What is Amazon Mechanical Turk? It's a web service that enables you to "complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it."
Amazon describes it thusly: "...when we think of interfaces between human beings and computers, we usually assume that the human being is the one requesting that a task be completed, and the computer is completing the task and providing the results. What if this process were reversed and a computer program could ask a human being to perform a task and return the results? What if it could coordinate many human beings to perform a task?"
So here's my list of Web 2.0 things I want done, that people could do for me better than computers could:
10. Get an A-Lister to link to me every day (probably can be solved by someone doing various small favours for them, on my behalf).
9. Manually filter my Rojo account at least daily - especially removing the duplicates from my topic feeds.
8. Translate all the best Asian Web 2.0 blogs into English (seriously, I want someone to do that!)
7. Insert Technorati tags and all that other microformat crap into my posts.
6. Enter my blog details into the Ping-o-matic page whenever I post something - and while you're at it, submit my posts to Digg and Slashdot.
5. Click on my Google ads from time to time.
4. Listen to all the podcasts that I never have time to listen to - and report back to me with a summary of what they said.
3. Cook me some spicy noodles, the way Jing Jing in Palo Alto makes them.
2. Turn up to the TechCrunch BBQs on my behalf and constantly remind people that I'm the Father of Web 2.0.
1. Convince a Silicon Valley company to sponsor my US work visa.
The UK has its own Web 2.0 Conference on 11 November in Brighton, in the form of d.Construct:
"d.Construct 2005 is the UKís first grassroots Web 2.0 conference. It is an affordable, one-day event aimed at those building the latest generation of web-based applications. The event will discuss how new technology is transforming the web from a document delivery system to an application platform. Internationally renowned speakers will discuss hot-topics such as Ajax, using the power of APIís and the future of the mobile web."
Apparently tickets sold out within 30 minutes of registration! It's an interesting line-up, including representatives from Flickr, BBC Backstage, and Cory Doctorow discussing The Remix Economy. Apparently there will be podcasts of the sessions. (hat-tip Josh Porter)
Also, over in Canada Raincity Studios is running a workshop series on blogging and social networking - with the intriguing title Blogs n Dogs. It's being held at the Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada from December 4th to the 8th 2005. (thanks Will Pate for the tip)
Great to see so much activity happening all over the world in Web 2.0! Feel free to contact me if you know of more happenings. I'm happy to be the TechCrunch of International Web 2.0 Events :-)
This what it's all about:
"Fully half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations."
That finding is from the Pew Internet & American Life Project Report: Teen Content Creators and Consumers.
This is the current generation of kids - read/write Web babies. They're being brought up as creators and not just consumers. Oh I love the Web...
So the latest ruckus in tech.blogosphere is about Dave Winer's call to Clone the Google API (note the URL name). Robert Scoble wrote an enthusiastic post entitled Yahoo's new pretty maps are doomed (and so are Microsoftís), which understandably got up the nostrils of Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny.
Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo wrote a post that outlined why Microsoft shouldn't just clone Google. He pointed out that MS and Y! APIs have different feature sets and don't necessarily use the same technology (the Google API uses SOAP), unlimited API user rates don't make business sense, and cloning shows a lack of innovation.
Like Frederico Oliveira, I'm all for competition for Google. But asking the likes of MS and Y! to clone Google isn't the way to go.
I'm now a bit sorry I kicked off this latest obsession with the word "disruptive". But in my world disruptive doesn't mean to copy your competitors, it means to out-innovate.
In summary, like Dave Winer I too would love to see unlimited or 1 million queries per day on the big companies' APIs. Wouldn't we all? However the business case issue around that is important and not easy to gloss over - perhaps I'll try and tackle that in a future post.
For now, let's stop talking about cloning please :-)
Update: Dave Winer points to a great comment by Dave Luebbert, a former development lead on Microsoft Word, in response to my comment over in Fred's blog (which led to this post here by me). Dave Luebbert's response is well worth reading - the crux of it is cloning is good for developers. I still don't see how it's good for MS or Y! to clone Google's API, but I can now see how it may be good for developers and for users of the resulting web apps. I'd be interested in what Dare and Jeremy Z think - and other developers.
Dion Hinchcliffe has an excellent post outlining the top 10 issues for Web 2.0 today (an 11th was added in the comments by Paul Montgomery). Here's a summary of Dion's list with comments from me, but be sure to check his site too because he has useful commentary for each point.
1. Excessive Hype: "Nothing will hurt Web 2.0 more than people loudly proclaiming Web
2.0 is the solution to every problem in software. [...] Web 2.0 is merely a powerful way
of thinking about the design and construction of effective Web experiences."
--> RM: I'd also add excessive anti-hype.
2. Lack of Simple Definition
--> RM: I've had most success defining Web 2.0 to normal people using familiar
examples, like MyYahoo or Google or even Wikipedia. I still use the staple 'Web as
Platform' as my starting-point (and you can't get much more succinct than that), but it
needs real examples to back it up.
3. Aging Poster Children: "Flickr and del.icio.us are absolutely terrific examples of
the new face of Web 2.0. [but] these guys are getting a little long in the tooth in Web
years and while very good, their functionality is nowhere near as central to our lives as
say Google, which is already 7 years old."
--> hence my current search for disruptive technologies.
4. Needing A Permaconnection
--> RM: This one is a matter of time. In my country, New Zealand, the broadband
service is expensive and slow. But I survive :-)
5. Ajax as the Official Web 2.0 Experience: "Ajax is getting serious hype at the moment too but quite frankly, people are going to expect so much from it that it will get ugly. [...] Flash might also be a partial answer to certain solutions, and Yahoo! apparently agrees. But I do think we need to focus on solving these problems by tweaking the Web browser model and not hacking things to improve Ajax."
6. Excessive Attention On The Technology
--> RM: I agree, but would add that not enough attention on the technology can
also be an issue. As always, it's about striking a balance.
7. Really Bad Adherents. "I'm not going to point fingers here but like every other succesful idea before it, everyone wants to co-opt it."
8. Blogging Instead of Doing.
--> I think all of us bloggers suffer from this affliction, but as Dion pointed out it
applies equally to the Naysayers (in case you were getting smug reading this!).
9. Not Facing Hard Truths. e.g. Dion cites non-shared, private algorithms and the push
for near-monopolistic user counts.
--> RM: a lot of this boils down to being open and letting the user really have
control. I think all 3 of the big companies (MS, Google, Y!) have major issues here and
it's time for us Web 2.0 pundits to shine some more light on those. I don't know whether
we can stop it, but it's worth highlighting at least. If we let the bigco's build Web 2.0, we may find ourselves
locked up in data silos. This is the point that Steve Gillmor has been driving at and he is leading
the charge for data ownership with AttentionTrust.
10. Adopting The Lightweight Creation Model: "Both Microsoft's entry into the space
(Fred Wilson's comments)and Google's recent releases have been pretty
underwhelming."
--> Dion expects "a new generation of companies to build Web 2.0" and I agree, to a
point. But established user base and money does still, alas, count for a lot in this world.
11. (from Paul Montgomery) Thinking The Whole World Is Like Silicon Valley: Paul says
"I don't know how many times I've read that Memeorandum has "changed the Web", but how
many readers does it have outside the people who are mentioned on it? Web 2.0 is still a
very small, insular movement. There should be far more attention paid to what people who
aren't impossibly well-connected and highly technologically savvy will want from these
new services."
--> I find myself agreeing with Paul, not so much about memeorandum but about the
whole insularity of Web 2.0 culture. The Yahoo! Maps announcement last night is a prime
example. When I was in Silicon Valley, I found myself using Yahoo and Google Maps all the
time (mostly the latter). They were so handy. I'm sure I'd be drooling over Yahoo Maps
today if I was still in the Valley. But I'm not - I'm on the other side of the world and
Yahoo Maps has little relevancy to me, because it doesn't cover this part of the world.
The technology is impressive, don't get me wrong, and will be rolled out to the rest of the world in future. But right now it's irrelevant to anyone not
living in the US. This is the kind of Silicon Valley-centric culture that Web 2.0 people
need to address.
So in summary, a great list from Dion and these are all points we can chip away at.
Summary: My Day 1 impressions of Windows/Office Live are positive and I think Microsoft is taking up the challenge of an increasingly Web-based software world, while at the same time sticking to their desktop software knitting. I'm particularly intrigued by the Xbox 360 relationship and I think we'll see a lot more multimedia coming out of Windows Live in the future.
This morning Microsoft announced Web 2.0 'software as a service' initiatives that went beyond expectations. There is a lot to take in, so this post is me taking a deep breath and trying to gather together the main points - from a Web 2.0 perspective that is.
Bill Gates gives us the outlook for Thursday - mainly fine, but clouds developing. Photo by Niall
Kennedy.
Whew! A lot of information to try and distil. My Day 1 impressions are positive though. I think Microsoft is taking up the challenge of an increasingly Web-based software world, while at the same time sticking to their desktop software knitting. I'm particularly intrigued by the Xbox 360 relationship and I think we'll see a lot more multimedia coming out of Windows Live in the future.
Microsoft's biggest product plays may still be to come - Internet TV and the Media Centre, Xbox 360, video conferencing, mobile, and other Web-connected devices. These are all things that require the hardware/software/Internet package - and of the 3 big companies, Microsoft has shown itself to be the most capable at implementing that. Well, Google has the software/Internet integration all sorted, but they have shown us little in terms of hardware. Apple is of course the acknowledged master, but they're not on the same playing field as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. So I expect Microsoft's Live strategy to really take off once they introduce more multimedia to the mix.
As part of the news this morning (my coverage here), Microsoft has released a website called live.com. It appears to be start.com under a new name - i.e. the RSS Reader/portal homepage that was released earlier this year. And it still doesn't have decent Firefox support! Dave Winer has a screenshot.
The actual Live.com domain name used to be owned by a group of developers building Streaming Media products. This from the homespun weblog back in February 2005:
"The Live.com folks have developed a number of C++ source-code libraries for use in building streaming media applications. They have made some applications developed with these libraries available also - I was very interested in LiveCaster, an application to multicast MP3s on the internet."
Interesting to see where Microsoft goes with this...
Microsoft just announced its new Web-based Windows and 'software as a service' strategies. After first announcing the Xbox 360 will be released on Nov 22 in North America, Gates talked about their new "Live" brand (thanks Mike from TechCrunch for the news - he has pictures too). The "Live" era will encompass the "Software Plus Services" strategy and is all about providing "seamless experiences". Their goal is "Building Live Software". The brand will encompass Windows Live and Office Live - integration with the Web.
This is Microsoft's Web 2.0 strategy, except substitute the word "Live" for that term.
"Came back on stage at 10:37, announced Windows Live and Office Live.
Windows Live: Primarily ad supported. Does not kill off MSN.
Office Live: ìinternet based services for growing and managing your business online.î extensible, thousands of partners. ad supported level with tier above requiring subscription."
Dan Farber has the news too: "In opening the event today, Bill Gates said that every five years Microsoft looks at its strategy and makes big betsñ1990 was Windows, the Web in 1995 and Web Services .Net in 2000. The next big bet, Gates said, is delivering new type of software experience, called "live software." [...] Sounds like a bit of Web 2.0 mixed with Microsoft's live naming themeñLive Meeting, XBox Live. Services = Software, in a broad way, from hosted services like email and CRM to MSN and mapping mashups."
Photos from Mike Arrington. More to come on the news, as I get details...
Update: See my follow-up post about Live.com. I'll also write some analysis later on in the day, when I've got the full picture.
