Matt McAlister began his technology publishing career at Macworld Online where he covered new technologies and games. He then joined the founding team of The Standard and led the online efforts in the US from launch until 2000 when he left to help launch the European edition in London. Currently, he is VP and General Manager for InfoWorld.com by day and instigator of a dotcom media revival by night. His blog is located here.
Gillmor breaks down the thinking behind attention.xml
What happens when you hit your RSS consumption limit? What happens when you remember that you read something somewhere on someone's blog at some point that you want to find again? How do you keep yourself in-the-know particularly within the universe of people that matter to you? Is it possible to train information how to come to you in a way that works both for you and for the source?
You could argue that RSS is creating these problems, but the fact that we have these problems and that we would consider solving them shows tangible progress out of the Web 1.0 world.
Steve Gillmor has been trying to solve this set of problems for the information industry for a long time now. He calls the solution attention.xml, and he writes an interesting overview of what he's trying to accomplish with this format. The format itself will enable the industry to solve these and other information flow problems, but the tools still need to be built or amended to actually make the changes real. That may take a while, but that means there's time for media companies to start rethinking how they are publishing in order to take advantage of this new relationship with the people they want to serve.
Similarly, the thoroughly edited news feature once gave us all the context we needed to fully grasp the significance or relevance of an event in time. Again, the connected nature of information across the Internet now dynamically creates context and understanding far greater than any single standalone article can offer.
Context occurs when blogs link to each other and reference sources. Context occurs when you pull a list of articles on a given topic and choose which ones matter to you. A snapshot in time on the Internet looks more like a reference list than a 1,000-word feature article.
The search engines offer an interesting solution to that problem. Feedster and Technorati both return results from queries in RSS format which can then be used to create context on any given topic. Amazon's A9 OpenSearch product performs a similar service, and the data set, in this case, comes directly out of publishers' records. Using the result of those queries on your site will show your readers a more comprehensive resource list than simply posting raw data produced internally or edited news stories that want to be standalone events.
Delicious is taking this context a step further by giving publishers the tools to make connections in 2 directions. 1) Publishers can create context around their own internal content by pulling RSS feeds of content that share a common tag. 2) Publishers can then engage in the external dialog about a topic by connecting internal content and external content with the same tag.
Investigative journalism is more important than ever before, but investigating is no longer limited to journalists with special access to sources. Reporting transparency becomes more and more important to readers as they begin to fact-check stories for the major media outlets. Rather than stand alone in the ivory tower, publishers need to create open links amongst their readers and build context out of those links to tell stories that matter.
Why Google isn't what it used to be
The AutoLink debate seems more like the catalyst for venting
frustration in a perception shift than a real complaint about the
technology. Google was once the enabler of open market
conversations, a doorway to a future where innovators could circumvent
the establishment on the way toward improving the world we live in. But there's
something about this new feature that changes all that.
Product launches such as Orkut, Gmail, Image Ads, and Google News all
stripped away the once-thick varnish of credibility and trust that
Google commanded amongst the digerati. They bought closed
software tools companies like Blogger and Picasa. And then Google went
public. The true intentions of the company's founders became
obvious to everyone. They want to be rich! How rude!
From Tim Bray:
Suppose some bright developers in a garage somewhere are cooking up
some new, dramatically better, online mapping application. If AutoLink
maps became the default way of doing things, they’re stone-cold dead.
Sure, they’ll just call up the Googleplex and ask to be on the options
list with Yahoo Maps and Mapquest. Ha. Ha. Ha.
From Steve Gillmor:
Over and over incumbents are walking up to the light at the end of the
tunnel and saying, "Looks like a train." If Google leverages its scale
to create new inventory around links, the net effect will be to incent
competitors to route around it. Just as Google destabilized Office by
creating the world’s fastest (and free) spell checker, reference tool,
and pizza delivery service, so too will a craigslistian series of
competitors destabilize Google if they are stupid enough to persist in
refusing a conversation with the very beta-testers who are their
partners.
The company's Do-No-Evil mantra then read more like a laughable
reverse-psychology trick or 1999 marketing ploy. Craig Newmark
suddenly looked like a saint, and Google was merely one product launch
away from turning its core supporters into rebel forces in the fight
against evil corporations.
From Doc Searls:
Google is, no doubt, completely revolutionizing the advertising
business. But they have a lot of work to do on the other side of the
consumer/customer split. They need to start treating consumers as
customers. They need to see that markets are not just conversations,
but relationships as well.
It couldn't be clearer from their own statements that Google has
monolithic intentions: "Google's mission is to organize the
world's information and make it universally accessible and
useful." The difference between Google and the CIA is that Google
let's everyone see what is in their database.
Fine. They are doing an incredible job of building an information
services powerhouse with a river of revenues to distribute and
impressive products that do impressive things. Stockholders and
advertisers should be very pleased. Consumers should marvel at
what Google offers.
From Jason Kottke:
If you're against AutoLink because you think Google is becoming too
big, they're evil, they're abusing their power, or they bought another
blog company instead of yours, then that's fine. Just be up front about
why you're upset. It's a trust issue. Do you trust Google's software to
do what it says its going to do and not take advantage of you? If the
answer is no, don't use it. But if you're saying that Google should not
provide this feature at all and that consenting adults in the privacy
of their own homes can't choose to use the feature themselves, I don't
think that's a good deal for the users. As content providers, let's not
try and reach into our readers' computers and dictate what they can or
can't do with the copies of our content that they've downloaded for
their personal use.
Should consumers of Google products trust that Google is providing any of these services primarily for
the user's benefit? Don't believe it for a second. Those
days disappeared long ago. It's time to get reacquainted with
Google and understand it for what it is today...a fast-growing capitalistic enterprise competing
for world domination.
Never to be outdone by mainstream media, the porn industry has turned the Podcast craze into something a little more saucy than blog-like blather. Playboy is photocasting your favorite naughtiness via Apple's new iPod Photo. And as expected, they've branded a brilliant name for their service -- "iBod".
Using the ultimate media platform also known as iTunes and the iPhoto slideshow tools, anybody can broadcast photographs just as they've been able share blog entries and music with increasingly simplistic tools. With the addition of a little digital camera, the iPod may soon finally enable the One-Man Mobile Uplink Unit reporter that Al Franken envisioned on Saturday Night Live in the 1980's.
The porn industry has a history of finding new business models and new ways to leverage media technologies before the mainstream can figure out what it intends to do. In this case, I'm guessing Playboy had already spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out how to sell us images on our cell phones. Why bother with telecom carriers when there's this open thing called the Internet?
Has porn done it once again? At the very least, iBod gives new meaning to Apple's iPod Photo slogan, "Why should your ears have all the fun?"
The press has been all over the reports that "Blog" is Merriam-Webster's most-searched word of the year. And I started thinking about what other phrases or companies might fall in the same ballpark in the Internet business this year. Skype is perhaps the most dramatic example of a disruptive business model and empowering technology. The Google IPO turned heads and signalled new confidence for all of us in the Internet business. And the introduction of Mozilla's Firefox woke a few sleeping giants. Though nothing could have been more telling that a revolution was happening with blogs than the common held belief at a recent blogger conference that CNet is "old media".
Of course, there were certain pressures that drove blogging into the popular consciousness. New media forms evoke new forms of expression. And after 2 years of depression in the markets and pain and suffering in the geopolitical spheres, the timing for a new communication form could not have been better.
I would bet that if Webster's had tracked this statistic back to 1998 "Ecommerce" would have made the top 5. We might have found "IPO" leading the pack in 1999. Perhaps "Bubble" in 2000. And, of course, "Osama" must have been the winner in 2001. (Google's Zeitgeist archive is always a fascinating study of pop culture.)
I'm encouraged to find the Internet driving pop culture discussion again, as there is so much vitality and power yet to be found here. John Doerr once proclaimed in the late '90's that we haven't hyped the Internet enough, as the transformational power inherent in the Internet as a concept is still only just starting to become reality.
If I were to make a prediction for 2005, I might guess that "RSS" becomes the new word. Though this industry has made every effort to build a more user friendly name for this publishing format, we're way past critical mass now. And as the blogging revolution unfolds, the power of RSS will start making more sense to more and more people. But we can't rule out that 2005 may be the year that "VoIP" becomes as prevalent as "Cyberspace" was in 1996.
Pay-per-view slaughter goes live on the Internet
A new online/offline sport brings hunting to the little man. Live-shot.com gives online subscribers the opportunity to kill from their computer, firing a rifle via a webcam trigger. The use of a computer to drive remote-control weapons has traditionally been available only for the military, but now anybody can enjoy the art of killing without ever leaving the couch or spilling a beer.
Is this like playing a video game? No, this is real. What you see on your screen thru the camera is what is there. When you activate the fire control, you are sending a signal to the firing mechanism which discharges a round. You control the camera and firearm.
Live-shot founder John Lockwood claims it's not as easy as it sounds. He states in an interview with NPR, "You still have to locate; you still have to make a good shot." He says it might be good for new hunters or "people who can't get out of bed or get out in the field and sit for any length of time."
Though the plan is controversial, John has no intention of stopping now. "As long as it's legal and I can do some good, it's gonna continue."
Since ID's aren't exactly trackable and nobody could possibly get injured with a remote control gun, a Live-shot subscription might make the perfect Christmas gift for your 8-year-old. Give little Jimmy an online gun for a day so he doesn't have to see the carcass or experience the reality of actually killing. No blood. No mess. No nightmares. Heck, why not setup a Live-shot kiosk at the office so you can shoot deer when you get too stressed out? Who needs foam when you can shoot lead?
Apple looking for iPod game partners
Digital River's stock jumped this morning on the heels of several rumors about its relationship with Apple. The iPod-as-gaming-platform will certainly get the publishers drooling. And Digital River may be the vehicle for delivering games over the Internet to iPod gaming buyers. Neither Apple nor Digital River have commented on the story.
In related news, Macworld Expo announced that Steve Jobs will keynote the event in San Francisco in January. Could the buzzmeister himself be hyping a hype-hungry crowd?
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