Well there’s 43 Things which I’m a huge fan of – a community based around ambitions and things we’d like to do, genius. And really nicely done. Then there’s 43 Places – a community rooted in the places that we’ve visited (or would like to visit). And now there’s 43 People – a community based around the people we’d like to meet.
All the sites are incredibly smartly put together using all the latest Web 2.0 must haves. Robot Co-op I salute your brilliance.
Who? Why? 2 Chinese dudes, sing along to the Backstreet Boys. It’s funny. It gets funnier as you watch it for longer. The guy in the background appears to be just going about his business, unperturbed by the maniacs freaking out to boy-pop behind him.
Via BoingBoing via the Today Show via Sina.com.cn – yoiks that’s a lot of via-ing.
Collaborative writing software online with Writeboard. Write, share, revise, compare. Well that’s what they say! It really is a lovely little collaborative app – great if you’re trying to do the old ‘to and fro’ with a bit of copy.
Those 37 signals chaps really do produce some cracking stuff. Check Backpack and Ta-da lists too.
PC Magazine: Top 101 Web Sites – really annoying laid out. But a good reminder of some of the best sites out there, and you might even discover one or two new ones. I did.
After running around excitedly telling everyone how much I love BugMeNot, someone told me I’m way behind the curve on this one. I was slightly crestfallen for about a nanosecond, then I remembered that I’d just found one of the most useful and brilliant things ever. BugMeNot.com – is a user generated database of logins and passwords for registration websites.
OK, so it’s morally reprehensible, and if I use your site more than once I promise I will still register properly, so they you can get my demographics, opt-in permissions, etc. But for that one little article that I want to read once, it’s a huge timesaver. Comes into its own when you install the bookmarklet.
David Sifry (the founder of Technorati) gives his view on the state (and size) of the blogosphere. Some interesting numbers in there. Perhaps naively I had no idea of the scale of fake blogs as used by spammers.
It’s true that you learn a new thing every day. Tangentially, The thing I learned yesterday is that a key part of ‘The Knowledge’ that London cab drivers have to go through is a test of temperament. If you’re a moody git, you fail. I reckon some of them need retesting ;-)
Broadband Stars – Covering the social media revolution: Growing pains ahead for social bookmarking? Interesting comment on the growth of web 2.0 apps and how the democratisation of them may ultimately lead to problems. Also refers to the ‘old guard’ worrying about non-geeks co-opting their technology. Strikes me that one of the beauties of tagging is that if geeks want to keep their links (or whatever) pure, all they’d need to do is add special tags that only their acceptible community know and use. Thus weeding out tags of the great unwashed.
Smacks a bit of elitism to me though. But I guess being able to slice information based on who’s submitted it is a key part of social software. It’ll be interesting to watch anyway…
Also liking the use of del.icio.us for reader submissions (see coolhunting.com for examples.
Creating Passionate Users: The best thing about Web 2.0 – As per normal Kathy Sierra makes some amazingly valid points over on one of my favourite blogs.
Isn’t it bugging when you read articles that express what you’re thinking so much better than you ever could?
Another case in point with Kathy is her article on ‘Dignity is Deadly’. She talks about the painful puberty that companies face when they try to grow beyond their startup roots. And questions the need to grow-up in the first place. A question dear to my heart (professionally and privately;))
Adrants covers BK getting ‘Farked’ – an interesting story of a brand getting stacks of exposure though an online community running away with their ‘icon’ and co-opting it in their own way. The article kind of makes it sound as if BK had a hand in it.
I was chatting with Rob from B3ta.com about this earlier and he spoke to Drew from Fark who made it very clear that there was absolutely nothing commercial about the Farking at all.
I’m in the process of writing a bigger piece on brands and viral subversion – I’ll post it soon…
If anything is hot right now it’s web2.0 – it’s starting to feel like mantra for a massive new bubble that’s swelling as I type…
Some people might say it’s a lot of fuss about nothing, and that there’s essentially nothing new in web2.0 (it’s really just what the web was always supposed to be: ‘a web of networked sites that fit together to create something bigger and better than the sum of its parts’).
That’s as may be, but as a set of organising thoughts and principles I think it has a place and a role to play. It certainly helps to make a case for getting rid of the desire for ownership that has plagued commerial web activity for so long now: “We’re going to own guinea-pig food online!”. Yeah right…
A great overview and primer here.
I my not going to surf any other kind of web from now on, if it ain’t 2.0 it ain’t getting in my
browser.