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Category: web design

Web 4.0: The Official Definition

Published October 5, 2007 by cgerrish

Small Electronic Safe

Jason Calacanis has provided us with the official definition for Web 3.0 — smart people + Web 2.0 technology, a recipe that amazingly corresponds to his own Mahalo project. People around the blog-o-sphere were up in arms, gnashing their teeth, no one had realized that it was time to define Web 3.0. Bloggers quickly polished up their definitions, counter-definitions or attacks. Some claimed to have defined Web 3.0 sooner and pointed to prior art.

But when the din resided, they asked me, although we’re not sure what Web 3.0 is, and we’re not sure why it makes sense to assign numbers to the Web— what is Web 4.0? Surely if we are going to invest our blood and treasure in the Web, we should associate ourselves with the highest possible number.

So here it is, the official definition of Web 4.0: It’s Web 2.0 mashup/api/services technology + user-asserted identity + really private, important personal information. Smart people are in there somewhere, but really— that approach is soooo Web 3.0. You may ask, can we see any of these Web 4.0 companies? Sure, there are a few starting to emerge, take a look at: Microsoft’s HealthVault, whatever Google’s Health initiative turns out to be and on the financial side, things like Mint and CakeFinancial. Although on the financial side these companies aren’t really 4.0 yet. Look for a vault that contains all your financial data which the vendors with whom you do business will be obliged to deliver to you. You’ll be putting the digital media that you own in there as well. Oh, and throw Doc Searl’s idea about Vendor Relationship Management in there as well, you’ll store your VRM prefs there as well. Stuff you are, stuff you own, data about stuff you own, stuff you want, and of course, your attention data. But it’s gotta be secure and it’s gotta solve the identity problem.

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Feudalism & Automating Web Polution

Published August 27, 2007 by cgerrish

Scoble writes that Mahalo, Facebook and TechMeme will “kick Google’s ass” in 4 years. Actually, he both writes and videos his prediction.

We live in a polluted environment on the Web. We destroyed the value of the Meta Keyword tag, and with spam we’ve made email a pain and with SEO spam, we’re poluting Web search results. And our poluters use automation for the purpose of polution. No wonder the internet is boring. We’ve fouled our nest, and now we retreat to the walled gardens, gated communities and da club.  The Web begins to organize itself into feudal kingdoms.

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Mahalo & Winer: The Human Element

Published August 12, 2007 by cgerrish

Calacanis makes products, Winer makes networked formats (and products to support those formats). Calacanis thinks about the Web’s ecosystem, but he also thinks about the economics of the Web and is willing to pay for value at the leading edge (even in the so-called social network space). That makes him rare.

So why the break? What’s really upset Winer about Mahalo? That it’s not a platform? This seems unlikely. While Winer is usually good about thinking about ordinary users, in this case I think he’s really thinking only about developers as users, and not ordinary users.

What’s good about Mahalo? Compare the search results pages for “how to speak french.”

Google: How to speak french

Mahalo: How to speak french

To my eye, the Mahalo page is more useful if a person would like to learn how to speak french. Granted the Google page lists the Mahalo page in its results, but the Google page is filled with advertising. Google doesn’t really tell me how to learn french, it provides a list of pointers based on a keyword query and page rank algorithm. Google doesn’t even know or care about my interest in speaking french.

Is the Mahalo page useful to a Web developer? Is it a low-level network protocol or format that can be mashed up into something new? Not at the moment, but it would be very useful to a developer who wanted to learn to speak french. The interesting thing about Mahalo is that it brings editorial judgement into the process of searching and finding.

And that injection of the “editor” is probably what Winer objects to the most, although he hasn’t put it that way— and maybe doesn’t realize it. Most of the technology that Dave has built is for the purpose of empowering the individual. Blogs, RSS, OPML, Manilla, Frontier — all these things give power to the individual to create. Mahalo doesn’t do that, it just provides good answers to questions. And to do that it needs smart editors to compile, structure and write answers. This makes the editor an important filter. Dave prefers to build his own filters and empower users.

From this perspective, Mahalo moves things in the other direction. Mahalo may start with good editors, but that may not always be true. If I search for “Dave Winer” on Mahalo, what will the editors return as a result? Will the break between Winer and Calacanis have any affect on the results? The human element can provide the extra intelligence that makes the difference between a good list of pointers and good answer to a question. It can also inject bias, cultural prejudice, political agendas, economic agendas, etc. Will Mahalo have the wisdom and ability to respond to its inevitable mistakes? And once that process starts, will Mahalo still be able to provide good answers to questions?

So maybe Winer is thinking about users. Calacanis has created a useful product, but he needs to answer the questions that Winer hasn’t been able to articulate.

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Quo Vadis? In Praise of the Sloppy Web (HTML5)

Published August 9, 2007 by cgerrish

For the longest time I thought that the future of the Web page was XHTML. If you read the literature about standards-based HTML coding, it seems like XHTML is the presumed next step. The more I investigated HTML Document Type Definitions and how they invoke different modes in browsers, it became clear that no current Web browser can deal with XHTML. HTML 4 is the current standard, and you can still go “strict” which is what the “standards-based” crowd is looking for.

The difficulty in moving HTML forward is that the HTML engines in Web browsers need to agree to include the new standard and then users need to upgrade their browsers. The next step in HTML also needs to work in older browsers. XHTML doesn’t do that. Recently I’ve started hearing about HTML 5 as the next step. The proposals around HTML 5 have started with a group of Web browser companies. That’s a great sign that standards will be adopted. And as usual Microsoft isn’t part of the group.

We’re living through a relatively good time for standards-based coding. There are still lots of Web browser differences, but the Web page has really moved forward. The rise of CSS, AJAX and unobtrusive Javascript/DOM scripting has really created a dynamic and creative period for the Web page. HTML 5 would provide even more stability, standardization and some great new mark up elements.

So I’ve been asking myself, if the Web browser companies move to HTML 5, what happens to XHTML? HTML 5 is still very forgiving, it still understands sloppy code. XHTML is strict and breaks if not properly validated. The success and rapid growth of the Web was based on browsers rendering sloppy code—they are very liberal in what they accept. If we must choose between a sloppy and strict future, put me down on the side of flexibility and sloppiness.

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