Kerry Webb Blog

Or should that be “a future …”?  I’ve posted before about the TED sessions; here’s a brilliant example of what can be done by someone with imagination and an enquiring mind.

In moving house and trying to cut down the number of books (and other impedimenta) to be hauled across town and accommodated in the new place, I’ve had to look at my own small library and consider how it fits into my life - now and in the future.  For a couple of major topics there’s no question - all the books are too important to throw away; but what about those bought on enthusiastic whims many years ago, and not read for a long time and perhaps not to be read again?  Do they earn their keep?  Sadly, the answer is often “no”, and so off they go to the Book Fair.  It’s especially true for my prized 1988 Encyclopedia Britannica, bought for a song twelve years ago and proudly displayed in my study.  I use the Micropedia often, to get a sense of a subject or person but never go the the other parts.  And so those will go too, because on those rare occasions when I need to look at a subject in detail, I know that I can find something on the Web.  And that’s a bit of a paradox - using the Web for depth of coverage - but I’ve found it to be true on many occasions.

Hashtags are those strings of text (like #haiti) that you get in Twitter to indicate some aspect of the message.  According to Chris Messina, the Twitter folks were a little slow to embrace the concept but now they’re an established part of the landscape, making it easier to keep track of issues of interest.

It started with Tyler Thompson talking with a fellow designer and wondering how they could improve the design of an airline boarding card.  So he blogged about it, with a couple of possible ways to do it better - and then readers of the blog came back with other examples and suggestions - and they’ve come up with some pretty good ideas.  Which illustrates to me why submissions to government enquiries should be interactive: the results can be so much better.

It’s not directly Web-related, but I learned about it through the Internet and I bought my copy online, so that must count for something - if only how much the Net can be woven into our lives.  I’m talking about William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, now in its umpteenth edition and well worth a read by anyone who puts pen to paper, or electrons on the screen.

Hanging his hat on reports that Wikipedia editors are bailing out in large numbers,  Mike Elgan is looking a bit further into the future to ask about the implications of many Web 2.0 sites foundering.  It’s a valid concern: although I’ve recently been called a pessimist in a blog (Cassandra would have been more flattering and skeptic more accurate) I do think that we need to keep a realistic eye on the foundations of our 2.0 dreams.  Some of the general notions though for safeguarding the future are risible: a government take-over of Second Life  for one.  Others are more sensible, such as a proposal for government-sponsored URL-shortening service or a video-hosting site.  Both ideas have a lot of merit.

Jakob Nielsen has done a good analysis of the differences in the media experience between the Web and TV, which of course has good and bad features on both sides - but it should be required reading for anybody trying to choose between the various channels to use.

Among the great time-consumers on the Net are the publications known as Web comics.  The medium allows a great deal of experimentation with drawing techniques, and like all Web publishing the barriers to entry are low.  I haven’t looked around too much, so there may be some really bad ones, but if you have a bit of free time over the summer try xkcd or if a story line is more to your taste go to Questionable Content (part of which is set in a university library - yay!).

As interesting as the buzz is that News Corporation is arranging a deal with Microsoft to transfer all its content from Google to Bing, it’s even more entertaining to see all the pundits trying to work out if it’s a wise or crazy move.  There is of course the benefit that it’s bound to increase Bing’s market share - if only by a small amount - and Microsoft can find the millions to fund such a sweetener for many many months, but then it’s (to my eye at least) quite anti-competitive and we can expect a lot of activity in that area before the dust settles.

While the relationship has moved on from its first burst of excitement, I’m happy enough with LibraryThing.  It meets my needs for an online personal catalogue and provide a set of interesting forums for discussing all sorts of issues.  They also publish a nice little newsletter every month (The State of the Thing) to keep you informed of what’s new.  So why would you change?  It’s a good question, and one that I don’t have an answer for - even after looking at an Australian offering called Booktagger.  This one isn’t bad (although the user interface is a little clumsy) but to succeed they need to be better than the competition, not just as good.