There’s a flurry of startup interest and social location apps that are working to glue the web to our physical locations. Tech enthusiast Robert Scoble prompted a Buzz discussion (another location capable media) to determine which was the best service, with varied opinions weighing in. Physical location and orientation is but one piece of the puzzle to seemlessly weave the web within our physical world and social lives. Augmented Reality is the channel of opportunity that will enable a rich blending of mobile web, location/orientation, and most importantly social discovery and connectivity.
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written by Mark Essel
\\ tags: design theory, far out, inspiration, web/tech
Founder of SocialToo Jesse Stay says the web is no longer open. He states that only a few large entities own the flow of information through both social and searchable web. DeWitt Clinton a Google software engineer responded with an eloquent description of what open means to him, and how even small budget businesses could construct a highly functional search engine (I keep bugging DeWitt and others about open semantic processing tools and interfaces).
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written by Mark Essel
\\ tags: design theory, distributed design, open design, search, social media
I’d like to make a bold wager. None of the big social web communities that are popular today will be so just ten years from now. My hypothesis is that massive improvements to network speed will reduce the pressure to colocate data. The traction we see to such tools is in communication, availability and connection to friends and those we seek to befriend. This functionality can be fascillatated better by moving away from the client/server model tied to RESTful design (how HTTP or the web is setup), and embracing peer to peer communication technologies. Federated network communications can take place without intermediary databases. There will always be a role for dedicated servers, but their dominance of attention in the future will wane as (mobile) Net participation skyrockets.
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written by Mark Essel
\\ tags: design theory, leadership, social media, web/tech
The concept of ownership is going through a transformation, as it has for thousands of years. A clear example of this shift is evident in the fundamental resource, land. We instinctively defend territory from outsiders, so it is little surprise that land and ownership are integrally connected. Cultural meaning for owning land has drifted between civilizations. Nomadic people defended huge tracts of land, which were tribally owned. In contrast, modern day title searches and local databases have become a bureacratic rat’s nest. Nearly all land is taxed annually, only specific religious entities escape paying property taxes. Taxation goes hand in hand with to ownership exchange.
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written by Mark Essel
\\ tags: coding, design theory, investment/finance, open, social design, startups
Late last night I was digging around looking for a replacement to our flash interface and I came across an incredible collection of javascript visualizations. Here are some design issues with the current cloud: Continue reading »
written by Mark Essel
\\ tags: coding, design theory, javascript, JQuery, startups, web/tech
The founder of friendfeed, and project orginator of Gmail Paul Buchheit, shares his design view: If your product is Great, it doesn’t need to be Good. I’m delighted with the way Paul identifies the signal from noise product features and suggests we try a similar approach when building consumer products. Continue reading »
written by Mark Essel
\\ tags: Decision making, design theory, leadership
If you’re a coder and in a hurry I included links to a couple of tools and how to use them at the end of the post
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written by Mark Essel
\\ tags: coding, design theory, optimization, web/tech
How often do we critically evaluate how effective our business structure is? In corporate America or a large government organization each employee has a large depth of managers that evaluate their performance, and isolates them from customers or end users. This centralized, managerial business structure, which has evolved is a top-down authority driven system. Much of the beauracracy has been put in place to protect the parent organization from legal costs. Although this model has worked for better or worse for the 20th century, it is long outdated. As a society we’re finally realizing* that commoditizing human effort within companies is detrimental to the individual and the organization. The evidence is the tremendous debt, fading dollar value, and rising unemployment rates common throughout the US.
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written by Mark Essel
\\ tags: Business, design theory, far out, investment/finance, social change
