Technology Update

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Technology Update - Agenda 1. WORLD “LIVE” WEB 2. BLOGS 3. WIKIS 4. PODCASTS 5. RSS 6. XML 7. FRBR 8. OPEN SOURCE 9. VOIP 10. FOLKSONOMY and… New Technology Trends

Evolution of the World Wide Web Can you define the “World ‘Live’ Web”? XML Podcasts Open Source Blogs The World “Live” Web FRBR VoIP RSS Folksonomy Wikis

Can you define the “World ‘Live’ Web”? Are you missing out on ways to promote your organization or business effectively just because you’re not familiar with the latest technological trends? • Blogs • Wikis • Podcasts • RSS feeds • XML • FRBR • Open Source • VoIP • Folksonomy • MySpace

World LIVE Web In order to understand the World ‘Live’ Web, it’s important to understand the “static” Web. • It has "sites" with "addresses" • It has "locations" in "domains" • We "develop" with the help of "architects", "designers" and "builders". • Like homes and office buildings, our sites have "visitors" • Unless, of course, they are "under construction".

World LIVE Web • One layer down, we see the Net in terms of shipping. • "Transport" protocols govern the "routing" of "packets" between end points where unpacked data resides in "storage". • Back when we still spoke of the Net as an "information highway", we used "information" to label the goods we stored on our hard drives and Web sites. Today "information" has become passé. Instead we call it "content". • Publishers, broadcasters and educators are now all in the business of "delivering content". Many Web sites are now organized by "content management systems". • The content is material that can be made, shaped, bought, sold, shipped, stored and combined with other material. • "Content" is less human than "information" and less technical than "data", and more handy than either.

World LIVE Web • Blogs still look like Web sites and content to the static search engines, but to see blogs in static terms is to miss something fundamentally different about them: they are alive. • Their live nature, and their humanity, defines the live Web. • Blogging predated syndication, but it was syndication that began to give form to the live Web.

World LIVE Web • The most popular live Web search engines are (with around 80-million page views per day): • Technorati and Alexa focuses on rapid indexing, tag search and hot topics. • What they search is alive, moving, changing. Its results are also radically different from what you get from the static Web. • The others include: • Blogpulse stresses trending and ranking. • PubSub doesn't offer Web search but instead concentrates on keyword search feeds to users' aggregators. • Bloglines integrates search with aggregation and other services. • IceRocket emphasizes performance and simplicity. • Feedster leads with personalization and index size.

Blogs Blogs are Journals -not sites Writing isConversational New Form of Journalism Blogging is a new form of journalism that gives individuals a higher degree of leverage than ever before. They are written, not built. And the best ones change daily or faster. Many people wrongly assume that a blog is like a forum, or thread. This means that its authors are speaking, and not just "creating content". A blog speaks to readers and other bloggers who speak back, through e-mails, comments or on blogs of their own. What a blogger says is often incomplete and provisional. Like all forms of life, blogging remains unfinished for the duration.

Blogs 1. Meme-du-jour bloggers comment on the high-profile ideas of the moment. This requires more or less constant research, and results in posts that are often less than polished or complete (because they have to be composed quickly, and also because these stories are after all, developing). This type of blogger is usually focused on political issues. 2. Caterers determine what an audience segment wants to hear, and pursue that theme aggressively. This style is distinguished from our next group by a core cynicism, or at best a lack of real conviction. Caterers' content is determined by readers' tastes more than by a central guiding force. Most caterers play in the political sandbox, while many others offer porn or sensationalism. The surest sign of catering is the demon-ization of some person or group outside their readership. 3. Nichebloggers, aka localbloggers. Someone focused on any particular subject a "local" blogger (that subject being the 'locality'). The subject is usually something the writer is passionate about, or has special expertise in. 4. Internet guides, such as Instapundit, create little original material. Their strength is that they are trusted link finders/filters. MetaFilter and BoingBoing are other Internet guides. This is not to say that these sites don't add value to the posts they link. Rather, it means that their posts are determined by the stories they link to (contrast with determining a concept and then researching material that supports that concept).

Blogs 5. The celebrity-bloggeris someone whose site traffic comes from fame achieved outside of blogging. While some bloggers achieve notoriety because of blogging, that has not become much of a factor. Other celebs, such as Barbra Streisand, are guaranteed site traffic to their blogs, even though they post on subjects well beyond their range of actual expertise (politics, in Ms. Streisand's case). 6. The service blogger performs a service, often to the 'Meme' blogger (see 1). The Political Teen drives its high traffic numbers by providing video clips to 'Meme' bloggers. The Truth Laid Bear does well by providing at-a-glance traffic stats and other group services. 7. The long-tail bloggeris the rarest of successful breeds. This style requires consistent blogging over a long period of time (hence the rarity in a fairly new medium). Blogging is heavily favored by search engines in the current Internet cultural environment. A classic long-tail blogger such as Dustbury gets a very respectable audience (currently approaching 1,000 unique visits a day) because the site has been commenting on popular culture, steadily and succinctly, for over nine and a half years. A look at Charles' site stats tells the story: Out of every 1,000 hits, about 70% come to the site's front page or a current post.

Wikis • Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. • Wiki supports hyperlinks • Wiki allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself. • Allows everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site and encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by non-technical users. • In a search, use the keyword wiki - Examples in use: • Whose Line Is It Anyway? • Start a Wiki

Podcasts • Podcasting is a term coined in 2004 when the use of RSS syndication) technologies became popular for distributing audio content for listening on mobile devices and personal computers (namely, iPod). • A podcast is a web feed of audio or video files placed on the Internet which anyone can subscribe to. • Podcasters' websites also may offer direct download of their files, but the subscription feed of automatically delivered new content is what distinguishes a podcast from a simple download or real-time streaming • Use of "podcast" to describe both audio and video feeds seems natural to some users, while others prefer to reserve the word for audio and coin new terms for video subscriptions.

Podcasts • In a search use the word, “podcast” as one of your keywords - Examples:o The Podcast Directory • o Podcast Alleyo Apple iPod’s • o Yahoo Podcastso Create your own podcast

RSS • RSS feeds: Really Simple Syndication • RSS tells us what's changed. • RSS is about "new" instead of "news." • You no longer have to limit your reading to sites you know get updated frequently like CNN.com. • Instead, when you find a site that you enjoy, even one that gets updated infrequently, sign up for its RSS feed and whenever the site is updated, you'll be notified.

RSS • How to access RSS feeds: • Install a news reader that displays RSS feeds from the Web sites you select, enabling you to view hundreds of headlines at once. • After installing the news reader, you can add each feed manually by clicking on the "Subscribe" or the "XML" orange button next to the feed. • An alternative to downloading a dedicated news reader is to use a Web-based news reader. For example, My Yahoo! users can now add RSS feeds directly to their personal page.

RSS • RSS is not a newsletter system that spams you with email. • RSS is much simpler to maintain for the publisher/syndicator. The weblog software creates the RSS format automatically each time the syndicate updates their weblog. • RSS is explicitly opt-in. Someone cannot send you an RSS, you have to enter the URL of the RSS feed into whatever program you use to view it in order to get it. • Unsubscribing from an RSS feed is simple and foolproof. You simply tell your software to stop downloading it. No more hassles trying to unsubscribe to an unwanted email newsletter. • RSS processing can be easily automated. This is a consequence of RSS being based on XML. • RSS is largely anonymous because there's no need to give out an email address.

RSS • So why do you care about RSS? • No more surfing from site to site. • No more missing something because you forgot to visit a particular site one day. • No spam. • RSS delivered Web content is easy to scan. RSS is like Tivo for the Web

RSS • The easiest way to get started is to simply subscribe to some RSS feeds for sites that you find interesting. • You will need a piece of software called an aggregator. • If you use MyYahoo!, there's a new RSS service built right in which works well for reading a few RSS feeds. • If you use Windows, NewsGator, NewZCrawler, and SharpReader all seem to be quite popular (NewsGator even integrates with Outlook). • Mac user? Consider NetNewsWire. If you'd like to user a browser-based tool,

RSS • Once you have an aggregator, try some of these:Note that unless otherwise noted, these URLs are the actual URLs of the RSS feed. Simply cut and paste them into your aggregator. These are not chosen as a representative sample, but simply as specific examples. o Windley's Technometriao Radio community Servero Amazon.com Syndicated Contento New York Timeso c|net News (my favorite) o Time Magazine • Other Resources • Rafe Needleman's RSS Tutorial (video) • LockerGnome's RSS Resources • RSS in Government • If you have a Web site or otherwise publish information on the Web, you may want to consider publishing an RSS feed of your own. The software you use may already support it. • If not, you may need to get someone to so some programming for you. In either case, publishing RSS is relatively straightforward and your readers will be grateful for the improved experience.

FRBR • Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records • It is a 1998 recommendation of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) to restructure catalog databases to reflect the conceptual structure of information resources. • Worldwide Library Cooperative

Open Source • An online interface that allows web site users to submit relevant material to the web site authors for sharing with other users. • It describes the development method used for many pieces of software, including the Linux kernel, where the source is freely available for anyone to work on, or modify, or learn from, or use in other projects. • Open source software is similar in idea to "free software" but slightly less rigid than the free software movement. • Users of open source software are (generally) able to view the source code, alter and re-distribute open source software. • There is however less of an emphasis in the open source movement on the right of information and source code to be free, and in some cases companies are able to develop proprietary products based on open source ones. • Various Licenses • Free Software Directory

VoIP • Voice over Internet Protocol is the technology used to transmit voice conversations over a data network using the Internet Protocol (Internet or a corporate Intranet). • Get ready to change the way you think about long-distance phone calls. VoIP is a method for taking analog audio signals, like the kind you hear when you talk on the phone, and turning them into digital data that can be transmitted over the Internet. • VoIP can turn a standard Internet connection into a way to place free phone calls. The practical upshot of this is that by using some of the free VoIP software that is available to make Internet phone calls, you are bypassing the phone company (and its charges) entirely.

VoIP • VoIP is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to completely rework the world's phone systems. • VoIP providers like Vonage have already been around for a little while and are growing steadily. • Major carriers like AT&T are already setting up VoIP calling plans in several markets around the United States, and the FCC is looking seriously at the potential ramifications of VoIP service. • VoIP is a clever "reinvention of the wheel."

Folksonomy • Folksonomy refers to the collaborative but unsophisticated way in which information is being categorized on the web. • Instead of using a centralized form of classification, users are encouraged to assign freely chosen keywords (called tags) to pieces of information or data, a process known as tagging. • Examples of web services that use tagging include those designed to allow users to publish and share photographs, bookmarks, social software, and most blog software, which permits authors to assign tags to each entry. • Examples: • Flickr • del.icio.us • TagCloud

New Technology Permalink - is a type of URL designed to refer to a specific information item (often a news story or weblog item) and to remain unchanged permanently, or at least for a lengthy period of time to prevent link rot. Microformats - are a set of data formats developed by Technorati, CommerceNet, and others that are intended to give meaning to content on the Internet. They are built on XHTML, where possible reusing existing semantic elements, and adding new meaning via a system of "class", "rel", or "rev" attributes Torrent/BitTorrent - is the name of a client application for the top torrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution protocol. And is designed to widely distribute large amounts of data without incurring the corresponding consumption in server and bandwidth resources (and typically, monetary fees attracted as a result of that).

New Technology Channels - These are XML links to new articles or blogs. Sometimes called a feed. Syndication - The sharing of content among different Web sites. The term is associated with licensed content such as television programs and newspaper columns. Feeds - These are XML documents used for Web syndication, often with links to new articles or blog posts and brief descriptions. Sometimes called a channel. Proxyserver - An indirect means of connecting to the Internet. A desktop connects to a server, which then connects to the Internet. Sometimes this is done to filter content or intercept viruses before they infect an internal network. If you are connecting to the Internet via a proxy server, you will need to make changes in your RSS reader configuration.

Keep on Top of New Technology Dictionaries and Encyclopedias • Computer Currents High-Tech Dictionary: 7,000+ terms - Searchable alphabetically or by keyword • FOLDOC: Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing: Searchable dictionary on anything ‘computing’ • PC Webopaedia: online encyclopedia and search engine dedicated to computer technology • Dictionary of PC Hardware and Data Communications Terms: Searchable by concept or keyword • Whatis.com: Explore at random, search specific term, or learn by reading definitions in sequence according to subject Electronic Publications • Check out the Resource Center at ComputerWorld • Infosecurity Magazine contains in-depth articles on issues of information security • Internet World is the voice of E-Business and Internet Technology • The Macintosh News Network for reports, reviews, updates and tips for all things Mac • See MacWEEK.com for news and resources for Macintosh users • Netsurfer Digest provides short, crisp news bites, notices, and reviews, and is sent to you via email • Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals combines evaluations of data content with discussions of delivery media • Tech: Business & Finance/New Media News The most current technology news from a west coast perspective • Tech Law Journal contains news and analysis of legislation and regulations affecting the computer and Internet industry • TidBITS covers news and views relating to the Macintosh and the Internet • Windows Internet Magazine focuses on Windows-related news and products • For more titles, try Ziff Davis Magazines for links to popular computer magazines

Technology Update