adamgreen
Grazr script, which allows you to make widgets with the Grazr app, and potentially much more, is now public.
In case you don’t know, Grazr is sort of an OPML. . . well grazer. It’s a very important concept in this future present world of a web that is built on top of RSS.
If I was forced to choose whether I could only use RSS or HTML, I’d choose RSS.
Luckily, I don’t have to. I just think it’s more important in the paradigm shift that is taking place right now. The move toward services and relationships, that is, over distribution and consumption.
I was allowed to test it out in the private beta, and found it to be pretty damn cool. Maybe when I have I minute I’ll post an example of my experiments. I promised not to talk about it before it went public, and man it was tough.
One thing I know. It will be an important piece in the next web application I build.
Expect to see a lot more action in this area. I’m sure Tom Morris has a few things brewing already.
Here is the spec..
I’m hoping part two of the latest Gillmor Gang will prove more interesting.
If you remember the Jason and the Argonauts tale, you might know how Jason succeeded in conquest over the Seed men by casting a stone at one, who thought it was his neighbor, and letting them all kill each other.
That’s what Steve Gillmor seems to do by letting the fellas discuss the importance of Google algorithms and whether site owners can get a cut by having search engines bid for their site search.
If Steve would have put the “knockoff” Cheerios down for a sec I know what he would have said.
It’s not whether Google’s algorithms hold up, it’s whether they can garner more stock in the conversation with all their attention data.
The winners of the future are not the best technologies. We’ll all be able to plug into those the same way we plug into an electrical outlet.
The winners are the services which add value to the conversations happening throughout distributed web networks.
These networks and conversations are fluid and changing constantly in response to our gestures.
Those who don’t get this are either thinking too hard or just not enough.
In a similar way that facial and hand gestures are a meaningful supplement to spoken conversations, the gestures which we talk about with attention are the metadata of the conversations happening on the web.
That equates to economic power because markets are conversations.
I agree with Jason Calacanis that many in the SEO business are trying to game this system, but I disagree when he says the system works. People are trying to game the system because it does not work. It just works better than the previous systems.
I can prove it Jason. I’ll write a better piece on a new cell phone than Engadget and see which shows up higher on Google.
No. Those dynamics are only part of the game.
The richer system envelops us with answers using our data and our network’s data in a chameleon like fashion, never static like Google. That’s child’s play.
Jason(Argonaut) succeeded in getting the Golden Fleece but was fickle and left Medea for another Princess.
Likewise, in the shorter term companies may succeed by amassing link attention.
The true winners won’t be seeking the Golden Fleece at all. They will be removing the barriers and letting the crystal waters flow in, filtered and clean, Pure Conversation.
So, Im back from RSS Alley and OPML Camp today.
I did not blog from the conference simply because the conversations were so rich and thought provoking that I didn’t want to only give them partial attention.
Attention itself was in fact a big topic and there is some big news coming our way on that topic. Other topics included namespaces, the spec, RDF and tags. Oh and Second Life seemed to permeate the breaks. I even talked a little on SSE, and I think we might see some progess on SSE used with OPML soon.
Special thanks must go to Adam Green, who did a great job organizing and Berkman for hosting, and Halley Suitt and the Top Ten Sources folks for hosting the party.
And if Dave Winer is listening, we all thanked you for RSS and OPML in general. Great work.
The whole weekend was truly inspirational.
But speaking of conversations and attention, this one is nearly over for me.
Perhaps a couple transitional posts and I’ll be moving on.
A couple things are for sure. OPML and Reading Lists (Glists if you ask me, Beeds if you ask James Corbett) have a huge future. Attention and gestures have a huge future. Grazr has a huge future and Second Life-like environments have a huge future. I’d like to be in the middle of it all.
Or I could just hang out on the podcast.com platform(search for podcast in second life) and listen to streaming music.
Either way.
Dear everybuddy,
When I got home from Syndicate, I had an email from Adam Green. He wanted me to help out with a session at OPML Camp about the relationship between OPML and Attention.
So I’ve been thinking even more about Attention.
If you’ve read this blog, you know those two topics are pretty big for me, but this blog is really about conversations.
And I think I’ve done a good enough job making my point (at least to myself) about the importance of conversations in the new economy.
Now I must move on and tackle a related but different subject.
I’ll continue to post during OPML Camp here, and then I’ll wrap things up.
Not sure of the name of my new blog or where it will be, but I have a few ideas.
If links weren’t dead, I’d have to thank Dave Winer for the biggest traffic day, when he pointed to a one minute snowstorm movie. (step aside RocketBoom)
Thanks to all who participated here, especially James Corbett, Alex Barnett and Danny Ayers.
I’m sure the conversations will continue when you find my new home.
Sincerely,
everybuddy.org
P.S. The Old Media Doomsday Clock will continue to be active.
SYO subscriptions like mine. No surprise to me. Although that’s true with most of the top fifty.
1. Pete Gilbert 554 8.043
2. Adam Green 25 4.508
3. Alex Barnett 593 4.391
4. Amy Bellinger 91 4.352
5. Tom Morris 344 4.148
UPDATE: That was my work OPML which is not in sync with home anymore. Slight difference here.
1. Adam Green 25 31.823
2. Richard Edwards 53 18.559
3. Pete Gilbert 554 12.713
4. Tom Morris 344 11.295
5. Alex Barnett 593 5.357
A new concept is sprouting in the OPML landscape.
The allusion to flora is not accidental, even if banal.
Consider these two unrelated posts, the first from Lisa Williams,
OPML’s biggest impact will be in making it as simple to add a record to a self-assembling worldwide directory as it is today to write a blog post. (Did that make any sense at all? I hope so.)
Yes, that makes sense Lisa.
It sounds like an “organically” created web directory, seeded and fed by the natural actions of an ecological-like community.
Next we move on to James Corbett, commenting on one of my posts,
I’ve been wondering if we should label these multimedia Reading List as…. SEEDs = Sensory Feeds. Seeing as SEEDs are the fruit at the leaf nodes in a tree I think this will tie in nicely with the direction some feed grazers are going. And as a SEED meme accumulates momementum it can actually spawn a whole other OPML tree, just like a real SEED.
Before we get lost in this placid garden imagery, we must also note one of Corbett’s posts that indicates there is also a food chain, or feed chain, if you will, that is in intense competition for our ravenous attention.
He concludes,
Of course the fleet footed Feed Aggregators won’t die out, they’ll just evolve Feed Grazing capabilities.
Our current crop of aggregators are likened to reptilian eating machines. The next generation of consumers, the mammals, will use adaptability to flourish where the reptiles could not.
Man, however, is the only creature in history to have conquered agriculture. Thus, the information consumption tool that wins will not only hunt and forage, but harvest.
This, I think, is a key conceptual transition that must be made to address the growing attention inundation issue.
To consume what is available naturally will not be enough. Social structures must be built to enhance the bounty which abounds.
Adam Green’s River of Feeds is certainly pointing us in the right direction. Annotated lists turn that river into a mill. Lisa Williams hints that we are at the dawn of a new type of information economy, one built upon the small actions of the masses. And so we stand at the launch of a new era, similar in many respects to the industrial revolution.
Large economies of scale, mediation and complex societal structures were produced by the historical industrial revolution.
In this metaphorical one, we will produce some of the same, but moreso, an ecosystem. Both economy and ecosystem, stem from latin for household or habitat.
It seems to be largely held that these social communities can be sown out of the metadata that exists like tagging, linking and subscribing.
I’m going to conclude this post by contending that a more definitive gesture will arise that will create smaller communities among the larger ones that we conceptually know of today.
In fact, I’m going to borrow a concept from the science of ecology called the metacommunity [PDF].
{End of Part I}
I think Adam Green is really starting to make some progress here, combining metadata from numerous sources to create a . . . something.
I’m not sure what you call it. It’s like a lens. It’s like a memetracker. It’s like a grazing list. It’s a beed. It’s a glist : )
To call it a mashup is not giving it enough credit, in my opinion.
Sprinkle a little attention seasoning on that baby and you’ve got a pie.
Am I going to have to learn Ruby before OPML camp?
Mar 06 2006 08:33 pm |
OPML and
Attention and
Glists and
adamgreen and
mashup |
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