It’s very fascinating to think of the upcoming generation who use online products to augment relationships that may not have been previously possible. Theodora Stites writes about a typical day in her life and how the online world connects her and defines her relationships. Relationships that take time to manage but the web is allowing people like Theodra to modify their level of engagement with their peer groups, engaging others with various levels of social intimacy.

Previously, there were acquaintances, friends, and colleagues. Now websites such as MySpace, Friendster, Dodgeball, Plazes, Facebook, and of course IM, are allowing users to customize and define new social groupings.

The future is ready for the connectivity that continuous computing will bring. I hope to be one of the many riding the wave as it crashes upon the rocks.

Looks like I’m not the only person wrestling with the big grid small grid effect. Ryan Irvine puts together a thoughtful commentary on what he calls the Garden State effect. I’d like to think I’ve moved on and that it’s for the betterment of the medium in general but its hard to be that optimistic.

I guess in a way we want to feel validated for our unique knowledge and simply jumping onto the bandwagon doesn’t cut it.

So it’s been a few weeks since Netscape released its ‘Digg’ style news portal. Verdict? Very interesting. I think what we’re seeing is that Digg is effective because it caters to a niche market. When we bring the same innovation to a mainstream level we get a front page that lists top headlines such as:

• Kitten survives trip through wood chipper
• Brandy to replace Star Jones on The View?
• Poll: Overweight America does read labels
• List of July TV premiere dates
• Guide to Fantasy Football Defensive Players
• Paris Hilton Wants to Reproduce
• Keith Richards to be in ‘Pirates’ movie
• The Sopranos Cast Is All Signed, Clearing Path to Eight Episode End Run

Of course I’m being selective in showing you titles but the amount of Entertainment news dominates at least 50% of the top headlines on Netscape. Kind of reinforces the reasons newspapers adopted a top down approach to begin with. Of course it’s still early and Netscape news may turn into something unexpectedly good. But as of now it’s pretty much what I expected: an Entertainment news portal. I’m curious if Netscape feels their initiative is successful…

Last week it was BumpTop. This week it’s Liquid Browsing. Hmm… I think I’ll stick with solid browsing. It’s interesting to see how many people I’ve spoken to who think these UIs are amazing.

To me it only fortifies the reason why you don’t get your audience to design for you. (Not that this is what BumpTop/Liquid did to create their UIs) But often people will say they want something which is very different from what they really require.

Perceived need vs Latent need

It’s interesting when the big boys start seeking parody with the startups. A lot of sites have embraced Digg’s style of community selected news. Cnet being one of the largest who have included “digg this” buttons on all of their stories. This is true of del.icio.us’ social bookmarking as well.

Now Netscape is trying to get in on the action allowing their users to populate their top news stories. What does this all mean? I like to relate it to the big grid – small grid dilemma. The big grid (accessible, mainstream whatever you want to call it) likes to mine the small grid for gems that they can take to recreate and make accessible. We’re seeing this a lot now in Movie and Music. Where a few years ago nobody cared about Broken Social Scene or the Decemberists and now they have a strong mainstream following. The same can be said about films like Rushmore and Magnolia vs Napoleon Dynamite and Crash.

I’d like to be optimistic and think that this generally elevates the level of the medium. There is level of authenticity which needs to be apparent for those in the small grid to accept big grid items who have adapted their craft. So what does this all mean for Web 2.0? I would hope all this IS elevating the web. Social software seems to be a very prevalent and reoccurring theme, allowing users to link to each other in various passive and active ways. These web toys are slowly moving out of the alpha geek circles and absorbing other demographics. This allows for new and interesting opportunities in other movements such as continuous computing. When the proficency for tools like Digg and Del.icio.us goes up so do the opportunities for creating another generation of tools.

The only question is if we are actually laying the correct foundation for innovation on the Web. Although the beautiful part is that the web is very much an accelerated society. Memes live and die in a matter of days. Experimenting and the web go hand and hand and as we begin to have other pieces of hardware singing the same tune a whole new world of opportunities will emerge.

This fun app lets you draw on Google maps. Simple concept, but marry it with some social software and you may very well get yourself something very interesting!

Pandora definitely isn’t as fun as it use to be BUT a new toy they recently added is backstage. Very similar to AMG but you get to see all the metadata that pandora has applied to each individual song.

I’ve been loosely following Flock since Garson Kwan brought it to my attention over a year ago. Although I wasn’t really sure or convinced of what added value this browser would bring. After reading Wade Roush’s article which coined it “The New Superstar Browser” I thought I’d give it a spin.

Since it is a gecko based browser there are a lot of functionally similar elements to Firefox. The set up takes about 5 minutes of your time but I’m not really sure it’s worth it. If you have a blog you can synchronize your account so you can blog about newsworthy pieces on the spot! Unfortunately for me I couldn’t even sync my account providing all the information it asked for. I simply keep receiving an error message.

You can also upload your Flickr or Photobucket pictures. If you’re a heavy user of Flickr/Photobucket it’s a useful app to have. But the feature I was most looking for was a seemless RSS reader. Flock integrates a reader into the browser but the news reader gives precedence to the browser. If you select a news item it opens it into a full browser window and closes the news reader module. This eliminates the ability to browse titles quickly (the beauty of RSS!).

Flock reminds me of those technologist who thought it would be smart to make a cellphone, tv, mp3 player, camera, video camera, pda device all in one with minimal consideration of how the actual interaction would take place. To be fair though, I only really looked at Flock for 30 min so my assessment is probably a bit premature. I’m sure there is a lot of great functionality I’ve yet to discover with Flock and as conventions in social software occur Flock may be well positioned.

In time Flock may convince me otherwise but for now I’m flocking back to Firefox and my Feedreader.

I’m beginning to believe strongly in Wade Roush’s vision of Continuous Computing. It’s an incremental step from what we already have and it’s much more feasible than ubicomp. Why? — Because the technology is already here.

For those not familiar with Continuous Computing it’d be a good idea to read Roush’s manifesto. If you’d like the Cole’s notes, I’d like to make the simple distinction that it is augmenting existing technologies with social networks and real time information in which users of this technology have unprecedented amounts of choice and access to information.

As a result of this existing infrastructure there are new opportunities to create very interesting software to compliment these technologies. Ubiquitous Computing on the other hand is more of a hardware driven revolution where by ambient devices are embedded into the everyday and interaction with these ambient devices seamlessly occur as they track and gather data. (think minority report – very hardware intensive and requires an infrastructure that doesn’t exist yet).

Anyway, I’m just babbling like usual but I have a strong feeling that there will be more applications built to propel the Continuous Computing revolution. We are just at the cusp of what can be possible. Applications that allow you to access their services anytime and anywhere and let you connect with people in the virtual and physical world that you may not know otherwise.

I’m working on such an application right now with a group of intelligent people. Right now it’s still very hush hush top secret but as it becomes more concrete I’ll release the details. In the meantime take a look at dodgeball which is just the beginning of what is possible.

So a lot of things have happened since my last post. I got a job in Vancouver and will be back in town June 9th on ward. It also means I miss Jeff Tweedy for the 7th? time… but who’s counting To the Edmonton folk who have kept me company I thank you wholeheartedly. Moving to a new city is tough stuff and you made my time enjoyable. In a perfect world I could pluck all of you from Edmonton and merge you in Vancouver but it’s not possible. Once I get my Vancouver number I’ll be updating everyone with new contacts. Please say hello if you ever make a stop in Vancouver and I’ll be sure to do the same when I return to Edmonton. New and exciting web related postings will begin once I settle in