Weblogs and Wikis are authoring tools that enable everyday people to write to the Web. However one part of the Writeable Web is often overlooked: weblog comments. Often some of the best nuggets of content can be found buried in a comment attached to a weblog post. I've even coined a phrase for this: Microcontent Wiki, which is defined as: Weblog Post + Comments. It's microcontent because it's usually content based around a single theme or topic (defined by the weblog post). And it's like a Wiki because anyone can write a comment on a weblog, so it has a similar collaborative feel to a Wiki. The problem is, currently we don't have an easy way to track Microcontent Wikis. We can subscribe to RSS feeds for weblogs and even topics (k-collector), but weblog comments aren't as simple to aggregate.
As Paul Everitt wrote:
"Today I was browsing around one of the sites in the world of Zope. On one page someone asked a question which, as is rarely the case, I actually had an intelligent answer. However, providing the answer required me to register and login. Meaning yet another stinking password to remember, and another URL to periodically revist for follow ups.
Needless to say, I didn't. And that's one of the big problems of today's mostly-non-writeable web. You usually have to put your words in a place where people will find them, which usually means you put your words all over the place. There is too tight a coupling between content and location.
Tight coupling of content and location is an issue that has been bothering me too. I often write comments on weblog posts, but in order to track the conversation I have to bookmark the post and check back periodically. i.e. like Paul says, I need to continually go back to the location of the comment in order to see what other people may have contributed. Tools like Trackback enable you to comment on someone's post on your own weblog (like I'm doing with Paul's post here), but you still need to visit the original location to read what other people have written. So it's often easier to write a comment on the other person's weblog. And if you're commenting on popular weblogs, like Mark Pilgrim's for example, then it's likely to be read by many more people than if you'd written it on your own weblog.
One tool that I've found helpful is Phil Pearson's Comment monitoring service, which allows you to sign up to an RSS feed of comments on your weblog. And today I discovered that Radio Userland are in the midst of implementing an email notification service for when comments are posted to your site. But great as they are, these services are geared towards tracking comments on your own site. I'd like to be able to track comments on other peoples sites, but post-by-post only. In other words I'd like to de-couple bits of content from their various locations - particularly if they're buried in a weblog comments system - and collect them together in my RSS Aggregator.
It's interesting to consider the differences of weblogs and wikis in this context. A weblog is the voice of a single person, or sometimes a group of people - e.g. the Corante Many-to-Many weblog is a collective of 5 people including Clay Shirky. The key thing is that weblogs are owned by 1 or more people and it is the publishing vehicle for them. Further, weblogs are "the unedited voice of a person" according to Dave Winer's definition. For example my own weblog, Read/Write Web, is my own publishing environment and nobody else has privileges to post here.
Wikis on the other hand are collaborative publishing environments and in most cases anyone can write on them. Like weblogs they are "unedited", but the difference is no one person or group of persons "owns" the content. But there is an interesting correlative between wikis and weblog comments. When a blogger posts something on their weblog and they have comments enabled, anyone who then reads the post is able to write a comment. i.e. essentially any reader can publish on the weblog. It's like a Wiki-on-the-fly!
This concept can be expressed as the following equation:
Weblog Post + Comments = Microcontent Wiki
Currently RSS makes it easy to subscribe to a whole weblog feed, but it isn't so easy yet to subscribe to bits of a weblog. Tools such as k-collector enable you to subscribe to topics, which is close to the ideal of subscribing to microcontent, but it doesn't aggregate comments attached to weblog posts. Some webloggers have created RSS feeds for their comments systems, e.g. Sam Ruby has comments feeds and its even possible to subscribe to individual posts. But RSS comments feeds are far from widely adopted.
Two bloggers that generate interesting comments from their readers are Don Park and Robert Scoble. But to track comments on their weblogs, I need to bookmark the post in my weblog browser (ie I have to go outside my RSS Aggregator), and periodically click "Refresh" on that webpage to see if any new comments have been written. This is a big time waster for me. Wouldn't it be great if I could simply subscribe to an RSS feed of that post's comments? For example when I click on the "Comments" URL and view the comments, I'd love to see a simple "Subscribe to these comments" button that generates an RSS file. Then I could add that to my RSS Aggregator and bob's my uncle - all the comments from that weblog post would automatically be streamed to me. Weblog authoring tools vendors - consider this a feature request ;-)
Content is always going to be tightly coupled to location. This is especially so in a weblog, where the location will be a URL - eg http://www.readwriteweb.com in my case. But even in a Wiki, or a Microcontent Wiki as I've described it (weblog post + comments), there is a central location where content on a specific topic is aggregated. The key is to make it easy to subscribe to all the "locations" that interest you. Currently it's easy to subscribe to weblogs using RSS. Now we want to make it easy to subscribe to microcontent.
A few days ago John Robb complained about his Google PageRank being zero after he moved to his new domain. I was in the same situation, but this morning I noticed my weblog has a new Google PageRank of 5/10. I see John Robb's PageRank is back too (6/10). Another new blogger who had 0/10 PageRank up till today is Adam Bosworth (a former Microsoft executive) and today I see his rank is 6/10.
Some background: about 3 weeks ago I moved to my new domain name and accordingly my Google PageRank dropped to zero. Actually, I only had a ranking of 1 or 2 before the move. I've only been officially blogging since April this year (I originally bought Radio Userland in 2002 and played around with it, but I didn't seriously start blogging till a year later when I had to choose whether to renew my Radio Userland license). Anyway, up till now my Google PageRank was minimal. But I am pleased to see it is now 5/10. Sure this is the kind of weblog vanity that Andrew Orlowski would snigger at. Hey what can I say - guilty as charged :-)
I also noticed that my old domain, on Radio Userland's server, also now has a 5/10 PageRank. So that must mean Google has worked out how to factor in re-directs when calculating PageRank, or has found some other way to synch old and new domain names. Nice one Google!
Dave Winer, on political campaign blogging: "The first candidate that helps voters publish their own stories and ideas and drive the campaign is the one who really captures the energy of the Web."
I agree, the essence of the Two-Way Web is that everyone has the right to publish. That could almost be "the lost amendment" of the American Constitution :-) There are plenty of great ideas out there in the wide world and most of them are just waiting to be discovered. The Web is an enabler of idea discovery.
Besides, who wants to read a politician's blog. All they seem to do is talk trash. The following is an example of this, from New Zealand's parliament house. I'm sure it's the same sort of thing in other countries (ps GM = Genetically Modified).
"Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does the Prime Minister agree with the answer from the Minister for the Environment when asked: ìAre you happy to eat GM products?î, which was ìUm, I donít knowî, and is that Government policy?
Hon Dr Michael Cullen: It is always helpful when people take quotations in their full context. The Minister for the Environment actually said: ìUm, I donít know, I travel quite a lot, I probably have ingested it and not known it.î She went on to say, I thought, with her usual facility with words: ì I tell you, Iíve had a helluva lot more fears about some of the chemicals on our things.î
[and a bit further on]
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Given that the Minister in charge of the Environmental Risk Management Authority does not know whether she is happy to eat GM products, can the Prime Minister tell us whether she is happy to eat GM products?
Hon Dr Michael Cullen: I think that the Prime Minister has eaten the Leader of the Opposition on a number of occasions in this House and he is some kind of GM product. [Interruption] I withdraw and apologise.
Soon I'm going to shut up and do some actual work on my Web of Ideas application. But I have to note a few interesting things that have surfaced recently on the topics of ideas and microcontent.
Firstly, Erik Benson has just released his own Ideas Database. As to be expected from Erik, who created All Consuming, it's a nifty piece of work. The user interface is crisp and clean. Entering a new idea is a breeze - enter a title, a category, and lastly the detail. Once a new idea has been entered, users can vote on a variety of value indicators including revenue potential, ease of development, cost. Currently Erik's Idea Database seems very project-focussed - each idea is something that can be developed into a full-blown product/service. But I imagine this application is flexible, so e.g. you could use it as a database for music you want to buy or listen to. You could change the value indicators so users can vote on each music "idea" - e.g. give it 3/5 for hipness, 4/5 to indicate how much you want to buy it, etc.
As to how Erik's product relates to my own Ideas Database, what I have in mind is more focussed on microcontent. Each "idea" in my definition will be a chunk of information, which may or may not lead to something more concrete. e.g. one thing that I may enter into my db as an idea - "Investigate the progress of Chandler (the open source PIM)". This is simply something I have in my head that I want to note down - somewhere. Currently I just jot it down in my paper notebook, or email myself a reminder, or enter it as an Outlook task or note. None of these things is satisfactory, mainly because I don't use any one of those methods of 'idea capture' consistently.
That's what I'm thinking of when I refer to an Ideas Database. It'll be topic-based, so I may want to assign values to ideas and definitely I want to be able to link ideas together. So there are simularities with Erik's Idea Database. But I'm also focussing on the microcontent angle and ideas as information chunks, so I think it'll be different too.
Steve Gillmor has written about something similar recently. Steve wrote:
"What I'm really looking for is a private Google, where I can find random notes without exposing them publicly--or more precisely, to unsubscribed (unauthorized) readers."
Steve is talking about much more than just an Ideas Database (he regularly pushes the 'RSS will replace email' message). But it touches on a groundswell of feeling about microcontent. Anil Dash's famous "Microcontent Client" may be just around the corner...
Let's not forget the PIM projects too (Personal Information Management). I've been watching the progress of Chandler and Haystack. I'll have to write an article about those two soon (see above).
Lastly for now (I have so many ideas swirling around in me head!), I'll briefly mention John Robb's "Web 2.0" concept. John wrote:
"What is Web 2.0? It is a system that breaks with the old model of centralized Web sites and moves the power of the Web/Internet to the desktop."
Yes this is very similar to Microsoft's "Smart Clients", which Robert Scoble has talked about. John cited Radio Userland as a good example of a desktop rich client. This is an interesting discussion, but I don't think we have enough information to know where Web 2.0 is headed yet. We'll have to wait for more Longhorn details (Robert Scoble reckons this will come at the Microsoft PDC), plus watch further products from the likes of Macromedia and see how all the independent innovators go (e.g. Userland, Broadband Mechanics).
Right, now I better get to work on my own very humble development attempts. Less talk, more action :-)
Today, August 25, is Elvis Costello's birthday. It's also my birthday :-)
Co-incidentally, we also share the same surname. Elvis Costello's real name is Declan MacManus. How cool is that! That's why I affectionately refer to him as Uncle Elvis.
Hey, maybe I'm the Elvis Costello of Weblogging... only less cruel :-) No, better to be my own person. There's only one of me (and Elvis too) and that's more than enough!
Yesterday I wrote about Sparrow Web, a 90's web application developed by Xerox Parc. I discovered that Sparrow Web was like a Microcontent authoring tool. It divvies up information on a webpage into discrete chunks. So when you edit content in Sparrow Web, you're editing a part of a webpage not the whole webpage (as in a Wiki).
Today I read an interesting couple of posts by Ted Lueng, regarding OpenDoc - an Apple program from the mid-90's in which you could create a single document from multiple software components. Ted wrote:
"The compound document metaphor is a perfect fit for microcontent (and other) applications. This is an old idea whose time has come (again). Unfortunately, there are so few people who remember what this was or how it worked, that it will be probably reinvented (and badly)."
I wrote about OpenDoc a couple of months ago, in the context of the Universal Canvas. In that same article I also mentioned Cyberdog (very 90's name that!), which reminded me of Microsoft's current attempts to tie all their apps into the OS - otherwise known as "integration". Weird how 1990's web applications remind us of current web trends - Microcontent, Universal Canvas, etc. The circle of life...or is it: what goes around comes around :-0
But Ted goes on to say in his latest post:
"Also, I think that we are ready for a compound document like system -- microcontent is going to drive it. Whether it's the whole system or whether there's a compound document container application, doesn't really matter to me."
I think Microsoft is trying to build "the whole system" and it's called Longhorn. But as Ted says, maybe Open Source collectively will come up with a "compound document container application". This reminds me of a concept that Marc Canter came up with called "People's Mesh":
"It's possible that an inter-connecting world of micro-content servers and RSS aware tools can create a distributed, open source, web services based Peopleís Mesh.
Longhorn and Apple's iLife will be the litmus we will compare our People's Mesh to. The goal would be to equal their functionality, but have it free and open for us all to use."
Compound is defined as: "To combine so as to form a whole; mix."
Integrate means: "To make into a whole by bringing all parts together; unify."
Similar dictionary meanings, but in Web terms one means freedom and the other lock-in. Perhaps it comes down to this: can an Open Source compound application defeat Microsoft's integrated OS?
I'm doing some research into an Ideas Database web application, prompted by my recent Web of Ideas post (and its sequel). I have a Movable Type sandbox blog set up as a base for development. I'm planning on using XTM (XML Topic Maps) and/or ENT (Easy News Topics) as the engine for ideas, with MT as the frontend and perhaps MySQL as the database. My "Web of Ideas" application will be focussed on weblogs and all the ideas swirling around in the blogosphere. It probably won't be a super-duper web application, but if nothing else I'll have fun learning by doing :-)
In my research I've come across a couple of interesting products. One is called Sparrow Web and it was developed by Xerox Parc in the 90's. Yes the same Xerox Parc who are famous for many PC innovations. I first read about this product over a year ago, when Fast Company published an article about an application on Google's Intranet which uses it:
"Google's idea search starts with an internal Web page that takes minutes to set up. Using a program called Sparrow, even Google employees without Internet savvy (there are a few) can create a page of ideas."
Sparrow Web is very similar to a Wiki. Both are collaborative web editing environments. Contributers use the browser as their authoring tool, so no authoring software needs to be installed and HTML knowledge isn't required. In both Sparrow and Wiki, web content is owned by a group of people. Sparrow calls this "community-shared web pages" and it is like a web authoring democracy.
The main point of difference between Sparrow Web and Wiki is that Sparrow allows editing of specific parts of a webpage, whereas in a Wiki you edit the whole page. As noted in a presentation at the 1998 WWW Conference:
"A Sparrow editing experience is intended to seem like interacting with a traditional "desktop" application (albeit more slowly), in which the user directly manipulates parts of documents which maintain their context from moment to moment. In contrast, most web applications are page-oriented, so that each interaction yields a new page with new information or new controls."
This sounds a lot like the Microcontent concept. Content is divided into chunks, or modules, of information. But Sparrow doesn't go as far as having a separate URL for each item of content (it was developed in the 90's remember). Each item is created using a form and CGI scripting to update the webpage.
Another feature of Sparrow Web is that it uses an Outliner User Interface. In particular the "disclosure triangle", with the open/close functionality that is such a familiar part of outlining software. The disclosure triangle in Sparrow indicates editability - i.e. click on it to open the editing form.
Which brings me to a web application called webOutliner, being developed by a group of people including Doug Baron, Marc Barrot and Marc Canter. The goals of webOutliner are as follows:
"- as a creation tool, we can select content at the paragraph (or node) level, and organize it as we think;
- as a publication tool, we can create immediately accessible hierarchies, revealing more content on demand."
As with Sparrow, content authoring and editing is done at the microcontent level. In the case of webOutliner, chunks of information are attached to an outline node. So when it comes to reading or browsing the content, it is in a hierarchical order. For instance you could create a Yahoo-like directory of information using webOutliner.
The ability to edit at the microcontent level while at the same time order the results into a hierarchy, is a powerful concept. It is one I will try to develop in my humble Web of Ideas application. I'll also watch with interest as the real pros continue to develop webOutliner. Oh and I wonder if Sparrow is still being worked on? I'd love to see the Google application that runs on Sparrow Web.
Actually in New Zealand, we don't have "grade schools" (they're called Primary and Secondary schools here). But I wanted to subtly reference Jon Udell's influential article called "Grade School CMS". i.e. I'm just being a smart ass :-)
Things I want to do with my weblog:
1. Contribute formal articles on the subject of the Two-Way Web. I'm still thinking about this, but one idea is to write a weekly "(insert Two-Way Web subject) for Newbies" article. eg "RDF for Newbies", or "The RSS Wars for Newbies". The Two-Way Web is on the cusp of becoming mainstream. Lots of people will soon take up blogging, moblogging, and other New School Tools. People will want to know what it all means, without getting into the minutiae of XML Namespaces etc.
2. Develop my Web of Ideas application. I've set up an experimental Movable Type weblog to develop this notion. If anyone wants write access to my MV weblog to help develop it, you're more than welcome - send me an email.
3. Continue my Literary Web Development articles, as I enjoy writing these. e.g. my Moby Dick/Semantic Web post was quite popular, although personally I was just as pleased with my XML as Literature post (which nobody linked to).
4. Re-design my weblog. I've gotten some inspiration from the recent re-designs of Julie Wiggins and Keith Robinson. I need to make my weblog unique-looking, plus I wouldn't mind testing out some modern CSS design techniques.
5. Synch my weblog blogroll with my RSS Aggregator subscriptions. This seems an easy win and a sensible thing to do.
Above all I want to keep following these principles when I write to my weblog:
1. Be Original. Contribute something new to the Web of Ideas, don't just regurgitate what other bloggers are saying.
2. Keep it simple. OK I admit I've been influenced by Dave Winer and Jon Udell here, but I do believe that successful Web Development is all about making things work. If it works for the user, becomes popular, and there is room to bootstrap to new levels, then that's a success. This is how Tim Berners-Lee built the Web (and he's probably my main influence).
3. Automatic for the People. This isn't really relevant for my weblog writing, but it's another principle I believe in for IT/Web Dev. Where possible, automate it. Of course, this is where most of the challenge (and fun?) comes in with Web Development!
Wow, I have lots of things to do! Isn't the Web great ;-)
A little while ago I wrote on the topic of "Smart Clients", a Microsoft catchphrase for non-browser-based web applications. In my article I mentioned an interesting browser-based RSS News Aggregator being built by Lucmo. Today I read the following post in the Lucmo weblog:
"The Read/Write Web blog writes that Lucmo is in "beta" -- that's not correct, we're still in alpha. ;-) Sadly, development has stagnated over the last couple of weeks because of busyness (Guan) and vacation (Simon). However, as soon as the current heatwave is over in Denmark we will be productive again."
I'm looking forward to further developments, because I believe the browser-based model for News Aggregators has a lot going for it. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I signed up to another web-based RSS Aggregator called Bloglines. I used to read my RSS feeds via a desktop app, but now I've switched to Bloglines. Here's why:
1. Bloglines allows me to synch my weblog subscriptions across my work and home computers. My subscriptions and history of what I've read stays the same no matter if I'm logged in from work or home.
2. I didn't have to install anything, or worse, install it twice!
3. I can synch my Bloglines subscriptions with my weblog blogroll, because Blogroll allows me to import my weblog subscriptions in OPML format. Granted this wasn't working when I tried, but I sent Bloglines an email about it and soon after they replied saying it is fixed now. You can also export your subs from Bloglines to your weblog blogroll, but I haven't tried that feature.
4. Bloglines has recently added some new features: blog search, "combined views", time zone configuration, and other nifty Web-based things.
5. There's apparently a way to track how many people in Bloglines subscribe to your weblog, but I haven't figured out how this works yet. The user interface is still being "tweaked", so maybe this feature will become more obvious soon.
I have noticed that Bloglines is very good at publicizing itself, e.g. Bloglines developer Mark Fletcher successfully got Scobleized a few times and now it looks like he'll be in Forbes magazine. Being able to spread the memes is half the battle sometimes.
But even though I'm a Bloglines user, I'm still keen to try out Lucmo when it arrives. Lucmo - with its concept of "collaborative filtering" - sounds like a mix between Bloglines, k-collector and Chandler. The logical next step for RSS Aggregators is to filter and aggregate information based on a user's interests. It's along the lines of topic aggregation that k-collector does and has similarities to the "agent" concept that Chandler is developing.
So good luck Lucmo and keep up the good work Bloglines! As for "smart clients", Robert Scoble has been quiet about these lately and I haven't heard mu
Whenever I read about the Semantic Web, I am reminded of Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick. One of my favourite chapters of Moby Dick is chapter 42: The Whiteness of the Whale. Here's an excerpt:
"Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me."
The Semantic Web is, in the words of Tim Berners-Lee, "an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning". I've been following its progress in the context of the weblogging world (aka the blogosphere). With this bias in mind, I've decided there are 3 main types of activity for people who are developing the Semantic Web:
1. Building the foundation. For example, defining what is a URI. This is a deep level of granularity and it is where the Architects of the Web are playing. It's not recommended you get involved at this level, unless your first name is Tim and your second name is Berners-Lee or Bray.
2. Developing applications for the Semantic Web. This is where most of the tech blogging world is at. Unfortunately, it is riven with political and personal battles. On one side are the people who promote Simplicity and ease-of-use in web development - e.g. Dave Winer and Jon Udell. On the other side are those that prefer Complexity, so that they may build more abstract applications. Danny Ayers and Bill Kearney are good examples. NB: if you're looking for tech bloggers who can interpret both sides for you, you can't go past Marc Canter and Don Park.
3. Describing the concepts of the Semantic Web. There are many magazine and website articles that wax poetical about the Semantic Web. It's at a high level of abstraction and essentially it's creating 'buy-in' for the Semantic Web. Examples range from an article in BusinessWeek, to a description of Chandler (an open source web application driven by Mitch Kapor), to the poetic but deeply granular essays of Shelley Powers.
The Semantic Web is being gradually developed in the above 3 ways - laying the architectural foundation, building web applications, and defining it conceptually.
So where does Moby Dick come into it? It's because, like the great Whale, the Semantic Web is an awe-inspiring vision that both attracts and repels people. Some people, like Tim Berners-Lee, see the Semantic Web as a logical and inevitable extension of the Web. Other people dismiss it as not practical and they reckon it never will be. Most people are just confused. What exactly is the Semantic Web?
One way to describe it is that the Semantic Web must be meaningful for both humans and computers. As Shelley Powers' writes on Semantic Web for Poets:
"To be a Semantic Web, it must be mechanical, and therefore precise, mathematical, and ultimately unambiguous. But to be a Semantic Web, it must also encapsulate meaning, context, and embrace ambiguity. Ignore the discontinuities, embrace the discontinuities."
Semantic means "of or relating to meaning". But the problem is, we can't easily define what we mean by a Semantic Web! It's the semanticness of the Semantic Web that appalls me :-0
But what we do know is that the Semantic Web symbolises the future of the World Wide Web. It is our notion of what the Web can and should be, so we continue to hunt it. As Chapter 42 of Moby Dick concludes:
"And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?"
