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Jive Software joins the DataPortability Project

Added on by Chris Saad.

I'd like to personally welcome Jive Software to the DataPortability Project. I am personally excited to work with their CTO Matt Tucker who is also the Chair of the XMPP Foundation. Together, Jive, XMPP and other vendors and standards will work together to deliver the promise of data portability to enterprise applications. Welcome to the discussion!

Microsoft is going to release a web-based version of Office.

Added on by Chris Saad.

How? Using Silverlight. Here's the strategy as I see it.

First, the underlying Silverlight technologies (XAML and .NET) are encouraging client-side Windows developers to think beyond boring forms apps and delve into the wonderful world of vector graphics with 3D, sliding reflective surfaces. In short, Microsoft is encouraging developers to use the power of the client-side to ensure that Windows apps to continue to make web-apps look like boring documents.

Second, having raised the bar on client-side user experiences, the Silverlight runtime enables developers to maintain that high bar of multimedia user experience in the browser. But Silverlight is not like flash. Developers can use the exact same development assets, metaphors and tools they know and love. Objects, Controls, Visual Studio and more. Users will come to expect web-based experiences that match their newly enhanced client-side ones.

Third, if Silverlight makes it possible to essentially deploy client-side style applications through the browser, which Microsoft product can now become truly web enabled?

You guessed it. Office.

Silverlight represents a way for Microsoft to not just complete in the online office space, but blow it out of the water with a product that is as good (or better) than its client-side counterpart. There was no way Microsoft was going to bet their web-based application strategy on Flash or try to hack together an Ajax word processor. Silverlight, and its true Object Orientated .NET foundation, are a perfect platform for the web-enablement of their traditionally client-side suite.

Fourth, Silverlight is positioned as the new application platform. It exists in places Microsoft has never existed before. On Nokia phones (the land of Symbian), Linux workstations and OSX. Even iPhone could conceivably run Silverlight since it runs the full fledged Safari browser. And now there is an announcement that Silverlight will be shipped with millions of HP computers.

With Silverlight now coming out on Nokia phones, delivered as part of the Olympics coverage and embedded throughout MS properties and content deals popping up everywhere, Microsoft is gaining enormous distribution potential. If they can somehow skirt the anti-trust issues, they could even bundle it with IE8.

Silverlight is a critical and masterful piece of technology and strategy from the Redmond giant. It allows them to leverage their tools and technologies from the client, raise the bar on web-based experiences, deploy their client-side apps through a browser and broaden their platform reach into every device and screen in a user's life.

Responses to DataPortability questions

Added on by Chris Saad.

Chris Messina has posted a fantastic post on his blog about DataPortability. It is a real pleasure to read his thoughtful and well articulated questions, concerns and compliments about the project. I am going to try to answer or comment on many of his comments below by quoting big chunks and including my ideas.

Contrary to what some folks have argued, I think that the semantics and meaning of the phrase “data portability” are important. To me data portability denotes the act of moving data from one place to another, and that the data should, therefore, be thought of like a physical thing, with physical properties.

...

So if you ask me what is “data portability”, I’ll concede that it’s a symbol for starting a conversation about what’s wrong with the state of social networks. Beyond that, I think there’s a great danger that, as a result of framing the current opportunity around “data portability”, the story that will get picked up and retold will be the about copying data between social networks, rather than the more compelling, more future-facing, and frankly more likely situation of data streaming from trusted brokered sources to downstream authorized consumers. But, I guess “copying” and “moving” data is easier to grasp conceptually, and so that’s what I think a lot of people will think when they hear the phrase. In any case, it gets the conversation started, and from there, where it goes, is anyone’s guess.

I do understand the concerns about names and the underlying meaning they convey. I do think, however, that the ship has sailed on the branding of the movement. We can call it Data Availability, Data Connectivity, Data Streaming, Data Accessibility or we can call it what everyone is already calling it - Data Portability. I think the nuance of meaning is probably one that only affects the technologists closest to the issue; not the broader audience we are trying to reach.

Also, we have long defined 'portability' as the ability to port the data or port the context in which the data is used. That is, use data from one application from within the context of another application.

Is it a perfect name? Probably not.

Is it worth diluting the conversation to stop and rename it? probably not.

Can the community live with it? I would argue they could. So we should probably move on.

OpenID, along with OAuth, microformats, RSS, OPML, RDF, APML and XMPP are all open and non-proprietary technologies — formats and protocols — that grace the DataPortability homepage. How they ended up on the homepage, or what selection criteria is used to pick them, is beyond me (for example, I would have added ATOM to the list). So the best way that I can describe the relationship between any of these technologies and DataPortability is that, at some point, the powers that be within the group decided to throw a logo on their homepage and add it to their “social software stack”.

I'm curious if, besides Atom, there are any other standards that community members would suggest as an addition to the list. Are there any on there that don't belong there? Having discussed this topic for a long time now, I think that most people agree that each of those technologies listed have a place in the conversation. The final 'stack' however will be determined by the Technical Best Practice documents.

Beyond that, it should be noted that OpenID, OAuth, microformats et al have been in development for the last several years, and have been building up momentum and communities all on their own, without and prior to the existence of the DP initiative.

Agreed - this is a fact I constantly repeat to everyone I speak to - particularly in public forums and on podcasts. I don't think, however, anyone can deny that the DataPortability project has accelerated the momentum and helped to propel the conversation into the mainstream. It is gratifying that many of the participants in each of these standards groups (particularly the groups that don't have as much visibility as OpenID, Microformats or oAuth) are now participating in the DataPortability project as a way to promote their work to a broader audience.

In fact, the DP project really only got its start last November with an idea presented by Josh Patterson and Josh Lewis called WRFS, or the “Web Relational File System”. At the time, the WRFS was intended to serve as a “reference design” for describing how data portability should work and this was to serve as the foundation of the DP recommendations.

In January, after ongoing discussions, Josh decided that it would be best to spin WRFS off into its own project and started a separate mailing list, leaving DP to focus exclusively on evangelizing existing technologies and communities and, in the oft-repeated words of Chris Saad, to invent nothing new (a mantra inherited from the OAuth and microformats efforts).

This is actually not quite accurate. The DataPortability project was running in parallel to the work on WRFS. We invited the two Josh's to bring their WRFS work into the DataPortability project and as it matured we spun it out again.

If you accept that DP is primarily a symbol for starting the conversation about transforming social networks from walled gardens into interoperating, seamful web services, then no, not really.

This is certainly where it starts - but I think it's clear that the group has far more potential than that.

... DP does not speak for the community as a whole, for any specific social network (except, perhaps, MySpace), or for any individuals except those who publicly align themselves with the group.

This is also true - The DataPortability project speaks for itself and for the people who participate. There are thousands of people and vendors both large and small who have publicly supported the group and, by extension, given it some level of authority to consult on and develop best practices for the community.

So if the second risk is that an unrealistic, naive or incomplete model of privacy [coupled with a lack of effective enforcement mechanisms in the case of fraud or abuse] will be promoted by the DP group, the third risk is that groups or communities that are roped into the DP initiative may open themselves up to a latent social backlash should something go wrong with specific implementations of DataPortability best practices. Specifically, if the final privacy model demands certain approaches to user data, and companies or organizations go along with them by adopting the provided “social technology stack” (i.e. libraries offered that implement the DP data model), the technical implementation may be flawless, but if people’s data starts showing up in places where they didn’t expect it to, they may reject the whole notion of “data portability” and seek to retreat back to the days of “safe” walled gardens of today. And it may be that, because of the emphasis on specific technologies in the DP group’s propaganda, that brands like OpenID and OAuth will become associated with negative experiences, like downloadable .exes in email are today. It’s not a foregone conclusion in my mind that this future is inevitable, but it’s one that the individual groups affected should avoid at all costs, if only because of the significant progress we’ve made to date on our own, and it would be a shame if ignorance or lack of clear communication about the proper methods of adoption and implementation of these technologies lead people to blame the technology means instead of particular instances of its application.

Open standards are developed as building blocks. The DataPortability project is building something from them. If some of the standards groups would -for some reason - like their standard to be excluded from our recommendations then we would be happy to oblige.

Also, there are a lot of people from all over the world looking at, refining and experimenting with the best practices being developed. I think most would agree that 'something could go wrong' is not enough reason not to try working through the challenges to come up with something worthwhile.

What’s good about DataPortability?

I don’t want to just be a negative creep, so I do think that there is a silver lining to the DP initiative, which I mentioned earlier: it provides a token phrase that we can throw around to tease out some of the more gnarly issues involved in developing future social applications. It is about having a conversation.

While OpenID and OAuth have actual technology and implementations behind them, they also serve as symbols for having conversations about identity and authorization, respectively. Similarly, microformats helps us to think about lightweight semantic markup that we can embed in human-friendly web pages that are also compatible with today’s web browsers, and that additionally make those pages easier for machines to parse. And before these symbols, we had AJAX and Web 2.0, both of which, during their inception, were equally controversial and offensive to the folks who knew the details of the underlying technological innovation behind the terms but who also stood to lose their shamanic positions if simpler language were adopted as the conversations migrated into the mainstream.

Agreed. I have often used the example that DataPortability can and will do for open standards what Web 2.0 and AJAX did for CSS, Javascript and XML.

Now, is there a risk that we might lose some of the nuance and sophistication with which we data junkies and user-centric identity advocates communicate if we adopt a less precise term to describe the present trends towards interoperable social networks? Absolutely. But this also means that, as the phrase “data portability” makes its way into common conversation, people can begin to think about their social networking activities and what they take for granted (”Wait, you mean that I wouldn’t have to sign up for a new account on my friend’s social network just to send them a photo? Really?”), and to realize that the way things are today not only aren’t the way that they have to be, but that there is a better way for social applications to be designed, architected and presented, that give the enthusiasts and customers of these services greater choice and greater latitude to actually pick services that — what else? — serve them best!

So just as Firefox gave rise to a generation of web developers that take web standards much more seriously, and have in turn recognized and capitalized on the power of having a “rectangle” that actually behaves in a way that they expect (meaning that it fully complies with the standards as they’ve been defined), I think the next evolution of the social web is going to be one where we take certain things, like identity, like portable contact lists, like better and more consistent permissioning systems as givens, and as a result, will lead to much more interesting, more compelling, and, perhaps even more lucrative, uses of the open social web.

I obviously agree completely here.

It is clear with Chris' great post, that the data portability conversation, and the DataPortability project has unearthed a fantastic set of questions and opportunities.

The Data Portability narrative, and the resulting questions that it posses, are precisely the tools that will encourage end users, developers, vendors and media to further investigating popular standards like OpenID and Microfomats, and dig deeper into more nascent standards like RDF, XRDS and APML.

The resulting acceleration in just six months has been phenomenal - I look forward to the next six months.

I've written more on this subject in my "Internal note of thanks" post.

Myspace and Facebook make Data Portability moves - lots more work to be done

Added on by Chris Saad.

In the last couple of days data portability and the DataPortability project have been all over the headlines. That's always a good thing for the cause of open standards and interoperability. Each announcement has been a small and long-overdue step towards making social network profile data available to other sites in some sort of digestible way.

First, MySpace announced their 'Data Availability' push with a series of launch partners, and then, seemingly in response, Facebook announced 'Facebook Connect' which is an iteration on their existing APIs to allow 3rd parties to connect and access their user data.

Both moves have rightly been attributed as 'Data Portability' plays - but neither of them are true 'DataPortability' implementations... yet.

They are each proposing and implementing their own specific mechanisms, policies and technologies for moving the data around, and none of them are allowing true two way sync.

Over the coming months it will be our job, at the DataPortability project, to further refine and ratify the DataPortability Best Practices to provide a complete, end-to-end guide that Facebook, Myspace and others can follow. Once properly implemented, all applications on the web will essentially become part of a friction free inter-operable and two way data layer based on open standards.

It will be up to bloggers and other media outlets to keep the pressure on these players to continue to improve their offerings to achieve true compliance based on community recommendations made through the DataPortability project.

I look forward to the journey and further discussing these issues at the Internet Identity Workshop on Monday May 12 and the 2nd Data Sharing Summit on Thursday May 15.

Lego is Participant Generated Content

Added on by Chris Saad.

We've all heard about User Generated Content (UGC). I don't like the term. Once you start generating content in a two way ecosystem you are no longer a user, you are a participant. In fact I have written long rants about the subject. But that's a subject for another day. An oft missed point re-occurred to me today so I thought I would write it up.

Bloggers and social media consultants are still trying to convince mainstream media and businesses that Participant Generated Content is a new media reality. Many companies are trying to grapple with the phenomena and are wondering if users remixing copyrighted material and/or generating their own media is an opportunity or a threat. At the very least it is highly disruptive to the role of traditional broadcast media - and where there is market disruption, opportunity is usually mixed right in.

It's key to remember or realize though, that Participant Generated Content is not new. In fact, it's as old as cave paintings. You don't even have to look that far back. What about Lego and Crayons. What about singing in the shower. What about writing a letter or making a mix tape.

It's clear through these examples that people have been expressing themselves through their creations since the dawn of time. The only difference in the new web ecosystem is the scale, scope, tools and business opportunities associated with this self expression. As usual the web simply gives us new visibility and connectivity to each other and new tools to create and share.

It's important to have this context in mind during the debate around the purpose, place and legality (in terms of copyright) of participant generated content; Because with this more long-term lens perhaps more businesses and media companies will properly understand the phenomena and the instinct that drives it. It might even help them to engage with the opportunity in more creative, human ways.

It's not a set of weird web early adopters. It is not just 'the bloggers'. It is not some fringe activity. It is a basic human instinct to create and share. And it certainly isn't new.

I'm going to Web 2.0 Expo - Are you?

Added on by Chris Saad.

Web 2.0 Badge

The conference that stated it all is back in town next week. Regardless of what you think of the term, it's the place to be to see all your favorite people in one place. Let me know if you are going to be there - will be great to catch up with some people!

Register here

Sounds like there might also be a DataPortability meetup happening at the same time too!

Gadgets vs. Apps - Google App Engine

Added on by Chris Saad.

David Recordon has a very clever observation over on the O'Reilly blog about the Google App Engine potentially marginalizing both OpenSocial and Facebook Platform. I think he might be right. Long term, the goal of most App developers should not be to develop gadgets in containers, but rather to build first class applications on the ultimate platform of all, the Web.

With tools like Amazon Web-Services and Google App Engine reducing infrastructure and scale costs even further, an emerging data interoperability layer via DataPortability and an increasing desire to add social functionality to most apps and services, the future looks bright.

I look forward to the day when I can use my best-of-breed applications (such as Flickr for photos - and now video!, Twitter for status updates, Ma.gnolia for Bookmarks and Google Docs for document collaboration) all backed by my personal, universal address book. My personal social network.

Combine everyone's address book together and you get what you get is what Tim Berners-Lee calls the Giant Global Graph.

The opportunity for Myspace, Facebook and other large social networks? Continue to provide a simple user experience for the mainstream in the mean time, and evolve quickly into an Identity Provider and social hub of the future.

You're Invited! Data Sharing Workshop April 18th and 19th

Added on by Chris Saad.

Hi everyone, I'd like to invite you to the Data Sharing Workshop on April 18th and19th and the Data Sharing Summit on May 15th.

Both events are part of an ongoing collaboration with DataPortability.org, which we hope to evolve into a larger-scale Data Portability conference in the near future.

Our primary goal is to provide a gathering space for everyone to worktogether to build consensus around and get adoption of emerging dataportability standards. We know the timing is tight, but we also know there is a lot of momentum, and we want to move it forward with these two highly-interactive events.

The Data Sharing Workshop (April 18 and 19) As a first step, the Workshop will provide a gathering space for different groups to have in-depth discussions about emerging data sharing standards and initiatives, and continue ongoing work by establishing Action Items to be carried out at subsequent events.

he Workshop will be held at the SFSU downtown campus in cooperation with the SFSU Institute for the Next Generation Internet.

Please make sure you add it to your Upcoming watch list Please make sure you add it to your Upcoming attending list http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/450853/

The Data Sharing Summit (May 15) The Summit will take place a month later, providing enough time to further develop the ideas discussed at the Workshop while still being able to track progress. With the larger venue, participants from the Workshop will be able to share their ideas with a broader audience.

The Summit will be at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Ca, immediately following the Internet Identity Workshop, allowing those in the user-centric identity community to participate in the Summit.

Please make sure you add it to your Upcoming watch list Please make sure you add it to your Upcoming attending list http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/452397/

Sign up You can register for both of these events at http://eventbrite.datasharingsummit.com.

Additional information is available on the Data Sharing Summit Wiki.

About (un)conferences As with the previous summit, which was facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin, aka "Identity Woman" [http://www.identitywoman.net/], the upcoming event will follow the open space (un)conference [http://unconference.net] format. The agenda is created on the first day of the event, allowing everyone to participate in the discussion.

Since 2005, Kaliya has been facilitating the Internet Identity Workshop and has received considerable praise for helping achieve real results, including the incredible progress of OpenID and other user-centric identity projects. Based on the success of IIW, we have decided to use a similar model for the Data Sharing events.

Get Involved We need help with promoting these events and ask that you blog about both events. We are also looking for volunteers and sponsors to help support this community, so that we can create real value for everyone involved.

To make the event accessible to a broader range of participants, attendance fees are relatively low. All three days are $200.00 for regular attendees and $140.00 for independents and start-ups. These fees will cover approximately half the cost. Sponsorship support is needed to cover the remaining half.

If you have any questions about any of these events, or would like to get involved as a volunteer or sponsor, please contact Laurie Rae at laurierae@datasharingsummit.com

What have you done for me lately?

Added on by Chris Saad.

Often in the DataPortability project we get asked "What have you guys actually done?" I often times find the question both amusing and confusing, while other times I can understand where the question comes from.

The DataPortability project received a lot of attention very quickly and very early in its life and it left some people asking 'Why?'.

The answer, however, can be quite multifaceted and complicated.

The first thing I do is encourage people to look at the DataPortability Road Map.

It clearly maps out our plan and shows that we have actually successfully completed 2 out of the 5 planed phases.

  1. Foundation (done)
  2. Invitation (done)
  3. Investigation (underway)
  4. Design
  5. Evangelize

Foundation is self-explanatory - but invitation is a very interesting step along this long journey.

We have invited the industry to start a conversation about data portability. And I think we have been quite successful in doing just that. It is now one of the most visible topics at most industry conferences, dev groups and board meetings. The mere existence of the project and the phrase has given people a handle from which to drive the conversation.

The result has been actual and practical. It has resulted in an acceleration of every discussion and implementation around openness and standardization.

This is indeed a journey of a thousand steps, but by defining our destination (as DataPortability has begun to do) we have helped the community shift from a steady walk to a jog. Next comes the run.

But we can't rest now - there is still a lot of work to do. We need to execute on the rest of our plan. We need to put aside our agendas, egos, doubts and fears and embrace this new, broader conversation.

Next, I remind people that, as a project, the DataPortability group is currently executing on Phase 3 - Research. During this phase we are speaking to each standard community about their relevant technologies and contributions to understand how they might fit into any future best practice document or documents. If we are not speaking to you yet, please drop me a line. After that, comes the Documentation phase. But not before.

The journey is indeed long - there are indeed a thousand steps to come - maybe more. Some of us are focusing on making shoes, others have given us iPods to keep us entertained, and others still are drawing directions in the sand. It will take all kinds of efforts and all kinds of people to arrive at our destination.

Are you helping? Join a standards group, write some code, or join the DataPortability project!

Of course, there's another, shorter answer. "Just you wait and see..."

Microsoft Acts on DataPortability

Added on by Chris Saad.

Today Microsoft takes another big step towards Data Portability by announcing their Contacts API for their Live Platform. To quote John Richards, Director of Live Platform (an active participant in the DataPortability project) from the press release:

"To tackle the issue of contact data portability it is important to reconcile the larger issue of data ownership.  Who owns the data, like email addresses in a Windows Live Hotmail address book?  We firmly believe that we are simply stewards of customers’ data and that customers should be able to choose how they control and share their data. We think customers should be able to share their data in the most safe and secure way possible, but historically this openness has been achieved largely through a mechanism called “screen-scraping,” which unduly puts customers at risk for phishing attacks, identity fraud, and spam. Now with the Windows Live Contacts API, we have provided an alternative to “screen-scraping” that is equally open but unequivocally safer and more secure for customers. "

This is another strong example of how committed Microsoft is to data portability in general and the DataPortability project specifically.

As things take shape in the DataPortability Project, we will have specific recommendations for Microsoft and all other vendors to make sure that their APIs are seamlessly inter-operable with other DataPortability enabled applications.

I am speaking at 'The Next Web' Conference

Added on by Chris Saad.

Good news - I will be in Amsterdam speaking at the Next Web Conference on the 3rd and 4th of April - are you coming? I will also be in London for a few days after the 4th. Here's a bit of info about the conference from the website:

The Next Web Conference is THE European conference for industry thought-leaders, leading web-companies, innovative Startups, visionaries and real Web savvies. This third edition will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on April 3rd & 4th, 2008.

I'm nominated for the 30under30

Added on by Chris Saad.

I just got this email from Antihill Magazine:

Dear Young Entrepreneur,

A friend, colleague or fan of your work recently nominated you for Anthill Magazine's 30under30 Awards, a national awards program designed to recognise and encourage young Australian entrepreneurs.

Details of your nomination are below, including th name of the generous person who nominated you for this awards program.

Cool!

If you'd like to nominate me you can do so on the Antihill website!

Microsoft to join DataPortability - Where's the beef?

Added on by Chris Saad.

The news today is that Microsoft intends to join the DataPortability Project. So where's the beef? Why are long-time influentials from all these large vendors joining the cause? What are we offering? What are we trying to do? What's in it for them? What do they bring to the table?

Many of these questions are already answered in the Project Charter, on the FAQ page and in the excellent video by Michael Pick. but I thought that since I am getting much of the blame credit for this that I might put it all in context in my own words.

First, I'd like to clarify that DataPortability is not mine. It is an initiative that was co-founded by many people who all believed that something was missing from the existing Identity/Data/Standards landscape. Something very small, but very important.

A story...

A message. A simple rallying cry for the mainstream that would:

  1. Explain the problem in simple terms
  2. Help contextualize existing efforts to solve it
  3. Encourage inter operable adoption by users, vendors and developers

That's exactly what DataPortability brings to the community. A neutral, community driven forum in which standards groups can champion their technology in the context of a solution, vendors can raise their concerns and get answers and end-users can get a easy, safe and secure experience.

So back to the original question. Where's the value?

The value is in the exciting and critically important work that standards groups have been doing for years. It's in the new conversations being encouraged between standards groups and vendors both inside the DataPortability Project and independently 1 on 1. It's in the Action Groups that are bringing diverse people together. It's in the Action Packs we are developing to help tell the story to Executives, Developers, Designers, Bloggers and Vendors. It's in the Technical and Policy Blueprints we are designing to tell the story in a more detailed way and believe it or not, it's in the PR hype of the announcements.

Each announcement - each new member - both large and small - means another voice, and another opportunity to broaden the conversation and apply the sort of grass-roots pressure we all know already exists to create a web of data we can Connect, Control, Share and Remix.

In regard to Microsoft specifically, I welcome their voice in the conversation. Their team has been one of the most transparent and accessible of all the vendors we have spoken to and their products and services touch the lives of almost everyone both online and off.

Please join us Chris

Special thanks to Daniela Barbosa for finding the picture!

'08 - The year of DataPortability

Added on by Chris Saad.

It's been a hectic few days. Our little project to create a reference design for Data Portability has been put at the center of a storm when Robert Scoble, video blogger to the stars, experienced his very own Data Portability use case - getting his personal information out of a closed system. In this case, Facebook. The DataPortability project sort of happened by accident for me. The goal was simple. Having worked hard to create and champion the cause of APML, the FaradayMedia team and I tried to join the broader standards discussion. The problem, though, was that the same questions kept on getting asked over and over, and the answers -while slightly different each time - were always basically the same.

It usually went something like this...

"So how can we use [X format, standard, protocol, technique] to get data [Y] from silo [Z] for purpose [1, 2 and 3]."

"You could use [my personal format of choice] because [I am personally invested in community A]."

"But that only solves part of my problem, what about [B, C and D]"

"Oh we have not really solved that, probably check out community [E, F and G] for that part".

The result, was very little standards integration work actually being done because while the standard file formats exist, there is no standard way of implementing them end-to-end.

So we started the DataPortability Workgroup with some friends to try and get the story straight in our own heads and share the results with the world.

The world, though, seems to have come knocking before we were quite ready for the attention. But that's OK. It has only served to re-double our efforts and seems to prove that there was indeed a problem that needed to be solved.

I'd like to personally thank everyone involved and welcome all the new people who have come to join the conversation. It has been an adrenalin packed few days and I have enjoyed every second.

I really feel quite grateful to have connected with so many people who believe in the same things - including personal heroes who have made all this possible with their hard (and often thankless) work to create the standards that will make DataPortability possible. I'd particularly like to assure those people that DP is not about re-inventing what they have done, but rather shining a light on their work by putting it in context for those that need to see the big picture spelled out.

It seems that the web will dramaticlly evolve again this year. It used to be the Web of Pages, most recently it evolved into the Web of People... it seems in 2008 the Web of Data begins to take root.

Look forward to the fun...

Seesmic Vs. TV

Added on by Chris Saad.

Watching the Le Web Panel on "TV Rebirth", I was struck by the tendency to compare seesmic and other video sharing platforms with TV. I think that comparing Seesmic (in particular) with TV is like comparing the phone with radio. They are totally different things that happen to just use the same media (video and audio respectively).

Also I am not sure why Current.TV does not get the recognition it deserves. I really believe that they need to join the conversation more aggressively. They deserve far more attention that they get. I'd say they should offer me a job, but chances are they are not even watching for references to their brand.

Also, well done to Robert Scoble who once again identified Attention and filtering as the next great frontier. As he knows better than most, the quantity of content around these days simply does not scale for most people. Content discovery and filtering (based on APML probably) will be huge in the coming years.

HD-DVD+Blu-Ray Hybrid

Added on by Chris Saad.

This cracks me up

I think both formats suck. DVDs and anything resembling a DVD is a hoax played by the studios so that people can 'own their own video store'. What's the point? The number of times you would watch the DVDs cannot justify the cost. And if everyone has a video store what's the point? Whatever format you choose to embrace and collect will be obsolete in a few years anyway.

But all those reasons against owning your own DVD style collection pale in comparison to the fact that all this content should be streamed from the net anyway - we should all have access to all content all the time. Anything short of that is a joke on consumers.