30th June 2006 - What is the internet really all about?
Here is another update about what's hot. Less comedy gems this time, more sites which show general new media trends and how they are being executed. As with all things web 2.0 - its all about user generation, so if you find a great site, get sent an unmissable video or simply want to increase your friends on MySpace, please do send me links for the next email.
Its quite long, so best either to dip in and out, or come back to it when you have some free time.
But to start, and as a reminder of what the internet is REALLY about, I've attched a song from Avenue Q (which if you haven't been to see you really should, its on at the Noel Coward Theatre and is hilarious)
ForPorn.ytmnsfw.com
The first site to take a look at is one that people are talking about on blogs and tagging sites as it makes for a pretty awesome homepage. In essence its "an aggregator of aggregators". Everyone knows the web is now about collections of things where the best rises to the top – whether its pictures on Flickr, videos on YouTube or news on portals. This page (refreshed every 15 minutes has lists of the top things which are showing on these different sites – you can rearrange the order of sources or make the lists longer or shorter. But the best thing about it for me is the search box on the right hand side. Instead of just searching lets say Google from a single page, you can now search for your word or phrase directly from a range of sources from Ebay to Myspace, Wikipedia to Flickr. Take a look, scroll through it, play around
www.popurls.com
As we all know, everyone loves a list. 43 Things is a site where people write a list of 43 things they want to do. You can see the things that most people want to do with tag clouds (ie the bigger the word the more people have listed that), you can look at other people’s lists for inspiration and you can see what other people are doing where.
www.43things.com
Another site has spun off from this which is all about travel (another favourite internet theme). Here people say where they want to go, and others say if they’ve been there, if its worth going, or what to see and do when they get there. You can ask people who live in different destinations questions and check out reviews. Its quite young, so I don't recomend using it for restaurant reviews, there are other better sources, but its a nice way for people travelling to make connections and suss things out.
www.43places.com
Still on the travel theme, if you’re deciding whether to go somewhere, and want to see some pictures of the country, city, landmark etc.. the mass of images now on Flickr means that searches of even the most random destinations throw up dozens of images that give you a real sense of what somewhere will be like. Results come up under a "most relevant" heading, but if you click on the "most interesting" button to the right of the "view" list (above the images) you’ll tend to see some really amazing pictures. This is just one of the more lateral ways one can use some of the larger user generated sites.
www.flickr.com
On my Flickr profile, I have a map with all the countries I’ve been to, coloured in red. If you’re well traveled this is a pretty cool thing to do (even if one trip to Moscow does seem to colour in half the planet!). More and more people are writing code that does different stuff, which can then be pasted onto your own website, your blog, your MySpace profile or can just be looked at once. This guy has created a very plonky site, which generates the map and can then be inserted elsewhere on the web. Click on all the places you’ve been to, it will generate a map and a piece of code which you can then place where you like.
http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries
Another example of insertable code is Personality DNA. This is a classic questionnaire, executed really well with sliding scales. It creates your personality profile which lots of people are starting to insert in their MySpace/Bebo pages to give a quick snapshot of what they’re like. It takes a while to do, but like similar things is quite fun and the report page is great.
http://www.personaldna.com/
Back to the way the internet loves associations and recommendations, here is another beta site that will create a "map" showing you recommendations based on films, music, actors or directors that you like. Some more obscure content isn’t there yet, and it will only improve the more people who use it but it’s a bit "rock family tree" and is a great visual way of finding new things.
http://liveplasma.com/
Google is great, but if you take the "Dyson approach" to development , things can always be improved on. Snap is a site based on two principles – 50% of searches end in failure, and the average search times from start to finish is 15 minutes. This search engine shows you snapshots of the pages that include your result, so you get a good sense of whether they are where you want to go, before you click all over the internet.
www.snap.com
Alternatively, there are often questions we have that can’t be answered by a traditional search engine ie: a computer. "How long is a piece of string", "do Germans play World War 2 computer games" and "what is the best treatment for cellulite" are just three of the questions people are currently asking on Yahoo Answers. This site allows real people to respond to questions – you get points for answering questions and more if your answer is rated as the best one given. Its in its infancy, and as you’ll see there are a lot of silly or random things on there, but in the future, this could be a far more sophisticated way of harnessing the wisdom of crowds.
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/
"Crowdsourcing" is a phrase coined by Wired for this type of activity. Whilst Yahoo Answers is free and for fun, networks are creating a way for people to sit anywhere in the world and generate low level revenues based on the power of networks. For a full read here is the article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
Basically it means that stock photography (good enough for most small businesses) can now come down from $100 a shot to something like $1. Sites like iStockphoto http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php allow anyone to upload their images and get a few cents if people want to buy them. Most interesting of all, the Wired article suggests that the future of corporate R&D could lie in this type of network. Innocentive http://www.innocentive.com/ is a site that matches scientists to challenges facing companies like Proctor and Gamble. Anyone can sit at home and work on a scientific solution – if they crack it, they can earn anywhere between $10k and $100k – hobbyists (retirees or people who want a different quality of life) are solving problems from a more diverse perspective than is able to be solved in-house. Do read the article for a full explanation.
Ok, enough heavy stuff for now. How about some more random YouTube videos?
As I said, travel is always popular, and here’s a link to one of those things you wish you’d thought of yourself – 1.75 million views and counting!
http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries
As we know, recreating or "mashing up" is endlessly popular, here is Claire's current YouTube favourite
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2yNzw00mpA&search=torn
Other than reversions of familiar things (usually involving Star Wars), You Tube’s other current obsession is that old favourite - Japanese "Beadle’s About" type content. No need to understand the language – cruelty reigns and many involve toilet stunts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gNsDp2N6yM&feature=Views&page=1&t=a&f=b
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrJSMxRPzPU&feature=Views&page=1&t=m&f=b
Its quite long, so best either to dip in and out, or come back to it when you have some free time.
But to start, and as a reminder of what the internet is REALLY about, I've attched a song from Avenue Q (which if you haven't been to see you really should, its on at the Noel Coward Theatre and is hilarious)
ForPorn.ytmnsfw.com
The first site to take a look at is one that people are talking about on blogs and tagging sites as it makes for a pretty awesome homepage. In essence its "an aggregator of aggregators". Everyone knows the web is now about collections of things where the best rises to the top – whether its pictures on Flickr, videos on YouTube or news on portals. This page (refreshed every 15 minutes has lists of the top things which are showing on these different sites – you can rearrange the order of sources or make the lists longer or shorter. But the best thing about it for me is the search box on the right hand side. Instead of just searching lets say Google from a single page, you can now search for your word or phrase directly from a range of sources from Ebay to Myspace, Wikipedia to Flickr. Take a look, scroll through it, play around
www.popurls.com
As we all know, everyone loves a list. 43 Things is a site where people write a list of 43 things they want to do. You can see the things that most people want to do with tag clouds (ie the bigger the word the more people have listed that), you can look at other people’s lists for inspiration and you can see what other people are doing where.
www.43things.com
Another site has spun off from this which is all about travel (another favourite internet theme). Here people say where they want to go, and others say if they’ve been there, if its worth going, or what to see and do when they get there. You can ask people who live in different destinations questions and check out reviews. Its quite young, so I don't recomend using it for restaurant reviews, there are other better sources, but its a nice way for people travelling to make connections and suss things out.
www.43places.com
Still on the travel theme, if you’re deciding whether to go somewhere, and want to see some pictures of the country, city, landmark etc.. the mass of images now on Flickr means that searches of even the most random destinations throw up dozens of images that give you a real sense of what somewhere will be like. Results come up under a "most relevant" heading, but if you click on the "most interesting" button to the right of the "view" list (above the images) you’ll tend to see some really amazing pictures. This is just one of the more lateral ways one can use some of the larger user generated sites.
www.flickr.com
On my Flickr profile, I have a map with all the countries I’ve been to, coloured in red. If you’re well traveled this is a pretty cool thing to do (even if one trip to Moscow does seem to colour in half the planet!). More and more people are writing code that does different stuff, which can then be pasted onto your own website, your blog, your MySpace profile or can just be looked at once. This guy has created a very plonky site, which generates the map and can then be inserted elsewhere on the web. Click on all the places you’ve been to, it will generate a map and a piece of code which you can then place where you like.
http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries
Another example of insertable code is Personality DNA. This is a classic questionnaire, executed really well with sliding scales. It creates your personality profile which lots of people are starting to insert in their MySpace/Bebo pages to give a quick snapshot of what they’re like. It takes a while to do, but like similar things is quite fun and the report page is great.
http://www.personaldna.com/
Back to the way the internet loves associations and recommendations, here is another beta site that will create a "map" showing you recommendations based on films, music, actors or directors that you like. Some more obscure content isn’t there yet, and it will only improve the more people who use it but it’s a bit "rock family tree" and is a great visual way of finding new things.
http://liveplasma.com/
Google is great, but if you take the "Dyson approach" to development , things can always be improved on. Snap is a site based on two principles – 50% of searches end in failure, and the average search times from start to finish is 15 minutes. This search engine shows you snapshots of the pages that include your result, so you get a good sense of whether they are where you want to go, before you click all over the internet.
www.snap.com
Alternatively, there are often questions we have that can’t be answered by a traditional search engine ie: a computer. "How long is a piece of string", "do Germans play World War 2 computer games" and "what is the best treatment for cellulite" are just three of the questions people are currently asking on Yahoo Answers. This site allows real people to respond to questions – you get points for answering questions and more if your answer is rated as the best one given. Its in its infancy, and as you’ll see there are a lot of silly or random things on there, but in the future, this could be a far more sophisticated way of harnessing the wisdom of crowds.
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/
"Crowdsourcing" is a phrase coined by Wired for this type of activity. Whilst Yahoo Answers is free and for fun, networks are creating a way for people to sit anywhere in the world and generate low level revenues based on the power of networks. For a full read here is the article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
Basically it means that stock photography (good enough for most small businesses) can now come down from $100 a shot to something like $1. Sites like iStockphoto http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php allow anyone to upload their images and get a few cents if people want to buy them. Most interesting of all, the Wired article suggests that the future of corporate R&D could lie in this type of network. Innocentive http://www.innocentive.com/ is a site that matches scientists to challenges facing companies like Proctor and Gamble. Anyone can sit at home and work on a scientific solution – if they crack it, they can earn anywhere between $10k and $100k – hobbyists (retirees or people who want a different quality of life) are solving problems from a more diverse perspective than is able to be solved in-house. Do read the article for a full explanation.
Ok, enough heavy stuff for now. How about some more random YouTube videos?
As I said, travel is always popular, and here’s a link to one of those things you wish you’d thought of yourself – 1.75 million views and counting!
http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries
As we know, recreating or "mashing up" is endlessly popular, here is Claire's current YouTube favourite
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2yNzw00mpA&search=torn
Other than reversions of familiar things (usually involving Star Wars), You Tube’s other current obsession is that old favourite - Japanese "Beadle’s About" type content. No need to understand the language – cruelty reigns and many involve toilet stunts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gNsDp2N6yM&feature=Views&page=1&t=a&f=b
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrJSMxRPzPU&feature=Views&page=1&t=m&f=b
posted by Blach at 9:09 AM
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