What I'm Reading This Week

In addition to the normal items I'm perusing available through my Google Share feed, came across these articles that might be of interest....

Windows IT Pro Troubleshooting DNS

Windows IT Pro Backup Confidence

 

My Vision of Web 3.0

Breaking out my crystal ball I have some visions of what I would like Web 3.0 to be. Before I get into that though I should probably qualify what Web 2.0 is to me....

Web 2.0 has brought about the advent of social networking and instant communications--this includes Facebook, MySpace, major adoption of instant messaging, Digg, Blogs, Wikis, mobile communications (texting, IM, & mail on phones), Podcasts, Photocasts, video chats, Skype, major adoption of digital cameras and the corresponding Flickr & PicasaWeb, online file storage (box.net, etc.), Gmail, Google Apps, and of course, RSS/XML implementation. That's a lot of stuff, and for me, Web 2.0 is about the massive bevy of information, communication, and news that's available at a moment's notice. If you're an enthusiast, it can also become overwhelming. Sometimes I feel more obligated to keep up on my RSS feeds than my e-mail. Strange, but true. I am a sponge for this stuff. I've embraced many of the technologies myself but it's coming to a point where there are several alternatives in each segment and not everyone follows one or the other. I have Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn accounts, as well as some others. I can't keep up on all of them so I pretty much gravitate to one from each category, but even that can be overwhelming. This is where my vision of Web 3.0 comes in.

I believe (or at least I want to believe) will be about transparency. I want all of these wonderful web-delivered applications to integrate at some level and be more intuitive to use (my mom is still struggling with trying to upload photos, and she's one of the braver ones to even try in my family) and talk to each other. I think there are hints of it with Google because Blogger and PicasaWeb are kind of linked (not totally, but a little) and of course you're either in the dark ages or a rebel if you don't have a Gmail account these days. Of course Google also has their Jabber-based IM client too so they're building the suite. Of course, some people are mumbling that Google is becoming the Evil Empire to replace Microsoft but that remains to be seen.

So, there's my prediction, Web 3.0 will be refinement and natural selection of the best of breed of the categories of Web 2.0 applications and it will be transparent and unobtrusive and intuitive. Now, can someone please make it happen SOON??? I might even pay $9.99 per month for it all ;-).

Blogosphere and the smooth renderings of developers and engineers

One of my favorite things to see online these days is real blogging done by software and hardware developers/engineers. After being in technology long enough you come to appreciate the work that these folks often do and in a way I consider many to be artists, for me, I see parallels with musicians.

The way I see it, a musician can have a general sense and style with which you can relate. You find yourself enjoying particular tracks or an album and eagerly await the next. I often find the same thing with software--some things you eagerly await the next iteration to see what styles and rhythms are incorporated as form and features. For years you've been able to pick up biographies or at the least, liner notes, or Rolling Stone articles to learn more about the creative mind of the artist of choice.

Until recent times, you haven't really been able to see that with developers or engineers. Now, a few of them are exposing themselves via blogs. Cisco is making an attempt (gotta love the Baby Poop entry!) but my hat is off to the MacMojo blogs by the kids at Microsoft's Mac Business Unit. They've written about what their daily lives are like, including home-time, what inspires their designs, and reasons for things being a certain way. It's very approachable and might even cause you to respect their art even more. My second favorite is the Office 2007 (Windows) blog. What it has in common with the MacMojo blog is an honest, approachable, and grateful-for-your-business tone to it. I know many people think of Microsoft as the big evil monster but skimming through some of these blogs really makes you think differently about that. Apple, AT&T, and most other big companies could learn from this example.

Modern Nomads

Having an Airstream makes it hard to not become interested in the history, living with one, and what others are doing with theirs. My in-laws gave me a subscription to a relatively new Airstream magazine called Airstream Life. I recently listened to a VAP podcast interviewing the founder and publisher. Turns out the gentleman, his wife, and daughter sold their house and are traveling full-time with their Airstream and they have a great blog. Most recently they have been in western Montana, my old stomping grounds and it's a really nicely written blog/journal. I've enjoyed the magazine and now knowing some more background on them makes it that much more interesting. Even if you're not an RV fan, they visit some pretty neat places and are having some wonderful experiences.

New fangled RSS thingie?

Most of the technology friends I have know that I've been espousing the virtues of RSS like Don Quixote and with about as much success.

I guess I was an early adopter of RSS and that was just for getting news content. RSS is the backbone of other technologies too, such as podcasting and photocasting which is an RSS feed with photos. The appropriate program can subscribe to the feed and display the photos on your computer and notify you when there are updates, some programs elegantly integrate them in with your own photos, such as Apple's iPhoto.

When coders first started delivering RSS feeds there wasn't really an elegant way of delivering the content to your average or casual computer user other than adding another program. Last year Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 to the masses and finally, all the major browsers would support RSS feeds natively. Prior to IE7 for the Windows users you had to use Firefox as your browser (and their implementation of RSS wasn't very elegant) or a third-party program for subscribing to and viewing feeds.

According to my theory on how your average person (and they will be dinosaurs before long) uses a computer, a third program for regular viewing is just too much to handle. Your average dinosaur uses e-mail and web, anything beyond the first two is something used for work, a chore, or a project, such as Word or Excel or Photoshop Elements.

So, now we have a situation where the excitement about RSS has worn thin just because the people who dig it have been using it for a long time and it's commonplace OR others tried it with a 3rd party viewer and it was too clunky for the majority of them and they haven't re-visited it. Outlook 2007 for Windows did add the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds in the mail application, which is surprising because I would have expected Apple to introduce it first, although it should be included with Leopard 10.5 operating system sometime in October 2007.

I am still an avid RSS user, I love getting my news updates as headlines + 2 sentences and I can readily click on the rest that I want to read. For me it's really the closest thing to being able to skim the newspaper or a magazine and then delve into the articles that interest me. I have collections of feeds in folders in my browser, such as 'IT', 'Industry', 'Local News', and several others. Whenever there is a new article a little number indicating the number of articles shows up next to the folder and I can click on it and check them out. It's incredibly convenient and keeps me up to speed on most of the news that interests me.

I've tried to explain how it can make you productive to lots of techie and non-techie friends but I'm running out of breath so it'll be my thing for now.