Disruptive Conversations

I've been too busy to comment on LinkedIn's announcement of their "Intelligent Application Platform" but there are certainly tons of others who have (see also here). Some of the posts I found most interesting were at VentureBeat and GigaOm.

LinkedIn, naturally, had a blog post with an introductory video that explains the platform.

While Facebook obviously has an enormous lead in terms of developers, it will be interesting to see what traction Linked does or does not gain. They indicate they will be supporting OpenSocial, which will allow developers to make apps that run in other OpenSocial-compliant social networks as well. They also have a strong user base within the business/professional community (include me) which could be quite attractive to developers as well.

In any event, I look forward to watching the announcements from LinkedIn as they roll out this developer program over the next few months.

Technorati Tags: facebook, linkedin, applications, apis, platforms

After writing my post last week about "w00t" being Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Year", I was mildly amused to be contacted by a reporter for Newsweek who was writing a human-interest story on the word and had found my blog entry via Google. The article is now out: "W00t! There It Is" We had a great conversation although she did not quote me in the article. She also spoke with Julia Roy who was quoted and twittered that fact. (But Julia, what's with using "sah-weet" in your tweet instead of "W00t!"?) Anyway, it was a fun little example of how the random oddball things you write can sometimes make the strangest (and useful) connections.

Technorati Tags: language, newsweek, w00t

The next stage of the voting for finalists in the Open Web Awards begins today. Unfortunately, Mashable just sent out the code for voting last night and I'm traveling today, so I'll have to post it sometime later tonight. Obviously, you can also vote at the main Open Web Awards site.

Technorati Tags: open web awards

After getting a second phone call of someone offering me a job because they had read on www.danyork.com that I was out of work and looking for a job, I finally got a chance to update the main page. In part the delay is a case of "the cobbler's own shoes". My web site has been online since 1996 and desperately needs to be updated on a technology end (you'll note that I don't have domain mapping set up, so danyork.com actually redirects into my lodestar2.com site). I just haven't made the time to do so. That was actually on my list of things to do if finding employment took a while, but then I landed rather quickly at Voxeo. So the main page of the site is updated - and comments or opinions about what I wrote on the page are welcome. Before I had a pseudo-resume... now I changed it to talk a bit more about who I am.

Technorati Tags: danyork, dan york

And so it ends.

Earlier this month I had written that it looked like Blognation was in trouble, but Sam Sethi now has confirmed that with his post.

I'm not going to dignify that post with any further discussion here as there is just way too much mud being thrown around right now. There's definitely room for a higher level of professionalism on a number of different fronts.

Right now my thoughts are more with friends like (ca.blognation.com editor) Tris Hussey, who has now naturally posted that he is looking for a new role. Whatever Sam's personal failings may have been, he did pull together a great team of writers! And now they are needing to find something new just as the holidays are upon us.

Personally, I'll miss blognation. The sites had great posts on a range of topics. They brought a great range of commentary on emerging technology and were a good voice to have out there.

What a mess.

Technorati Tags: blognation, sam sethi, blogging

Google's OpenSocial effort passed a milestone yesterday when the first pieces of code were uploaded for Shindig (tip of the hat to Mr. Topf for pointing this out), an open source implementation of the OpenSocial API. Why is this important? Quite simply, I see an open source implementation as critical for the success of any API. As noted in the Shindig Proposal on the Apache Software Foundation's web site:

Shindig will provide implementations of an emerging set of APIs for client-side composited web applications. The Apache Software Foundation has proven to have developed a strong system and set of mores for building community-centric, open standards based systems with a wide variety of participants. A robust, community-developed implementation of these APIs will encourage compatibility between service providers, ensure an excellent implementation is available to everyone, and enable faster and easier application development for users. The Apache Software Foundation has proven it is the best place for this type of open development. The Shindig OpenSocial implementation will be able to serve as a reference implementation of the standard.

The key part is that last sentence. A "reference implementation" does a couple of things. First, for developers for whom the license terms are appropriate, they can simply incorporate the code directly into their products and... ta da... they are writing OpenSocial applications. Second, for developers who can't directly use the code verbatim due to licensing, they can at least study the code and understand how it works. They can see how the OpenSocial interaction occurs in a working example. Getting an open source reference implementation out there enables developers all over to rapidly use and learn about the API. While this news yesterday represents only the very first step in the development of the project, it's a good start down the path. Now, developers can download the existing code, try it out, and, hopefully, contribute patches/fixes/etc. back into the code base. Shindig will be a good project to watch. There does not yet seem to be an official project web page, but there is a "project status page" on the Apache Incubator site. P.S. And for those wondering, "shindig" is an English word for "a social gathering" which makes it rather appropriate.

Okay, maybe I'm just a linguistic pedant, but I just don't find myself sharing Julia Roy's joy at the fact that Merriam-Webster has annointed "w00t" (with the zeroes) their "Word of the Year" for 2007! But then again, I didn't really like "ginormous" being added to the M-W dictionary, either. I know, I know... "languages evolve"... I should just deal with it. Sigh.

To be fair, M-W is not adding "w00t" to their "official" dictionary - at least not yet - and this "Word of the Year" was "based on votes of visitors to our Web site", which of course will skew any poll that you run. (Although it is in their online "Open Dictionary".) I did enjoy some of the runner-ups on Merriam-Webster's list. Somewhat predictable that "facebook" would be on there, but fun to see "conundrum" and "quixotic".

I think, though, the M-W folks are showing their age when they talk about "l33t" being "an esoteric computer hacker language". They obviously have not spent any time with teenagers who are madly texting each other. (Although I suppose those who wish to get pedantic about Leet might say that texting and true "leetspeak" are different, but I'd argue there's a good bit of crossover.) It does, however, warm this linguist's heart to see someone actually using "esoteric". Nice word.

Ah, the joy of language! w00t!

Technorati Tags: language, merriam-webster, dictionary, w00t

This morning on Twitter I was just struck by the fascinating intersection of new and old media. Jim Long, aka "newmediajim", is a cameraman for NBC based in Washington, DC, who twitters what he is doing and takes us along on often fascinating trips behind the curtains of production of NBC programs and footage. Being in DC, he is often shooting interviews/footage of various political figures and now and then he takes us along virtually as he travels to places like, oh, Iraq! (as part of the camera pool)

Anyway, this morning Jim was twittering about doing live shots of Tom Costello for the Today Show. As you can see in the screenshot I've included here (click on it for a larger version), Steve Lubetkin, meanwhile, was watching the Today show and at one point asked Jim a question about what he was seeing in realtime. Now, Jim didn't immediately reply (I mean, come on, the man does have to be doing his job!) and for all I know may not even follow Steve, but I thought it was an interesting sign of what could be happening through media such as Twitter. It was even more entertaining later to see Jim's tweet about his shadow being on Tom's coat.

Jim is telling us a story in small 140-character or less bites... and here we do have the opportunity to weave our own comments into that story.

Fascinating space we're in right now...

Technorati Tags: newmediajim, twitter

I don't know how long this site has been out there, but I had a great laugh this morning when Neville Hobson pointed out the existence of the "Web Economy BS Generator". The scary thing to me, of course, is that as I pushed the button multiple times, I did see phrases that I have actually seen or heard in marketing presentations or materials! Fun, fun, fun...

Technorati Tags: humor, windowslivewriter

Voting is now open for the "Social Search" category of the Open Web Awards (described here).  Please vote for your favorite site!  The 10 nominees are listed below and you will be able to vote up until 11:59pm PST on Sunday, December 16th. At that point, the top 3 choices will be selected and we’ll move into the final round of voting.

For more information, see the post on Mashable.com kicking off the voting in this category.

Category: Social Search

Sponsors: Cohn & Wolfe PR & Mashable Web Poll by Vizu