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Joel wrote, as usual, a thoughtful and witty article on the web, standards, interoperability and the upcoming mother of all flame wars; this is a must-read for everyone concerned with web-related software development (web designers, web programmers, information architects, marketeers…) .

As usual, the idealists are 100% right in principle and, as usual, the pragmatists are right in practice. The flames will continue for years.

Joel goes into a lengthy explanation, driven by an extra-terrestrial catchy case study, of what are the possible “cardinalities” of “market standards” (One-to-One - all is fine and simple, One-to-Many - yet fine, Sequence-to-Many - a story of pain and backward compatibility, Many-to-Many - you know, PurePain ™), why a standard without a reference implementation it’s not that standard, and why in the long run being conservative in what you do, and being liberal in what you accept from the others potentially ends in deployment issues kicking your conservative yet liberal butt. In the meanwhile you get also acquainted with some real-world compatibility issues between rabbis from different ultra-orthodox communities:

If you’ve ever visited the ultra-orthodox Jewish communities of Jerusalem, all of whom agree in complete and utter adherence to every iota of Jewish law, you will discover that despite general agreement on what constitutes kosher food, that you will not find a rabbi from one ultra-orthodox community who is willing to eat at the home of a rabbi from a different ultra-orthodox community. And the web designers are discovering what the Jews of Mea Shearim have known for decades: just because you all agree to follow one book doesn’t ensure compatibility[…]

As a very brief personal memorandum: Real Standards must have Real Reference Implementations (because “reality siphons off excess complexity“¹) and although Postel’s Robustness Principle is (imho) still much valuable for the wide spread of the internet/web it has been able to sustain so far, it should be carefully balanced - “in medium stat virtus” - with having very, very strict standards and “components” positively obnoxious about pointing them all out to you; maybe we (as developers/engineers) should resort to some sort of “carrot and stick” principle.

NOTE ¹: The full citation from David H. Gelernter’s Mirror Worlds (a wonderful and fascinating book narrating a vision of computing and information of extraordinary elegance - that is by other words a good combination of simplicity and power) is:

“Information structures are, potentially, the most complicated structures known to man. Precisely because software is so easy to build, complexity is a deadly software killer.
The same problem exists for hardware machines, but it lacks comparable significance. Physical reality is the overflow valve that siphons off excess complexity before the whole system blows.[…]”.

When you say “network on the go”…

it happens sometimes you really mean it.

From MIT Technology Review “Local Area Network Droids“:

The robots, called LANdroids, are being funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as part of a $3 million three-year research program. The aim is to create expendable robots that will be able to overcome the communications problems that soldiers currently face in built-up areas. […]

Existing radio communications networks used by the military work well when there is line of sight, but urban environments can hinder this. Obstacles and structures can reflect, refract, diffract, or absorb the radio signals, leading to signal loss and attenuation. The overall effect is that soldiers often have to work with poor and unreliable radio communications.

The LANdroids will be designed to overcome this problem using an autonomous positioning system that will help the robots adapt the communications networks as needed. To do so, the bots will use the 802.11g Wi-Fi standard to form mobile ad hoc networks that can repair and reroute themselves if, for example, the enemy destroys a robot.

Interesting initiative by Il Sole 24 ORE (Luca De Biase) in collaboration with Elastic (Nicola Mattina): 10domande | ai candidati premier alle elezioni politiche 2008, that is 10 questions to candidates to the 2008 political (italian) elections. From the site:

10domande è un progetto di giornalismo partecipativo: è una video-intervista di dieci domande formulate e scelte direttamente dagli elettori.

Round I (dal 3 al 23 marzo). Tu proponi una domanda che viene votata da tutti gli utenti del sito. Le dieci domande più votate diventano un’intervista ai candidati premier.

Round II (dal 24 marzo al 13 aprile). I candidati rispondono alle domande. Tu puoi votare le risposte e dire se ti piacciono o meno.

This is a really nice example of what participative media in the internet age are all about (also what means providing a smooth implementation and making a good use of them).

The weather today has been awesone (extraordinary warm for these days of the year - about 26 degrees Celsius at about 1 PM, it felt quite like summer) so I took the chance to get back to running (having been kind of lazy during the last months). I chose a pretty usual route: the esplanade from Cesenatico to Gatteo Mare (with a little tour across Gatteo Mare “docks” to Savignano Mare esplanade); the run went pretty well about 11 Kms in about 1 hour and 6 minutes. It has been a while since I thought to give MapMyRun a try, so I took this chance for a real test-driverun. The service (built on top of Google Maps service) is very nicely accomplished: it provides simple and effective tools to draw your route (an handy “Out and Back” function to automatically draw the way back, and also a loop function), it lets you easily export your route to KML or GPX (this really comes handy for the bikers out there who go for longer and more complex routes) and the user interface is responsive nonetheless the heavy javascript-ing going on under the hood (quite impressive). As a last note (big point for blogger’s big ego gratification) the service lets you easily embed the map into a blog post (to be fair, it uses an evil(tm) iframe).

Runners Note: on this route there are two part “under construction” (works should end in three weeks); one (about 500 mt) between the end of Valverde and the beginning of Villmarina, another at Gatteo Mare docks (Savignano Mare side).

Kluster is a platform aimed at helping people to develop their idea into real products by providing a system to support virtually any decision making activity (e.g. product development, marketing/advertising initiatives, and event planning). In other words:

kluster is a place to harness the power of community collaboration to get stuff done. everyone has ideas, we provide a platform to get them out of heads and into the world…where they belong.

The platforms is based around some neat concepts (phases - to structure the project -, sparks - to make proposals in a phase -, amps - to refine sparks - , watts - gained through participation and sound investments on successful sparks) that provide (IMHO) a “serendipitous” quantification (and reward) of the participation/activity/idea soundness and a game-like engaging and “flowing” experience. The decision making algorithm is quite sophisticated and more important it is open to change based on the activity of the whole system:

All the activity and participation on kluster is stored and analyzed. The data is used in the decision-making process. Each user’s successes, failures, reputation, areas of expertise, and overall history are considered. This encourages users to earn respect, to act positively, and most importantly, enables extremely educated decisions to be made using real world logic.

The recursiveness of having future developments (e.g. Collaboration Tools) of Kluster modeled as a Kluster project is also nice.

Kluster officialy launches at TED by the unveiling of the TED Kluster project. Project 72 aims to develop a real product in no more than 72 hours (identity / branding, tagline /ad campaing and packaging included).
From project 72 page:

over the next 72 hours we will harness the collective power of TED attendees, and our online community to develop a totally new, tangible product.

we can make anything that fits within our guidelines, but we would love to see something that has a global impact.

rapid prototyping machines, and a team of modelers are standing by…

things will move quick, so you’ll want to check back often.

Doubts may be on the effectiveness and the scalability of the decision making algorithm and the commenting/refining process: project 72 will provide a quick testbed. Time will tell in what decision-making processes (what about a political agenda? what about the planning of a research project?) and if the system will prove successful; from my first impressions I would definitely invest “my watts” on this project.

Begining 2008, Wafer is keeping up with the good ol’Web Cocktail tradition. Yesterday On friday evening I got to the WebCocktail on “MA CHI L’HA DETTO??
REPUTAZIONE, CREDITO, POPOLARITÀ AL TEMPO DI INTERNET“, and it turned, as in past “editions”, a good chance to hear some interesting thoughts and reflections concerning the web (in this case reputation) and have a few talks with intellectually honest and stimulating geeks people.
From the panel, moderated by Alessandra Farabegoli, I got some notes/sketches (I beg you pardon for my poor english which will affect the transposition of the original thoughts hereafter intertwingled with personal considerations):
- [Gianluca Diegoli - Minimarketing] Blogs made the critique (towards products/firms/brands) individual (no more anonymous as it was used in newsgroups time) weighing in the balance the reputation of the critique author (his blog, his thoughts, his social relations) . Bottom line: critiques grain consistency and “value” for the criticized product/firm/brand which can build on these to improve the “user experience”.
With respect to astroturfing the internet and the web do have antibodies, and the ecosystem is quite good at keeping everyone honest, in other words “lies have short legs” on the internet”. If you start a fake-user-generated marketing campaign the chances you got exposed and the firm’s reputation is blown are fairly high. On the other hand there’s an ever increasing interest in fruition of the web as an old-style/main-stream media as entertainment, so it doesn’t bother (this kind of audience) if the video is fake (e.g. Ronaldo and Crescina); it only matters if it is entertaining.
- [Massimo Mantellini] Long live “shop-window” corporate websites; firms hiding beyond fictitious participation (faking positive comments/blog posts) pollutes the value of social interactions on the web reducing the overall ecosystem value and reputation. Is really the case for corporate participation in social networking, does it bring any good (to the community/net-citizens)?
Nice question. Gianluca points out that if the value for a company lies in the relations (interactions) with its customers and hence the company do really value the relations (i.e. honest communication), keeping it apart from the participitative web/social networking scene inhibits it from exploiting its true potential.
- Speaking of transparency and honest communication [Antonella Beccaria] notes that journalism is not any stranger from distortion and pollution (often more subtle and difficultly discoverable due to relations with “strong powers” and interests rather than a “one company affair”); in the last years the consumer perception of the reputation of the main-stream information has been changing: more and more people started questioning newspapers, TV news.

Following the panel it came the so awaited cocktail… There I spoke with Gianluca, Massimo, Enzo, Francesco, and Fullo and Leonora about everything-web-computer-related (from (lack of) “hacking-attitude” of the new generations, to RSS (lack of) adoption, to still dominant portals market share in traffic on the web, to javascript for server-side scripting/agile development, http://appjet.com).

Then, I must thank Laura for being my Local Positioning System, driving me to the restaurant and to the wine bar.
Among the many matters of discussion It is worth noting that talking about methane-fueled vehicles it is always extraordinary amusing and funny (I do remember an incredible methane-powered trip from Cesenatico to Dimaro for a rafting week-end: never ending quests in find of a station, turbo-boost system (AKA fuel switch) to surpass other cars). I recommend you read Elena’s post on the matter: “Son sicura di voler entrare nel tunnel del metano?“.

From the high clock-wise: me, Elena, Tommaso, [mini]moglie and [mini]marketing, Alessandra, Michele, Laura, Luca and Livia. The photo was taken by .
Thank you all for the great time.

This one is pretty awesome… (just read it on John Batelle’s Searchblog)

“Google won’t search for Chuck Norris beacuse it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, he finds you.”

This is the first result for Googling "find Chuck Norris" and hitting "I’m Feeling Lucky."

In the meanwhile I get the time to write down some (not so badly) articulated thoughts on the interesting event I attended in Ravenna on October 13th “Strati in Rete” (inside “Strati della cultura” for ARCI’s 50th year anniversary) I’d like to share (for no good reason at all) my notes. I met and took a chance to nicely talk about internet and participation with Alessandro Bottoni (future value of past failings - GNU Arch and BazaarNG), Frieda Brioschi (valorization of expertise and competence in wikipedia), Livia Iacolare (her experience with intruders.tv), Antonio Sofi (participation and new media distribution models - radiohead’s In Rainbows and Magnatune) , Alessio Jacona (the right channels for the right audience - how the participation is changing the way companies “talk” to their customers), Valentina Orsucci (second life and metaverses possible innovations in [e]learning processes and a nice “Prisoner’s Dilemma” based experiment in the classroom) and Elena Zannoni (open source and technology adoption in Public Administration), and other people I forgot to mention.

Kudos to Luca for the organization.

Disclaimer: the notes are (highly) rough and my handwriting is hieroglyphic at best, this whole thing is a kind of experiment.

Strati in rete Notes 1/4 on Flickr
Strati in rete Notes 2/4 on Flickr
Strati in rete Notes 3/4 on Flickr
Strati in rete Notes 4/4 on Flickr

It’s official after lots of rumors Apple unveiled the “/webapps directory“.

Part fun. Part function.

[…]

The Internet and multi-touch.

With web apps, the power of the Internet meets the brilliance of multi-touch. And suddenly, iPhone and iPod touch can do that much more.

The Internet and multi-touch.

With web apps, the power of the Internet meets the brilliance of multi-touch. And suddenly, iPhone and iPod touch can do that much more.

Flick through lists of news articles on Digg. Play games like Sudoku and Bejeweled with the touch of a finger. View movie times, train schedules, and blogs.

Web apps don’t just extend the functionality of iPhone and iPod touch, they do it in style. Since web apps are websites designed specifically for the 3.5-inch screen, you’ll find the viewing experience amazing.

UPDATE (First impressions): The webapps collection is not yet that much crowded but it features yet a pretty useful variaty of apps from the usual “suspects2.0″, Facebook, digg (reddit where are thou?), a few feed readers and others, to the most crowded (as you may imagine) enterteinment directory and a pretty collection of useful utilities and search tools (events, travel info, local attractions, local business). From the available images all this apps show to have been “redesigned” to prefectly fit the iPhone screen and take full advantage of the touch interface. It’s pretty clear this selection makes an inviting appetizer for all the so-called-social geeks out there (if the iPhoniness-per-se wouldn’t have been proven yet enough attractive).

But the real interesting news come to the Developer side; the Web Development for iPhone section spells out a clear message:

Developers can create Web 2.0 applications that look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and provide seamless integration with iPhone applications and services including making a phone call, sending an email, and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using web standards can extend iPhone’s capabilities without compromising its reliability or security. Accessory developers can create products that attach to the dock connector, the stereo headphone minijack, and carrying cases.

So you can expect a flourishing of third-party applications that will feel as the native ones (althought built on html, css and javascript) and you won’t worry about screwing up your iPhone installing a broken and messy third-party app, which makes it a well argumented (yet questionable) decision on what to open and what not to.
I took a look at the sample iPhone webapp - Puzzler and you can see the aformentioned claim holds still: Puzzler is a web standards based application that you can fairly run in Firefox without any issues and you can verify it’s just a few (about two hundred) lines of javascript code and nearly nothing html and css (the application is actually very simple on the “presentation” side) - random thought: a nice companion to the Puzzler webapp would be a Conway’s Game of Life simulator.
Much of the success of a mobile platform depends on a right balance between the will to “play well” with others players and the ability to attract and keep customers; iPhone’s user interface proved to be very effective on the “attract-customers” ability, now that the opening to third-party applications has happened the jury is finally out, and we will se if the degree of openess adopted by Apple is enough to catch on developers and users and go beyond its gadget’s coolness.

I’m currently (beta) testing Jango: the quality of the songs and the reccomendation engine is pretty amazing, althought the variety of artists/songs in the database is not yet very wide (compared to last.fm), it is in constant increase, and I found two artists I did’t know, a more accurate analysis of the service in a following post. I’ve two beta invites left, the quickest commenters get the invites via email.