infinitely meta: brian daniel eisenberg

1.15.2007

post on need for tagging standards makes del.icio.us most popular page

Just came across a recent post focusing on the need for standards (or not) for tagging systems. Furthers my case that we need to do something about these tagging systems or we're never going to be able to bring it to masses.

[UPDATE: Via trackback links on the above article, I read this post, and left this response to the author. ]

I think the KISS model is highly applicable in this case. Simple, effective tagging systems that all share the same baseline features might help, but may not address the inherent issues that crop up in socially-driven systems like del.icio.us and other sites.

My comments are really focused on the need for some level of commonality and consistency across tagging systems in the following areas:

Ability to gracefully handle compound words, phrases, and multi-word tags. Space, no space, quotes, whatever. Pick one.
Spell checking. FF2.0 brings this into the fold, but spelling errors in tags results in bloated and inaccurate tag clouds.
Better equivalence detection capabilities - singular vs. plural, synonyms, typos, etc.
Better tag management - for example, right now, on del.icio.us, I can only delete one tag at a time. Tag replacement helps me get rid of equivalents, but only one at a time.

What do you think?

1.14.2007

WTF is going on with Digg Swarm?

Came across a post by Muhammad Saleem, over at The Mu Life about a strange object over on Digg Swarm. I also noticed something very strange on Swarm this morning. Check out the screenshots below of the crazy activity from Digg User BigYellowDot.

As of ~11:15am pacific on Jan 14, 2007, this account has dugg 14674 stories. Either this is a bot/script that the Digg team is using to test, or someone else has written some slick code to auto-digg.

Watching this user's activity on swarm was very interesting. You could literally watch the size of this users BIG YELLOW BALL grow before your eyes. Also note how the stories that were dugg are sucked in like a black hole. Whatever it was, it was pretty cool to watch on Swarm.

Tags: digg, swarm, spam, bigyellowdot

King 5 News uses my cameraphone picture on their Top Stories web page!

Check it out: My cameraphone pic (sent to king5 via my flickr stream set link) made their online news report. the power of mobile phones. I'm just glad to have water again. Enjoy this set my people's!!! Happy new year everyone.

Browser screenshot of my cameraphone pic:

--Brian

1.11.2007

Some new pics of my reef tank to spruce things up a bit.

Here are a couple pics I took earlier tonight of my reef tank. Just wanted to post something non-tech and non-geeky for a change. Enjoy. More pics coming to my flickr stream soon.

Rose Bubble Anemones

My latest acquisition - a ginormous brain sized bright green candy cane coral

Devil's Hand coral, assorted leather corals, and my mean ass female Clarkii clownfish (my oldest fish)

Digg Down! Upgrade? Installation of the anti-spam-laser-blasters?

Digg down @ 5:07PM January 11, 2007

No activity on Swarm:

more signs of strain on the web2.0 bubble

I remember about a year ago when I came across an odd new Amazon service called Mechanical Turk. I actually signed up for an account and tried to do some simple mturk HITs. I spent a couple days fiddling around, and while I saw the genius behind the application, I thought that back then, the concept was way ahead of its time. And here we are today, a year later and the folks over are ReadWriteWeb dicussing the rather lackluster rate of adoption of MTurk services in webapps and the fact that there really hasn't been a killer app implemented that leverages this service. Is there a killer app for MTurk? I think there probably is, but I'm not sure the dev community is ready to build mature apps with something like this yet. What do you think?

the end of the socially-driven-web2.0-era? Social sites reeling from spammers

OK. This now confirms what I've been suspecting for the past couple months. Spammers have REALLY increased their activity and infiltration of the socially-driven sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, MyBlogLog, and many others to the point where it could bring the whole thing crashing down.

It's a damn shame. I get the feeling of impending doom where the entire socially-driven web2.0 bubble could come crashing down rather quickly unless these sites do more to combat the sleazy and constantly-evolving spamming techniques. We need better anti-spamming features built into these sites.

Digging and burying of comments (kind of like a peer review for comments) on things submitted to Digg is a start, but man, the flame wars going on over at Digg make me think that everyone over there is in high school. I mean come on people. The quality of content, commentary, and user participation on the social driven sites has really done downhill. Del.icio.us is in danger of following suit.

More evidence - I came across a post on the MyBlogLog blog earlier tonight where they were asking for feedback on where do draw the line between those pesky spammers vs. honest folks like myself who are just trying to grow our communities. My post from earlier tonight on the existence of possible spam-laden comments over at the TechCrunch MyBlogLog Community site also alludes to the spam-related issues that are currently plaguing the socially-driven sites.

Another example - del.icio.us spam - Here's a screenshot that I just took from del.icio.us with a lot of suspect links rising to the top of the Most Popular page. I took this screenshot at approximately 12:56am pacific time on January 11, 2007. Notice the two entries that I've blacked out below. Both link to adult-oriented porn with tons of ads, links, spyware, and such.

Very concerning trends for techno-geeks like myself who have come to enjoy the GREAT benefits these sites have [had?]to offer. Wouldn't you agree that there were MUCH more interesting things rising to the tops of the socially-driven sites about a year ago. Now the waters are muddied and the future of this amazingly interesting phenomena may be in dire straits. I certainly hope not.

It just goes to show you that it's not about the software and features driving these sites, it about building a community where users are encouraged to participate, contribute, and interact with one another instead of spamming and flaming the latest and greatest poster-of-stupid-content-that-gets-dugg-then-buried-then-flamed-in-comments.

Double sigh. Just when I thought we could bring web2.0 to the masses, I start seeing trends like this that make me think otherwise. Time to go throw a temper tantrum over on Digg.

1.10.2007

Techcrunch MyBlogLog Community getting excessive amounts of spam in comments?

It's amazing how vigilent us techno-geeks must be to stay on top of those pesky spammers. Look at the comments from the MyBlogLog Community page for TechCrunch in the screenshot below.

@ Michael Arrington - might want to break out your spam laser blasters and clean up some of these community comments. Or not... ;-)

Catholic dating? Myspace codes? seems awfully suspicious to me...and please do correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't visit the MyBlogLog TechCrunch community page all that often.

Personally, I'm sick and tired of the spammers. I'm sick and tired of Digg. I'm getting sick and tired of web2.0. Sigh. I think I was on to something in my earlier post on the impending doom of web2.0.

I want my Radio Shack TRS80, tape cassette drive, list of BBS's, and my trusty 300 baud modem back. Ahh the good ole days when life was simpler and there were less distractions. I've gone anti-digg and am starting to digg down all the stoopid stuff that amazingly makes its way to the top. unfrikinbelievable some of the garbage that makes it up on Digg.

Question to my fellow techno-geeks - where are you going for your daily dose of socially-driven content these days?

I'm still using Original Signal and PopURLs, but I'm finding myself constantly scanning my 48 Technorati Favorites. I've got 200+ feeds in Google Reader, but I just can't seem to get in the habit of using it.

That's all for tonight. More fun tomorrow.

1.09.2007

Finally. Flickr approves my account and removed the NIPSA lock so now my pics are searchable.

This is the response from Flickr after I sent yet another request for them to review my account in the hopes of making my pics searchable by others. Tanks Flickr.

Hello, bdeseattle!

This is an automatically generated copy of a help case reply:
Here's the response I got from Flickr after I asked for yet another review of my account to allow my pics (which were previously marked NISPA) to be indexed and available via search.

Hello,

Thanks for your question.

Your account has been reviewed and set to public status. In a short time, your photos will be visible in searches and public areas of the Flickr site.

Regards,

Monish

Digg swarm activity around Steve Job's Keynote @ Macworld

Wow. Check out the Digg activity on Swarm following Steve Jobs keynote.
http://labs.digg.com/swarm.

Link to Keynote as reported by Engadget.

Holy F@#$%@#$%@# --- Eric Schmidt just joined Steve Jobs on stage. Then he brings up Jerry Yang, co-founder and Chief Yahoo!!!!

Swarm is going frikin nuts. I want a MacBook, Apple TV, and iPhone, and I want them now.

1.06.2007

heading to crystal mtn - solo - with pack + gear

In the spirit of being smart, I'm headed up to Crystal Mtn. this morning for some cold deep fresh pow pow. Expect to leave around 7:30am and back to Seattle this afternoon. If you don't hear from my by 5pm, please call Crystal Mtn Ski Patrol. I have my full compliment of gear - avalanche transceivers, shovel, probe, fire making tools, shelter, water, food, etc. etc. Will not be heading out of bounds or into the back country, but knowing that Crystal has gotten over 40" in the last 4 days, its going to be deep. Pics will be taken from my mobile and posted to my flickr stream.

1.05.2007

Late night wrapup...uhhh..make that early morning wrapup

OK. It's 2:11am and I've been posting like a madman over at the recently launched Techcrunch Forums. I've finally found a venue to post a thread on the topic of tagging, socialsoftware, and the issues I have with today's tagging systems. Thanks to Michael Arrington and the team over at Techcrunch for rolling out another vehicle to build the community. Great stuff.

Oh and while I'm at it, please forgive the mess here on my blog. I'm so friggin #@!$@!#$ed off at the "New Blogger", that I MUST MUST MUST get my Ubuntu server setup, dialed in, loaded with Wordpress, and extract my feed to a dedicated server. I can't wait for the day to rid myself of my dependence on Blogger. With that, I'm calling it a night..err morning.

After all I have the Comcast guy who is supposed to show up tomorrow morning from 8-11am to swap out my existing Motorola HD-DVR with a new one that has a BIGGER hard drive -- and get this -- it's not costing me a dime!!! I'll post some more nuggets on how to get Comcast to kick down a brand spankin new HD-DVR with a bigger HDD.

1.04.2007

Is it just me, or is web2.0 losing it's steam?

I remember about a year ago when just about any time of the day I could login to del.icio.us/popular, digg.com, popurls.com, originalsignal.com, etc. and be completely and utterly blown away by the amazing content that so eloquently ebbed and flowed on their most popular lists.

I've become a frequent visitor to buzz.originalsignal.com, labs.digg.com/swarm, and http://technorati.com/pop/ and maybe its just my warped sense of what I find to be interesting, but over the past few months, the quality of content that rises to the top of these sites has gone way way down hill. I still get my daily dose of web2.0 crapola from these sites, but a year ago I was learning all sorts of new and interesting stuff from just about every link I clicked from the above mentioned sites. Now it seems like the quality of the coent being submitted has gone down significantly. I think I saw an article yesterday about the "dumbness of crowds." I think where I'm heading with this post is perhaps a completely factless and baseless hypothesis that as these social sites grow their userbase, quality suffers. I think I'll go explore the "dumbness of crowds" meme and report back.

Fellow tecnho-geeks, is it just me, or is web2.0 played out? Are the amazing benefits of socialsoftware and related web2.0 technologies, techniques, and philosophies meant to stay with us techies and never reach the masses? I sure hope not. What is it going to take to gain widespread adoption and bring the benefits of web2.0 to the masses?

standards for tagging
standards for tagging
standards for tagging

1.03.2007

technorati tags vs. blogger labels

So I've been using this nifty little Greasemonkey script that inject a Technorati tag input form field to the blogger post GUI so I can embed technorati tags in my blog posts. As a recently upgraded blogger user (to the "new" system), I see that they've implemented a labels feature, which is strikingly similar to what I'm trying to accomplish by injecting technorati tags into my posts. Does anyone know if the Blogger labels are picked up by the blog engines like technorati, feed readers, and plain 'ole search engines? I guess I'll need to do some more research on Blogger labels.

My question for all you tech bloggers out there is:

technorati tags or blogger labels, or both?

This tagging stuff is getting to be a real pain in the a$$. sigh.

standards for tagging
standards for tagging
standards for tagging

[maybe if I repeat it enough, one will magically appear]

sigh. time to setup my ubuntu server with wordpress.

tagwars - del.icio.us, myweb2.0, bluedot, flickr -- we need tagging standards -- + a quick review of the del.icio.us Firefox extension

Building on my previous post and initial review of the Bluedot socialbookmarking site, as a daily, yet somewhat frustrated del.icio.us user, I figured I'd give it a go and see if Bluedot might trump del.icio.us as my socialbookmarking tool de jour (see previous rants on Yahoo's overlapping tagging and social bookmarking systems and issues with tagging & social bookmarking in general). The jury is still out on this debate, but I'm going to give Bluedot a fair shot, especially seeing some of the interesting features it appears to have in the works.

This post is a cut and paste from my post below (which was becoming a bit bloated), so I decided to extract this out, as it primarily is a review of the del.icio.us Firefox extension and how I am using it instead of my old FF links toolbar.

The setup:

So I start with my reasonably tuned FF2.0 browser that I've dialed in for hyper-productivity whilst navigating the web2.0-blog-o-net-sphere.

About 3 weeks ago, I upgraded my del.icio.us extension to the latest version, and initially wasn't too happy when my highly configured Links toolbar (aka my netOS) disappeared and was replaced with a del.icio.us specific one.

[NOTE: while installing this extension will replace your Links toolbar with a del.icio.us one, you can easily recover your old one by disabling or uninstalling the del.icio.us extension. You can also use what they are now calling the "Classic del.icio.us" extension if you want to still tag using del.icio.us, but also want to keep your Links toolbar.

After reading through the del.icio.us doc for the FF extension, in a relatively short period of time I was able to re-tune my del.icio.us toolbar to allow me to use it in a similar manner as I had previously used my tweaked out Links toolbar.

For me, the most important tag is my start tag, which allows me in one click to open all the sites I typically like to start my FF session with in a single click. I've added the Start tag as my first tag that appears on my del.icio.us tags toolbar.

Here's a screenshot of my previously dialed in Links toolbar:

versus my new del.icio.us tag-based toolbar:

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the new del.icio.us bookmarks functionality, but I have run into the following minor annoyances:

If you customize (or have previously customized) your FF toolbars (e.g. add extra buttons, rearrange things, etc) and you disable or uninstall the del.icio.us extension, all your custom buttons get reset.
If you only use FF Links toolbar to organize your FF bookmarks, they will not be imported into the firefox:toolbar tab. I think this is a bug. I can't seem to track down all the links from my old FF Links toolbar.
Every so often, Firefox will initiate a Bookmarks Sync process that freezes up FF and I'm not able to access other tabs or perform other functions (like type this post).

Okay, enough del.icio.us talk for now.

[UPDATE: I've gone back to using the del.icio.us toolbar instead of my dialed in FF Links toolbar. Still a work in progress, but I see the light and have some new ideas on how to kick it up another notch. sTay tuned. ]

del.icio.us vs bluedot comparison

Alright. Yesterday, whilst getting my daily dose of socially-driven news over at Original Signal, I came across Arrington's review of the 2007 web2.0 companies that he couldn't live without. After reading the first part of his post, I was intrigued by his review of Bluedot and decided to take it for a quick spin.

Let's move on to the bluedot.us install / del.icio.us import.

The install:

Simple FF add-on / bookmarklet. Install FF add-on [ Get it here ]. Restart FF.

The import:

My ~900 del.icio.us bookmarks took about 5-8 min to complete.

The Process:

As Michael mentions in his post, bluedot is really about sharing your bookmarks with friends and adds another layer of granularity to making your bookmarks public vs. private. Bluedot allows you to selectively share your dots with friends [NOTE: I've yet to explore this feature because I only have one friend so far and I'm all about sharing my dots with the masses in the true spirit of the user-driven, socially-powered web2.0 world we live in. ]

The GUI:

Bluedot organizes itself into 4 main areas.

Home - sub menus allow you to filter your "dots". Dots = URI/bookmark + tags + extracted metadata. You can view Friend's dots, Everyone's Dots, and My Dots
People - sub menus allow you to Find Friends, view My Friends, and Invite Friends
Tools - everything you'd come to expect in a piece of socialsoftware - widgets, feeds, REST, APIs, FF extensions, bookmarklets, and blog integration. Tools page is pretty self explanatory, so am not going to go into too much detail here (also haven't explored all of them yet)
My Account - standard account management features. Edit profile, password, email settings, etc.

Here are some pics I posted to my flickr stream that showcase some of the bluedot features in action:

My Bluedot homepage:

Tag view of my dots:

So I've only spent about 2 hours total playing around with bluedot, but I think I'm ready to do a basic feature comparison. There are certainly features that I am psyched to see in Bluedot (is that a USER RATING SYSTEM I see next to my profile?!?!?!?), but there are other critical features that are supported on del.icio.us that I am not seeing here (yet?). I'll wait for the experts to chime in and correct any inaccuracies or oversights on my part (apologies in advance).

With that, here's a feature comparison table with a list of features that I find most important in social bookmarking and tagging systems. It will expand on my del.icio.us vs. myweb2.0 feature bakeoff in my previous post on this topic that I've linked to from above.

OK, so I'm a busy guy and haven't finished this post. Gives you a compelling reason to check back. I promise I'll finish it soon. :-)

Feature	del.icio.us	Bluedot	MyWeb2.0	Comments
Tagging
Tag separator	space	comma	comma

12.11.2006

U2 + Pearl Jam Live in Honolulu, Hawaii = Vertigo

more later. head still spinning. here are some pics for now:

U2 + Pearl Jam Concert - Honolulu, HI

11.28.2006

Stupid stupid stupid. Just watching local news and report of a skier who died up at Mt. Baker over the weekend. Damn.

Still waiting to see news post online with details. Early reports were person was lost in backcountry. Backcountry wasn't even oven, as far as I know. It would have been a really poor decision to venture off into either the Canyon or the backcountry this past weekend with all the snow. Also just saw a report where Mt. Baker issued a warning to skiers and snowboarders to not ski alone off main trails. A good idea indeed.

My post from Thursday is testament to the importance of knowing what you are getting yourself into when skiing at Mt Baker. As someone who has been skiing at Baker for 10+ years, I've had my own close calls and know how easy it is to get yourself into trouble -- even while in bounds. I wasn't kidding when I went through the ritual of preparing for my deep powder experience at Mt. Baker last Friday.

It's a damn shame that I have to see news reports like this one. People really need to get educated and be smart when it comes to skiing the deep cascade powder. My condolences to the family of the skier who lost their life.

--brian

LOL > Firefox on Steroids

Check out this screenshot of FF fully decked out with massive extensions and add-ons. LOL. This is hilarious. Try to sync that using Google's Browser sync! When I tried to use it to sync my tweaked out FF a couple months back, the sync app complained that I had too many extensions installed and the sync operation eventually timed out. Now I just use my portable FF instance stored on my 2 GB microSD card that I have in my mobile.

11.27.2006

blogger is really starting to annoy me

UPDATE: So I recently submitted a request to have my blog reviewed by the blogger team because somewhere I saw that it got flagged as a possible splog. Anyway, they told me to logout and login again and I should be all set. So I did that and now saw that I had the option of upgrading to the new Blogger beta. Well, after about 20 minutes of cutting/pasting from my old blogger template, I think I've more or less pieced it back togther. I have not figured out how to edit / add to my blog post comments / links / footer where i'd like to add links to technorati, add del.icio.us, swarm, etc, but I have yet to figure it out. Please let me know if you have any issues viewing the new template.

===

Since my recent return to being an active contributor to the blogosphere, I figured I'd give my crufty blogger site a makeover and optimize for SEO and widgetize my sidebar. While I'm pleased with the direction I'm heading, I'm about ready to pull my hair out with the Blogger system. Maybe I've outgrown it. As an old school HTML code slinger, who got started in the webdev back in 1995 (can you say cgi-bin), I need more control over the design, layout, and management of my site.

I think it's probably time to move my blog off of the blogger servers and host it somewhere else. I can devote one of my aging Dual Pentium III 933mhz boxes as a web server. yeah. I think that's what I'll do. I could conceivably grab the latest Ubuntu dist and setup a nice simple wordpress server.

Open question to folks who roll their own blog site and host on their own servers / domain,

What is the best setup today for a home-hosted site? Ubuntu/Wordpress seems like a logical recipe for success.

What do you think I should do?

11.26.2006

How to Export Google Reader Feeds as OPML

Last night, I realized that adding a simple blogroll to my blog hosted on Blogger was a pain in the butt. Every time I wanted to add a new site, I had to mod my blog template (old school blogger GUI - not the fancy schmancy new one -which I saw the other day while tweaking my sister's blog). Anyway, I figured out that OPML was the path to success, and after recently blowing away all of my Bloglines subs (ditching Bloglines as my reader), I started re-adding my favorite feeds to Google Reader.

Well then I spent some time updating my blog to make it more Technorati friendly and SEO'd. After exploring the Technorati Tools and starting to train myself to add blogs I like / read to My Technorati Favorited(in addition to saving to del.icio.us), I figure this is as good a way as any to manage my blogroll. I'll just use an embeddable widgie-poo from the Technorati Tools site.

So, after all that, I just now figured out how to export my subs from Google Reader as OPML. Actually, the feature was right there all along, it was just not too obvious. Here's the recipe for success that I just figured out (assumes the new Google Reader Web GUI):

1) From Google Reader home, click Manage Subscriptions.

2) Click Import/Export.

3) Click "Export your subscriptions as an OPML file"

4) This will generate an odd looking page with plain text: " subscriptions in Google Reader" - rest of page is otherwise blank.

5) This is your OPML file. From your browser, view source or save as "myfeeds.opml.

6) Then I used Technorati to suck in my Google Reader feeds via their OPML import feature.

7) Finally, I embedded one of the Technorati Favorites widgets into my blog template and voila, I've got the Feeds I've saved in a nice compact widget exposed on my blog's sidebar.

Happing exporting.

--brian

PS - also experimenting with blogrolling site that I found last night.

11.25.2006

Spread some peanut butter on this

Ok. I've been wanting to post on this topic for a couple days now and think I'm ready to sit down and write this post.

I first wrote about potential issues with the del.icio.us - Yahoo! mashup a while back.

Then I started thinking about some issues related to tagging.

And of course I recently read the Yahoo Peanut Butter Manifesto.

Now let's take a quick look at some evidence of overlap and poorly rationalized technologies in two specific areas that were mentioned in the memo that are near and dear to my heart, yet continue to co-exist as overlapping pieces of innovation within the Yahoo! empire.

Overlap #1: MyWeb2.0 vs. del.icio.us - WTF? I tried MyWeb2.0 when it first came out, but by then I had already been using del.icio.us. If you sit down and compare the features of WY2.0 vs. del.icio.us, you'll notice a couple things. Here's a quick feature comparison:

Edit Tags
* del.icio.us = YES
* mw2.0 = NO

Delete Tags
* del.icio.us = YES
* mw2.0 = YES

Rename Tags
* del.icio.us = YES
* mw2.0 = NO

Merge Tags
* del.icio.us = NO
* mw2.0 = NO

Detect Equivalent Tags
* del.icio.us = NO
* mw2.0 = NO

Support Compound Phrases
* del.icio.us = NO (workarounds in play)
* mw2.0 = YES

Bulk Tag Editing
* del.icio.us = NO
* mw2.0 = NO

Bulk Tag Deletion
* del.icio.us = NO
* mw2.0 = NO

Overlap #2: Yahoo Photos vs. Flickr. Again WTF? Can't we rationalize or collapse these services into a single offering. Which one are we supposed to use? Personally, I use Flickr over Yahoo! Photos, but again, why should I use one over the other? Both share some features in common, but there are some features in Flickr that Yahoo! Photos lacks, and vice versa. I've not used Yahoo! Photos enough to do a detailed feature comparison, as I have with the MyWeb2.0 vs. del.icious feature comparison, but I'm sure if you took the time to dig deeper, there will most likely be some degree of feature overlap as well as some degree of feature gaps between the two services.

Oh - I also forgot to mention that the tagging-related features in Flickr are also not quite the same as del.icio.us and MyWeb2.0, which is yet another layer of features to rationalize.

I want to make it clear that I'm not knocking any of these services, because quite frankly they all kick ass. My main point of contention and source of much frustration is the feature gaps that exist between services that are clones or closely complimentary to one another as I've outlined above.

After reading the Yahoo! memo, I welcome the changes within the walls of Yahoo! and look forward to seeing them give Google a run. They clearly have some AMAZING IP. Will be interesting to see how quickly they begin to morph into the company that Brad Garlinghouse alludes to in the memo.

Maybe in the back of my head, part of the reason why I'm focusing on yahoo and the recent release of the PB Manifesto is to drum up more support for, and attention to my desire to bring some of the basic concepts and techniques of traditional cataloging and classification to tagging and folksonomy, which are evident in the feature analysis and gaps between the tagging mechanisms built into del.icio.us vs. MyWeb2.0 vs. Flickr.

Do we need a standard for tagging? Dave Winer & friends - if you're paying attention to issues with socialsoftware, tagging, and folksonomy, which I think you are, please take a couple minutes to think about this.

With that I will conclude this post.

Epic day at Mt. Baker

Here's a recap of my trip to Mt. Baker on Friday, Nov 24, 2006.

Truly one of the best "opening days" I've ever had.

Quick clip of the drive up:

Spent most of my time off Chair 6 (Sticky Wicket, Pan Dome), but also had great fun on Chairs 8 and 3. Waist-chest deep powder off piste in the glades with face shots at just about every turn.

Took a couple runs to get used to my new skis, but damn, these Elan 777s plow through just about anything and when you do get into the deep stuff, it's like floating on air. Next time I'll try to capture more video clips. Maybe give some live action shots a go. Was too good to stop though, hence the reason why I don't have too many cameraphone pics.

The Canyon or Backcountry were not open (for obvious reasons), so while I didn't really need gear bag, on days like this, it makes me feel more secure knowing that with that pack I can survive for several days in the most extreme conditions (e.g. stuck in treewell or lost off trail).

Here are a few of the cameraphone pics I took. Complete set here.

11.24.2006

Geared up - this is a test post that I published directly from Flickr

Geared up,
originally uploaded by bdeseattle.

Ready for the deep stuff at Baker.

Trying to figure out most efficient way to upload, convert, and include pics that I take. Still a work in progress.

11.23.2006

Mt. Baker - Here I come. [Includes WA State Avalance Report]

OK. It's DUMPING in the Cascades.
I'm heading to Mt Baker to ski the deep powder.
Leaving @ 6am. Back around 7-8pm.
Call for help I'm if not back by 10pm.

Suffice it to say that I will be bringing:
my avalanche beacons,
probe,
and shovel.

This is is a serious dumping that is not for the feint of heart.

:)

I love the interweb.

Look at the wealth of resources that are helping me make my decision.

1. KIRO TV Pacific Satellite Loop
2. KIRO TV Local Doppler Radar Loop
2. WA State DOT Mountain Passes
3. BACKCOUNTRY AVALANCHE FORECAST [Nov 23 report beloe]
4. Mt Baker Conditions
5. Technorati Search for >> skiing seattle baker, led me to [6]
6. Pics taken from Mt. Baker today [gotta love the blogosphere]

Cameraphone pics to follow on my flickr stream

--brian

===========
Source: http://www.nwac.us/products/SABSEA

BACKCOUNTRY AVALANCHE FORECAST FOR THE OLYMPICS WASHINGTON
CASCADES AND MT HOOD AREA
NORTHWEST WEATHER AND AVALANCHE CENTER SEATTLE WASHINGTON
0845 AM PST THU NOV 23 2006

NWAC Program administered by:
USDA-Forest Service
with cooperative funding and support from:
Washington State Department of Transportation
National Weather Service
National Park Service
Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission
Pacific Northwest Ski Area Association
Friends of the Avalanche Center
and other private organizations.

This forecast applies to back country avalanche terrain below
7000 feet and does not apply to highways or operating ski
areas.

WAZ513-518-519-019-042-501-502-ORZ011-241700-

&&

ZONE AVALANCHE FORECASTS

* OLYMPICS, WASHINGTON CASCADES NEAR AND WEST OF THE
CREST, MT HOOD AREA-
Considerable avalanche danger above 5 to 6000 feet and
moderate below increasing Thursday and becoming
considerable above 5000 feet and moderate below late
Thursday except for locally high danger on southeast
through northeast facing slopes above 5 to 6000 feet.
Further increasing danger likely Thursday night and
Friday, becoming considerable above 4000 feet and
moderate below except for locally high danger on
southeast through northeast exposures above about 5000
feet.

* EAST SLOPES WASHINGTON CASCADES-
Moderate avalanche danger above 5000 feet and low below
increasing Thursday and becoming moderate above 4 to
5000 feet and low below except for locally considerable
above 6000 feet on southeast through northeast
exposures, especially steeper terrain near the crest.
Further slowly increasing danger likely Thursday night
and Friday, becoming moderate below 7000 feet except
for locally considerable danger above 5 to 6000 feet on
lee slopes.

SNOWPACK ANALYSIS

In most mid and upper elevations of the Olympics and
areas near and west of the Cascade crest, increasingly
large recent new snow accumulations have been deposited
over the generally stable and increasingly refrozen old
snowpack during the past three days, with accumulated
snowfall totals generally ranging from around 20 to over
40 inches. Along with relatively low freezing levels and
intermittently strong winds this new snowfall has
produced a generally increasing danger, especially at
higher elevations on north through east facing slopes
where the danger is now considerable and human triggered
avalanches have become probable. On these lee slopes,
some weak layers created during intermittent breaks in
snowfall or briefly decreased winds may now be buried by
wind slabs of up to 1 to over 3 feet and travelers should
exercise increasing caution in such steeper lee terrain.
Also, with the recent cooling, field reports indicate
that slow weakening of the snow near the interface of the
recent snow and the old rain crust is occurring and more
faceting and weakening of this bond is expected over the
next few days. At lower elevations and along the Cascade
east slopes, less recent snowfall has been received along
with a still relatively shallow but increasing snowpack.
This is resulting in an overall lower danger, but here
too the danger is increasing especially on lee slopes
where initially shallow but increasing wind slabs are
developing.

DETAILED FORECASTS

THURSDAY, THURSDAY NIGHT-

Moderate snow or snow showers early Thursday should
increase later Thursday morning through Thursday night,
with locally heavy snow accumulations likely in many
locations especially in the Olympics and most locations
near and west of the Cascade crest. Along with moderate
to strong ridgetop winds and continued relatively low
freezing levels, this should create increasing wind slabs
over several weak layers formed during breaks in snowfall
either Tuesday or Wednesday, especially above about 5 to
6000 feet where most potential anchors are rapidly being
buried. At lower elevations of the Olympics and Cascades
near and west of the crest, a still relatively shallow
snowpack is helping to limit the danger. However, with
anticipated heavy snowfall, many of the existing anchors
should be progressively buried, thus producing a
generally increased danger here as well, especially on
steeper terrain having a smooth underlying ground
surface. Also, the overall colder weather projected
through the remainder of the week should allow for
further weakening and faceting of the snowpack near the
interface with the old rain crust formed last Sunday.
While most avalanche activity should involve only the
most recently received new snowfall, some larger slides
may break down to the old crust and involve all of the
snowfall received since last weekend. As a result,
travelers are urged to monitor and assess the bond at
this old interface and perform stability tests on this
developing weakness, and travel is not recommended in
steeper, higher elevation lee terrain on Thursday.

While less snowfall expected along the Cascade east
slopes should help to limit the increase in the danger
particularly at lower elevations where a much shallower
snowpack remains, significant loading is nevertheless
expected on lee exposures at higher elevations,
especially near the Cascade crest. Hence locally
considerable danger is still likely on southeast through
northeast aspects above 6000 feet with moderate danger
developing on smooth, steeper lee slopes at lower
elevations.

FRIDAY, FRIDAY NIGHT-

Further moderate to occasionally heavy snow and moderate
winds are expected at low and lowering freezing levels
for much of Friday. This weather should produce further
increasing danger, with the danger accentuated on
northeast through southeast facing slopes at all
elevations. On lee terrain, unstable slabs should become
likely above about 5000 feet and travel in such terrain
is still not recommended, especially during heavy
snowfall. It should be noted that due to wind effects,
significant differences in snow stability may exist over
very short distances near ridgelines. Some wind exposed
terrain may be scoured down to near the old stable rain
crust with nearby lee slopes having substantial wind
deposits and a likelihood of human triggered slab
releases. Slowly decreasing showers and winds expected
Friday night should allow for a slow decrease in the
danger as new wind slabs begin to settle. However,
anticipated cold temperatures should make this
stabilization a very slow process, and further faceting
and weakening near the old crust should maintain a threat
of isolated larger slide releases on steeper lee terrain
above about 5 to 6000 feet.

&&

Backcountry travelers should be aware that elevation and
geographic distinctions are approximate and that a transition
zone between dangers exists.  Remember there are avalanche
safe areas in the mountains during all levels of avalanche
danger.  Contact local authorities in your area of interest
for further information.

NWAC weather data and forecasts are also available by calling
206-526-6677 for Washington, 503-808-2400 for the Mt Hood
area, or by visiting our Web site at www.nwac.us.

Moore/Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center

$$

Just in time for Turkey day >> Orginal Signal rolls out new features

Woohoo. OS just pushed out a bunch of new features and signals on their site. What a treat for Thanksgiving. Thanks OS team. You guys truly rock. OS has become the most impt site that occupies the coveted space in my group of tabs that are set as my FF hompage.

http://buzz.originalsignal.com

Happy surfing OS addicts. Here are some screenshots.

OS Buzz Home: See the new Navbar.

New OS Feature: Rearrange modules.

OS Feature: Search OS (powered by Yahoo!)

OS New Feature: Mobile Friendly GUI

11.22.2006

step away from the laptop

Ok. After a gruelling 72+ hour marathon web2.0, web3.0, semantic web, w3c, socialsoftware, del.icio.us, flickr, digg.swarm, originalsignal geek out session, I MUST step away from my laptop.

I've been posting and tagging like a crazy person, but it's just too damn exciting. so many ideas spinning in my head. My head is spinning right now.

Now that I've more or less made it through my work week dousing a series of fires and firedrills that kept me up till 3am last night, I'm gearing up for great turkey, stuffing, and insanely good apple and pecan pie [see the real deal here and here] (thanks a lot to Grand Central Bakery).
========
WARNING: DEEP POWDER ALERT That's right. It's dumping in the Cascades.

I just hopped over to SkiMart this morning to pick up my new Elan 777 skis and I finally just now took the time to troll my local mountain reports:

Mt. Baker
Crystal
Steven's Pass
Alpental

OMFG. This could be "one of those weekends"!!! Reminds me of the el Nino year we had back in 1997/98 (?) when the following winter in 1998/1999 when Mt. Baker broke all records. I remember staring in awe as I watched ski patrol dig out chair 6. It's looking like this weekend could be one for the record books, so I guess now the question is which mountain do I hit up first?

Crystal?
Baker?
Stevens?
Alpental?

Ahhh. decisions. decisions.

With that, I'm going to sign off and step away from my laptop for a while. Thanks to everyone who is pushing the envelope in the latest web2.0, semantic web, social media / tagging /bookmarking / trends discussions that are funneling so many ideas into my head.

Have Safe & Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

--Brian [bdeseattle]
Seattle, WA USA

the value of metadata

While I think that Paul Kedrosky is on to something in his recent post on the release of the new flickr camera ratings page, I disagree with his comment:

"Give the software away, so to speak, and sell the data. Its day is coming."

I think privacy concerns over the use of user-generated data in general, and metadata in particular may cause a backlash and user revolt if you simply give away the software and sell the data. Isn't this what all the web2.0 "beta" sites do today? Give away their services for free and sell their usage data to spammers (uhhh I mean ad agencies) and seed their sites with Adsense / Adwords to generate enough revenue to keep them afloat?

How much data about users and user behavior is too much to collect? Exploit? Sell? Privacy and identity theft are the biggest concerns I have about exposing my data on the net today.

Sites like Wesabe and the trend that we are seeing here with Yahoo's use of Flickr's user-generated metadata may drive new business models, but I think that there is a fine line that most intelligent users who actually read EULAs and privacy agreements are probably going to be a bit reluctant to cross.

The cost of giving up your identity and privacy information versus the perceived benefits of doing so (e.g. the wesabe community approach) are a debate that will wage on for some time. As an example of putting a value on my personal [meta]data and identity, I recently chose to NOT fill in and print out a $3 off online coupon for the Seattle Ski Expo this past weekend in favor of NOT having to give up my identity to get a lousy $3 off the entry fee.

I like to think that my identity and [meta]data is worth more than $3.

UPDATE: Thanks to Marc @ Wesabe for the detailed commentary and clarification on Wesabe's model and Data Bill of Rights.

11.21.2006

Problems with the socially driven news sites [authoritative sources]

Here's a link to a brief commentary on problems with socially driven news sites (ala the digg effect). Hmmm, now we're moving on to the "authoritative sources" debate. Another fundamental concept from the library science field that has yet to be widely embraced by the socially driven sites. That said, sites like eBay and Epinions do offer ways of establishing your 'net cred, but not all sites do. I think that the social news sites need to borrow from the ebay model and build this feature this into their systems.

make your own "countries I've visited" badge

Countries I've visited:

create your own visited countries map

11.20.2006

The problem with Folksonomies and tagging.

I came across an interesting article published in the November issue of D-Lib magazine today [1] that focuses on some philosophical issues with folksonomies and tagging The author brings up some good points about the culture of tagging and folksonomy. This immediately reminded me of a parallel thread that I captured on this topic a while back in a late night blog post. [Scroll down to the Call To Action section after top 10 list]. I vaguely recall commenting on the need for controlled vocabularies for tagging / folksonomies.

After re-reading my post, I think the author of this article does a decent job of articulating the need for (and value of) applying techniques from the world of cataloging, controlled vocabularies, and well defined rules for cataloging works (e.g. Dewey, MARC, Library of Congress), while at the same time understanding that folksonomies and social tagging are driving much of the web2.0 phenom. Anyway, I need to get back to work, so I'm going to cut this short. Maybe I'll try to expand on this post another time.

Here's my original call to action from my January 7, 2006 post:

CALL TO ACTION: taggers

We need a controlled vocabulary and some best practices and/or guidlines for taggers asap. If not, this whole social tagging and bookmarking phenomena is going to implode and get muddied with dirty metadata. I am of the opinion that we should strive to apply the library of congress cataloging rules (or similar methodology) and establish a set of rules for tagging and assigning metadata descriptions to internet works.
It's got to happen before tagging goes mainstream or else we're going to be back in the same place we were with the early search engines in the 1998-2000 era of the interweb.
Who wants to join my mission to bring the concept of a controlled vocabulary and set of guidelines for tagging to sites like del.icio.us, digg, and all the other tagging sites? If you're on board, please leave me a comment or track me down on my blog.

[1] Beneath the Metadata. Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy. D-Lib Magazine, November 2006, Volume 12 Number 11, ISSN 1082-9873. Elaine Peterson , Associate Professor / Information Resources Specialist, Montana State University

11.19.2006

don't believe the [web3.0] hype?

So I recently started tracking the spread of web3.0 hype, buzz, FUD, whatever you want to call it and there's no doubt that it's spreading like wildfire across the inter-blog-web-social-net-icio.us-sphere.

Check out technorati mentions of "web 3.0" and also related tags on del.icio.us.

Reminds me of the hype and buzz that ensued with the evolution of the "next greatest" distributed computing technologies over the past 15 years. Remember how we went from CORBA > DCOM > RMI > XML/SOAP/WS and all the hype around xml and webservices.

Here are some initial thoughts.

web2.0 = XML/SOAP/WS for the masses and the maturation of the NKOTB like eBay, Amazon, Google, and Yahoo. Then came AJAX and the rise of public apis, the concept of the mashup, and the domination of socially-driven sites like myspace, friendster, linkedin, flickr, del.icio.us.

Then just within the past few months, we've had a slew of press releases from enterprise software vendors like IBM, BEA, Oracle, and MSFT trying to bring web2.0 techniques to the enterprise. Something that for a time was being called enterpriseweb2.0 or enterprise2.0. Salesforce.com appears to be the model citizen of an enterprise2.0 company.

Now all of a sudden we have folks trying to spin the W3C Semantic Web Activity and the genius behind TBL's vision as the special sauce needed to get us to web3.0? And then today I see people talking about AI being an integral part of web3.0? Come on people. The masses have yet to understand the potential and value of web2.0. Let's not clutter the playing field by spinning up a new version for the web. Let's get web2.0 feature complete before starting another dev cycle ok?

From what I can tell, it looks like most of these web3.0 buzz-mongers are trying to mashup TBL's vision for the semantic web with the interesting trends, techniques, and phenomena driving web2.0.

Is web3.0 nothing more than the realization of TBL's vision of the semantic web with the current trends fueling web2.0? Someone say it ain't so? And I previously blogged about how web2.0 makes my brain hurt. web3.0 might just make it explode. Enough. Stop the madness

cross post on web3.0 links from my multiply.com site

Might as well start here. I think that web3.0 hype is about to get insanely out of control OR I think it will wither and die.

Don't believe the Web3.0 hype - check it out technorati style - Here are posts that contain Web3.0 per day for the last 365 days.

Get your own chart!

There seems to be enough buzz to set web3.0 off, but time and users will ultimately tell. Here's my initial list of web3.0 links along with some personal commentary.

Ready for list off? Here's the beginning of the web3.0 Hype Cycle --

Start here:

[1] new york times front page article on web3.0 by John Markoff.

[2] http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=68 One blogger's perspective on 3.0 - lots of hype, but some pretty interesting ideas and predictions. Some of it is laughable, but lots of folks seem to be jockying to position themselves around the 3.0 buzz that has yet to really catch on. Some think it might just fizzle, but then all of a sudden it shows up on last sunday's New York Times [1]. ?!?!?

[3] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ - W3C Semantic Web Activity - This is Tim Berners-Lee's age-old brainchild. I recall having drinks with TBL back in 2000 debating the merits of RDF, topic maps, and metadata at one of the W3C summit meetings in Boston. The Semantic Web activity, while typically a slow moving activity that was way ahead of its time, yet many of its specs/standards took a while to migrate out of purely academic applications to being relevant/useful in a business context.

RDF and related metadata initiatives fall under this working group. web3.0 starts to take some of these concepts and apply them into the enteprise and for specific business contexts. Building upon the success of 2.0 in "wooing" the consumer space and the empowering the masses, web3.0 solutions / services will be much more targeted, focused, and business-specific. At least that's what most of the 3.0 articles / commentary / buzz i've tagged in [4] below seem to be talking about.

web3.0 is trying to be the realization of the web2.0 phenomena in a business context. 3.0 will spin business uses for 2.0 concepts, techniques, and phenomena like the "collective intelligence", "mashups", "tagging", "social bookmarking", "social networking", "blogging", etc. Salesforce.com is probably the model company who first capitalized on this opportunity.

is web3.0 upon us?

UPDATE: So the more I play with this Multiply social networking / blogging site, the more I get frustrated by it. I am going to continue blogging right here on my good 'ole blogger account, so please bare with me as I figure out the best medium to dispense with my nonsensical commentary.

========
OK. So I stopped blogging for a long time. Mostly due to the fact that my identity was compromised and my credit info hacked. Not fun at all. That's ancient history, and with the continued wave of innovation sweeping across the internetwebspace, I thought I'd try to pick back up and start blogging on web3.0, web2.0 and related topics. Also will use multiply to post pics. From what I can tell, multiply will act as my uber-blog-aggregator where I can manage all of my web2.0-accounts e.g. flickr, del.icio.us, digg, etc.

My flickr stream is here: http://flickr.com/photos/bdeseattle

Cheers,

--Brian [bdeseattle]

PS - I bookmark on del.icio.us @ http://del.icio.us/bdeseattle

7.03.2006

Who has time to blog anyway?

ping. just a quick ping to verify that I"m still alive and kickin. hopefully will be posting pics from my recent trip to belize y guatemala.

adios

--brian

4.15.2006

things that make you want to vomit

...having your identity and credit history compromised...

painful.

extremely painful.

to the point where I'm pulling my public self off the Internet

not quite sure how yet, but stay tuned.

Completely frustrated,

--bdeseattle

more on this when I'm in a better mood.

4.02.2006

My new dell media center booting to my 56" samsung dlp via s-video cable

time to play around with msft's latest windows media tech. Figured I'd give it a whirl and see how well it works with my setup. Haven't had any time to dial it in yet. Still removing all the crapola that comes pre-installed. likely will reformat in the near future anyway.

this pic shows my new dell media center booting to my 56" samsung dlp via s-video cable. I'm looking into HD capture cards that will allow me to archive my home videos as HD content I am dying for an efficient way of archiving content. stay tuned.

Gmail - AllPeers is coming soon!

I got the inside track to the allpeers private beta!!! woohoo. This is going to be fun. Thanks for the bump Matt!

Go allpeers!

3.26.2006

as yet to be identified sea slug. [danger]

Here's a pic of a recently acquired, but yet to be identified species of sea slug. these things look like aliens and are known to be quite poisonous. they are similar to nudibranchs and change color much like an octopus or cuttlefish [see below]. I'm trying to id this species before I introduce it into one of my reef tanks, so if anyone knows the species, please email me. I've got it in a quarantine tank for now.

pic taken with samsung t-809 cameraphone

3.25.2006

See the cuttlefish?

If you look closely, you can see the right eyeball and tentacles in the lower right portion of the photo - just below and to the right of the center of the photo. This guy's about 3 inches long and inhales just about anything you put into the tank. He currently lives in my 20 gal hex tank, which has a bunch of Mangroves growing out the top. I brought the mangroves back from Delray Beach, Florida a week before hurricane Wilma hit there. The mangroves are doing quite well. Will post a pic of them soon.

Cuttlefish pic taken with Samsung t-809 cameraphone.

3.24.2006

Flowerpot leather coral with misc anthelia, sinularia, etc in background, not to mention some icky cyano

Pic from my 75 gal reef tank (Seaclear system II). This is going to become the sump for my 240 gallon macro-reef tank that I'm still working on setting up. Stay tuned for updates on the 240 reef project. I will be posting a thread on reefcentral.com as I build out the new setup.

Unknown species of sinularia? slightly green in color. sitting next to new rock w. nice yellow sponge

Unknown sinularia species? nice yellow sponge, flowerpot leathe in lower left background next to powerhead pump.

50 gal reef tank

Nice pic of my 50 gal reef with my recently divided rose bubble anemones with clarkii clown symbionts. clowns are over 5 years old and the female is the meanest fish in the tank. also visible are my clams - 1 squamosa and 2 gigas in the bottom of the pic. blue menkii starfish slightly visible in upper left portion of photo. Anthelia colony in background (top right above clownfish).

60 gal coffee table tank with bright neon red discosoma mushrooms, green zooanthids, star polyp, anthelia, xenia colony, bubble coral

Nice pic of my 60 gal coffee table tank with assorted corals.

wow. feb 27, 2006 - date of my last post - where has the time gone?

crazy. it's been almost a months since my last post. how fitting, as today is the first day I've been able to officially "take off" since I got back from the Super Bowl. Boy am I glad I finally have some time to breathe. There's a lot of catching up to do. If you nod off for a couple weeks in web2.0 time, that's like 5 years in "web1.0" time. hehe. anyway, as a treat to anyone who actually reads this blog, I'm going to start sending photos from my camera phone directly to this blog. hopefully this will give you a sense of what the heck I'm up to these days.

Lots of cool stuff going on at work. new position, new role, I'm writing Java code again, so look out. Definitely need to polish up on my coding skilz, but it's been a blast to get back into the web app / site design side of things. I'm using many of the new web2.0 techniques in my new endeavors. Will keep you posted on how things work out.

That's all for now. Gotta go check on my apt remodel. Also need to attend to the reef tanks. More on the super-reef tank conversion project in the coming weeks.

--brian

2.27.2006

Boing Boing: BoingBoing banned in UAE, Qatar, elsewhere. Our response to net-censors: Get bent!

The game of cat and mouse continues...

technology v. censorship v. dictatorship

Boing Boing: BoingBoing banned in UAE, Qatar, elsewhere. Our response to net-censors: Get bent!

web2.0 makes my brain hurt

Frazzled, mind boggling interludes of extremely quick, efficient, inefficient, targeted, untargeted, focused, unfocused, relevant, irrelevant searching & information retrieval in the wacky wild web2.0 world...

web2.0 has really done it.

pushed me to the brink of losing control. control over being able to efficiently manage the flow of information into my brain. control over the process of determining what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what to filter, what to focus on, what not to focus on. its really starting to make my head hurt. am i alone here? does anyone else feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, feeds, mashups, blogs, news, email, etc that streams past our eyeballs on any given day?

it's getting out of control. to the point, where my ability to search, filter, scan, browse, repeat -- which is a pretty damn efficient process -- is becoming unmanageable. even with a master's degree in library and info science, I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle here.

let me explain.

today, web2.0 makes it incredibly easy to search for, locate, identify, and acquire useful, rich, relevant, and enlightening information

information that can EASILY be turned into knowledge.

in virtually any domain, on virtually any topic.

[except in china, where companies like msft, goog, yhoo bow down to the govt and censor the flow of information, but don't get me started on that rant. grrrrr]

the problem is that there are no boundaries.

web2.0 makes it too easy to learn just about anything about anything. quickly.

add to this, the "social" aspects of web2.0 and the new genre of socialsoftware (e.g. del.icio.us, flickr, digg, techcrunch) that harnesses the power of the"collective intelligence"

and you get really cool, interesting pages, that can take hours and hours and hours to fully explore/digest.

real time wasters.

don't believe me.

look at your watch.

then check out the links below

http://del.icio.us/popular/lifehack
http://del.icio.us/popular/cool
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/
http://digg.com/topstories

did you come back?

look at your watch again. how much time did it take you to browse these 4 simple links?
get my point?

clearly, web2.0 is opening some pretty interesting doors.

in fact, reminds me of late 1996/1997 just as the .com boom was starting to take off. this web2.0 crap is also the reason why I don't get much sleep anymore.

this is exciting stuff. its too interesting for me to ignore. the mashup phenomena that we are witnessing right now is one of the most interesting unintended trends on the web right now.

on the flip side, web2.0 is also introducing a bunch of new problems, which began as the primary topic of this post - most notably -- how to deal with information overload, which isn't really a new problem at all.

today, we simply have a much more powerful set of tools available at our fingertips that compound the issue.

information seeking discipline is key. focusing on the task at hand. taking it to completion, without being distracted. this is the biggest challenge we face today. dealing with distraction. I really think it comes back to discipline in the end. guess I need to work on that some more.

to conclude this frazzled, somewhat unintelligeable, inconclusive rant on how web2.0 hurts my head, I'll leave you with some final thoughts that just might help fight the info overload battle in this brave new web2.0 world.

you know what, screw it, my head hurts. best of luck web2.0 surfing. maybe another time, I'll elaborate on my "rules of survival as an information seeking specialist in the web2.0 world."

until then, happy filtering.

>>