Gawker: valleywag, web 2.0 to english

Web 2.0 definitely for idiots

Paul Boutin — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:59:47 EDT

In response to my Web 2.0 for Idiots PowerPoint slide, commentarian nealsid writes: "How about the part where 'you help make it' but 'they make the money?'"

Web 2.0 for Idiots

Paul Boutin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:01:13 EDT

A reader emails in response to our Web 2.0 to English series, "I fail to see the problem with Tim O'Reilly's primer. Anyone who's not an idiot needs no further explanation." As a Reader's Digest contributor, here's the condensed version of your email: Fail. For the rest of us idiots, I've whipped up a chart.

Web 2.0 is supposed to be so easy a baby can use it — hence the color scheme. But when the experts try to plot out what it all means, stand back. Here's Tim O'Reilly's early attempt, What is Web 2.0:

Dion Hinchcliffe upped the ante in March with a post titled, Web 2.0 Software Models Evolve as the Conference Season Begins in Earnest. My takeaway: There's a conference season?

I suppose I need to include this one:

Enough already. I went back to O'Reilly's original post. The guy is sincerely brilliant, he just spends too much time editing advanced programming manuals. I started erasing parts of O'Reilly's diagram until I got down to what I think is the minimum for Mom:

Any questions?

OpenSpeak translated is "gimme"

Paul Boutin — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:32:22 EDT

Loveable crankster Dave Winer unwraps the etymology of Google's OpenSocial platform.

Open Source — let's see your source code.

OpenDoc — let's get rid of Office.

OpenID — let's see your users.

Free Beer — Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 = Web 1.0 + more girls

Paul Boutin — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:11:25 EDT

Roommates, MySpace TV's online serial that launches Monday, is like JenniCam without the tedious waiting around.

45 seconds into Episode 1: "This is my big, beautiful bed." Bounce bounce bounce as shot switches to black-and-white spy cam aimed at bed.

65 seconds: "Oh my gosh! You guys! I'm changing!"

You get the idea.

The "semantic graph" reads Wikipedia

Owen Thomas — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:43:52 EDT

WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Twine, Powerset, and Freebase are all doing dense demonstrations about the "semantic Web" — basically, improved search. I'd swear I've heard all three startups say that their systems analyze Wikipedia to understand connections between terms, a phenomenon one calls the "semantic graph." The short version? These startups read Wikipedia so you don't have to.

Social networking for dummies

Owen Thomas — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:30:17 EDT

WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon, the nerdy duo working on programming standards for opening up social networks, are presenting a thoroughly less nerdy version of their usual presentation. I chatted with Fitzpatrick, now an engineer at Google, who said he realized he needed to dumb it down for the audience of people wealthy enough to afford the $3,595 ticket price at this conference. The simple metaphor they came up with to explain the problem of closed social networks? Instant messenger. "If Brad is on Yahoo and I'm on AOL, we still want to talk to each other," explains Recordon, who's now at Six Apart, Fitzpatrick's old company. The social graph? "Who my friends are," Recordon sums up. OAuth, the network-ID standard Recordon and Fitzpatrick are championing? "The valet key for the Web," says Fitzpatrick. I can just hear the rich guys in the audience thinking, "Great, kid. Go park my car already." (Photo by CottonCandy)

How soon can I Google my date's DNA?

Paul Boutin — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:31:30 EDT

J. Craig Venter is the scientist whose startup beat the government-funded Human Genome Project to mapping a single person's entire DNA. Whose DNA? Duh, Venter's! On the last morning of the Web 2.0 Summit, Venter brought the audience up to date on the faster-than-Moore's-Law advances in reading and writing genes.

Some factoids from his chat with host Tim O'Reilly:

In 2001, when Venter's team first mapped his complete genome, they presumed that our individual DNA codes would be almost entirely identical. Since then they've found humans vary by a couple of percentage points.
Venter's current top project is to map the DNA of 10,000 more humans. He thinks the price will come down to under $100,000 per person in three years.
You have more individual bacteria living in your body than you do human cells.
A round-the-world survey ship found that in the world's oceans, DNA of the local life varies completely every 200 miles, and probably even more locally than that.
Soldiers in Iraq eventually acquire a completely different set of bacteria in their mouths than they arrived with.
Human DNA contains spliced-in codes for pathogens that have crept in over the ages.
Venter worries that startups like DNA Direct and 23andMe will only check small subsections of their clients' DNA — say, to look for heart disease risk — and miss the big picture.
Venter's green project: Looking for genetically engineered bacteria that will produce electricity from human waste or from host plants — also engineered — that thrive on currently unfarmable land.

Venter envisions a future where in addition to tracking your stocks and sports, you'll have an RSS feed for updates on the latest medical news tied to your specific DNA map. And Robert Scoble will claim to track the DNA of his closest 6,000 friends.

(Photo by AP/Matt Houston)

Bulldog-cute entrepreneur Jason Calacanis...

Paul Boutin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:14:02 EDT

Bulldog-cute entrepreneur Jason Calacanis dogs the Web 2.0 Summit's panel of search-engine optimization experts: "People are coming up to ask questions and the guy keeps saying, 'Well you have to do social work on Digg and Reddit, but it's complicated and we need to talk about it.' During the panel he said, 'It's complicated, we should talk about it after the panel.' I'm sure folks will come to his office and he'll say, 'It's complicated, sign this contract and we can start working on it.'"

Can I make money doing online video?

Paul Boutin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:52:38 EDT

Raw numbers from today's Web 2.0 Summit: Federated Media, which sells ads for top video shows Ask a Ninja and Diggnation, claims to pull checks ranging from $10,000 to a cool million from advertisers. But if you're a unknown starting out, don't expect more than two to four dollars for every thousand of your viewers, say panelists here. Plus, you'll argue with ad buyers about how to measure your audience and their return. Advertisers will pay most for the classic "host endorsement," where the Ninja or Diggnation's Kevin Rose talks about their product during the show — a format widely used in the early days of TV. (Radio newsman Paul Harvey remains the master of the host endorsement, as proven by the Neutrogena products that pack my bathroom.) The takeaway from today's panel: Don't quit your day job yet. In 2007, advertisers still haven't opened up to spending big video bucks online.

Why Facebook is bad for the Internet

Paul Boutin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:30:55 EDT

Harvard and Oxford prof Jonathan Zittrain's Web 2.0 Summit workshop this morning, "Web Two Point No — And You Thought Microsoft Was Bad," hits on something few people think about: All the social-network information and messages flying around Facebook, MySpace and AIM are stored and retrieved through proprietary systems — at the whim of the proprietor, as Zittrain puts it. It's a sharp contrast to the email, Usenet groups and IRC channels of yore, which were generally open networks with many points of access. In this respect, Zittrain sees Facebook as the new Compuserve, a members-only resource. Even its myriad apps are built to the company's programming specs, and Facebook can change the terms of the deal for competitive advantage anytime. Be afraid — be moderately afraid.