I did a podcast with Roland Tanglao early this morning my time. My first real 'chatty' podcast, so it was enjoyable.
Roland is more of a natural podcaster than me. I was all "um"s and "yep"s and coughs and halt--ing speech. But that's what podcasting's about - it brings the real live person behind the blog out into the open. Writing is always going to be my natural medium (I'm no Adam Curry), but podcasting may serve a purpose for me too...
Indeed near the end of the show, Roland encouraged me to do a weekly 'Web 2.0 Wrap-Up podcast' - discussing the Web 2.0 issues of the week. I can see that being a nice complement to my written Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-Up, in that I can expand on certain themes and find out if thinking out loud brings new insights. Hmmmm - anyone have any feedback or advice on that? e.g. I don't even know the best way to record a podcast or store it.
I've recently added a neat new feature onto my blog - a "Listen to audio version of this post" link at the end of each post (only on my website). It's powered by a really cool new app called Talkr.com. Every time I write a post on Read/Write Web, Talkr converts it into an MP3 file. It's quite a thrill listening to a computer-generated voice, female with an American accent, recite my posts. Check out the audio version of the "Yahoo My Web 2.0" post I wrote tonight.
Funnily enough, it's not unlike my own first experiments with podcasting nearly a year ago - in which I rather blandly recited one of my long posts. Except I think the computer-generated Talkr voice has way more personality :-)
Incidentally, I'm recording a human podcast with Roland Tanglao tomorrow morning my time. So you'll hear my real voice soon enough.
Yahoo has a beta "Social Search Engine" called (woo!) My Web 2.0. According to the Yahoo Search Blog, it "enables people to search the expertise of their friends and community". It hooks into Yahoo 360 (which opened up to the general public last week), and it's got "personalized search", sharing controls, tagging and APIs. All beautiful Web 2.0 stuff - and I presume that's why "Web 2.0" features in the name. Oh and they have a blog too.
Reactions from around the 'Sphere (including those who got to test drive it before the public announcement):
Flickr Blog: "...it has all the ingredients for a healthy Web 2.0 experience, including:
ï Control what you see (and want to see) by your social network
ï Open APIs for developers to mess with
ï RSS feeds for pulling out the stuff you're interested in
And of course:
ï You can tag more than a kid with ADD on a third grade playground (including location, time and people tagging)"
Jeremy Zawodny: "...for most topics I might want to know more about, I already know someone that's smarter than me on the subject. I have my very own community of experts (we all do)."
Waxy.org: "At the very least, it blows Google's offering out of the water, and follows in a recent trend of Yahoo's smart moves and acquisitions."
(plus some interesting thoughts on how it compares to del.icio.us)
Matt Haughey on the difference between My Web 2.0 and delicious: "I use delicious to bookmark all the neat things I find online, but Yahoo's search is more for reference things and epinions style bookmarks I want to save for later and share with friends."
Marc Canter: "But to make this really functional I'm hoping that access to members themselves and what they've rated, ranked, tagged, etc. - will also be necessary."
Ross Mayfield: "When you make search social, what matters is trust, expertise and context."
John Battelle: "This is a major push from Yahoo in the realm of social search."
SiliconBeat: "Version one was mostly about storing bookmarks and whatnot. Version 2.0 is about sharing that information with others."
Greg Linden is skeptical: "Yahoo MyWeb 2.0 might win some converts in the early adopter crowd, but it isn't a system built for the mainstream."
Related:
Google launches Personalized Search. Google Blog states "...you can use that search history you've been building to get better results."
(nb: you know it's the official Google blog, because it calls Sergey and Larry by their first names)
But wait, there's more:
Yahoo! are upgrading their email software to incorporate Oddpost functionality (one of Yahoo's acquisitions last year).
I guess this is going to be Yahoo's week, just as last week was Microsoft's. Poor old Google :-)
This week: Wrap of Microsoft RSS news, reblog/reblg, Attention, Yahoo 360 go-live, Late Show style Top Ten for Web 2.0.
The biggest story of the week, probably even the year, was Microsoft's bearhug embrace of RSS. They got Dave Winer's blessing and they made all the right sounds in their announcement at the Gnomedex Conference. Robert Scoble did a pre-Gnomedex video with the newly-named "Longhorn, Browsing and RSS team" (formally known simply as the IE Team), which illustrated just how much RSS means to Microsoft now - "RSS everywhere" was the mantra repeated throughout. In my coverage of the news, I surmised that Microsoft is betting on RSS being as important to Web 2.0 as HTML was to the Web ten years ago.
Reaction throughout the blogosphere so far has been positive, spinkled with caution about Microsoft's previous record when it comes to the Embrace and Extend strategy. The RSS techies have already got the spanners and wrenches out and are tapping away at the specs, so expect more of that in the coming weeks - and Microsoft is taking notice. There'll also be deeper analysis of the news and what it means for the Web, by Read/Write Web and others.
This week Marc Canter announced his latest development, a universal "Blog This" button called ReBlg.com. Michal Migursk, one of the developers of a similarly-named project called Reblog, admitted to being baffled. Marc responded to Michal's post and said that Reblg is "a 'universal' way of inter-connecting content to an editor". It's about keeping the structure of data and, at its essence, it's about aggregating all forms of microcontent (blog posts, reviews, events, etc).
It looks like Marc and Michal got together after that and nutted out some of their differences, because Michal posted a follow-up to that effect soon after. As Michal noted, Marc "really has a grand vision of a microcontent mesh, and it's both aspirational and achievable, so I'm into it."
According to Steve Gillmor, no one is paying attention to Attention. Perhaps we need to understand the philosophical implications of why the concept of "attention" is is so important to Web 2.0 applications. O'Reilly Radar posted notes to a talk by Linda Stone at the Supernova conference, on what we pay attention to and what drives human use of software. Linda coined the phrase "continuous partial attention" in 1997:
"With continuous partial attention we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges. Continuous partial attention is motivated by a desire not to miss opportunities. We want to ensure our place as a live node on the network, we feel alive when we're connected. To be busy and to be connected is to be alive."
Yep, that describes my blogging experience! So as Linda explained, this leads to feelings of being "overwhelmed, underfulfilled, seeking meaningful connections." The solution?
"Trusted filters, trusted protectors, trusted concierge, human or technical, removing distractions and managing boundaries, filtering signal from noise, enabling meaningful connections, that make us feel secure, are the opportunity for the next generation."
Ah, so that's what Attention is all about! Still diggin', as Dave Winer would say...
A quick note on Yahoo 360, the social networking service that Yahoo launched at the end of March. About 3 months later, it's still in beta but has been opened to the general public to participate in (previously it was invite-only). According to this PCWorld article, it's going to be expanded to include "the capability to share non-Yahoo content".
Now that it's available to the general public, it'll be interesting to see how many of the millions of MyYahoo users register and use Yahoo 360. Blogging in particular is known to be a minority sport, so I wonder how many 'mainstream' people will take it up via 360. The social networking angle is perhaps how Yahoo will entice its users to try out 360. In any event, I'll be monitoring the user interest in Yahoo 360...
Here's my "dorky" (according to Noah) homage to David Letterman's Top Ten List. I'm republishing it, because I originally published it just as the Microsoft RSS news came out... so obviously people had more serious things to read at that time ;-)
Top ten signs you spend too much time thinking about Web 2.0:
10. When arranging to meet with your friends in town, you suggest a "point of presence" instead of a meeting place.
9. Your child asks you for a raise in pocket money and you tell him to monetize his feed.
8. When someone asks for your business card, you tell them your FOAF URI and say "ping me".
7. You have bad dreams about slipping off the end of "The Long Tail".
6. Your favorite pickup line: "You show me your API, I'll show you mine."
5. When shopping for bleach, you always choose Ajax. [groan!]
4. You wish Michael Moore would do a documentary about "roach motel" websites that lock-in users data.
3. You buy a new parakeet to replace the one that flew away and you name it "Joey 2.0".
2. You send a snail mail letter to your Grandma, but attach a Creative Commons license to the end of it.
1. You go red in the face and start stammering when someone calls it Web 3.0.
That's a wrap for another week!
There has been a lot of coverage already about Microsoft's RSS in Longhorn announcements, so my aim here is to distil it and get to the essence of it. I'm doing this for my own benefit really, but hopefully my notes help others grok it too.
The obvious place to start is Robert Scoble's blog (Microsoft's most famous blogger). But I also recommend Alex Barnett's coverage.
The Microsoft Internet Explorer Blog announced the news. The key points:
- "deep platform support for RSS" is being built into Longhorn (the next version of Windows).
- they are are targeting both users and developers
a) users: "make it easy for users to discover, view and subscribe to RSS feeds"
b) developers: "make it simple for developers to incorporate the rich capabilities of RSS
into their applications"
- An RSS Aggregator/Reader will be integrated into Longhorn: "you’ll be able to subscribe to an RSS feed as easily as adding a favorite".
- one of the goals is to enable developers to create non-blog applications for RSS (this is very significant). An example: "an IT worker can subscribe to sales data that notifies them via a line-of-business application when new deals have been closed."
- Microsoft also announced "enhancements to RSS, which we call the Simple List Extensions". It will enable users to publish, for example, "photo albums, music playlists and Top 10 lists as RSS feeds".
- Further, they made "the specification for these extensions available under the Creative Commons license, the same license under which the RSS 2.0 specification was released."
More details are to be found on this page in the MSDN network. Developers should carefully read this page in particular.
The video that Robert Scoble did with the "Longhorn, Browsing and RSS team" (nee the IE Team) is illuminating and it includes a demo for those of us who couldn't make it to Gnomedex.
Key quotes from the video by Dean Hachamovitch, GM for this team:
- "RSS is many things"
- this is about "how RSS moves out of blogs and becomes much broader."
- "RSS everywhere... every application"
- "The power of subscribe..."
- "casting" for all the file types: "where's the calendar-casting, powerpoint-casting"
etc -> i.e. enclosures are much more than podcasting (mp3 files)
- "we're betting big on RSS"
- talk about "an RSS platform" to "RSS-enable everything"... "RSS is too good to be in
just browsers and aggregators".
- what MS is doing with RSS extensions is "very complimentary" to what Dave Winer is
doing (hierarchical lists with OPML)
- emphasis (again) on "RSS everywhere" - "we mean everywhere!" (leads to talk
about Dean's orange RSS shoes - funny)
Then the team showed Internet Explorer in Longhorn in action. Key points:
- there's a highlighted orange RSS button (and note it does say "RSS" and not "XML", as I
do on my blog incidentally) in the top browser bar. This is automatically present
whenever the browser picks up an RSS feed on a webpage.
- when clicked, the RSS button brings up a browser-friendly version of the feed (like
Feedburner does for my feed)
- has a search function
- big "plus button" for subscribing
- same metaphor for subscribing as adding an HTML page to a user's Favorites in IE --> term
used was "common feed list"
- Jupiter's Microsoft Monitor Research on how it'll affect the competition: "The risk I see for competitors is simple: RSS is fairly portable today. By integrating capabilities into Windows, Microsoft could decrease that portability in favor of Windows."
- and partners: "The benefit to Microsoft partners is mixed, but mostly good [...] Exactly what market would there be for third-party products if Microsoft makes RSS a part of Windows?"
- how serious are MS?: "My expectation: RSS will be a major or the major feature of the Longhorn shell." [RM: whoa!]
- more from Jupiter: "it’s reasonable to suspect that Microsoft sees in RSS a new user interface for accessing Internet content."
- Jupiter's conclusion: "Microsoft is better off embracing, extending and extinguishing RSS as a competitive threat." [RM: that's what I call not mincing words!]
- Steve Rubel: "My optimistic view here though is that they will get it right and keep it open for everyone and that today we witnessed a milestone day in the history of the Internet."
- BusinessWeek: "[Jupiter Analyst Michael Gartenberg] estimates that about 10% of U.S. Web surfers use RSS readers, software designed to view feeds from Web sites. "This is the type of thing that will bring it into the mainstream," Gartenberg says."
- Eric Freeman, O'ReillyNet: "what Microsoft has done is essentially build an RSS aggregator into the OS and expose API's that any application can make use of to produce or consume RSS."
More updates later... I'm continuing to absorb this news. My initial impression is that this is indeed very big - possibly even Microsoft acknowledging that RSS is to Web 2.0 what HTML was to the Web in the 90's. Which is to say, this is Microsoft embracing and extending RSS like they did with HTML 10 years ago. I'll leave the question open, for now, as to whether they'll be as ruthless in this strategy as they were in Web 1.0. More from me later...
In the tradition of David Letterman, I've come up with my own topic-focused Top Ten list.
Top ten signs you spend too much time thinking about Web 2.0:
10. When arranging to meet with your friends in town, you suggest a "point of presence" instead of a meeting place.
9. Your child asks you for a raise in pocket money and you tell him to monetize his feed.
8. When someone asks for your business card, you tell them your FOAF URI and say "ping me".
7. You have bad dreams about slipping off the end of "The Long Tail".
6. Your favorite pickup line: "You show me your API, I'll show you mine."
5. When shopping for bleach, you always choose Ajax. [groan!]
4. You wish Michael Moore would do a documentary about "roach motel" websites that lock-in users data.
3. You buy a new parakeet to replace the one that flew away and you name it "Joey 2.0".
2. You send a snail mail letter to your Grandma, but attach a Creative Commons license to the end of it.
1. You go red in the face and start stammering when someone calls it Web 3.0.
MediaPost reports that Microsoft's MSN portal is advertising for bloggers. At first glance, this is right up my street. I've been trying to get an ongoing and secure 20 hour/week writing gig for months, with no success - i.e. I'm still at my day job! So my first thought was: is this potentially my breakthrough gig that will enable me to go full-time self-employed? Hmmm, let's look at it... here's the advert, c/o JournalismJobs.com:
"Company: Microsoft
Position: Bloggers Wanted
Location: Redmond, Telecommute
Job Status: Freelance
Salary: Not Specified
Ad Expires: July 22, 2005
Job ID: 524227
Description: Blog for MSN!
MSN is hiring freelance contributing editors to moderate, write and produce blogs in five topic areas: television, music, technology, sports and fashion/food/style.
Contributing editors will be responsible for:
*Writing and producing five-10 daily posts for their blog, drawing material from user submissions, the MSN network and the wider Web
*Reviewing user e-mail submissions and turning the best of them into posts on the blog
*Monitoring blog comments and feedback
You must be passionate about your subject area; familiar with the tools and trends in blogging; a natural writer with an inviting, engaging style; and attuned to the broad interests of MSNís huge audience. Send us five sample posts written over the course of a single day. In addition to the posts (which should reflect a variety of source links), in a paragraph or so, explain why you selected those items and how they reflect your vision for this project. Please include a list of sites you scanned to find your material and other favorite sites and blogs. Attach a rÈsumÈ or short note to tell us what youíre doing now and what youíve done in the recent past. And finally, in the subject heading of the mail specify which blog youíre applying for.
We estimate this project will require approximately 15 hoursí work per week.
Send your submission to: filtered@microsoft.com."
OK so here are my impressions:
1) 15 hours p/week is nearly ideal for me, as I have other p/t work that will make up the other 20-25 hours/week. Sweet! And it sounds like I could do this job virtually, all the way from New Zealand. I can't see any reason why this would be an issue with Microsoft.
2) I'm sure I can fit myself into the 'Technology' topic area (one of the 5 options).
3) 5-10 posts per day - I can do that easily if I have half a day each weekday to do it (i.e. if it's my actual job to blog).
In summary, it sounds promising and I'm going to apply. I kind of wonder whether my current blogging style (on average 4-5 lengthy posts per week) is going to support my application, or whether it'll be an automatic reject. Read/Write Web is not one of those blogs that can pump out 5-10 posts per day - but that's mainly because I don't have the time (as I said, I have a day job and lots of sidelines). Also I'm wondering whether I'll be 'mainstream' enough for MSN. I'm very much a niche blogger, who writes for a niche readership. That's why y'all love me, right? :-) But on the other hand, I'm a good writer and given the time to do it - I could easily pump out 5-10 posts per day for a wider audience. That's called professional writing, so I'm up for that!
I'm going to apply and see what happens. I just hope the MSN people will be broad-minded enough to recognize that although Read/Write Web isn't MSN material (too niche, posts too lengthy and not updated frequently), as a blogger and writer I definitely have the chops to do this job.
I have a feeling this is going to be hugely significant. Dave Winer wrote today:
"On Friday you'll see how deeply integrated RSS is in the architecture of the browser. But that's just the tip of what may turn out to be a very big iceberg. The people at Microsoft noticed something that I had seen, only peripherally -- that there were applications of RSS that aren't about news. Like Audible's NY Times Best Seller list, or an iTunes music playlist, or lists of Sharepoint documents, or browser bookmarks. Lists are all over the place, and people are starting to move them around via RSS, and they are not the usual kind of data that has been carried by RSS in the past."
This is big on a number of levels:
1) Is Microsoft going to integrate RSS into the IE7 browser?
2) Not only that, but will there be a "wide and deep integration of RSS into their products" as Charlie Wood put it?
3) So Microsoft is doing something with RSS and microcontent (by which I mean, in this case, non-blog content)...Wow!
4) Dave is in on this? I'm pleased about that!
5), 6), 7)... count the ways this is going to be big news. I can't wait for more details on Friday.
UPDATE, Friday US time: Alex Barnett has excellent coverage of the "RSS meets Longhorn" news as it comes out today. More from me after I've digested it...
Apparently tiny font size means more Adsense revenues. Sad... and how the heck this promotes "greater Reader participation" is beyond me, unless by that they mean squinting to read the blog's content and shading one's eyes to avoid the glare of the ads. [via]
More news is filtering through about AOL's re-design. AOL is probably second behind Yahoo in terms of the number of users it has, although it's far behind Yahoo in terms of marketing itself as a media company. If you look at AOL.com's homepage right now, for example, you'll see it still largely promotes itself as an ISP (Internet Service Provider). The title tag of the homepage states: "AOL.com: AOL Dial-Up Internet Service Provider with TopSpeed, Add AOL for Broadband to ANY High Speed Internet Connection".
However AOL is now making an effort to re-brand itself as a Yahoo-like portal. BetaNews reports that AOL is going to offer "free Web mail, exclusive audio and video content, and access to a number of AOL services previously available only to subscribers." It'll also introduce RSS feeds to the mix. The new "MyAOL" portal will be in beta shortly and will go live end of July, according to BetaNews. A few things caught my eye in this...
1) AOL will have a feature called "LiveWeb" which will involve AOL editors searching the blogosphere "for hot topics" and they will "link interesting content directly from AOL.com."
Now this is interesting... there's a chance for bloggers who write niche and original content to get some serious coverage on the Web. Who wouldn't want to be featured content on the AOL (or Yahoo for that matter) homepage? Think: Slashdotting times 10! I really hope AOL go through with this and post quality blog content on their homepage, rather than the usual AP or Reuters stuff.
2) The second thing that caught my attention was the introduction of RSS. From BetaNews:
"My AOL begins as a "blank slate" that can be populated with content from RSS feeds in an attempt to bring order to "the chaos of the Web." To this end, AOL has partnered up with Feedster, a search engine for RSS feeds, to create an RSS aggregator that is topic driven. Users can initially select "RSS samplers" that contain a number of different content sources."
emphasis mine
An RSS Aggregator that is topic-driven? Hey, that's one of my obsessions! In January I wrote a post entitled Why Topic/Tag/Remix Feeds Are The Future of RSS. I think this extract from my post bears repeating:
"The killer app for RSS probably won't be geared towards the current ranks of bloggers and geeks. When RSS hits it big, it'll be because 'normal' people start using it - your Mom and Dad, Frank from Marketing, Jessie from Payroll, Dave from the local dairy. They won't be bloggers. They won't be interested in writing or podcasting or anything like that. All they'll want to do is track news and trends that are relevant to them."
So if I put two and two together, it actually seems like AOL will try to deliver on that vision. Or am I too optimistic? What's certain is that AOL.com will be an RSS Aggregator for "normal people" (my phrase). I think AOL is heading in the right direction, at least.
And going back to the blogger/publisher point of view, it's also promising that they plan to feature "a number of different content sources" in its "RSS Samplers" - which I assume are pre-packaged groups of topic-focused feeds. Not dissimilar to what Rojo does - they have pre-packaged sets of feeds which new users can subscribe to using a Wizard. e.g. Rojo has a group called "Technology Bloggers" which includes A-Listers like Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Jon Udell, et al. And that I suppose is the worry - that only so-called A-List bloggers get included in these 'topic sets'.
3) Finally, Greg Linden pointed out how similar the current My AOL draft looks to Microsoft's start.com. Take a look at the screenshot. I have to agree - and it's a pretty disappointing design, to be frank. I'll give AOL the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a very early prototype, much like start.com.
But if they're going to compete with Yahoo, which is far and away the top Web portal for media, then AOL will need to come up with some innovative design features - e.g. how to layout the topic-focused groups of RSS feeds, how to add interactive media elements to the mix (audio, video), how to promote quality 'small media' content that has been hand-picked by their editors, etc. There are a lot of design issues to be sorted out if AOL is going to realise its vision to be an RSS and new media portal.
