[NOTE: I've decided that I just don't have the energy to edit this right now.  I'm posting it raw for fear that it will otherwise never see the light of day as so many that have come before.  I will however spell check so I don't appear completely ignorant ;-}]

Holiday season is upon us and my life is now crazier than ever.  Yesterday I considered parking my truck in the front yard with the hazard lights on in lieu of putting up the Christmas decorations. 

As usual, I haven't blogged in a while, I have enough work on my plate to keep me up until 2:00 am every day, and now my head is all cluttered with crazy thoughts... time to spew!

Let's start with the basics.  How about a "Laser Etching" business's?  A while back I took a semi-serious look at laser cutters for a business idea I had.  The thought was a kiosk at your local mall that would sell one of a kind personalized jigsaw puzzles.  You provide the picture, pick the size, materials etc... and 30 minutes later you have a one of a kind present.  Also good for making specialized knickknacks, custom "carved" picture frames and what have you.  Well, looks like someone came up with yet another product/service to add to the list.  There is a good business just waiting to be had by someone with $20K-$30K to layout for a laser cutter/etcher and a lease on a kiosk at the local mall.  Layout the cash for an HP Indigo 5000 and scope up the Blurb and iPhoto crowd as well!

I love this idea.  It brought back thoughts I had on what people now call micro charities.  Also made me start thinking of my recent blog on social lending and Web 2.0.  What about social micro charities?  It could work similar to the lending sites where people who are in need of help (or a proxy sponsor) would post the details of their situation and ask for help.  People who want to help could then donate (donor would remain anonymous to the recipient)  The recipient would be encouraged to provide status updates.  The site would track donations and provide appropriate tax forms to the donors.  The idea would be to cultivate the personal aspect of charity to encourage a sense of gratitude/pride in the repents and a sense of accomplishment in the donors.

I wrote my first Ruby program yesterday.  Nothing major just something to extract information from a log file.  <Soapbox>you would be amazed at how much business knowledge large companies keep in plain text log files.  The advances in computers over the last 20 years and the enormous databases these companies possess would lead you to believe that they have some control over their own data.  The fact of the matter is I haven't seen a single company over 1000 employees that has a handle on their business data.  In the end it almost always comes down to grabbing the data you need from some log file that was left on after a debugging session by a long gone developer.</Soapbox>  Anyhow, Ruby program to extract text from a log file.  One line.  Very nice.  I'm not sure I'd use it to do any major development but it does appear to have its uses.  I'm playing around with it on Rails for another idea that I started playing with....

On a recent TWiT episode one of the guest proposed that the role of the editor is changing into more of a curator.  This makes sense given the incredible number of content producers out there.  Someone needs to accumulate the information and present the best stuff to the masses.  "But what about RSS feeds, sites like Digg and other portals?" you ask.  Well, they fill a niche, but mostly with a certain Internet savvy group of people.  Many (most?) people on the Internet don't know where to go, and frankly don't have the patience to find out.  If you doubt me just look at the success of companies like AOL and Microsoft who have made huge fortunes by providing easy access to things that were always available.  Take this popular desire for spoon-fed information and combine it with a similar component from another media, the magazine, to form a targeted portal.  "You mean like Maxim or any of the hundreds of other online magazines?" you say.  Well let's move it up one more step ;-}  Since what we are talking about here is a aggregating existing content and doing it in a medium that is expected to have constant change, let's make the content aggregated content more dynamic.  And since we're targeting the "Give us 5 minutes and we'll give you the world" audience, we want to control what makes it into the magazine and not let them control it (ala Digg, customizable portals etc...)  Finally, it would be nice to make some ad money while we're at it since we've gone through the trouble of accumulating all those targeted eyeballs and everything.  Enter del.icio.us, Flickr, RSS, Google AdWords and others.  What I'm thinking is establishing a site targeted at a particular group, say Cat Lovers, and using del.icio.us to bookmark the best cat related pictures, sites, blog entries, articles, product reviews etc...  The site then builds itself dynamically using the del.icio.us bookmarks as it's content guide.

Originally my thought was to see if it was possible to create a nearly complete virtual site.  The thought being you would be served a single stub page that would pull (Ajax style) from other sites to provide you what you needed.  ie. www.xyz.com/dogs and www.xys.com/cats would both result in exactly the same stub page but would produce very different outcomes due to the content which would be pulled from the various sites.  Now I'm more interested in doing it as a way to kick the tires on Rails so I've lessoned my constraints a bit (although I think I may be able to get there using nothing more than a reasonably complex XSLT file ;-})  I hope I get a chance to work some more on this, but I doubt it.  I think it could pull a reasonable advertising income with very little advertising.  And given the ease of being able to update an entire site by simply adding a bookmark with a few tags, it should be reasonable for a person to create and maintain dozens or even hundreds of these dynamic magazines, each providing a few bucks a day in ad revenue.

Crap, lunch is over and I didn't put a dent in the clutter my head.  Well, maybe next time ;-}

TTFN

I don't feel much like writing today but there's a lot to say.  What to do?  What to do?  Whirlwind post anyone?

Swivel looks poised to be huge.  For those that know me this is similar to Yet Another Incomplete Project (YAIP) that I started a couple years back.  Mine was call Data Analysis System (DAS) and was taking aim at the pay per license smart client market.  Swivel's plans to provide public data for free and charge for private data is a much much better idea.  Making it available on the web at a time when the world is all about being social is fantastic.  All in all it looks like they've done an amazing job! 

And while we're on the subject of leaving stuff on the table, take a look at Stickis which is similar to YAIP of mine I dubbed Anot8 (it even had a cutsie Web 2.0 name)  My idea was to be able to post notes and maybe even markup a web page for others using the plug-in to see.  The potential for big money comes into play when you realize that you can actually sell advertising space to Ford on GM's web site!  Put that in your Google pipe!

Zudeo has also recently gone live.  My favorite (if somewhat piggish) bit torrent client Azureus is the force behind this "Oh my god not another F*%$!^n YouTube clone."  The twist on this one is HD.  While I doubt it will see the viral success that the early CopyTubes saw I think it's got potential as a delivery mechanism for HD content.  Of course I think the XBox 360 has a better opportunity in that capacity assuming it ever gets an upgrade for a larger hard drive.

Gotta run.

TTFN

It seems like everyone has been having trouble defining exactly what Web 2.0 is.  Like the story of "The Blind Men and the Elephant" it seems like everyone has their own take on what it is to be Web 2.0, and I'm no exception. 

Different groups tend to identify Web 2.0 sites depending on their own viewpoint of the world.  Programmers tend to define it based on the technology used.  In their case Ajax is one of the first big tip offs.  If a site makes heavy use of client side scripting then it just has to be Web 2.0.  Designers on the other-hand see it as more a function of form.  For them, simplistic design, large text and pastels equate to Web 2.0.  Then came the users who don't care at all about the nuts in bolts.  They defined Web 2.0 by functionality, the ability to collaborate in particular.

As usual I think they are all right and still all missing the point.  If you want to see what Web 2.0 really means check out Zopa in the UK or Prosper in the US.  These are social lending sites.  Both make use of Ajax and pretty colors and both have plenty of collaboration but those things are not the reason I choose these sites to represent the epitome of what I consider Web 2.0.  The major revolution with Web 2.0 is what isn't there, and that's middle men.

In the case of Digg what's missing is a formalized news agency.  In the case of Flickr it's an editor.  The same holds true with Wikipedia.  GarageBand ousts the RIAA.  Podcasts bypass radio conglomerates.  As for Prosper the missing element is the bank.  This extends to the open source community as well.  Most open source at least starts out with the same goal so eloquently outlined in The Gettysburg Address:  "...of the people, by the people, for the people..." 

This represents a revolution of sorts.  Many people have begun to get fed up with the interests of both corporations and governments.  Companies put the wishes of their shareholders before everything, and rightly so.  After all the company exists to better the lives of it's shareholders not the average person off the street.  Governments, at least mine, have fallen into the trap of catering to the squeaky wheel.  This is inevitable since the easiest way to mold the government is through perceived public opinion which is exactly what squeaky wheels manipulate.  The power behind the Web 2.0 revolution is simply the drive to bypass the monoliths that do not offer much value.

What I find very exciting is that there is at least a small portion of the population that is willing to take responsibility for improving the situation.  Too many people (myself included) spend too much time sitting around complaining about how bad of a job the government is doing or how company X is taking advantage of people by overcharging customers or mistreating employees.  It appears that there are at least a few people out there who have decided that enough is enough, and rather than spend the energy to take down the evil doers they have decided to beat them at their own game.

I expect that there are going to be a number of quiet, unassuming developments that will come out of "Web 2.0", and that these unassuming pieces will have a major impact on the world over the next 20-50 years.  I expect to see relief for many of the problems related to the healthcare industry.  I expect to see solutions to industry standardization and information sharing.  I expect to see some new revenue models and help with social reform.  I expect a good deal of advancement in education related issues.  I expect that governments and corporations will have to change the way they do business if they want to survive, and I expect that I expect too much.

TTFN