I've been attracted recently to ideas that bridge the gap between possibility and short-term practicality. The game is managing the evolution of an innovation. It goes like this: first, what is this thing; second, how does it help me do what I already do; and third, what new things might I do with it...

Generally speaking, OpenSocial is amazing news. The social layer I've been prattling on about for, well, a very long time, is really shaping up. Though I still believe we've yet to do more than scratch the surface of social user experiences. And that surface, to stretch the analogy too far, is so wide...

I've been experimenting with Facebook -- like some 18.5 million others. My four main conclusions (and an observation) follow: It has personal social value -- that is, I enjoy keeping up with my friends, and almost friends. At the moment, it's not much good for anything else. That's good enough for Facebook...

My experience with Facebook has been great. I'm somehow engaged with Facebook nearly every day -- sometimes multiple times a day. Of course I'm there not only as a participant, but as an analyst. That changes the experience. Think of it this way -- if you read several books on the subject of writing...

http://www.sermo.com/tour Tier three designs and experiences (okay, call them web2.0 or social or whatever you like), so obvious they're invisible to the connected young and the initiated, are not obviously valuable to everyone. That's true despite the fact that social sites exist for Moms and...

Lots of really fascinating stuff is happening in my world lately. Some of it is a bit unusual. For instance, my wife now refers to me as the Hannibal Lector of Microsoft -- I'm not going to pursue that other than to report that I don't actually bite. Anyway, half of what I've been working on is what...

I think we're taking to close a look at social computing to see it for what it really is. Stepping back, it looks a lot like social nets are the next level of internet sophistication. From this perspective social nets are superimposed upon content nets which in turn rest upon an IP infrastructure. Another...