We have implemented a del.icio.us like social bookmarking service and are currently trialling a new web based rss aggregation system within our organisation. Both of these applications allow you to tag content.
People who use both services are starting to ask whether they should be suing their RSS reader or the social bookmarking service to tag their content.
The answer is imperfect - you should use both.
Tagging is useful - it allows people to add their own semantics to content they are interested in, which provides an instant benefit to them, and engages them in the application they are using. For this reason tagging is becoming part of the core functionality of most Web2.0 applications.
This is a great thing because it increases the usability and usefulness of a service. However the problem is that while there are many places that you can tag things, you are essentially building lots of siloed tag collections that are difficult to aggregate. In the web2.0 space this is born out of the fact that all these services are competing with one another, to manage your information, and therefore there is no advantage in allowing you to share your tags with other applications.However within the firewall, this competitive element is stripped away and we have the opportunity to create an integrated environment.
Therefore I think we need to start thinking of tagging as a service.
Tagging as a service will allow your Enterprise 2.0 infrastructure to share a central repository for tagging. This means that when a user adds a tag in one application , it can be expressed in any number of others instantly with no further effort from the user.
Therefore adding tagging to an E2.0 application not only adds value to that application, but it increases the value of your whole Enterprise 2.0 infrastructure. For your users this will increase engagement and multiply the return that user receives from their initial investment in tagging.
Its a really simple concept but something I think that is being overlooked by the Enterprise 2.0 community at the moment.
Monday 29 October 2007
Friday 5 October 2007
So what is the FOWA?
The FOWA Expo 2007 is finished and I am just about to go on holiday so I wanted to quickly put down my thoughts on what I think is the Future of Web Apps, after listening to the talks and talking to the exhibitors.
So what is going to be big:
1. Lifestreams - until platforms like Facebook and Twitter open themselves up and allow social network interoperability people will start to create lifestreams aggregating all the content they create in various places. There are lots of companies getting into this area, but my favourite so far is http://rememble.com/ , I had a chat with them and they have only just launched but there site looks great and they have lots of good ideas.
2. Ambient Intimacy : A phrase coined by Leisa Reichelt when talking about presence applications such as Twitter and Jaiku. I think these technolgies will become more mainstream, especially now you can Twitter from Facebook.
3. Mobile Web : As phones get smarter, and developing for them gets easier (?!?) then companies will want to get into the monile scene. In Britain we are well placed to be forrunners in this with providers like Vodaphone and T-moile providing broadband speed mobile internet at a fixed price. Lets face it, if you are out and about with nothing to do, whats the first thing you will reach for - your phone!!!
4. DeDigitilisation : As more of us have a lot our lives digitised (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Wikis), our lives are becoming more intagible, and we become dependent on the internet to get access to our stuff. However printing has become massively cheaper, and companies like Blurb and Moo have arrived, offering to print out our digital lives at a surprisingly reasonable price!. Blurb is my favourite one at the moment - for a mere tenner you can create an 80 page shop quality book (Softcover) of whatever you want - I just ordered one with a bunch of my favourite photos, and it feels really good to have dedigitalised some of my life.
So whats not going to be hot at least int he way we expect??
1. Semantic web - the Tim Berners Lee vision isn't going to happen, at least not anytime soon.
We are all selfish at heart, and as a developer, what si the ROI of making my site semantically aware? However companies like Dapper are allowing communities to put a semantic layer over stuff they are intereseted in - essentially creating a semantic folksonomy.
So what is going to be big:
1. Lifestreams - until platforms like Facebook and Twitter open themselves up and allow social network interoperability people will start to create lifestreams aggregating all the content they create in various places. There are lots of companies getting into this area, but my favourite so far is http://rememble.com/ , I had a chat with them and they have only just launched but there site looks great and they have lots of good ideas.
2. Ambient Intimacy : A phrase coined by Leisa Reichelt when talking about presence applications such as Twitter and Jaiku. I think these technolgies will become more mainstream, especially now you can Twitter from Facebook.
3. Mobile Web : As phones get smarter, and developing for them gets easier (?!?) then companies will want to get into the monile scene. In Britain we are well placed to be forrunners in this with providers like Vodaphone and T-moile providing broadband speed mobile internet at a fixed price. Lets face it, if you are out and about with nothing to do, whats the first thing you will reach for - your phone!!!
4. DeDigitilisation : As more of us have a lot our lives digitised (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Wikis), our lives are becoming more intagible, and we become dependent on the internet to get access to our stuff. However printing has become massively cheaper, and companies like Blurb and Moo have arrived, offering to print out our digital lives at a surprisingly reasonable price!. Blurb is my favourite one at the moment - for a mere tenner you can create an 80 page shop quality book (Softcover) of whatever you want - I just ordered one with a bunch of my favourite photos, and it feels really good to have dedigitalised some of my life.
So whats not going to be hot at least int he way we expect??
1. Semantic web - the Tim Berners Lee vision isn't going to happen, at least not anytime soon.
We are all selfish at heart, and as a developer, what si the ROI of making my site semantically aware? However companies like Dapper are allowing communities to put a semantic layer over stuff they are intereseted in - essentially creating a semantic folksonomy.
Thursday 4 October 2007
Twittering
I have been experimenting with microblogging sites such as Twitter and Jaiku for a while, but without really doing it seriously. However yesterday Heidi Pollock mentioned in her talk that Twitter now has a mobile website, so I thought I would give Twitter another go.....Then this morning I was sitting next a guy called Paul Downey who was writting notes on the talk we were in directy into Twitter - I thought what an awesome idea and started to do the same, we ended up exchanging ids and follwing each other on the conference. I thought this is cool - so not only am I getting my notes down somewhere that I can find them again, but I can also see in real time what Paul was thinking/finding interesting. However it got even cooler when I changed track at the conference to watch a talk on presence, but still got the highlights of the talk on my original track because Paul was in ther twittering about it !!! Very cool.
BTW - The talk on presence was really really good - so good in fact I am going to write its own post later on this evening.
BTW - The talk on presence was really really good - so good in fact I am going to write its own post later on this evening.
Thoughts on FOWA day one
Well I was a bit dubious about coming to FOWA. Simon had been to a few conferences this year that overall he didn't really find very useful, and to be honest, for a conference about the future of web apps, their attendees "networking" site was really rubbish!!!
However, I arrived with an open mind, and kicked off the day with a bit of Halo 3 at the Microsoft lounge. Having established that this wasn't going to be a stuffy Enterprise 2.0 conference, and it was going to be a fun web2.0 conference I relaxed a bit.
I noted before going that most of the attendees were from little web2.0 startup companies, and apart from the sponsors of the shows I reckon I was the only attendee from a big corporation , let alone from a pharmaceutical company - so I felt a bit like an undercover agent , posing as a Flex developer!!! The upside of this was that nobody was trying to sell me anything, and I found that people, even the exibitors really just wanted to tell you what they were up to , and maybe get some feedback!
My highlight from yesterday was a talk by Daniel Burka, who was talking about how to implement changes in a community site like DIGG, in a way that really engages and placifies the community. I think he had some really great advice, and actually out shone his boss Kevin Rose, who presented later in the day.
One final point to note - like any cool technology conference, everyone was sporting their swanky MacBooks - but I was very surprised to see that Microsoft were using them on their stand to showcase Silverlight!!!!!!
More later on today!!
However, I arrived with an open mind, and kicked off the day with a bit of Halo 3 at the Microsoft lounge. Having established that this wasn't going to be a stuffy Enterprise 2.0 conference, and it was going to be a fun web2.0 conference I relaxed a bit.
I noted before going that most of the attendees were from little web2.0 startup companies, and apart from the sponsors of the shows I reckon I was the only attendee from a big corporation , let alone from a pharmaceutical company - so I felt a bit like an undercover agent , posing as a Flex developer!!! The upside of this was that nobody was trying to sell me anything, and I found that people, even the exibitors really just wanted to tell you what they were up to , and maybe get some feedback!
My highlight from yesterday was a talk by Daniel Burka, who was talking about how to implement changes in a community site like DIGG, in a way that really engages and placifies the community. I think he had some really great advice, and actually out shone his boss Kevin Rose, who presented later in the day.
One final point to note - like any cool technology conference, everyone was sporting their swanky MacBooks - but I was very surprised to see that Microsoft were using them on their stand to showcase Silverlight!!!!!!
More later on today!!
Wednesday 3 October 2007
Finally got a sneak preview of fav.or.it
http://fav.or.it/
I have been really looking forward to getting my hands on fav.or.it, which looks poised to solve the annoying problem, that you can subscribe to a comments feed for a blog, but these comments don't come to your RSS reader with any information about what post they relate to.
Fav.or.it I am pleased to say solves this, not only are you alerted when there are new comments on a post, but you can post a comment to a post from fav.or.it directly. GREAT.
BUT and I think it is a big but, the guy from fav.or.it that I spoke to admited, that they aren't really going for a RSS reader as such, more a platform for mashing up your RSS feeds and producing what they call "slices", streams of posts on a specific theme.
This in itself is fine, but it isn't "Brain Dead Simple" - the interface looks nice - but it isn't intuitive and the concepts behind mashing up web feeds to create "slices" are quite obscure.
What I really wanted to see was google reader but with comment support.
That said - they have been hiding away an amazing feature that I am surprised they haven't made more noise about :
Like many other similar RSS mashup tools, fav.or.it claims that it can learn what you like and suggest similar content. I am always skeptical about this because normally it involves maintaining a list of key terms that I am interested in....
However fav.or.it have put some thought in and developed a system that monitors the time you spend reading about subjects and maintains your interest profile based on this "passive interest".
Without seeing it for myself I cant say that this works, but it does seem like an elegant solution to a problem that needs addressing, and it is the reason that I would be prepared to put the effort into learning and setting up the interface for my use.
So, not the tool that I was looking for, but definitely one to look into.
I have been really looking forward to getting my hands on fav.or.it, which looks poised to solve the annoying problem, that you can subscribe to a comments feed for a blog, but these comments don't come to your RSS reader with any information about what post they relate to.
Fav.or.it I am pleased to say solves this, not only are you alerted when there are new comments on a post, but you can post a comment to a post from fav.or.it directly. GREAT.
BUT and I think it is a big but, the guy from fav.or.it that I spoke to admited, that they aren't really going for a RSS reader as such, more a platform for mashing up your RSS feeds and producing what they call "slices", streams of posts on a specific theme.
This in itself is fine, but it isn't "Brain Dead Simple" - the interface looks nice - but it isn't intuitive and the concepts behind mashing up web feeds to create "slices" are quite obscure.
What I really wanted to see was google reader but with comment support.
That said - they have been hiding away an amazing feature that I am surprised they haven't made more noise about :
Like many other similar RSS mashup tools, fav.or.it claims that it can learn what you like and suggest similar content. I am always skeptical about this because normally it involves maintaining a list of key terms that I am interested in....
However fav.or.it have put some thought in and developed a system that monitors the time you spend reading about subjects and maintains your interest profile based on this "passive interest".
Without seeing it for myself I cant say that this works, but it does seem like an elegant solution to a problem that needs addressing, and it is the reason that I would be prepared to put the effort into learning and setting up the interface for my use.
So, not the tool that I was looking for, but definitely one to look into.
"Web Apps Should be Braindead Simple"
Om Malick said in the opening discussion at FOWA that his top tip for the future of web apps is that "Web Apps should be braindead simple". I couldn't agree more in this respect, there are so many tools out there that do similar things - but the tool that I choose will be the easiest to use, the one that has the finest focus on the problem.. Its always worth remmbering the "one size doesn't fit all rule" make a web app to do one thing and one thing well.
Other top tips for the future of web apps: Mobile, Widgets - hopefully I can cover more on those later.
Other top tips for the future of web apps: Mobile, Widgets - hopefully I can cover more on those later.
Ctrlspc @ FOWA
Long time no blog, but I'm London today and tomorrow at the Future of Web Apps at the Excel center. I am going to be blogging my thoughts throughout the day, but looks like its going to be a good conference.
More soon.
More soon.
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