i really wish i hadn’t seen b-l-o-o-g-e-r.com in my referrer logs. it’s only an additional letter ‘o’ – and yet, like a good meme, it’s now lodged in my brain. blooger! bloooooger!! bloooooooooger!!!
not…enough….time…in…the…day…..
i’ve been using groove more and more these day and ran into groovelog today, which in turn led me to the juxtaposition of the recent John Doerr on a bicycle and a message from ray ozzie from 1997 entitled HI. Wow. Thanks. [this version OK for publishing].
from the former:
“Let’s rebuild around this new model John, the Internet is a two-way medium, more like the telephone than the printing press or TV.”
compare that with ozzie’s message [from freakin’ 1997!]:
“I don’t know your feelings on the matter, but I have mixed feelings about
what the Web has wrought. On one hand, I – as you – had dreamt of a day
when “the masses” would use computers transparently to access vast
information stores and share things with one another. But it hasn’t quite
turned out the way that I’d have anticipated or liked.”“Instead, the Web has turned out to be a medium that is clearly skewed
toward the broadcasting metaphor of “readers” and “publishers,” most always
having identifiable information “providers” and “consumers.” Due to the
fact that the this metaphor was established very early on, and was
supported by weak technology (no user identification & authentication, no
authoring/editing environment, no document database or any organizational
metaphor to speak of, and the name “browser” itself!) people got used to
the environment as a static environment. And there it sits.”“Perhaps if the Web metaphors had been more read/write to begin with, it wouldn’t have taken off as swiftly and smoothly as it did ..? Maybe a truly effective collaboration network can only exist in closed environments, e.g. a corporation, a special interest group, etc. Maybe people only feel safe identifying themselves in closed groups, lurking anonymously elsewhere.”
chew on that and then throw in an articulate post-mortem on pyra from paul bausch entitled what is a pyra?
“We spent days theorizing about how people use information. We wondered about the best ways to give information context. We believed we could help people manage information more effectively with the web. Once we had a beta version it was hard to explain to people. We couldn’t come up with an elevator pitch. People didn’t get it when they saw it. Pyra was difficult. What’s a Pyra? people would ask. We had trouble explaining.”
“A lot of times, Blogger was the problem child. Granted, it brought in a lot of new people to Pyra. (we saw it as a gateway app.) When people saw it, it instantly clicked. There was no need to explain it. And once people tried it they were hooked…There was something just as magical about Blogger as there was with stuff. It was connecting us with people. And connecting people with people.”
there’s some good stuff in there about the internet, history, collaboration, branding, communication, stories and people connecting with people.
fans of clayton christensen might be interested to know that he has a new series of papers that you can download on why e-commerce firms fail:
“Christensen doesn’t consider the Internet to be an inherently disruptive technology, but an infrastructural technology that can be used in either a disruptive or sustaining way. But it does enable disruptive enterprises, which historically have shared six qualities: they were enabled by infrastructural innovations; they reshaped the prevailing business model to earn money in a new way; they served customers as the portals of their day; they enabled customers to do for themselves what only specialists could do before; they migrated upmarket, as they gradually satisfied the needs once filled by the overserved high end of the market; and branding opportunities shifted from the product to the channel.”
i have such a mixed bag of emotions over “the pyra situation”. my range of feelings is covered in the me-fi thread, so i guess there’s no point in being repetative here.
i guess i’ll go with the understated approach and just thank the whole team who made something cool that many valued, but few could price. or something like that. yup, there’s loads of crappy stuff going on the world and maybe our little content management system doesn’t amount to a hill of beans – but dammit, i think there’s something happening. something different.
i can only hope that the reports of pyra’s death have been greatly exaggerated and that maybe dreams will come true :
“Think of what will be created now people have stopped, thought, and decided that yes there is space to compete. Blogger has been humanised, it can return to being just something people use rather than the roots of the community (and there is a community here). Interoperating personal content management systems. Standards. Growth. Taking over the world. Letting a thousand flowers bloom. ”
and matt proves it’s really not so much about blogger as it is about people, communication and stories.
i can’t remember where i picked up the link to inform, but it looks like it might be fun to play with.
i’d like to see a true cross-platform, decentralized system for sharing bookmarks [not a web-based system]:
“InForm is a decentralized, peer-to-peer sharing system, based on a plugins architecture.
Currently, InForm is available with just a plugin for the Favorites Sharing.
InForm without plugins doesn’t make anything.”
while i should just keep my big fat mouth shut – i’ll throw caution to the wind and just admit it. i don’t get that much spam. i get just enough to make using spamcop a fun little break in the normal tedium of the day. that said, i can see how mailmole could come in handy:
“MailMole inhibits web creepy crawlers from snatching email addresses on a web page. This is accomplished by using custom JavaScript code. See for yourself… You won’t find an any email address embedded in this HTML frame, guaranteed. Yet, oh wait, an email is located right below? Hmm… The JavaScript has three arguments for your convience: name, domain, and email subject.”
[via splorp]