::.. Timing ..::

:: 2003/07/25 ::

Blogging and the Rise of Blogournalism

Interesting article at Business Week by Spencer Ante about pay-per-view blog-based journalism.

I am particularly interested in the info about BlogNetwork, whose founder, Mihail Lari, distributes cash to the most popular writers. He was the one who pointed the article out to me, via Ryze.

Disclosure: My company's Blogging Network is featured as an example of the networks being created since we're the first to successfully charge a subscription fee for access to the network, 50% of which goes to the bloggers each subscriber reads in the proportion they're read. We wanted to come up with a fair, equitable and easy way to reward bloggers for their writing.

I guess I should put out an electronic hat for people to thrown their change into, here at Timing.

:: Stowe Boyd 7/25/2003 02:02:08 PM [link] ::
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Let's Party!

“Traditional publishing is about putting on a show; building a network of weblogs is like hosting a party” --says Simon Waldman (head of digital publishing at the Guardian).

:: Stowe Boyd 7/22/2003 03:01:03 PM [link] ::
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Bill Seitz is Timeless

Perusing a transcript of a session at the ClickZ conference, I saw this quote of Bill Seitz's:

"What is perceived as a crisis is often the end of an illusion. Weblogs can accelerate that process."

:: Stowe Boyd 7/22/2003 11:23:41 AM [link] ::
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Wozniak starts Locator Network -- Maybe now I can find my cell phone

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is repurposing the company he started a few years back, Wheels of Zeus, to "make wireless useful" to being a locator network, according to my confidential and exclusive sources (like the Associated Press).

From the "Company Overview" page:

wOz was founded by technology innovator and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in January 2001. Guided by the principles of ease of use and affordability, wOz provides partners with the wOz Platform system, an end-to-end wireless solution.

The wOz Platform includes an innovative wireless network, a system reference design, and an online service to enable wireless solutions in the areas of location, status, control, and communications. wOz partners will bring to market a range of business and consumer solutions based on the wOz Platform.

The heart of the wOz Platform is the wOzNet network, a unique local wireless network that provides long range and long battery life at a low cost. wOzNet enables businesses and consumers to locate, monitor and communicate with what’s important to them over much greater distances than current wireless networks.

wOzNet also enables the wOzNet Community™ network that can transparently mobilize an entire community to help locate a person, pet or thing that’s not where it should be. Businesses participating in wOzNet Community can provide an important public service to the community at no additional cost. And wOzNet grows organically so a community can be as large as the nation or even the world.

Although I like the idea of being able to find things that have sprouted legs, like the cell phone we lost for a year (under the seat of my wife's car), there is something decidely Orwellian about "not where it should be."

I have similar and more obvious reservations about public surveillance systems, but at least (in principle) participation in wOzNet is voluntary. Still, I can imagine the scenarios: jealous lovers, suspicious parents, and even nosy neighbors could wOzNet enable your car, and find out much more about your comings and goings than you would like them to know.





:: Stowe Boyd 7/22/2003 10:52:17 AM [link] ::
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More on AOL Journals

Reading detailed notes on AOL Journal from Jeff Jarvis, I thought to add this post:

"The really awesome possibilities of AOL Journals will arise from presence-enabling and IM-enabling blogs. Knowing that "boydstowe" -- my AIM screenname -- is online right now when you read this comment, might lead you to directly contact me to clarify or expand. And of course, if AOL 'gets it' (like Dave and the other distinguished blogheads said that they do) then AOL will begin to add functionality incestuously, so that AOL chats can be directly posted to blogs (which I already read about elsewhere).

I recommend that TypePad and Blogger (and the other pure play blog companies) start figuring how to incorporate IM technologies ASAP.

I intend to pester my contacts in AOL so I too can fiddle with this new stuff.


:: Stowe Boyd 7/21/2003 03:26:42 PM [link] ::
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Fungibility of Online Identity: Guys sells his Friendster Network for $4

In a strange twist, a guy sells his Friendster network on eBay for $4. This is not exactly what I meant when I recently wrote about the fungibility of online digital reputation.

:: Stowe Boyd 7/21/2003 02:00:08 PM [link] ::
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t-six-ten: Mobile Photography Journal

Ericsson is supporting an online journal, t-six-ten, dedicated to mobile (cell phone) photography. Amazingly good images.

:: Stowe Boyd 7/21/2003 01:57:53 PM [link] ::
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AOL Journals: Blogging for AOLers

I read that AOL is (has?) released its AOL Journals -- basically blogging for AOL users. From the comments of Dan Gilmor and Jeff Jarvis it seems that AOL's offering is very easy to use. Jarvis is especially involved in an on-going comparion with TypePad.

I haven't yet written any commentary about TypePad, although I have moved www.aworkingmodel.com to my TypePad trial. Coming soon.

:: Stowe Boyd 7/21/2003 01:23:03 PM [link] ::
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Beyond Collaboration: Immediacy

I rediscovered a piece I wrote for the Lotus Developer Journal some time ago (2001?) which is still accessible at the Lotus Developer Domain Archives.

"So-called collaboration is just not enough

It seems that you can't even turn around without bumping into another company touting its platform for collaborative commerce, or a new ASP solution geared to helping organizations effectively collaborate, or yet another consulting firm positioning a new service focused on building collaborative B2B exchanges. For those of us who have been tracking the frontier of collaborative technology this might seem to be the millennium at last, when we can stop evangelizing and really start rocking-and-rolling. But just as the core value proposition for collaboration appears to have become inextricably engrained in the infrastructure of all strategic information technologies, the world may be looking for something else. Something better. Something bigger. Something realer.

Whoa! Better than collaboration? Doesn't that smack of heresy? Doesn't everything good come from collaboration, after all? Well, sorta. Kinda.

The Myth of The Collaborative Business

Perhaps we have been reading too, too many press releases, because the buzz about collaboration is everywhere, and the term has been thrown around so broadly that it just can't mean anything serious anymore.

A new myth, the archetypal collaborative business, has taken hold in the collective unconscious of the digerati. In such a business, all sorts of spontaneous innovation is happening, bursting out from every cubicle, arising from the socializing influence of high-tech, cooperative work. This is in effect the most recent incarnation of The-Technology-Formerly-Known-As-Groupware (as typified by Lotus Notes in the mid-90s). With the Internet implosion in the late '90s, groupware wasn't just for "groups" – departments or teams within the enterprise – any longer. The dream of extraprise interactions – virtual networks, knowledge supply chains, and one-to-one dialog with customers – led to a wholesale repurposing of so-called "groupware," without really moving the core set of features very far from the ancestral homelands.

The core of the myth – and where it really is mythical – is that the basic elements of groupware actually meet the most critical communication needs of today's businesses. Much of what makes up "collaborative technologies" has become so ubiquitous and dispersed that we can't really turn up a technology that isn't collaborative. Like the term 'digital.' What isn't digital? When everything is digital, the word digital becomes an irrelevancy. Likewise, in a world where every word processor, every photo-sharing ASP, every CRM tool, and every PDA support collaboration, the term 'collaboration' has become as devalued as the Turkish Lira.

Take a look at the complete article.



:: Stowe Boyd 7/21/2003 12:29:29 PM [link] ::
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