Posts Tagged: web 2.0

General Ramblings — No Comments
20
Sep 08

The Wisdom of Crowdsurfing to France

My biggest problem with the internet is its size. There is so much information out there, but sometimes I just can’t find what I want. The companies who add the most value are the ones who deal with this. The obvious one is Google, who allows you a targeted way of searching for what you want. Another is delicious (who has finally removed those pesky dots from its name) which allows you to share bookmarks. But can we go a little further to turn the large quantity of information out there into quality?

The wisdom of crowds

While reading about a presentation at Agile 2008, I stumbled upon a theory by James Surowiecki, professing that groups can often make decisions that are better than those made by any single member of the group. Digg and Reddit already make use of this by allowing the collective web audience to highlight and vote up pages they find valuable. But why not extend this to all users and all pages, building it into the way we use the web?

Continue reading →

General Ramblings — No Comments
20
Aug 08

Collective Blogging

Blogging is a broadcast, just like the old newspaper and less old television. I blog, you read. Sure, you may comment, but once a post is up there, it’s not often refined or refactored further.

There are some advantages to this unilateral approach. Firstly, it’s much quicker to write on your own – no waiting for a glacially slow editor. Secondly, for a contentious topic (or even a seemingly uncontentious topic), a coherent argument makes much better reading than a schizophrenic arguing from every viewpoint. Thirdly, a personal voice can be lost in the noise of differing writing styles when there are too many contributors.

The flip side? In this era of increasingly cheap collaboration, co-writing can help you flesh out and improve your ideas before you release them into the wild. When I’m ranting about “software and process patent insanity” or “why an imperfect wiki is better requirements than a perfect document”, I might notice that my co-author has fallen asleep – in turn saving you from a great deal of pain. Having a peer means the old-fashioned benefits of a newspaper editor, relevance, accuracy and hilarity, are gained. And (not that there are any), but any weaknesses and quirks are identified and ruthlessly squashed.

So this is it, right here – one blog, two writers.

General Ramblings — No Comments
6
Aug 08

Tagging Reflections

The golden ideas

I love ideas that make you think – those classic light bulb moments. Not ideas which slip out the backdoor of your head before you’ve even finished reading. But the the ones that ring a little bell of clarity, that seem so obvious you can’t believe you didn’t say it yourself.

The Internet is a gold mine of these ideas. Information is supposed to be instant, at your fingertips. You don’t need to physically gather a group of like-minded friends together, invest hours in a book or a movie, to feel inspired. But that accessibility is also the problem. Unlike in book publishing and the movie business, the barrier of entry is so minimal, that it’s easy for  people (like me) to put up a post and add to the growing debris mountain. I joined a secret group recently and was so overwhelmed by the amount of activity on the site that I didn’t know where to begin contributing, for fear of repeating thoughts voiced 30 pages (or years) ago.

Continue reading →