Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on community http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic community Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Weblogs, communities and tools Thu, 13 Jun 2002 12:51:50 +0100 <A href="http://www.rjsjr.org/archives/20020610.html#weblogs_and_communities">Weblogs and communities</A>. There are a lot of great ideas going around and I look forward to the tools and discussion this will generate. However, I think of this issue in a slightly different way, while linking neighborhoods, syndications, etc. all highlight the mechanical connections between related weblogs what interests me most are the conceptual threads of conversation that cross through many weblogs. This means extracting the relevant portions of many conversations, organizing the responses, editorializing the content, etc. Everyone talks about wanting to create communities, but it seems most of the proposals really address how to create collections. To me, a community is about discourse and participation, not just relationships. I don't only want to know who's like me, I want to interact with them to create great ideas and products drawing from our shared experience. What's more, I want to filter or focus on real analysis, not just the link parroting that <A href="http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/">Blogdex</A> and <A href="http://www.daypop.com/top/">Daypop</A> tend to highlight. [<A href="http://www.rjsjr.org/">rjsjr :: Robert J. Seymour, Jr.</A>] Robert is a new voice to me but I'm glad to have met him as he has a great perspective. So far I've been concentrating on the tools to collect together the members of a disparate community in a dynamic fashion (it's the problem that drove me to think about this in the first place) but Robert highlights that the business of community is really about discourse and exchange. Part of the BlogPlex manifesto (in progress) is that a BlogPlexa should actually be able to offer you useful services.  The first service being of course, that it introduces you to other people in a wider community.  Hopefully we can I think we need a discussion about the services/facilities that we can provide to people. If chat, threaded discussion and file sharing were not important to people I think that newer mediums such as Groove and organic mediums such as SlashDot wouldn't have them at their heart. However I think we also need new tools that fit the medium of blogging.  In <A href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs/message/248">this</A> message on k-log Phil Wainewright discusses the possibility of shared aggregators: "The key point I'm making is one that I feel would be of immense value in networks of k-logs: being able to read an RSS feed of someone else's RSS aggregation:" I agree and I think it would be interesting to consider how a BlogPlex might offer a shared (& digested) aggregation of the RSS feeds of each the current membership (remember it's dynamic).   http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000006.html For whom the Blog flows Tue, 25 Jun 2002 12:20:37 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0108019/2002/05/21.html#a66">Blog Notes 5: For Whom The Blog Flows</A>. Embedded in most current blogging software is an odd notion. Because the systems are self-referential and the overall audience is in its early growth stages, there is an interesting assumption that one "blogs" for oneself or other bloggers. Conventions, like <A href="http://doc.weblogs.com/sitesIRead">blogrolling</A> (a cross linking scheme that builds traffic within the blogging community), have a nearly religious fervor associated with them. Community building, as we've mentioned in other <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0108019/2002/05/17.html#a47">Blog Notes</A> creates the essential social infrastructure on which the long term success of blogging rests. As the community voraciously consumes the product of other community members, a momentum develops. It's good for groundwork and subject to replacement at the beginning of the second phase of growth in the phenomenon. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0108019/">5th Constituency</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I discovered 5th constituency yesterday via <A href="http://home.netcom.com/~luskr/weblog/radio/">Ron Lusks weblog</A>.  I'm working back through the stuff there, the blog notes are especially interesting. I am not sure that I'm down with "making blogging a success" as an end in an of itself.  Although I haven't thought about it very hard I guess I see blogging as a part of a wider bootstraping process for online communities as a whole.   I guess this may be the second phase that is referred to here.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000044.html Paradox of the best network Tue, 25 Jun 2002 20:00:03 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0108019/2002/05/20.html#a56">Best Human Network</A>. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> "The perfect network is perfectly plain, and perfectly extensible.  That means it is also the perfect capital repellant, [which] implies a guaranteed loss to network operators, but a boon to the services on the 'ends'." - Roxane Googin's High Tech Observer as  cited in <A href="http://netparadox.com/">The Paradox of the Best Network</A> </BLOCKQUOTE> Take a moment to scan <A href="http://netparadox.com/">The Paradox of the Best Network</A>. We've cited the piece before. The quote, which prompted the Paradox piece in the first place, suggests that the best network is the one that produces the best results for its users (the ends). The Paradox article and the quote are referring to telecom and internet networks. We wonder if it's true and if it has relevance for human networks. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0108019/">5th Constituency</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » It is a good piece to be sure.  To help you decide whether to follow the link and read it here is a 10% summary by <A href="http://www.copernic.com/products/summarizer/index.html">Copernic Summarizer</A> <UL dir=ltr> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Just a few short months ago, it seemed that humanity stood on the edge of a communications revolution.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">New technology promised to topple barriers of space and time.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Prospects of new connectedness recede as capital markets tighten, existing telephone companies back off on capital expenditures, established communications equipment suppliers falter, and ambitious new telecom companies fail.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Despite the darkened outlook, new communications capabilities are within reach that will make the current Internet look like tin cans and string.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Radically simplified technologies can blast bits a million times faster than the current network at a millionth of the cost.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">It's not even that the communications revolution has been derailed by inept or self-aggrandizing behavior by incumbent telephone companies and their government regulators.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">It provokes incumbent companies to mass lawyers and lobbyists to thwart the development of a competitive communications market.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Communications networks have a more important job than generating return on investment --- their value comes from their connectivity and from the services they enable.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Therefore, the best network delivers bits in the largest volumes at the fastest speeds.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">In addition, the best network is the most open to new communications services; it closes off the fewest futures and elicits the most innovation.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">As software engineers say, "Today's optimization is tomorrow's bottleneck."</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Thus, the best network is a "stupid" network that does nothing but move bits.2 Only then is the network truly open to any and all services that want to use it, no matter how innovative or how unexpected.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">They know that implementing the new commodity network threatens the very basis of their business.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">As a result of this simplicity, the Internet has proven to be the most scalable, most robust communications infrastructure humans have ever built.</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">It will boost the economy, open global markets, and make us better informed citizens, customers and business people.</DIV></LI></UL>  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000048.html Another point of view Tue, 25 Jun 2002 22:58:25 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2002/05/31.html">Village shops in BlogSpace</A> <BLOCKQUOTE class=article>It is my belief that people online, as in daily life, naturally want to form communities and that, where they do not/can not, it is because of a failure of available tools to help them.</BLOCKQUOTE> Not everyone does want to form a community. A community is nice, when you start and you don't want to (re)discover by yourself all the small things that make the blogging life better, faster, stronger (blogtools, RSS, news aggregators, permalinks, archives, referers, backlinks, valid markup, pinging weblogs...) After a while, being out of a community is good, the same way the small bird is being kicked out of the nest: now do your own thing. [<A href="http://jemisa.editthispage.com/">Jemisa</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Another viewpoint to my own.  I'm not quite sure I fully understand the point being made here, however... I hadn't thought about it too much but I admit the possibility that there are people who don't want to form communities.  However I don't think the bird metaphor works -- birds leaving the nest don't usually go on to live a solitary life they are going on to build a new community.  Even more than this though, I believe that humans have an innate instinct for language.  Something that is profoundly useless unless one wants to communicate with others. Unless you are just shouting at random strangers then you are looking for some kind of community with whom you want to communicate. I'd like to discuss this further.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000051.html Chalks away Wed, 10 Jul 2002 19:33:12 +0100 Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United Kingdom, London, Tooting, Matt, Male, 26-30!   http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000150.html Blogging books & Trackback Mon, 15 Jul 2002 09:58:46 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0108194/2002/07/15.html#a118">Oh stop already.</A>. I keep reading entries discussing the idea "how silly it is that there are books coming out about blogging." Look, there's a simple fact that seems to elude most of the Blogerati, if I may coin a term. Most people (something that has no statistically relevant deviation from EVERYONE) have NO idea that blogs exist. The books about blogging need to be there. We're in a pretty self-congradulatory medium here. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that an inaccurate book is better than no book. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I think this is a key point.  When I step back and think about it I've had a lot of conversations recently where the subject of blogging came up because people asked me about what I was doing.  There then followed a conversation where I try to get across what it's all about.  In desparation I usually end up with some sort of half-baked: "It's like a web diary" explanation.  This misses so much of value but there you go.  These are people who know what the Internet, use wordprocessors and email, maybe even write web pages. So the value of the books, even the bad ones, is as <A href="http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/2002/07/14.html#a2648">Jenny</A> points out: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> "Now I find myself in the same situation with blogs. I plan to implement them for every service area at <A href="http://www.sls.lib.il.us/" target=_blank>SLS</A> and on a personal level for staff internally and yet, I'd be surprised if even 10% of our staff understand what they are. I covered blogs at our SLS Tech Summit in March, but it was still too confusing and irrelevant for most of the librarians that attended that session. Next time, I'll be able to hold up these books, and they'll take me more seriously. Sorry, but that's how most of the world still works. They'll purchase them for their libraries, too, which means the concept of blogs will officially be cataloged and indexed in our collective memory (not just the memory of those of us who live online)."</BLOCKQUOTE> People are going to read these books.  Lots of 'em.  I hope Blogger.com have a good relationship with their server suppliers!</BLOCKQUOTE> Blogging is currently a one-way medium. Best you can do is have 2 (ok, "N") people subscribing to each other's monologues. But with TrackBack you close the loop and notify your conversation partner that it's now her/his turn. Now you can TRULY have interchange. Something that's only hackishly possible at the moment. (Check the userland discussions for the number of times people ask for "comment notifications".) <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I agree.  I think TrackBack is a very important technology.  I'm reaching for a metaphor but can't find a good one. But effectively it's the difference between a broadcast system and a network.  Blogs alone are too much like public broadcasting.  You send and if you're lucky you get back letters and phone calls.  With TrackBack people can be wired in, feedback loops will be established, communities will grow, it'll all come alive.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000196.html Sharing is a community responsibility Wed, 07 Aug 2002 21:38:21 +0100 <A href="http://www.kellogg.nwu.edu/faculty/mcgee/htm/blog/2002/08/07.html#a2039">Knowledge sharing and responsibility</A>. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Key insight for me:</BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> the sharing of knowledge, and the cooperative application of new technologies are part of the responsibility of belonging to a community of practice.</BLOCKQUOTE> First time I've seen the notion of knowledge sharing articulated as a responsibility of community membership. [<A href="http://www.kellogg.nwu.edu/faculty/mcgee/htm/blog/">McGee's Musings</A>] [<A href="http://home.netcom.com/~luskr/weblog/radio/categories/kLogs/">Ron Lusk: Ron's K-Logs</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Hmmm... I guess it's one of those point of view things.  It seems obvious when I think about it that if you are really a member of a community then sharing is an implicit responsibility.  Whilst the value of what you have to share will vary over time, you will want to share to enable the community to grow.  Otherwise you're not really a member. For me it's the difference between carrying a Union card and going to meetings (I never did either but hopefully that doesn't hurt my point too much).  If you don't go to the meetings then you're not really part of the Union.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000262.html Coaching tools Thu, 15 Aug 2002 12:31:02 +0100 <OL> <LI>Follow my coach. </LI> <LI> <DIV>Someone else keeps up on all this nerdy stuff more than I do. Let me subscribe to almost all of his changes, adopting them automatically or at least putting them in a queue for approval. This way I focus on my content and let my coach pick/tweak tools, macros, templates, style sheets, news feed subscriptions, etc. </DIV></LI></OL> <UL> <LI> <DIV>I can unsubscribe bit-by-bit (perhaps tweaking my own templates) as I learn more and follow my own path. </DIV> <LI> <DIV>This may be the default for a company, department, community, hosting service. </DIV> <LI> <DIV>Affiliate one or more coach URLs with a "Radio Community Server". </DIV></LI></UL> From [<A href="http://dijest.com/aka/2002/08/11.html#a1917">a klog apart</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Wow, here's a powerful idea.  I'm blown away by this. You could apply it in so many places.  Almost every time you start using a new package and meet up with someone who you would like to mentor you in it.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000332.html Patently absurd Thu, 15 Aug 2002 18:24:32 +0100 <A href="http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/1446781">Internet News</A>: "New York-based ActiveBuddy has won a crucial patent covering instant messaging bot-making technology, but hobbyists and amateur developers aren't buying the company's claim that it invented the technology." [<A href="http://www.scripting.com/">Scripting News</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I'm drawn to wonder;  Does a patent application have a space for you to list your venture backers these days?  Does the patent office even bother to look for prior art? <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> From <A href="http://www.cpan.org">www.cpan.org</A> <IMG alt="[ ]" src="http://www.cpan.org/icons/unknown.gif"> <A href="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Net/Net-AIM-0.01.readme">Net-AIM-0.01.readme</A>                   18-Aug-1999 15:37  1.5K  <IMG alt=[CMP] src="http://www.cpan.org/icons/compressed.gif"> <A href="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Net/Net-AIM-0.01.tar.gz">Net-AIM-0.01.tar.gz</A>                   18-Aug-1999 16:34   25K  </BLOCKQUOTE> I think the patent system should be changed into a community based process.  There should be an RSS stream generated by the various offices that details applications under review for processing and trackback should be used to allow the community to comment on them. As to Tim Kay's assertion: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> "If you want to do things that our products allow you to do, your best choice is to use our products," Kay said, referring to the <A href="http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/enterprise/article/0,,10816_1444521,00.html">recent launch</A> of the Lite BuddyScript Server, which can be used by hobbyists to develop and run IM bots.</BLOCKQUOTE> Well I guess I'd be that smug too if I'd just put one over on my competitors.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000335.html Sharing zones of control Tue, 24 Sep 2002 23:48:52 +0100 <A href="http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000171.html">IBM turns to social network analysis</A>. A critical resource embedded within organizations is the knowledge that highly skilled workers bring to work on a day-to-day basis. However, aside from human resource policies targeted at the attraction, development and retention of skilled knowledge workers, there has been little effort put into systematic ways of leveraging knowledge that is embedded in people and relationships. Given the extent to which people rely on their own knowledge and the knowledge of their contacts to solve problems, this is a significant shortcoming. Social network analysis allows us to understand how a given network of people create and share knowledge, helping us to move beyond this approach. [<A href="http://www.smartmobs.com/">Smart Mobs</A>] An important issue that would arise for me, if I were to work in an enterprise, would be to restrict my sharing to the organization. This would require a degree of corporate loyalty that I just might have some trouble with. From a personal standpoint, it would be more useful for me to share all my knowledge publicly: it would enable me to build more relationships with outsiders, and establish a reputation that is not limited to my organization. When the time comes to move on, I'd probably be in a better position. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/">Seb's Open Research</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » As in most human endeavours I think there's going to have to be a compromise.  I can imagine increasingly relaxed zones of control over blogged information.  Sharing layers if you like: <UL> <LI>My personal private blog (backup brain)</LI> <LI>Team / Project Group / Community blog (private sharing)</LI> <LI>Intranet blog (corporate sharing)</LI> <LI>Public blog (real sharing)</LI></UL> All of which could be done now using Radio category routing.  A simpler interface could be introduced in Radio so that people can specify how wide they want that post shared and Radio selects the right routing category itself. I'd add that liveTopics (plug, plug) will soon support categories and less soon the idea of a corporate weblog directory.  This will group posts from different weblogs around shared topics.  Add theme support and you can cluster related topics to create a real navigable knowledge structure for each layer. I haven't forgotten about BlogPlexes either... [I do seem to have gone italic mad lately though]</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000588.html One for PingBack Wed, 25 Sep 2002 16:29:02 +0100 I agree with <A href="http://www.ozzie.net/blog/2002/09/25.html#a65">Ray</A>.  I don't want pingback, trackback, or refererback.  I get enough feedback with comments, spam free e-mail, and links to IM.  If I wanted to host a discussion group, that is what I would have instead of a weblog.  [<A href="http://jrobb.userland.com/">John Robb's Radio Weblog</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Quite frankly I do more than scan my referrer lists "once in a while" as Ray puts it.  I am always scanning them, looking for the breadcrumbs of someone or something interesting that has passed by.  Always on the lookout for that connection that could have value for me or my business.   I get as much spam as anyone, but I'll put up with a future of pingbots right now if it means I make the connections that helps my business to succeed.  Just like I put up with spam to use email today.  I can't afford to pull up the draw bridge. PingBack may not be good for John, Ray, and others on the path well trodden.  But I think there are lots of people like myself who see things differently.  I want to know when someone is talking about what I am talking about and especially when they are talking about something I've written. I don't know all the answers to the path I'm on, it's only through shared dialogue and the connections that I am making that I have a hope of moving forward.  I see PingBack as a valuable way of making those extra connections that I need, of closing the loops, and getting the feedback.   If Ray & John don't want to come to that party that's fine, but I hope that, their not turning up, doesn't mean that there isn't a party at all. To put it another way my blog isn't the government emergency broadcast system, it's The Frasier Crane show. So go ahead and ping me. I'm listening.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000602.html Where's the pain? (Part I) Fri, 04 Oct 2002 12:58:34 +0100 Promise "Klogs will help your team muck up smaller and sooner." When fear is in the air and the skies are grey, I really think it's about managing risk. Find projects where the costs of even small errors are huge. Klogs as cheap/fast/easy communication to capture lessons learned (making fewer mistakes) and to notice and escallate risks earlier (before they grow into problems). <DIV class=date><A href="http://dijest.editthispage.com/">Phil Wolff</A> [<A href="mailto:pwolff@dijest.com">pwolff@dijest.com</A>] 9/30/02; 5:26:57 PM</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I think positioning klogs as corporate fire-alarms might be a good tactic in these times.  It's not how I wanted to position them.  It's a little close to the dark side but, hey, whatever works baby! It seems to be accepted wisdom that corporations think poor internal communication is a problem that costs them money. It's less clear to me whether they are prepared to spend money to fix it. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000635.html Pleased to meet you. Mon, 07 Oct 2002 13:03:15 +0100 <A href="http://www.rklau.com/tins/2002/10/06.html#a571">Piloting a K-Log</A>. We're kicking off a k-log initiative at my company tomorrow. I've identified a dozen people to serve as guinea pigs. IT installs the software tomorrow, and they'll take a few days to get familiar with the software. Rather than bombard them with any formal training right away, I want them to be comfortable with what's on the screen - at least that way they'll figure out what questions they want to ask. So far, people seem cautiously optimistic about the concept. We're great at using our own product for CRM - but we haven't committed enterprise wide to doing anything like this other than CRM. Wish us luck! [<A href="http://www.rklau.com/tins/">tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » It was my great pleasure to meet Rick last night and share a few beers at the Chandos pub near Trafalgar Square.  For a man on 7 hours sleep outta 48, Rick was remarkably cogent ;-) More on this later.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000653.html Water - Slush - Ice, and a slice Tue, 08 Oct 2002 10:33:16 +0100 The metaphor describes how innovations go from ideas to implemented projects. Here's a diagram that illustrates this process: <IMG height=270 alt="water to ice: " src="http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/kumquatweblogscom/icefunnel.gif" width=300 border=0> Weblogs are an excellent example of a "highly networked community that encourages innovation." The water to ice metaphor describes a way to move these ideas from interesting conversation to successful projects. Interesting piece from back in July by Andy Chen [<A href="http://kumquat.weblogs.com/2002/07/29">Kumquat's musings</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I'm not sure yet whether idea management is a leaky pipe, but if it is then knowledge logs are, as Andy says, a very good way to handle the water-slush-ice transition. Andy's weblog is new to me, but chock full of interesting ideas and insights.  I'll be reading more.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000669.html Ad hoc group forming with liveTopics and BlogPlex Wed, 09 Oct 2002 16:42:14 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2002/10/09.html#a426">Making group-forming ridiculously easy</A>. Now, the idea is this. When I come across a post on an interesting theme that seems like it might have lasting value, I want to be able to <OL> <LI>Create a topic, with a title of its own and a definition or description in plain English (which may contain arbitrary hyperlinks). Just "where" the topic is stored is unimportant. The important thing is that it is a public entity. <LI>Subscribe to that topic. Subscribing has two effects: it adds the topic to a personal topic list of mine, and it means I'll get posts by other people on that topic in my RSS aggregator because each topic is associated to a shared RSS feed. <LI>Post to that topic whenever I talk about it in my weblog. This has to be *easy*, like checking a box or selecting from a drop-down menu displayed under the box where I write my posts. <LI>Access an archive of posts on that topic somewhere on the Web. <LI>Let anyone edit the description of the topic when important things are added to the "state of the art" on the topic, or when other related topics spring out of the discussion, to let people know where the conversation has branched off.</LI></OL> Basically, from where I stand, this sounds a little like a witch's brew of <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/outlines/liveTopics.html">liveTopics</A>, <A href="http://www.movabletype.org/news/2002_08.shtml#000571">standalone TrackBack</A>, and this peculiar brand of editable web sites known as <A href="http://www2.iro.umontreal.ca/~paquetse/cgi-bin/om.cgi?Wiki">wikis</A>. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/">Seb's Open Research</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » What you are describing sounds very like the idea behind the <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2002/05/31.html#a63">BlogPlex Server</A>, for forming ad hoc communities, I put forward a little while back and is the start and endpoint for liveTopics. In order to form BlogPlexes you need enough good metadata in someones weblog to being to make connections between them.  When I looked around I realised categories weren't going to cut it, AI wasn't ready and hence I began working on liveTopics. Obviously since those initial thoughts (which I don't claim are particularly original) I have come across lots of other new ideas like RSS, XFML and so on.  These will all feed in to the design and I think improve it.  For example in considering item (5) one of the powerful features of XFML is to allow us to connect topics together.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000690.html BlogStreet Thu, 28 Nov 2002 16:46:44 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <H3>Pretty Damn Cool: BlogStreet</H3> I just checked out <A href="http://www.blogstreet.com/">BlogStreet</A> and I have to say that it's pretty damn cool.  I know Veer one of the authors via IM from India and periodically he pops onto my radar with a new BlogStreet feature and says "Is it ready yet?".  Using my mighty "bermuda triangle of software bugs" power I give it a whirl and he very nicely takes the feedback.  He and I just spoke again and there are several new Blogstreet features, BlogStreet <A href="http://blogstreet.com/icons.html">icons</A> and more.  More on this next week when people are reading again.  Until then it's worth a definite look. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/">The FuzzyBlog!</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> I am always as fascinated by these things as I am disappointed by not being in the top #10.  Oh well, now you know I'm an egomaniac so the cats out of the bag :P http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000893.html A different kind of B2C Wed, 26 Feb 2003 11:12:43 +0000 That's business 2 community... Something I have never done before but am interested in persuing now is getting involved with voluntary projects.  I would like to help out with one or more charities who need Knowledge Management (KM) or Information Technology (IT) skills. Do you know someone who might need me? Specifically I would like to become involved with one or two projects where there is a shortage of Knowledge Management or Information Technology skills.  Obviously given my bias I would prefer to help out with a KM project (maybe a charity interested in persuing weblogs?) but I will happily volunteer IT strategy skills and IT implementation skills (from advice & recommendations, through implementation and support - including software development).  I haven't thought too hard about how much time I can, or would like, to commit -- I guess I'll worry about that when I need to. I have come across the <A href="http://www.bcconnections.org.uk/">Business Community Connections</A> site, which aims to help businesses get involved with community projects, however they have a lot of charities on their books and I'm not sure how easy it is going to be to match up my skills with any of them.  I'd rather short-circuit the process by personal contact if I can. I'd love to hear from you. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001213.html Weave a circle round him thrice Mon, 22 Aug 2005 14:12:22 +0100 I just <a href="http://www.feedblog.org/2005/08/kottke_is_upset.html">Kevin Burton's response</a> to <a href="http://www.kottke.org/05/08/so-long-technorati">Jason Kottke abandoning Technorati</a> in which he says:<blockquote>I'd rather have a Technorati that was fast and always worked even if that meant only indexing 1M blogs. Even 500k blogs as long as they are the top 500k blogs.</blockquote>Which is, I think, indicative of a class of problems people are experiencing in thinking about the blogosphere that revolve around a concept I'll call Leaderboardism. Right now Technorati are <a href="http://www.technorati.com/about/">claiming to index 15.7 million blogs and have a database of 1.4 billion links</a>. WOW! Those numbers are certainly impressive. But what does this huge data-warehouse buy us? Gripes about performance and database outtages aside, not much it would seem. I don't get anything from a Technorati search that I value over, say, a Google search. In particular I don't seem to get value from Technorati understanding the blogosphere better than Google which you would think they really should. Kevin thinks a better idea is to just index the most important 500,000 (3% of Technorati's claimed reach) of blogs in the blogosphere. Sure that would make Technorati fast. But would it make it more useful? After all, who is deciding who is important? How are they deciding it? And isn't importance subjective anyway? To my way of thinking what Kevin is advocating would make Technorati faster and less useful in equal measure (unless you are mainly interested in what the usual suspects think). The problem is that the blogosphere has grown too large for summary statistics to be relevant to a large group of people anymore. Your Top 100 isn't mine because you aren't interested in basketweaving and vole racing and I am. I think Technorati (and <a href="http://www.feedster.com/">Feedster</a> who seem, so far, to have avoided many of Technorati's pitfalls) should abandon Leaderboardism and focus instead on how to make their database relevant to each individual. Relevance is about understanding the context of the reader and delivering the results they would have asked for if they'd only known what they were. I will consider it a success not when I can see <a href="http://www.technorati.com/pop/blogs/">The Top 100 Blogs</a> but when I can see The Top 100 Blogs you've never come across but will wish you had! For reference I read 2 of Technorati's Top 100 (although I have read about 30% at one time or other and am familiar with over half) so clearly their measure of relevance doesn't match mine very closely. This takes me all the way back to where I started thinking about <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2002/05/31.html#a63">Village Shops in Blogspace</a>. Update: This post lead to me being asked to contribute to an <a href="http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1895,1856550,00.asp">article on Technorati</a>, and later to my <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2005/09/08.html#a1981">posting a follow-up</a> item. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002866.html So it's a social world after all Thu, 08 Sep 2005 13:12:43 +0100 At the last minute it looks like I will be attending <a href="http://www.oursocialworld.com/">Our Social World</a> tomorrow in Cambridge. Some old faces, some new. The best part is that it was my CEO who has suggested I go along with him! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002886.html