thinking

I’ve just been trying Startforce.com which touts itself to be browser based operating system. To make matters complicated, I decided to run Startforce in Firefox on Windows XP Pro running in emulation on Mac OS X. Perhaps I’m not seeing the light but why would anyone want a browser based operating system? Particularly when on has to have an operating system to run the browser in which the operating system will run? If the browser can run alone… I buy it. I also crashes Safari when selecting new user. Oh well.

I make this statement any time I talk with clients and colleagues and it always gets a chuckle. I thought I would add some detail to defend my provocative statement. For the record, some content should perish. The content that I am referring fuels the knowledge that is “hosted” in intranets or said differently, knowledge that lies in stagnant information silos.

News, Commentary and Analysis. This is how I describe the content in an amazing archive that is part of the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group’s Factiva platform. Once a company realizes that these categories apply to their knowledge, the state of their information access strategy is exposed.

News: What is happening in my company? What are we working on? …
Commentary: What does everyone think? Opinions…
Analysis: Trends, patterns and relationships…

Add users to the mix and here we go…

So at the foundation of the information access problem (or solution being the optimist) is a metadata strategy coupled by social tools that enable users to collaborate through content and knowledge and not through technologies. The knowledge base + metadata strategy creates relevant experiences.

At the expo this week and had the honor to speak with Rod Smith and David Barnes from IBM. We covered QED wiki and it generated many great questions. One question which resonated as an issue was change management, e.g., roll out and adoption of 2.0 services in an enterprise. Yes, the corporate enterprise, where 2.0 initiatives challenge convention, workflow, culture and infrastructure. Thanks for that great question.

I was at the Phila Fringe Fest last night and saw the Devil and Ben Jones at the Troc. Really strong performances with really soulful, live music. After the show, wound up at the Fringe Cabaret on American St. and met some really cool people, one woman in particular ran CCCP (Carbon County Cultural Project) which was the sponsor of the play I saw earlier. In her prior “life”, she was a metadata and taxonomy guru at Reuters and we shared many connections.

Well, she wasn’t really a date, but she was really great and I couldn’t believe that I was having an intoxicating discussion on the virtues of a sound metadata strategy @3:00 am in Philadelphia.
Small world.

The social/community based search is now heating up. Rollyo and Swickis popping up everywhere. Celebrities rolling their own from John Battelle, to Debra Messing’s fav shopping sites… Not unlike the celebrity playlists of itunes. Building the list in either of the aforementioned was a joy. The ability to create a nice widget that I can drop just about anywhere was simple. Customization, training and integration- nice.

• Rollyo
• Eurekster Swicki

Eurekster’s Buzzcloud is curious in the default view as the size of the search terms don’t seem to have meaning at first…

I’m very very interested in what either of these services plan to do with the user-built-community-tuned bits.

The Swicki results tools are not rendering properly in Safari but Mozilla is solid. They responded within 2 hours and will let me know when they attack the issue.

A colleague of mine is debating the use of the term “widget” to describe interface components that users have the ability to add to their “dashboard” or “page” or “desktop”.

Yahoo: Widget

Google: Gadget

OSX Tiger Dashboard: Widget

Microsoft: Gadget

Moveable Type: Widget

Automatic/WordPress: Widget

Mozilla: Widget

Opera: Widget

Sun: Widget

Here’s a histogram from Sphere showing the the spike in the term “widget”.

looks like Widget is in the lead…dude.

On June 11, I’m running a pre conference workshop on the topic of Web 2.0 at SLA 2006 in Baltimore. Just getting into the meaning of the concept of 2.0 is a daunting task. The last Google search I ran on “Web 2.0″ within powerpoint presentations yielded 1,600 results.

Tracking the mentions from 2000-2006 using Factiva.com, (I’m the AVP of Product Design at Factiva) the spike in mentions is an indicator of industry adoption of the term “Web 2.0″.

• 2000 14

• 2001 12

• 2002 14

• 2003 23

• 2004 182

• 2005 836

• 2006 1207 (up to May 24)

The paradox is that what Web 2.0 represents is in fact governed by the Web 2.0 Meme–by idealists to sensationalist marketeers and all who fall in between.

Life in the Burg.

Looking into some nice tube preamps… avalon, pendulum, raven. Not sure. Will Bartlett will be engineering a long overdue release. Can’t wait. Thanks Will.