Archives for Collaboration Tools

Harnessing The Collective Mind

Today I read an interesting article in the New York Times about a company called Rite-Solutions which is using a home-grown stock market for ideas to catalyze bottom-up innovation across all levels of personnel in their organization. This is a way to very effectively harness and focus the collective creativity and energy in an organization around the best ideas that the organization generates.… Read More “Harnessing The Collective Mind”

New Text-Mining Project Aims to Help Scientists

A new project applies text-mining to help scientists in the UK discover knowledge in large collections of research articles and data (Found in: KurzweilAI):


Julie Nightingale

Tuesday   January   10, 2006
The Guardian

 
 Scientific
research is being added to at an alarming rate: the Human Genome
Project alone is generating enough documentation to "sink battleships".

Read More “New Text-Mining Project Aims to Help Scientists”

The Semantic Web on Your Desktop — Open IRIS Announced

Following in the footsteps of Douglas Engelbart’s pioneering work, SRI has announced the upcoming open-source (LGPL) release of Open IRIS — an experimental Semantic Web personal information manager that runs on the desktop. IRIS was developed for the DARPA CALO project and makes use of code libraries and ontology components developed at SRI, and my own startup, Radar Networks, as well as other participating research organizations.… Read More “The Semantic Web on Your Desktop — Open IRIS Announced”

The World Wide Database — Google Base Thoughts

I am playing around with the barely functional live beta of Google Base that just launched. There’s not much there, but what I do see is interesting. At the very least this is going to be serious competition for Ning. Beyond that it may compete with Craigslist and other classifieds and events listing services.… Read More “The World Wide Database — Google Base Thoughts”

The Future of the Web is Semantic

Here is a good article from IBM that provides decent, not-overly-technical, overview of the technologies that make up the Semantic Web, and the value they offer.

Radar Networks News…

Great news! Radar Networks, the venture I’ve been building, has received its first round of outside funding from Vulcan Capital. We are heavily in stealth mode.

Beautiful Idea: How to Program the Global Mind

I just read this really cool idea about how to design a programming language for the global brain — think of it as grid computing, but where some of the agents in the grid are humans and others are computers, working together to solve problems.… Read More “Beautiful Idea: How to Program the Global Mind”

Communities of Purpose: The Third Type of Community

I’ve been thinking about different types of communities recently. Two forms of community that are often discussed are "communities of interest" where the members share a common set of interests (e.g. a community of people interested in Japanese culture), and "communities of practice" where the members share a common set of skills (e.g.… Read More “Communities of Purpose: The Third Type of Community”

Microsoft Buys Groove: No Big Deal

Microsoft announced that they are buying Groove Networks today, in a deal that has gotten some buzz. But I don’t really think it’s very significant given that Microsoft already had a large equity stake in Groove and has linked them into their apps for more than a year now.… Read More “Microsoft Buys Groove: No Big Deal”

Folktologies — Beyond the Folksonomy vs. Ontology Distinction

First of all I know Clay Shirky, and he’s a good fellow. But he’s simply wrong about his claim that "tagging" (of the flavor that is appearing on del.icio.us — what I call "social tagging") is inherently better than the use of formal ontologies.… Read More “Folktologies — Beyond the Folksonomy vs. Ontology Distinction”

The Ontology Problem: A Definition with Commentary

The Ontology Problem is a fundamental challenge of the emerging Semantic Web. This problem is comprised of three key sub-problems, the Upper Ontology Problem, the Domain Ontology Problem, and the Ontology Integration Problem, described in detail below:

 

Google's Browser Project…And Ours…

So, rumor has it that Google is working on a browser and/or other software to challenge Microsoft. And, what’s more, this may be based on Mozilla…. interesting…. If true, the folks at Google should get in touch with me… without disclosing too much (yet), we are working on a project (with SRI, for DARPA) to build a Java-based fully-semantic open-sourced PIM that grafts Mozilla onto my company’s Semantic Applications Platform.… Read More “Google's Browser Project…And Ours…”

Idea: Driving Through Virtual Soundscapes

This is an idea for a new way to navigate interactively through large audio sets, such as collections of thousands of music tracks, and to automatically or interactively learn and evolve interesting trajectories through such spaces.

Current State of the Weblog Tools Market

This article provides a good overview of the Weblog tools market, products, and market share.

GoMeme 2.0 – Help Test This Meme

Note: This experiment is now finished.

GoMeme 2.0 — Copy This GoMeme From This Line to The End of this article, and paste into your blog. Then follow the instructions below to fill it out for your site.

Steal This Post!!!!… Read More “GoMeme 2.0 – Help Test This Meme”

FAQ for GoMeme 2.0

This posting is the FAQ and introduction for a new, improved, second-generation meme experiment that is designed to spread faster and more broadly than the first meme experiment. We call this kind of meme a “GoMeme” (pronounced Go-Meem), because it is a meme that is designed to Go.… Read More “FAQ for GoMeme 2.0”

RFC for a New Distributed Data Exchange System

Matt Poepping has come up with an interesting idea for how to create a fully distributed searchable database on the Net. It’s a cool enough idea and approach that people should see his RFC and comment on it. He may be onto something important here.

A New Blogging Feature: Automated "Social Syndication" Networks

Here’s an idea I’ve had recently that is related to the Meme Propagation experiment (see posts below on this blog for more about that ongoing experiment). The concept is for a new, meme-based, way to syndicate content across blogs. Here’s how it might work:

1.… Read More “A New Blogging Feature: Automated "Social Syndication" Networks”

GoMeme 1.0 — Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

NOTE: This experiment is now finished.

This is an experiment in spreading ideas across weblogs using the principles of viral marketing and social networks using a new method for making content more viral, which we call a "GoMeme."

Facetop — Cool New Videoconferencing Idea

Check out Facetop, a really smart way to do collaboration and videoconferencing at the same time. See the picture in the link above. (from Josh

New Version of My "Metaweb" Graph — The Future of the Net

metaweb_graph.GIF

Notes:

Many people have requested this graph and so I am posting my latest version of it. The Metaweb is the coming “intelligent Web” that is evolving from the convergence of the Web, Social Software and the Semantic Web. The Metaweb is starting to emerge as we shift from a Web focused on information to a Web focused on relationships between things — what I call “The Relationship Web” or the “Relationship Revolution.”… Read More “New Version of My "Metaweb" Graph — The Future of the Net”

From Application-Centric to Data-Centric Computing: The Metaweb

One of the big changes that will be enabled by the coming Metaweb is the shift from application-centric computing to data-centric computing. As the Metaweb evolves, information will be imbued with increasingly sophisticated metadata. HTML provides metadata about formatting and links.… Read More “From Application-Centric to Data-Centric Computing: The Metaweb”

AOL Joins Social Networking Craze … Using ICQ

AOL is entering the social networking fray by converting ICQ to a social networking tool. As I previously predicted social networking and IM are converging and this will give competitive advantages to companies with established IM user-bases. Here is the article.

The Metaweb is Coming… See this Diagram…

This diagram (click to see larger version) illustrates why I believe technology evolution is moving towards what I call the Metaweb. The Metaweb is emerging from the convergence of the Web, Social Software and the Semantic Web.

metaweb_graph.JPG

Blogging Study Stats Released

The Internet and American Life Project found that between 2 and 7 percent of Americans have weblogs, and about 10 percent of them update their blogs regularly. 11 Percent of surfers reported visiting blogs. The study was a random telephone survey of 1,555 Internet users with a 3 percent margin of error.

The Pattern of Social Technology Evolution

Here is my strategic outlook on the evolution of online technologies: past, present and future. Please see the table below. Commentary follows the table…

 

Content

Communication

Collaboration

Community

Commerce

1980’s

 

The Net

 

Desktop Publishing

 

Phone, Fax, Email

Database Applications

BBS’s & On-line
Services

Phone, Fax, Early EDI

1990’s

 

The Web

 

Web Publishing & Web Sites

 

PIM’s, E-mail & IM,
Phone, Fax

Groupware, KM, and Intranets

Web Portals

Web Stores & Marketplaces

2000’s

 

The Metaweb

 

Weblogs & RSS

 

(“Microcontent” and “Personal
Publishing”)

E-Mail, Webmail, IM, VOIP, Video
Conferencing & Web Conferencing

Wikis, Decentralized
Collaboration & Semantic Webs

Social Networks & “Friendsware

XML Web Services & Web Services Exchanges

2010’s

 

 

The Semantic Web

K-logs, Lifelogs & Personal
Portals

 

 

Microcontent becomes primary enterprise KM medium.

Read More “The Pattern of Social Technology Evolution”

Desktop Social Networking Apps Are not Defensible

Before you invest time, content, relationships or money in any desktop social software play, be forewarned, this idea is already “old hat” and there already several apps out there that combine social networking, chat, and community features. Note that here I am placing emphasis on “desktop” — my point is not to malign social networking in general, but rather to reveal the weaknesses of any business model that is focused around trying to make money from a desktop software tool for social networking.… Read More “Desktop Social Networking Apps Are not Defensible”

Semantic Web Officially Approved by W3C

Huge news for the Semantic Web — the W3C has officially approved the RDF and OWL specs.

Distributed Social Software

Ran across this paper on some ideas for distributed, peer-to-peer social software. It’s a very nice overview of some of the main ideas and benefits of a decentralized model for social networking, and also touches on Semantic Web topics. Interestingly the author has hit upon many of the major themes in Radar Networks’ platform — which implements the functionality that he proposes and more.… Read More “Distributed Social Software”

Mind-Reading for Managers

At Sandia National Laboratories researchers are working on a new technology that helps managers read the minds of their employees. This is supposed to help the managers assign tasks more effectively, gain insight into their employees’ states of mind, and achieve higher human performance.… Read More “Mind-Reading for Managers”