Recently in Group Collaboration Category

An interesting case study in one of the most delicious web sites Del.ICIO.US. Have a good read as the author makes some interesting observations about peoples initial "conceptual shift from traditional forms of classification (using fixed taxonomies) to distributed classification schemes (using flexible taxonomies)" being something of a stretch.

i d e a n t: A del.icio.us study

Abstract
Working within the constraints of a very limited data sample, this study attempts to identify some of the information management and meaning construction practices of an online distributed classification (a.k.a. free tagging or ethnoclassification) community. Specifically, this study seeks to investigate the social and communicative practices that emerge when users are encouraged to share web links with one another by using a metadata keyword, or tag, to demark a social group, apart from using other tags to classify links according to an emergent taxonomy.

This one's for all you geeks out there. Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey, two fellow bloggers and the founders of the Weblogs, Inc. on which I write about a variety of topics including spam, grid, rss, etc... have joined forces with Peter Rojas formerly of Gizmodo to launch Engadget.com

While there is much debate about whether Jason "stole" Peter from Gizmodo, it's really a moot point. Peter made up his own mind to strike out on his own. So more power to him. He's a heck of a writer who gets scoop, so the proof is in the blogging.

Ahhh...gadgets, gadgets and more gadgets.

Make sure to head up to Cambridge on April 17th 2004 for BloggerCon II. Let me know if you're planning on heading up. Look forward to seeing you all.

Update 3/3/2004: Damn...had other plans that I forgot about. Looks like I won't be going. I'm sure I'll read all about it though. Everyone have fun.

...so little time.

Not even sure where to begin here but the last few weeks have been so busy that I really just haven't had time to keep pace with the amount of stuff that I want to write about. So, with that said, I figured I'd just put together a short highlight film, in reverse chronological order...sort of like the news in 60 seconds.

Here goes.

- back to work... <sigh> gotta pay the bills
- Phillip Guston at the MET...hmmmmmm
- boarding at Butternut up around Great Barrington, Mass....too much ice on the mountain, not enough real snow!!! Scraped knees
- International Center for Photography, Only Skin Deep...Great exhibit...powerful imagery
- writing for a few new blogs at Weblogs, Inc.... Covering the subjects of Spam, Utility Computing and occasionally Social Networking, feel free to drop by, but be forewarned....you may be bored to death tears.
- the program that I volunteer for, Streetwise Partners, held their graduation the other day and my client graduated from the program. The graduation ceremony was really wonderful....Good Luck Sonja! I know you can do it.
- drinks at Calle Ocho...oooohhh...gotta love those Mojitos
- Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist) seminar at the Learning Annex....Craig's great but the Learning Annex sux...the level of discussion was not what I had hoped, but Craig managed to pull it out
- The movie Of Mice and Men, with Gary Sinese and John Malkovich, Malkovich...Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich, Malkovich Malkovich, Malkovich!!!!?!?!?!?
- boarding up at Killington this coming weekend with the GF and friends

...News at 11

Ok..now we are pretty much caught up. I hope to have some good stories from this years trip, but if you're interested, there are photos from ski trips past over in the gallery.

Heading down to a seminar on Creating Online Communities hosted by Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.com.

More to follow.

Bostonworks.com has published a very interesting article entitled Job blogs hold perils, opportunities. In this article the author, Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe, discusses blogging in the context of revealing information about the companies for which the bloggers themselves work.

I came across a really interesting and extremly useful site called The Internet Topic Exchange today. In a nutshell, it's an aggregator and entry syndicator for blog posts on specific topics.

The way it works is like this...when a trackback / ping enabled blog posts a new entry on a topic for which the Internet Topic Exchange has a feed, that blog can be configured to send a trackback ping over to the Internet Topic Exchange topic thats been created for that subject matter (e.g. Movies, Spam, New York City, Social Computing). The exchange then syndicates these feeds via RSS for you to download into your RSS Aggregator.

As a result, if you posted an entry in your blog and send a ping to the New York City feed anyone who wants to subscribe to the RSS feed for the New York City topic can view your posts and find your blog.

A very thought provoking analysis of identity presentation as it relates to blog readership in particular, and broader social impact in general. In other words, whose reading this nonsense (boss, friends, parents, relatives?) and what are they going to think of me afterwards since they may be seeing a side of me (through my writing) that they had never seen before in person.

Joi Ito writes: "The problem with many blogs is that the audience includes so many different communities of people that it collapses the facets of one's identity and requires you to choose a rather shallow facet which becomes your public identity. For instance, I know that people in the US State Department, friends from my Chicago DJ days, my employees, my family, thoughtful conservatives from Texas, cypherpunk friends, foreign intelligence officers, Japanese business associates and close friends all read my blog occasionally. In real life, I present a very different facet of my identity to these different communities, but on my blog I have to imagine how all of them will react as a craft these entries."

Source: Joi Ito's Web: Blogger's block, collapsing facets and the number 150

P.s. kudos to the person who can tell me where the title quote came from.

For those of you not familiar with spam filtering and elimination tools, this is one that you will start hearing much more about as Cloudmark?s Spamnet 2.x is gaining serious traction in the client side spam elimination tool space. What is so unique and compelling about Cloudmark?s solution is its community based approach to spam elimination.

I've always known that I enjoyed expressing myself as well as absorbing that which others have to say. Rather opinionated, as I'm sure my friends and just about everyone else who knows me would probably say, I have never found the pen/pencil to be the optimal facilitators for my expressing myself. Maybe it was my handwriting..which is chicken scratch if there ever was chicken scratch. Even as a child I excelled in reading and writing more so than mathematics. I scored much better on the verbal portions then the math portion of my SAT's and just about every other standardized test that I ever sat for. Regardless...I never found my voice. Arguably, I'm still looking...but that's for another rant. :) Isn't that what blogging is all about?

Thing is, I find this all so extremely ironic, because I wound up in the IT field and have become what is now defined as a blogger. Someone who expresses their personal (or professional) thoughts and interests via the equivalent of a journal or a legal pad. I have no doubt that I am not alone. In retrospect though...it makes perfect sense. This medium for self expression that we love and hate (often in the same sentences as a result of what it facilitates...read penis enlargement SPAM) so much, the INTERNET, is the perfect outlet for that which I need to do...to express myself and my ideas and to read other peoples writing. To connect with the rest of the world. Whether they are America or German, Black or Brown, Muslim, Arab or Jew is no matter. People have a need to express themselves. This new (well, not really...NNTP has been around for years, even before the Mosaic browser was born...sorry for all you non-geeks who have no idea what I'm talking about) outlet is the logical next step toward higher levels of self awareness and expression.

The beauty is, the sky above is no longer the limit. The second I post this message, my words...my thoughts...my deepest feelings (being overly dramatic are we?) are put out for the world to see. I'm not quite sure that the world has fully grasped the concept of media for the masses. But this....this is media BY the masses, and that is something incredible.

Ryze is a very interesting web site that combines blogging (well...kinda) and peer networking (and I'm not talking p2p either). Another great site with similair motivation is Tribe.Net

So I was reading last weeks issue of Time Out NY and came across this acrticle about this new phenomena of Internet organized mobs. Well, I really don't know how NEW it is, but I started hearing about the New York version a few weeks ago. Now, seeing how I read about it in Time Out NY, it appears that the press is certainly making in roads. Oh yeah..NY1 was on the scene for #5 in Central Park. Keep in mind that there is nothing illegal about showing up (far as anyone can tell), but you probably wouldn't want to get found out if you were the knucklehead organizing this thing.

The real phenomena though is that apparently they have been sprining up all over the world. Read about the next social revolution here at SmartMobs

You can read a bit about the New York version here at Satans Laundromat

Oh...and what Mob discussion wouldn't be complete with the randing musings of the Anti-Mob project over here at the broooklyn mobblog