I just started using Last.fm yesterday.

“What?” you say. “What kind of self-respecting Web 2.0 kid isn’t using Last.fm?”

Well, for a while, I wasn’t. I love me my music, don’t get me wrong. I have 6600 tracks in my iTunes Library. I like to crank it with the rest of ‘em. But my music has been stored on my home eMac which is generally not connected to the web often (you need your machine to be connected to take advantage of Last.fm). Since I so often listen to podcasts to and from work, I generally only have a very few albums on my work machine at a time. So, I was never in a situation to get much out of Last.fm, so I didn’t use it.

Well, my new MacBook Pro affords me the ability to add some music to the work machine. So, I copied over about 2700 tracks in the last couple days of my very favorite albums (I know, that’s a lot of favorites). But over 425 alone are Teenage Fanclub and Yo La Tengo. And that’s not including all of them. So, it adds up quickly.

So, what does Last.fm do? When you are web-connected and listening to music, you run the Last.fm app and it records what you are playing on iTunes (I’m sure it works with other music-playing apps, but seriously… what others are there?). It then uploads that data to the Last.fm server. You are able to view charts of your recently played tracks and artists as well as tracks and artists played over time.

But like any hip Web 2.0 site, Last.fm “harnesses the collective intelligence” of the users in order to provide additional features. The first, of course, is a similar artists feature. This isn’t an arbitrary music critic choosing who he thinks is most similar. Actual listening patterns are determining the suggestions.

How is this different than Pandora? Pandora allows you to select an artist or song and it then serves up similar music—as determined by the members of the Music Genome Project. You can guide the recommendations by giving a thumbs up and thumbs down, but you are really going by what the Genome Project thinks. Last.fm builds the entire recommendation system totally based on what you listen to.

Another feature is, of course, a friends feature. In fact, if you visit any profile of a user, there is a “taste-o-meter” that shows how compatable your musical tastes are with that person. For example, here’s me rated against my pal Nick:

Every time you visit an artists page, it also shows the top listeners to that band. I find it interesting to poke around and see who people’s #1 artist is. I love that Caterina of Flickr has Mogwai as #1.

I found Last.fm pretty interesting because I’m working on a couple projects that specifically deal with software-generated recommendation systems. One of them I’ll be writing about on the CogBlog soon, and the other… perhaps I’ll be able to write about it down the line. But Last.fm has been more than just handy. It has inspired some ideas of how to handle these serendipitous recommendations.

If you use Last.fm or decide to sign up, here’s my profile.

Update: Just noticing that some of those tracks in the image in this post were listened to when I was not connected. So, it tracks your offline plays and uploads when you connect. So, I could have been using it all this time! D’oh!

New publishing technologies challenge the traditional structure of peer-reviewed scientific journals. For hundreds of years the “article” has been the primary vehicle for conveying scientific information – but semantic markup, tagging, and wiki are reconstructing scientific publications into a flexible and evolving concept. This panel will look at the social and legal implications of “Web 2.0″ and “Semantic Web” as they impact science and scientific knowledge.

Some of this was a bit over my head, but I’m just going to toss up my notes and then follow up with my impressions.

Panelists:

• Moderator: John Wilbanks, Creative Commons
• Matt Cockerill, BioMed Central
• Melissa Hagemann, Open Society Institute
• Timo Hannay, Nature Publishing Group
• Amit Kapoor, Topaz/PLoS One

Notes:

• We used to communicate scientific information by sending it to someone and having them publish it
• Definitions:
  • Timo: Web 2.0:
    • Multi-faceted concept
    • Architecture by participation (network effects, harnessing collective intelligence)
    • The Long Tail
    • Open APIs, Mashups (Open Data and Open Access)
    • Interface Issues (AJAX, web apps)
    • Development process (perpetual beta)
    • Web as a platform
  • Matt: The Semantic Web
    • Web pages no longer electronic paper
    • Robots/machines reading them along with humans
    • Defining standards for allowing computers to read information
    • Flood of data, more info that humans can possibly read
    • Need semantic web tools to sift through it
    • Help scientists publish work in a way that captures semantic structure
  • Melissa: Open Access
    • Free online availability of scholarly content
    • Defined 5 years ago – Budapest open access initiative
    • Open Access Journals are freely available online and don’t rely on subscriptions for revenue
    • Apply combinations of new business models
      • Article processing fee
        • Fee paid by researcher or research grant
    • Many researcher agencies are mandating Open Access for their researchers
• Measure impact of article by citations in other articles (much different than hyperlinking)
  • Citation specifics have been a monopoly, still publish the definitive numbers
    • Starting to become available from other sources (Google Scholar)
  • Scientists don’t blog or comment very much
    • Those things don’t get credit for them
    • Very competitive
  • Connotea: Del.icio.us for scientists
  • Standards are being developed for web usage of scientific sites
  • Citation-based metrics—takes too long to get the data
    • Ancient history by the time everything is published
• Amount of info that has to be dealt with is absolutely amazing
  • Lack of standards, lack of formats
  • Semantic Web played huge role
    • It is an evolving concept
    • Start with a concept, modify it over time
  • Text annotations
    • Attach a note to an article that says specific research is wrong
    • You can later search for all opposing theories
  • Trying to put out a release every two weeks
    • At about version number 0.5 now
• All journals now (whether they like it or not) are databases
  • What is missing is the standards for the different types of data to be interwoven
• No way BioMed science can move as quickly as it could if data is not open
  • OpenAccess makes this possible
  • Facilitates exchange of information
• Nature relies on reader subscriptions
  • Nature rejects 92% of papers submitted
• NatureJobs : Scientific career service
• Web 2.0 science tools don’t generate any revenue yet (like Connotea)
• History of policy pressures from government
  • OpenAccess – government funders didn’t want to pay for information twice
  • One funder provided a grant of 250,000 pounds to pay for research then he himself couldn’t access it
    • Wondered how much impact the research will have if nobody can access it
• Semantic Web
  • Everything needs a permanent URI
  • What is the vocabulary of the community?
    • Bottom up AND top down approach to establish vocabularies
    • Wikipedia approaches have great value because otherwise nothing will ever happen
  • Bookmarking can become much more than keeping a list of favorite articles
    • As someone bookmarks and tags articles of interest, they can assemble a collection of scientific knowledge that is intresting and trustworthy
      • Can be used to recommend other research
  • RDF and ontologies have their place, Tagging and Microformats have their place
    • Tagging gives noisier data
    • Microformats are not the same as a formal ontology, but can be very useful
  • Defining things like what a gene is should be left to scientists
    • Things like defining an author can be done by the community
• Question: Total divergence of solving the same problem (Tagging vs. Semantic Web)
  • Tagging: Assign keywords, let the Googles of the world figure it out
  • Semantic Web: Each document filled with tons of data
  • Amit: Tagging is a way of classifying objects
    • Tagging is a small subset of what the Semantic Web is all about
    • Tagging is the first step
    • The cost of putting in semantic web info is very high
      • Who is going to bear that cost? The author? The distributor?
• Great second question from Amy, but a bit over my head. Must get from podcast when it comes out. The gist was how about how user-generated content can feed The Semantic Web.
  • Very effective ontologies have been extracted from user generated Wikipedia content

I work with many scientists that publish papers, but a lot of this is still so very foreign to me. I personally have a lot of faith in “Web 2.0″ tools such as tags and Microformats. I struggle a bit with some of this Semantic Web stuff.

I guess if I was trying to record my life by using Semantic Web technologies, I’d have to somehow go back and record everything I’ve ever said, where I said it, who I said it to, what they said back, what other thoughts I had without speaking them aloud, etc. If I use “Web 2.0″ technologies to record my life, I’d have my blog posts, Flickr photos, Del.icio.us links, YouTube videos, Twitter tweets, GMail, and any other social tools—plus the tags, timestamps, and (perhaps) GeoCodes that go with each. I could go a step further and do a desktop crawl for files, local photos (I haven’t thrown all 2500+ photos of Ella into Flickr), perhaps POP email, timestamps, folder names, etc.

Would this second approach be perfect? No. But could it be done? Yes. To me, the Semantic Web just feels too much like a dream that is unachievable. The panelists were definitely giving me that vibe, too. There is already so much scientific information out there. You can’t go back and put all this meta info on it. And for all the information that’s coming out, it’s hard to force people to follow a strict process of extracting certain data for the Semantic Web purposes. You can, however, track how that information floats around the web, how it is tagged, sorted, commented, annotated, etc.

One thing that didn’t sit well with me is the fact that scientists won’t blog because there’s no “credit” for that. They need to release their info in an environment that can be tallied up to rank them against their “competition.” Well, does writing a book directly help a blogger’s Technorati ranking? No, not directly. But with that book out there, more discussion about that person will ensue. Even though links are not being made to the book, the book is causing more discussion. I would like to think that a scientist that shares by blogging and commenting would gain notoriety in other ways. Perhaps not, but I’d like to think that.

But what do I know? I’m just a web hippie. I know many Semantic Web folks turn up their noses at things like Microformats. But to me, that feels a bit too much like someone that complains about small size of the in-ground pools that one person is digging as he is trying to dig an ocean. Only problem is, he’s been digging for ten years already and there’s no swimming in sight.

I have a “problem” named after me.

When I was chatting with Chris Messina a while back, he was telling me about how OpenID can solve the problems I brought up in my post hCard Overflow: Could We Use rel=hcard?. My homie Brian Oberkirch referenced that post in a recent post of his own titled OpenID, Portable Social Networks, and The Darowski Problem.

Darowski problem? WTF? That’s awesome!

I’m not sure what technically makes someone an “A-list” blogger, but to me, Oberkirch certainly is one. I gotta say, I’m honored to have the contact info overload problem be associated with me (a line I never thought I’d say when I was in design school). Then he emails me with a cryptic message that just says “Check it”, and a URL. He’s We’ve been picked up by ZDNet blogger Eric Norlin on a post called Brian Cracks the Identity and Web 2.0 Problem. After getting over the “Darwoski” spelling in Norlin’s piece, I’m pretty psyched. I literally have a problem.

So, back to OpenID. My god, this is needed. Read Brian’s article for a great summary of what the problem is and how OpenID will address it. Chris had told me to put OpenID on my to-do list for 2007 and Brian just gave me a bit more of a kick in the ass.

I’ve linked to quite a few Inside the Net interviews on here. Turns out, Amber MacArthur has gotten too good for our own good. She’s been hired full time by City News International in Canada, so her time to conduct interviews for ITN has been severly slashed. It’s a bummer, but it’s geat for her. I first heard of Amber when Adam Christiansen of the MacCast interviewed her for his first interview ever. Since then, I’ve become a very dedicated listener to Inside the Net and watcher of commandN.

Amber is a Leo Laporte proteg√©, as she has worked with him on many TechTV and TWIT.tv projects (including Inside the Net). From what I gather, Inside the Net is far from her most popular venture, but it is my favorite because of the quality of her guests. It seems to always consistently be all the people I want to hear from. Inside the Net isn’t going away completely, but it will be different. Specifically, it’ll be less interview and more live commentary with Leo about new things she found on the web (presumably while researching for City News). I still enjoy Amber’s commentary—commandN is great and I’ve been checking out her early work at City News and it is fantastic.

The last traditional interview episode of ITN (Amberless, just Leo) was with David Sawyer MacFarland, author of the new CSS Missing Manual book. I took a half-day CSS session with David at WebVisions, so it was pretty neat hearing from him again. I hope to check the book out when a bit of time frees up.

Some other great interviews that stick out:

• David Sawyer MacFarland (#39)
• Jeffrey Yan of Digication (#35)
• David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals (#30)
• Jeff Robbins of Drupal (#25) ***
• Dan Cederholm (#19)
• Brian Oberkirch and Alexander Muse of Big in Japan (#17)
• Jason Fried of 37signals (#5)
• Chris Messina (then with Flock) (#2)

In Googling for this post, I noticed Amber’s now a big enough start to have a fan site! Right… I almost forgot to mention that Amber is… what’s the technical word I’m looking for here… adorable?

So, good luck to Amber. Inside the Net completely rocked.

*** Just a note on this one. A few minutes in, it was nice to hear that this was THE Jeff Robbins of Orbit. I absolutely loved Orbit when Jeff was fronting them. In fact, in my former “I want to be a rock star” life, I actually used to chat about Orbit’s label, Lunch Records, with drummer Paul Buckley.

A few items/products/discussions/tidbits about discussion had crossed my plate recently and I figured I’d write about them. They are

• iTunesU
• TeachMac
• Digication
• The Future of Education in a Digitally Convergent World

iTunesU

I had heard about iTunesU a while back, but a recent post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog made it enter my consciousness again. What is it? iTunes U is a way for universities to make content available to students and faculty through the iTunes Music Store. As Apple itself says it:

iTunes U* is a free, hosted service for colleges and universities that provides easy access to your educational content, including lectures and interviews 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s the most powerful way to manage a broad range of audio or video content and make it available quickly and easily to students, faculty, and staff.

So, what makes this worth talking about? The possibilites. Only a handful of schools are taking part, but this really could provide a whole additional business model for the iTunes/iPod combo. For me (and many others), podcasting changed the way I used my iTunes/iPod. I was educating myself on web design news and trends and also keeping myself entertained. Taking that education and actually making it a regimented full-fledged course seems like a logical next step. Forget the implications this has for universities—how about training companies that want to charge a few bucks per “episode”? It could use the same foundation as TV shows. A “season” is a “class”. “Episodes” are “lessons”. Buy one class or buy the “season pass” to enter the class and receive all lessons for a flat rate. It doesn’t have to be just tech training. People can be trained on ANYTHING. How to make the best minestrone soup? How to lay down a perfect bunt? How to teach your dog to sit? User generated training? All in iTunes? Apple, of course, gets to take their cut and the author gets the rest.

I’m sure there are many other implications of this (who hosts the content, what pricing model, who handles the tech support, etc.), but those can be answered later. This, obviously, is a braindump.

TeachMac

I first heard of TeachMac because they are a proud sponsor of a great podcast—Mac OS Ken. TeachMac is “The Modular Macintosh Learning and Teaching System”. A lot of what I just said about iTunesU is being implemented here. It is user generated content. TeachMac takes a cut. The author takes a cut. But it is all Mac training. The shell and technology really are independent of the content. They could use this to host training programs of any kind. They just choose to focus on the Mac.

iTunes is huge, though. They could afford to branch out and the be the home of all things training. They already host podcasts from NPR and music from Paris Hilton. Training as diverse as making apple pie to building a skyscraper is hardly pushing the envelope.

So, what I like about TeachMac is they are already doing something that I think iTunes could easily do but hasn’t yet.

Digication

What pissed me off the most when I heard of Digication was the fact that about an hour before listening, I told my boss about how something like it would be a great idea for a product. They thought of it first (and quite a while ago). Congrats to them (seriously, nice product).

Anyway, keeping with the trend of where I heard about these products, Digication was featured on Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte’s wonderful podcast, Inside the Net. Digication is a social networking site (yes, another), but this one is for the use of education. One line I like to use at work is that we have to start designing for people that grew up on Halo and MySpace. Digication uses the great communication and collaboration features of MySpace, but in a learning-friendly way.

Kids are still going to use their MySpaces and their Facebooks, but at least this site helps make education a bit more compelling for them in a format that has already been proven to reach students (just look at any stats on MySpace’s usage). Digication is a walled garden. Students cannot see content or link to people outside of their assigned classes. The discussion is supposed to revolve around the coursework, though I’m sure the teachers and developers would rather see classmates chit-chat about off topic material on Digication than on any of the alternatives. The site features threaded message board discussion, calendars and tasks, easy course material creation, grading (nice addition, better keep that secure though!), and more.

Digication is free to the first 1000 students. There is a monthy, per student charge after that. I’m not a user of the site, so I wonder if the value comes when a single class starts using it or when a whole school is on the system (and that’s if a teacher can even sign up if the whole school is not in the system). For teachers at schools that won’t adopt something like this, a class blog would be a good alternative (though you probably want to password protect it for just your students). Although, I do like the idea of Digication being something a bit more regimented and school-approved. Teachers are human, too, so you never know what they might be saying to your kids on a personal blog. I guess the key here is for parents to just be more observant and involved. Of course, that’s a blog post (or an entire blog) for another time.

The Future of Education in a Digitally Convergent World

I’ve mentioned a few hundred times that I love podcasted conference sessions. One from South By Southwest 2006 that was a good listen was The Future of Education in a Digitally Convergent World. I actually didn’t know anybody on the panel and don’t remember a ton from listening to it, but I remember it being a good conversation. Here’s what the site says about it:

From online degree programs to instant knowledge available on Google and interactive online education in the K-12 space, digital convergence is transforming education in meaningful ways. But we are only beginning to explore the ways in which digital technology can change and improve education around the world. From virtual online communities to adaptive learning programs and 3D simulation worlds, the future of technology in education will continue to change dramatically. This panel will explore what is next in the world of technology-enabled learning.

There’s nothing specific to report there, but it was good to hear a few different outlooks on where this whole education thing is headed.

So, there you have some random notes on education. Sorry it wasn’t more formulaic, but it had been stewing for a while and needed to get out.

The traditional software model goes something like:

Develop Software » Sell Software » Write Upgrade Version » Sell Upgrade » Repeat

Then came the web. The original web model was generally:

Publish Free Content » Plaster with Advertising » Repeat

Other more application-like sites then came along and were able to charge for their content or service, like:

Develop Service » Generate Paid Subscriptions » Enhance Service (through features or content) » Repeat

These models were created for tools that have a user working with the tool within a vacuum. The user can have a great experience with the tool, but he really has no idea who else is using the tool or what they think of it. Social media web applications fill the void for users wanting something more interactive where they can tap into the collective opinions and expertise of the other users of the tool.

There seems to be a lot of information out there about how to treat your existing users well; how to keep your users; how to allow your users to best use your application; how to make money off your traffic; etc. But my burning question has been… how the heck do you get the users there in the first place?

Not all social media web applications are created equal. Just to give you an idea of what I’m dealing with, my site is a professional resource that allows users within a particular field to work together, train each other, solve problems, and communicate. So this is not a MySpace where people are just there to socialize and connect. This is also not like the social aspects of Amazon, where the discussion is essentially a layer over a database of products or other items. The approach I need to take for my site is much different than the approach other developers should take for theirs.

I have brainstormed about four different approaches to solving the problem of how to get the initial user base for your web site. Different approaches, of course, need to be taken for building on an existing user base. But as far as your first group of users, here’s what I’ve got:

1. Populate Static Data to Spark Discussion

This first option doesn’t really help me for my site, but it can help in others. For example, if you were creating a site where the discussion revolved around books, you could populate your site with a database of books (I’m not sure where you would get such a database, but perhaps it is out there). The thought here is that if it is out there to be discussed, people would be more apt to discuss it.

The problem is, you’re starting at zero here. Your very first user—make that your second user (you need to be your first user)—will come and see absolutely no discussion. So what is that user’s incentive to stay? Sure, there is a sense of “I was here first” that appeals to some, but how long is user #2 going to wait for user #3 or user #100?

2. Populate With Supplemental Content

This is an approach I’m heavily leaning towards with my site. Again, my site is a professional resource for a particular field. The supplemental content we intend to provide is a training curriculum. So, even before any discussion ensues, there is already something of value available on the site.

Since this content starts off independent of the social discussion, it won’t run the risk of sounding forced, as some early discussion could sound. The curriculum is used to spark discussion for the social aspect of the site: users following the curriculum can post problems they have encountered, tips and hints, success stories, etc. The curriculum will also be editable by a yet-to-be-determined user class with certain privileges. So, the ability to contribute to what we hope will be the premier online training resource for this field could help motivate discussion in other aspects of the site.

This approach, however, can run the risk of an identity crisis for the site. Is it all about the supplemental content (in this case, the curriculum)? You have to make connections to the social aspects of the web site to make sure users know there is more available. Another downside for this is that somebody still has to be the first user to enter the social aspect and risk talking to themselves.

3. Pay for Content

I’m not sure if this approach is used much at all, but I don’t see much of a benefit. A company could hire an outside firm to pay users to contribute to the site (for example, a pay per post incentive). What this paid-for content can give you is a base of content on which to build.

However, if these users are paid, what happens to them once the incentive (money) to take part is gone? With social media sites, the value is just as much in connecting with users as it is in reading their contributions. So, if the new users see that all of these contributors have jumped ship, how does that look to new users?

4. Invite-only Extended Beta Period

What would a Web 2.0 application be without a proud “BETA” badge on it? Seriously though, the invite-only period can be a huge help. This beta period starts off with enlisting friends and acquaintances to take part in your system. These people will generally be passionate about the site—that’s why you asked them to take part. So, in that respect, they will most resemble the type of users you are trying to attract once you go live.

Starting with users that are close to you will also mean your early adopters will be more forgiving and cognizant of the “beta” aspect of the site. But including them early will give them a strong sense of ownership to the site, which is the holy grail for user experience on a social media site. You can release more invites to your users periodically, allowing them to invite their friends and acquaintances. Word of mouth is an extremely effective advertising there is. This way, the size of the user base can grow consistently with the robustness of the infrastructure and the expansiveness of the content.

Of course, there are some downsides to this approach, as with all approaches. Taking this approach assumes that you have the contacts to get it off the ground. If you’re creating a social media site dedicated to Saint Bernards but don’t happen to know any Saint Bernard owners, you have a more difficult time (though hanging out on canine message boards and blogs is a good place to start).

You also aren’t getting a good sense of the behaviors of your potential users that weren’t part of the invite process. The beta users will be more forgiving and less apt to fade in their activity. Outside users have nothing invested in the site. Will they sign up based on the home page design you are using? You forget that your beta users probably signed up without seeing the current iteration of the site.

My Approach

For my first social media site, I plan to take a combination of #2 (supplemental content—the curriculum) and #4 (invite-only beta). The beta period should be interesting, since I’m not part of the field I’m designing the site for. But I know some people who are, and hopefully together we can identify the best ways to approach that community.

If you have any more approaches, please leave a comment.

Two days ago, I gave my brown bag presentation titled WebVisions 2006 Recap. It was an internal Aptima presentation shared over video conference (Woburn, MA and Washington, DC). The talk lasted about 38 minutes and included topics such as web standards, semantic markup, microformats, community marketing, corporate blogging, decentralized living, bulletproof web design, and social information architecture (all related back to the sessions I attended).

The feedback from the presentation has been quite good—it was my first presentation while flying solo (did one as a duo before… another as a quartet). To give you an idea of the audience, most of these technologies were absolutely brand new to folks within Aptima. So, some of it may be a little high level. But I find all of it very interesting and it was a pleasure to make the presentation.

• View the Presentation (audio with slides… 18.7 MB Flash file)
• Listen to the Presentation (audio only… 17.4 MB mp3 file)

I wanted to throw some thanks to Brian Oberkirch, Erin Julian, Nick Finck, and Will Pate for the use of their photos in the presentation. Also, big thanks to Aptima for sending me to the conference!

Also, a quote of MINE made Derek Powazek’s site?

Well, I’m not going across the Atlantic, but on the way home from WebVisions, I am going across the country. I’m going from Portland, Oregon to Providence, RI via… Phoenix. Yeah, a big checkmark across the good ol’ U S of A. I’m on the Phoenix to Providence leg right now (the five hour flight that came after the three hour one). Since it’s a five hour flight, Southwest gave us a WHOLE CAN of soda. Of course, I open it up and, it explodes.

How do you deal with it? I’m in the window seat, so it’s not like I can hold it over an empty seat until it’s done erupting. And it’s not like I can move around at all. I even had my PowerBook out (but closed), sitting on the traytable. Luckily, I quickly moved the can away to save it. Then I’ve got it hanging over the back of the traytable… I look down and my laptop bag is open with my recently signed copy of Dan’s Bulletproof Web Design exposed. Oh hell no, that’s not going to do.

The only thing I have left to do is just let it finish erupting while running down my leg. Not a pleasurable experience, but the laptop and the book are fine. I guess a super-sticky leg isn’t as bad as a lapful of cranberry juice though.

With that, I will go into some final thoughts about WebVisions:

• This was my first modern web design conference. I absolutely loved it. With the exception of one snoozer of a session, every single one was inspiring and insightful. I can’t wait until next year’s event.
• I met Dan Cederholm. Twice. I made sure to talk about Dave Roberts.
• People like Jeremiah Owyang are what the so-called “Web 2.0″ is all about. It’s about sharing, collaboration, and helping. I used to feel like web design was similar to many other fields—people were protective of their intellectual property. Not this new crop of designers. They write, they share, they help. And it makes this a great field to be in. It’s not just Jeremiah, but all I had to do was mention to him that I was getting into community and he immediately showed me things to help me out.
• The Design Panel was one of the most enlightening seventy-five minutes of my professional career.
• I have never seen such a high concentration of Macs ANYWHERE (and I’ve been to a Macworld Expo).
• User Experience design is so much cooler than… well, anything else. I’m pretty jealous of the jobs that Jeremiah, Kelly Goto and Gene Smith have. I think a lot of what they are doing can help Aptima, and I plan to get that ball rolling.
• For some reason, I feel like the Derek Powazek and Heather Champ reality show would be addictive to us techies.
• When I started Traces of Inspiration, it was really just to dump some thoughts and links while researching community and Web 2.0 for a new Aptima project. I blogged my WebVisions notes and suddenly I’m getting my first trackbacks ever. I’m being linked to, and it’s pretty darned cool. Jeremiah was the first trackback I ever received, for waht it’s worth. I told him that and he was like “cool… wait… first ever?”
• And lastly, there’s just one thing that I don’t like about WebVisions… the fact that I was away from my wife and little girl for a few days. I’m still a fairly new dad and that’s very hard for me (harder for Erin, I’m sure). I can’t imagine how Dan Cederholm feels after all this speaking with a little one of his own at home (dude, Jack is totally adorable!).
• I want to thank those who set up WebVisions and the folks at Aptima who’s projects paid the bills for me to go. It was well worth it for not just the projects, but for the company itself.

Some more wrap-ups:
Dan Cederholm
Jeremiah Owyang
D. Keith Robinson
Bryan Veloso
Micki Krimmell
Matt Anderson
Erin Julian
Bryan Veloso
Nick Finck
Conference Web Page

Design Panel

Spakers: Bryan Veloso (Moderator), Dan Cederholm, D. Keith Robinson, Mike Davidson

Every once in a while you go to a panel that is just … fantastic.

This panel was three web rock stars (Dan, Keith, and Mike) and a guy that looks like he’ll be part of the next generation very soon (Bryan). Bryan was nervous going into this (as stated on his blog), but he did very well as the moderator.

My battery was low for this one, so I scribbled down five pages of notes. here’s the transcription (if I can read them)…

What’s wrong with web design today:

• Internet Explorer
  • IE7 is better but still not where it needs to be
  • It’s not necessary to wait until IE6 is down to 0% usage before ignoring it.
  • Some site serve or more basic CSS for IE6 & below (make them want to upgrade!)
• Revenue being the bottom line in driving design decisions
  • Problems happen when short term revenue drives design decisions and not long term revenue.
  • You’re not an artist. Get over it.
    • Art provokes emotion.
    • Design provokes reaction.
• The disconnect between graphic design and web design.
  • Creativity bar is higher in graphic design.
  • David Carson would be a bad web designer (too abstract)
• Too much focus on technology, technique, and latest trends
  • Technology is means to an end
  • Talk about fundamentals
  • learn to design; solve the design problem with something like AJAX
  • CSS isn’t design, it’s a technique.
  • More focus on graphic desing & usability
  • There is such a small set of tools
    • Real creativity comes from constraints
• Browsers, HTML & CSS are moving along at a glacial pace
  • CSS3 will take a long time to become standard
  • The web exists for communication
    • Not for clean code nazis
    • Know when to break the rules
• There are ridiculous arguments about bad design actually being good
  • MySpace, Google, Craig’s List, etc.
• There isn’t enough focus on copy as a design element
• We need new heroes.
  • Every industry needs someone to look up to.

What’s right with web design today:

• Best practices are now part of web standards
• Designers are creating their own design products and companies
  • If you an’t convince them your idea is better, become their competitor.
  • Having someone focused on design at the top of the company is great, until you have to worry about really making money.
  • Freedom to make something as you would want to do it.
• People are learning the right way at an earlier age.
  • There weren’t classes for this when we were in school (I didn’t learn web design in college, even)
• Many different people from many different backgrounds are trying their hand in design
  • There is a lot you can learn from print design (white space, grid, typography, etc.)
• Web designers are maturing, beginning to develop good fundamental basis
• Complexity of design is increasing in proportion with average bandwidth
  • Nobody cares about dialup anymore
• Flexible platforms make design more leverageable (WordPress, etc.)

The most important design elements:

• Clear and defined purpose
• Solid concept well executed
• Solid architecture
• Balance
• Answers “who?”, “what?”, and “why?”
• Easy for beginners, but still good for advanced users
• Easy navigation from one area to another
• Personality and memorability: standing out in the crowd
  • Learn how to write!

Breaking it down (what’s good):

• JeffCroft.com — creative comments
• thebignoob.com — great photos
• 31three.com — laptop image
• Technorati — clean URLs
  • URLs are interface design
  • no subdomains effects your search results positively
  • good structure helps your rankings
• veerle.duoh.com — art & illustration
• dustindiaz.com — style switcher
• muledesign.com — creative fine print
  • (scroll to bottom)
• uxmag.com — widget front page
• tatteredfly.com — flybox
• nytimes.com — typography
• digg.com — comment ratings
• digitalmash.com — dynamic head
• bearskinrug.co.uk — interactive bear
  • (on the right side of screen)
• nymetro.com — typography

Reassembly:

• Take elements of design and apply them to projects
• Do what fits
• Little details can make the most impact, but don’t spend 99% of time on it
  • Concept first
  • Details later

Spin it to make it your own:

• Nothing is new, just spun differently
• Every designer develops a style eventually
• Better to be good than original (on the web)
• Don’t steal: use nodes of design inspiration
• Mix up your process (comp first, css first, etc.)

I attended a snoozer of a seminar in the middle here… the only dud. I won’t comment on that one… This next one was another good one, though.

Social Metadata and the Relevance Revolution

Speaker: Gene Smith

• Harness what users are doing to make your site more relevant
• Emergent Information Architecture
  • Became Collective Intelligence
  • Social Information Architecture
• Takeaways
  • Better understanding of social systems we are so engrossed in today
  • Think about feedback and how to incorporate it into the design process
• IA: Structural Design of shared informaton environments
• Shared design of semi-structured information environments
  • Users are co-creators
• Social IA: User actions create some or all of the structure of an information environment
  • Using the wisdom of crowds to solve the problems of IA
• Amazon: Granddaddy of social IA
• Wikipedia: without the contributions of users it would be empty
• Flickr & tagging
• Augmentation vs. Co-creation: Levels of contribution from users
• The web is now part of our social structure
  • Go on to have fun, too.
  • Shouldn’t ESPN know that he ALWAYS clicks on the NHL button?
• Three ingredients of SIA
  • Capture user actions
    • Things people do online that we can track
    • Building blocks
      • Popularity
      • Community
      • Reputation
    • Ignore higher goals and motivations
  • Aggregate and display
    • Brining together user actions in a relevant way
    • Displaying them
    • Rules
    • Kinds:
      • Listing
      • Ranking
      • Clustering
      • Collaborative Filtering
      • Other algorithms
  • Feedback
    • Places to intervene
      • Introduce delays (comment moderation on blogs)
      • Modify the strength of feedback loops
      • Who has access to what informaton?
      • Adjust incentives and punishments
      • Change the system
• Challenges
  • Spam
  • Gaming the system
  • Balance
  • Relevance
  • Unintended consequences
• Design Principles (for Social IA)
  • Allow for different levels of engagement
  • Monitor and tweak feedback loops
  • Participate in larger ecosystem
    • YouTube is viral
  • Design new actions, aggregators, display
• genesmith@atomiq.org

Keynote: The Dawning of the Age of Experience

Speaker: Jared Spool

This keynote was done by Jared Spool of Boston-based User Interface Engineering. I’m actually more familiar with Jared’s colleague Joshua Porter for his writing on Bokardo. Jared was very entertaining, though. A few notes:

• Successful user experience integrates the user AND the business.
• Successful experience design is learned, but is not available to introspection.
  • (Chicken sexing example)
• Successful experience design is invisible.
  • (Think air conditioning — if it’s just right, nobody notices it)
• Successful experience design is multidisciplinary.
• Successful experience design is cultural.
• Redesign is dead — embrace incremental change.

More Notes:

• Ryan’s Notes
• Brian’s Notes (on the Design Panel)

Bulletproof Web Design

Speaker: Dan Cederholm

Well, if you’ve been to this site before, you know that I’m quite the Dan Cederholm fanboy. So, it was great to see him speak (and introduce myself afterwards). This seminar went over ways to make your site less vulnerable to worst case scenarios (content adjustment, browsers, user settings, etc.). Well, I’ll avoid the gushing and go into the notes:

• Dan filled the room.
• Bulletproof =
  • Worst-case scenarios
  • flexibility
• Baby Jack – born premature
  • Real life worst-case scenario
  • Easy to worry about stupid stuff (diapers, strollers)
• A site visitor couldn’t read site with images off
  • Used Faux columns
  • Text was same as background color
  • Fix: Include background color equivalents to background images
• Building in Salem – storage facility
  • Built windows, but covered with cement
  • Was this because they planned for future, thinking that it wouldn’t always be a storage facility?
• Bulletproof pants
  • Tab slides in an out as your waistline expands.
• 3 areas you can be bulletproof
  • Content – text sizes, content amounts (pants)
  • Editing – content changes, maintenance (building)
  • Environment – device/browser, scenarios (images off, etc) (baker’s dozen)
• Recommended from ALA: John Allsopp “A Dao of Web Design”
• Bulletproof arrow
  • 4,362 ways to accomplish the same goal
  • Solution #1
    • make an image
  • Solution #2
    • CSS
    • Arrow as background image, place text over it
    • Not bulletproof (if text is increased, arrow does not resize)
      • People really do adjust text size
      • You’re not only testing text size, but adjustments in content amount
      • Use relative text sizes with confidence
  • Solution #3
    • Flexible
    • Easy to edit
    • allows for varying text sizes or content amount
    • Make the text a heading
    • use a background image for just arrowhead
• Web design in a nutshell
  • Ways that Work
  • Ways that Work Better
  • Ways that Don’t Work
• Bulletproof tabs (Cork’d)
  • Absolute positioning – breaks if text size increased
  • Double self-clearing floats
  • Think Modular
  • NetFlix
    • They think in fixed height
    • Use vertical sliding doors
    • There is a breaking point (but can accommodate much more than before)
• Clearleft.com
  • Dog ear on right – simple to attach
  • Simple details easy to implement
• Odeo
  • Rounded corners in top left and bottom right
• Reusable ornaments (Cork’d)
  • Swash below text
  • Same image, different widths
  • Always centered
  • Tundro, reusable line behind text
• ESPN search tabs
  • Needed to hold number of search results
  • Needed to go from image to CSS (to allow tab to expand)
• Microformats.org
  • Hovering over unordered list items
• Haveamint.com – link treatment with background, two borders, and padding
• Cork’d – Icons attached to text links
  • class=edit (each class gets a type of icon)
• Fixed vs. Fluid
  • max-width, min-width (no IE)
  • Frame by % instead
  • Simplebits (maxwidth in center, % columns on side)
• Variable fixed-width layout
  • Javascript checks size of window and adjusted styles accordingly
  • Collylogic.com
• Bulletproof tools
  • 10 second usability test
    • Take away the design
    • Is the site still understandable?
    • Like an x-ray of the document
    • Does the structure make sense?
  • MLB=bad
  • McAfee=good
• Validation as a tool
  • 100% validation is difficult to maintain
  • Validation during construction is key
  • Eliminates head-scratching CSS problems
  • Firefox: Web Developers Tool Kit
  • Safari: Tidy
• Bulletproof dashboard
  • 10 second usability test (disable styles)
  • Turn off images
  • Validate
  • DigDug Text Test (DDTT)
• The bulletproof concept
  • The positive power of buzzwords
  • Embrace flexibility
  • Let go of pixel precision
  • plan ahead for worst case scenarios

For Aptima: Well, this is one of those things that can only help design of all kinds.

About Interface: Designing for Lifestyle

Speaker: Kelly Goto

I hadn’t planned to go to any of the seminars at this time, opting to just wing it and see what looked interesting. I’ve seen Kelly Goto’s name around quite a bit, but knew little about her. I was glad I attended this one—she’s a great speaker. This talk was a lot about mobile technology, but also about ethnography.

• This is the year for US to shine or flop in mobile space
• “Getting inside the minds of customers is essential for ‘aha!’ moments that lead to innovation.” (Business Week, April 2006)
• Lifestyle and Innovation focused companies
  • jetBlue, TiVo, Google, Apple
    • jetBlue designed around what customers want.
    • TiVO has an interface that fits in with how people actually live.
    • Google GMAPS – people on the go know what’s near them
    • Apple iPod – personality & lifestyle driven
      • Apple & Nike (corporate giant mashup)
• How can you design an appropriate experience
  • Practical
  • Emotional
  • Ordered pretty coffee maker despite poor interface
    • Worked until they “got it” because they were emotionally attached
• More than usable
  • Are you emotionally attached to it?
  • Do you think it is useful?
  • Does it meet your needs?
  • Can you integrate it into your life?
  • Just because something is usable doesn’t mean it is meeting your customer’s needs.
• 3 takeaways
  • See how large brands are incorporating lifestyle research
  • Gain insight on the trends impacting our society
  • Take away practical methods of rapid research incorporating usability and “deep hanging out” into your design & development process
    • observe customers
• Ethnography = “deep hanging out”
• Research & Design
  • Traditional: Research informs design
  • Goal: Disciplines are merged
• Focus group/survey vs. Observation
  • People are themselves in observation, not as much in a focus group

For Aptima: Not sure, but as we get into more productizing, we can see how to make our customers really get into our products. Our products are more like something they would use on the job, so perhaps there’s a way to make that a little easier on them.

CSS Bootcamp

Speaker: David MacFarland

This seminar lasted the first half-day of the event. I didn’t know David MacFarland before today, but he was a great presenter. The seminar was a mix of things I’ve recently learned, a refresh of things I’ve known for a while, and some new things I look forward to adding to my arsenal. One thing worth noting is the fact that the last hour of the seminar was devoted to bugs with Internet Explorer. Why this browser has so much of a market share, I’ll never understand.

Some other tidbits I took from this seminar is not to put your site’s title (or company name) within an h1 tag. The reasoning is that search engines LOVE pages developed in standards, because the code is so semantic. Engines pay special attention to what is in that h1 tag, so it makes sense to put the title of that page in there. For example, a blog page would have the post’s title as the h1. A company’s web site would have something like “About Us” in the h1.

I never paid a whole lot of attention to the “active” state of an HTML link… I usually just style it the same as the plain link. The only time I’ve ever seen the active state is that brief split second that I’m clicking on a link. Well, I neglected to remember that some people tab through elements of a page. And when the user tabs through these links, the currently selected (active) link is styled with the a:active selector. So, that’s something I’ll take into consideration in the future.

I also learned a bit more about floats (allows you to use CSS layout instead of table layout), learned that there’s actually an address tag in HTML (who knew?), and that David calls a style that is the product of many different cascaded styles a “Frankenstyle.”

For Aptima: Well, this seminar means a lot for Aptima. I’m currently developing my first true web standards site (not the one I originally though I would be developing… unfortunately—another project jumped in the lead to become the first). HOwever, the original site should be right behind it, making another project I will need this stuff for. Plus, Aptima.com was developed with a good amount of CSS in there, but it’s still table-based and I’d like to fix this at some point.

Let Go, Jump In: Community Marketing Strategies for Empowered Customers

Speakers: Kit Seeborg (moderator), Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Oberkirch, Dan Saffer

The first slide of this combination presentation read “Embrace Intelligent customers.” Each member of the panel then took a turn with some opening remarks:

Brian Oberkirch:

• We (the users) have attention scarcity.
• Marketers are no longer in control (We filter advertising with ad blockers, Tivo, etc.).
• Our best tools are not technological.
  • head (thoughts) and heart (committment)
• Recommended book: Brand Hijacking
• Letting go does not mean laissez-faire.
• Avoid advertising by other means (no trickery).
• Flickr has great brand persona.
  • Downtime message turns into a user activity.

Jeremiah Owyang:

• Got Hitachi’s CTO blogging
  • Toughest part was getting him to open up
  • No problems with him being public face of company
• Started industry wide wiki (for storage community)
  • let go, link to competitors, take control of industry

Dan Saffer:

• Companies want more customer participations.
• Power Law of Participation
• Different types of users will display different participation behaviors
  • You can design for them all
• The simple act of reading a news story can contribute to the community by providing input to a “Most Popular” list

Then, some other topics were discussed by the whole panel:

Trust:

• Who would make the best corporate blogger (for your company)?
• Are you afraid of what your customers might say?
• The future is building products together with customers

Risk:

• Audience communicates with each other (not dialogue, triologue).
• Executives are message holders and message controllers
• Companies feel comment moderation is a giant suck of time
  • Give users moderation tools
  • onus not completely on the company
• There is a mistrust of amateurs among professionals.
• Does citizen journalism dilute the brand?
  • For example, when users upload photos incorrectly to a news site.

I asked a question:

I work for an R&D company that is currently moving towards productizing our offerings. I am interested in getting the bright company executives blogging. How do you deal with the line between trying to spark discussion in the communty vs. looking like you’re just trying to pitch your products. For example, Ryan Carson takes flack every time he mentions DropSend.

The advice:

• Gear your posting towards problem solving and best practices.
• Don’t even mention the product if you don’t have to.
• If you do talk about it, don’t link to it. If they want, they can find it.
• Some of the best blog posts can be:
  • What do we need to improve…
  • We’re not very good at…
• People will tell you if you’re talking about your projects too much.
• Keep it conversational – conversations cannot be one-sided or the other person will just be annoyed.

For Aptima: Obviously, even though I went into this seminar for one project, I came out with more of an attack plan to get Aptima’s brilliant minds blogging and sharing with the community. My current project work doesn’t have as much of a marketing aspect because it isn’t really selling a product, per se. But a lot of this still applies to retaining the user base.

Step Away from the Computer

Speaker: Andy Baio

Andy talked about when online communities meet offline.

• First “meetups” — HAM radio (amateur radio)
  • Geeks with funny handles chatting over long distances without meeting.
  • Referred to people they met as “Eyeball Contacts”
  • 1947 first HAMfest in Atlantic City
• Meeting BBS people in person was defining moment of Andy’s life
• Why go offline? What does meeting face to face fill in?
  • Face to face is high fidelity
  • No subtleties and tones online (emoticons half assed approach)
• Andy’s Half-baked Unified Theory of Meeting Offline
  • Personality
    • need a way to express who you are
    • makes people want to meet in person
    • tons of info asked on MySpace
  • Group Identity
    • Are you emotionally invested in the community
    • If not, won’t be motivated to self-organize
  • The Commons
    • Public space for people to self-organize
    • Digg has no form of commons

I actually had a “meetup” while I was here in Portland. I run a community web site of my own. It’s centered around a baseball simulation league, the Ted Williams Memorial League. We have 24 guys across the U.S. and Canada, and I’ve met about half of them face to face. Wednesday night, Mark (who lives 45 minutes north of Portland) came down and we hung out. It was the first time we had met face to face. While Mark was here, we recorded a podcast, so it was good fun. But I could certainly relate to what Andy was talking about today.

For Aptima: My Aptima tie-in for this one was in the event that we develop a community site that is wildly successful, who’s to say we won’t one day have a small (or large?) conference based on the community? Even before we get to that point, “meetups” among users could certainly be possible.

The New Community: How Decentralized Conversation Empowers Individuals while Creating Community

Speaker: Derek Powazek

I first heard of Derek through an article he did for Vitamin. I also recently heard an interview with his wife, Heather Champ of Flickr, on the Web 2.0 Show. They both just seem like very fun people, and Derek was a great presenter.

• In 2000, wrote the book Design for Community
  • 4 pages devoted to “new thing called blogging
• Communities happen when people have the ability to use their voice in a public and immediate way.
• Web 1.0 – Community sites were company towns.
• Web 2.0 – Increasingly self-powered and independent.
• Connective Tissue – technologies power distributed community: blogs, commenting, tags, APIs, etc.
• Decentralizing: Commenting through your own blog makes for less flaming.
• Memes – proof of life
• Pros & Cons of decentralized community:
  • PROs: Self-ownership, nobody can turn you off
  • CONSs: Nobody is in charge, hard to converge, difficult tools
• Modern Company Towns:
  • Flickr, You Tube, MySpace (Frindster/LiveJournal/VOX), TypePad, Last.FM
• Now, we wear different hats.
  • Current: blog posts, everyone can read.
  • Future: Able to talk to specific groups
• Treat your community well – if you don’t they’ll leave.
• Go to where your community is – you cannot create community
  • Best you can do is create tools that people like to use, then they’ll hang out and end up making a community.
• Decentralized community better mirrors “real” community (for better or worse)
• Blogs have forced Company Towns to interact with the rest of the world.

For Aptima: This relates more to project work than it does to Aptima.com in the respect that I see a particular project as one of these mashup kind of sites that combines all sorts of different content types to educate the user base. They will have tools for collaboration and communication within the site. The other site that I’m working on (that is already in development) is based on a similar framework, but the user base isn’t quite as collaborative. It is more of an instructor/student relationship.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow will be a super cool day for me. WebVisions is touting their speakers as “rock stars” and tomorrow I will meet the supreme rocker of the mall, Dan Cederholm. He’s giving a seminar on his book Bulletproof Web Design and is also taking part in a Design panel. Plus, he’s got a book signing, and I just happen to have a copy of Bulletproof right next to me.

His first book, Web Standards Solutions is absolutely fantastic. I’m so glad I picked that book as my first foray into Web Standards (well, after reading Dan’s blog—and others—for months). Anyway, Dan is one of the many great designers out there that have really influence the way I’m looking at my work—and my career path—lately. He is a pioneer in modern content delivery.

I haven’t decided what I’m seeing during the second slot yet… perhaps About Interface: Designing for Lifestyle (presented by Kelly Goto). Kelly appears to be a rock star herself, but I’m not familiar with her yet. After lunch, I’m wrestling between three good ones, but I’ll have to choose between Tagging in the Real Web World (very relevant to proejct work as more and more content populates the sites) and Beyond Just Content: Websites as Interactive Applications. That’s the next step to a lot of this web standards stuff… throwing a layer of AJAX on top of it to make it behave like a desktop application.

(Note: AJAX comes LAST though… you have to put it as a layer on top of everything else. That way, you have a web app that degrades nicely to standards compliant HTML on whatever device the user is using.)

Social Metadata and the Relevance Revolution (at 2:15) is also very project-relevant, but it competes against Scaling for Your First 100k Users. Okay, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself on getting 100k users.

Finally, we end with a keynote by Jared Spool, anther rock star I need to familiarize myself with. All in all, it looks like it’s going to be an awesome second day. This is looking like the type of conference that was made for me.

More Notes:

• Ryan’s Notes
• Brian’s Notes (on Stepping Away From the Computer)
• Brian’s Notes (on The New Community)
• Jeremiah’s Notes

Also See:

• Day 2, Part 1
• Day 2, Part 2
• Final Notes

The other day, I came across a nice introduction to Microformats that you should check out if you’ve never heard of them.

Sorry to pass you off to others’ sites, but I’m busy packing for the WebVisions 2006 conference tomorrow! The aforementioned Dan Cederholm is going to be presenting on Bulletproof Web Design. Can’t wait! Expect more posts from the conference.

Jason Fried is the director of 37signals, a Chicago-based design company that has moved from web site design to the development of web appliactions. 37signals is as much known for their philosophy as their products (though their products are extremely elegant and useful).

First off, I’ve listened to a few interviews with Jason, so I’m going to start with those. I highly recommend listening to them. Most recently, I listened to Jason on MarketingMonger, and that interview really pushed me to get this post up here (been meaning to talk about Jason for quite some time). Another very accessible interview with Jason was on Amber MacArthur’s Inside the Net podcast. The Web 2.0 Show had another great chat with Jason and finally on Vitamin Jason gives an interview titled Web apps, Cash flow and Pricing.

While that gives you enough to listen to for awhile, I’ll let you know some of the things I’ve really taken from 37signals over the past couple months:

• Web-based software is much easier to create and release than standard software. Think about it… if InDesign comes out with a great new feature, Quark has to wait until their next major release to respond. With web-based software, you can just update your site with a similar, if not better approach to solving the problem.
• The current software model begs you to create bloated, overfluffed software.
  With the traditional software model, you release your software and then must add to your software to get customers to purchase an updated copy. Are these additions really needed? Web apps use a monthly subscription-based model, which means there is a constant flow of income without needing to bloat the software to generate money. The software stays clean, fast, and elegant.
• Meetings are toxic. 37signals is a small company and therefore when the members of the company are meeting about various topics, they are not producing. Meetings, if necessary, should be kept extremely short and only involve the people that NEED to be there. How many times have you sat in an hour-long meeting and thought “I don’t need to be here.” Honestly, that’s why I’ve started bringing my laptop to all my meetings.
• Don’t fret too much over the initial design. Don’t wait around for everyone to approve a look and feel for a project. Just make it. Using web standards, the look can evolve easily. Using old Web 1.0 approaches (tables) this was very difficult. But if done correctly, you should just be able to start coding. Sure, sketching your ideas out at the very beginning is still a good thing, but don’t let this process go too long. I’ve let it go just a few days with my current project and I hope to start coding this week.

Well, there we go. There are many more—and maybe I’ll add some later—but those are just the thoughts off the top of my head (without listening to any of those interviews for about a week).

Most of what you have heard about MySpace may have come from the news. It’s all the rage with the kids these days and many of them are using it to misbehave. But the premise of the site is wonderfully inventive. You set up a page. You say what you like. You link to your friends’ pages. They leave comments. it’s social networking at its most basic and at its best. Just out of curiosity, I hopped on it while blogging this and right now I’m listening to killer music by my ex-girlfriend’s brother’s band.

Speaking of sites that have sparked controversy, YouTube is also listed in the Newsweek article. YouTube allows users to upload videos. Then they are tagged and linked very similarly to how Flickr photos are. Where YouTube has gotten into a bit of trouble is when users post TV shows and other copyrighted materials. A new site-imposed ten minute video clip limit is a first step at keeping the networks happy.

A few other sites are mentioned, but these two are heavy-hitters that I wanted to add to my list of sites that have succeeded with the new business model.

The sites discussed in this article are great ones—we’ve got del.icio.us and Flickr (both of which I’ve discussed before) as well as sites like Backpack (from 37signals). Were you aware that there are even web apps that can replace your word processor (like Writely or, if you’re a 37signals addict, they have Writeboard) or spreadsheet application (like Num Sum)?

There are certainly some issues with doing all your work online. If their server is down, you don’t have your work. Also, your work is stored on someone else’s server, so there are not only issues with access, but perhaps security. Still, as stability and security get better over time, desktop apps may become limited to things like high end image editing and video editing tools.

GMail is Google’s web-based mail application. You probably have heard of this one. It uses the AJAX approach so that it behaves like a desktop application (not the click-refresh-click-refresh model that you’re used to). It also abandons the idea of filing your mail in folders. Instead, you send your old messages to your “Archive” which you can then search quickly using Google’s incredible searching technologies.

Google Maps is Google’s MapQuest killer. It is a mapping/driving directions site that feels like a desktop app, again thanks to AJAX. You’d guess that it’s Flash or something, but no… that’s Javascript, baby.

Google Calendar takes a GMail approach to calendar management. Not only will typing something like “meet with Jon at 9am tomorrow” automatically create the event correctly, you can also publish your calendars to collaboratively share (if you don’t mind your data being on Google’s servers).

Del.icio.us is just plain neat. I’ve never been a big bookmarking guy, always preferring to just type the addresses of where I want to go. However, in doing all this research, I’ve wanted to save a bunch of articles for later. Well, what better way to try out another Web 2.0 app? Del.icio.us stores your bookmarks so you can share them on different machines. Not only that, but when you save a bookmark, you can see how many others have bookmarked it. Then you can read each users’ comments about that link. You can also see what else users that linked to that page linked to (think Amazon’s “Those who purchased X, purchased Y and Z”).

To top it all off, users tag each link with whatever terms they want for easy categorization. This type of tagging, called “folksonomy” (as opposed to “taxonomy”), generates a more accurate way to sort through data since it actually reflects how users are using the content, not how the site admins think they will use it.

Flickr is another site that relies on “folksonomy”, this one an online storage site for photographs. Flickr, while I don’t actually use it, has a rabid following. Flickr has gone beyond just photo uploading. You can create user groups to share and discuss, subscribe to other users’ photo albums, and comment on each others’ collections (and more).

Digg is a site where users submit tech stories. When other users read it and like it, they can “digg it”, which is essentially giving it a thumbs up. Articles receiving a lot of diggs are ranked on the top page, but users can also search for other sites that users digg.

There are many more out there than these, but I just wanted to talk about a few right off the bat. Rest assured that I will provide more.

Anyway, Tim O’Reilly tells us in this article what Web 2.0 really is. It goes beyond saying things like “a Web 2.0 site is developed in AJAX” or “a Web 2.0 site adheres to web standards.” He lists a series of principles that true Web 2.0 apps follow:

1. The Web as a Platform
2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence
3. Data is the Next Intel Inside
4. End of the Software Release Cycle
5. Lightweight Programming Models
6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device
7. Rich User Experiences

For my current project, I have a great deal of interest in “Harnessing Collective Intelligence”, so this article was a great resource. That section started with discussing how hyperlinking was the foundation of the original web and then traces that straight through to blogging and the “Wisdom of Crowds” associated with it. Sites like Wikipedia and the “folksonomy” tagging used in del.icio.us and Flickr are also discussed. But the article goes beyond just this principle and is a great read.