proto::blog


	lock January 23, 2005 21:17 Quick start Most parts of this interface will hopefully explain themselves as you run into them or are explained while you are reading the articles. Some basic behaviours should be explained, though: As you move around with your mouse, the articles are supposed to fold and unfold. Nevertheless, some of them do not behave. It is generally a good idea to move not too fast, otherwise the `javascript`-eventhandler won't notice – well yes – the event. If you want to keep an article open, you can lock it. The bars above an article represent links within the text that point to others sites. Links with a Ξ-symbol can be unfolded to view a short description. Those beneath are created by each website linking to the article. Clicking on one of the bars will reveal more details. You can scroll the whole page moving your mouse to any point at the edge of the screen.


	lock January 22, 2005 23:02 A new interface for political creativity. Having read a paper by Joitchi Ito initially I got a more detailed image of the possiblities and obstacles for collaboration with a poltitcal scope on the web. I got the motivation to develop some ideas that facilitate discussions and particularly formation of opinion via blogs. The problem of web communities is less the lack of discussions but rather an and posts that is difficult to understand for outsiders. In this context one of my favourite goals has been to provide an overview over whats going on in the blog first but to offer a deeper level of involvement instantanously on demand and without the need (but with the possiblity) to leave the site. In order to achieve these two contradictionary aims I fitted the whole site with rollovers that will open the entry of interest (supposed your interest is where your cursor points to; see ) and offers the possibility to rush through the site at the same time. You are not bothered with the whole load of information around the original entry at once because the comments (trackback-links, referrences) stay minimized to bars until they get clicked. Refernces within the original text can be expanded via the symbol so that you get a kind of preview information of the linked website. The referenced words themselves are still available as a classic hyperlink to the original source. creative network technical note January 23, 2005 12:40 PM The preview functions can be implemented quickly when the corresponding webpage offers an rss-feed. usability disclaimer January 23, 2005 13:02 I have to admit that my technical skills could not completely keep up with my ideas for the rollover effects. social network big fish vs. swarm fishJanuary 24, 2005 4:15 In an interview from 1995 Umberto Eco points out that The Internet is the greatest possibility of abolishing any or every [Big] Brother. But it can in a second step open up the possibility for some Big Brothers to occupy the main lines and the main network. At this point, I do not know. Almost ten years later the situation might have changed for both, better and worse. The conglomeration in the media sector advanced and the influence of "gatekeepers" such as Google for information or Microsoft in the browser world grew. Especially these two companies were merging more and more aspects touching communication, commerce and often privacy issues into their services such as Blogger, Gmail and Adsense with Google. On the other hand the open source movement is growing rapidly with excellent software in their hands. And other collectively maintained areas are full of vivid members such as the blogging community. It might be one of the best chances to keep the worldwideweb from getting the same problems with oligopoles as the print media and TV markets. political network What do you call democracy? January 23, 2005 0:07 Democracy as thought by Abraham Lincoln is a government "of the people, by the people and for the people". As soon as majority decissions are introduced a competion of ideas will follow and to get one's ideas heard (and appreachiated) one will try to promote them in the best way possible. Today's media often have a massive impact concerning their proclamations but also often a narrowed i.e. imbalanced perspective. It has become quite difficult to present different views outside the media business. A view on the current www. January 23, 2005 0:12 The web used to be the hope of lots of idealists who thought that this might be the place of free discussions and idea exchange. It became a colourful and loud market place on the one hand and a battleground for major media companies on the other. Though it is getting easier to publish, attention is generated by sites like google that ranks the search results of its omniscient brain by well treasured algorythms. What the web could be January 23, 2005 0:24 After all, this does not mean that the internet failed to catalyze democratic processes. In contrast it still develops as more and more people get access to it and so does the awareness for the publishing possiblities offered. Web-based discussions are easily accessible independently from time and space, serious and massive sources can be displayed quickly via links, transparency can be enhanced, and the whole process gets fueled by a series of tools for dealing with information more efficently. Little technical or financial effort is necessary to publish, discuss and refine new ideas – and maybe laws. blogs and democracy January 23, 2005 0:38 A Blog is a perfect illustration to all this as it can mix personal, entertaining reports with serious discussions, offering attraction as well as thorough information. Multi-view information still remains the basis to set up a differentiated opinion. Laurence Lessig January 23, 2005 1:38 Although the OpenSource Movement proves that software development improves dramatically both in speed and quality while publicly run, especially major companies try to lock up their source code with patents and copyrights. Even more they try to get well known software features protected which will offer them the possiblity to license them back to the public for fees. This development is a serious threat for a lively progress towards a web-based democratic society as it prevents barrier-free medium access.


	lock January 23, 2005 0:07 Three levels of networks A very intresting aspect in Joitchi Ito's was the presentation of the so-called that had been proposed by Ross Mayfield. Being CEO of he has detailed knowledge of social systems and business relations. For the categorization of links on a blog he brought together some aspects of the social sciences: One individual is usually part of a creative network of around people that are most important to generate new ideas. There are up to people forming the social network of friends and family which is enclosed in the political network of all other society members. Having this in mind I thought it could be helpful for the visitor to notice not only that there are comments but also whether a post is in intense but limited discussion or part of a society wide debate. While the rollover-interface supports the display of blog entries the coloured bars inform the user which kind of network of people is working on an article. As each comment and each source is represented by one bar an article that is based on a variety of sources or provoked a lot of reactions gets automatically larger and more noticeable. creative network learning algorithm January 23, 2005 13:50 Especially in heavy-networking environments such as blogs it should be easily feasable to categorize all occuring links and comments. A possible, simple algorythm is to collect all links and rank them by number of occurence. The top nine are probably forming the creative and the top 150 the social network. As automatic determination of personal data tends to fail the maintainer of the site should be able to add or change the entries of these lists. All in all it would result in a learning algorithm. social network rss January 23, 2005 14:38 A speciality in the world of blogs is a standardized procedure to create an abstract of each article by a technology called rss or atom. Both systems provide the most important information such as title, author and description in an xml-conform package. These packages can be collected by newsreader tools that display an overview over different blogs in one place. two way linking January 23, 2005 14:38 Usually a weblink is one-way that means you can set an outgoing link but the target site will never know that it is referred to from somewhere else (except via the server-log). With the introduction of trackback-servers for moveable type and the technorati-webservice a webbased directory got set up that can receive rss-packages just like a news-reader. But with these systems the package can contain an additional entry if the corresponding article links to another webpage. In consequence you can search this directory for "all sites that link to me" and with rss-packages as a result you receive the most important aspects of those sites at the same time. Of course you do not have to perform these queries your own but it will be available via server-to-server communications. political network testbox permalink If everything worked fine, you will see a second box with the referring site "linked back"


	lock January 22, 2005 23:06 basic blogs. One of most common functions of blogs has been traditionally the webfilter where the blog-author collects interesting sites and links from his travels through the world wide web (best example is the well known ). This way he genereates a kind of commented bookmark list that presents some opinions and interests of the author as a person as well. This activity might sound like stamp collecting and just alike these web-collections are often shown or referred to. Exchanging one's findings and views forms a vital part of the community. Based on those web-oriented blogs the personal aspects became more and more intresting. Lots of blogs today (e.g. on ) can be seen as personal diaries that contain events from the web as well as from the real life of the writer. Typical properties are personal/private information, completely arbitray collection of topics and time-oriented order. A third kind of authors see their blog as a offering a simple but sometimes very effective means to get their voice heard. Just like Gutenberg's printing press served as a basis for newspapers they see themselves enabled to free speech by a blog in contrast to the often biased images drawn by mass media. Analogical the appropriate blog tools bear names like or . These kinds of blogs present personal views just like the mentioned diary-style but refer more to things happening in society, often with political (though not necessarily party-oriented) statements. Usually these points are supposed to be discussed making use of both the possiblity to refer to lots of sources and the dense, crosslinked community of bloggers. creative network personal impact January 23, 2005 12:40 PM The last kind of blog was most intresting to me because it seems to combine the advantages of the web with the requirements of democracy. This way it fosters as well the development of advanced technologies as a creative exchange the brings lots of different ideas together. social network blogs and forums January 23, 2005 11:15 AM The characteristics mentioned might be especially useful to seperate blogs from forums that tend to be public/collectively maintained, topic-oriented and thread-sorted. Of course there is no need to draw a clear line and a platform can float somewhere between these two states.


	lock January 12, 2005 IBM contributes 500 patents to the public Ross Mayfield's Weblog Steve Lohr reports that IBM is . John Kelly, the senior vice president for technology and intellectual property, called the patent contribution "the beginning of a new era in how I.B.M. will manage intellectual property." Perhaps for more than just IBM -- competitors may have to follow, um, . While 500 patents is a drop in the bucket for the () this is a significant move and part of a broader strategy to pool risk, leverage a lead in services and change the game. "This is exciting", said , a professor at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. "It is I.B.M. making good on its commitment to encourage a different kind of software development and recognizing the burden that patents can impose." Amazing things happen when self interest is in group interest. Although I'd like to see what those patents actually are, but I do think this is interesting and good thing to see. They're not the first to take this strategy. I recall Intel doing something similar, pooling patents around development using their chips so that developers could more easily create software without bumping into each other. I think I remember that those were not Intel's patents, but the patents of the developers. ;-) But the strategy is similar. Companies fight for intellectual property protection for self-interest arguing that without it, people will not innovate. On the other hand, many platform providers know that patents often encumber innovation. With software patents in particular, I believe that they stifle innovation more than they create incentives, especially for small companies. It's nice to see patent giants like IBM taking steps like this. creative network 1- intellectual property @ January 12, 2005 01:13 PM The owner of any type of property has the right to give that property away to others as a gift or as an act of philanthropy. That is a fine, moral and indeed noble act. Once one has an income level above a certain level then the pleasure derived from providing gifts can be far greater than that derived from enjoying the material benefits that would accrue from keeping control of the property and any income stream derived from it. Also, an intellectual property owner may decide that it is in its best interest to pool intellectual property or enter cross licence arrangements with other key players in an industry in order that they can ensure that they have all the key patents to produce products that customers want. This type of co-operation arrangement is perfectly rational and results from the excercise of the mutual self interest of a group of individuals or organisations. So, gifting or intellectual property and/or entering into co-operative licensing structures such as Patent Pools and Cross Licensing deals are the natural extension of a respect for property values. After all, if the valuable contribution of each individual player was not recognised as property then there would be nothing to use for trade or leverage to co-operate and nothing to bestow as a gift. As Joi says platforms develop on top of fundamental research patents and without the co-operation of these early stage inventors in licensing their invention then innovation on the platform can be inhibited. However, the solution is certainly not to steal the original patent but for co-ordinators to create patent pools where the early stage patent holders are provided a higher licensing revenue than later stage innovators. 2- intellectual property @ January 12, 2005 01:52 PM Maybe one way of protecting the creators/innovators and entreprenurs of start up businesses against those large companies who would use their R&D and patent portfolio as a weapon against them - would be to establish a kind of handicapping system like in Golf. Intellectual property owners would be able to compete and co-operate with one another based on the power of their intellectual property porfolio adjusted to their handicapped score. 3- Trevor Hill @ January 13, 2005 10:44 AM IBM is doing this for only two reasons. One is marketing. The other is that at this particular point in time, their interests happen to be aligned with certain open source projects and companies... It's nothing more than that. 4- intellectual property @ January 13, 2005 02:42 PM Trevor, thanks for backing me up on my comments recently. Even though I am confident of the inherent truth of my argument it can be lonely in the vacuum of this free culture echo chamber. 5- dshupp @ January 13, 2005 02:43 PM Trevor, I feel like you're implying that there's something wrong with either of those? IBM has made a series of deliberate choices over the past few years to align itself with open source, and is trumpeting the fact that it helps its and its customers' bottom lines. So a for-profit company uses and supports open source to make even more profits...where's the issue? social network IBM gives 500 patents public! from Petri Vilén Blog January 13, 2005 03:07 AM The Big Blue, IBM contributes 500 patents to the public. The list of pulished patents shows that it is a rather interesting deal from IBM. Maybe after this other large companies give out some patents too and I hope the IBM IP Gambit from Occam's Razor January 14, 2005 07:25 AM The word gambit stems from the Italian 'gambetta' which means: setting a trap. A gambit is a chess opening, where something is sacrificed in order to achieve a better position. Usually, the piece sacrificed is a pawn, but there are


	lock December 19, 2004 03:06 JST The edge of Orkut I just got the following message on . Limit reached for number of friends You have 1024 friends. You can only have up to 1000 friends. Before you can add more friends, you need to remove friends. Partially because I was getting sick of social networks systems, partially because they were trying to be "exclusive" with invite only and partially because it was easy, I took the policy of saying yes to every friend request that didn't look like a fakester. Now I've found the edge of Orkut. According to Orkut, you can only have 1000 friends. I guess that's OK compared to the 150 or so for AIM. This error message reminds me a bit of real life. I know need to forget someone every time I meet someone I want to remember because I'm having a buffer overflow on my people recognition memory. Now the question is... What do I do with my Orkut network now that I'm "done"? creative network François Granger 04-12-19 03:29 AM Sell it on eBay ! ;-) Michael 04-12-19 03:29 Delete your account and start over. Ross Mayfield 04-12-19 03:33 Now you discover who your real friends are? Julian Bond 04-12-19 04:08 Francois beat me to it. An alternative answer is of course, "Give it away on Craigslist". 1024 is deeply suspect. This is what happens when you let Geeks build social software. 2^10 friends indeed. Joi must have at least 2^16 people who can answer the multiple question "Are You My Friend? Yes:No" with 1 instead of 0. Adam Shostack 04-12-19 04:10 Ebay is so old-school. Sell it on your blog! I'll start the bidding at $5. Kevin Burton 04-12-19 04:50 Why 1024? I find it strange that you're exactly 2^10.... Is Joi really a bot? Why does he have exactly 2^10 slots for his buddy list?! Very suspect! I have my eye on you Joi! Mark Wubben 04-12-19 05:31 Now, the really suspective thing is that you can have a maximum of 1000 friends, but Joi has 1024! social network Les Grecs anciens craignaient d'atteindre les limites de la Terre, Joi Ito lui a atteind les limites d'Orkut from GuiM Weblog 04-12-19 12:36 Si la Terre est ronde et sans limites, ce n'est pas le cas d'Orkut dont Joi Ito a atteint les limites avec 1 000 amis dans son réseau... Dommage... Moi, heureusement, j'ai beaucoup plus de 1 000 amis sur 我们能有几个朋友 from WebLeOn's Blog 04-12-19 10:55 一直觉得，要在网络上创建一个稳固而可以信任的新关系网络非常困难&#... political network Joi finds the edge of Orkut from The Power of Many 04-12-19 03:47 Joi Ito fills up his Orkut dance card, wonders what happens after "game over" (The edge of Orkut): I just got the following message on Orkut.Limit reached for number of friends You have 1024 friends. You can only have up... iPod For Every Kind Of Music Fan from Twist Image Multimarketing Studio - Mitch Joel's Blog - Marketing and Communication Insights 04-12-19 04:51 Joi's at the edge from RatcliffeBlog—Mitch's Open Notebook 04-12-09 10:34 AM So, Joi Ito has reached the edge of Orkut and cannot add anymore friends unless he starts deleting some first. What are they supposed to do, die? Is he supposed to offend someone by saying "No, you're not really...


	lock December 18, 2004 07:07 JST Global Voices manifesto draft There is now of the manifesto on Hoder's wiki. What do you think? You can also comment on Ethan's creative network Rebecca M. 04-12-19 07:19 FYI I just posted the very latest version (same as you just posted) for comment on the blog here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/index.php?p=28 Look forward to hearing what people think. Rebecca kelli 04-12-19 03:48 Love it! I think it's really good it adresses a lot that's important concerning free speach. More so it give's people an impression about what free speach is. I never really thought about it before i read this manifesto. Now I get a clear picture of it.


	lock December 16, 2004 The top 1,000 things to know I agree with him. The most important thing I learned in school was how to touch type. social network Top things for a 13 year old to learn or know from chaotic intransient prose bursts December 17, 2004 11:23 AM [Via Joi]: Seth Godin blogs about the top 1,000 things for a 13 year old to learn, although he lists only 20. There's some good points in there, but overall I think the list sucks. The top 1,000 things to know from Jim O'Connell December 17, 2004 12:12 PM Seth Godin started an interesting thread on his blog about what every 13 year old should know. Seth's Blog: The top 1,000 things to know The top 1,000 things to know So what are they? What are the one thousand teachable things that every third grader o... A 3d Graders Top 1K Things to Know from CommonSenseDesk December 24, 2004 12:15 AM Joi Ito shares Seth Godin's question 'What are the top 1,000 things every third grader should know?' Slow Learning from Kalilily Time December 26, 2004 05:46 AM Over on Blog Sisters (where I can feel comfortable posting and commenting now because I resigned from the job of Registrar that I was doing badly and feeling guilty about), Betsy Devine calls attention to a post on Seth Godin's... Top things for a 13 year old to learn from Steve's Gallery December 30, 2004 02:48 AM I'm a bit behind the sphere on this one, but there's a list floating Joi Ito points to Seth Godin's post about kid's skills from Chunky Ji's Journal January 7, 2005 02:46 PM The top 1000 things for a third grader should learn. I would add critically: That they are extremely cool just the way they are... political network Chunky Ji's Journal Excerpt: top 1000 things for a third grader should learn Blog Sisters Excerpt: men hope someone else will silently do what's needed. Well, I hate to feed into that stereotype, but really! Way too many important parts of human existence are missing from Seth Godin's "Top Twenty" list--and even from the somewhat more wide-ranging discussion on Joi Ito's blog . Even worse, I pictured ambitious, anxious parents creating similar checklists, then ripping the GameBoy out of Junior's hands and asking to "talk." "Junior, my ambition for you is a high credit limit on your platinum credit card plus occasional Kalilily Time Excerpt: calls attention to a post on Seth Godin's blog asking what are the thousand things that every third grader should start learning and know before she graduates high school. The discussion is carried on over at Joi Ito's blog as well. Before I retired from the NY State Education Department, I worked as part of groups that developed a variety of the state's "Learning Standards" (pdf document) -- what kids should learn, know, and be able to do in various subject areas by View From 5280 Excerpt: The top 1,000 things to know : " Seth blogs about the top 1,000 things for a 13 year old to learn. I agree with him. The most important thing I learned in school was how to touch type.Comment - TrackBack" (Via Joi Ito's Web.)The top 1,000 things to know r - echos / jerome rigaud / informations flux / electro typo graphisme / electronic installation / media art Excerpt: Does anyone use my blogroll? People seem to like the random faces, but I have a feeling people don't look at the blogroll. I admit it's rather hidden, but it's become unwieldy. Comment - TrackBack The top 1,000 things to know PaidContent.org Excerpt: The Digital Genie's Out of the Bottle -- Jim Austin TV News in a Postmodern World: A Broadcaster's Christmas Carol -- Terry L. Heaton (and Charles Dickens) (via Doc Searls) The top 1,000 things to know -- Seth Godin (via Joi Ito ) Whatâ??s Next for Google -- Charles H. Ferguson (via Robert Scoble) [Dec.17: Link] \| [by staci] [IMG e-mail this post to a friend]'