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Workflow Goes Social

I was amused this week to see two examples of workflow getting sexy. That’s not how the developers describe their efforts, but the departure from old groupware notions is clear.

In daring defiance of Zawinski’s proclamation, Jeffrey McManus, with Approver.com, and Karen Greenwood Henke, with Nimble Net (as reported yesterday), are tackling workflow and approval processes.

Combine the increasing numbers of people who are self employed or working in very small businesses that can’t afford those old enterprise groupware “solutions” (but who nonetheless have to get a job done) with the combination of luck, pluck and smarts these two seem to have applied to the challenge, and there’s a chance these new products — groupware 2.0 — might have legs.

Still not sure how Approver.com will get somebody laid (the true definition of social software)? I’m just waiting for somebody to submit for approval a document titled “proposal for licentious relationship including sex and other carnal acts.” With tools so easy to use, and a willing approver, how could it go wrong?

The Social Software Over There

Amusing. One one side of the world is Jenny Levine, the original library RSS bigot, pushing libraries to adopt new technologies from the bottom up, and here on the other side of the world is NewsGator offering their products for top-down adoption. Why are law libraries interested in NewsGator? Could it be that social software […] » about 100 words

Linkability Fertilizes Online Communities

It’s hard to know how Fuzzyfruit found the WPopac catalog page for A Baby Sister for Frances (though it is ranked fifth in a Google search for the title), but what matters is that she did find it, and she was able to link to it by simply copying the URL from her browser’s location bar.

The link appears among her comments in the discussion about her post on an early letter she’d written to her mom. Fuzzyfruit’s comment spawned more comments about the book from Sarahq and Coffeechica.

We talk here and there about how “libraries build community,” but how does that work in the online world? How do our systems support or inhibit community discussions online?

Living The Life Embarrassing, Stupid Online

Without contradicting the moral weight of social software post from last week, let’s take a moment to look at three stories from Arstechnica about MySpace and others: online video leads to teen arrests, shooting rampage avoided due to MySpace posting, and Google + Facebook + alcohol = trouble. These are the stories we’ve come to […] » about 300 words

The Wealth of Networks

Wendy Seltzer gave a shout-out for Yochai Nenkler‘s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, describing it as… …an economic history of information production. We’re moving from the age of industrial information production to one of social information production. Ever-faster computers on our desks let us individually produce what would have […] » about 200 words

Danah Boyd On The Moral Weight Of Social Software

Danah Boyd posted recently at Many-to-Many about the future of social software. I’ve been more than a little bit gung ho on web 2.0 for a while, but I do like her caution: If MySpace falters in the next 1-2 years, it will be because of this moral panic. Before all of you competitors get […] » about 300 words

Identity Management In Social Spaces

(note: the following is cross-posted at Identity Future.) Being that good software — the social software that’s nearly synonymous with Web 2.0 — is stuff that gets you laid, where does that leave IdM? Danah Boyd might not have been thinking about it in exactly those terms, but her approach is uniquely social-centered. She proposes […] » about 400 words

Involvement, Inclusion, Collaboration

<a href="http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media" title="peter caputa">Peter Caputa</a> dropped a comment on <a href="http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/03/02/utr-zvents/" title="UTR - Zvents">Jeff Nolan</a>'s post about <a href="http://www.zvents.com/" title="Zvents - Main Page">Zvents</a>. The discussion was about how online event/calendar aggregators did business in a world where everything is rather thinly distributed. Part of the problem is answering how do you get people to contribute content -- post their events -- to a site that has little traffic, and how do you build traffic without content? The suggestion is that you have editorial staff scouring for content to build the database until reader contributions can catch up, and that's where Peter comes in, suggesting that content and traffic aren't where the value and excitement are: it's the opportunity to involve fans in the event planning and marketing process. » about 300 words

Facial Recognitition Spytech Goes Social

<a href="http://troyb.net/">Troy</a> expressed both great amusement and trepidation in his message alerting me to <a href="http://www.riya.com/">Riya</a>, a new photo sharing site: <blockquote>I don't know whether to say cool, or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E33W1W/ref=maisonbisson-20/">zool</a>.</blockquote> <a href="http://www.riya.com/learnMore">The tour</a> explains that you upload photos, Riya identifies faces in your photos, then asks you to name them (or correct its guesses!). Then you get all your friends to join up and we can all search for everybody by people, location, and time. So say "hi" to <a href="http://www.riya.com/search?btnSearch=btnSearch&faceID=34848e86a2df7a0a9228e0a3a18f2a9f65841d7d_0&acct=&scope=99 ">Andrejs</a> and <a href="http://www.riya.com/search?btnSearch=btnSearch&faceID=34848e86a2df7a0a9228e0a3a18f2a9f65841d7d_1003&acct=&scope=99">Nora</a>. » about 400 words

Our Connected Students

Just when you thought I was done talking about how the internet really does touch everything, Lichen posts some details from the most recent University of New Hampshire Res Life student survey and it gets me going again. In order, the top three activities are:

  • socializing (15.8 hours/week)
     
  • studying, excluding in-class time (12.5 hours/week)
     
  • instant messaging, (9.3 hours/week)

Lichen also points out that IM activity was reported separately from “personal internet use,” which got an additional 8.4 hours/week.

The survey doesn’t appear to be online, so I can’t tell how many other computer-related activities are reported or how activities like “studying” may (or may not) also include computer use.

This Is What Social Software Can Do

The <a href="http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2006/03/this_is_what_fl.html" title="FlickrBlog">FlickrBlog</a> reports this message from <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/yeimaya/">Gale</a>: <blockquote>People have been submitting good humpback whale fluke shots to a group called <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/humpbackflukes">Humpback whale flukes</a>. I volunteer at <a href="http://www.coa.edu/alliedwhale">Allied Whale</a> which holds the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalog and I was able to make a very exciting match with one of the whales that was posted on the group by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/25212853@N00/88329014/in/pool-humpbackflukes/">GeorgeK</a>. George saw this whale in Newfoundland in the summer of 2005. It <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/25212853@N00/88329014/#comment72057594077150312">matched with</a> HWC#2943 in the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catolog ..... this whale was seen only once before in March 1984!!! on Silver Bank (the breeding grounds North of the Dominican Republic). This is what flickr has the power to do.</blockquote> » about 300 words

The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People

Bob Garlitz, who’s trying to decide between blogging at Typepad and Blogspot, wrote to offer a somewhat older phrase for the success of social software as described in The Wisdom of Crowds and in the definition of collabulary: “the ignorant perfection of ordinary people.”

Bob is at a loss to identify the source (and it pre-dates the book of the same title by a long shot), but maybe this crowd will know?

PodBop Rocks Your Calendar

Ryan Eby pointed out PodBop, a site that podcasts sample tracks from bands coming to your area (or any other area you select), and we both wished we’d thought of it ourselves. There’s nothing coming to Warren (of course). But they’ve got coverage for Denver, where I’ll be in May, so it immediately found a […] » about 300 words

What Does Facebook Matter To Libraries?

Lichen pointed me to this Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette post about new technologies: Keep up to date with new technologies that you can co-opt for library use. So what if no one will ever listen to the pod casts of your bibliographic instruction lectures, subscribe to the RSS feeds from your library’s blog, send your […] » about 400 words

Jenny Levine’s Online Library User Manifesto

Drawing from John Blyberg‘s ILS Customer’s Bill of Rights and The Social Customer Manifesto, Jenny Levine offers this Online Library User Manifesto: I want to have a say, so you need to provide mechanisms for this to happen online.   I want to know when something is wrong, and what you’re going to do to […] » about 300 words

Social Software Works For Organizations Too

Ignore the politics for a moment. MoveOn‘s CTO, Patrick Michael Kane, remarked that the organization’s membership to Flickr, the photo sharing site, has paid off: “Flickr has got to be the best $24.95 we’ve ever spent.” Why? Micah Sifry explains in a story at AlterNet that MoveOn had been soliciting photos of events from members […] » about 400 words

Nature Concludes Wikipedia Not Bad

Fresh from Nature: a peer reveiw comparison of Wikipedia’s science coverage against Encyclopaedia Britannica:

One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is also controversial: if anyone can edit entries, how do users know if Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources such as Encyclopaedia Britannica?

Several recent cases have highlighted the potential problems. One article was revealed as falsely suggesting that a former assistant to US Senator Robert Kennedy may have been involved in his assassination. And podcasting pioneer Adam Curry has been accused of editing the entry on podcasting to remove references to competitors’ work. Curry says he merely thought he was making the entry more accurate.

However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica’s coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule. (link added)

Go read the whole story.

Yahoo! Rocks The Web

No, I don’t mean that they’re disrupting it, I mean they’re getting it. And in saying that, I don’t mean they’re figured it our first, but they they’re making some damn good acquisitions to get it right.

Mostly, I’m speaking of they’re purchase of Flickr last year and their acquisition of del.icio.us Friday. But in a somewhat lesser way I’m also speaking of their announcement Monday that they’ll be offering blogs as well.

Yeah, Google rocked this picture a good long while ago with their purchase of Blogger long before most people could understand what value it offered, and even Microsoft beat Yahoo! to this. But the better way to read this is as the final piece to a rather impressive array of social software.

And where perhaps only ten percent of internet users will likely ever be regular bloggers, it’s a safe assumption that nearly 100 percent of internet users will create bookmarks and almost as many will have reason to post a photo online. And with Yahoo! controlling the leading services for both, it sort of rearranges the picture.

Identity Management Podcast

Josh Porter and Alex Barnett got Dick Hardt and Kim Cameron on the line to talk about Identity Management. The result is available as a podcast. I should add that Josh and Alex are big on the attention economy and social software, so they’re asking questions about how IdM works in those contexts. Most people […] » about 300 words

Who’s Afraid Of Wikipedia?

Arguments about Wikipedia‘s value and authority will rage for quite a while, but it’s interesting to see where the lines are being drawn. On the one had we’ve got a 12 year-old pointing out errors in Encyclopaedia Britannica (via Many2Many) and now on the other side we’ve got John Seigenthaler, a former editorial page editor […] » about 500 words

My Wife The Technology Dependent Anti-Geek

My wife Sandee cringes at the suggestion that she’s a geek. She writes poetry and teaches English, she cooks fabulous meals and dances all night long. Surely you’re mistaken she’ll say. But she does have a laptop, a digital camera, and an iPod. And she immediately saw the value of having a computer in the […] » about 300 words

Collective Intelligence: Wisdom Of The Crowds

I’m here at NEASIS&T’s “Social Software, Libraries, and the Communities that (could) Sustain Them” event, presented by Steven Cohen. He’s suggesting we read James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds. Surowiecki first developed his ideas for Wisdom of Crowds in his “Financial Page” column of The New Yorker. Many critics found his premise to be an […] » about 200 words

Wolfram’s Tones

WolframTones mixes hard science with social software in the form of a ringtone generator. Each click on any of the 15 style buttons yields a “unique [note: not random] composition.” Why not random? The FAQs note: Once WolframTones has picked a Rule to use, all the notes it will generate are in principle determined. But […] » about 200 words