Monthly Archive for September, 2005

Web 2.0 mememap overview

After I saw Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 mememap (via readwriteweb.com) and Dion Hinchcliffe’s visualisation of Web 2.0, I realised they didn’t cut it for me. They were somewhat confusing and chaotic. So I decided to make one myself.

So here it is: Peter’s effort for a better Web 2.0 mememap visualisation:

Web 2.0 overview - mememap

Some examples:

  • HousingMaps (mentioned on The Economist) takes the houses on Craigslist (”USER DATA” and “METADATA”), gets the geo-coordinates for each address (”ANNOTATE”) and shows them on Google Maps (”VISUALIZE”)
  • Plazes.com takes your network topology and the address you attach to it ( “METADATA”), geomaps it (”ANNOTATE”), and shows you who’s near to you (”FILTER”). It also show your Plazes on Google Maps (”VISUALIZE”).
  • Matt Biddulph takes a list of people (”USER DATA”), uses the Yahoo Search API to find their page in Wikipedia (”ANNOTATE” with other “USER DATA” thanks to the Yahoo! “AGGREGATE” engine) and then looks for links to the other people in the list (”METADATA”). He then uses this information to create a map with arrows between the names (”VISUALIZE”). I particularly like this one, very inventive!
  • Pixagogo Maps takes your images (”USER DATA”), allows you to add tags/labels to them (”METADATA”), and again maps them on to Google Maps (”VISUALIZE”)
  • extispicious takes your del.icio.us tags (”METADATA”) or Yahoo pictures (”USER DATA” but also “AGGREGATED”) and draws a tag cloud (”VISUALIZE”)
  • Writely offers editing of user documents (”USER DATA”) with a WYSIWYG Ajax editor (”RICH UI”) and allows for tagging (”METADATA”). This is not really a “remix” kind of service, but it qualifies for Web 2.0 nevertheless.

The image falls under my Creative Commons blog license, i.e. you can use it in any way you want, except for commercial stuff, and you have to mention your source (this page).

All input is welcome, since this is only the first version (let’s call it v0.1).

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WizaRSS: a wizard player based on RSS


I had an idea recently that I probably won’t be able to work out, so I’m just gonna throw it here and see if anyone feels like putting the nuts and bolts together.

It’s about step-by-step wizards (i.e. the “Next-Next-Finish” idea). Please follow my thought process:
(a) I’ve made a pretty popular wizard for podcasting with Blogger and Smartcast one year ago; (b) I also have been following Jon Udell’s efforts with screencasting (and also more on mastuvu.typepad.com) and (c) I recently have made a project based on photofeeds.
Well now, eventhough I am wary of seeing everything as a nail just because I have the RSS hammer, I think there is a nice synergy possible.

Imagine a generic wizard visualizer. It takes as input an RSS feed and considers each of the RSS items to be a step in the wizard process. It then shows each step in a userfriendly way: either as a kind of slideshow, with “next” and “previous” button, or as a timeline, with zoom-in on a specific step if you click on it, or … All AJAX, CSS and multimedia wizardry is possible. That is purely a presentation-layer issue. Once the wizard content is made, the rest is make-up.

Some examples/remarks:

  • think of a photofeed” wizard: an image is shown for each step, with some HTML text underneath.You could zoom in on the picture. I have made a demo of such a feed on wizarss.blogspot.com and a stub of what such a generic wizard visualizer could look like: WizaRSS stub.
  • think of a “podcast” wizard: for each step, there is an audio clip of 10-60 seconds explaining in simple terms what should be done (with a small Flash MP3 player in the page).
  • think of a “screencast” wizard: for each step the screencast is shown to make things more tangible.
  • another type of visualizer could convert the RSS to a SMIL or ASX multimedia playlist.
  • a good wizard player would have templates, or customizable CSS stylesheets
  • anyone could make a nice wizard with Blogger (and Feedburner SmartCast). Like: recipees, how-to-repair-your-bicycle, bonsai-101, …
  • since RSS is reverse chronological, the last step is listed as most recent, so as the first item in the feed

All feedback is welcome!

Update: Pascal already has a WizaRSS Powerpoint-like S5 presentation player!

PS: I create a new blog on Blogger, and within 15 minutes I have a comment spammer. Some morons scraping the “Recently Updated” on the Blogger homepage?

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RSS is a hammer


We’re all excited by the promises of Web 2.0, we’re all awaiting the next really neat remix application/service of data, meta-data, analysis and presentation. But let’s not fall for the “I have a hammer, so all problems look like a nail” trap. According to me, Dave Winer goes one step to far when he says:

(on Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Meme map)
Web 2.0 is really simple, it’s RSS 2.0.
on scripting.com

Similarly, in a comment on the excellent “The Web 2.0 is here” article, Scott Johnson writes:

Ajax is where it’s at. Ajax is the driving force behing 2.0.
(on web2.wsj2.com)

It’s not because you have particularly strong feelings about one building block of the Web 2.0 temple that you can simplify the whole thing. RSS is important. Ajax is important. And so are REST/XMLRPC/SOAP, KML, social software, folksonomies, contextual advertising, “Long tail” logic, Creative Commons, … It’s the sum of all these forces that hint at a future “Web 2.0″ that’s bigger and brighter.

In the mean time, since I don’t think Tim O’Reilly’s chart is very clear, and even Dion Hinchcliffe’s effort is not 100% clear, I’m working on a visualisation of Web 2.0 on my own.

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Blogging, it’s all about conversations

Les Blogs 2.0

And talking about blogging is something I will do a lot in the near future:

Anyone has an interesting conference in Rome or Madrid coming up? We’re running out of Indian summer here.

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Google’s 7th birthday

In September 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California. The door came with a remote control, as it was attached to the garage of a friend who sublet space to the new corporation’s staff of three. The office offered several big advantages, including a washer and dryer and a hot tub.
Google Milestones

The baseline of the company might be “don’t be evil“, but it actually should be something like “dare to dream”. What Larry Page and Sergey Brin have done a number of times already, is realize the improbable and seemingly insane in a market, redefine the standards of how things should be done, and kill off most of the competitors in one go.

A very happy birthday to Google, and I hope they stay around a whole while longer so they can shake up the establishment.

Google & music? Google & movies? Google & hardware? Google & office software? Google & payment? …

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Brussels Bloggers Meeting on Oct 7


(NL versie hieronder - version FR ci-dessous)

After the Geek Dinner (Jan 2005) and Blog Dinner (Jun 2005) in Ghent - organised by Smetty - it is now time for the Brussels connection.

I am organizing together with Bart VH the very first
Brussels Bloggers Dinner.

All you bloggers, vloggers, photo- and groupbloggers and other podcasters are kindly invited to mingle with your peers at the splendid International Press Center aka Résidence Palace. This meeting is rather casual and informal (no smoking required) and open for all Belgian-based bloggers (NL/FR/EN). It will feature some light and short presentations (topics still to be chosen - propose your own on the site!) and an equally easy-to-digest pasta meal (10 euro for pasta + water ad lib and a coffee). For those who work late or have other dinner appointments, you are still welcome to drop by around 22h and see what you’ve missed.

Subscription is required so we can plan the catering: you can add your name to the ‘WillAttend’ wiki page.

Be there or B²!

Peter

— NL (in ‘t kort)
Op vrijdag 7 oktober is de eerste Brussels Bloggers Dinner in de Résidence Palace, Wetstraat - Brussel. Een informele eet- en drinkgelegenheid waar u andere bloggers kan ontmoeten, een gezicht op de URL plakken en kletsen over van alles en nog wat. Alle details over de maaltijd (spaghetti), de locatie (gezet in 1923), de korte presentaties en inschrijvingsprocedure vindt u op de site.

— FR (en bref)
Le vendredi 7 octobre on organise le premier Brussels Bloggers Dinner au résidence Palace, Rue de la Loi à Bruxelles. Une occasion unique pour rencontrer des autes bloggeurs, pour coller un visage sur des liens et pour pappotter sur pleins de choses. Tous les details sur le repas (spaghetti), l’endroit (construit en 1923), les presentations courtes et la procédure d’inscription se trouvent sur le site!

De Standaard: down by popular demand

De Standaard is one of the better (Flemish) newspapers in Belgium, and the pioneer of building an excellent web site around a “traditional” medium (even making money from it). That is why it is so surprising that after all these years, they still haven’t figured out how to handle traffic peaks. Nor how to customize web server error messages.

They must have posted something really interesting again this morning (”Nieuw theoretisch rijexamen verrast“? “Belgen bouwen in China“? I can see these thanks to krantenkoppen.be) because their site is unavailable:

“The request cannot be processed at this time. The amount of traffic exceeds the Web site’s configured capacity.”

Three remarks on that:

  • “the Web site’s configured capacity”? Either add more servers (’scale out’) or make sure your server can handle more traffic (’scale up’). What kind of lousy error message is that?
  • Did you read this part on the 500.13 error page: “Open IIS Help, (…), and search for topics titled Monitoring and Tuning Web Application Performance, Performance Monitoring and Scalability Tools, and About Custom Error Messages.” Yes, I know it’s embarrassing but do read that part on customising IIS error messages. Create a custom page for all 500 errors that is worthy of a high-profile professional web site.
  • The site of a newspaper is rather static. Let’s say there is a new element on the homepage every 15 min at maximum, and most ‘item’ pages never change once they are created (apart from ads and promotions in the sidebar). This is content ideally suited for caching with a reverse proxy. Even if your server can’t handle 10.000 visitors per minute, a battery of ‘dumb’ caches before your servers can do that easily. If you have no idea what I am talking about, call me.

The Standaard Blog on the other hand is hosted on Typepad, and they sure use caches (look for “X-Cache = HIT/MISS from www.sixapart.com“).

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Blog search engine frenzy


Exciting times in blog search country:

Question: can someone make a meta-blog-search-service (like an on-line Copernic for blogs) that :

  • searches all “who-links-to-me” blog search engines
  • filters out the doubles
  • creates a weighted combined ranking (a referer featured on 5 search engines ranks higher than a site only listed once)
  • can use a date parameter (”only show posts younger than 1 month”)
  • gives us some sexy graphics like Blogpulse does
  • offers its results via RSS
  • has a viral component, like e.g. a counter I can display on my blog - something like Feedburner’s Awareness API (which always makes me think of Jean-Claude Vandamme’s legendary “AWARE” theory)

Anyone aware of a service like this? Please leave a comment!