Web 2.0 - after two classes...

...I find it interesting because I now listen to conversations with a completely different ear than I did before. In the two course I am teaching at Cooper Union and at Polytechnic, I discover that the concepts I thought were simple to understand are not necessarily agreed upon or understood.

When hear people discuss "Web 2.0", I hear the typical phrases:

• "community generated content"
• "mashable data"
• "rich web user interfaces"

But what I do not hear is an explanation that has brought this step to our doorstep today. And will this be a harbinger of what will come.

My defintion of Web 2.0 circa Jan 2007
Funny, Howard Greenstein once referenced me in his description of Web 2.0 in an article - which lead me to write my own blogpost on the concept back in March 2006. At the time, I was riding the media wave much like everyone else. Loving this concept of "social media", building a podcasting company and thinking we had the market by the ear. But, I now look at the story with a different eye. For me, Web 2.0 is defined by the following principles:

• Data must be free to "mash"
  Back in 1995, when I first learned of BLOBs, I kept thinking that BLOBs were the end-all, be-all. We could now store different types of content into a database and access it with minimial effort. Now, we could use a simple SQL query to get our content. The challenge was security, authentication, and other services on top of the database that hampered our efforts. Today, with the proliferation of APIs led by the energies of the web-services/XML revolution of 2000-2005, we have achieved a level of this by standardizing our protocols and allowing for managed access to the database. Include the speed of bandwidth from the server to the users client interface - and you are close approaching the speeds we saw on our 486 machines back in 1995 in terms of perceived performance - at a cost coming close to free.
  
  
• Users must be able to contribute
  Instead of assuming experts are always correct because the tools for aggregation of opinion were always time-consuming and troublesome, today - polling the community on their opinion and their wisdom is simply a push button away - whether on a blog, on a wiki or an email message leading to a way to respond. By allowing for such community contributions, reputations are formed in ways that are not normally seen and users begin to feel the power of ownership through action.
  
  
• Mashable acts extend beyond programming
  Instead of keeping this only in the realm of programming, mashing is an act of involvement that is part of the pendulum that is swinging back. Call it my political sensitivities, but the US has gone through 15 years of an interesting pendulum. From a recession, to a boom unlike any other, to an almost depression where a new government used fear to oppress and control our people, to a pentup energy to express and represent ourselves. Then with technology as the friction reducer, collaboration became possible - even from the desktop. And, due to our human need, we found channels to meet and collaborate off the 'net. Consider the number of non-profits and acts of physical presence that occurs on a regular basis - bringing down borders that normally were there because the obstacle for crossing was too high.
  

Web 2.0 is more than a short hand for technology - it ushers in a phase of collaboration and involvement by reducing friction once again. Now, we are able to speak and be who we want to be, what we want to do, with cheap resoruces allowing for the development and deployment of our dreams - whether as a videographer, social maven or what have you.

Just some of my thoughts gleaned from my students and my readings.

Yi-Tan Tech Conference Call: Social Search

How we are helping one another to find content on the 'net. How are helping others finding the "good stuff'? google is loading the database with content and scholarly content.

Jerry includes in thoughts: outfoxed.com now called lejit.com (social searching), digg.com, diggswarm.com, me.dium (Firefox plugin), chacha.com (conventional search and/or assisted by someone), del.icio.us (echoditto.com shares all things they are looking at), can hide important information in plain site using a specific string in del.icio.us - allows for people to find the content on your specific tag. google Reader Sharing - reblogging content. Imaging 1600 feeds into the reader - then needs someone to filter. google Reader allows for share and has a shareable URL "exhaust feed" of the content in a rapid process.

Peter/Trudy: we do not use social search. Know about it - not able to make it work in a focused fashion. At present, do not know how. Use trusted email lists, but have not found how social search works for the things needed.

Things that look like social search: emails forwarded to you by friends - this is social search.
Al Chang's google summary - Al looks at a lot of stuff.

Rocky - discovered google Reader Share - for the teams. No mechanism to consume reader feeds. Have to go to yet another URL to consume it for my team. Would like a highlighter of important info.

Jerry - Firefox plugins could be modified to highlight the feeds.

Jim Benson - PageFlake - an aggregator of content and feeds - provides a richer view of social news. Sets up a widget to read the feed with specific tags

Beth - community tagging project - uses nptech and writes a summary and created a metafeed into categories. How do you create community filtering occur? Now using Pligg - kid of a digg platform.

Jerry: What are the after effects of using this? Beth - cross-blog conversations started. Other efforts - who's tagging, starting a folksonomy.

Jerry: run to dabbleDB which shows you how to pull data out of digg and del.icio.us and analyze it.

Pip - what works, what doesn't work - based on reputation of the people within the network - informalness. Hiring people that are conscientious - right brain filter. Jerry: these people are sort of anal, obsessive/compusive - but these skills are important to filter feeds and then need to connect to the meet, not the torrent.

Rocky - Current workflow is STILL based on trust. We build protected data streams from people we know and trust. To move to something that scales, requires we move to people we trust but do not know. Can not optimize a standard.

Jerry: collection of work over time - if we start to see content that is relevant and appropriate - and do it well over a long period of time, we develop trust over time. Bringing up the issues of weak-ties over strong-ties. Eric Biddle has a news feed that he has published a news feed over the course of the last eight years, and built up a weak ties.

Wikipedia founder creating Citizen Media through wikia, Campaign Wikia and Wikiseek - a community google play.

Breaks the whole Web 2.0 model? Pip - not that I like the content, rather that I feel that there is a level of transparency. Why is there something wrong with building a closed system? Web 2.0 is not about everything being open - which is limiting freedoms as well.

Boundary of open versus closed. Very strange for corporates at this time. When you start locking down portions of the content (like sections of Wikipedia), you can potentially impact the social norm of the commons. Whenever the Dean campaign sent out the coordinators to locations, energy dies out because of the paid staff. Nurturing the commons is a major issue.

Jerry: how explicit do we make the trust metrics - like reputation systems. These systems seem to ruin social norms rather than help them.

Mark - reputonics: filtering out who you know versus what you know. AggregateKnowledge - great to see the what. a) who is saying it and b) what they are saying.

Tags: social search, relationships, trusted bonds, google reader sharing

YiTan Tech Conference Call - CES 2007 recap

...joined a few minutes late...

Brian Wieser - CES is the new COMDEX - slice of what was there - how is the ad media changing economy changing - HD is present.

HD is coming up in various offers and devices.

HD Channel feeds - HD offered will be very compressed - consumer interest in consumer interest in HD and cable channels offering HD content. It is not a major change, rather an incremental change - will increase interest, but not a tsunami.

NYT article - Porn industry discovering pros and cons is occurring (you can see who has acne and such).

Pip asks - compression? Brian - Digital networks will eventually begin to fade away.

Second thing - connected media managers/centers/servers - many different solutions.
Digo going to offer a direct to consumer DVR - not relying on cable operators.
Moxie Center very nice - but lots of others.
HP is pushing their offering, lots of Windows Media Server in various forms everywhere.

Jerry - with Vista, will more people consume media in greater forms because of the WMS?
Just because the technology is there, does not mean that everyone is going to use it. Goal from products there was to allow for more media center functionality.

Third thing - internet bypass TVs - TV solutions allow for connection to the Internet (bypassing the cable set-top box). Sony offering branded channels, AOL has an offering, Apple offered iTV. The greatest challenge is the cable-card plugin issue (standards are being used to slow things down, not increase deployment).

Right now, you can get the content, but no return path - e.g. no Video On Demand. When the customer will need the "cable card", it will sound so complicated that the user will just not do it.

Too many obstacles in making true internet bypass content. Unless you have five-9s, customers will nto be happy. Brian's assessment - a long way away (2-3 years) until the issues get resolved.

Pip - what is the problem with cabel cards - how would internet bypass to become common/a reality? Dean Collins - go to CableCard3 to see the work he did with cable networks and cable cards. The cable companies followed the rules, but cable companies were not willing to give the other services. We are now at CableCard1.3 - supposedly going to CableCard2 which would offer two-way, then CableLabs changed the conversation to move from PCMCIA to a chip and then another 2-3 years and intentionally delayed.

Effects of iPhone Announcement at CES
Everyone was talking about it - but wondering if it would live up to the hype. Will they ship out as many as they suggest (10M in 2007). Seems like an impressive device on it's own merit.

Mark - absolutely in line for the iPhone. Game changer in thinking about UI - hardcoding buttons on portable devices - the beginning of the end. What experience is the user after instead of what kind of tool to build.

Pip - "game changing" device that he wants is that it never drops a call and clarity of call. No one has any intention of solving that issue (we are used to it). Will it be "gee whiz" like the Cube or will it be similar to the iPod. Come May/June - will it meet the expectations? Word of Mouth has to be successful. Unlike Vista, iPhone is revolutionary.

Alex - on the marketing, Steve Jobs performance - he blew it by announcing the iPhone before it was ready, and give the competition to figure out what it is and how they can beat it.

Pip - LG is offering an iPhone-like product called PRADA. Not sure why Apple offered the iPhone and have to regenerate the excitement.

Al - with phones, you have to submit the information to the FEC, so it is public then anyway.

Howard - Nokia N800 - follow on to the Nokia 770 - Esme Vos has it - why are we not speaking about it? This phone is open (Linux) and a bad UI for the phone.

Pip - if Ballmer had been showing this product, people would be attacking it much harder. Apple gets a little grace - you can see what it might be, rather than what it is not.

Jerry believe we will be using the tablet to make calls and connect to the bluetooth headset.

Web 2.0 from the other side of the desk

Yesterday was my return to lecturing in a classroom setting - this time, at Polytechnic teaching an new class, "Emerging Paradigms in a Web 2.0 Environment". The class is made up of 11 students coming from various walks of life and roles - from as lofty as a CEO of a small company to project managers of a major utility in the city to senior QA effort for a software concern. The class is also one of the most diverse I have seen since living in London - it made me wistful for the diversity of my Decom dinners back in London.

Our first class was on the definition of Web 2.0 - borrowing heavily from Web 2.0 by Tim O’Reilly as well as other sources including his blog and articles by other bloggers with articles like State of Web 2.0 by Dion Hinchcliffe. Since O'Reilly has not published a book as of yet on the paradigms of Web 2.0 (outside of the $400 PDF), we have been using "live" content fromt he web to inform our discussions. For the class last night, we had a number of interesting observations and one of the assignments is for the students to explain what they think Web 2.0 is. Instead of letting the cat out of the bag, I wanted to note a couple of interesting statements made:

1. For all of the students in the class (and all had some level of technical expertise) - NONE of them had a social networking profile up. Not on MySpace, not on Friendster or FaceBook - not even on LinkedIn (but I have since asked them to create a profile in the near future). Why? The consensus was a concern about privacy - that privacy and blending in the crowd was important - especially when being considered for a job, a promotion, whatever. By exposing one's personal details on the Internet could result in a bad recommendation, bad comments, something that could hamper/hinder your chances of advancement.
2. Web 2.0 as a "hubbub" - what was it all for? Why do we care about "web 2.0"? To that, I gave them O'Reilly's Why Web 2.0 is More Than a Buzzword as well as the deep link to Kathy Sierra's post of the same name.
3. The evolution of technology seems to have something to do with the resurgence of interest in building web technology companies - and could we estimate the end of this cycle?

More to come - especially as the students begin to craft their blog posts and we will decide as to which to post that comes from this class. If you have any questions or suggestions for content, please send me an email.

Dr. Gerry Lemberg passed on Saturday...

I just got off the phone with Gerry's roommate in Surrey and learned that he passed away in his home on Saturday. I was calling to follow up on a conversation we were having - and never thought I would be hearing such a thing.

Gerry was an incredible person - we had met when I was living in London and going to the Democrats Abroad UK events. Gerry was one of the few cantankerous individuals who would always speak his mind when given the chance - and knew what he wanted to do. He dreamed of retiring in Hawaii with the success of his company, SilverFox Venture Partners, and we would talk about his past in companies and Silicon Valley over the years.

His stories included work with the Israeli Army with Moshe Dayan (literally flying a jet from one end of the country to another), working with the founders of Intel at Fairchild (he was one of the five who decided to go VC, rather than entrepreneur) and other efforts over the years. We used to meet at the IOD in London for conversations about business ideas and opportunities that were percolating in London and abroad.

He started SilverFox with the idea that, while young meant energy and ambition, "silver hairs" meant wisdom and guile - and could create better companies out of their efforts. He was instrumental in me meeting various people and getting a much better perspective on the world from his eyes. He was doing a lot of teaching in Europe - in particular, helping get the Brits and other countries out of their risk adverse situations, and into building real companies. One of his supplemental handouts can be found on Christian Mayaud's blog, Sacred Cow Dung.

He will be missed - more than I could ever imagine. In just two days, he is already missed on his ecademy profile and I assume will be across the European entrepreneurial space rather soon.

I send my love and regards to his family and his roommate.

Music & Lyrics - A Com-Rom, not a Rom-Com

Just spent a couple hours at the movies tonight - watching the new movie "Music and Lyrics" with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. Funny thing, I have been watching the filming of this movie for the past year or so - since they filmed most of the exteriors and lobby scenes near my apartment in NYC. I even saw their efforts about three weeks ago where they made some minor edits for the film with Grant coming in and out of a building near the apartment he supposedly lives at (actually came out of a record store of some sort).

This week, I got an invite to view a rough cut of the movie for minor changes (if the feedback is appropriate). Interestingly, I was also picked (okay, so a woman suggested I join the groups since I was laughing at all the right parts) and got a chance to be in the focus group in the last showing, which gave me a chance to participate in giving feedback to the director and other such people.

For the movie - let me say that it is not a typical "rom-com" - I would call it a "com-rom" which is a bit more on the comedy side than on the romantic side. Oh yes, there is romance. But it is the whipped cream on top of the ice cream "comedy" which is at the heart of this film. It is the humor is what gets you through the movie to its amusing endings.

Quick and Dirty: Pretty Good
The challenge they have right now is that the movie (in its current state) has a number of threads that need to be trimmed and cleaned up. For me the beginning of the movie was kind of quirky and slow, but once you got into the story - and the music began to flow, a much better movie existed. Think of it as a combination of what would happen if Julie from "The Wedding Singer" would be like if she had not aged, but retained all of the knowledge of the past 20 years and could be a writer/lyricist. Now, add an "Adam Ant" character living on the Upper West Side (which many older artists seem to live in these anonymous buildings) who is benefiting from a revitalization of the 80s music scene (who knew that the 80s would be considered "classic"?). This is the start of the story of "Music and Lyrics".

To give you more would give too much away - but, suffice it to say that it is more funny than romantic - which means guys, you will actually like the movie - if they clean up a couple of the pieces that are missing (e.g. "jerk" of an ex-boyfriend which should have been cut, but is required for the next major scene, missing lead from POP who seems to have been somewhere else, but not in this movie).

Focus Group:
In the focus group - most of the group were women (22 people, with 7 guys). All of us loved the movie, and a third would definitely recommend it (the rest of us would "probably recommend" it, though the whole of us would "definitely recommend it to someone"). The challenge is that recommending a self-professed "rom-com" would not sell well - since, "Sleepless in Seattle" and "When Harry Met Sally" were a much more understandable and direct thread on the rom-com formula. This is different - sort of a humor hodge (especially sarky British humor) with a podge of romance and integrity and nostalgia to the 80s. If you are 30+ and can remember some of the acts from the 80s, and appreciate a Hugh Grant/British sort-of-sarcasm, this is a movie you should see.

The Trailer:
They do hit the high points in the trailer and even include stuff they left on the cutting room floor (e.g. "We broke up in 1992, which means I am a 90s has-been" and the scene where Hugh is cleaning Drew's teeth in the bathroom). They have some minor edits to do before the Valentines Day release - but I think it will turn out well.

Kudos:
Check out some of the more amusing efforts from Brad Garrett, Kristen Johnston, and Jason Antoon. I felt for Haley Bennett who plays Cora Corman (an amalgam of Britney, Christina and Shakira) who I think was in my showing (I believe I briefly met her when going into the theater) and of her scenes; only two really shows her strengths (in the recording studio when she sings with her band as well as her duet with Grant). If Samantha Zweben actually lives on the UWS, then please give me a call when you can...

To the team behind this film: best of luck. Looking forward to see the weekend grosses.

Yi-Tan Tech Conference Call - Predictions for 2007

From Jerry's request for predictions:

Dean Landsman: Microsoft will make serious moves on online advertising and attempt a hostile takeover of Yahoo! - might save Microsoft's own blunders.

Pip: Microsoft is on the crest - ready to become bolder - and become more active. Microsoft's R&D budget is too high compared to their peers ($8B in 2006) - will make a change. Wii becoming a very powerful voice. Alternative energy/glovbal warming will become higher and higher. Some new idea will come into the framework will translate into a change. Action may occur. Stage 2 of energy independence, climate change - will be at the top of the agenda by the end of the year. Green will become cool - and will be a way for people to become rich (Jerry: "green is the new black") - audience has expanded.

Nicole Lazzaro: Wii stats - very impressive - continued success - outselling the PS3 with the new experience. Gets back to what is most exciting about gaming - forcing designers to innovate and create new innovation elsewhere. Low end of the market.

Nancy White: SecondLife - what will people be doing with online environments - how will people make it easier for users to use SL environments. Second wave adoption is going to get serious attention - and will help develop revenues and adoption opportunities.

Jerry: no community is takling up SL like college students took up FaceBook.

Allen Kelly: Gartner hype-cycle - initial hype, disillusionment, then mainstream adoption - 2007 will be a disillusionment and then 2008 will become the real growth. SL (hopefully) will offer a chance to allow for creative and innovative opportunities after the disillusionment trough.

Pip: Web browser allows for simple navigation - ISPs got you on. Need similar slide for SL. Initial adoption - and then something that is radically compelling. Needs it to become more navigatible and create compelling experiences.

Jerry: in Web 1.0 - early browsers - you could view code and then reuse code. Easy dissemination. In SL, not easy - growth constraint - IP has slowed it down.

Nathan: energy issues- lend even more fire into energy-efficient computing. No info on google aiming for energy efficiency. AMD is maintaining its advantage over Intel in terms of energy efficiency. Virtualization will be the place to be.

Pip to Nathan: will there be fewer and fewer servers in the world? Nathan: some of the high volume has to start experiencing slower growth with the virtualization expansion. In addition, power and real-estate issues.

Howard: Dan Miller pointed out that in Y2K in '99 has depreciated in the past seven years - look to replace their equipment and look to virtualization and centralization. Amazon cloud-in-the-sky solutions. Social media is not dead - despite what Steve Rubel says.

Bo: FindMe/FollowMe will exist - IM, SMS, mobile phone lines - and control access views to contact you. Will be able to happen in '07 - smart phones, FON - will happen for real.

Jerry: will be have an aggregation of free wifi - muni? What effect will that have on the carrier model? Will it syphon off that solution.

Esme: Yes, you can roam NOW - police in several cities are already running around using their laptops, high speed chases - anmd getting high-speed wifi. Number of cities that have a network up and running or RFPs are over 300. Grassroots level wifi - can not roam. One companies network - wireless local LAN - you can roam. 802.11N will win over WiMAX - need to win over the laptops, need to get over the upgrade cycle. Delay in the replacement of the devices. N good replacement of current tech.

Jerry: social filtering (using social information to find information)

Heather: what is next - social filtering will proliferate - will be a huge influx of human curating - displaying visually - sort of like Jerry's Brain. Will always be challenging to find what you want. Yahoo! did it in the beginning - and now others are doing it better. Tools that will go into it - but human beings will have to be part of the equation.

Jerry: right-brain: "A Whole New Mind"

Jay: Drop Web 2.0, 3.0 and call it WebN - not webX (already copyrighted)

Nick: Identity in '07 - productive and accelerated work in converging technologies in terms of interoperation. When benefits of single signon becomes more than password/authentication - and then eyeballs/identities are allocated - this will become the major acceleration. Major places to look: iiw2006 - workshops, Berkman Center w/ Doc Searles, technometria, Sxipper - single signon browser. Identity/SS - middle of the spam issues - more important to validate who sends what to make identity very important - will, in a lasting way, be important. Could help and really hurt as well - tracking the policy side. Watching how people are able to manage their identity and other aspects.

Jerry: 2007 appears to be spam. Image spam - much larger in file size - applicaion acceleration. Now it is becoming more important to handle.