mediajunk

In an article entitled Converging Universes, prominent intellectual and technophile James C. Bennet predicts that the growth of the blogosphere will eventually lead to "a single artifact, probably the most complex human artifact ever to emerge."

Bennet suggests that the blogosphere is already having a profound effect on our information universes:

"Separate as the British and American information universes have been until now, a process of convergence has begun that will continue until there is only a single Anglosphere information universe. In this, the differences between right and left (for example) become more important than the distinctions of national origin. This process is already foreshadowed in the leading edge of the information universe, which at this point in time is the blogosphere -- the world of the Web logs, or blogs."

Bennett claims that the current blogosphere is just a foretaste of what's to come:

"The blogosphere is still miniscule compared to the audience for broadcast and print media. (Although reporters are more and more relying on the blogosphere for research and background, and more and more aware that the blogosphere has the power to expose quickly errors that previously could be buried.) However, its denizens are disproportionately young and disproportionately well-educated professionals. They will likely set the tone more and more for the coming generation."

Thus, an enivitable chain of events will occur:

"Full convergence is still some time away, but it is coming, as surely as today's younger blog-readers will move into positions of influence as time passes. The parallel information universes will be tied together with the thread of Internet linkage.The informational Anglosphere, in the sense of the entirety of written and recorded information in the English language, is gradually becoming fully accessible through Internet and Web, and accessible without regard to national boundaries.

At some point linkage will be so fluid and transparent, and indexing and search so effective, that documents will cease to be stand-alone artifacts, and the entire body of information in English (and for that matter, the entire body of information in other languages) will become in effect a single artifact, probably the most complex human artifact ever to emerge."

Food for thought!

In a remarkable, historic move, the BBC is to make its vast archives available for download on the internet -- for free!

"The service, the BBC Creative Archive, would be free and available to everyone, as long as they were not intending to use the material for commercial purposes," the company's news site says.

At a time when other content creation organisations -- notably the US music industry -- are fretting about how to make users pay for content, the BBC has truly embraced the spirit of the internet.

Sure, the Beeb won't make any money directly from this "intellectual property" -- but it will hugely enhance its brand, making it the number one name associated with digital content, which will give it much power in the future.

All of this content -- from Monty Python sketches to football commentary -- has already been paid for by the British public. Why keep it locked up?

So argues Alan Connor in a debate that is spreading like wildfire across the internet.

Content wants to be free. Kudos to the BBC for recognising this!

It's official: the word "blog" is now part of the English language, with its own entry in the Oxford Dictionary.

I wonder how the guy who (claims to have) invented the term feels about that?

(FREE BONUS TRIVIA: The French equivalent is "joueb" (journal + web), though "blogue" is also popular.)

I was watching a Discovery Channel documentary on robotics this morning and learned about the Asimo robot.

I'd heard about it before, but Asimo is much more advanced than I'd realised. Developer Honda seems to be serious about creating a market for humanoid robots.

So, indeed, is the Japanese government who, worrying about the ageing population (and without a significant pool of immigrants, who provide a cheap labour supply in other developed countries), provides funding for the R&D of "assistive technologies" to help the aged.

It turns out that Asimov was in the news recently, as he was the "ambassador" in a state visit to the Czech Rebuplic.

The video clip of the event (requires RealPlayer), from the BBC site, is fun to watch.

Just a quick follow-up to my last post.

Bernie Goldbach, technology journalist with the Irish Examiner, has a great story about how he was counter-googled at the desk of the UK Immigration authorities.

After checking him out on the internet, the immigration official decided to let Bernie through!

In an article that was designed as much to coin a new term as it was to add a new string to the marketing department’s bow, trendwatching.com are urging business to get "counter-googling".

The idea is that, just as consumers look up companies in Google, businesses should Google their clients or consumers. Google probably has more information on individuals than customer databases do. Hence, to offer a targeted, personalised service, it is better to glean information on an individual by Googling -- sorry, counter-googling -- them.

"Ask your sales department for a list of 25 recent first-time customers (names and addresses), start counter-Googling, and be amazed at what you'll find, learn and dream up!"

The real-world examples Trendwatching cites are pretty lame. For example: "The Bel Air Hotel in LA already Googles first-time guests upon arrival, based on their reservation details (name and address), leading to personalized services like assigning guests a room with morning sun if Googling shows the guest enjoys jogging early in the day."

Hmmm... I don't buy it. If you look up someone expecting information as specific as whether or not they are morning joggers, you are likely to be disappointed.

I agree that companies may well find information -- by counter-Googling individuals -- that is valuable to them. One of the first things you can find out about someone this way is what type of job they are in (and, from this, you can at least guess salaries).

But I don't think many companies will have the time and resources to read through a person's (often dull, endless) blog entries simply to find out what their tastes/dislikes are; what their socioeconomic background is; etc.

Thus, we may well see third-party counter-Googlers. That is, I could imagine companies offering a lookup service, which they would carry out by "scraping" information on individuals from the web.

This reminds me of Googlism, which uses counter-Googling and information scraping in an automated (and subsequently humourous) way.

If that last post about the Google calculator didn't make you realise just how geeky the new kings of the internet are, check out their homepages (created while they were PhD students at Stanford University).

Sergey Brin's homepage is pretty geeky, but Lawrence Page's takes the biscuit. That Lego printer ... what more can I say?

Just as Bill Gates did before them, Page and Brin are proving that cerebral talent, traditionally undervalued in the "cut-throat" world of business, is becoming increasingly important.

It's just such a pity they lack style; those page designs are awful.

People use Google for reasons other than simply searching the web.

To check a spelling, for example, type a questionable word into Google -- and if you don't see the "did you mean... ?" line afterwards, you know the spelling's good.

Also available through Google search are phone number lookups; dictionary definitions; stock quotes; and street maps.

The latest addition is the Google calculator.

To use the calculator, simply enter a calculation into the Google search bar (e.g. 2+2).

Of course, this being Google, the functionality gets a little more sophisticated.

Here are some other ways you can trigger the calculator. Try entering any of the following:

• Eighteen times twenty two

• XVI * MCXL

• How many pounds in seven stone?

• Planck's constant * 12!

• Speed of light / ((4/3) boltzmann constant * radius of earth^3))

• Seconds in a day * 1 quattuordecillionth / pi
  

If you were starting to feel lost at around 2+2, don't worry -- you're not the only one ;)

Just as books have ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers), periodicals and magazines have ISSNs (International Standard Serial Numbers). Both are unique numbers, used by international libraries to identify individual publications, which usually appear above the barcode on the back cover of the publication.

Well, a weblog is a periodical, so is it entitled to an ISSN number?

Yes! says Joe Clark, who cites the Canadian definition (which, he says, applies in other countries) of serials that qualify for ISSNs:

"A 'serial' is a publication, in any medium, issued in successive parts and intended to be continued indefinitely." (My italics.)

Clark says that some weblogs in the US have already received ISSN numbers, while some UK applicants have been turned down (he is unsure why).

Irish weblogs can apply for ISSNs online. I don't know if the Irish authority will accept weblogs – but I've written and asked them, so hopefully I'll find out soon.

"Why would you want an ISSN number?" you ask.

Clark lists a number of reasons, but forgets the main one: because it would be cool, in a geeky way.

As is often the case with Google, the first hint of a major new development was a quiet announcement on its site -- in this case, the jobs section. The ad for Director of Product Management, Googlette, leads immediately to the question -- what the hell is a Googlette?

According to the ad, a Googlette is "a start-up within a start-up" and that there will be "a wide array of them". The Director of Product Management will "define Google's innovation engine and grow the leaders of our next generation of businesses."

In an absence of any press release or comment (as yet) from Google, here's what I surmise:

• This venture – rather, these ventures – have grown directly out of "Google labs", which has spawned many new, exciting ideas. Google wants to manage some of these innovations as separate projects, recognising they may require as much nurturing as Google itself did when starting out four or five years ago.

• This is Google sticking to New Economy-style thinking, which so many companies rushed to emulate in the late 1990s, then quickly abandoned after the dot-com meltdown. Not Google, which understands that its toughest competition in the future may come from within its own offices.

  Thus, instead of trying to quash or control emerging ideas and/or personalities, Google encourages them. It offers to create a support network for potential leaders, in exchange for loyalty and an ongoing network relationship. Thus, Google's vision's of the future is one where it is the "queen bee", with many satellite companies hovering around it, at once feeding it and gaining support from it.

• Google is reacting to external competition, which is fast toughening. Witness the recent frenzy of mergers and acquisitions in internet search and advertising. Even Bill Gates is developing a search engine designed to rival Google's. Realising that the best form of defence is attack, Google's strategy is to start working on the next generation of technologies to change the web landscape.
  

I was intrigued by the evolution of the web “ecosystem” during the 90s; now we’re seeing the emergence of dominant web “organisms”, such as Google. I know, I know: I need to get out more.

By the way, did you know that Google recently bought Iceland? Yes, the entire country! ;)

What if you could have the entire contents of the web on disk? Well, Alexa (an Amazon company previously known for its site-rating concept) is offering just that ... albeit a gazillion disks.

I like the idea of internet archives. I had a magazine on the web called "The Buzz" back in 1994/95 and would enjoy looking at those pages again. Unfortunately, the best known archive only goes back as far as 1996.

I think I may still have some Buzz files on floppies. If so, I'll post them to my new site soon. Meanwhile, the only references I can find to The Buzz are a couple of dead links, here and here.

Both of them say that "The Buzz is a free magazine based in the northwest of Ireland, written and presented by a team of horrendous layabouts, and aimed at a similar reader group," which would have insulted me, if I hadn't written that line myself ;)

*****

Getting back to Alexa: I wonder if they'll run into any copyright issues, now that they've effectively copied the entire web? Incidentally, the same question was recently asked of Google, which maintains a huge cache, or locally stored set of the internet's pages (CNET magazine).

Really, I've never seen so much fuss over a squiggle.

Admittedly, it *is* a nice feature. Wonder if I'll ever remember to use it?

I was briefly interested in serving Google ads on this page, through its new AdSense programme -- especially when I learned that other sites with similar visitor numbers were making hundreds of dollars a month from AdSense.

But I decided against doing so for two reasons. First, you're not allowed to change the code of the ads in any way, not even the look-and-feel. That's particularly annoying for arrogant creative types like me, who fret about every pixel.

Second, I didn't like the ads that Google was going to run on my site.

Huh? you say. Well, Google offers a great service whereby you can preview the ads that would appear on your site, were you to sign up. It selects the ads based on the keywords it deems relevant to your site.

To see what ads Google would serve on this page, hit Go:

(You can check any other site by changing the URL.)

As you will see, many of the ads are for sites that offer search engine optimisation and placement services. These are services that I'm offering myself (more details on my new business site within the next couple of weeks). I don't know if I like the idea of serving competitors' ads on my site!

Then again, if I keep hearing stories about rich pickings, I might just change my mind ;)