I've been playing around with various online calendar and address book services and getting frustrated at having to keep everything in synch with the family paper calendar. I've been peripherally participating in the microformats project which involves contextually marking up date-related information in HTML. It's an incredibly nifty idea especially since several of the major search engines are looking to index this semantically defined information.
Anyway, I was thinking about the developments of ePaper and thin clients - why not create one that has an 802.11a/b/g card, a bluetooth card, has compatibility with vcard and icalendar/vcalendar and the ability to synchronize with various online services through API plugins. The user-interface would be via a stylus of some sort and it would be the size of a calendar except no need to get a new one every year - simply download a set of standards-based calendar "skins", doing whatever the heck you want. Anytime you add an event, it simply uploads it to the service of your choice and stays synchronized with that. If each of the family members have different calendar services of choice then you create accounts with those services and set your calendar to synchronize with all of them.
The same can be done with an address book and contact list - perhaps it can connect and synchronize with all these damn social networks out there as well.
I think I'm looking forward to the OutputThis.org service though I know very little about what it is or will do. I'm hoping it will replace my LJ-Crosspost plugin that posts whatever I enter on my main, MovableType-powered site onto my LiveJournal account. I'm also hoping it will allow me to crosspost to my Yahoo! 360 account, MySpace, and other social networks and services I am a member of.
Unlike crazy, over-techie folk like me, I cannot guarantee people I know will have an account on every social network I am on so it only makes sense such crossposting should be possible. But the key is going to be smart publishing - so if I say "this blog" then I want it replaced on all the other sites with BrainStream.com so people on other services know what I am referring to. If I reference a previous post, then on each service, I want it to link to the previous post from that service and not back to BrainStream.com. This seamlessness is going to be important. Or if I reference a person and link to them, I want a link to appear to their account on the appropriate service, (i.e. linking to a LiveJournal.com URL or, on LiveJournal, using their <lj user=""> tag).
But I also see an even better use for OutputThis.org and I hope it's being considered - though I didn't read anything about it. I'd be willing to pay for such a service. Basically, I want a tool that stores all the personal information that can be shared across all social networks: Ryze, LinkedIn, Planzo, Orkut, Friendster, Tribe.Net, MySpace, LiveJournal, Yahoo! 360 etc. This includes mostly personal profile type information - name, contact information, interests, favorite music, movies, television shows, books, insert-yours-here, as well as relationship status and information and resume details.
It should would make it a heck of a lot easier to keep information on the Web more updated. I'm continually thinking about metadata, (data about data), so it bums me out that some of these services don't semantically contextualize every bit of information I enter. I would love for all these services to start using microformats. One service, for instance, lets you enter what schools you attended however if it's not a unique school name then it will list all those schools around the country with that name. Each school should be a unique "item" with it's city, state, and any other information making it unique to itself.
I'd also want to syncronize my friends/buddies/contacts. If I list a person on one service, then check all the services for the same person and match by email address or other unique information. Something like this may need human interaction to approve or reject potential matches but it sure beats manually searching all these services.
Anyone know much more about OutputThis.org?
For the first time in ages, I've finally started updating this Web site. My main problem was that I was and am still getting an incredible amount of comment spam - only a few slipped through filters but most, (read: over one thousand), were set to moderation. So I've set this blog so you must "sign up" to comment.
Currently it works with TypeKey-only but I've already installed a plugin that allows both TypeKey and OpenID which would allow you to use a LiveJournal, WordPress or other account login to verify yourself. That should be setup soon. However, if you already have a LiveJournal account, I crosspost everything on here to my "LJ" so you're welcome to comment there.
I'm also playing around with microformats - a way of taking standard XML or RDF metadata schemas and implementing them in standard HTML. In more layman's terms, there are open standards that allow you to store one's address and contact information, (vCard), and all your various calendar information, (vCalendar), that you can now include inline in your HTML. This is most excellent because it means you don't have to download a vCard or vCalendar file to get such information - it's embedded in what you are reading. I've also started using the XHTML Friends Network or XFN which lets me denote that a Web site I link to is owned and run by a friend and how I know them.
It may not make much sense to some of you however this is a small part of the Semantic Web or this "Web 2.0" buzzword everyone is using - by further contextualizing your information with more than what's visible to the naked eye, you are making it more easier for computers, software agents, programs etc to find and understand the information you are posting.
At some point, I will update my resume, contact information, bio, and even the design of the site as the "celestial" theme is so Y2K. It's still an important part of me but I have the same look-and-feel in my home office. Better to make my Web design a little more flexible and clean and save the celestial relaxation for my personal self. Besides, Kirky designed and implemented my office and I love it.
Are you adding any sort of new features to your site that I should consider? Let me know.
Thanks for reading.
I'm not terribly impressed with Structured Blogging thus far - I'm not one to ridgidly structure the text of my blog posts, though I'd happily semantically markup my content. The MovableType plugin is a bit too strict. Maybe I'm using it wrong but I'd like to make an entry and then use the pulldowns to add an event, review, list, showcase, audio, image or video - in some cases, in the same post.
Perhaps once they're out of Beta we'll see some JavaScripty-AJAXian magic to accomplish this. You can't force bloggers to stick to your formatting. Granted, you can use creative CSS-positioning to make it look however you want, but one of the whole reasons people use MovableType to begin with - so they don't have to deal with manual formatting and markup. Perhaps it would be worth it to develop some CSS templates with positioning to manage more inline contextual information sans any rigid formatting?
They're off to a damn good start and are headed in the right direction - but it will be a bit before the mainstream blogging community will adopt what they're working on. I look forward to what comes next.
Just saw this post on Dave Farber's list "Interesting People" about how Microsoft offered $80 billion over the weekend for Yahoo!. I wondered if MS was simply going to fade away in the "Web 2.0" war between Google and Yahoo! . Hot damn what a rumor.
Just went over to look at Technorati and read this:
The photos come from Flickr and Buzznet, two online photo sharing communities. If you'd like your photos to appear on our tag pages, join Flickr or join Buzznet and post your photos there. Just tag them and set them to be public and they'll appear on Technorati Tag pages.
The links come from web-based bookmark services Delicious and Furl. If you would like to contribute links to Technorati Tag pages, you can join Delicious or join Furl and post some links. Again, be sure to tag them for them to appear here.
Seems like Technorati is next in the tag trifecta - Yahoo! already has Delicious and Flickr...
I was just chatting with my brother Nate, (
In a conversation with Greg Burd we concluded that Six Apart may be next. Yahoo! may purchase them to compete with Google's acquisition of Blogger and BlogSpot or.....Google may take them to simply augment their "blogging" division and so Yahoo! can't use them to compete.
Icould see the same for Technorati - Google is pretty set with their BlogSearch beta and their Google News however Yahoo! is pretty much lacking in the blog-search area. Maybe LinkedIn as well - I see it as one of the more successful Social Network products out there. Any other "Web 2.0" services ripe for acquisition? It's really interesting watching Yahoo! and Google go at it - very reminicent of the DotCom days just without the unproven vapourware.