Minding The Planet is Nova Spivack’s weblog on emerging technologies and trends. It focuses on ways in which the Web is becoming more present, personalized and precise.
Nova Spivack is a technology futurist, entrepreneur, angel investor, and a leading voice on search, collective intelligence and the Semantic Web. More...
Today I’m happy to announce the launch of StreamGlider, a new tablet app (initially on iPad) that provides the first live streaming dashboard for keeping up with your interests. TechCrunch just broke the story. The inspiration for StreamGlider was a product that launched in the early 1990′s called Pointcast. Pointcast streamed news, entertainment, ads and [...]
After my former project, Twine.com, was sold, I began to turn my attention to the Next Big Challenge: How to make sense of the growing real-time Web, or what many call, “the Stream.” I could see the writing on the wall, and it was less than 140 characters: Social media’s own success was going to [...]
Today, after almost two years of work in stealth, I am proud to announce the launch of Bottlenose. While I have co-founded and serve on the boards of several other ventures (The Daily Dot, Live Matrix, StreamGlider, and others), Bottlenose is different from all my other projects in that I am also in a full-time [...]
Today I’m pleased to announce that, The Daily Dot, our newest “venture production,” has launched into public beta. The Daily Dot is the first of its kind – it’s the Web’s newspaper — the first community newspaper about the Web. We cover the Web like a town paper covers its community. Here’s a video overview [...]
The social media landscape is changing quickly, but this change won’t be immediate, or for that matter, efficient. And that’s going to be a big problem for all of us. I believe that Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn are fundamentally different, and thus, should not be in competition. However, I’m not sure the companies themselves [...]
In previous articles, I’ve written about how Google+ can build a developer ecosystem on Chrome that is different from Twitter’s ecosystem, and how Twitter must change to survive against that. It’s clear that Google+ and Twitter are very different animals. Now what about Facebook? Should Facebook be worried about Google+? Are Facebook and Google+ really [...]
As a result of the emergence of Google+, Twitter could soon find itself in a tough spot. A large chunk of their core developer base might migrate to Google+ because there is simply more opportunity there. Why? Well for starters, it’s really easy to crank out Chrome extensions and you can market and sell them [...]
Google+ has seen some good initial uptake from early-adopters in its first few weeks. But how will it leverage developers and partners? In order to really build value around Google+, of course Google will integrate it with their other products, including Search, Gmail, and more. That will get it in front of a lot of [...]
I was recently interviewed by Stephen Ibaraki and Alex Lin (CEO of ChinaValue) in what turned out to be the most interesting, far-reaching, and multi-disciplinary (and long) interview I’ve ever given. I was very pleased with the depth of their questions and the topics we covered. You can listen to the MP3 version here, or [...]
TechCrunch kindly ran my most recent article today — the full version is available here. Here is an excerpt: I’ve been puzzling over Twitter’s recent tactical moves around their API, Ubermedia and Tweetdeck, for a few months now, and it just doesn’t add up. In fact I think Twitter’s current strategy may take them in [...]
I’m pleased to announce that my newest venture production is beginning to unstealth. It’s called The Daily Dot and it promises to be “the hometown newspaper of the Web ” — the community newspaper for Web. The story of The Daily Dot began several years ago when I was thinking about where the Web was [...]
My father, Mayer Spivack, passed away on February 12, 2011, in the Kaplan Family House, a beautiful hospice outside of Boston. He passed away, at the young age of 74, after a difficult year and a half battle with colon cancer. During his illness he never lost his spirit of childlike curiosity, enormous compassion, and [...]
If 2010 was the year of the Real-Time Web, then 2011 is going to be the year that it evolves into the Scheduled Web. The Real-Time Web happens in the now: it is spontaneous, overwhelming, and disorganized. Things just happen unpredictably and nobody really knows what to expect or what will happen when. The Real-Time [...]
Today I am announcing that my company, Radar Networks, and its flagship product, Twine, have been acquired by Evri. TechCrunch broke the story here. This acquisition consolidates two leading providers of semantic discovery and search. It is also the culmination of a long and challenging venture to pioneer the adoption of the consumer Semantic Web. [...]
The human brain is like an archaeological record. Different layers and functional areas have evolved outwards over time. And now a new layer is evolving. I propose we call this new layer of the brain “the metacortex.” (Note: Metacortex also happens to be the company that Neo worked for in the movie, The Matrix) The [...]
Sneak Preview of Siri – The Virtual Assistant that will Make Everyone Love the iPhone, Part 2: The Technical Stuff In Part-One of this article on TechCrunch, I covered the emerging paradigm of Virtual Assistants and explored a first look at a new product in this category called Siri. In this article, Part-Two, I interview [...]
“All reality is virtual” — Terrence McKenna This is Part II of my article “The Global Brain is About to Wake Up” — about the realtime Web and how it relates to the emerging Global Brain. Here I focus mainly on thorny philosophical and scientific speculations about the nature of consciousness, the role it plays [...]
We are so focused on how to improve present-day search engines. But that is a kind of mental myopia. In fact, a more interesting and fruitful question is why do people search at all? What are they trying to accomplish? And is there a better way to help them accomplish that than search? Instead of [...]
This is the story of Twine.com — our early research (with never before seen screenshots of our early semantic desktop work), and our evolution from Twine 1.0 towards Twine 2.0 (“T2″) which is focused on semantic search. A Yarn About Twine — ISWC 2009 Keynote — Nova Spivack View more presentations from Twine.com. Related Posts:Twine [...]
This is a talk I have given many times, on the past, present and future evolution of the Web, and particularly the Semantic Web. Web Evolution Nova Spivack Twine View more presentations from Twine.com. Related Posts:Twine "T2" – Latest Demo Screenshots (Internal Alpha)A Few Predictions for the Near FuturePowerpoint Deck: Making Sense of the Semantic [...]
I have noticed an interesting and important trend of late. The Web is starting to spread outside of what we think of as “the Web” and into “the World.” This trend is exemplified by many data points. For example: The Web on mobile devices like the iPhone. Finally it’s really usable on a phone. Now [...]
In typical Web-industry style we’re all focused minutely on the leading trend-of-the-year, the real-time Web. But in this obsession we have become a bit myopic. The real-time Web, or what some of us call “The Stream,” is not an end in itself, it’s a means to an end. So what will it enable, where is [...]
The next generation of Web search is coming sooner than expected. And with it we will see several shifts in the way people search, and the way major search engines provide search functionality to consumers. Web 1.0, the first decade of the Web (1989 – 1999), was characterized by a distinctly desktop-like search paradigm. The [...]
DRAFT 1 — A Work in Progress Introduction Here’s an idea I’ve been thinking about: it’s a concept for a new philosophy, or perhaps just a name for a grassroots philosophy that seems to be emerging on its own. It’s called “Nowism.” The view that now is what’s most important, because now is where one’s [...]
May 8, 2009 Welcome to The Stream The Internet began evolving many decades before the Web emerged. And while today many people think of the Internet and the Web as one and the same, in fact they are different. The Web lives on top of the Internet’s infrastructure much like software and documents live on [...]
(DRAFT 2. A Work-In-Progress) The Problem: Our Communities are Failing I’ve been thinking about community lately. There is a great need for a new and better model for communities in the world today. Our present communites are not working and most are breaking down or stagnating. Cities are experiencing urbanization and a host of ensuing [...]