www.josschuurmans.com

'Transform Your Conversation!' - Enter Cluetail

[While Cluetail's website is in the making, I'm posting this description of our company on my blog - because I want to start reaching out :-)

UPDATE, March 31, 2009: I've put up a brief description of Cluetail in English, Finnish and Dutch, at http://www.cluetail.com (or, until the DNS records are updated, at: http://sites.google.com/a/cluetail.com/transform/)- note that http://cluetail.com does not yet redirect here.]

Cluetail Ltd. is an integrated communications services company which deeply appreciates the value of human conversation.

All transactions - either privately, in business, or in the public domain and the media - are a function of relationships, built on conversation between people.

We exist to create value to our customers by enhancing the quality of their conversations, connections and relationships.

The Challenge

"Choice" is sometimes referred to as the epidemic of the 21st century. During the foreseeable future, information, choice and competition for attention will keep growing at an increasing rate.

Without access to the most relevant information and the right people, no meaningful transactions can be done and business will suffer.

Our Vision

However, Cluetail shares a more optimistic vision of the world: one in which people engage conveniently, instantly and continuously in the conversations most relevant to them, and connect to the people who matter most.

Seasoned in journalism, organizational communications, and participatory intra- and Internet applications, we at Cluetail build processes and tools which maximize the reach, impact, visibility and measurability of your communications efforts.

How We Do It

While harnessing enabling technologies in the realm of participatory media and social software, our objective is to make these technologies as unobtrusive as possible.

First we help you save money by making your communications practices more efficiently aligned with your strategic objectives.

Then we help you make money by more effectively engaging your employees, customers, partners, investors, media, interest groups and the general public in conversations relevant to you and your brand.

Our Services

Our consultancy services include current- and desired-state analyses and road-mapping, process and tool development and implementation.

Our operational support services include technical process and tool support, content and channel management, content creation, media monitoring and business intelligence, training, team building, coaching and mediation.

Coming up...

Through our ASP (Application Service Provider) services we plan offer content life-cycle management systems, online conversation analysis and recommendation systems.

The latter will enable our customer companies to make tacit communications structures visible; to extract business intelligence and trend analysis from online conversations; and to help their people identify the most relevant conversations and build meaningful relationships with the people involved.

By detecting tacit structures and weak signals early, customer companies can faster anticipate a changing business environment, thus gaining competitive advantage over their peers.

Talk Is Cheap

Drop us a line or give us a call: let's have a conversation about your conversation.

  Jos Schuurmans

  CEO & Sales, Cluetail Ltd. (y: 1747348-8)
  Patteristonkatu 2, 50100 Mikkeli, Finland

  +358 50 59 33 006
  <jos.schuurmans@cluetail.com>
  http://cluetail.josschuurmans.com
  http://josschuurmans.com/contact

P.S.: The name Cluetail is an hommage to the Cluetrain Manifesto and the Long Tail, two concepts which, IMHO, are particularly insightful when we try to understand the Internet and where it will take us.

The Live Web Will Be Federated

Under the headline 'Blogging 2.0: Moving Toward Conversational "Flows"', Bill French wrote a piece on MyST Blogsite, in which he observes that conversations on the Internet are increasingly moving away from being contained within blogs, towards being distributed among lifestreaming or micro-blogging services (Bill calls them "flow applications") such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

He quotes me by saying:

"(...) Ironically, in this comment, Jos Schuurmans equate sthe emergence of social networks with the end of “channels”. (...)"

I subscribe to the view that online conversations will be less and less contained within channels, while more and more federated among and across different platforms and services. To the extent that channels can be seen as walled gardens, the emergence of the blogosphere itself was the disruption that started taking down those walls.

The point I was trying to make earlier, under 'The End of Channels?' and ''Channels' does not sufficiently describe the dynamics of distributed online conversations', is that conversations take place across and between channels, not just within, and that it is therefore less useful to think of the Web in terms of channels. As David Weinberger and Doc Searls have pointed out: the Internet is a place, not a medium.

Indeed, enablers like Jaiku, Twitter, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Ping.fm, and Facebook are speeding up the trend of conversations being more distributed. But what these services represent most of all is the shift from a more static Web to the "live Web".

Another application worth mentioning in this context is Disqus, an enabler of blog comments federation. If Dave Winer will have his way, something similar is going to happen to micro-blogging as well... And why wouldn't he?

Tags: Bill French, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Dave Winer, lifestreaming, micro-blogging, federation, channels, conversation

Mobile Internet sucks (= conclusion of 3 wks without ADSL)

I've been without broadband Internet at home for about three weeks - I was "between providers", so to speak.

Must say that, while I was still able to consume some of my daily Internet fix - browsing RSS feeds on my mobile phone -, it was at the same time a sobering experience of how embarrassingly ill adapted the applications on my Nokia N95 are to mobile Web 2.0 participation.

I'll probably remember this period best as the time when Doc Searls went in and out of hospital and blogged  it all. Good health and happiness to you, Doc!

Data speed is not the bottle neck. It's the lack of mobile client-side participatory software.

With my Nseries device and 3G coverage I could browse and email, but that was about it. No tagging, no digging, no blogging with any level of convenience.

So what I ended up doing was to bookmark the URLs I would have liked to tag, digg or blog and thus collect them in my mobile phone's browser for future reference.

I hope to catch up blogging some of those bookmarks over the coming days.

Dugg: Who is Who: Interview with David Weinberger | Ulrike Reinhard

Via David Weinberger:

"(...) Ulrike Reinhard, of WhoIsWho, video-interviewed me on our back porch last week. She asked me about the need for serendipity, what an “open” Internet means, the costs of social networks, the new sense of privacy, user-controlled identity systems, Web 3.0, market conversations, categorization and control, Twitter, Obama… (...)"

Serendipity is a fascinating concept. I strongly believe that the way we learn new things and expand our horizons is through serendipity. In order to discover and, if you will, accept something new, this "news" needs to be presented to us in a familiar, trusted, i.e. "old" context.

We hardly ever buy into something entirely unfamiliar. For example, if we don't know the source, we are less prone to trust the news. In conversations, I am more likely to learn something new from people with whom I have, say, 80 percent in common, than from people with whom I have, say, 10 percent in common. If you get my drift...

read more | digg story

Dugg: The Internet Organizes Itself: Here Comes Everybody | Glenn Fleishman

"(...) Clay Shirky's (...) book "Here Comes Everybody" (The Penguin Press, 2008) explains his views on the power of individuals to organize into groups without companies, hierarchies, or outside efforts. (...)"

Glenn Fleishman writes:

"(...) I sat down with Clay on 14-Mar-08 to talk about the book for a short article that appeared in the Seattle Times, focused on the business side of his book. However, the Seattle Times allowed me to publish a podcast of our roughly 40-minute conversation. (...)"

The 40-minute podcast is indeed worth the listen. Clay talks about a lot of stuff, including the notion that we don't yet understand where the Internet will be taking us. And another thing I found quite interesting was his reference to "more is different", i.e. scale changes the nature of things (such as the Internet).

(via Charlie Schick, who adds on a personal note:

"(...) My tongue is bleeding, I am biting it so hard. Though a beer can loosen it, in case you are interesting in a tale of enlightenment, abandonment, discovery, creativity, stealing, cluelessness, and dissapointment. (...)"

Charlie, what's your favorite beer? Come visit and I'll put it cold for you.

read more | digg story

Dugg: Dan Gillmor: Principles of a New Media Literacy | Publius Project

[UPDATE, April 30, 2009: Dan Gillmor's essay on the Publius website appears to have moved. The new, correct link is: http://publius.cc/principles_new_media_literacy]

"(...) In this emergent global conversation, which has created a tsunami of information, what can we trust?

How we govern ourselves on the Web depends in significant ways on the answers. To get this right, we’ll have to re-think, or at least re-apply, some older cultural norms in distinctly modern ways.

It comes down, in significant ways, to some principles, both for media consumers and creators. They add up to a 21st Century notion of what we once called “media literacy.” But media literacy has generally lacked the kind of participatory piece that is so essentially a part of digital media. (...)

• Be skeptical of absolutely everything.
• But don’t be equally skeptical of everything.
• Understand and learn media techniques.
• Ask more questions.

(...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody | Clay Shirky

(Via Jay Rosen / PressThink: 'Looking for the Mouse in Media: Clay Shirky on Deploying the Cognitive Surplus for Public Good')

Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008 | blip.tv:

"(...) And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

(...) "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."

(...) This is something that people in the media world don't understand.  Media in the 20th century was run as a single race--consumption.  How much can we produce?  How much can you consume?  Can we produce more and you'll consume more?  And the answer to that question has generally been yes.  But media is actually a triathlon, it 's three different events.  People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

(...) Here's something four-year-olds know:  A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken.  Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for.

(...) "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?"  And I'm betting the answer is yes. (...)"

read more | digg story

Blood from stone: Don't focus on ad revenue from social networking services | Charlie Schick

Charlie writes: "(...) Your core service drives the interaction with the customer, but the money can come from some other area.

But, be careful where you _think_ you can get the money. (...) Online social networking services thrive because they are a form of social lubrication. (...) Yes, social network is the concentrator, but what the folks end up doing is where the money's at. (...)"

Interesting comment from Stefan Constantinescu: "(...) recommendation engine may sound unsexy now, but they will LEAD the next generation of corporate buy outs and be the foundation for the services we use in the upcoming decade. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Blogging as a Form of Journalism | J.D. Lasica / OJR

"(...) Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices (...)"

When cleaning up my paper (sic!) archive the other day, I came across a printed article in two parts, by J.D. Lasica for the Online Journalism Review (OJR), published on May 24 and 31, 2001. Just before I'm throwing this away for the benefit of the paperless office, I'll quote what I highlighted back then:

From: 'Blogging as a Form of Journalism', May 24, 2001:

Dugg: Becoming 2.0: all startpages, the comprehensive review. startpages part 2 | Justin Fenwick

Justin Fenwick: "(...) I looked through 20 different options, which exhausts the lists of other older comprehensive reviews I found. (...) Netvibes is without question the one to beat. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Ajax homepages market review | ZDnet.com

[A lengthy analysis of the main Ajax homepages (aka personalized start pages), concluding that Microsoft and Google are set to dominate.]

Published February 28, 2006:

"(...) Over the past year many new AJAX homepages, aka personalized start pages, have been introduced to the market. Microsoft and Google have offerings, as do a host of small startups. First I’ll define what an AJAX homepage is, then I’ll do a feature comparison between the leading services. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Netvibes Ginger is now open to everyone | Tariq Krim / Netvibes.com blog

Posted March 4, 2008: "(...) Netvibes ginger is now open to any netvibes registered user. (...) Ginger features and performance improvements:

•     General startpage loading time improvements
• Prefetch feeds features
•     Flash audio player improvements
•     OPML import/export improvements (now available in adcontent/add a feed section)
•     Mobile and iPhone versions improvements
•     Feedreader content is not updated if marking all items of a tab as read
•     New Ginger thumbnails
•     "Send to my universe/Send to my private page" feature improvements
•     New Premium Widget : Stechworld, L'express, Usa Today, FranceTelecom, Computer World UK
•     Widgets Improvements: myspace, digg, FeedReader, Weather, multiple feeds widgets (Premium widgets), preconfig widgets

(...)"

read more | digg story

'Channels' does not sufficiently describe the dynamics of distributed online conversations

Interesting conversation about "channels" developing here with Bill French.

Totallly agree that people create channels in efforts to create order from chaos. The way I used "channels" in my post on 'The End of Channels?' was with the traditional notion of, if you will, media titles, in mind: TV/radio channels or shows, zines, newspapers, websites, blogs, forums...

I suppose what they have in common is that they all have a name, an address, and usually a more or less defined scope. They are often furnished with editorial policies and they may be designed to further particular political or commercial interests. Also, most often they have a brand identity.

But if we look passed the keeper of the gate and over the garden wall, I am willing to accept that channels - as in "meta-handlers" - are not necessarily disappearing, but rather evolving into new forms, such as distributed conversations connected by tags.

The point I am trying to make is that old-style channels are designed to contain conversations within them. Sure, they are helpful as meta-handlers in creating order. And, agreed, the new meta-handlers are facilitated by social media, e.g. through tags. However, I hesitate to go as far as to call those tag-connected (micro-content contributions to) conversations, ehm, "channels".

In Dutch, we use the same word for channel and canal: "kanaal". So it won't surprise you that I quite strongly associate the word channel with a human-made, one-directional, controlled flow.

Bill writes:

"(...) People tend to prefer the benefits that channels provide - they create the notion of a "meta-handle" that makes it easier for them to understand, know about, and share. (...)"

Well, I won't deny that people find channels convenient. Still, to me, even "virtual channel" or "conversation channel" doesn't quite sufficiently express the dynamic nature of distributed online conversations. These conversations do not have ONE name, ONE address or even a defined scope.

Tags are useful in searching and navigating these conversations, - in particular because they add social filtering to the mix - and "tag cloud" is a metaphor that helps people venture into the Web 2.0 era.

And yet, even tag clouds cannot contain or accurately scope conversations. The Web, and in particular the social media web, makes our culture and economy more "probabilistic", as Chris Anderson puts it in The Long Tail.

So, why not liberate the conversations from their channels and simply call them "conversations"?

(See also: 'www.josschuurmans.com: 'The concept of "conversation" as in the Long Tail of Conversations')

Dugg: Social Media Will Change Your Business | BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek's Stephen Baker and Heather Green have updated their article 'Blogs Will Change Your Business' from May, 2005, (which I dissected here) to include observations of social media over the past three years.

It's a nine-pager, so I'll read it on my commute one of these days before drawing any conclusions. However, I already know that one of my posts that I will compare this against, is: 'The End of Channels?', which has this summary:

The three aspects of social media that I'd like to view as qualitative departures from the past are: (1) 'The Dilution of Channels' in that online conversations happen all over the place; (2) 'The Wisdom of the Crowd', social software helping people navigate their way through online conversations; and (3) the participatory and co-creational nature of social media.

read more | digg story

Dugg: Andrew Keen is the Anti-Chris

In this podcast Moira Gunn speaks with author Andrew Keen, who claims that today's Internet is killing our culture. With descriptions like "dystopia", "Orwellian nightmare", and "tyranny of the amateurs", Keen explicitly disagrees with Chris Anderson on the virtues of the Long Tail and the abundance of free content.

Anderson's more optimistic views on emerging economies of abundance and the business of "free" are well captured in another podcast on IT Conversations from June 2007, as well as in his keynote at the Nokia World event in Amsterdam, in December 2007 (which I blogged about earlier today).

Keen describes Web 2.0 as a stage in the development of the Internet in which businesses attempt to build revenue models around user-generated content, whereas during Web 1.0 businesses explored the Internet as a new distribution channel for their existing, professionally produced content.

read more | digg story

Dugg: Chris Anderson: 'Free' | Nokia World 2007

(streaming video and downloadable .mp3)

At the Nokia World event in Amsterdam in December 2007, Chris Anderson discussed themes from his upcoming book, 'Free', in which he argues that when the price of production and distribution of (digital) content (and services) approaches zero, you might as well treat it as if it were free, and sell something else.

Open your mind to create new business models around "free", in an economy of abundance.

We are entering a world in which every way that content (and even physical products) can be created, WILL be tried, because it costs next to nothing to do so.

The old scarcities are: time + money. The new scarcities are: time + money + attention + reputation.

When working with Intel, Chris tells, they did a thought experiment. What about, instead of selling hardware and software as 1+1, selling it perhaps as 0+2?

Is Chris suggesting that Nokia should give its devices away for free in order to sell MORE services?
Could and should we move from selling hardware+software as 1+1, towards 0+morethan2?

To put it more urgently: is this the ONLY way to go?

read more | digg story

My top-8 podcasts of all times

Admittedly, I'm hooked on the Conversations Network :-)

In fact, surprised myself by having such a strong focus on technology in the top-3. But the truth is, these topics will have a huge impact on our future.

1. Pop!Tech 2004: Carolyn Porco, Cassini Science Imaging Team Leader: 'Explorer's Club'

"(...) Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) has been focused on Saturn since early 2004 as the Cassini spacecraft approached its orbit around the planet. (...) The icy moon Enceladus contains fissures that suggest tectonics, the south pole is especially warm and has signatures of organic material. (...) The other moon, Titan, is where the Huygens probe landed in January 2005. (...) the Titan moon may give us a significant glimpse of what the Earth was like before living organisms. (...) Lastly Carolyn shares some of her views on science and spirituality. (...)"

2. Pop!Tech 2004: Joel Garreau, Journalist, The Garreau Group: 'Human Nature'

"(...) "Are we fundamentally changing human nature in our lifetime?" Joel Garreau thinks that yes we will be...over the next twenty years. What's driving this? (...)" GRIN: genetics, robotics, Information and nanotech.

3. Tech Nation: Sandra Blakeslee, Contributor, NY Times

"(...) Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with NY Times contributor Sandra Blakeslee, about neuroscience, and how it is revealing how our brains map out our physical bodies. (...)"

4. Pop!Tech 2004: Ben Saunders, Solo Explorer

"(...) On his latest expedition in February 2004, Ben set out from Cape Arktichevsky in Northern Siberia in an attempt to be the first person in the world to make a complete crossing of the frozen Arctic Ocean in a 1,240-mile journey ending in Canada, solo and unsupported. (...) After experiencing first hand conditions described by NASA and Environment Canada as 'the worst on record', Ben has raised international awareness regarding the extent to which climate change is affecting the Arctic. He noticed conditions that were up to 15 degrees warmer than in 2000, and had to negotiate vast, unprecedented areas of thinning ice and open water. (...)"

5. Pop!Tech 2004: Doug Rushkoff: 'Renaissance Prospects'

"(...) Douglas Rushkoff analyzes, writes and speaks about the way people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it. (...)"

6. O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005:
Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine: 'Economics of the Long Tail'

"(...) he explores the economics of the long tail and shares his insight on the effects it might have on future business models. Chris discusses how distribution networks like Amazon, iTunes and Netflix have shown that the right side of the curve which forms millions of niches can be as big a market as the chart toppers. (...)"

7. O'Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-In:
Gatekeepers No More? The Grassroots Challenges the Journalistic Priesthood

"(...) Professional journalists have been the chief gatekeepers of news about political campaigns and governmental operations. That's changing, fast, as the Internet and other technical tools open up a variety of avenues for other participants in the information process. (...)" With Dan Gillmor, Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen.

8. Pop!Tech 2005: Sam Harris, Author, The End of Faith: 'The Future of Ideas'

"(...) Sam Harris debates many points relating to religion, particularly the dangers that can be brought about by religious extremists -- in any faith -- around the world (...)"

Runners-up:

Clayton Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School: 'Capturing the Upside'

"(...) Through his recent research, Professor Christensen has developed a set of theories to help guide managers as they seek to answer seven critical questions when trying to build new growth businesses, again and again: (...)"

Web 2.0 Conference: Lawrence Lessig

"(...) By presenting media remixing as the "creative writing" of the future he highlights the dangers of moving from a free culture where discussion and free speech are taken for granted, to a permission culture where permission to reproduce media messages will depend on the use of that media. (...)"

SDForum: Lawrence Lessig: 'The Comedy of the Commons'

"(...) Lessig (...) charts a history of IP, which helps him highlight the difference between physical-property law, which can result in a tragedy of the commons, and intellectual-property law, which can result in a comedy of the commons. (...)"

Eben Moglen, Director, Software Freedom Law Center: 'Freedom Businesses Protect Privacy'

"(...) Few, if any, presentations at conferences in the coming years will manage to combine the intellectual depth and delivery skills shown by Software Freedom Law Center director Eben Moglen in this penetrating analysis of privacy and technology. (...)"

Tech Nation: Dr. Steven Miles, Author & Professor, University of Minnesota

"(...) Dr. Moira Gunn talks to Dr. Steven Miles, the Minnesota MD who studied tens of thousands of documents released by the Department of Defense about US military prisons in Iraq. Included were those from the notorious Abu Ghurayb prison near Baghdad. What Dr. Miles found was extremely disturbing. (...)"

MeshForum 2005: Jamais Cascio: 'Participatory Panopticon'

Jamais Cascio's 'Participatory Panopticon', a presentation at the MeshForum 2005 Event held in Chicago, Il, May 1-4, 2005 and podcast via IT Conversations, takes the "memory prosthesis" concept of Nokia Lifeblog a few steps further.

"(...) [S]elf-proclaimed freelance world-builder, [Jamais] has a bold vision for the future. He calls it the Participatory Panopticon, and it spells the end of privacy and the end of secrecy. While personal privacy is eroding, the ability of those in power to lie, cheat, and steal is also becoming increasingly impaired. (...)"

Tech Nation: Greenfield v. Kurzweil: 'Biotech: Will it Save Us or Hurt Us?'

"(...) Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, debates Ray Kurzweil, one of America’s most prolific inventors and a futuristic thinker in his own right. Will biotechnology save us? Or hurt us? (...)"

Pop!Tech 2005: Susan Blackmore, Author and lecturer: 'Memes'

"(...) Memetics is an intellectually rich but controversial field which seeks to explain how our minds and cultures are designed by natural selection acting on replicating information, just as organisms evolve by natural selection acting on genes. (...)"

The End of Channels?

Summary: The two aspects of social media that I'd like to view as qualitative departures from the past are: (1) 'The Dilution of Channels' in that online conversations happen all over the place; and (2) 'The Wisdom of the Crowd', social software helping people navigate their way through online conversations.

[ADDITION, October 26, 2007: I've added one more charasteristic to the social media mix: (3) 'Participation'. See also the addition towards the end of this post]

My local professional communicators' association wishes to pick my brain on "social media". So it's about time I captured the concept in writing.

The media have, of course, always been "social". Any form of human communication (where there are messages sent by senders and processed by receivers) is social. The Internet is a disruptive technology that accelerates certain properties of everything social, in particular human communication, including what we call "the media". In other words, to some extent "social media" is a pleonasm.

Also the Internet has always been a social space.

For homework I Googled the term. The Wikipedia entry, Robert Scoble's entry, and some other references I found seem to position "social media" mainly as something that has more "capacity" than "traditional media": online means faster and more immediate, easier to interact with, easy to copy and share, unlimited space...

Quantitative or qualitative?

Are we really talking about quantitative differences only? Or should we make some qualitative distinctions as well?

Posting this from the Lifeblog app on my PC

A Nokia N95 arrived to my pigeon hole today (September 4, that is). Fun toy! Checking out the over-the-air podcast download. A link to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code comes pre-set, so that's as good a place to start as any. Decent sound quality!

It's not just a fun toy, though. This is the first time since I started working for Nokia five years ago, that I decided not to upgrade to the next QWERTY-equipped Communicator (from the Enterprise Solutions business group), but to a one-hand operated device from the Multimedia business group.

Rather than being evidence in support of The Register's thought provoking Andrew Orlowski, I guess my choice reflects that the whole multimedia Internet experience is becoming more relevant in my line of work.

I must have been one of the first people to write about Nokia Lifeblog, an interview story with Christian Lindholm in March 2004, published on Nokia's intranet (restricted access).

[UPDATE, October 24, 2007: I posted a condensed version of the article: 'Trust your life to a piece of Nokia'.]

It has bugged me ever since that ES-devices never got around to support Lifeblog. And, frankly, now I have run out of patience - even though I know that the new Communicator runs on Series60.

To me, (a) QWERTY and (b) the nice big screen were the main selling points of the Communicator. So, it's been a trade-off: what I now gain instead is (1) more compact hardware and (2) a richer multimedia / Web2.0 / life recording experience.

22:45 04 September, 2007 Text note

P.S. 1: This is the "text note" I wrote on my PC after synchronizing the contents of the Lifeblog apps on both the PC and the N95. It was too big to be sync'ed to my phone, so I couldn't blog it from the phone. Short-story-long: this text was intended to go with the photo I posted just before :)

P.S. 2: Rich-text formatting, links, categories, excerpt, keywords, Technorati tags added later via Typepad's interface.

The concept of "conversation" as in the Long Tail of Conversations

I'm preparing to have a conversation (okay, a presentation) at the MindTrek 2007 Conference in Tampere, Finland, early October. My topic is to do with the Long Tail of Conversations, and how we might connect people to the conversations across the Long Tail distribution graph that matter most to them.

(I was kinda getting there in one of my previous posts: 'Look at the Long Tail for the highest-value conversations'.)

When I submitted my draft conversation (ok, yes, presentation), one of the organizers asked me to elaborate on my understanding of the concept of "conversation". That was really good feedback, because it caused me to realize that I was using the term in different ways for different purposes, and it forced me to think about defining them better.

So here we go, sketchy at best:

Look at the Long Tail for the highest-value conversations

Excerpt: Where do you think creativity and innovation is born? And where do you think that the best-match conversations about the things you are interested in are taking place? The answer is: in Long Tail conversations!

[UPDATE, July 29, 2007: Whoa, I just noticed on Technorati that it's Doc Searls' birthday today. Happy "round" birthday, Doc! (I just celebrated my 40th on 070707)]

Not perfectly sure how and why Doc Searls associates my excerpts from the Cluetrain Manifesto with Ben Peters' talk about close reading of text (particularly since I haven't heard Ben's talk), but I hope he means he can see that I've read the cluetrain closely  :-)

Doc: "1) I haven't read the book in years;"

I was somewhat suprised to read that, although surely the contents of the book are so much part of Doc's being that in practice, he may never really feel the need to go back and look things up. (I do.)

The Cluetrain Manifesto on the rebirth of conversations

IMHO, the Cluetrain Manifesto is still the most visionary book, indeed a feast of recognition, of how the Internet is accelerating the shift from broadcast to search, from push to pull, from controlled messaging to open conversation.

From where I stand, the three most relevant themes in the Cluetrain are:

1. The significance of conversations, and how the Internet is bringing them back.
2. Why and how businesses need to change as a result.
3. The power of storytelling.

Below is my collection of references from the book, with an emphasis on the first theme, the rebirth of conversations.

[UPDATE, July 29, 2007: Doc Searls refers to my excerpts from the cluetrain on The Doc Searls Weblog:  Saturday, July 28, 2007. In response, I submit that we should combine the teachings of the Cluetrain and the Long Tail theory to be able to engage in the conversations that matter most to us.]

Dugg: The porous membrane: why corporate blogging works | gapingvoid

In a very simple and elegant fashion, Hugh MacLeod zooms in on one of the core themes of the Cluetrain Manifesto.

He explains in 15 points how and why a more porous membrane between its internal and external conversation will make it easier for a corporation to align itself with its market.

NOTE TO HUGH: Hugh, I hope you don't mind I copied your diagram above :-)

read more | digg story

We need to learn to let go!

The five-member team I work with (we develop and content-manage internal news and participatory media channels) have decided to (re-)read the Cluetrain book over the summer and discuss it when we're all back at the office.

A colleague from another team the other day requested ideas as to whom we could invite to speak at our yearly global corporate communications days. (The name Andrew Keen came up.)

Even though things have moved on since 1999, to me the Cluetrain is still the most visionary book, indeed a feast of recognition, of how the Internet is accelerating the shift from broadcast to search, from push to pull, from controlled messaging to open conversation.

Many corporate communicators, I feel, are still struggling with the concept, clinging on to an illusion of "controlled conversation" or some such compromise. Well, it won't last, will it? And the sooner we all grok this, the better for all involved: WE NEED TO LEARN TO LET GO!

If I had to suggest a speaker to our communications teams, I'd be humbled should any of the four Cluetrain authors be willing. Perhaps the chapters that spoke to me most were those written by Christopher Locke and David Weinberger.

We're in the finals!

(Photo by Andrew Mason shared via Flickr.com under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license)

Nokia's intranet news service, the News Hub, has made it to the finals of the CiB Awards 2007, by the British Association of Communicators in Business.

We are looking at an award of excellence for 'Best navigation/usability for intranet' (Class 14B).

Thank you RedHouse Lane! Thank you team mates at Nokia Corporate Communications!

As I wrote on April 24:

In the March issue (.pdf) of their Red Current newsletter, communications consultancy Redhouse Lane tell how they worked with my team at Nokia to rebrand and redesign the News Hub, Nokia's global news and conversation intranet site.

"(...) The result is  a striking exhibition of the power of Web 2.0 giving staff the tools to access the information they need, in the way they want - and then encouraging them to comment, contribute and collaborate. (...)"

---

"(...)The introduction of affiliate program has assisted the small business to run their business profitably as affiliates. The webhosting strategies of famous companies like godaddy cater all necessary attributes with respect to customer’s demand. They can even make a website design according to their customer products and update it with the passage of time. The search engine manager utilizes all strategic techniques of search engine marketing to increase their profits. The rates of internet phone service are very economical along with high speed and quality internet voip. There are different kinds of online website design software or templates to develop website easily. (...)"

Nokia's News Hub: Web 2.0 in action

(Photo by Andrew Mason shared via Flickr.com under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license)

In the March issue (.pdf) of their Red Current newsletter, communications consultancy Redhouse Lane tell how they worked with my team at Nokia to rebrand and redesign the News Hub, Nokia's global news and conversation intranet site.

"(...) The result is  a striking exhibition of the power of Web 2.0 giving staff the tools to access the information they need, in the way they want - and then encouraging them to comment, contribute and collaborate. (...)"

My favorite YubNub commands (to date)

Just started playing around a bit with YubNub, "a (social) command line for the web".

I've only looked at three sources for commands so far. First, Jeremy Hussell's picks, albeit last updated half a year ago, are nicely categorized. Second, the YubNub Golden Eggs is a list of hundreds of commands, apparently in no particular order, suggested by visitors and administered by Jonathan Aquino, who invented YubNub. And third, the most-used commands, as counted since June 29th of last year.

So here goes my initial top 5 (perhaps I'll add-on as I explore further):

(1) ls
"Lists information about all the commands in YubNub. Sorts entries by date. (...) For example, "ls music" will return all YubNub commands pertaining to music."

(2) man
"Displays helpful information about the given command. "man" stands for "manual"."

(3) g
"Performs a Google search using the given keywords." (...) "You don't even need to use g if you don't want to. Any search that can't be interpreted as a yubnub command is treated as a google search."

(4) wod
"Who describes better than authors of www.websters-online-dictionary.org: What do you get when you start with Webster’s classic 1913 unabridged dictionary, and you add updated definitions, thousands of images (one picture being worth a thousand words…), quotes, trade names, references, timelines, translations and any other bit of information that can help someone understand a word from as many perspectives as possible?"

(5) create
"Creates a new YubNub command with the given name (must not already exist). You will be prompted for a URL pointing to the implementation of the command -- it might be an existing service (e.g. the Google Image Search submit form), or your own custom implementation sitting on your own server." I don't quite know how to use this one yet, but it seems promising ;-)

Somewhat related on www.josschuurmans.com:

• Observations about (social) bookmarking (February 9, 2006)
  Since blogging=capturing, social bookmarking is becoming something of a "blogging-light" to me. But wouldn't it be oh so Web 2.0 if search engines, social tagging sites and online blog tools standardized on exchanging tags in the background? And I'd also like to search my own blog plus everything I've linked to in one go!
• Does anybody know of an effort to standardize Q&A blog entry types to serve natural question search? (November 21, 2005)
  Imagine what a working natural question search could do for usability! How about if we would standardize on Q&A type blog entries and create a vast repository of answers this way? Does anybody know anyone working on this?
• Brilliant hacks on Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion (November 15, 2005)
  Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion blog is the best resource to blogging I've found so far. For example, check out his recent entries 'Ten Technorati Hacks' and 'Ten Blogging Hacks'.

Technorati Tags: YubNub, command line, Web 2.0

direc.tor offers a richer UI for browsing del.icio.us

Johnvey Hwang's del.icio.us direc.tor is a client-side web service broker for del.icio.us.

As he puts it:

"(...) del.icio.us direc.tor is a prototype for an alternative web-based rich UI for del.icio.us. It leverages the XML and XSL services of modern browsers to deliver a responsive interface for managing user accounts with a large number of records. (...)"

After installing the del.icio.us direc.tor Javascript bookmarklet for Firefox or Internet Explorer, browse any page on del.icio.us, click the bookmarklet, and your browser will show the del.icio.us data in an entirely different user interface.

As it happens, the thingy is an AJAX application. Wikipedia says about AJAX:

"(...) Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, or its acronym Ajax, is a Web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to shift a great deal of interaction to the Web surfer's computer, exchanging data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, and usability. (...)"

Now, if I understand Johnvey's explanation, while a standard web service broker intermediates the traffic between the user and a service on the Internet, a client-side web service broker like del.icio.us direc.tor lives on the client browser, which cuts out the middle man and therefore saves a lot of data traffic going back and forth.

Be it as it may, the result is an entirely different experience at browsing del.icio.us. Through direc.tor, it's clearly easier to browse through larger sets of bookmarks, narrowing down searches tag by tag. Me like!

Somewhat related on www.josschuurmans.com:

• How does BlinkList compare to del.icio.us, really? (February 10, 2006)
• Observations about (social) bookmarking (February 9, 2006)
• Rashmi Shinha's cognitive analysis of tagging (November 28, 2005)

Technorati Tags: Johnvey Hwang, del.icio.us direc.tor, del.icio.us, AJAX, social bookmarking, client-side, web service broker, javascript, bookmarklet, UI, user interface

David Sifry's top-one-percent 'Magic Middle'

I suppose Technorati is mainly concerned with the metrics and search side of all things Blogosphere. Technorati helps people find information, rather then helping them create blog content or get their voices heard in Blogosphere conversations.

Still, In the second part of his 'State of the Blogosphere' (part 1 here), Technorati's founder and CEO David Sifry briefly touches upon the challenges that individual bloggers may have in attracting attention. What he offers, really, is nothing less than... hope :-P

He basically pep-talks people into blogging, offering the perspective of becoming part of 'The Magic Middle'. That's Technorati speak for the realm of 155,000 bloggers who have from 20-1000 other people linking to them. By publishing regularly and with consistent quality, this is an achievable goal for many bloggers, David seems to suggest.

Well, it feels like a bit of a Catch 22, doesn't it? The Magic Middle makes up about 1.1 percent of those 13.7 million blogs that we could call "alive" (since 13.5 million blogs out of the total 27.2 blogs that Technorati tracks have been dead for at least three months).

Something tells me that, if enough average bloggers reach the 20-links benchmark, it will be lifted in order to keep the Magic Middle at around one percent of the blog population.

Still, David gives us two straws to clutch at. First, there is a particular quality to The Magic Middle:

"(...) "The Magic Middle" of the attention curve, highlights some of the most interesting and influential bloggers and publishers that are often writing about topics that are topical or niche, like Chocolate and Zucchini on food, Wi-fi Net News on Wireless networking, TechCrunch on Internet Companies, Blogging Baby on parenting, Yarn Harlot on knitting, or Stereogum on music - these are blogs that are interesting, topical, and influential, and in some cases are radically changing the economics of trade publishing. (...)"

Translation: it's worth trying to get there.

The second argument is that, although - yes - network effects and a power law relationship do exist in the Blogosphere, the importance of these mechanisms should not be overestimated:

"(...) There is a network effect in the Technorati Top 100 blogs, with a tendency to remain highly linked if the blogger continues to post regularly and with quality content. (...)"

"(...) [T]he number of new blogs jumping to the top of the Top 100 as well as he blogs that have fallen out of the top 100 show that the network effect is relatively weak. (...)"

Funny thing is, as it happens, I'm not so worried about the amount of attention to my blog. I'm more concerned with the quality of the attention. The way the Blogosphere should really work is that, if your blog entry adds value to a particular conversation, it should surface in that conversation. So it's not about your position on the head or the tail; it's about whether the Long Tail works as it is supposed to.

If your contribution adds value to the conversation and, as a result, the whole conversation moves a little further up the tail and towards the head, then that may be a nice by-product. But for many niche conversations, even this will not be the most pressing objective.

The most promising technology is technology that helps The Long Tail function.

Technorati Tags: Technorati, David Sifry, Long Tail, Magic Middle, Blogosphere, authority

FOAFing the Semantic Web

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is about creating a Web of machine-readable homepages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

FOAF on Wikipedia offers useful links to exploring the concept.

Edd Dumbill's article 'XML Watch: Finding friends with XML and RDF' provides some introductory insights into what FOAF can do.

It's an instance of the Semantic Web, really, described by Wikipedia as a project that: "intends to create a universal medium for information exchange by giving meaning (semantics), in a manner understandable by machines, to the content of documents on the Web. Currently under the direction of the Web's creator, Tim Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web Consortium, the Semantic Web extends the ability of the World Wide Web through the use of standards, markup languages and related processing tools."

Leigh Dodds' FOAF-a-Matic is a tool to create a FOAF description of oneself. As Leigh describes: "FOAF is a way to describe yourself -- your name, email address, and the people you're friends with -- using XML and RDF. This allows software to process these descriptions, perhaps as part of an automated search engine, to discover information about your and the communities of which you're a member."

'Click to the clique', Ben Hammersley's article for The Guardian, explains the concept further: "(...) the US sociologist Stanley Milgram who developed what he called the "Small World Hypothesis", which said, in effect, that everyone was connected to everyone else by six degrees or less (...)"

People describe their connectedness with others in a decentralized way, by uploading FOAF files to the Net. Software robots can access these FOAF files, and present the aggregated contents in an organized manner.

The projected result is that people can then view the chains of acquaintants between themselves and any other FOAFers. Jim Ley's FOAFnaut is supposed to be such a tool for "browsing the FOAF universe".

I haven't got it to work yet and, frankly, I'm wondering about the privacy implications and anti-spam protection.

Related posts on www.josschuurmans.com:

• 'TypePadVersusWordPress' on Wikispaces.org (September 19, 2005)
• Web 2.0 means participation, also in the mobile space (September 8, 2005)
• Submission to the Open Directory Project (ODP) (September 7, 2005)

Web 2.0 means participation, also in the mobile space

"The Web 2.0 is here. We've had it for years, ever since the first email list was created, or the USENET saw the light. It was here before it was even called Web 1.0."

Janne Jalkanen is a little bit upset with O'Reilly's hype around Web 2.0, but agrees that "participation" is key, equally in the mobile space.

Janne: "How to design mobile applications for Web 2.0? Design for participation. Make sure everyone can contribute. (...) Make services that make the mobile phone users first-class citizens, and not just guys with crummy browsers and bad connectivity."

"Web 2.0 ," says Wikipedia, "is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. The proponents of this thinking expect that ultimately Web 2.0 services will replace desktop computing applications for many purposes. (...)

"An earlier usage of the phrase Web 2.0 was a synonym for Semantic Web. The two concepts are similar and complementary. The combination of social networking systems such as FOAF and XFN with the development of tag-based folksonomies and delivered through blogs and wikis creates a natural basis for a semantic environment."