Chess.com has re-branded itself as a social network. In today’s climate, this is a wise move. I have taken a look at the site. Chess.com is a perfect example of what it means to be a “social network.” What I mean is that a social network is a buzzword that is really hot right now. If you look at what chess.com has done with a more critical eye you see that really they are basically a 1999 chess portal. The difference is that, instead of highlighting really interesting content, they are highlighting people. The other content features are still there, but they take a background to people and people interaction. The big key item that I think will make them successful is that they kept a message board. I think that social networks often toss the message board as old software. The message board is a lot like a book or pencil and notepad. Technology can emulate it, but never really gets it quite right. The message board is a good way to communicate for the average person online.
Go there for yourself (chess.com) and comment on what you think makes it a social network instead of a portal.
Read/WriteWeb has an interesting post about creating a standard on how to define web url’s. As much as I like the proposal isn’t this just a simplistic subset of what Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the Semantic Web is meant to be?
Maybe the Semantic Web revolution needs to start with smaller beginnings. Another group working on making the Semantic Web a reality is Microformats group.
Getting data out of the stove pipe website and more relevant than todays search results is a fantastic goal. It is nice to see people begin working on it.
I basically don’t understand the need for a “real SDK” for the iPhone. I am attempting, through comments here and at the Ajaxian post, to get someone to provide real concrete, well thought out reasons that an SDK is necessary and how it would be better than developing AJAX applications for the iPhone. I think two very well put together examples of iPhone apps can be found here.
According to an article in the online British paper The Independent, peak oil will happen in just four short years. What does this mean?
Peak oil is a theory. The definition of peak oil is the date when the peak of the world’s conventional oil production is reached. After this point production enters a step decline. The result is obvious. Catastrophic shortages, soaring prices, and devastated economies are just some of the results.
Pushing this point further, I would state that we are already beyond peak oil in a purer since of the idea. In the United States, we currently consume more gas than we refine. Simply logic dictates that we only have a matter of time before price escalates to an unbearable level. Gas prices force a downturn in the U.S. economy which in turn has a ripple effect through out the world.
I haven’t been impressed with the solutions I am seeing in the press. Ethanol as a substitute for gasoline seems to only move the problem momentarily from gas to fresh water. Where are the scientific minds on this one. What happened to the fuel cell drive, highly affordable electric cars? When was the last time we have had a life changing advance in the science of batteries?
It doesn’t matter when we reach peak oil, four years or forty years. We need to stop worrying about the money and start coming up with solutions that can be mainstreamed soon. I hope industry isn’t waiting on government or the consumer to wake up to an oil drained planet. One is to worried about the war in Iraq, the other is to worried about getting a tan, to worry about the future. I will let you decide who is worried about what.
Life for most of us is complex and stressful. Technology is taking over our lives, yet I wouldn’t give it up. Most of us are neck deep in debt and we worry more about how we can continue to finance our excesses than we do about the quality of our lives.
MSNBC is running a story today about a man in Buffalo, N.Y. who live in a self-made underground bunker. Don’t let that fool you. He isn’t homeless or down-on-his-luck. He is just living a simple life and he enjoys it.
Now like most people when I read this the first thing that came to mind was pity. I pitied this man for not having all the things in life I take for granted. Once I watched the video my attitude changed. I no longer felt pity, but now I was somewhat envious of his simplified life. His simplicity was a choice he made not a choice made for him because of his socioeconomic status.
After thinking about it for a while I realize that in addition to feeling envious of this man, I was feeling a little angry at him. It turns out that he is a very brave man following the life that he wants to live in a simply unobtrusive manner. Meanwhile I realize that his bravery is a spotlight lighting up my, and societies, cowardice. We complain about complexity and stress but we are to afraid to change our circumstances the way this man has done.
I sat to watch the local morning news today, as I often do, for a few minutes before heading to work. I like to catch the weather and get the highlights of what is hot on the national scene to start my day. I thought I would see something about the monumental tech event of Gates and Jobs on stage together, a historic event of two tech giants. Not a word.
Well maybe we would hear about recent remarks made by the NASA administrator. His comments were thought provoking, if not controversial, about global warming. How he was throwing ethics into the discussion and forcing us to think about how magnanimous we must feel toward other generations, both future and past, now that we have determined that our climate is the perfect one and must be preserved. No, they didn’t report on this either.
Instead we had the breaking story - racing helicopter deep in searching of a fugitive. The high distant camera shot of a helicopter scouring the tree line looking for a fugitive. A regular criminal mastermind. Police were out in drove’s, at least four different police organizations were involved in the manhunt. The manhunt had zig zagged investigators across the state as they hunted desperately for the fugitive since early April. They finally had him after being spotted on county road U (we letter our county roads in wisconsin). This violent offender had hijacked a snow plow at gun point back in April. Somehow managing to elude authorities for nearly two months while crossing the state with his new found prize. A perilous trek from Hobart to Eau Claire in his pilfered, not so inconspicuous, snow plow.
Onlookers were interviewed as they watched the dramatic events. The consensus being - “Will he still be able to do my snow plowing?”
Keitai, or mobile phone, novels have become very popular in Japan. I found this info via the O’Reilly Radar but the original post can be found at the economist.com web site. It indicates that Keitai novels is a blossoming industry in its infancy in Japan accounting for 82 million in sales a year. A Keitai novel is a short novel that is downloaded and read on your mobile phone. Published in shorter formats much like the Chap books Stephen King attempted a number of years ago. The new format is perfect for the mobile phone market and may just save the publishing industry who has been suffering from increasing decline in book sales. A similar trend seen with the highly popular new music format, or ring tone, which has been a welcome windfall for the music industry.
This is a complementary product to the recent rise in short format fiction as published by one of my favorite sites 365 Tomorrows which publishes a short format speculative fiction story each day in 500 words or less.
Here is the list of reasons that social networking doesn’t work:
There’s nothing to do there
It takes too much time
Traffic alone isn’t enough
Strangers kind of suck
We already have the Internet
The most important one that has plagued social networking sites has been number one, there’s nothing to do there. Once you create an account, generate your lists, all you have left is adding friends. Things are slightly better than that today, but basically that is it.
Facebook has changed all of this with their announcement of the Facebook Platform. The Facebook Platform gives developers access to all the Facebook users. They can embed applications, similar to widgets, into Facebook and users can add them to their navigation. Giving users something to do once the novelty wares off.
This certainly sets them apart from the other social networks. I can’t wait to see how this plays out.
With all the discussion of immigration lately, I have begun to wonder if the age of borders is passing. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. It just is. National borders is a hold over from a non-globalized economy. I don’t see how you can treat the issue of immigration separate from that of globalization. At it’s heart, that is the real issue. We have a totally globalized economy and all the policies that go with it. On the other hand, we have the issue of immigration and its policies. Each treated as separate issues. The U.S. is schizophrenic on this issues. If we are ever going to have resolution on these issues, it will have to be done together.
Ron Paul just might be the man who can get the country back on track again. He is drawing a strong following from both the right and the left. Here is his answers to questions at the Republican debate held recently at the Reagan Library.
