Supposedly the weak economy will bury landlines

Of course, the most expensive-to-serve areas -- the rural areas, where low population density and vast spaces mean that telecomm companies have to lay lots of infrastructure per person -- are also underserved by wireless companies. So I don't think landlines will disappear soon.

Survey: Weak economy will bury landlines as mobile phones become ubiquitous - Austin Business Journal:

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The expansion of the mobile social web

Est. 975m by 2012. That seems a little low given mobile phone penetration rates. How will they generate revenue? "advertising, subscription services, and premium upgrades." Ad revenue appears to be the most pervasive, but I wonder how long ads can support social networks. They need another revenue stream.

Mobile Social Web: 975 Million Users By 2012 - ReadWriteWeb

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STC tweets

At the recent Society for Technical Communication conference, they used the hash tag #stc2008 to categorize their tweets. I expect we'll see more of this at conferences and other public gatherings.

#stc2008 - Summize

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How to locate a mobile phone

A primer discussing the many ways to make mobile devices location-aware, and why it matters. (The main reason: contextual advertising.)

Location Technologies Primer

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An effusive Plurk review

I haven't used the serice, but Muhammad Saleem has.

Plurk: Unique or Just Another Twitter Clone? - ReadWriteWeb

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It's a sure winner?

Via Slashdot. Preston Galla at ComputerWorld is pushing the idea that

"If Google really wanted to deliver a knockout punch to Microsoft, it would integrate OpenOffice with Google Docs, and sell support for the combined suite to small businesses, medium-sized business, and large corporations. Given the reach of Google, the quality of OpenOffice, and the lure of free, it's a sure winner."

I strongly doubt that this would deliver a "knockout punch," that Google wants to compete directly in this space, or that a full suite is in Google's strategic roadmap. Let's take just the last point: Google's strategy is to enhance online collaboration and display through the web browser (desktop and mobile) in order primarily to enhance online experience -- and sell more advertising. Driving people offline during the drafting and collaboration process, and encouraging them to use features that can't be used with the online version such as footnotes, is counter to the strategy.

Slashdot | Why Google Should Embrace OpenOffice

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Status messages - not aggregation but capillary action

Confused of Calcutta speculates about the ways we'll handle status messages in social networks in the near future:

I think we’re going to see an explosion of activity in the status message related tool space, with two different sets of tools. One to do with personal “manual” input, one to do with automated input. In both cases, I think we’re going to see this explosion connect with a similar set of explosions in the visualisation space, so that we see more colour, more heatmaps, more timelines, more fractal representations, more radar diagrams, more tag-cloud-like diagrams …… but all to do with status messages.

Status messages with a difference. Not aggregated, not summarised, but built around a capillary-action publish-subscribe model. Truly personalised.

Wondering about status messages amongst other things

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NCTE discovers Twitter

NCTE Inbox Blog: Twitter: 140-Character Professional Development and Writing Tool

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TimeWarner Cable testing metered Internet bandwidth in Beaumont, Texas

$1 per GB for bandwidth going over the plan. Sigh.

Going Medieval: Time-Warner Begins Metered Bandwidth Testing

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Filtrbox

Filtrbox is out in private beta. It's a visual tool for filtering out specific content. The obvious app: ego surfing. From the site:

Filtrbox is an intelligent content and news monitoring service that does the work of monitoring the millions of blogs and online news sources for you. In one place. Stay competitive, save time, and keep everyone on the same page. Filtrbox is powerful and easy to use, and you can access the new content via the dashboard, email, or custom RSS feeds.

In practice, it's very easy to use. You search for a term and Filtrbox brings up three panes: a tagcloud of words that appear in the search results, a pane for refining the search, and a pane listing results. If your search is overly broad, you can drag tags into the appropriate spots to include or exclude them in the refined search results. This allows you to inductively refine the search until it looks solid. Then you can save the search and have it push results to your email box, dashboard, etc. Results are visualized in graph form.

Filtrbox is not a general search; it focuses on the blogosphere and online news. It is therefore well positioned for marketers, managers, etc. In an increasingly informated world, online identities are also brands, so Filtrbox could make a good platform for ego surfing as well.

filtrbox : home

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Microblogging platform 2: Plurk

Like Twitter, but with optional tags called qualifiers ("is," "feels", "thinks", "loves"). Can define smaller groups (cliques). Does not appear to push updates to SMS at present. People are characterizing it as "weird" and aimed towards the Neopets crowd, but that's just window dressing.

Your life, on the line - Plurk.com

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Microblogging platform 1: Adocu

Like Twitter, but allows only one word per post. Not a joke.

Adocu Is The World’s First Nano-Blogging Platform

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A welcome to arms

Luke: Dean Kamen's wonderful prosthetic robot arm - (37signals)

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The slippery slope of telecommuting

Higher gas prices -> one-day-a-week telecommuting -> constant telecommuting -> "extreme" telecommuting from different parts of the globe.

I am skeptical. Although some lines of work are pretty amenable to this sort of progression, others certainly aren't. And distributing work in this way tends to be accompanied by attenuated organizational structures and typically a shift to temporary federations of subcontractors rather than stable long-term organizations. Definitely we are seeing and will continue to see this sort of movement in some sectors, but I don't think it will catch on across the entire workforce the way casual Fridays did.

Instapundit.com -

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Android vs. iPhone: The bottom line

iPhone is Mac, Android is more like Linux. One focuses on control, the other on customization and openness. Oh, and of course Android is built to funnel people to the web where Google can leverage its own services and ad network.

Google's Android: How Will it Compare to iPhone? - ReadWriteWeb

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CFP: Technology-Focused Collaborative Research in English Studies (Collection)

Laura McGrath, who visited us at the CWRL some time back, is calling for papers for an edited collection on technology-focused collaborative research in English studies. Looks really interesting and timely. Deadline is August 31.

CFP: Technology-Focused Collaborative Research in English Studies (Collection) | Kairosnews

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Jaiku update

The recent FriendFeed discussion has prompted Jyri to do some damage control. They are focusing on the move to Google App Engine rather than maintaining and extending the current server.

Jaikido Blog | Making progress

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Android - I am 95% sold

I've been intrigued by Google's project to bring the Android mobile platform to market, but also worried -- Google has a habit of releasing beta software and taking on projects that don't quite get completed. But they demoed Android today. And one of many possible killer apps is Street View that uses the phone's internal compass:



Total game changer, especially for someone with no sense of direction.

Clinton strategy comes to fruition

Just before the Texas primaries, I speculated that the Clinton campaign would try to exploit the difference between primary and caucus results to argue that the caucus results were not representative.

Today, the strategy came to fruition. Here's the relevant paragraph from the report (PDF), which documents a nationwide pattern in primaries vs. caucuses.

Example 2: Texas held a primary & caucus on March 4 and once again widely different results were recorded. Over 2.8 million Texans voted in the primary and gave Clinton a 100,000 vote margin over Obama, a 52% to 48% win. However, just hours later, the Texas caucus registered an Obama win over Clinton of 56% to 44% [with 41% of the precincts reporting, total caucus participation has not been released]. Allocation of the 126 primary pledged delegates were Clinton 65 and Obama 61. Allocation of the 68 caucus pledged delegates were Obama 38 and Clinton 29. Bottom line: Obama actually won 5 more pledged delegates than Clinton in Texas. Common sense begs the question if this result was truly in line with the will of the Texas voters.

My sense is that this is too little, too late. But you can see the argument coming down the pike: The general election will follow the same format as the primaries. This looks like an attempt to hold onto Clinton superdelegates and force a brokered convention.

Twitter + FriendFeed vs. Jaiku

A thread sprang up overnight -- on FriendFeed, so it's a little biased. The highlights:

• Jaiku is moving to Google App Engine
• People are using these conversations to hawk their own Twitter clones
• Folks are starting to speculate that Microsoft will buy Twitter just for the community. I wonder what they would rename it? "Microsoft Text Conversations"?
  

People's complaints about Jaiku:

• They hate the interface.
• It's too complicated.
  
• It's slow.
• Community evangelism has been lackluster, so the people just aren't there.
• 'according to rumour, apart from its port to Google AppEngine, it's now maintained as a "20% time" project.'

Many speculate that Jaiku fits into Google's Android strategy and we'll see a location-aware Android client.

Why isn't Jaiku discussed much as a serious Twitter competitor? I just took another look and I hate the UI. Plus it's ssslllooowwww. - FriendFeed

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