- Sci Blogs — aggregated and hosted blogs from New Zealand scientists and researchers. A planet aggregator has become a key part of building a community, even outside programming.
- Super Better, or How To Turn Recovery Into a Game — Jane McGonigal had a concussion, and created a game to keep her doing things that aided her recovery. Interesting discussion of how to build a game around a serious real-life problem. And honestly, people: if she can make concussion into a game, surely you can make your crap websites suck less?
- Justniffer — packet sniffer that identifies HTTP requests and emits an Apache-style logfile showing what was requested. (via Simon Willison)
- Vegemite Names New Spread — the original name was crowdsourced in 1923. They decided to repeat the process for their new product, a spread made from Vegemite and Cream Cheese. The winning name came from an Australian web designer: “Vegemite iSnack 2.0”. This does not appear to be a joke (no mention that the commercial will use music from Rick Astley). Unsure which will make Americans more ill: the name, the idea of eating Vegemite mixed with cream cheese, or the idea of eating Vegemite at all.
"Web 2.0" entries
Personalization and the future of Digg
A recommendation model could quell competition for Digg's front page
I recently talked to Joe Stump, CTO of SimpleGeo, about a number of topics related to location and databases. However, in the course of the interview, we also got around to discussing Digg. Previous to launching SimpleGeo, Joe was the Chief Architect at Digg, and he has a lot of insight into where the site is heading. We'll be running the rest of the interview soon, but what Joe told me about Digg got me thinking.
Four Steps to Gov 2.0: A Guide for Agencies
What Does the World Look Like When the Work of Government is Driven by the People? Gov 2.0 has a lot of definitions, but in observing the exciting breadth of projects currently being built, it feels a little like the Blind Men and the Elephant, where everyone defines it based on their first hand experience, but not from a holistic…
Playing With Foursquare Data
Foursquare is the new Dodgeball. Which is to say that it is my (and many other people’s) method for tracking where we go (and in most cases our social activities). On a daily basis I use the iPhone app to announce some of my whereabouts to friends. I share specifics selectively, but in aggregate my information is shared publicly. (Disclosure: Foursquare is an OATV investment)
Being online: identity, anonymity, and all things in between
To be or not to be: that is the question.
Hamlet’s famous utterance plays a trick on theater-goers, a mind game of the same type he inflicted constantly on his family and his court. While diverting his audience’s attention with a seemingly simple choice between being and non-being, Hamlet of all people would know very well how these extremes bracket infinite gradations. Our fascination with Hamlet is precisely his instinct for presenting a different self to almost everyone he met. Social networking gives us an impetus to review how we appear online. When people ask who we are, questions multiply far beyond the capacity of a binary “to be” digit.
The War For the Web
It is becoming clear to me that we are heading into a bloody period of competition that could be extremely unfriendly to the interoperable web as we know it today. If you've followed my thinking about Web 2.0 from the beginning, you know that I believe we are engaged in a long term project to build an internet operating system. I've outlined a few of the ways that big players like Facebook, Apple, and News Corp are potentially breaking the "small pieces loosely joined" model of the Internet. But perhaps most threatening of all are the natural monopolies created by Web 2.0 network effects. We're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill. And it's time for developers to take a stand. If you don't want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don't wait till it's too late.
Ignite NYC on 11/16: Gov 2.0, Body Hacks, and Hi-Tech Craft
The Web 2.0 Expo starts tomorrow, 11/16, in NYC. We're kicking off the conference with an Ignite featuring 14 great speakers. The event is at the New World Stages. I'll be co-hosting with Ignite NYC organizer Tikva Morowati. As always each speaker gets just five minutes on stage. Their presentation will each be just 20 slides that each auto-advance…
Web 2.0 Summit Starts Today
Last year at Web 2.0 Summit, one prominent tech executive responded to our focus on "Web meets World" — the way web technology is being used to attack the world's problems — by saying "I don't come to this conference to learn how to do good. I come to learn about trends that are going to affect my business."…
Social Networking is the Means to Achieve Workplace Collaboration
Yesterday I live-blogged a bit from the terrific Government 2.0 event produced by FedScoop.com at the Newseum in Washington, DC. I wrote a post about how collaboration was not the means, but rather an end made possible by the means of social networking tools. You can read my original writing and some initial comments here. Here on O’Reilly Radar, I expand on these ideas.
Where 2.0 CFP Extended
Every year Where 2.0 is a gathering of mapping companies, and geohackers. This year there will be a lot of discussion about mobile apps (iPhone vs, Android vs. Pre vs. Nokia), user-contributed geodata (like Waze and Google Building Maker), temporal mapping, government geodata (like Data SF), augmented reality (like Wikitude), and the geolocated web. We've extended the CFP entry…
