Barcamp is coming to Boston again!
Well it's not really 'coming' - it was here all along, just dormant. Here's the down-lo:
BarCamp Boston 3
May 17-18, 2008
http://barcampboston.org/BarCamp is an unConference, organized on the fly by attendees, for attendees. There is no registration fee, but you don't just attend a BarCamp — you can participate in discussions, demo your projects, or join into another cooperative event.
Topics may include, but are not limited to: open source software, startups, UI design, entrepreneurship, AJAX, hardware hacking, robotics, mobile computing, bioinformatics, RSS, Social Software, programming languages, and the future of technology.
More information and free registration at:
http://barcampboston.org/
I 'm coming. Are you?
Ray Ozzie on Mesh
You might have missed the announcement of Microsoft Mesh. Cycnical me: these grand strategies come and go. I believe this is the second or perhaps third major iteration of Microsoft's strategy in this area, in each case without an actual scaling implementation of same.At any rate, if you are interested in the whole memo that supposedly started it all, check this post Full Text of Ray Ozzie Mesh Memo from ReadWriteWeb:
"Excerpt: In its early days the web grew through the explosion of information portals as gateways to content, marketplaces for commerce, and communications tools such as email, IM and newsgroups that drove a sense of community on the internet. Over time, the significance of these “3 Cs” – content, commerce, and community – has expanded tremendously, growing in ways through which they‟ve become intermixed and mutually reinforcing."
Twitter mania continues, unabated, now claiming bodies, Story at 11
Check this post Twitter’s Lead Architect Leaves: It’s Not You, It’s Me from Mashable!:
"While I’ll give Cook the benefit of the doubt, I can’t think of a more pressure packed job than being responsible for the scaling of Twitter, a service that has continuously struggled to keep up with its growing user base. Was Cook forced out as the scape goat for Twitter’s technical woes? Who knows, but as someone that was with Twitter since the beginning and likely an owner of some valuable stock options in the redhot-in-spite-of- itself startup, it seems unlikely he’d leave completely on his own terms."
Grou.ps Launches Public Beta
Check this post Grou.ps Launches Public Beta from ReadWriteWeb:
"There are a lot of ways to collaborate online - wikis, forums, social networks - but there are very few providers that package all the tools together that a group might need. Grou.ps, a social groupware provider, aims to address that problem by providing its users one single package of integrated tools."Looks like it's worth a look…
Danah Boyd on Facebook and Myspace
A really interesting article for anyone interested in social networks and their role and impact in our society.
"… I want to take a moment to make a meta point here. I have been traipsing through the country talking to teens and I've been seeing this transition for the past 6-9 months but I'm having a hard time putting into words.
Americans aren't so good at talking about class and I'm definitely feeling that discomfort. It's sticky, it's uncomfortable, and to top it off, we don't have the language for marking class in a meaningful way. So this piece is intentionally descriptive, but in being so, it's also hugely problematic.
I don't have the language to get at what I want to say, but I decided it needed to be said anyhow. I wish I could just put numbers in front of it all and be done with it, but instead, I'm going to face the stickiness and see if I can get my thoughts across. Hopefully it works…." (from Danah Boyd, Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace)
Danah's Boyd's disclaimer alone is thought provoking enough to get me to read the whole article about Myspace and Facebook.
What’s Your Best Dilbert Punch Line?
Amazing idea from Scott Adams. Dilbert Mashups. Check this post What’s Your Best Dilbert Punch Line? from Mashable!:
"Dilbert has a huge following and I’m sure lots of people will have fun making their own punch lines for the popular comic, and there are even a few sharing options (embedding, email, social bookmarking, etc.) that will allow those Dilber writer-wannabes to share their humorous wit with friends across the web. One drawback, though, is the fact that you can only create a mashup for the current day’s comic strip." Check it out!
Vista new user experience not for the faint of heart
I just turned on a new laptop I bought for my father in law -
amazingly a 1 Gig Mem, 1.7MHz, 90Mb computer for around $700. Nice.
But one thing: HP just doesn 't seem to care about the user experience. Or is it Microsoft for allowing it? Or is it ourselves for forcing Microsoft to make Vista so open that their OEMs are practically forced to go nuts?
I've written in the past that I thought at 60,000 feet, Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X are more or less the same in terms of ease of use. The one huge (and probably crucial) exception to this is the initial user experience. I can only imagine what my 80 year old father in law would do if he saw the screen as it looks 'from the factory.'
Take a gander at what the screen looks like after turning the thing on. Look at all the mysterious icons from third party OEMs:
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Get Vonage?
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Ebay?
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Photosmart Essential?
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Aol Sign up, but also High Speed Services, and also Easy Internet Services
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Oh lets not foget MSN
And then look at those two huge windows:
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HP Total Care advisor, which should be called HP Total Confusion
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Symantec with lots of inscrutable options
And what about that weird sidebar? Yeah the clock is kind of cool and understandable but what the heck is that box with "view headlines" and that funny orange icon? Are you kidding me?
Just study the screen shot and imagine yourself an 80 year old, world war 2, ex-merchant marine who is trying to check his email. Yikes!
Great new information about blogging
I just wrote a few brief tutorials that I thought might be of interest to you and, well, everyone. Please check them out - if you find them useful, please pass them on to your friends!
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"What's the difference between a blog and a web site?" - That perennial question that people first discovering blogging often ask. My short and sweet explanation.
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"How to put a blog on my web site" - A brief explanation why anyone with a web site might want to consider adding a blog to it, and how you might do that
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"What are the best news blogs" - How do you go about finding the best blogs about current events?
Trade-off: Facebook vs. Ning
I am advising a client who is interested in reaching out to a huge existing community of folks who they, historically and today, can count as their natural constituency.The problem is, they don't have their names or email addresses and want to connect to them, and them to each other. The question is, how to do that.
I explored three options with them: create a Facebook 'Group' and/or Application, create a Ning social network, or create a new and beautifully designed new web site to serve as the hub of the effort.
Here are some of my tentative conclusions.
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Outreach: No matter what approach is taken, a big part of the effort will be outreach, via email or google ads or something along those lines, to get the attention of these people, and motivate/incent them to register. The message, tone, language and incentive have to be carefully designed and monitored and tweaked to make it work.
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Design and Look: Facebook will allow the least customization of the look, followed by Ning, and of course creating a new site will give you any design you want. But don 't get all caught up in how important having a unique look is. There is something to be said for the familiarity and trust that a Facebook-looking group elicits.
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Cost: There is a similar trade-off in cost: A Facebook group will be the cheapest, a Ning site a little more, and a custom web site will almost certainly cost much more than you expect.
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Facebook has captured a lot of the 'social graph': This one is the hardest to explain because my point is subtle. [I await comments from someone saying that this point isn't subtle at all] Facebook 's magic is that it has already recorded many relationships, who is who's friend etc. They are trying to 'capture the social graph' So, it is much easier to encourage John to tell his friend Jane to also join this group because neither John or Jane have to 'sign up' - create a profile. So this is one unique advantage of using Facebook, assuming that there is reasonable overlap between Facebook users and the people we are trying to find.
Those are some of my insights in assessing the trade-offs. Please tell me all the things I am missing!
More on congestion pricing…
From a few previous posts you know that I have a curiosity about congestion pricing as a way to allay traffic jams, while raising money to improve infrastructure and alternative transportation.
In a recent post in the Freakonomics Blog, which I recommend, there's an interesting Q&A on that very topic that you may want to take a look at.
"Most people now recognize that congestion is a serious problem and that something can be done about it. There is also a growing movement nationally to charge drivers more directly for the use of the roads and technology. This will make charging easier and more sophisticated in the future by allowing for time-of-day, day-of-week, and level of congestion pricing." (from What We Didn't Know About Congestion Pricing)