what I need is a meta web 2.0 service, one which finds the web 2.o services I need because I can't keep up with them all. I can't even be bothered to work out which fine niche each service is targeting, and whether that is in fact a service I need.I have a long list of web 2.0 applications to explore, but there aren't enough hours in a day to go on safari, let alone send back deep & insightful blog posts from the field.
There's also a faint echo of some half-learned economics - the distinction between needs & wants, & capitalism's survival on the back of creating wants we didn't know we wanted & needs we didn't know we needed - making me suspicious of web 2.0's proliferation. Perhaps this is all pascalian diversion from What Really Matters.....
Even so, Martin's startup proposal might be the solution. Would it be a 'Rough Guide to Web 2.0' or something far more sophisticated & personalised? Would I be prepared to accept the degree of self-exposure it requires to function usefully? As Martin explains, such a service could only operate if it was primed with detailed knowledge of my preferences, routines, habits, like a sort of online PA.
Given the rather crude attempts of Amazon to tell me what kind of books & CDs my previous browsing/purchasing history suggests I would like to "consider", or the OU Courses & Qualifications website's hopeful listings of courses that 'students who studied this course have also studied at some time' I'm a little dubious about how much information I would need to provide, for a meta Web 2.0 service to achieve greater efficiency than I could myself.
I'm also curious as to how it would search the available options, which change daily. I don't think automated searching could come anywhere near capturing what each service offers, unless there was an agreed set of searchable metadata available (don't get me started on metadata: I encountered them once before & came off worse).
Despite these reservations, I still think it has promise, if only as an expression of our sense of helplessness watching something unfold that we cannot hope to grasp in its entirety.
1 comment:
Hi Lynne
not so much a rough guide to 2.0, more a 2.0 valet, or an automatic PLE, which assembles the services and tools it thinks you need. E.g. 'You're using the todo list extensively and Google calendar, so I have added Remember the Milk in as your organisation tool. I have preset some values and it will take you 5 minutes to complete. Here are some others who have used it effectively...'
As you say, getting the data to make that choice would be the tricky part.
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