the thing about innovation is that once it exists, you can't realy ever imagine life without. Life before cell phones? Life before atm's? The whole new web evolution (web 2.0, ajax, etc) is like that.

Every day i'm seeing apps that blow me away - and then become almost immediately essential. Take Google Calendar. Built in sms alters, built in natural language 'quick links', and the ability to share your info with with your friends, family, and co-workers. Of course.

Then you go to Riya. FAce recognition for photo's. Impossible? Nope. done. and elegant too. then there's pixoh, a browser based photo editing tool.

I said on these pages a few weeks ago that Vista miss it's launch date was a big deal. And in my gut knew that there would be a number of advances that would move the world from a desktop centric universe to a browser based world. Welll, it's happening, and you can hardly stop yourself from being charmed by the ease, elegance, and pure fun of these new browser based web applications.

Coming along quickly are a whole collection of tools that will create platforms for collaborative creation of content. YouTube and Google video are leading the way with simple upload and storage solutions. Video Egg has downloadable app that makes upload and video sharing a snap. And now motion box and jump cut are adding to the mix with browser based editing tools.

This is not trival stuff.

We've been talking for a long time about the importance of a shared space for creative collaboration.

and now the pieces are coming together to make that a reality.

What makes this phase in the webs development so interesting is that many of these web 2.0 application are truely collabverative themselves (example - www.alexaahonic.com) sites that add layers of services and new capabilities to existing sets of data or collections of resources. Sure this new shared desktop environment is complex uncharted territory (note the battle with Veoh over 'scraping' video). But there's lots of incentive for newly intertwined serivces to find business models wher e they share revenues in proportion to the value they bring.

April 13, 2006

"The Wealth of Networks" Booklaunch with Yochai Benkler @ Eyebeam, NYC
(via Rhizome.org)

"The Wealth of Networks" Booklaunch with Yochai Benkler

Eyebeam April 14, 2006 - 6-8PM 540 West 21st Street New York, NY 10011 http://www.eyebeam.org

Please join Yale Professor Yochai Benkler for the launch of his new book, "The Wealth of Networks," exploring how a new form of distributed collaboration is transforming the world economy. In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge and cultural production are changing and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves.

The evening starts at 6pm with wine, cheese, and informal conversation. At 7pm Jonah Peretti, Eyebeam’s Director of R&D, will introduce Benkler and give a quick tour of important and emerging open source and collaborative projects. Then at 7:15pm, Benkler will give a brief talk presenting the core ideas of his new book.

"The Wealth of Networks" examines distributed collaboration’s transformation of the world economy, heralded by innovations such as: 1) Open Source software like Linux and Apache that have surpassed commercial software made by huge corporations 2) A free, collaboratively authored encyclopedia called Wikipedia that rivals Encyclopedia Britannica, and 3) Volunteer research projects like NASA Clicks that are as accurate as the work of paid scientists.

Benkler does not see these projects as isolated examples, but rather as exemplars of an emerging mode of economic production. His book shows why labor done outside the constraints of free markets and giant corporations can still have a huge impact on the economy and social relations. He argues that a “third mode of production” offers the promise of a more free society, but only if we make the right collective decisions.

"The Wealth of Networks" will be available for purchase in the Eyebeam bookstore the night of the event. This event is open to the public free of charge.

- EYEBEAM 540 W. 21st Street New York, NY 10011, USA http://www.eyebeam.org

Have you seen Joga? It's a community site for soccer players... which is in an of itself no
big deal.

http://www.joga.com

But the partnership between Nike and Google that gave birth to Joga is interesting.

First of all, this is to the best of my knowledge the first time that Google has taken the role of content creator (rather than tools creator). And perhaps most strangly, you need to use your google ID to log into Joga.

This i just find wierd. It's like the NY Times asking you for your bank PIN# to read the paper on line. As a Google user who uses AdWords, adSense, GoogleVideo, all sites that include payments, banking info, and transactions - i'm just plain wierded out by them using that same ID to centralize my ID as it relates to content and search.

And more importantly, it's confusing.

"Welcome to Joga.com, an online personal networking service, operated by Google Inc."

I guess you could argue that Google was in the content space before with services like Orkut -but they were services not content front ends. BTW - Joga has JogaTV as well - on the home page.

Overall the thing that has me scratching my head is the front and center Google branding (both interms of log in and logo) on the home page. I'm not sure what that says about Google's long term plans as it related to content companies. But take a look at the site and see if it doesn't make you scratch your head.

Before I could even ponder or realize the amazing opportunities that these new video editing tools were going to unleash on us, I am already surrounded by a small set of great online video services that make the uploading, editing, remixing and sharing / re-publication of video clips just about pure fun.

Video Editing, Publishing And Remixing Online Is Here - Robin Good's Latest News

Maxtor teams up with Fabrik on personal server (from engadget)
Posted Apr 1st 2006 8:17PM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Storage, Networking
So Maxtor and Valley startup Fabrik are up to something together, which they're calling Project Fusion. It sounds very cloak and dagger and whatnot, but it's actually pretty transparent and literal: they're building a personal server (i.e. a big external hard drive) that connects up to the Internet with Fabrik's service and allows you to access your data with a web-accessible frontend. There's even a new buzzword to describe the package: "personal media portal." Ok then. According to Maxtor the device could go for as much as $799 for a 500GB, which leaves a bit of a bad taste in our mouths (especially when there's, you know, about ten thousand companies out there trying to get your files online for you), but Om likes Fabrik, and you can't really argue with Om.