure.  See for yourself.

Is Web 2.0 Real?

Yes and no.  Too many people are trying to equate the definition of Web 2.0 to a particular technology or grouping.  In that respect, Web 2.0 isn’t real.  AJAX, web services, etc have been around for sometime.

What is different is the number of public exposures being announced; Google, Amazon, etc, coupled with the understanding of reconstitution.  Web 2.0 is a bit like object oriented programming taken to a global scale.  The network becomes this living, breathing entity where people can pull bits of information, combine that information with processing services and gain the desired result.  In this respect Web 2.0 is real, and we are just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg. 

As programmers and other architecturally adept people begin to explore the reconstitution and presentation of these bits of information and services, we will see a plethoria of requests happen.  In fact, I believe the real power behind Web 2.0 is the ability to get the information you want, in the manner you want, when you want it. 

So in closing, Web 2.0 is real, but should not be focused on particular technologies.  Web 2.0 is a philosophy that is just now happening because we have reached some sort of threshold, or tipping point. 

 

Thank you Google maps for generating that tipping point.

Save My Files

This is more of a testimonial than anything, but here goes.  I lost access to files that I had stored on a USB connected harddrive.  Not exactly sure what happened, but the drive was discoverable not readable.  It kept asking me if I wanted to format the drive. 

Fortunately, I know enough not to do that.  So I went searching for a program that would hopefully recover my files, since the drive held minor things like my family’s pictures for the last year, and video and work files that I backed up.

I found File Scavenger on download.com.  Less than 5 minutes after discovering the program, I had it loaded and did a trial recovery.  The program in free mode only allows up to 64k in file size recovery.  That was enough to verify the program worked.  Needless to say, I paid my 45 bucks, a pitance when compared to file recovery firm prices and in less than a minute I recovered the 415 jpgs that were my family photos. 

So a picture like this one was saved.  BTW, that is my son in the front on the left wondering what is going on. 

Add Your Own Caption

 

WOA and Rich Portals

Last year was the year of the ESB and Event Driven Architecture.  This year at the Gartner Integration Conference, it was about WOA (Web Oriented Architecture) and something I noticed by the initial discussion of Web 2.0.  This was further cemented by the attendence of Macromedia.  You may ask what is Macromedia doing at an integration conference?  Well, let me tell you.  We are at the advent of a 5 tier architecture; and it goes something like this – data, application, middleware, portal, rich interface.  This combination will allow for selected, tailored delivery of information that is reconstituted, mashedup for consumption on a very custom GUI, that in fact is not custom.  The better term here is “specific”.

Netvibes

Now this is nice stuff.  Netvibes.com is what portal presentation, and flexibility is all about.  Now if we inject a little Ning to the equation we might really have something.

Gada.be

I will tell you, I do not care for Chris Pirillo that much, in fact his podcast is a bit too MS centric for me.   Afterall, I am a former Netscaper.  But I gotta tell you, the Gada.be site is extremely useful, and generates tons of relevant information in one place.  Kudos to Chris and his team on this one.