"Connect it to Facebook, viral spread, boom, boom." I have no idea what that means but I do know that for some reason, I'm still not tired of the Sh*t [fill in the blank] Says meme. This video is for anyone who's spent more than five minutes reading Techcrunch, knows what Y Combinator is and has faced the (sometimes) irrational exuberance of a tech entrepreneur. "Overheard: Time to pivot."
Internet users usually think of Wi-Fi networks as either open (hey, let's steal Internet from our neighbor instead of paying for it!) or closed (only those with a password can access the Internet). If you leave your network open, how often do you actually know the people who are also logged on?
Wifis.org, a new site created and operated by Berlin-based Mathias Nitzsche and "Robert," turns your WiFi network into a contact form of sorts, making you accessible to others via private messages that are transmitted through your WiFi network. To create an account on WiFis.org, login using your Facebook or Google account.
Over the past week I read Kevin Kelly's latest book, What Technology Wants. It's a highly ambitious and expansive book, which looks at technology from an evolutionary perspective. Over 350 pages, Kelly outlines and explores technology as a living system, akin to humanity's biological evolution. The title alludes to this - 'What Technology Wants,' as if technology is a living, breathing thing.
Kelly's book is a must read for technologists and anybody interested in the future of the Web. In this post I'll explore a few of the main themes of the book, in particular as they relate to the evolving Web. (there won't be any spoilers, for those of you in the middle of reading it or if you haven't yet read it!) Two of the main themes are how technology will evolve and how we - humanity - can guide it and make the best use of it.
Yesterday we reported that Justin Bieber's video Baby has become the first video ever to surpass 500 million views on YouTube. The flip side of that fame, though, was that Bieber's was by far the most disliked video on the site - having received ten times more dislike votes than what appeared to be the second-most disliked video (also by Bieber).
Then, everything changed. Rebecca Black's video Friday was burning up the charts - but especially the Dislike chart we created by extracting numbers from across the site. Today what seemed inevitable finally occurred - Rebecca Black's Friday surpassed Justin Bieber's Baby to become the most-disliked video of all time on YouTube. Friday currently has 1,187,200 dislikes - but that number has been climbing fast for days. It's hard to know what this all means - but surely it means something. Unless it means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Watch and listen to the new Anti-Queen of Broadcasting Yourself below and think about it. Don't be too mean though, this young woman is just 13 years old.
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild, unregulated world. Facebook and LinkedIn, among other online social networks, are vast private communities that have thrived without oversight from any policy-making body. And new social networks are proliferating like bed bugs in a cheap hotel. As a result, trademark protection on social networks is becoming a serious concern for corporations.
Your personal and corporate reputation and popularity on these networks pivot on an identity known as your username. The role of usernames as brand identifiers is following a similar pattern as domain names but without any of the protections that trademarks owners enjoy.
Today and tomorrow in London, Digital Archaeology is digging down into the history of the Internet. Said the creators of this exhibit that delves into the early years (almost 20 years ago!) of the Web:
"Soon we will know less about what was seen on PC screens -- the HTML blossoming that helped change our world utterly -- than we do about the relief carvings in Mohenjo-daro or the Yucatán. Although they helped defined our new culture, almost none of the websites of less than two decades ago can be seen at all."
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal posted an article entitled "'Scrapers' Dig Deep for Data on Web". While the article highlights some important issues surrounding the murky and potentially shady business of Web crawling, it fails to provide a comprehensive story on the uses of Web crawling. In other words, by focusing on one or two companies with spotty business practices, it casts the entire practice of data collection from the Web as something to be feared.
There was an interesting article recently in The Wall Street Journal by Isacc Arnsdorf that discussed how art gallery and museum patrons are studied as they move through art exhibits. The objective is simple: measure how people navigate through and engage with the art. When I read the article, I immediately thought of some of the things that we're doing at MindTouch, but really there's a broader lesson to be learned here.
The technology press is full of stories of heroic men. In the startup economy, they often take the form of brave men who quit steady day jobs to join crazy startups. That's an inspiring kind of story; I wrote about Louis Gray doing that earlier this week and really enjoyed sharing his news. (How Chris Messina Got a Job at Google is a related example.)
But what about women who make that kind of leap? There needs to be more stories told like that. I put out a call on Twitter and Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times said she too wants to tell more stories about brave women in technology. We live in an incredible time of cultural, economic and political change made possible by changing technology. That technology is being driven in many cases by women - so whose stories would you suggest we write about here on this blog?
Over-reaction is endemic to discussions of the Web. Over-enthusiastic proponents - Millennialists - seem to be convinced that every burp in online tech, every new tool, every momentary trend, every relocation of a dialog box on a popular site, hails the onset of a Brave New World. On the other side, Professional Doomsayers play the part of sweaty Cassandras, scritching manically at their bespoke hairshirts, bravely warning the hoi polloi of the certainty of their bleak oblivion.
This time around, what with the wholesale collapse of the Web on everyone's lips, let's take a look at the latter. Let us, with grave mien and bowed head, earnestly regard those things Webesque which have been proclaimed "dead" in the last few of years and shuffled, permanently, off the e-mortal coil. Harden your hearts and sharpen your stakes. We could be here a while.
