Google is Amazing ...

Check out the screenshot ....

Re: Here Comes Trouble: A Social Directory

Om Malik either does not know about "microformats" especially hCard (which is unlikely) or has willingly chosen to ignore it. The solution to directory problem is not to have a single provider like google or Plaxo collate all information about a person, but to allow any service to syndicate the same standard contact information.

The solution is the standard microformat for storing your contact details from email, to phone number/ postal address to social network profile info. Once all existing platforms which store profile info - blogs, email services, eGroups, specialized networks (forums/ batchmates.com etc) - start using the same format, it will be possible for any service to access hCard info from any other service (provided privacy is taken care of by allowing users the right to share/ not share).

Also, this will make it possible for you to store your hCard info at only on of the websites you use (say your personal blog or social n/w account or Email provider) and share the same info (syndicated) with any other service you use. (This is just like OpenAuth where the same OpenID - I store mine on my blog - can be used to access any service)

Nikhil

 

 

Sent to you by s4ur4bh via Google Reader:

 

 

Here Comes Trouble: A Social Directory

via GigaOM by Daniel Berninger on 3/29/08

The declining relevance of telephone directories erased 95 percent of publisher RH Donnelley's market capitalization over the last 12 months. Although Google's free 1-800-GOOG-411 service may attract some share of the directory assistance business, the crux of the problem lies with the diminished standing of wired telephones in an increasingly crowded communications landscape. The demise of paper directories does not, however, mean there exists a clear alternative to accommodate the growing list of communication coordinates most people juggle. A "social directory" created by merging the telephone directory with the social networking model may provide a way forward.

.............. ....... ....... ....... .......

As the number of communication options increases, so does the burden of managing contact information, yet Internet-enabled directory options remain lacking. Google's 60 percent share of Internet searches gives the company both gatekeeper status in the information Internet — not to mention a rich market capitalization. However, Google's revenue represents less than a third of what the declining telephone directories generate in the U.S. alone. Riches await the infocom company that achieves gatekeeper status for the Internet's communications applications.

 

 

Feed of Feeds? Or TagFeeds?

... as the buzz around lifestreaming continues to build, some people are starting to question where it fits into their daily lives. Last week, we wondered whether sites like FriendFeed solved the problem of information overload, or merely brought attention to it. 

Venture capitalist Josh Kopelman - "I love the concept of the News Feed ... with the combination of (1) more users activating feeds and (2) more web sites offering them, I think that feed volume is poised to increase exponentially. And I can sense that ... the volume will increase to a level that will require 24 hour vigilence to remain informed," he writes.

Fellow venture capitalist Brad Feld voices similar concerns, in a post entitled, "I Need A News Feed For My News Feeds." The solution for each of them lies in the creation of some sort of universal feed dashboard that manages your social activity feeds and determines which items require action and which are of interest.

Jevon MacDonald, thinks that lifestream aggregators are starting to become "noise aggregators," ...

The solution to the problem lies in the development of filters that learn what you want to read. "If I give someone's del.icio.us bookmarks a thumbs down every time I see it, then you should stop showing it to me. If I give a thumbs down on ever single del.icio.us bookmark I see, then make sure you never show me one again," he writes.

Does it indeed? Can machines really be so  intelligent to guess your tastes? And is it really true that if till today I did a thumbs down to a delicious bookmark, I would really never want to see them?

I am doubtful, a thumbs down is to content, not to source ... and then - what exactly in the content lead to the thumbs down? the quality or the relevance or say the author?

I don't think machine filtering will work ....

A case for storage solutions

Archive is one of the fastest growing segments of the storage market, fueled by an explosion in unstructured data growth, longer data retention periods, organizations leveraging digital assets, regulatory compliance, and overall storage optimization needs.

... how to digitize, preserve, and distribute vast amounts of diverse multimedia content, from research papers and scientific visualization of data sets to past course content, video, photos, and animation. Owners of expanding digital repositories and preservation archives must ensure that the objects they store are available for decades to come. That's making file-based data and the management of file-based storage assets a serious challenge.

Source: http://www.sun.com/emrkt/educonnection/newsletter/0308insidetech.html?cid=e5328 (nice article)

The next Bill Gates

Mark Zuckerberg!!

The parallels are striking. Both are ex-Harvard boys who struck it rich by capitalizing on someone else's brainstorm. In Gates' case, it was creating a knockoff of CPM and labeling it MS-DOS (and later building a Mac wannabee called Windows). For Zucky, it was HarvardConnect (now called ConnectU), a budding social network that hired him to do some programming back in 2003 and is now suing him for stealing their ideas.

Apple, google and everyone else - Who owns the customer experience?

Click here for Source

It's funny, I would suggest that Apple and Google probably have very different design processes and certainly a very different culture so what is the common denominator?

Lifestreaming - aggregating your life

35 Ways to Stream Your Life from Read/WriteWeb by Josh Catone

Lifestreaming apps generally fall into two categories: those that help you keep track of and display your own lifestream and those that help you keep track of your friend's lifestreams (or both). For the sake of clarity, we've focused mainly on the former for this list.