A personal manifesto for a User-Centric web

A pretty walled garden

There are walls all around us. We live our lives realizing that we have to live with rules and limitations. We have laws to obey,  values to live by, families we are part off, countries we live in, services we make use of, gravity that pulls us down, freedom of speech, natural resources, food, water, money. Everything we do in life comes with a set of rules.

The existence of some of these boundaries is something we tend to ignore. We are taught to aim for the highest, get the best out of our own potential, be a winner. There are no problems, only challenges. Can you see an athletic coach explaining to the world fastest sprinter that it is impossible to sprint 100m in 4.5 seconds? No way. You need to train harder, overcome your fears and doubts. You can accomplish anything if  you really want to. Work hard until you reach your goals. Just do it!

We don’t like it to be captured. If we bump into a boundary we will try to get around it. If it is a problem, we will try to resolve it. If the wall is bigger then ourselves we will try to mobilize others to help us.If we don’t deal with a wall that stands in the way then at least we will complain often about it (dissatisfied customers that can’t leave a service).

It seems to me that we sometimes act very differently online. Sure, if there is something to complain about we harness the power of all the publishing tools and cry outrage. But when it comes to the core of our online presence, our personal identity we willingly accept the boundaries that the big web companies have set for us.

There is a war out there, a battle to own your online identity. Driven by network value based business models service providers aim at unlimited growth. We get sucked into the best web 20 services. It’s free and it’s cool. Big service providers fights to get you in and then never let you out. It’s like a black hole. You, your personal data, your interactions and friends.

We seem to accept this a a fait accompli. That is the way the web works. Nothing we can do about it. We give away our online identity for free and in return accept the boundaries and limitations the service providers give us. Google shows you their web, which is different from Yahoo’s web, or Facebook’s web for that matter. We let Social Networks own and exploit our personal data, our interactions, our family and our friends. We create the value of those networks ourselves yet accept that these networks impose (sometimes ridiculous) boundaries on us.

All effort goes into enlarging the network, the data, and few big service providers put as much effort in setting you and your data free again from that very service. Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t all bad, or even intentional. And the value we get in return can be very high! I’m a happy user of many web 2.0 services and I am amazed at what technology can do for us. There are many services, organizations and individuals out there that have a user value focus.

However we are often blinded by the coolness factor, the joy, the zero cost participation, hype created by the media, following the crowd, getting sucked in by friends (that’s called viral growth, which in itself doesn’t have a very healthy sound) we join everything and accept that our online identity isn’t ours. But at what cost?

The biggest threat in my opinion is that in this process we let a few very big service provider decide for us where the walls are build. What boundaries and rules we need to live by. We are giving away our online identity for free in order to be able to participate.

Tim O’Reilly nailed the web 2.0 definition when he said:

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.

It has become part of our history books now. The network effect Tim mentions has lead to an undesirable side effect. Driven by network value business models some service providers are not just viewing the Internet as a platform. Instead they are aiming to ensure that their own platform becomes the Internet!

That is a boundary I’m personally not willing to accept. Why should I be confined to one network, or accept that my online identity is not only scattered but not even my own? In a true service provider model, the user is in control of his identity, his data and his interactions. The user needs to be able to define his own ‘Terms of Service’, which are to be respected by the service provider. It’s web 2.0, inside out.

It is something I am passionate about. It’s why I write about it often. But that isn’t enough. I can’t complain about it if I am not really contributing to changing this. I feel I should take my own responsibility and join those that are already working on it, no matter how small or insignificant my contribution is.

It means professionally that I’ll be spending as much time and effort on letting users control their own identity, data and interactions, as I spend time on getting these users in the first place. It means changing the ‘terms of service’ from protecting a business (model) to serving the user. It means embracing standards like OpenId to let people decide where they create their online identity. It means supporting efforts to define solutions that will put the user in control of his online identity.

Joining discussions already taking place. Helping the big service providers change their strategy. Making sure that the Internet isn’t confined to a single platform. Choosing business  models that leverage user value instead of network value. And perhaps most important of all, educating those unaware of the importance of their online identity. It’s an effort for the long run. I don’t expect fast changes or revolutions over night. But any journey start simply by taking the first step, and by writing this down.

I’m taking my first and I’m joining those that have already gone down this path.

Our need for real-time information consumption is pointless

What if we have instant access to all the data in the world? I’m flying about 38.000 feet above ground and I’m thinking about this question. It’s part of the mission of Google, everyone should have access to all information. It’s also fashionable in Silicon Valley. It seems there are a gazillion startups that aggregate data for us. We seem to have a never ending hunger for data and information. Where we once depended on storytellers, bards, poets, painters, writers, journalists, we now want to know everything written by anyone. Official information providers long thought they could keep a monopoly on ‘quality’ information, but it is now obvious that they have lost that battle. The consumer isn’t interested in “quality”. He wants to know it all.

We write blogs, create news, produce content, act as journalists, and there are plenty of platforms that allow us to spread our message. It doesn’t stop at news. We are eager to share personal information, wishes, needs, thoughts, ideas, emotions, friends, locations. To find information we use Google, news sites, rss feeds, aggregators, aggregators that aggregate aggregators, news feeds, tweets, social networks. Where news could take years to surface a few hundred years ago we now have almost instant and real-time access to information. Almost. The next evolution can be predicted, we will see the rise of real-time information systems.

If anyone can have access to any information at any time, what is then the value of that information? As transaction costs to produce, distribute and consume information drop to zero the question arises if the information value itself drops to zero too? My guess is that in many cases the data itself will have less value. That same data all platforms are now fighting a war over, the data that makes web 2.0 more important than the destinations of web 1.0.

Ironically there are at least two types of “data” thinkable that can never fit this real-time model and at the same time have tremendously more value than data that does fit that equation. Googling Stephen Hawkins may tell you everything there is to know about black holes, but it doesn’t give you any knowledge about them. Knowledge Stephen Hawkings clearly has. A deep understanding and experience that makes knowledge truly valuable. And all the processing power, disk drives and search engines of Google and the rest of the world can’t capture that. There are no short cuts to knowledge, no matter how much processing power and storage capacity we throw at it.

The other type is the storytelling that has been part of human culture as long as we have existed. And I am not just referring to the storytelling that allowed us for centuries to pass information on to new generations. I’m talking about our daily interactions. If I ask you to remember the last conversation you had that made you laugh or cry, chances are pretty high that this conversation was a real-life one, not an online one. It could be a conversation with a loved one, a family member, a good friend, even a colleague. When we interact with each other, we create. We tell each other stories, we share experiences, we define history together. It could be the most difficult conversation you have ever had, but it can just as well be as simple as having a good laugh with a friend, or watching a sunset together. The information that we exchange is meaningless. Unless you were there, because then the information is priceless.

It is for that reason I tend to be rather skeptical of our current online efforts to get information to us via search, sites, aggregators, rss, social networks, soon all in in real-time. Sure it has value, but that value diminishes quickly when the transaction costs drop to zero. These developments are technological in nature. We solve this problem because we can. And when we have solved it, we will find that all the information in the world doesn’t give us a lot of real value. It just gives us convenience.

The question is more important than the answer

Yesterday I wrote about the trend that every bit of content that is produced on the Internet seems to get aggregated, producing yet another view of what is already out there. Instead of delivering us inspiration, aggregation brings us more of the same. Aggregation doesn’t inspire us to think, it lets us sit back and consume. I said:

And when people get lost, they will simply return to their human nature. They will look out for the oldest, wisest, or craziest people out there. I don’t think the world needs more information. We don’t need any more or better content aggregation, search algorithms or noise filters. We need more inspiration. We need storytellers (and that will be the topic of another post).

I figured it would be good to spent another post on this topic and introduce you to a few storytellers I deeply admire. These are people that aren’t looking at their rating on any blogging leaderboard. They don’t publish for the sake of it. They don’t bring you the breaking news everyone else already does. They are, in my opinion, people that like to take the time to tell us a story. Something that is nearly always fascinating to read, and often leaves the reader with more questions than answers. They make you think, and that is the sole purpose of their act.

Jonathan Harris

If you are a regular reader of this weblog, then you already know that I am a big fan of Jonathan Harris. He is one of the best storytellers I know. You can find most of his work right here. One of the projects he did that really amazed me is called Universe.

Jonathan writes:

Each night, the great stories of ancient Greek mythology are played out in the sky — Perseus rescues Andromeda from the sea monster; Orion faces the roaring bull; Zeus battles Cronos for control of Mount Olympus. Most of us know the sky holds these great myths, immortalized as constellations. Slightly less well known are the newer constellations, largely added in the 18th and 19th centuries. These more modern constellations reflect a different sort of mythology — a commemoration of art and science, expressed through star groups representing technical inventions like the microscope, the triangle, the compass, the level, and the easel.

As humans, we have a long history of projecting our great stories into the night sky. This leads us to wonder: if we were to make new constellations today, what would they be? If we were to paint new pictures in the sky, what would they depict? These questions form the inspiration for Universe, which explores the notions of modern mythology and contemporary constellations.

….

Universe is a system that supports the exploration of personal mythology, allowing each of us to find our own constellations, based on our own interests and curiosities. Everyone’s path through Universe is different, just as everyone’s path through life is different. Using the metaphor of an interactive night sky, Universe presents an immersive environment for navigating the world’s contemporary mythology, as found online in global news and information from Daylife.

Universe is a concept in which Jonathan brings back our fascination of content exploration. In the earliest times humans would look at the sky and explore the universe. With universe he has created a concept and interface that allows us to explore the world once again. Instead of sitting back and getting stuff aggregated to your screen or profile, Universe demands you to explore, to discover, to be fascinated. Each trip is different.

There is a whole lot more to discover on his site. I love his work on human emotions (check out “We feel fine”). I have seen him present his work once and ever since I have been following him. For all you Twitter fans out there. Jonathan inspired a Twitter tool that is way cooler and more fascinating than any of the tools I’m aware of. check out twistori to find out what Twitter users are experiencing right now!

Rolf Skyberg

Anyone that has the audacity to write 477 slide long presentations and can keep the audience fascinated throughout each slide is a great storyteller. I discovered Rolf when he delivered a presentation in the Netherlands entitled “Web 2.0 why we got here and what’s next”. I went back to slideshare and looked at each of his slides. Rolf wasn’t presenting us anything. He was telling us a story. He calls himself a pattern hound, and he has become one of my favorite blog writers. He doesn’t write posts every day, but when he writes something it immediately sets you to think. Just take a look at a few titles of teh posts he has written. Makes you wanna read them right away don’t they?

• the Facebook stalker and other urban myths
• why you’ll pay to network
• 98% or even 100%-open: not enough in social networks
• delivering a useful luxury

Dig into his archives and start following him. There is a lot more to be discovered there

Michael Wesch

Michael is an assistant professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. He and his students have created several video’s that spread out like a firestorm over the Internet. He is a master in storytelling. What can I say, just watch his video’s if you haven’t already.

Conclusion

Storytellers are essential throughout times. Even in this digital age where every bit of information is available in digital form. Where all content is aggregated for you, ready to be consumed. But information isn’t really what inspires us.

It’s a bit like Neo in the Matrix, its the question that drives us, that inspires us. I just showed you three people that inspire me. People that make me think and ask questions. People that don’t necessarily provide us with answers.

There are so many more of them out there. I am really curious to hear who is inspiring you. What are your favorite storytellers? Let me know.

We don’t need more information or aggregation, we need inspiration

Being able to pass relevant information from one person to another has always been part of the evolution of mankind. When there was no technology we used storytelling. People would listen to the oldest, wisest, craziest people in their community to hear about the past or the future. Families used storytelling to teach children their heritage. Slowly drawings were added to this information passing, possibly starting with the earlies cave drawings. Where storytelling was used for 1 to 1 or 1 to a few connections, the ability to draw lead to more persistent information passing. From symbols we went to pictures and written language. Storytelling remained as an important way of sharing information but we added letters and manuscripts to it. Manuscripts were copied by writing them down again. Each manuscript was unique in its own.

With the introduction of printing technology things changed rapidly. Now books could be copied much quicker and at much lower costs. Again, the storytelling remained, but books and newspapers made the information passing process faster and simpler. The technology developments that lead to the telephone lead to the possibility to share information real-time without the need of being at the same location. Much later, the mobile version was created, allowing communication without a fixed position. These different technologies allowed 1 on 1/few/many information passing.

Computer technology gave us the ability to communicate electronically via chat and e-mail. And with the introduction of Internet technology, the possibility to make information accessible to anyone on the net became a reality. The first version of the Internet was a static library of information. Web pages were added and the most important problem to solve was how to find the right information. Information became clustered in web portals, and finding information using search was invented. The cost of information creation/storage dropped to nearly zero and left us with infinite amounts of information, creating the problem of finding the right information.

Web 2.0 provided us technology to tackle this. Partially by clustering people and information into communities. It also gave us user generated content. Instead of companies or professionals, everyone could now create information, video, audio, pictures, and share it with the whole world. the Internet changed from a static library of information into a dynamic world of opportunities. Everyone can now become a storyteller by simply starting a weblog. The subscription to a magazine or newspaper has now been replaced by RSS subscriptions to weblogs. And to structure this world full of dynamic information we need new ways of finding the relevant stuff.

Search engines work to a certain extend but cannot deal with our urge to have instant access to something created right now. the information flow needs to be real-time. The response of web companies is to provide near real-time tools for information flow. With services like Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, we get real-time many to many conversations. And for our convenience of finding the right information we now have content aggregators that find all relevant content for us. Often specialized for a specific content type and using a computer algorithm (e.g. TechMeme provides us with the latest in Tech news using a special algorithm). Facebook providing us near real-time access to what our friends are doing. Or Friendfeed, a content aggregator that lets people do the content aggregation. By subscribing to people we know, find interesting or trust, Friendfeed provides you with the content those people like.

But the problem of finding the right information is of all times. Just look back into history (not just my short, inaccurate, and incomplete summary ) and we can see that finding the right stuff is a problem of all times. We now have nearly unlimited computer power and storage capabilities, but that leads to nearly unlimited (and often unclassified) amounts of information too.

So the question becomes, what is next? I can’t look any better into the future than you can, but I have a tendency to look at the past and try to see if human nature can provide us with clues for the future. I believe that we haven’t seen the end of content aggregation or search engine algorithms yet. Simply because the web business model drives us there.

All that content aggregation really does is reposition, reclassify or reorganize content that is already out there on the web. Whether it is done by a computer algorithm in the case of TechMeme, or done by people, in the case of Friendfeed. But you can easily spot a few problems with aggregation. First of all, if content aggregation tries to be complete, all it does is try an attempt to get all the content out there back into one place. The more content it aggregates the more difficult it becomes to find the interesting stuff from the pile. The signal to noise ratio drops to the level of the entire web. We quickly need search algorithms and noise filters to get to the good stuff.

If content is aggregated using people, then we get a “democratic” version of the web. It filters out the stuff that the community likes best, leaving the more obscure or less liked stuff behind us. But I’m no so sure that the stuff that comes up this way is always the best stuff. If anything, democracy principles to select information, also leads to predictable and similar content. There isn’t room for obscurity or weird stuff. The people that are in such communities will end up selecting only part of what is out there, governed by themselves and the social community they are part of.

Web 2.0 technology and business models are aiming at the masses, large communities with millions of members, enormous content aggregators with uncountable amounts of content. But I believe that a large part of the Internet population will end up getting lost in this new digital universe. It is like the Star Trek computer that Captain Picard can talk to. It has all the information, but what if we simply don’t know the right question to ask?

Content aggregation is the new thing now. But the problem we should be solving isn’t the many to many flow of information. It is the one to a few, or few to a few that needs to be tackled. I doubt I’ll ever need to know about all the content that is out there. It is just a small part of it that I’m interested in. Content aggregation, no matter what form is used only leads to more content leading to noise, filtering and search. Social networks allowing us to connect to the entire world leave us with too many connections and too much information. It leads to more than we can handle. It leads to so much information, tagged and targeted, that the information itself becomes less valuable.

And when people get lost, they will simply return to their human nature. They will look out for the oldest, wisest, or craziest people out there. I don’t think the world needs more information. We don’t need any more or better content aggregation, search algorithms or noise filters. We need more inspiration. We need storytellers (and that will be the topic of another post).

What do you think? Where do you get your inspiration from? Are there any storytellers out there we should know about?

You can’t claim an idea once it’s out there, just set it free

This weekend TechMeme shows that bloggers are pretty anxious about the new service called Shyftr. Shyftr is a new RSS service that allows people to comment on blog posts. The discussion is not taking place at the original blog, instead it is taking place on Shyftr. While some seem to like the service, others talk about theft. Tony Hung feels Shyftr has crossed a line :

However, in my mind, when a service cannot exist *without* republishing others content in its entirety, and directly profits from that republishing without the original consent of the author, there’s something that isn’t right.

Frederic at the Last Podcast takes a different view:

The way I see this is that by publishing my feed, I give you consent to use it in services like RSS readers, aggregators, memetrackers etc. Using the same reasoning we can accuse Gabe Rivera for building a business on top of our writing with Techmeme – it’s profitable and it couldn’t exist without using our feeds. Neither could Google Reader, RSSMeme, FriendFeed, LinkRiver or any other service based on feeds.

These services are explicitly not just simple content scrapers because they a) give me credit for my work (even if that doesn’t need to translate into ‘traffic’ coming to my site) and b) create value around the feeds through allowing commenting, aggregation with other feeds etc.

And Robert Scoble goes one step further and declares that the era of blogger’s control has ended:

Anyway, I am seeing this trend big time. Over on FriendFeed I’m seeing better comments than I see on most blogs (and more quantity too).

The era when bloggers could control where the discussion of their stuff took place is totally over.

This is a trend that the best bloggers should embrace. Me? I follow wherever the conversation takes me.

I believe that he web, the flow of ideas, thoughts, conversations, business, they all exist due to it’s open character. But I would take this one step further.

The web cannot exist if idea’s, content, conversations aren’t set free. It is a false illusion that you can claim a thought, an idea, a piece of content if you publish it on the web. How would you know it is yours? Where did you get the inspiration, the idea, the content? Can you be sure it is truly original. That is, you, and only you have ever thought about it and published it first?

I doubt Robert ever had any control over the conversations he might have started. I sure hope not. Conversation takes place everywhere. On the web, at home, in a restaurant, with family, friends, work, you name it. There is no controlling that, but we shouldn’t want to either.

I see people opposing this idea because it might cost them traffic, and therefore income. If that’s the case you better deal with it. There isn’t a single blog in the world that creates traffic on it’s own. We all create traffic to our blog by writing sensible stuff about things other people have been writing about too. By linking to these people we create our own set of followers. Is that bad? Of course not. People will have to find you in order to decide if you are worth reading. Blogging shouldn’t be about traffic of pageviews, it should be about inspiring other people.

Some say it is ok as long as the credits go to the original poster. I guess that is fine, although it is sometimes impossible to see who is the “original” blogger. Just to be clear on this, copying someone else’s blog post and writing your own name above it isn’t right. That is just lame. But when a lot of bloggers are circling around a specific topic it is sometimes impossible to reconstruct where the circle started. Trying to be as thorough as possible when linking is the best we can do.

To be honest. If a blog post of mine leads to discussion anywhere on the web I would be very satisfied with it. I’m not in it for the traffic, the amount of readers, the number of pageviews. I blog because I believe that I might be able to give something to the people that want to take the time to read my stuff. I get inspired every day by reading amazing blog posts of some really smart and creative people. It enriches my life, my experiences. The least I can do is to return that favor. It that inspires people to talk about it, copy it, rip it, do anything with it, then it makes my day. It tells me that the things I have written could perhaps inspire others to do something with it, completing and starting new circles.

(image taken from a post on the IT Security blog: http://tinyurl.com/52n54p)

You can’t claim a thought, an idea, a conversation , even a blog post once it is out there. Better deal with it now and set it free. Who knows what it will lead to

Just a few wishes for 2008 (part 2)

In my first post in 2008 I said I would elaborate a bit about things I would like to see happen in 2008. My first wish for 2008 was to bring back freedom and responsibility to the user. The article can be found here but if you want a very short abstract, I said:

My first wish for 2008 is that Service Providers build business models on user value instead of walled garden free but ad-based business models. In doing this they should provide the user with excellent, easy to use, transparent, privacy controls where the default is always set by the standards of the user. This wish would provide us with 3 major changes: The service provider becomes a partner that can be trusted and that provides user value instead of walled gardens, the user gets his freedom, and the user becomes responsible for his own actions and data on the Internet.

I just read an article written by John Battelle that takes a similar angle. He says:

The problem is, no one seems ready to truly set the social graph free. Till now.

With one move, Facebook can change the face (sorry) of this debate by making it falling-down easy to export your social graph. And I predict that it will.

Why? Because I think in the end, Facebook will win based on the services it provides for that data. Set the data free, and it will come back to roost wherever it’s best used. And if Facebook doesn’t win that race, well, it’ll lose over time anyway. Such a move is entirely in line with the company’s nascent philosophy, and would be a massively popular move within the ouroborosphere (my name for all things Techmeme).

Compete on service, Facebook, it’s where the world is headed anyway!

Let’s move on to my next wishes for 2008.

 2. Redesign of the mobile UI and Web to make it really work for its user

I personally feel that accessing the web using my mobile sucks. The experience isn’t even close to the capabilities I have access to on a PC. I have written an article about this called “We need a revolution in mobile UI thinking”. A quote from that:

In my opinion we need a revolution in mobile phone UI thinking. A revolution that puts the user and his intentions central in user interface development. We need to understand what users do with their mobile phones. We shouldn’t be thinking in terms of releasing technical functionalities with nice graphical interfaces. We need to think in terms of the remote control of life, supporting the user in his interaction needs. If we let go of the current UI and browsing paradigms who knows what becomes possible. Let’s not rebuild the entire web to make it mobile, let’s not even come up with even better alternatives for the iPhone touch screen. Let’s first think about what the user wants to do with his phone, and then come up with an interface and a mobile web concept that supports his actions, regardless of the technology.

After I wrote that article I was asked what I felt about ovi by Nokia. It is difficult for me to really comment on that until I have actually used it, but a few things come to mind.

The thing I really dislike about it is the pay off they use, “ovi by Nokia, your door to our services”. What do you mean “our services”? My mobile phone is mine, it is my personal space, my remote control of life. I don’t want anyone to tell me what services to use. Ovi might look great, but if it isn’t truly open, forget it. I won’t be using it. I want to decide what services I access via any mobile interface. It needs an API so that anyone can build services on it.  It needs to be freed from any mobile hardware. If a mobile interface is to become successful, it better work on a lot of different handsets. Maybe Android might fill this in, but it remains to be seen. But most of all, we need to get out of the current mobile UI interface, It isn’t fit for our social communications needs.

          

(images taken from www.s60.com)

We are still using SMS, web browsing (screen too small, bandwidth/cost too high), and that darn inbox/outbox paradigm (ever tried to handle 100 or more SMSes, MMSes, e-mails  a day using that mechanism?). Old school thinking.

Microsoft just announced their version 7 of their Mobile platform. It uses a touchscreen,  like the iPhone does, as a main interface element but will also use motion gestures of the user as a UI interface element.It will be interesting to see if this will lead to better UI development, but For now I hear a lot of technological features, not user experiences. And, I still see the inbox/outbox appearing in the screen shots.

3. Human behavior as the basis for new service development

Innovation is so often triggered by technology. That is not a bad thing necessarily. Many great developments start with the application of new technologies. However, where a lot of these innovations fail is their ability to support human behavior. Technology needs to be used and needs to be useful. If it isn’t the case, then the role of human behavior hasn’t been taken in account thoroughly enough. There have been numerous new technological capabilities launched in 2007 with confusing names and propositions. Just look at a snapshot of the web 2.0 directory and tell me, which services do you know and actually use?

So often this is caused by people thinking they know what users want, but fail to simply engage with them to really understand human need. I call that observing social behavior though a fishbowl. It sounds so simple, yet is hard to do. At the same time, the reward for providing user value is very big.

The good thing about this is that it leads you away from a mediocre web business model that is currently being used in web 2.0 developments. Instead of thinking about locking in the customer, you need to think of providing him value (thus setting him free, big difference).

4. Let content exploration become an interactive adventure again

There is an enormous amount of content on the Internet. Way too much to handle. It becomes increasingly difficult to find the right content. To help us there are numerous sites that index and present the available content to us. But that doesn’t help either. If I want to find something which might interest me but I don’t  really know what it is I’m lost. I tried browsing sites like YouTube, but it doesn’t work for me. I could look at the most popular, best watched, highest rated video’s, simply browse on subject or whatever, but at the same time I feel the interface isn’t helping me to find what I want. I’m not the only one with that problem. Looking at the blogosphere there are many examples of a video traveling through many different blogs. Everyone is looking at or recommending the same cleverly launched video’s.

I think the overwhelming availability of content is one part of the problem. The rating mechanism’s every site uses is another (it helps us all look at the same things). But the third aspect of this problem is human laziness. We all want to be entertained, but we don’t really want to put in the effort to find great content. The reason for this is that it is actually quite boring to find content using the current sites and interfaces provided. The search for content needs to become an adventure again. We need to explore new worlds, and get excited by all of our personal findings. To do that, we need new ways of exploration, new interfaces to enter these large worlds.

I hope that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft will be paying a lot of attention into the work of Jonathan Harris. He has shown that the exploration of content can become exiting and adventurous.

Check out his universe demo to see what I mean by that. It is a new paradigm for browsing, and it is a powerful one. While you are at it, also take a look at some of his other projects. He has done some amazing and inspiring stuff.

5.  Let the web continue to be a place for inspiration

I read a lot of blogs, surf to different sites, communicate with family, friends and even total strangers. Why? Well, for one thing, interaction is what life is about. But another way of looking at it is that it helps me to find inspiration. Inspiration in life, work, blogging, anything really. There are so many smart and creative people out there. All you need to do is take the time to look around. I posted a few inspirational sources earlier here, but it is really just a modest list.

Enough for now. What are your wishes for 2008? Let me know? It would be interesting to compile them all together.

Looking for inspiration?

Sometimes I find myself stuck in a thought and not getting out of it. When that happens it is a signal to me that I need to get out and get inspiration form others. While a walk outside does a lot of great things for me there is also lots of fun things to find on the Web. So if you are in need of some inspiration here are a few suggestions:

Lynette Webbe from Google collects really excellent pictures and quotes about the digital world around us. Thanks to Erik van Roekel who pointed me to this.  Check out this slide show she has created for you (she also provides an rss feed on the site):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/sets/72057594139269787/show/

Anything from Ze Frank really, he always makes me laugh, think, surprised, you name it. Here is a recent favorite of mine, a muppet drum contest and Animal doesn’t win!

I got this one thanks to Rhymo.

This is something every child has dreams about, remember them? And these guys make it happen:

The video’s done by Mike Wesch and his students  from Kansas University should not be missed:

Here is a guy with one of the coolest jobs in the world!

Where the hell is Matt is an oldy but still fun to watch. And I like the music done by Deep Forrest:

How about the 10 videos that make you change your view of the world?

There is so much more to find and share. I try to collect video’s as I go along, you can always find them on the right side of my blog.

And, a lot of this stuff gets posted to my link blog.

Do you have any pointers to great material? Would love to hear from you!

Enjoy. Get out there and be inspired!

(Re-) discovering great things on the web

Tim O’Reilly wrote a nice post today on the effects of self fulfilling prophecies on social media. One of the examples he provides (read his article, it’s longer and nicer than my brief summary here) is that if everyone uses the same sources to find or publish information, the system becomes self enforcing where in the end everyone covers the same stories (the Techmeme leaderboard effect). I wrote a similar warning earlier when the Techmeme leaderboard was first announced.

His solution to this vacuum we are creating together, is to ensure that you read fresh input, input that leads to diversion. Out of the crossover of information of, for example, art and science, new things will arise. I like that idea very much. It sometimes is hard to look for things that go beyond your own knowlegde or the field you are working in. But, learning niew things only happens when you are not in your comfort zone!

I would add a few more ways of getting fresh input:

1. Get into conversations on blog posts. I’m really not interested in how many people read my posts. But I am interested in those that take the time to digest my writings and are willing to comment or add to it. I always try to respond, and also look up that person if possible. I have found some very nice and smart people I didn’t know about this way. Remember, inspiration comes from interaction.
2. Look past the “scoop” posts (take the umph-tiest scoop post on Google taking over Jaiku’s an example, you know what I mean), and see what happens in the analysis afterwards. Often, when reading through those analysis posts and the comments they get provides me with lots of smart people I want to now more about.
3. Keep track of people writing  blog posts that are numbered (great example here), and people that  scan massive amounts of blog posts to select their favorites for you. I found 2 great posts this way today.
   • Check out Anne Truit Zelenka, who writes some very smart things about the way we (should be) consuming information. Think of looking at a huge river of water flowing, you don’t want to swallow it all, but become aware of the fish below the surface. Ties in nicely with the obervations of Tim O’Reilly. I would like to point both Anne Truis Zelenka and Tim OReilly to the work of Jonathan Harris (yes, I am a fan), who has done some amazing work on structuring emotions of millions of people in a different way.

   And check out these two new video’s done by students from Kansas State University. They are essentially follow-ups on the video “The Machine is us/ing us” I wrote about earlier. Amazing how well they bring their analysis of what is going on with them in web 2.0. I like it already, as they focus on the social aspects of new technologies.
   

4. Don’t forget to meet people in real life! Nothing better than having a conversation with inspiring people, especially if they are not working in your field of expertise!

The world is full of inspiration and fascinating people. All you need to do is look past reputations, leaders, big sites, and easy scoops, and let yourself be surprised by small things, unknown people and information beyond the information bubble we are often  stuck in professionally. Get out of your comfort zone and start interacting!