short trip

CIMG0133
Originally uploaded by Sereno Hsieh.

At the end of 2005, I took a short trip to famous travel resort in Taiwan: Aowanda and Chingjing.

In the two days trip I photoed a number of dozens. New digital camera bought recently did me a excellent favor. And I put part of those photos on Flickr.

Baked Apple

Baked Apple, get funny.

I'm using Apple's laptop for more than 3 years. The old G3 laptop still works well.
Following the newer version OS X operating system continuously released, the G3 engine
has no sign running slowly more but swifter. On the other hand, I usually come across the situation Windows laptop runs bluntly more and more.

I'm looking forward to the release of Intel-inside Apple laptop.

interoperable IMs

The news to integrate Gtalk and AIM benefits for IM market and users. And it's a reasonable direction to follow.

Since Microsoft and Yahoo! have said the users of individual IM network will be communicate to each others, what users can look forward is the combination of the main four IM systems: MSN, AIM, Gtalk and Yahoo! messager, and yet that may be take a long time to realize when the population and influence scope of IM achieve the level to put enough pressure on those vendors.

Performancing for Firefox

Performancing.com provides a excellent tools for blogging: Performancing for Firefox.

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox.....

After installing, a small icon of note is showed below window. Clicking it brings a panel containing a WYSIWYG blog editor. It supports blog hosting lilke blogger.com, wordpress.com, typepad.com, livejournal, wordpress custom and moveabletype custom.

Yet another search engine?

Japanese Government Looks To Develop Own Search Engine

Yet another search engine?

If the search engine is something like Google or Yahoo!, it's not interesting. More interesting for Internet users may be the univesal semantic search engine or search engines for different contents.

default search engine

Yahoo! Instructs Firefox Users to Change Default Search Engine

Does the little search box really matter?

reviews everythere

TechCrunch reported a site for aggregation of reviews from blogs: KritX.

KritX takes the leverage of hReview of microformats. Authors of reviews orgainze their reviews in hReview to reduce the doorsill to recognize reviews scattered on information on blogs.

A core component of community is review and rating system. Community sites usually have their review system. Because the formats they used vary a lot it's hard to index and make those reviews searchable. Microformats provides a basic semantic syntax for mark reviews.

If the way works well, more microformats-enabled microcontents and corresponding applications will coming soon.

StructuredBlogging.org and universal tagging

StructuredBlogging.org launched recently. The idea behind the non-profit initiative is to post information when blogging with microformats-compatible semantic syntax.

The project provides plugins to represent microcontents on blogs. Those contents also could be converted to several formats like RSS 2.0, Atom and RSS 1.0. The formats it used will be mapping to common seen file formats like FOAF, iCal, etc.

TechCrunch has the idea to decentralized review aggregation. In order to achieve that, the information on blogs must to be understood by machines in syntax. Once information on blog is in syntax way to represent, search engines will be more effective and more accurate on their jobs. And also, a simple but working semantic search engine will be implemented easily.

In fact, I'm more like to see the univeral tagging system. Given a microformats like format called tag used to tagging arbitrary information on webs, different tagging on various sites will be integrated and interoperable.

sharing revenue with users?

From InfoWorld:

Microsoft will share a part of its advertising revenues from its search engine with users, the company's chairman Bill Gates said in a panel discussion on an Indian television channel.

Gates said that search engines like Google Inc. get their revenues from advertising because people use these search engines.

Does it sound weird? So we will receive cash by using softwares from Microsoft, is it right? That's Microsoft get their revenues from softwares because people use their softwares. Reasonable inference?

the benefits of authors

An old news.

I understand the concerns those authors have. But in fact, that's not reasonable.

In the news, Google said:

"We regret that this group has chosen litigation to try to stop a program that will make books and the information within them more discoverable to the world," the company said.

Authors worry if their books could be read on-line for free, who else wants to buy those books?

We know something called library, and we also have borrow books from libraries. Why don't authors have concerns of the situation? Because it's limited as you can't borrow to read the books already borrow by others. The ratio of free reading is limited under a certain level. In Internet the limitation is broken. Thousands of people search and same book on-line. Authors worry the usage has damage on their benefits.

But is it really damage? Or it will be an benefit for those authors if thinking again?

Somebody like to buy books. Somebody don't like to. If someone likes to read whole book in library, he/she will do it regardless of how great the book is. And the author of the book lose the benefit. In same condition, he/she still wants to read whole book on Internet. But what's happen now? By imposing copyright technology, it's hardly to do that. And large proportion of possible readers may be not have the require skills to break that facilities. At that time, the searchable materials of books on Internet increase profit authors receive because it widen the possibility those books to be discover by possible readers.

So, if one guy doesn't want to buy books, he/she doesn't buy whether you put it on-line or library or bookstore or elsewhere. Internet even provides the equipment to protect more thoroughly author's materials. For those like to buy books, better to authors is increase the probabilities possible readers (buyers?) to catch the wind of those books and to be roused their interesting of those books.

Squidoo, a knowledge sharing community, looks cool.

It features the common tagging system. Users after signing up could create their own 'lens'. In lens you post tips in the domains you are good at.

Quote from Squidoo's faq:

A lens is one person's (lensmaster's) view on a topic he cares about.

It's like personal yellow page used to record information. Although sounds it the same with other existing on-line information management applications, it intends to become a knowledge sharing community. Using ranking and tagging system, making finding popular or specific lens possible.

Squidoo mentions "a co-op of experts". I think that's an exact description of the model Squidoo wants to be. According to their statement, Squidoo's profit model is to gain traffic as more as possible. And those traffic come from the attractiveness of the people they call "lensmasters". Lensmasters are a group of experts with strength of specific themes.

The combination of Squidoo and blog may be a good experiment. To start a blog is easy, but not always for promotion of a blog.

the imagination of media in Web 2.0

Interesting article, talking about an analysis of the strategy of Yahoo! and the competition between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!.

The article discusses Yahoo!'s strategy of being a media company is competitive and Microsoft and Google both have underestimated that the threat of Yahoo!.

The primary reason Yahoo may be a leader is the Internet's role in dismantling traditional media distribution.

...

"As opposed to Google, which is still essentially a search site and is known as such, Yahoo provides information and entertainment content, including interactive content. Yahoo is positioned to benefit from the proliferation of high speed Internet services like interactive gaming, streaming video, video and music downloads, and real-time media events."

In the article, it says losing focus is the risk of Yahoo!'s strategy:

"Yahoo is trying to be everything. Sure, Yahoo isn't in the line of fire, but it's also not great" in any one area. While offering a broad array of content, commerce and services, Dreze adds, the risk of Yahoo's strategy is that the company loses focus. "Everyone knows what Google does; it's a search engine. We know what Google is good at, but Yahoo is less clear.

Richard MacManus doesn't think so:

I don't totally agree, because I think Yahoo is very focused on being a read/write media platform for mainstream users - which requires a broad feature set.

The opinion is arguable, I think. The big risk Yahoo! faces is the imagination about what a Internet media company looks like. Yahoo! has their imagination. According to that, Yahoo! attempts

offering a broad array of content, commerce and services.

But we can't hard to question, is the way really right? If the imagination of Yahoo! eventually is proved wrong, what will happen next?

What a Internet media company should be we don't be very sure. In the past, media company play both the roles of content producer and distributor. Audience are hardly being sources of content. But in the environment of Internet, esp. Web 2.0, audience become where content come from. The importance of being content producer declines. In Web 2.0, a media company need to do is providing excellent platform for community growing. In other words, the media of Web 2.0 isn't a source of content but a mediator.

The Chinese word of media is "媒體", the meaning of linking. What I immediately think is search about that. In Web 2.0 we don't need a central content platform. The platform is distributed and scattered. The media company's duty may be to identify and make those content searchable for audience.

what's deal with Web 2.0

Paul Graham talked about Web 2.0. And the main point is, using the web the way it's meant to be used. I think the most important is providing the tools and freedom for users to create their meaning.

Mathew Ingram gave some words about Web 2.0 and the idea related of "the Web as a platform". Irrespective of Web as a platform or something "you should use to build a platform", the point here is the interaction created by users and the meaning behind that interaction.

Paul Graham provided three components of Web 2.0: Ajax, Democracy, and Don't Maltreat Users. I won't give so much weight to Ajax. It's just a method to provide the opportunity to the meaningful interaction between users. Don't Maltreat Users is not a very accurate term, even though I know what he was meaning. It's better to call the component "Don't offer unmeaning stuffs to users". Flickr requires users to register but that doesn't matter because that's meaningful. A site providing free stuffs and extremely Ajax interface but unmeaning to its users still fails.