Just a quick note to point out Adrian Miles recent quicktime experiments which really do appear to riff on the nature of photography and the possibilities of a meditative interaction . one clouds I think that they also point to the potential for a meditative visual dialogue/multilogue/collaboration that looks toward the kind of chance that a tag based slide show benefits from. The joy here is the possibility of setting very focussed points of coalescence and projection. Simple elegant and expressive these experiments plumb for unforeseen potencies or virtualities expressed through, propelled by, the communality of a word, form, or point of perception.

Click movie to play full comment This is a quick test to check the functioning of Josh Paul s video commenting implementation - it looks quite neat - I ll post some more ideas about it in the next couple of days - this is just to see if it works. You can submit a video comment here

Click movie to play full comment This is a quick test to check the functioning of Josh Paul s video commenting implementation - it looks quite neat - I ll post some more ideas about it in the next couple of days - this is just to see if it works. [...]

Survey.* Explanation writely word processing and collab Writely is a full featured word processor constructed as an online app. It also has a publishing feature and collaboration/editing facilties with version tracking. The collab features don t appear as feature rich as writeboard but the word processor which has many of the features we expect form a desktop word processor. All my comments re: 37Signals apps applies here: why move something that works perfectly well at the local into a proprietary online system. If you are working alone you write in word and upload for editing in a wiki with decent version control. If you are writing in collaboration write in a wiki installed on server you have some control over . Many of the sites that serve these apps suggest that the principle benefit of writing online is having the work accesible on numerous computers (as long as they are connected to the network) but given I write locally on a lap top and rarely use anything else I am not sure what I would achieve . Of course collab features are nice and that s why I can see the value of a wiki but not a proprietary system whose longevity is all but assured There is a tendency to call any web-based app web2.0 but if this shift is indeed a major upgrade then I hope it does more than strip back my desktop apps to make them fit as net based models and offer a little more in terms of networked porosity or other forms of generative potency than what we are seeing in the bulk of these sites. There are ways that we could radically shift the network dynamic of a writerly environment but writely doesn t achieve these Plenty of ideas about how we could develop a writerly collaboration app writely.com is ideed missing more than one letter if this is what you are after ..I ll write those ideas sometime but not under the guise of this survey. If you re a developer and interested then email me or comment

This raised a smile .. Drunken Rampage Thanks to jill/txt

a tag cloud of my interesting feeds This is a fun little engine that genrates tag clouds for a web page. I had no room in my side bar I could post a weekly cloud though. Of course they are tags parsed from the text of the RSS feeds that I add to it but still quite a different way of looking at the data aggregated from the collection of blogs I subscribe to. Had to remove the Engadget feed and the News feeds in order to get an interesting result - my firstcloud was full of mobile phone brands and violent crime this is a cloud of the more topical feeds.

http://cloudalicio.us/ A really interesting look at evolving folksonomies .charts del.icio.us tags associated with a URL over time. Its creator makes an interesting claim about tags that they mark the popular perception of a site and therefore are essentially anthropological interest. It occurs to me some way of organizing folksonomies might evolve from these collections of metadata about tags hmmmm tagging about tagging again?? Not quite .because here we have a method of abstraction capable of automagically culling metadata that has no reasonable incidence or reinforcement overtime. Really useful and shareable metadata is derived from the movements of bodies. Metadata needs to be elicited and involuntary (see: Massumi) in order for it to forge un-thought connections - to mine the virtual (the classic/simple example is an early one - theyrule.net - the complex more recent one is last.fm). The form of analysis that cloud* does takes the incidence rather than the oft confused and schizoid semantic of the tag itself. It treats the act of tagging as a reflex response not essentially a rational categorization so that only after time the tag can be understood as a normal response - or more essentially a normalized result Of course this requires some organized approach to folksonomies that is perspectival .by this I mean that tags require something like the dynamic provided by amazon.. People who tagged this cognition also tagged this cognition and this generative - from here we can truly begin to develop relevant and dynamic folksonomies .perspectival and incidental are the keywords for developers .anyone requiring an explanation or help developing such a system should email me.

Survey.* Explanation http://www.taggling.com Taggling appear to be a site that aggregates a tag search over delicious, technorati, flickr .. If anything this is a testament to the meta-noise created by the tagging phenomenon .I mean this is great for what it does - and an example of so-called web2.0 because it adds nothing ..nothing at all

Hilarious look at the tagging phenomenon. http://www.tagtagger.com/ TagTagger a Web2.0 Ajax and Ruby app for Tagging your tagged tags of pictures of cute sunflowers Looking for initial VC funding now for all you keen bubble investors .

Note on posts marked Survey.* 37 Signals http://www.37signals.com/ 37 Signals make proprietary versions of what are now very common wiki style tools. I am a bit miffed at what people actually get out of such applications perhaps that is because I don t write collaboratively and I m to disorganized to use To-Do lists and so on. I really don t under stand the benefit of outsourcing my word processing to the web when I have very stable and feature rich options locally that are portable. In terms of collaboration I think these tools are great but would much prefer and feel more confident with a non-proprietary system such as a wiki that I can host on my own server. Giving ultimate control and security over to a third party gives me the chills for a number of reasons. Not sure what the business model is here as I can t see pepole subscribing in great numbers when many of the features are offered free. Applications: Writeboard: http://www.writeboard.com A straightforward feature poor web-based collaborative writing tool. Very straight forward. Email to invite collabs and import/export. Nice interface. Nothing innovative in terms of networking and nothing added to wiki model other than nice clean interfaces and icons. Backpackit/Basecamp http://www.backpackit.com Web based organizational tools. Collab To Do Lists, Notes, Editing, Contacts. Not had a great lookbecasue as with Writeboard there is nothing terribly new achieved by moving this form of app online - indeed what is needed are offline and local clients to make sure these tools are useable when away from the network. Apples ical model seems pretty smart in terms of date sharing -ie. I can publish and download form the local app. Campfire: http://www.campfirenow.com/ A Message Board App integrates well with other apps above but once again the model is a little odd. I want local mirrors in dedicated apps so I can continue my discussion off-line. Nothing added to the chat/message board model really .in terms of functionality I can do everything here on a mailing list in a more flexible manner. Of course as with all these apps the knowledge produced in conversation and the process of editing is very well documented .but of course mailing lists and wikis have better integrated third party plug-ins have greater transparency and probably greater longevity and redundancy .. All of the above represent a move that seems destined to be followed by Google and Sun with more comprehensive desktop software remediated for the the online environment