echovar - Latest Comments in General

Re: echovar » Blog Archive

Michael_Markman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:54:39 -0000

Oi. Philosophy. I don't know from philosophy, but I'm impressed by people who do.

Kleenex, I think I get.

Thanks, Cliff, for continuing my education.

Re: echovar » Blog Archive

cgerrish — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:34:05 -0000

Michael, the references reference botany, but primarily come from philosophy. In particular, Deleuze's idea of the rhizome as expressed in "A Thousand Plateaus."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Plateaus

And extended to understanding the Network by many others:

http://rhizomatic.net/

It's a contemporary metaphor for discussing the idea of the One and the Many.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GLOSSARY/ONEMANY.HTM

Twitter's growth has depended on its openness to multiple end point clients via API. Twitter is a real-time medium, past was merely prelude. Openness at the level of XMPP feeds would lead to explosive growth and opportunity. Here's where the failure of nerve and imagination comes in. Retreating to the economics of scarcity stunts the growth of the root system, and allows breathing room for the other weeds in the garden (friendfeed and identi.ca).

Re: echovar » Blog Archive

Michael_Markman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:07:56 -0000

Oi, botany references. I dunno from plants. But I'm impressed by people who do.

Re: Microsoft and Google: Wielding Hard and Soft Power

cgerrish — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:15:28 -0000

Thanks for the comment Marc. I've been working my way through your OpenMesh posts. There's some provocative thinking there.

I think your intuition that personal computing will move from the desktop pc to the game console, and into the living room, for a majority of people is on track.

But user interface is going to be key. The iPhone didn't create a new feature/function set -- they just created a usable interface metaphor. That's the real battle of the living room.

Re: Microsoft and Google: Wielding Hard and Soft Power

marccanter — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:39:44 -0000

The very notion of an open Microsoft si truly frightening. Combining the living room, game console, set top box, PC and auto is the future and there's only one company that can do that.

They just have to leave a few crumbs on the table - for the rest of us.

Re: Why Marketing is Broken

Hypotheek voor Duitsland — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:47:37 -0000

again

Re: Why Marketing is Broken

hypotheekvoorduitsland — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:45:24 -0000

Although it doesn’t tell me when they’ve lost interest, or if they intended to unsubscribe, but were too lazy to do so.

I totally agree with this one,

We have many subscribers to our website, but when they will buy our service somewhere else we will never know it. And many times they forget to sign out.

Re: Simulating VRM at the beginning of the Searlsian Decade

cgerrish — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:47:35 -0000

My understanding of the ongoing development of identity models through the IIW process is that 'anonymity' may either be a default state, or a managed persona within an identity management system.

The key is to enable a two-way market and conversation. One might ask the question: who would perceive VRM as a threat?

Re: Simulating VRM at the beginning of the Searlsian Decade

cgerrish — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:40:18 -0000

Thanks for the comment Doc. The 'ocean boiling' metaphor is really a question of approach, as you note. But it does give a sense of the size of the task at hand.

The live real-time aspect of this is very interesting. While XML-HTTP-Request has created a back door into a more interactive web page, it seems clear that an XMPP infrastructure will need to be deployed along side the established HTTP servers to provide that capability.

If we assume success, the scale and bursty-ness of traffic will be tough to engineer for. Witness the difficulties of Twitter. I'm starting to explore the idea that a primary market will be required for VRM gestures. It'll be too difficult for Vendors to scan all possible nodes looking for possible connections. This is where the utility of Twitter and Track could be a piece of the puzzle.

Regarding the mobility issue. The un-networked desktop computer is dead, long live the teleputer.

As far as my use of the "Searlsian" adjective, ultimately it's not for you or me to say. If VRM and IIW have achieved their goals in ten years, I'd like to make sure that it's remembered that a person had this vision and worked with others to make it happen. The technical achievement will be substantial, but the human achievement will be world changing.

Re: Simulating VRM at the beginning of the Searlsian Decade

cgerrish — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:23:32 -0000

Interesting approach, I tried to express something similar with my posts "Who owns the pen with which you write?" and some discussions about Data Liquidity.

Lately I've been thinking that the foundation for this approach already exists in Dave Winer's OPML Editor. Because Dave fundamentally believes that you should have a local copy of everything you write or create, you keep your data at the point of origin. Then there's a simple upstreaming process that could be pointed to various clouds, or the blogging API. A comment API would be a welcome addition.

There's a question about how new infrastructure and standards propagate -- it requires a tremendous use of force to implement change systematically. Spreading virally node by node seems to be the more effective model.

Re: Simulating VRM at the beginning of the Searlsian Decade

Graham Sadd — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:53:17 -0000

A key point about VRM is to have the ability to post 'invitations' to pull relevant information whilst retaining your anonymity.
You may be interested to read the article 'VRM - Threat or opportunity?' on my blog or at
http://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1...

Re: Simulating VRM at the beginning of the Searlsian Decade

Doc Searls — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:02:56 -0000

Cliff,

Thanks for understanding VRM so well — and for adding to that understanding.

A couple thoughts.

First, you are right that VRM is an Archimedean challenge. I prefer that metaphor to ocean-boiling. If we borrow the ocean metaphor, it's to look at the sea (half million and counting) of open source code bases out there for the right combination of small wheels we don't need to re-invent. I believe this is exactly what Adriana, Alec and friends are doing with the work she points to in her comments. It's also what we're doing with the relbutton. The nice thing there is that we have a handy symbol behind which all kinds of code can be placed.

Second, the "Searlsian" adjective makes me cringe. I'd prefer something descriptive. "The relationship decade" or "The live Web decade" perhaps? I like 'live" because I think the most important and meaningful interactions will happen in close to real time. Too much of demand works that way already in any case, and the site-based static web can't cut it. Not alone, anyway.

I also think it needs to be mobile. A whole 'nuther topic I don't have time to go into, but let's stick a reminder there.

And thanks again.

Re: Simulating VRM at the beginning of the Searlsian Decade

Adriana — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:33:08 -0000

"What I’d like to do is construct an RSS feed of the kind of things I’m interested in for my kitchen remodel. Vendors could read that feed and respond with feeds of their own that I could wrap into a consolidated feed where I could rank, tag, filter, sort, and search the RSS items. The user contract with the vendor is: don’t offer me feeds that aren’t relevant to my interest/gesture feed or you will be labeled a spammer."

That's exactly what I concluded some time ago and what I want for myself. Given that there isn't much out there (checked evernote and live mash and they don't really cut it), I decided to try to design such a tool myself. here is more, if interested. http://www.mediainfluencer.net/2008/05/i-haz-a-...

Re: @SteveGillmor : Plan B, and Playing ‘Dealer’ in Real Time

John C — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:22:09 -0000

Plan B or not Plan B - That is the question!

Re: @SteveGillmor : Plan B, and Playing ‘Dealer’ in Real Time

beng — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:29:08 -0000

Excellent post. You should become an official Gillmor translator.

Re: Imagine a Real-Time Information Distribution Business Model

sssrinivasan — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:28:28 -0000

Timeliness is probably a more intelligent metric than real-time. it requires knowledge of the subscriber's context and ability of publisher to deliver just-in-time.

Re: Imagine a Real-Time Information Distribution Business Model

Adrian — Thu, 29 May 2008 07:16:12 -0000

The thing is that the time embargo needs to be based on some genuine scarcity, or at least control over, the information, which the exchanges do still exert. I'm not sure that there is much value in the real-time *delivery* itself; in the long run, it will be almost as cheap to distribute the information real-time as delayed, and the information providers will move to a better system.

Re: Human-Computer Interface: The Simplicity of Asking and Telling

Brij — Thu, 15 May 2008 06:41:56 -0000

Brilliant observation.

Last year I blogged about strong intentional relationship between Google and Twitter character constraints.

http://www.onemoreidea.org/why-twitter-matters/

Enjoying your blog and tweets.

Re: A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter

cgerrish — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:13:23 -0000

Try "Track" using Twitter with an XMPP client. If you have a Gmail acct use Gtalk. iChat also works on the Mac. The client needs to speak Jabber. There are a growing number of people who use track to create an optimal flow of information.

Regarding ink and paper vs. words and ideas -- I suggest looking at Derrida's "Writing and Difference" or "Speech and Phenomena." Writing and thinking are very closely linked.

Re: A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter

Hamish MacEwan — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:46:56 -0000

Hi Cliff,

While the graph of tweets (where followers can be followed) is not arborescent, the fundamental structure of twitter is star, with them at the centre and us at the edge.

When decentralising Twitter is discussed, I think IRC. In fact Twitter is a meagre echo of IRC, with a lot of additional limitations but the big plus, for some, of mass mobility thanks to SMS.

Yes its simplicity is its strength, allowing a lot of building on.

Back to IRC, a distributed mesh of servers.

Your call to "Think of a 140 character Tweet as a series of space separated tags to which you can subscribe." is fanciful at best. No-one subscribes to a tweet, but to an end-point, the IP address of Twitter's name space, e.g. cgerrish.

Sure, twitter search (over what subset of tweets) might allow you to subscribe to a "tag" in a tweet, fine, but it hardly defines the fundamental service.

Keep in mind neither the ink nor the paper are the words or ideas. You can't attribute every outcome to its components.

Re: A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter

cgerrish — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:45:58 -0000

This is a similar problem to that of real time quotes and the creation of ticker plants to provide "real-time" transaction data to equity traders. There are many vendors in the real-time quote space, but there's only one consolidated tape of transaction data.

Twitter is the consolidated tape. GTalk, or Twhirl when it implements XMPP, will be able to provide track -- as long as Twitter provides follows and track keywords per identity.

This is where there may be a significant difference in the clients -- Twhirl, as a desktop app, may have a problem filtering the full stream. It could certainly filter the follows. Google, and GTalk, would have a better chance of filtering the full tick-by-tick stream on the server side and passing that through to a web-based (or Google Gears) app.

Re: A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter

Blaine Cook — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:45:00 -0000

Oh, absolutely; I anxiously await the day that we can apply "track" across, well, the internet. Right now google and technorati et al have no hope to build something like Twitter & track. I hope that federation will open up the web to enabling rich conversations around all sorts of media.

Re: A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter

Mike — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:40:54 -0000

If I fire up a Limewire client I can see this stream of search queries from other people on the P2P network. Couldn't decentralized Twitter servers be using something like that to exchange keywords and implement tracking?

Re: A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter

bobwyman — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:36:24 -0000

Blaine Cook wrote: "NNTP is a good conceptual representation, except that it's topic-based, rather than user-based."

If you just consider each user to be a "topic" then NNTP matches very well. "Following" in Twitter is just topic-based publish/subscribe. Tracking, which is content-based publish/subscribe is the harder challenge -- not implemented commonly by NNTP systems. Based on experience, I can assure you that reasonable systems (i.e. small number of machines) could provide full content-based tracking for tweets at rates of thousands of tweets per second...

Re: A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter

MyMesh.com — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:44:42 -0000

Twitter's always-down problem was quite obviously system administration problem, you just need to read (the attitude of) their ISP migration announcements to tell. It was kinda of like, love-me-love-my-dog mentality. Whoever heading that team should be immediately fired, that's all.