Recently in Net Effects Category

I've been intrigued for some time with the prospect of electronic ink and paper. Geekzone reports that Philips Polymer Vision developed a prototype device using the technology in months rather then the 2 years they thought it would take.

With four gray levels, the monochrome, 5-inch QVGA (320 pixels x 240 pixels) display provides paper-like viewing comfort with a high contrast ratio for reading-intensive applications, including text, graphics, and electronic maps.

Looking forward to when these things are commercially viable. I think its emergence will be quite profound on computing devices as we know it. Imagine what someone like Apple could do with this technology?

Alex Bosworth has announced an interesting social networking/wiki project called Swik.

A common complain about Open Source is that it's hard to find out how to make it work. I don't really think this makes sense: if Open Source has any strength, it's strength in numbers, and if there are many other people figuring out how to use software, they should be able to pass that knowledge along to everyone else.

Unfortunately, life is not always that easy for users of Open Source yet. That's why SourceLabs is developing Swik, a web service for letting information about Open Source software flow from user to user, in a free and open way.

Swik is a wiki for any open source project. It's a set of CreativeCommons pages that lets anyone share tips, links, definitions or instructions.

Sounds promising. I'm already doing enough documentation in with my current projects load, but potentially having a respository tech how-to akin to Wikipedia is really quite appealing if it works.

Over the weekend I got to read and contemplate Jason Kottke's post A whole new internet? that got my special attention because it solicited a response post from Mena Trott taking the bait.

Jason touches a couple of areas I'm quite passionate about and have been investing a lot of thought lately. So much so, that I'm dividing these thoughts into two parts. This first post covers the broader issue of how successful application handle success.

Kottke points out that innovation in the last few years came from creative and passionate individuals with no funding and shoe string budgets at best while unemployed or unfulfilled in a job. This is now changing as funding is becoming available and these projects are being turned into business ventures. There clearly are many cautionary tales to be noted as to not to repeat history or loose the essence of what launched these innovations.

His observations are quite correct benefiting from the perspective of the (first?) dot com boom that he was a veteran of. Being one of those veterans myself I agree and understand his perspective.

I'm not sure if this post is meant to be a criticism of these new Internet upstarts or simply observations with historical perspective sprinkled in. Perhaps it is a little of both.

Whatever the case, what Kottke describes from my experience is a basic and unavoidable part of evolution to any successful application. This echos the bottom-line of my O'Reilly Network Movable Type 3.0 and Eating post of nearly a year ago though from a different angle.

When a project strikes a chord with a large community of individuals, how does it manage and survive its growth?

Balancing innovation with business and funding is an underlying theme I keep seeing for better or for worse.

Eventually these projects far outstrip the waking hours of its core team to handle the needs of the gathering masses let alone maintain their rapport with its existing supporters.

Distribution of the application (whether it be code or a service), in addition to any online documentation, support forums and mailing lists, cost increasingly more money. There are plenty of free software tools (Perl, MySQL, emacs, Apache) to cobble together systems. However there is no such thing when it comes to bandwidth or servers. Each and every month expenses are incurred and, as its success grows, so do these expenses. The goodwill of the community (donations) no longer cut it (if they ever did) to paying these bills, let alone carrying the cost of an employee – the biggest expense any company will incur.

All of this can be summarized by a line taken from Clay Shirky badly misquoted – a successful application is its own worse enemy.

In my opinion, the challenge for these early adopter communities is understanding this evolutionary process and participating in it through realistic feedback and support that manages success without selling out wholesale to the irrational exuberance of dot com boom.

How does a successful application protect itself from itself while still continuing to grow and evolve? It's one that should and will be asked again that I'm not sure there is one right answer for.

Over at AdFreak, Mae Anderson writes about the Spike Jonze directed Adidas commercial featuring…

…a breathy track by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (doing her best to channel Cat Power) and Squeak E. Clean. The track is available exclusively on iTunes and has risen to No. 11 overall on the downloads chart, alongside Gwen Stefani and the Backstreet Boys. (It’s No. 5 on the alternative-music downloads list.) Might the TV spot/iTunes combo be the future for record labels trying to reach the masses? Hello tomorrow.

I agree. This is a great example of what I meant when I wrote over 2 year ago...

I find it fascinating how commercials in recent years are becoming the modern day radio hit or MTV video. Commercials are becoming a serious source of income and potential startum for previously obscure artists like Nick Drake in addition to upcoming and independent artists like Telepopmusik or Dirty Vegas. Even well established commercial artists are benefiting. It was reported that there was a spike in Sting's Brand New Day sales when Desert Rose was running in a Jaguar commercial.

With product placements in movies and commercials as short-film features, perhaps this could be the future.

While the posts to this weblog haven't been terribly interesting or frequent lately, I've been quite busy coding away. Here is a lot of what I've done that is now public.

CPAN Modules

The links in this section are to the latest version in CPAN as of this post.

Text::BIP 0.51

The Blosxom Infrastructure Package (or simply BIP), is an object-oriented module for facilitating event-based file system indexing. Release back in January after almost a year of internal evolution and refactoring, the purpose of this module is to provide a lightweight mechanism for facilitating event-based file system indexing. In many ways it's File::Find with a slightly more specific and object-oriented interface.

When Rael Dornfest released blosxom, his lightweight yet feature-packed weblog application, I was intrigued by how much could be done with so little. The one feature that made the biggest impression on me is how blosxom used the file system as a simple hierarchical document database. I began to apply this technique in a number of my scripts whose scope was outside of the realm of the traditional weblog uses blosxom was designed to handle. To better organize and reuse my code, I created a module that implemented an extensible framework that I could begin dropping into my scripts. The result became BIP.

Text::Tiki 0.73

TikiText is a structured text formatting notation that primarily descends from wiki and plain text email conventions. It strives to more intuitive then common wiki notations by using the least amount of characters from plain text. It is easy to learn to learn the basics, but provides richer functionality for those who want to dive in. Like most text formatting engines, Tiki abstracts users from needing to know or understand markup whenever possible. It differs in that it makes valid and semantical XHTML markup easy and lets CSS do its job.

Besides internal refactoring and bug fixes, 0.7x includes functionality and hooks for wiki linking. While wikis are a part of TikiText's lineage, it was never my intention to create a new Wiki notation or tool. Based on the feedback I received from the initial releases, that changed.

XML::RSS::Parser 2.12

I released a major refactoring and enhancement to my liberal object-oriented parser for RSS feeds. Version 2.x has what I think is a much better and simpler object model then the short lived 1.x release. It supports XPath-esque queries as of 2.1.

XML::RAI 0.1

The RSS Abstraction Interface or RAI (said ray) is a bit of an experimental module for me. It is an object-oriented interface to XML::RSS::Parser trees that abstracts the user from handling namespaces, overlapping and alternate tag mappings that is common in the RSS space. Its only a 0.1 release, but I'm using it internally and it seems to be working quite well. It will be interesting to see if it lives up to its mission in the wild.

Net::Trackback 0.991

This module is an object-oriented interface for developing Trackback clients and servers. The big change in this version is that it has been fully OO-ized and hence more adaptable. This previous version (which had an upper case B) was a crude hack of the standalone Trackback client Ben and Mena Trott released. Recently I had to use it and had forgotten how poorly it was so I HAD TO rewrite it.

XML::Parser::Style::Elemental 0.40

This module is a slightly more advanced and flexible object tree style for XML::Parser. I wanted something simple and virtually transparent, but wasn't satisfied with the built-in styles of XML::Parser. I needed a reference to a node's parent and namespace support. In developing my code, I decided to go the distance and made it a reusable module I could distribute.

MT Code

mt-closure

A utility script for closing comments and pings open for a specified period of time. Is a pure MT solution and is not tied to a specific database. Not rigorously tested. (Treat as beta for now.)

XSearch 0.2

The built in search functionality in MT does fine, but at times I've found myself needing something more or different in my work. What I've wished for was a pluggable search facilities like MT's template engine.

In scratching my own itch, I've thrown down the gauntlet and finally done something about it. I've created MT::XSearch an extensible framework for creating search plugins for Movable Type.

Announced on the mt-dev mailing list, this framework is for coders. My hope is that other coders will create various search and application functionality off of this framework.

Up on deck is adding some type of template tags for navigating through large search results.

mt-publish-on 0.11

Nothing really new here, but I thought I'd mention that I fixed a bug where dependent pages (such as an index page) were not getting rebuilt with the newly published entry.

The recent discussion of RSS profiles and an optional default namespace hosted by Sam Ruby that forked into a heated discussion as to the rights of weblog comments and moderation has brought mind a keynote Clay Shirky gave at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference just over a month ago. I took notes on Clay's keynote as he was speaking and posted to a weblog. Here are some select passages from those notes that I thought where relevent to this situation.

Too much open access and too much freedom caused an early online community (Commitree) to collapse because it could not defend themselves from an onslaught on teen age boys that overran the group with obscenities and fart jokes.

The increasing need for structure grows as the group attempts to defend itself from the group.

The core group have rights that trumps the whole group. Absolute citizenship is a harmful pattern. A contenious group can derail anything otherwise.

All groups of any integrty have a constitution. The formal way is in the code. The informal part are the social interations(?) There will always be both parts.

I won't rehash how this conversation diverged and derailed. You can read the comments on Sam's weblog and Shelley Powers.

I have to say that I'm taken aback by Shelley's reaction and see it as being exccessive. I also find it ironic that Shelley is so outraged by group structure and its defense that she just began as a guest contributor to the social software weblog.

It would have been nice had Sam given advanced warning before modifying comments. At the same time there was precious little time to attempt tp protect what was a productive conversation from going astray. Sam, being that it was his weblog (I don't think anyone is surprised by that), reacted to protect the group from itself. Unfortunately, depsite his attempts, it would seem this overreaction threw cold water on that conversation. I hope it recovers, but now I'm not sure.

I got one of my comments marked up so I think it's fair for me to comment – especially since this is my weblog. I didn't even think twice about the practice Sam started – I actually thought it was a good idea. Sam has my utmost respect and I trust his judgement when he marks something as flamebait. I will take that into consideration next time I comment. I am thankful that he didn't just delete any of the comments in question – especially since some good thoughts where interlaced with the inflammatory statements and smack downs.

On an aside, Scott Andrew nails it when he writes Of course, there's irony here in that Sam's clever approach to handling comment flames has all but upstaged the dialogue on RSS within the blogosphere. Which may indicate, some might suggest, that further debate on RSS is futile and unnecessary. And while we're at it, let's throw FOAF and RDF on the pyre too, since no one cares about the former or comprehends the latter. Perhaps marshall law imposed by a few with power is the only way to ever establish order.

While buried in my work the past few week, I missed noting two happenings I'm happy to have assisted in. The release of mt-allconsuming and Sun retitling an inflammatory JavaOne session.

Dave Seidel announced the release of mt-allconsuming a MovableType plugin for integrating info from the All Consuming service. I let Dave use some of the code from my mt-rssfeed plugin. Dave also mentions that my Developing MT Plugins article showed him how to get it done. Glad I could help. Good work Dave.

A few weeks ago I noted a post by Andrew Oliver via Sam Ruby in my O'Reilly weblog. Andrew pointed out an inappropriate and inflammatory titled of a JavaOne session where an independent view (Sun staff was on the panel) of why the JCP is better then open source. Last week Andrew noted that we can make a difference. The chain-reaction of our posts succeeded in getting Sun's attention who have retitled the session to something more appropriate and less inflammatory. Andrew writes I hope this demonstration proves that we can make a difference. I have a lot more hope that with each of us watching and speaking out, that Sun will over time behave well without our help. Its up to us to be watchdogs. The onion smells much better today. I agree. Good work Andrew.

Interesting work is afoot in the world of TrackBack and other related concepts.

I received an email from Aaron Straup Cope that he has put my newly released XML::TrackBack module to work. Aaron is developing a OOP-ish interface to the Internet Topic Exchange dubbed Net::ITE.

The Internet Topic Exchange site is an implementation of Ridiculously Easy Group Forming concept. In its current form, ITE is a TrackBack repository with a twist -- participants can create channels that they and others can ping. The integration of a Wiki into the mix, albeit a loose one, is intriguing and one that has yet to be touched upon and explored.

David Raynes has been working on two concepts based on TrackBack infrastructure that he calls ComeBack and Post-It. Post-It allows users to publish whole entries to a MovableType weblog while ComeBack enables distributed comment authoring. I tested both with some basic test scripts using XML::TrackBack. Post-It works without issue. ComeBack uses a slightly different interface that returned an error when pinged. David has now integrated the two in one site achieving a forum-like effect where a user can make a post and others can comment on it.

The notion of a remote commenting interface that ComeBack represents is an intriguing one. This is a topic I will return to in a later post. Too much to write about here. Post-It is not as apparent to me. As a publishing API, Post-It bears a great deal of similarity in principle to the RESTLog API. The value of free-for-all posting that it enables via TrackBack I'm not entirely sure about.

Yesterday, Ben Hammersley was his own guinea pig as he attempted to implement TrackBack threading on his site. Ben had to retreat for the time being and shares his learnings in a later post here.

Sam Ruby recently put a different spin on Mark Pilgrim's automatic linkbacks system by utilizing RSS feeds as its source of excerpts. Sam explains To participate, you don't need to use weblogging software that supports trackback or pingback, you simply have to update your templates to have a link to your RSS feed. In a follow-up post he reasons I actually experimented with mark's code for a bit, but the biggest problem I had was that it looked like it would require continual investment to weed out the ever growing number of portals and personal aggregators. I was also concerned about the feedback loop that could occur given the amount of back traffic I get whenever I mention anything on Mark's page.

Shelley Powers continues to advanced something she calls BackTrack on top of TrackBack information. In this post she explains its purpose In each individual posting page is a section labeled with Sticky Strands and listing all of the TB pings the posting issued. The functionality I added today takes those pings, follows them back to the posted weblog, and then lists all of the trackbacks that weblog posting has received. Sam Ruby has joined in.

Both are excellent ideas that underscores the increasing value (and necessity) of meaningful titles and excerpts.

This experimentation has all been very intriguing and worthwhile in our discovery and understanding of the network and social effects of two-way hyperlinking systems. In reviewing this work I'm beginning to see some emerging issues and topics coming into focus. (In no particular order.)

• Extensibility of TrackBack. How should this is achieved without breaking some semblance of interoperability. For instance, I was unable to make a ComeBack post with XML::TrackBack because email has been added, excerpt renamed comment and blog_name renamed agent. All are required. So a TrackBack enabled tool cannot interoperate with a ComeBack interface, but does it have to be that way? It would seem not if these situations where examined for consideration to developing standard.
• What is the appropriate use and display of these various mechanisms? What improves usability and what degrades it? In commenting on Ben Hammersley's TrackBack threading experiment I wrote it seems the time is near, even here, where we need to begin discussing when is it appropriate/useful to use these different mechanisms and how are they best presented. Another case in point, since implementing a number of these mechanisms, Sam Ruby's comments board have been filling up with various links and excerpts to the point its becoming hard to grok.
• Integration of RSS and a consolidation of efforts. Post-It uses a superset of the TrackBack. Is ComeBack was based on TrackBack's infrastructure and has a very similar interface, but breaks comparability. Post-It is quite similar to RESTLog. All make use of RSS or RSS-like structures including Sam Ruby's automatic linkbacks and let's not forget MLTFO (More Like This From Others) effort that happened over the holiday season. One thing is becoming clear RSS is bloody important and highly useful and far more then just a way to read news outside of the browser so we can stick it to the BigCos.

The subtle and underlying theme I draw from all of this is that RESTful interfaces that inherent in the Web's design work and have yet to be fully explored.

Here is to experimentation, innovation and evolution.

lazy \La"zy\

1. Disinclined to action or exertion; averse to labor; idle; shirking work. --Bacon.
2. Inactive; slothful; slow; sluggish; as, a lazy stream. The night owl's lazy flight. --Shak.
3. Wicked; vicious. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.] --B. Jonson.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

I'm all for the concept of the LazyWeb and I'm quite excited by its potential. Shelley Powers put it best when she wrote I think we're seeing a new form of open source development, based on technology developed for the community and its immediate, expressed needs. A case of community searching for technology rather than technology on the hunt for a users.

Lazy doesn't seem to be the word for it because members of the community describing its needs are taking action requiring some work to clearly articulate their need.

In his article covering the LazyWeb and its significance, Clay Shirky explains that term first coined by Matt Blackbelt Jones initially meant If you wait long enough, someone will write/build/design what you are thinking about. The concept has since evolved to mean I describe a feature I think should exist in hopes that someone else will code it. The concept has evolved, but the name has not to reflect that change.

I'm actually not sure what the right term is, so I suppose in essence this is my description of a need -- the need for a more appropriate term. The term seems like a slight that doesn't exactly encourage participation for those who are unfamiliar with the concept. (A form of Developers Have Blind Spots?)

I'm the type of person who reads a request and develops something. Community software development needs more input from users and needs to encourage their participation anyway we can -- like not describing them as slothful or the like.

In the continuing the review and discussion of Safari, Jason Kottke asks the intriguing question why are Safari and Sherlock two different applications? Jason argues that there is little distinction between web browsing and using specialized interfaces for structured data. He provides screen mockups of Safari to illustrate his point. An active discussion in the comment boards follows.

Back in September I wrote as the Internet continues to evolve into an 'Internet operating system'--programmable interfaces, ubiquitous access, and distributed computing resources--the document-centric browser is an awkward solution to a growing number of emerging needs. The browser is not dying by any means; it just needs a mate.

Reading about Remote Application Development with Mozilla, the mod_pubsub open source project KnowNow kicked off and discussions like the one Jason is leading have me reconsidering my view. Does the browser really need a mate in as much as it needs to expand its range?

Could browsers like Mozilla and Safari/Konqueror be the basis of simple lightweight structured interfaces for accessing network resources and microcontent? What if these browser brought bookmarklets and remote XUL to the forefront as equal partners to viewing webpages?

More intriguing questions and experiments lie ahead.