Korby Parnell's Social Software Wunderkammer : Social Computing

Tagspace: Social Bookmarking for the Whole Web...from Microsoft

KorbyP — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:19:00 GMT

I am tickled pink 'n honored to announce the third release of Microsoft Tagspace*, a social bookmarking solution for technical professionals, like you. With this release, Tagspace becomes Microsoft’s first true social bookmarking application for the whole World Wide Web Web. Learn more about Tagspace and its potential to help you save, recall, and connect to the people, subjects, and Web-based resources that matter most to you here.

With today's release, you can now use Tagspace to:

Tag Practically Anthing on the Web--Apply tags to practically any site on the World Wide Web, excepting those that are known to contain offensive, malicious, and otherwise inappropriate content.
Browse Member Tags--See what other users have tagged and view their personal tag clouds, by clicking on their display names.
"Tag Drafting"--Subscribe to the RSS feed for a tag (like tagspace).
"Member Drafting"--Subscribe to the RSS feed for other members' public tagged items (my Tagspace RSS feed here;-), by clicking on their names and subscribing to the RSS feeds associated with their tagged items lists.

"Tag Drafting" and "Member Drafting" are excellent ways to stay up to date, diminish information overload, and approach what I like to call "domain omniscience", at little expense to yourself.

Kudos to Taylor, TShak, Marshall, Huong and everyone else on the CDS team (including Dave, the Other Dave) who contributed to the successful development and deployment of this precedent setting release. You exceed exceptions, exceptionally.

*This is a Beta release. You can expect more pleasant surprises from the Tagspace team, especially if you're a software professional who digs social bookmarking tools, in the near future. Stay tuned and Chime in, because we'd love to hear your ideas for how we can improve Tagspace even more.

Trust Microsoft with Claimspace (my response pending)

KorbyP — Thu, 24 May 2007 00:11:00 GMT

Ted Haeger, aka ReverendTed of Bungee Labs (purveyors of the most kill-killski development toolkit for Web 2.0 developers, in the world), just published a thought provoking blog post asking his readers: Can we...?

Trust Microsoft with Claimspace

Ted has personally challenged me to respond and I plan to do so, in the next couple of days. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out Ted's post and weigh in with your thoughts and opinions, either here or there.

Claimspace: Against a Well-designed Reputation System

KorbyP — Thu, 17 May 2007 21:18:00 GMT

Clay Shirky recently published a post on Corante, entitled "Against Well-designed Reputation Systems (An Argument for Community Patent)" that I've been meaning to respond to, for awhile. His thesis, which I agree with wholeheartedly if I understand it correctly, can be summed up as 'Don't do it. Don't even think about doing it.'

Clay, rather than respond to your post with a post, I will instead respond with a working implementation of an alternative approach to social evaluation (same ends...different means). Due out in alpha in the next few weeks, I believe that Claimspace demonstrates my agreement with your observations and reservations about the risks inherent in developing a traditional ranking and reputation system. Claimspace speaks louder than words. It may even prove useful as a social evaluation platform for community patents.

A favorite passage from Clay's post:

"The obvious conclusion to draw is that, when contemplating the a new service with these characteristics, the need for some user-harnessed reputation or ranking system can be regarded as a foregone conclusion, and that these systems should be carefully planned so that tragedy of the commons problems can be avoided from launch. I believe that this conclusion is wrong, and that where it is acted on, its effects are likely to be at least harmful, if not fatal, to the service adopting them.

There is an alternate reading of the Slashdot and eBay stories, one that I believe better describes those successes, and better places Community Patent to take advantage of similar processes. That reading concentrates not on outcome but process; the history of Slashdot’s reputation system should teach us not “End as they began — build your reputation system in advance” but rather “Begin as they began — ship with a simple set of features, watch and learn, and implement reputation and ranking only after you understand the problems you are taking on.” In this telling, constituting users’ relations as a set of bargains developed incrementally and post hoc is more predictive of eventual success than simply adopting any residue from previous successes.

As David Weinberger noted in his talk The Unspoken of Groups, clarity is violence in social settings. You don’t get 1789 without living through 1788; successful constitutions, which necessarily create clarity, are typically ratified only after a group has come to a degree of informal cohesion, and is thus able to absorb some of the violence of clarity, in order to get its benefits. The desire to participate in a system that constrains freedom of action in support of group goals typically requires that the participants have at least seen, and possibly lived through, the difficulties of unfettered systems, while at the same time building up their sense of membership or shared goals in the group as a whole. Otherwise, adoption of a system whose goal is precisely to constrain its participants can seem too onerous to be worthwhile. (Again, contrast the US Constitution with the Articles of Confederation.)"

The Backstory
Dr. Credlove, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Reputation System

Last year, after we launched CodePlex, I sat down with my new manager, Bob Rebholz to discuss what my next big challenge at Microsoft might be. Bob was busy planning the overall strategy for project "Athens", which would come to be known as Microsoft.Community, internally. To his credit, Bob gave me a lot of freedom to chart my own course. But one thing he insisted upon was that I assume product management/planning for a project he had in mind to 'do something about reputation and recognition.' Alas! Reputation! What better than the frickin' Holy Grail of Social Computing to keep me stimulated and gainfully employed for years to come? I wanted it but I hid my eagerness behind a veil of resistance. People DIE when they touch the Holy Grail, right? That or they go insane trying to find it. Why in the world would I accept the charter to build a ship that might never sail, of its own power, or drive me crazy, in the process? Did I really want to perish like all those crazy Nazi dudes in Indiana Jones. NO!

For nearly two weeks, I tried to convince Bob to unload "Reputation" on one of my two peers, Dave or Brian. But Bob was resolute and frankly, I'm drawn to challenging v1 products like a moth to flame.

To take a bit of the sting out of ugh, "reputation", I soon prevailed upon my new teammates to adopt the kindler and gentler approach and code name: "Rapport", for our fledgling project. I then focused my attention on defining and delivering on two objectives:

Enable technical professionals to gain recognition, on their terms, wherever they go on the Web.
Enable people to rapidly ascertain and socially evaluate the probable credibility of any online resource whose author has included it in Claimspace: a placeless market of opinion.

"Hm?" you ask, "Isn't credibility sorta related to reputation?" Well, yes. Yes it is. But it is not the same thing. Wikipedia's entries on reputation and credibility are illuminating and um, confusing. I have toiled, perhaps overmuch, to convince my team and indeed, anyone who would listen that building a traditional, point-based "reputation system" (like Slashdot's karmic system) is a dangerous and costly proposition. I even developed a handful of little slogans to drive my anti-Reputation crusade, such as "REPUTATION IS THE ONLY FOUR-LETTER WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE THAT HAS MORE THAN FOUR LETTERS."

The central points in my anti-reputation argument were threefold.

If you build a traditional reputation system, users will "game" it, meaning that success will come at a steep and continuing cost, both in terms of dollars and user acceptance.
It is dangerous for a company to assign a value to its customers. Doing so is bound to alienate more customers than it delights.
Reputation is a personal and subjective calculation of a person or group's probable behavior or reliability or credibility, in a specific context or situation. The measure of a person or group's reputation cannot be reliably expressed, in a simple and universally meaningful way because the context and personal objectives of the subjects and their evaluators are ever-changing. For example, consider this well-known photo and fill in the blank.

In the context of the Yalta Conference, Joseph Stalin's reputation was one of _____. On a scale of 1-10, Stalin had a reputation of _____? On what basis? To whom?

Interestingly, it is possible that Claimspace--or something similar--might someday be used as the basis for an entire generation of reputation systems. Funny how things work out, isn't it, Bob?

Claimspace, a Long Tail Recognition System

KorbyP — Thu, 17 May 2007 15:56:00 GMT

Robert Rebholz is not only my boss*, he is also my muse, ideological sparring partner, alter ego, and mentor. Bob is possesed by a special kind of genius, with a sort of Jeffersonian breadth and intensity that makes it a pleasure and honor to collaborate with him, on a day-to-day basis. In my opinion, Bob is one of two people on Earth who can talk about the BIG idea that is Claimspace, with absolute confidence, competence, and credibility. If you have even a passing interest in online communities of practice, folksonomies, reputation systems, credibility, identity, recommendation systems, rewards, "flow", collaborative filtering, "social search", & related areas, I encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed and Bob's RSS feed.

Yesterday, Bob posted an excellent post about Claimspace that wades into the broad river of uses that it might one day support, for both users and "community owners", across the Web. He cites the following potential uses:

"Long tail recognition system"
Solution to the "Who can I trust? issue"
"Generalized polling mechanism" (and portable)
"A simple REST API gives everyone (and I mean everyone -- the mashup possibilities are just staggering -- caveat, keep the crawl, walk, run idea in mind) the ability use the data in a manner best suited to their needs: community (MVP or other influencer) reward programs, product design input, product feature voting, bug prioritization, and on and on and on, all without a ton of custom code. Any Digg-like application would love this kind of data. Can you imagine -- hottest claims, hottest people making claims, most used claims, newest claims, by product, by solution area, by geographical region, and the list goes on."
Lastly but not leastly... Bob identifies the possibility of using Claimspace as a bizarro substitute for a traditional, taxonomically hobbled, binary choice or n-scale rating system, which he describes thusly: "Claims can be created and applied by anyone, including the people hosting the community. They could be built right into the forums application, for instance, to support assertions or claims such as "was this post helpful", or "this post answers the question asked". A library team could, for instance, create several standard claims (a claim/assertion taxonomy) that relate to the quality or usefulness of the posted library content."

Alas, it is true. Perversion will occur.

Alas, we must accomodate the taxonomy-doers and guide them to the right path, if we can. But Claimspace is a folksonomy.

Personally, I believe that the taxonomy-doers will come to see the futility of their ways and that if they don't, they will lose the vast majority of their customers, over time. For example, if Typepad disallows xClaims and Blogger allows them, Typepad runs the risk of making Blogger appear to be a much better blogging platform than it actually is, relative to Typepad ;-).

It's tempting and easy to impose one's way of thinking on others; to deprive one's minions or customers of the ability to control the means by which resources of their creation are published, organized, discovered, and evaluated by other people. The organization of information, access to publication mechanisms, and permission to cite, annotate, edit, and otherwise alter the organization or substance of information resources or its metadata, both online and offline has ALWAYS been closely and jealously guarded. Those who control "the tree" of information control you. The taxonomy-doers derive personal benefits from that control, often at our expense and often, in the absence of compensatory benefits. In many cases, taxonomies are indeed helpful. But Claimspace is designed and is being developed primarily as a "folksonomical" resource rating system. As such, Claimspace has the potential to be medium of social evaluation that empowers the little people: you, me and millions of other self-publishers, to gain recognition and evaluate credibility, on our terms, rather than in a way that is strictly and uniformly defined by AOL or Microsoft or O'Reilly or Yahoo or Google.

Are you subscribed to this blog?

*Note that this is the first time I've mentioned Bob, in my blog. Talking about one's boss in a public forum is tricky, both socially (wrt personal credibility) and from a career perspective. However, I feel that Bob's ideas deserve your recognition, as they command my attention and respect, and not just because he looks like Zod.

REST2SQL in a Jiffy, with Tagspace for Spice

KorbyP — Wed, 02 May 2007 18:26:00 GMT

A few months ago, Alex Barnett excitedly told me about a project he was working on with Pablo Castro, of the Microsoft SQL Server team. Like most things brilliant and game-changing, their invention is shockingly simple. As Alex explained it, project codename "Astoria" would enable anyone to expose (and query/update) a SQL Server database, in the cloud, via a REST API...yup, simple URLs...over HTTP.

"Wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second," I said, shaking my head and playing for time to catch up and catch on as Alex sat there, his eyes alive with creative energy. "Are you telling me your program allows me to query and potentially update a database in the cloud as easily as I can now query one directly, using my query editor? And my queries will be expressed with something like http://foo/bar/blah...?" He nodded, "Yes."

I GET it. I can REST.

Several weeks after our initial meeting, Alex and I sat down with Pablo, Taylor, Dave, and Bob to discuss the possibility of using a snapshot of our beta social bookmarking solution, Microsoft.Community Tagspace, as a sample dataset for the unveiling of Astoria, at Mix07. On Monday, Pablo did just that.

Ooooh, I feel like the cat presenting its prey to its favorite humans on their back porch...

Click Here, for more information about Astoria, examples using a snapshot of the Tagspace store, links to documentation, downloads, videos and, other goodies. Alex rocks.

NOTE: The Tagspace dataset to which the Astoria service points is NOT the live Tagspace database. For Tagspace, we are planning to expose our own REST API, with initially gated access and Read-only access, in the near future. Our initial REST implementation will differ, syntactically and significantly, from Astoria's. But you can bet you last two bucks that we'll be keeping a close eye on Astoria and continuously evaluating how we can leverage it to improve the data programmability model around Tagspace. To keep track of this and other Tagspace and Microsoft.Community developments and to weigh in with your valuable feedback, I encourage you to subscribe to this blog and comment, with abandon.

xClaims and Microformats

KorbyP — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:17:00 GMT

In response to my penultipate post, reader "David" (the other David?) xClaims: "Um, I don't get it - what's this for again? Is it a microformat or something? I hereby claim xClaims are confusing." My vote: Abstain + a Comment (below):

I hear you, David. And point taken. Note to Self: continue to refine messaging around Claimspace. Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming. As with any unreleased product and all true innovations (again, early June), it's hard to predict how folks will use Claimspace. Usage will drive the messaging. But for whatever it's worth, I *love* your first xClaim! And I point out that you just created the SECOND public xClaim, in history. ;-)

To your questions,

Question: "what's this [an xClaim] for again?"
Answer: An xClaim is an author-defined, reader interactive rating/polling mechanism for the Web that enables a person to assert that, 'I created this resource and I wish to be recognized personally or promote the recognition of my resource on these terms [my claim]. What do you think? Vote/Comment here.'

Question: "Is it a microformat or something?"
Answer: An xClaim is a control, not a microformat...yet. For my thoughts on the difference between a control and a microformat, see http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/archive/2007/04/12/microformats-are-like-rfid-tags-for-the-web.aspx. For any demonstration sites that we provide (Tagspace and Claimspace are being designed as services, first and foremost, for inclusion in other Web sites), we are super-interested in using existing microformats like rel, XFN, hCard, and hCalendar. For xClaims, in particular, we are currently investigating the extent to which we can use VoteLinks or whether we need to begin a conversation with the fine folks at microformats.org and elsewhere to explore a new microformat or extension of an existing one.

Tagspace, Meet Claimspace

KorbyP — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:11:00 GMT

In early June, we will launch a new social software service for technical professionals called Claimspace (codename, "Rapport"), which will join Tagspace, Blogs, and Forums as the newest member of the Microsoft.Community family. Our development lead, Doug, mentioned Claimspace a few weeks ago so I figured I'd follow up.

Tagspace enables you to say, 'I found this resource and it appears to be worthy of my attention.'
Conversely, Claimspace will enable you to say, 'I created this resource, wish to be recognized for it on these terms ___, and I hope you find it worthy of your attention. What do you think?'

What is Claimspace, exactly?
Claimspace is a decentralized, folksonomical resource* evaluation and recommendation system for technical professionals. Claimspace will enable you to take credit for your great ideas and gain recognition for yourself and your valuable contributions, wherever you go**, on the Web. Claimspace will provide a structured and simple way to build social capital, quantify its value, and establish credibility, on your terms. To participate in Claimspace, all you have to do is create and deploy or respond to an xClaim, anywhere on the Web.

*In this context, a "resource" is any item on the Web that is URI addressable. Conceptually, we divide resources into two groups: static and dynamic. A static resource is a resource that does not change. Static resources include Web pages, podcasts, videos, & etc. A dynamic resource is representative of a resource that produces static resources. Dynamic resources include such things as people and RSS feeds. How is Claimspace "folksonomical"? You can write anything you want in an xClaim; absolutely anything. We're not your parents and we do not impose a claim taxonomy.

**In our first release, Claimspace will be usable only in the context of our new Blogs and Forums. 6-8 weeks later, we plan to extend support for the creation and deployment of xClaims on practically any Web page to which you have write access, on the Web.

What is an xClaim?
Claimspace will be powered by legions of interactive widgets, which you and other Microsoft.Community members scatter across the Web. These widgets, which we call xClaims, are portable polling stations that you will be able to create and paste into or alongside practically any blog post, threaded discussion, podcast, code snippet, photo, video, or anything else that has its own URL which you wish to be recognized for, anywhere on the Web. Here's an example of what an xClaim might look like, in the context of a blog post that I wrote a few months ago: Friend-o-Gen, for just $.99/month. This is a mockup and only a mockup. Since Claimspace is a service, the look and feel of xClaims will vary on a site-by-site and client-by-client basis.

In the xClaim mockup above, the 'up arrow', 'down arrow', '?', and other little icons constitute an interactive voting panel. xClaims have three core vote options: '+', '-', and 'WTF?' These vote options are client-extensible and can be rendered as anything, including text descriptions like 'aye', 'nay', 'abstain' by the client application.

Why participate in Claimspace?
xClaims will enable you to call attention to and provide your readers or viewers with an easy way to vote and comment on the statement your xClaim contains; your claim. After responding to your xClaim, members can visit Claimspace to see how other members responded (or the client site can pull down and display vote tally information, programmatically). They can also view a list of all claims that you have created over time and navigate to the Web pages where those claims are posted, if they want.

xClaims will not only dress up your online contributions, they will drive traffic to them! More importantly, xClaims are designed to give your readers the information they need (the recommendations of other members) to comfortably and confidently heed your advice, act on your good counsel, download your goodies, and otherwise consume the resources you so graciously provide, on the Web.

If you would like to harness the simple power of Claimspace to your personal benefit, here are a few ideas and examples of how you might use xClaims to your advantage...once we release;-):

Blog and Forum Posts
Read a few of your most recent blog and forum posts. If you don't yet have one, you can read this or this or this, instead. In each post, I'm betting that you'll find one sentence that articulates a central idea or thesis. This is the punch line. This is the meat. Everything else is supporting evidence. When you wrote your post, you may even have considered making that sentence bold or calling it out in some other way (e.g., "I'm going to make a catorical statement..."). When Claimspace is released, consider placing your meaty theses in an xClaim, instead. An xClaim is an IDEAL way to draw your readers' attention to the heart of your blog posts and other online content submissions and obtain laser-focused reader feedback and recognition for that which matters to you most.
Aggregating Praise and Building Credibility, Across Multiple Venues
Most technical professionals who participate in online communities participate in and contribute helpful resources to two or more online community venues. Sometimes, you post relevant and useful information on a blog. Other times, you answer questions on forums.microsoft.com. Occasionally, you pick some low hanging fruit and answer a recently posted question on tek-tips.com or another independent forum or newsgroup. Once or twice, you may even have posted photos of whiteboard diagrams on Flickr or Live.com and pointed to them from elsewhere. Wouldn't it be great if you could aggregate all of the "thank you" notes you receive across all of those venues and give future recipients of your assistance a sense of your credibility and trustworthiness. xClaims allow you to do just that.
Code Submissions
If you are a programmer, there's a 99.9% chance that sometime in the last week, you stumbled upon and considered copying and pasting or downloading and compiling a code snippet or set of source files from the Web, perhaps an entire open source project on CodePlex.com. But you hesitated, didn't you? You hesitated because you had no idea who the author was. You feared that the code might contain a line or two of GPL code that might create costly problems for you or your company, in the future. For all you knew, the author, "a8vs_hippo" may have laced the source file you considered re-using with malicious code. Wouldn't it have been nice if you could have learned more about a8vs_hippo's from other people who you know or believe to be trustworthy and "real". In the future, when you post a snippet to a forum, upload a sample to ProjectDistributor.net, or check in a changeset to CodePlex.com, we hope that you will consider associating an xClaim with it. If the only thing notable about your code is that "This code compiles," make that your claim. xClaims are good etiquette.

Claimspace is designed for technical professionals who want to:

Reward and Be Rewarded
Build social capital and reap the rewards. By associating xClaims with your technical contributions on the Web-your blog and forum posts, podcasts, code samples, diagrams, photos, videos and any other URI-addressable item-you will enable your readers to give you the running bear hug you deserve and increase the visibility and credibility of you and your valuable technical resources.
Discover and Connect
Tap into your social network. Claimspace will enable you to tap into the power of a vast social network of technical professionals on the Web who share your needs, interests, and concerns and who can point you to the resources you need to get the job done.
Evaluate Credibility, Quickly
Consume community resources with greater confidence. Claimspace will enable you to rapidly ascertain the probable credibility and relative value of many technical resources on the Web-people, blogs, forum posts, RSS feeds, etc-by consulting the vote tallies (and voters) of their associated xClaims.

Key features of Claimspace that we are planning to include, over time:

xClaims
Your name, picture, and member since [date]
Your group affiliations (e.g., if you are a Microsoft MVP, your xClaim will be adorned with an "MVP" logo, if you want)
Vote on claims
Leave a comment
Suggest a claim
Subscribe by RSS to a claim by member or all members
View xClaim Vote Tally for:
A member's claim, for a particular URL
A member's claim, across all URLs where they posted it.
All of a member's claims (lifetime rollup)
Member Directory
Search and Browse Claimspace for claims, by keyword
Tight integration with Microsoft Tagspace
Tight integration with Microsoft Forums
Tight integration with Microsoft Blogs
REST API - Integration with your favorite community sites and services...

[xClaim placeholder]
Korby Parnell xClaims: "I created Claimspace."*
[xClaim placeholder]

I bet the developers and testers on the Rapport team wish they could take issue with this unilateral and egoistic claim, TODAY. Huahahaha. Ship it boys! Ship it! Whereas this claim is technically true, it belies the co-creative nature of any serious software development effort. Props to the core members of the Rapport team: Eric Mahlberg (lead dev), Jason McCullough (lead test), Ben Martin (cat herder in chief), and David Waddleton (dev). Special thanks to Bob Rebholz, who had the vision to spin up our project and plant the seed of "personal recognition elements", an idea which has grown into xClaims.

Introducing Microsoft Tagspace

KorbyP — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 04:51:00 GMT

Tagspace* is a social bookmarking service for software professionals** that encourages sound sleep and sweet dreams by enabling you to be better informed, better connected, and more productive. The more you use Tagspace, the more you'll wonder how you survived for so long in the cramped quarters of your Web browser's Favorites folder.

WARNING: TAGSPACE IS ADDICTIVE. REPEATED USAGE MAY CAUSE INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY.
*Tagspace has been shown to be effective in helping to prevent and reduce memory decay.
**No animals or software engineers were harmed in the making or testing of Tagspace.

For more information about Tagspace, see:

Screencast (direct stream): intro2tagspace.wvx
Screencast (on MSN Soapbox): intro2tagspace.wmv
Text Overview: Tagspace Beta Refresh Overview
Product Roadmap: Microsoft.Community Today and Tomorrow (...because this is just the beginning.)
Tagspace: In the News
Subscribe: RSS

Microformats are like RFID tags for the Web

KorbyP — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:02:00 GMT

Today, I took a much needed break to attend a Microsoft Research talk by Paul Dietz, who is a scientist at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab (MERL).

In describing one of his inventions, a system that automagically pings your waitress when your glass is half empty, Paul described RFID tags as a "passive, non-interactive component". He then proceeded to describe how he and his associates at MERL have figured out how to enable two devices to communicate using low cost LED lights, at hundreds of bits per second. But I'll get back to that, in a second.

Suddently, it hit me: a quick and simple way to describe microformats to my friends and colleagues!

A microformat serves the same function on the Web as an RFID tag in a Walmart warehouse! Microformats are descriptive but passive. They just sit out there and wait to be discovered by an interested agent. They are small and easy to miss, unless you're looking for them. Microformats, like RFID tags, talk to everyone.

What is a microformat? A microformat is an RFID tag for Web pages. Do you see any problems with this analogy?

Now, back to LEDs and Paul Dietz... I invite you to chew on this for a second:

LED a + LED b = communication medium

Think about the hundreds of LED lights that you encounter on a daily basis: on your keychain, desktop, dashboard, keyboard, remote control, auto, kitchen appliances, telephone, TV, computer, and even your kids. Paul Dietz is not just another Talking Head.

Someday, you may find yourself living with a cheap cell phone...
And you may find yourself, holding that cheap cell phone to the tail light of a large automobile...
And you may find yourself, uploading information about that large automobile to your mechanic...
And you may find yourself, connecting to the Web by opening your laptop under an LED light.
And you may ask yourself, "How do I work this?"
And you may say to yourself, "MY GOD, WHAT HAVE LEDs BECOME?"

Paul Dietz is an engineer who strives to create elegant circuits and systems that bring a smile and make the world a slightly better place. He is best known for his work on interactive systems including DiamondTouch (an identifying, multi-user touch screen), iGlassware (RFID-based, level-sensing glassware that automatically calls for refills) and Pal Mickey (a location-interactive plush toy sold at Walt Disney World). In his spare time, Paul runs the Animatronics Workshop – an extracurricular activity for kids 11-14 years old where they build complete robotic shows. He holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon and is currently a Senior Research Scientist at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs.

Alexbarn Leaves Microsoft...ARGH!

KorbyP — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:32:00 GMT

With a farewell quote from the greatest American writer of all time, my friend, neighbor, and idea-mate, Alex Barnett has announced that he is leaving Microsoft and Redmond to join a startup in Utah: Bungee Labs. [Lump_in_throat]. If they had any idea of the potential that Microsoft is losing, with Alex's departure, Steve would be ranting, Bill would be knocking on Alex and Katia's door, this evening, and Mary Jo would be working overtime.

Alex who? Alex Barnett is one of the most brilliant "practitioners" of social software, on Earth. Alex lives in the future; he reads, blogs, and tags prolifically in the present; and he routinely conceives of BIG ideas that have or will soon change the way WE discover resources, connect, interact, and collaborate, on the World Wide Web. Alex is the only [other;-)] blogger whose RSS feed I have recommended to every member of my team, Microsoft.com Communities Technologies, and do to practically everyone else I work with with, inside and outside MSFT.

Although Alex and I didn't really connect until about a year ago (a fact which we both find odd given the proximity of our interests, jobs, and homes) Alex has fast become my singular idea mate. Recently, upon learning that I had yet to read The Singularity is Near, Alex purchased me a copy and delivered it to my doorstep. He's just that kind of guy.

Alex, you are a true friend and gentlemen. It has been my great, great honor to count you among my closest friends and colleagues. Whereas your physical presence, in Redmond will be missed, I'm sure we will remain close, by other means. Good luck and godspeed, in your future endeavors. If I start my own company, someday, you are hereby invited to be employee #3...#2 if my friend and mentor, Jonathan Gordon, turns down his offer.

Speaking of start ups...

If you, dear reader, are in the venture capital (VC) business and on the prowl for promising Web 2.0 assets (or Web 3.0, LOL) with a focus on platforms and tools, here are two, multi-million dollar tips that you would be an unwise to ignore:

Get in on the third round of Bungee Labs. History shows that one brilliant mind is the difference between bomb and bonanza and Alex is all o' that. For the record and in the spirit of full disclosure, I have no interests in or other ties to Bungee Labs...yet.
Subscribe to Alex's Blog (RSS). Corante did.

Big in Japan

KorbyP — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 05:23:00 GMT

Recently, I attended the Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) Attendee Party (thanks, Sean!) at the wonderful Boeing Museum of Flight, in Seattle, with my partner Dave Morehouse.

Our Mission
Find, gather requirements for, and validate our social software plans for what we stiltingly and half-jokingly refer to as "Microsoft.community" with a subset of our target customers: Chinese- and Japanese-speaking MVPs; our most likely early adopters in China and Japan. I invited and we were graciously accompanied by my college buddy, Jumi, who hails from Tokyo, as well as a colleague from China, who is the Program Manager on our extended team, at Microsoft's Advanced Technology Center, in Beijing.

Our Findings
One of the services we are planning to deploy (soon) as part of our integrated service offerings is a social bookmarking service, codenamed "Tagspace". Toward the end of the night, Jumi and I engaged in a colorful and informative conversation with three young Japanese MVPs, an exchange which later blossomed into a very hopeful theory.

Big in Japan
I xclaim that Japanese culture--a culture in which building concrete group consensus with as little conflict as possible is profoundly important--inclines the Japanese to embrace and value the product of Social Bookmarking (aka, Tagging) on the Web more completely and permanently more than any other culture. This is a UNTESTED theory.

The Follow Up
On Monday night, I floated my nascent theory over dinner to my friend Jumi, Alex Barnett, and our visiting colleague from China. Jumi surmised that it is more likely that social bookmarking will become an intense but short-lived fad than a permanent fixture of Japanese society/culture. I am well aware of that "Fads are an integral part of Japanese culture" (Parker, 1997). Fads, like every Japanese school child suddenly having to have a robotic dog, seem to wash over Japanese society each year like the coming and going of a great, memetic tide. Unsatisfied with Jumi's initial response, I pressed her to speculate on the possibility that social bookmarking might someday become as institutional and engrained in the Japanese psyche and "economy" as baseball or the Yen. Jumi demured. Alex, if you're reading this and assuming you've had a chance to give my theory some thought, what is your opinion?

What do you think?
If you are familiar with Japanese culture/society and social bookmarking (Joi Ito jumps to mind) or if you have information/research that would seem to affirm or contradict my theory that Tagging will be Big in Japan for longer than a typical Japanese fad cycle, please weigh in, by leaving a comment, below.

Web2.0verload?

KorbyP — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 12:20:00 GMT

http://uselessaccount.com/

Randomization Works! Watch this...

KorbyP — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:25:00 GMT

For my innaugural post of 2007*, I decided to wait for the Chinese New Year. Hey, why not? I have also decided to do something new: Randomize.

Occasionally, I send short "inspirational" videos to my teams in an often vain and frequently futile attempt to amuse, inspire, enliven, and inform their work on the mind-blowingly awesome sites and services that we are developing.

Last Week's Inspirational Video 2/14/2007
"Let's get on the hump, boys."
- Captain Kong, in Stanley Kubrick's immortal Dr. Strangelove.
click here to view the clip
(get it? "hump"-tendre...)

My teams build social software for technical professionals. As such, we are blessed. We are also, sometimes, full of it. In advance of upcoming v1 releases, this Spring, I plan to "inspire" each of my sleep-deprived, stressed-out but nevertheless well-showered teammates, on at least a weekly basis. I've also decided to share my missives with you and the rest of the world.

Why randomize only ten world-class software developers and testers when I can randomize thousands of you?

This Week's Video Inspirational Video
"NO! This is COUNTER-dependency training…"
click here to view the clip
Date: 2/21/2007

If you work in the tech industry, my weekly video postings and my annotations thereto could give you a chuckle, summon a yawn, evoke an aha!, or convince you to eschew my blog, forever. But... If you take a step back, you might also get a pretty good sense of "where we are" in the development process and the prevailing mood of the team. Over time, I imagine that these videos/comments could, in combination, take on a life of their own and become an epic poem in which the informal histories of our software development projects are encoded, for posterity. Nahhhh.

*Where in the world has Korby Parnell been since December 2006? Short Answer: at my desk in Redmond mostly, making hay, hanging out with my lovely daughter, reading/tagging/reading, dreaming, getting back in touch with my customers' [_your_] pain, drawing up wireframes and breaking them down into scenarios and decomposing them into stories and disaggregating them into tasks and..., and refueling my blogine for 2007. How have you been? Well and happy, I hope!

Friend-o-Gen, for just $.99/month

KorbyP — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 01:29:45 GMT

Although they have "temporarily shut down their service", for legal reasons, you need look no further than http://www.fakeyourspace.com for proof that identity validation services like Opinity will survive, and possibly thrive in the online social networking era. Fakeyourspace intends to cater to socially-challenged users of Myspace, Facebook, Consumating, and Friendster.

If that's not enough to convince you, re ad this: Online Personals Watch.

Microsoft Enters Munincipal WiFi Market

KorbyP — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 02:08:49 GMT

Woohoo.....But wait! What about Redmond?

From FierceWireless:

"Microsoft announced that it will partner with MetroFi to build a free wireless Internet service for Portland, Oregon. Microsoft will provide targeted content to the service's users through its new online platform adCenter--a rival platform to Google's AdSense. adCenter allows advertisers to target users based on browsing habits and other data like gender, age and location. Google has a similar offering rolling out in San Francisco with partner Earthlink. MetroFi already operates muni-WiFi networks in Silicon Valley cities and has agreements with 13 cities across the country. Microsoft said it chose MetroFi because the company has a large footprint in the sector, but Redmond said it is open to work with other partners and cities in the future."