Marc Canter

“the integrated DLA platform wars have begun!”

Noah Brier, in Capturing Attention:

“When you get right down to it, Google is a giant recommendation engine.”

Robert Scoble:

“My blog is MY garden. I love this trend. Let me do more from my blog, no matter where I am.”

I agree completely. 3rd party hosted software is great, unless you have a blog that can do the same thing. I would much rather have some service built into my blog than have it exist on someone else’s servers.

Here’s an example: Imagine if I want to create a list of movies, and I want complete control over it. Should I create a wiki, a tadalist, a Vood2do blog, a list on Google Base, a Gmail account, or should I use my blog?

I would put it on my blog. But don’t get me wrong…it is apparent that networked services will grow tremendously, but there will always be a tension between what the best services offer and what is built as a plugin to a blog. It seems that most first features come out in networked software, then they’re cloned and put into blog software.

I have my own networked cloud that I can (or will be able to) use for synchronizing, searching, backing up, and whatever else. My domain. My web services. My blog.

Adam Green:

“There are plenty of RSS aggregators that allow you to import OPML files as a quick way of subscribing to a large number of feeds, but these are basically a static form of subscription. BlogBridge, on the other hand, is able to stay in synch with the original OPML.”

I’ve been using Blogbridge for a few days now, after talking about them with Adam over sushi, and I can say that dynamic OPML reading lists are really cool. However, because they are OPML they are working at the feed level, and at this point I think I’m more interested in the post level.

Adam has set up a dynamic OPML reading list of Tech.memeorandum created from an hourly check-in of the popular meme tracker site. So, every hour the OPML updates to show all the blogs that have bubbled to the homepage of memeorandum. So this is totally cool.

However, the blogs got there because of some really interesting post, because they’re somehow related to the top stories of the day. In other words, the blogs themselves may or may not be interesting to me other than their one, attention-getting post. So OPML might not be the best solution at this level. So the question is: are reading lists dynamic? Or is it simply news headlines that are?

Going forward, my guess is that we’ll be more interested in the post-level relevance, as opposed to feed-level relevance. Or, perhaps that’s easy for me to say because I already feel like I have enough feeds to read (about 200). But I think it makes sense that way, because we read many, many more individual posts than we acquire new feeds, and we’re more interested in the relevance of the information than what feed they come from. Acquiring new feeds is slow, reading the news is not.

Over on ZDNet, Garet Rogers has discovered javascript that suggests Google is going to be adding domain functionality to the popular email client Gmail.

This is hot on the heels of the discussion we had the other day after I asked: Why Not a Paid Version of Gmail?. Our discussion centered included the question: what else could you add to Gmail?

So the answer is Yes. Here’s another significant feature you could add, in addition to the Gtalk integration just announced.

And it’s all free. For now.

About half an hour into our podcast with Steve Gillmor:

Attention Podcast with Steve Gillmor, Joshua Porter and Alex Barnett (58 min 14MB) (Alex’s notes)

it became clear to me that Steve’s ideas on attention aren’t just a view from 50,000 feet. No, it’s more like a view from space, where you see a butterfly tapping its wings in Borneo and visualize the tsunami that might occur in Cuba – three years later. RSS, Attention, and Gestures, Steve’s three muses, are not just cogs in a nice little theory he’s working with to explain why he’s having trouble keeping up with all the information he wants to read. Instead, this is Gillmor’s Theory of Everything.

Continue Reading: Gillmor’s Theory of Everything (podcast)

Dave Rogers in Web 2.0: Mistaking the Forest for the Trees?:

“Web 2.0 thus demands greater attention to end-users than ever before. Just as its technological hurdles challenge developers, Web 2.0 requires more of user advocates. We will soon find ourselves besieged for deeper insight into the minds and practices of end-users.”

Wow. Just yesterday I added the term “advocate” to my about section on the home page. Fancy that!

The rest of Dave’s piece is spot on, as he’s focusing on designers focusing on users. I think I’ll add it to the Introduction to Web 2.0.

Luke Wroblewski:

“The problem is design is being segmented into too many specialties (information architecture, interaction design, visual design, etc.) which leaves designers without a complete understanding of their medium(s). If you don’t know your medium- how can you communicate through it?”

Umair Haque

“Now, the point is that of course very few people will invest a great deal of time in individualizing their choices in an exploding consumptionscape. That’s exactly the opportunity for all things 2.0 – that’s why and how they create very real economic value; or, conversely, why blockbusters create less and less value.”

Steve Gillmor:

“The attention revolution is not about what we do, it’s about what we aspire to do. If I can get this much done today, how can I do more tomorrow? If this is true, then what else is true?”