CivicActions

Recently I've been looking into new web2.0 and, I guess web3.0, and social media trends - sites and services that are popping up like mushrooms after a rain. I've found many interesting one and wanted to share a few, and at the same time ask that if you know of anything really cool that you think I might not know about, please send it my way, either by email/contact form or tag them on del.icio.us for:gregoryheller

CivicActions is happy for its work with Ben Nowack, who has
been named "Invited Expert" of the W3C, the MIT associated group
which maintains web standards around things like XML, HTML, and CSS!
Ben will be enhancing some of his Open Source software called ARC for his company SemSol, which we use in some of our projects.

"Much of the "easy" innovation seems to have been wrung out of the Web 2.0 wave. Web 2.0 was cheap - thanks to open source, simple - thanks to RSS/REST, and distinctive - thanks to AJAX and Flash."

"Now the hard work begins, again. The next wave of innovation isn't going to be as easy. The hard problems in the WWW are no longer usability or ease of everyday content creation. These problems are solved."

"Now the hard part is moving from Web-as-Digital-Printing-Press to true Web-as-Platform. To make the Web a platform there has to a level of of content and services interoperability that really doesn't exist today."

Flickr seems to have figured out a nice, user friendly way to use tags that have relevance to the Semantic Web. Really great idea.

From the article:

Like tags, there are no rules for machine tags beyond the syntax to specify the parts of a machine tag. For example, you could tag a photo with :

* flickr:user=straup
* flora:tree=coniferous
* medium:paint=oil
* geo:cartier="plateau mont royal"
* geo:neighbourhood=geo:cartier

http://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157594497877875/

Alex Iskold has written a fantastic piece on The Road to the Semantic Web

"Some people think that the Semantic Web is about AI, some claim that it is more about semantics, while others say that it is about data annotation. All agree however, that we will all be wonderfully more productive and simply happier when it arrives."

What is the Semantic Web?

Google is on top and making a grand profit. Now that the numbers for Google's profits are in, it's safe to predict that Google is on top of the search game for a long time to come. So, in the great American tradition of rooting for the underdogs, let's look at Google with the eyes of an underdog. What isn't Google?

Is Google nice? They aren't evil. This is enough, right?

It's a rare thing for corporations to have a double or triple bottom line. But can you say no to billions of dollars of profit when your corporate legal framework requires you to acquire business and grow? If google can only sustain the "not evil" phase that's a victory. Maybe if Google were "nice" they wouldn't survive.

At first glance, the PEW report on the Future of the Internet seemed a bit juvenile. Then jumping in to it, I realized those surveyed included Internet luminaries Esther Dyson and Howard Rheingold (among others), and should be taken seriously...

From the report summary:

"A survey of internet leaders, activists, and analysts shows that a majority agree with predictions that by 2020:

* English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence."

Read the full PDF report.

What type of searcher are you?

Slate distinguishs the seven ways people search using the mistakenly-released AOL search logs of 650,000 members.

Or go to Valleywag to search the logs yourself. Like User 1912452, "a psychiatric counselor looking for a job in Colorado, obsessed with quick weight loss. She's turned to the book of Revelation, the zodiac, psychic schools, private investigators, and Victorian poetry. She (or a patient) dreams about being drenched in blood."

An ambitious project, NINA (National Information Network for Artists)[1] serves to create a reusable tool for making the finding of information easier and more effective. Specifically geared for artist communities, but applicable to all search applications, NINA can let organizations quickly build quality data and make it accessible via search and web standards. NINA is nearly feature complete for version 1.0 and promises to bring several projects enhanced search and sharing functionality.

NINA is the meeting of Web 2.0 with the Semantic Web. What this means for the users of NINA is that some very powerful technologies are available[2]. A community group only needs to install NINA on their website, start entering data, change some configurations - and the information they want found is easily navigable, sharable, and searchable. Data entry works like it does in any application, except the way the data can be shared and presented is enhanced greatly.

I am always fascinated by new visual ways of looking at old things, ways which reveal truth and meaning and intent previously hidden but secretly suspected. Take the example of the annual State of the Union speech, no doubt one of the most artificial and deliberately, if not cynically, constructed examples of speech of any kind, nestled as the crown jewel in the crown of synthetic political diatribe. Since the goal of modern political speech is such a game of obfuscation and misdirection, better tools to deconstruct the game to reveal the true intent and meaning of the gamers are the tools of true democracy.