As I blogged, my attention was caught by Janice Fraser's Adaptive Path post, It's a Whole New Internet. I then read Andre Torrez's post, It's A Whole New (No It's Not) Internet, and Jason Kottke's follow-up. I can see where they're coming from (developers who have been involved online for some years; a point also made by Michael Boyle), but my original excitement at the Adaptive Path essay remains. Of course, I'm far from alone: for example, Josh Owens and SteelPixel also sniff the new air. I am interested that they are working on a calendaring project (see comment 1), something for which we at Radley are definitely hunting. Trumba gets my colleague's, Ian's, vote as of now: its import features for uploading your own calendars commend it to us.
I find it amazing how much the web/web-user interface has altered from what it was just a short while ago: Firefox, with all its plugins and Greasemonkey extensions (provided that the whole thing doesn't end up broken); what I noted Mike calls 'a galaxy of API-enabled web-services … exploring the all-of-one-type-of-thing-everywhere path'; the first shot (from Larry Gadea) at integrating Gmail with Google Desktop Search; the almost daily initiatives that both Google and Yahoo! are making with their search engines; the only just a bit slower rate at which dazzling new online projects are coming into the world — the latest being Backpack … And I haven't even had time to try Orb, as we wait for Odeo to launch. And, Audioscrobbler is working lightning fast!
The web is buzzing with ideas as to how things should now go forward. I posted the two paragraphs above and then found:
- Matthew Gertner on The Resourceful Web
Jon Udell comments on the architectural shortcomings of offers like del.icio.us and social bookmarking clones like del.irio.us. While they offer compelling functionality, the possibilities for extending these services are mainly limited to lobbying the person who created them in the first place. Contrast this with an ecosystem like Firefox, which has blossomed because anyone can add new features in the form of extensions. With blinding insight, Jon remarks that “our models of programmer participation haven’t yet caught up with the shift from open source to open services.” … The solution? A client-centric architecture that manipulates resources (i.e. little chunks of XML, each with its own ID). It's essential that the resources have an ID so that they can be synchronized across clients. This would let me store and manipulate my del.icio.us bookmarks locally and still keep the bookmarks on the server up-to-date.
- Olivier Travers on An Easier Way to Upload Photos to TypePad
"If you are a Windows user who likes to share a lot of photos with your family and friends, then you will be happy to learn that uploading photos just got a whole lot easier. In a few moments XP users can download and install a simple photo uploading wizard that integrates directly into your XP File Explorer. Just select the photo or photos you wish to upload from any folder and click on the "Publish these items to the Web" link found in your XP sidebar."
Imagine that, a desktop extension (almost at the OS level) to that most webish of web apps, the blog publishing tool. If only operating systems kept evolving to better support the hardware they're supposed to manage, instead of trying to include more and more such media-related gizmos best left to ISVs.
