Apperceptions

Thinking Outside

Tip-o-the-hat to Danny Ayers for his "Thinking Outside The Box" post.  Great photo! On his blog, Danny asserts that everything is related and it appears that this is especially true when it comes to cats (his or mine).  His weblog is definitely worth keeping up on if you are into the symantic web (who wouldn't be?).  He's into Java and RDF programming, which is an interest of mine too (I've just downloaded the open-source Informa API and hope to play with that in Eclipse real soon now).

Pimp My Site!

OK, how about this for a new "show".  Like TLC's "Overhaulin" or MTV's hit show "Pimp My Ride", except that it's a hot Graphic Design firm that remakes some ugly website and surprises the owner.  Perhaps this could be aimed at bloggers and their friends vote them "most needy of a makeover" and we do it.  Could be sponsored by a major blog provider like Blogger, MSN Spaces or TypePad.  It would be great if we could "hijack" their domain or host as part of the shock factor.  Maybe raise their search engine ranking too, add banner ads, paypal, forums, flash, hook in RSS feeds, the works!.  A show about making over your digital presence.  Run a blog about the building of each new site, interview friends or clients, big surprise for the "contestant".  Like the car shows, interview the "backend" guys to give a peek at the tech behind the site.  Could be entertaining content and viral.

Community Management Systems

How do you build a community?  Can one start with an existing open-source content management system (CMS) and extend it to meet the community's additional needs?  What features are important to start with?

I'm starting to take another serious dive into content management systems.  There are lots out there, lots of features and lots of platforms and architectures.

It would be interesting to know what some of the popular sites are using.  I note that Webjay is a heavly modified version of Geeklog.  Of course, I already mentioned that Microsoft has open-sourced the Channel 9 wiki. The AlwaysOn Network is PHP based.

While I am not wedded to any particular architecture or platform, I want to be able to integrate easily with SpinXpress, which is a mainly a Java/SWT app based on the Jetty web server.  SpinXpress and the SPIN directory server, use HypersonicSQL for metadata storage.  I've been seeing a lot of job ads lately that mention Hibernate and an inital review of this object2db mapping api looks very powerful.  Needless to say, many people are using MySQL these days.  Apache and Tomcat based solutions are plentiful.

I know I have not mentioned what the community is for and what it's features will be.   At this point, I am only interested in basic and typical community and content management features so as to determine the a good one to build upon.  What's your experience?

Copy Rights?

Hmmm.  Suppose my mother took a photo of me as a child and my sister takes the only copy and sends it to me.  If I scan it and put it here, can my mother sue me for copyright infringement?  Can she have my sister arrested for theft?  Could I be considered in possession of stolen property?

Better Radio

I've been thinking lately that (1) I spend a lot of time "browsing" the web (it has gotten more efficient and at the same time, more intense since weblogs and RSS have taken off; at Outhink, we call this "gathering") and (2) I really like listening to and occasionally watching podcasts, screencasts, etc.  Also, (3) I miss good radio (they just don't seem to blend the content and personalities like they used to - or at least I have a harder time finding it now, compared to when I lived in LA with a radio, back when I was a skinny kid).

But I think we can recreate some of that with all our new found web toys.  How about we aggregate news and information, according to user preferences (ok, done) and then "read" the information using text-to-speech (I have played with the Java TTS API, see also Say-It-Now) and assigning specific voices (and personalities) to the various information sources (AP, Reuters, Blogs, etc.).  It might go something like this:

This just in Bob, Microsoft has gone open-source today with their wiki software...
That's right Sue and not the first time either (more data from another source)...
Let's talk to Mitch Ratcliffe and Marc Cantor about this briefly (audio and blog scrapes)...
Here's some video of the big announcement (scrape)...
Well, that was interesting.  Now here's a new little item from OddioKatya's playlist on Webjay...
The time is now 2:15pm...
Don't forget you have a conference call planned for 2:30...
Dave is stopping by the lab for a demo at 4...
Here's a good joke about webloggers(scrape)...
The latest West Wing espisode is now available for viewing(feed/torrent)...
Eric has published a new requirements spec for SpinXpress 3.0 (upload)...

Throw in a little voice recognition (Jon Udell discusses Dragon, which I used several years ago on a NASA-AMES funded simulation project for UI and Human Factors research).  Let me say things like "what?", "again?", "bullshit!", "elaborate", "more", "save", "send", etc and have the news app respond appropriately.

I imagine that others have all thought this out already, but it seems like it might be something one could put together (might be fun to do it with existing open-source tools).  Jon Udell put together a nice post and screencast recently that I liked that has the right flavor.  Let's see if we can remove a lot of "individual" effort that Jon had to go through (Thanks! btw)

See also this great video from the museum of Media History that probably leads to something similar (and possibly more frightening).  Does anyone know what motivated making this video?  Was it a class project at Georgia Tech?  Does anyone know what the CC rights on this are?  I do not see an easy way to find out at the CreativeCommons.org site.  I have to watch again, there are some credits at the end.

Addendium (01/31/2005):

Social Networking Experiments

I've been thinking about trying out a little experiment lately using both craigslist.org and del.icio.us.  Here's the idea: have people read thru job postings in their area of expertise (each day) and bookmark (post) each one to del.icio.us, supplying tags and a comment.

I need to elaborate on how the following play in:

• First off, these postings will appear breifly in the main, user feeds, and longer in the user /tag and /tag ("job" in these cases) feeds at del.icio.us
• People could subscribe to these as rss feeds
• Other people might add bookmarks with tags and comments (e.g., I can do this, I need similar services, this email is bogus, etc.)
  
• Might be worth pointing to Joel on Software post about hiring top candiates and mention how it relates
• How does Jon Udell lookup all links  to a specific url?  Check the del.icio.us API
• Could this be something that was at last deserved of the name app.etitio.us?

Webjay Wizardry

I made this with the Webjay Wizard (thanks to Lucas Gonze for Webjay and pointing out this wizard).  It launches an interesting mp3 playlist that I stumbled across today.

Eclectic #1 (the image site may go off-line)

Here is OddioKatya's Japan and Okinawa
Windows Media playlist (ASX)
Webjay page (link)

TV's for Sale? I Love My P2P TV!

I hardly watch the big Sony's anymore (mainly NWI in the background).  I've been bitten by the Internet media bug ever since I got what passes for "broadband" around here (a sometimes working 1Mb/384Kb Adelphia cable and a more reliable but 1/3 slower, wireless DSL from a local provider).  Anyway, I download or stream a lot of video and audio from the Internet Archive, CSPAN, Webjay and others.  Check out The West Wing in HDTV!  I'm still trying to tweak every last bit from thse torrents.  I love it (mostly).  Today, I found this interesting draft on The Implications of Video P2P on Network Usage.  The conclusions:

The enduring popularity of P2P file-trading for music, despite intensive legal efforts and licensed music distribution alternatives such as Apple’s iTunes, shows that once P2P platforms achieve critical mass, they are virtually impossible to stamp out. In the case of video, the rising sales of video cameras and broadband connectivity seem destined to create the conditions for substantial new applications. Video P2P will place dramatic new demands on data networks regardless of what type of content it carries. And the opportunity to transfer non-commercial content will create new business opportunities and usage shifts.

Given the early stage of video P2P activity, especially in the US, precise economic predictions are difficult to make. Many factors will influence future developments, including the pace of broadband rollouts for truly high-capacity connections (at least 10 Mbps, and ideally at least 100 Mbps, in both directions); the influence of disruptive actions by non-traditional participants in the networking world, including Apple, Sony, Nokia, and Microsoft; and progress on standardization of short-range high-speed wireless links between media-capable devices. Still, the question is when, not if. Video P2P is here to stay.

Another Beautiful Ojai Day

A few photos looking out the front and side of the house.

Microsoft and Open Source

There was an interesting development yesterday: Microsoft open-sourced it's Channel 9 wiki software. This is a .NET application, of course, and is available on Source Forge under the Common Public License.

Flickr Zeitgeist

As Stewart would say: Look what I can do!

Linked In

Dan Hughes pointed out an interesting article regarding due diligence, which in turn mentioned LinkedIn.  I had been meaning to join and so I did.  I was pleasantly surprised to find several people from my email address book already registered.

Jon Udell, Marc Cantor and Sounds

As usual, Jon Udell is talking about the things that interest me and my friends at Outhink.  He even mentions Marc Canter, who I had the pleasure of meeting last week.  Late last year, I was playing around with RIA's for SpinXpress and I even got the Lazslo demo components (including the one that one Jon uses) to work on a secure, private SPIN hosted weblog.  On a related note, I recently ran into a cool SMIL playlist that Marc had made to allow indexed access to one of those lengthy, but interesting, Gilmor Gang talks.  Like Jon says, cool.

Internet Time

Time is a secret weapon, says Roger McNamee of AlwaysOn in his book The New Normal.  He takes a look at the characteristics of successful companies born during the Internet boon that are actually still around today:

... But take a look at the companies born in that era that are actually still around...

...They mastered their business. They stayed focused...

... despite all the hype, the old rules were still in force. Cash flow and profitability mattered in a major way. Not during the mania, of course. But when the mania ended, it didn’t take long for the cream to rise to the top...

... To be clear, it is better to be early than late. But it is always more important to be right than to be early...

I am witness to this: Dave Toole has been advocating the same principles over the past five years as he guided the development of Outhink's core products and services.

extisp.icio.us

This is too cool.  An interesting representation of my del.icio.us tags.

Mac's and PC's

Finally got the Canoscan working with OS X.  This was much more like an old Windows experience than I would have suspected. XP was trivial.  Win2K was simple initially, but then I installed the Creative Webcam and that was the end of communicating with the scanner.  Jeez.  Now it's the Mac's turn.  Got it working with the camera too.  Gotta love that USB.

Still no luck getting the two messed up laptops (Gateway and HP) back into usable states.  Am learning a lot about repairing laptop screens (HP) and Linux (Gateway).

Also, a bad Kodak install has killed off IE6 and made me into a Firefox user for the better (but I'd still like to get IE back).  No amount of install/uninstall seems to fix this.  Strange after all these years as an IE user.  Love the firefox features.

Social Networking

I've been checking out the following technologies/sites in some detail this weekend: BitTorrent, SmartCommons and 43 Things.  BitTorrent is a gas; I used it to check out some very powerful videos related to the Tsunami.  More on these later.  Check out my del.icio.us page for relevant links.  Also looking into VPN more.