42 Quirks

I have written a couple of posts about Web 2.0, early on in my blog.

I’ve had various conversations revolving around this concept across the years. A comment I wrote on the 9rules community was the best explanation I could generate for such an abstract concept.

To many people out there, Web 2.0 is just a buzz-word. For quite a few, it is about AJAX and flashy effects on website. And very few really understand what it means.

The other day, one of my friends directed me to a YouTube video titled “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us.” And suddenly, a few more pieces of the jigsaw fell into place.

The title was intriguing enough. Go watch it yourself…

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us.

I will not embed the video here, because I have already had spats with my hosting providers for ’streaming’ content from my site. But I do urge you people to check out the video. It is one of the simplest, best and most explanatory videos I have ever seen.

And what’s more, it’s Web 2.0!

Strange, isn’t it?

All of us hailed the coming of a shareable, collaborative web and ‘lovingly’ named it Web 2.0. But along with it came announcements and offerings, options and varieties; faster than anything else. So much, that the low murmur of the internet rose to a harsh, loud, incoherent noise. So much, that we are beginning to denounce it like no other.

Hypocrisy? Nope, I think “Familiarity breeds Contempt” is more like it…

Web 2.0 was a concept. Each one of us interpreted the concept and put forth ideas of their own. As a result, there was a rush of ideas and hence a flood of communication. People started ’socializing’ on the web. Social networks boomed and people came ‘closer’.

IMHO, it all started with the advent of broadband connectivity. Being ‘always-on’ had a direct implication, that of being connected with all your near and dear ones. Web 2.0 looked upon the internet as one huge community, with local groups of people inhabiting it. This concept was publicized and then, taken too literally. Thus, were born the social networks of today.

The community is a market and markets have alternatives. Working on the same lines, social networks began to sprout, each claiming to offer something different from the other. But, the basic objective of these networks was the same - connecting people and conducting conversations across the globe.

The market analogy gives us yet another insight. Every product has competition. And every competitive product has a seller who is willing to canvass for it. The greater the competition, the larger the canvassing and the noisier the market. In the end the market become a large noisy mass of voices and nothing audible or coherent.

Get the drift?

The web as a marketplace has been inundated with offerings. The noise in the marketplace will remain until the day the sellers give up or the stocks dry up. Since, there is little chance of the latter happening, we will have to wait for the former to happen and pray that it happens sooner, rather than later.

The noise of the eMails and IMs that have been flying back and forth has overwhelmed us to the extent that we now want out. But without them, how would we communicate, let alone converse?

Or, are we wrong in assuming that eMails & IMs are the only methods of communication? What if there IS an alternative?

Will things be different?

Technorati Tags: web2.0, conversation, market, cluetrain

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My last post on WebOSes and the corresponding comments on ZDNet and Performancing resulted in interesting conversations.

Performancing users and authors had very interesting opinions. Dave, for instance, said:

…they could bring down the price of computing massively. All you would need on a desktop is effectively a thin client that handles inputs and outputs, and
connects to the internet.

… while georgemanty was worried about security:

Do I really want a third party to have access to everything on my computer’s hard drive???

searchengineblog put it really well with:

The problem is that there is no problem to be solved. In 2006, fat clients (read: PCs) aren’t expensive - bandwidth is.

The security concerns do make a valid point. But I guess, with the way things are moving, third-party storage (read: online storage with desktop synchro) is the thing to watch out for in the near future.

Technology has not only enabled cheaper and communication, but it has also been revamping the field of transportation. As travel becomes cheap, we will find ourselves at different places at different times. And then we will need one central location to store our data. Which is where third-party storage comes in.

One option would be a personal FTP server. Like your hard-disk away from your PC. Again, the only hindrance I see currently is the band-width (in terms of access). Thus it boils down, essentially, to two things:

1. A radically new, faster method of accessing the internet.Condition: It must support huge amounts of bandwidth so as to enable each one of the 6 billion people whoo will soon be online in the near future.
2. A safe and secure online storage system.Condition: The privacy concerns of the users must be put to rest. Each such third-party supplier must be liable for any leakage of information (intentional, or otherwise) occurring from their servers.

On ZDNet, 3D0G said:

There are still far to many people out there using computers who have no
clue how computers work and don’t want to know. They just want to browse the web and read email. There are also many people who know they know nothing about computers and so don’t buy one. Something like this would at least open the internet and email up to them

This would be like saying, we need hand-cranked cars because some old-timers cannot adopt to automatic transmission. Not a very good analogy, I agree, but just because people don’t know how to use the net does not mean we step back to thin-clients.

A similar attempt was made (if my memory serves me correctly) with public Internet Access kiosks (at least in India) But it was a huge failure, simply because:

1. People did not want to make their ignorance of the Internet public.
2. The kiosks were not supported by adequate bandwidth. They were too slow.
3. The thin clients were actually confusing and they allowed only one browser window - no tabs back then.
4. Around 25% of the screen space was consumed by ads that were run to support the costs of running these kiosks.

I have realized that, the more you attempt to make technology easier for people, the lazier they become. “Give a man fish to eat, he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will never go hungry for the rest of his life.”

If there are any such laymen, we need to teach them how to surf the waves and not try and make things easier for them. Simplicity does not always mean simplifying the product. It could also mean simplifying the process.

Let’s face it, the internet is a skill and not a toy. You have to learn it and the more inquisitive can even attempt to master it. Any attempt to simplify things further will only allow the lazy to become lazier. Do we really need WebOSes? The argument of thin-clients and simplification of things seems pretty thin to me…

I mean, is it really that difficult?

(It’s a pity that I have to summarize my Blogosphere Conversations here.)

Information Week reports:

A patent has been granted to a relatively unknown California Web-design firm for an invention its creator says covers the design and creation of most rich-media applications used over the Internet. The patent holder, Balthaser Online Inc., says it could license nearly any rich-media Internet application across a broad range of devices and networks.

In simple words, this page, and this page and this one and this one and this one - you get the drift - are in violation of the United States Patent Law (direct link to PDF).

Oh and by the way, no use yelling now. The patent’s already been issued - on Valentine’s day. Lovely, eh?

The Patent applicant (now owner) claims everything from creating users for media-rich applications to maintaining them on hosting services. Which essentially means that if you are using Flash, Flex, Java, AJAX and XAML on your site, you gotta pay these guys.

And they don’t even have their names on the first page of Google Search results, sheesh!!

If you are wondering why nobody ever knew about this coup d’état, I recommend you run a quick eye through the Patent. The references are so subtle it would take a keen-eye to spot them. But, the references are there. All references to rich media and the explanations thereof, point clearly to the various rich-media enablers described early on in this post.

The A-list bloggers might recall the name of Neil Balthaser. He was declared a DEMOgod in the 2001 DEMO conference for the Flash-based website builder Pro:Fx.

Flash-based? Erm, back in my days, this was called hypocrisy. But then, the world has changed now, After all this is the Web 2.0, right?

I, for one, am looking forward to this conversation in particular…

With my ear-drums well-protected, of course.

Mike Arrington over at TechCrunch reports that the Big G has released the next version of its Desktop Search utility: Google Desktop Search 3. And he’s being very cautious about it..

I am not happy.

Mike’s stand on this?

This is of course a touchy privacy subject, but the ability to search from a remote computer will be very welcome by some users.

The point of contention is the new “Search Across Computers” feature which horrifed me. Until now, the Desktop Search explicitly declared that all your results would be stored locally, and locally only.

I haven’t been much of a fan of the Desktop Search anyway, but this release is just too mind-whacking not to report about. Compare this, the older versions of the Google Desktop Search (Link probably expires soon) :

These combined results can be seen only from your own computer; your computer’s content is never sent to Google (or anyone else).

with this, the new answers by Google:

Search Across Computers enables you to search your documents and viewed web pages across all your computers. For example, you could find files you edited on your desktop from your laptop. To activate this feature, you will need a Google Account (the same login you use for Gmail, Orkut, or other Google services). Remember, to search your other computers you must also install Google Desktop on them as well as enable the Search Across Computers preference using the same Google Account on each one.

My “other” computers? Heck, If I had two computers in different places I would be using some CMS or a Collaboration tool or some other Sync software. Why should I Search Across Computers?

A touchy privacy subject, eh? Well Mike, you are damned right on that one!

Oh but wait, I had given up my privacy the day I accepted the Gmail, Orkut, etc. and all those ever-forever-’beta’s… Have you read their privacy policies? Actually, all of the Google ‘Programs’ have only one standard privacy policy.

So, I shouldn’t be complaining at all…

Moreover, ain’t I forgetting something??

“We’re not Evil!!”

Oh yeah! Right!! Hmm… Let’s see:

Here is a short version of the Google ‘We’re-not-evil’ Policy over the years:
(with subsequent ramifications-due-to-ambitions)

1. We’re not evil.
2. We’re not evil, we just want to access all the data in the world so that we can give you better results.
3. We’re not evil. After all, we’re offering you 2000MB to store your mails. But you’ll have to let us read them? Why? Ads, of course!! Somebody’s gotta pay for that right??
4. We’re not evil, we just want to access your data so that we can give you better searches on your desktop.
5. We are not evil. We are just keeping an eye on you if you are doing anything illegal so that we can sell it to the world and thus, earn our ‘pious’ money .
6. We’re not evil, but we don’t want to show you the truth. So what if the world calls them slants? WE slant towards ‘other’ things - World Domination, for example…
7. We’re not evil, but we will refuse you entry into our living room if you do evil things. Yes, Optimising your site for our Search Algorithm is an evil thing. Why? Because only we are allowed to do that!!!

Excuse me, I have to go throw up.