Although Tim Berners-Lee made his “Information Management” proposal back in March 1989, the key moment for what became the World Wide Web was October 1994, when the start-up Mosaic Communications – later known as Netscape – released its browser, optimised for PC users and dial-up modems....
On Computer Weekly.
Following my post about RMS's doubts about clouds, Stan D. Freeman has kindly pointed me towards the growing kerfuffle over iGoogle's new format in the US, and how everyone is now redefining themselves as Brits (sounds a good move to me).
As Stan points out, this neatly underlines exactly the point that RMS was talking about: once in the cloud, you are in the lap of the gods (or something like that). It seems that Google is forgetting the first rule of Web 2.0: users rule. Why not just let people *choose* what they want? Isn't that supposed to be the way we do things around here?
Good analysis - and don't miss that embedded video:Twenty world Internet citizens met in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in October of 2008 for a week of reflections on life, love, and the Internet.
The perfect if unintentional nailing of a bunch of narcissistic wallies and their bankrupt "values"....
Today marks a milestone for the innovative language-learning site Chinesepod: it has published its 1000th Mandarin lesson. Those not familiar with the Chinesepod phenomenon will be surprised to learn that the lesson, like the other 999, is freely available: for Mr. Chinesepod, the Shanghai-based Dubliner Ken Carroll, is a connoisseur of the Web 2.0 world. He understands that in the digital age, the secret to making money is to give away the entry-level stuff to attract interest and build a vibrant community, and then to make money by offering premium content to people who are already know the value of your free resources.
Chinesepod's methods have been widely copied, something that Carroll, to his credit, is remarkably relaxed about. In any case, the Chinesepod family has already grown to include a Frenchpod, Spanishpod and Italianpod, with Russian, Arabic and German versions in the works.
Carroll obviously understands that its not the basic idea - of using downloadable lessons, interactive resources and message boards - that counts, but the execution. Speaking as one of the many tens of thousands of poddies who eagerly await their daily ration of digital Chinese, French, Spanish and Italian, I can attest to the fact that Carroll and his superb team certainly deliver.
Indeed, looking back over the last 1000 lessons, I'd go so far as to say that it's not so much that Chinesepod has *passed* a milestone, but that it *is* a milestone in language learning. Here's to the next 1000, Ken.
An interesting perspective from Chinese blogger Isaac Mao:It's a different mindset that one can feel after blogging for a period of time. I call this philosophy "Sharism", and it can be practised by anyone because the rewards are easy to see. You share one piece of knowledge and then could come a time of returns (maybe not immediately, but with many magic happenings in the future).
The sharism spirit can currently be found in any so called "Web 2.0" phenomena - Wikipedia is just one example, created from the collective intelligence by many people around the world based on their sharing philosophy.
In a more metaphysical view, your blog can act as a halo (to borrow a term from gaming) to shine more lights to the world and coupled with other people's halo at the same time. This has spawned more imaginations in my mind of future society where everyone can be sharist and all the brains are well connected to form a smarter society like a social brain - though given the controls and obstacles that still confront blogging, it is going to be a long road to reach the social-brain dream.
This is why we will win:It used to be so easy - the government could just set up a plan, push through it, let the media do its part. But the web 2.0 turned nearly every single Korean into a media figure. Now everyone ventilates his or her ideas on the internet, to which all others are responding back and forth - the amount of communication taking place grows exponentially. It ain't simple and easy anymore. If you want to lead people, you should do it in a 2.0 way, or you're doomed.
Who knows? Maybe even the UK could be like that in a couple of decades....
They say that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. That's certainly true in terms of the carbon footprint of air travel. If you're not aware of how much you're producing, how can you set about minimisiing it sensibly?
Now you can, thanks to Dopplr:On Thursday at ETech, Gavin Starks announced that Dopplr is teaming up with AMEE to help you measure your travel carbon footprint.
We’re still putting the finishing touches on this feature, but we’re previewing it with alpha-testers this week and it’ll be launching soon. Measurement is just the first step along this road, and we’ll be working with AMEE to make sure you have pointers to the information you need to understand and act on this data.
This is a great example of how the very latest in Web 2.0 approaches can make a difference to the real world too.
Facebook has been getting a lot of stick recently over its Beacon system, so I thought I'd be contrarian by pointing out what a good open source citizen the company is:Facebook has been developed from the ground up using open source software, and we are proud to give back to the open source community through various open source projects.
It's generally taken for granted that Web 2.0 companies will be based on free software, but we hear far less about who does and who doesn't contribute back, which is a pity. (Via RedWriteWeb.)
Here's a tired old meme that I've dealt with before, but, zombie-like, it keeps on coming back:The open-source software community is simply too turbulent to focus its tests and maintain its criteria over an extended duration, and that is a prerequisite to evolving highly original things. There is only one iPhone, but there are hundreds of Linux releases. A closed-software team is a human construction that can tie down enough variables so that software becomes just a little more like a hardware chip—and note that chips, the most encapsulated objects made by humans, get better and better following an exponential pattern of improvement known as Moore’s law.
So let's just look at those statements for a start, shall we?There is only one iPhone, but there are hundreds of Linux releases.
There's only one iPhone because the business of negotiating with the oligopolistic wireless companies is something that requires huge resources and deep, feral cunning possessed only by unpleasantly aggressive business executives. It has nothing to do with being closed. There are hundreds of GNU/Linux distributions because there are even more different kinds of individuals, who want to do things their way, not Steve's way. But the main, highly-focussed development takes place in the one kernel, with two desktop environments - the rest is just presentation, and has nothing to do with dissipation of effort, as implied by the above juxtaposition.chips, the most encapsulated objects made by humans, get better and better following an exponential pattern of improvement known as Moore’s law
Chips do not get better because they are closed, they get better because the basic manufacturing processes get better, and those could just as easily be applied to open source chips - the design is irrelevant.
The iPhone is just one of three exhibits that are meant to demonstrate the clear superiority of the closed-source approach. Another is Adobe Flash - no, seriously: what most sensible people would regard as a virus is cited as one of "the more sophisticated examples of code". And what does Flash do for us? Correct: it destroys the very fabric of the Web by turning everything into opaque, URL-less streams of pixels.
The other example is "the page-rank algorithms in the top search engines", which presumably means Google, since it now has nearly two-thirds of the search market, and the page-rank algorithms of Microsoft's search engine are hardly being praised to the sky.
But what do we notice about Google? That it is built almost entirely on the foundation of open source; that its business model - its innovative business model - would not work without open source; that it simply would not exist without open source. And yes, Yahoo also uses huge amounts of open source. No, Microsoft doesn't, but maybe it's not exactly disinterested in its choice of software infrastructure.
Moreover, practically every single, innovative, Web 2.0-y start-up depends on open source. Open source - the LAMP stack, principally - is innovating by virtue of its economics, which make all these new applications possible.
And even if you argue that this is not "real" innovation - whatever that means - could I direct your attention to a certain technology known colloquially as the Internet? The basic TCP/IP protocols? All open. The Web's HTTP and HTML? All open. BIND? Open source. Sendmail? Open source. Apache? Open source. Firefox, initiated in part because Microsoft had not done anything innovative with Internet Explorer 6 for half a decade? Open source.
But there again, for some people maybe the Internet isn't innovative enough compared to Adobe's Flash technology.
One of the besetting faults of the online world is a certain anglocentricity in its reporting: we tend not to hear much about the goings-on in other parts of the world - even other parts of Europe. So for all those of you who were wondering, here's a list of the top 100 Web 2.0 sites in Germany, complete with quick notes explaining what they do.
An interesting post from Tom Foremski, who, even if he doesn't always grok the underlying dynamics of open source and its offshoots, is certainly plugged into the right people in Silicon Valley, and is very sharp about spotting trends there:Whenever I meet with VCs I've noticed that there is a growing distaste for Web 2.0 startups. The "Web 2.0" term, in connection with a startup, and as a collection of concepts, is very tired in this community.
I think this is good news. Although I've used "Web 2.0" as a shorthand for a group of sites/services/technologies, what is much more important are the driving forces behind them. And those, quite simply, are openness, sharing and the Net-based, distributed methodology pioneered by open source. The more we concentrate on those core currents underneath, and the less on the trendy froth on top, the better.
The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night.
The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.
...
What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.
A nice vindication for the "make money by giving it away" approach, and testimony to the power of the Web 2.0 world, driven as it by search engines and user-generated content. (Via Boing Boing.)
Ordnance Survey is trying to get Web 2.0 hip:explore is a new beta application from Ordnance Survey, allowing you to create and share your routes with the world, and join in with ones that already exist. Find out more about explore.
As this is a new application we need your help to build up the content. Please submit your routes and make explore a useful and exciting tool for all our users.
So it wants to tap into user-generated content. Which would be fine, were it not for the fact it doesn't play fair: its maps, funded directly by taxpayers, and often drawing on information provided by local authorities, also funded by taxpayers, aren't made freely available to those self-same taxpayers (ever heard of open access, chaps?). Why should people contribute to an enclosed commons? This is our data: free it, and then we'll make it soar.
Bottom line: ignore this until the Ordnance Survey (and its masters in the UK Government that lay down how the service must operate) get a real clue. (Via Ogle Earth.)
This is interesting: a collection of Web 2.0 apps that provide practically all the functionality you need. What makes this particularly pertinent for me is that I am increasingly moving in this direction.
In fact, I live almost totally online these days - not least since several of my machines have shown a distinct desire to pop their clogs. The exceptions are a few cross-platform apps like Firefox (obviously) and OpenOffice.org: using these lets me switch seamlessly from proper operating systems (like Ubuntu, my GNU/Linux flavour of the month), to "other" systems, which will remain nameless, and thus become machine independent. (Via Webware.)
Once again, Matt gets it, and Tim doesn't: "I will predict that virtually every open source company (including Red Hat) will eventually be acquired by a big proprietary software company."
Thus spake Tim O'Reilly in the comments to one of his other posts. Tim believes that open source, at least as defined by open-source licensing, has a short shelf-life that will be consumed by Web 2.0 (i.e., web companies hijacking open-source software to deliver proprietary web services) or by traditional proprietary software vendors.
In other words, why don't I just give up, sell out, and go home? I guess I would if I thought that Tim were right. He's not, not in this instance.
There's something more fundamental going on here than "Proprietary software meets open source. Proprietary software decides to commandeer open source. Open source proves to be a nice lapdog to proprietary software." I actually believe that open source, not proprietary software, is the natural state of the industry, and that Tim's proprietary world is anomalous.
I particularly liked this distinction between the service aspects of software, and the attempts to view it as an instantiation of various intellectual monopolies:
Suddenly, the license matters more, not less, because it is the license that ensures the conversation focuses on the right topic - service - rather than on inane jabberings that only vendors care about. You know, like intellectual property.
And there's another crucial reason why proprietary software companies can't just open their chequebooks and acquire those pesky open source upstarts. Unlike companies who seem to think that they are co-extensive with the intellectual monopolies they foist on customers, open source outfits know they are defined by the high-quality people - both employees and those out in the community - that code for the customers.
For example, one reason people take out subscriptions to Red Hat's offerings is that they get to stand in line for the use of Alan Cox's brain. Imagine, now, that proprietary company X "buys" Red Hat: well, what exactly does it buy? Certainly not Alan Cox's brain, which will leave with him (one hopes) when he moves immediately to another open source company (or just hacks away in Wales for pleasure). Sure, the purchaser will have all kinds of impressive legal documents spelling out what it "owns" - but precious little to offer customers anymore, who are likely to follow wherever Alan Cox and his ilk go.
As a big fan of both freedom and Tibet, it seems only right that I should point to the Students for a Free Tibet site. Against a background of increasing repression and cultural genocide by the Chinese authorities in Tibet, it will be interesting to see what happens during the run-up to the 2008 Olympics and the games themselves. On the one hand, China would clearly love to portray itself as one big happy multi-ethnic family; on the other, it is unlikely to brook public reminders about its shameful invasion and occupation of Tibet.
I can only admire those Tibetans who speak up about this, and even daring to challenge, publicly, the Chinese authorities, even within China itself. One of the highest-profile - and hence most courageous - of these is Lhadon Tethong:A Tibetan woman born and raised in Canada, Lhadon Tethong has traveled the world, working to build a powerful youth movement for Tibetan independence. She has spoken to countless groups about the situation in Tibet, most notably to a crowd of 66,000 at the 1998 Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C. She first became involved with Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) in 1996, when she founded a chapter at University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Since then, Lhadon has been a leading force in many strategic campaigns, including the unprecedented victory against China’s World Bank project in 2000.
Lhadon is a frequent spokesperson for the Tibetan independence movement, and serves as co-chair of the Olympics Campaign Working Group of the International Tibet Support Network. She has worked for SFT since March 1999 and currently serves as the Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet International.
She has a blog, called Beijing Wide Open, stuffed full of Tibetan Web 2.0 goodness. I'm sure RMS would approve. (Via Boing Boing.)
Update: Sigh: bad news already....
As the post below indicates, one reason that open content strategies are working is that online advertising is increasingly profitable (just ask Google). Further proof that advertising is evolving rapidly is the rise of OpenAds, one of open source's better-kept secrets. Here's a piece by Matt Asay with some useful background:OpenAds is one of the most interesting open source projects/companies on the planet. Period. It's an open source ad server. Like Doubleclick without the lock-in or fees. In other words, open source. 100% GPLv2. I guess it should be no surprise that the world's most popular ad server, powering Web 2.0 business models, is open source, just as the LAMP stack is the technological basis for Web 2.0 sites/services.
Amazingly, OpenAds is British, too.
Interesting Turkish delight from the second OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy, held in Istanbul on 27-30 June:Official statistics are a key “public good” that foster the progress of societies.
...
To take this work forward we need to advocate appropriate investment in building statistical capacity, especially in developing countries, to improve the availability of data and indicators needed to guide development programs and report on progress toward international goals
Steady on, chaps, this is getting perilously close to calling for open data:the OECD is thinking of creating an Internet site based on Web 2.0 “wiki” technologies for the presentation and discussion of international, national and local initiatives aimed at developing indicators of societal progress. By making indicators accessible to citizens all over the world through dynamic graphics and other analytical tools, this initiative would aim to stimulate discussion based on solid and comparable statistical information about what progress actually means.
The journal Nature is a rather ambiguous beast. On the one hand, it represents the acme and epitome of the current science publishing system - and hence everything that is wrong with an analogue, profit-based, traditional access approach - and on the other, it is clearly an organisation that is trying harder than most to be innovative and engage with new ideas flowing from Web 2.0, social networks, virtual worlds and even - whisper it - open access.
One of the people there who seems to get this stuff is Timo Hannay, Head of Web Publishing for the Nature Publishing Group: maybe he's working within the citadel. In any case, this interview with him on the Confessions of a Science Librarian blog is well worth reading for the insights it offers into Nature and its gropings towards openness, and one of the main protagonists prodding things in that general direction.
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