Archive for September, 2007
Being a fan of the so called Semantic Web and knowing the long way we still have to track to reach it, all the things that takes us a bit closer to it has me on board. So it has been with Microformats, I had played a bit with Structured Blogging before but rapidly moved to what was ended up being known by Microformats for their multipurpose and not just for blogging.
A brief introduction for non-geek persons about Microformats and why they’ll became ever so important: The web is full of information, trapped information, hidden relations, hidden contents, consider for instance a simple news article, a review in a product page, that information is trapped under the rumble of it’s page HTML. Not nice, isn’t it? Through the separation of layout/content we already improved, since we can read each one of those examples hiding the details of the document structure focusing on the information thats important!
Being intelligent beings as we tend to consider ourselves, we have the ability to spot which parts of the information are relevant, if I look at a contact page, I immediately search for something that looks like an address, phone or email contact. It’s something we’re used to. Well the problem raises that when it matters with information we really can’t depend on humans! 
To a program reading a regular webpage, all that rumble and layout information, etc. is just the same! That’s were Microformats became essential! They allow us to seemingly “format” that information, so that humans and machines alike are able to extract the REALLY important parts! Microformats are much more than that, but for today’s introduction that the key idea to retain.
After some of the big companies embraced them a few months ago, Microformats seemed to be on the right track for massive adoption, and yesterday the all mighty W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) seems to have given a step the consolidation of Microformats by providing a set of use cases (GRDDL) that provide real-world scenarios and examples of Microformat in use, as they quote it:
(…)
GRDDL is the bridge for turning data expressed in an XML format (such as XHTML) into Semantic Web data. With GRDDL, authors transform the data they wish to share into a format that can be used and transformed again for more rigorous applications.
(…)
Once data is part of the Semantic Web, it can be merged with other data (for example, from a relational database, similarly exposed to the Semantic Web) for queries, inferences, and conversion to other formats.(…)
I strongly suggest reading some of thew3c use cases:
As complementary to the Microformats Website, the nice to have in hand Microformats Cheat Sheet and the book written by John Allsopp: “Microformats: Empowring Your Markup for Web 2.0 “
For people reading this here in the Portuguese quarter I promise that in coming weeks you’ll get your opportunity to learn a bit more about Microformats! enough said! 
September 13th, 2007
A lot of people argue that services like Twitter, Jaiku and more recently Pownce, are mere services aimed to boost our egos, services born to increase our already ego-flooded world, it might or not be truth, it’s a fact that a lot of their users simple use it to broadcast short status messages with few or no interest at all! It’s my belief that these particular services are the beginning of something unique simply because their particularly different from previous messaging services, and departing from this idea I’ll explain why I believe that we need a nationwide Twitter!
Twitter is much more than a messaging system, it’s a unique multi-platform broadcasting system. Like we’ve witnessed in the past with radio, which was used to helped distribute messages from different services across, simply and quickly, so is Twitter doing it somehow! Two different features in Twitter seem to me the groundbreaking, first it’s a internet based broadcasting network: my message is sent across a multitude of people and mediums originating from the internet, second it’s bridge for inter-connecteness with other systems: by using it’s Twitter public API we’re able to connected to it any system that outputs messages. In the end the process is simple: a message sent from the web, reaches people on their instant messengers, mobiles, or on their contacts page on the service website. The other-way around also applies.
The idea of a nationwide Twitter just pleases me because I tend to be more comfortable the more informed I am: I (unfortunately) have this deeper sense that in the event of something important I’d be the last to know!!
Cellphones don’t handle crises situations nicely! In case of a network breakdown, they’re dead in the sea, so we have to create something more reliable and universal. In the past, pretty much everyone had a radio, so trusting the radio was the obvious choice. Today, due to many factors no technology seems to be such common place, we have to consider that in the advent of something people will have different means depending on where they are at the moment, it could be a computers, a radios, or a simple cellphone, so we really need to have that in mind.
I would wish we could have a multi-plaform nationwide alert system, something that everyone interested, national citizen or not, could subscribe and register with different ids for different alert channels. When some relevant thing happens on the channels I’ve subscribed the system would broadcast an alert on all the mediums I’ve registered for being notified. This would assure that, when needed, the information would reach me somehow.
Everyday I see the more and more services using Twitter massive broadcasting platform for delivery updates on their interests. In Portugal we have Público, that through twittering is in fact delivering alerts for every breaking news they publish on their site.
So it’s probably just a matter of time before we actually see it being used for as multi-channel alert system, at least the “media” is doing it already!
The only reason I think Twitter wouldn’t make it, it’s related to the fact that I think this system should be managed by some Official Emergency Department to avoid and prevents it’s abuse or deviation and therefore ruin it’s success as emergency broadcast system.
Any comments on this?
September 12th, 2007
Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, and Michael Arrington co-authered a proposal for a Bill of Rights for users of the Social Web/Networks available under the Open Social Web website.
According to this proposition for a bill of rights, every Social Network and/or Application should guarantee 3 fundamental USER rights
- Ownership of their own personal information: own profile data, the list of people they are connected to and the the activity stream of content they create;
- Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and
- Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.
which in practice means that this services should display the following features:
- Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list, and the data that’s shared with them via the service, using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats;
- Allow their users to syndicate their own stream of activity outside the site;
- Allow their users to link from their profile pages to external identifiers in a public way; and
- Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.
As further reading about this interoperability problem between different services and networks, I strongly suggest that you watch both Brad’s Fitzpatrick slides and read his “Thoughts on the Social Graph”:
September 8th, 2007
The Web2Expo Berlin Tracks have been unleashed. Just by looking at the tracks, I can already guess that’s going to be a very special and unique conference in terms of tech conferences around Europe. Web2Expo will cover five different tracks:
The tracks session list is so large and covers so many interesting subjects, that the hard job is going to be choosing which ones to attend to. A special note for which I’m really glad is that we’ve managed to get some portuguese representations in there: Fred (WeBreakStuff) is going to moderate the panel “Moving from 1.0 to 2.0: Philosophies and Structures for Change” and I’ll be presenting “Conversational Design“:
Once we progress from the User Centered Design to Community Centered Design we’ll need to identify and gather a similar set of best practices regarding it’s Community design. This presentation collects more or less the key features and interactions that a successful Community should display in order to empower their users and facilitate conversation between its members.
This presentation aims to be a bridge between Usability Best Practices and Community Centered Design, a practice that can maximize the networking and crowd effect under online user communities.
Web2Expo will also include a Foo/BarCamp style event that’s being organized by Nicole Simon entitled Web2open which will blend pre-scheduled content with an open grid where the attendees can fill in sessions they either want to discuss or present themselves. It certainly going to be a unique space to connect with other attendees, learn more about elements of Web 2.0, and share their knowledge and experiences.
So if not before, see you in Berlin, next November!
September 8th, 2007
On the subject of productivity, the unscheduled conversation about the Flow that ended up presenting during this last weekend BarCamp in Coimbra got me reminding some concepts I’ve learned about facilitation as BEST member during my university years.
We had a lot of meetings at BEST, and being young as we were, trouble meetings were just around every corner, so we sort of complied to a set of rules and roles during each meeting to avoid pitfalls and endless meetings, which seem to be a problem in way too much companies in Portugal.
You can read all about Facilitation and in particular about the role of The Facilitator in Wikipedia, but for this post I’ll stick with the key ideas behind this oh so important and neglected principle!
Prior to the meeting the facilitator should be responsible for:
- Prepare the discussion: meaning gathering all the information that might come in handy;
- Determine Goals and Purposes for the meeting;
- Draft an Agenda for the meeting: points covered and questions that need to be answered;
- Send out (informed) Invitations: when booking everyone for the meeting remember to always send in this agenda;
- Keep Presences to a minimum: the more the merrier!
As soon as the meeting happens, the work of the facilitator continues:
- Track! Keep time, and monitor the agenda
- Manage the Group Process
- Guarantee a Running Dialog: by encourage participation from all attendees
- Help sort out conflicts and doubts: fostering solutions that incorporate diverse points of view
- Record the meeting: wether on notes or even if possible the audio for the meeting. Keep an eye on this document for unresolved issues.
Last, but not least the Facilitator should produce a document that reflects all the things that came out of that meeting, in the sense of report, covering problems, solutions, things that need attention, and a list of the assigned task for the next meeting.
Interestingly or not, the person who takes on the responsibility of the facilitation doesn’t need to be part of your team or project, you can simply swap in with someone who’s willing to drive your meeting considering your goals for it, allowing you to take the role of participation without being way to distracted with this administrative trivia.
Photo credits: Sleepy Terry and Johnny Vulkan
September 7th, 2007
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