Techophilia and Social Progress

Andrew Hoppin is a great guy. He just helped to launch a new venture called GoodStorm that gives non-profits a similar service like CafePress, except that the mission– to do good– and business model (we give away most of the profits) is entirely predicated on helping progressive communities and organizations to generate meaningful operating income in a community context, rather than simply selling kitsch at high prices. Which is great, because Cafe Press ain’t so grand. Limited supply and poor quality of merchandise. The cups I’ve bought from them faded out in only a few months and the tshirts aren’t great quality. Check out CNET’s take and Bryght’s take.

Technorati nptech

I like the way this article has laid out Web 2.0 and provides a simple explanation. The larger companies have definitely started to take more than an interest in Web 2.0. “Network effect” and “web-based services” are the best descriptions in the article of Web 2.0. Websites can “share” information with each other and new knowledge can be gained with the resulting “mashups” between them. It’s a natural progression from the silo’ed Web 1.0 websites to the integrated content sharing of Web 2.0 sites. But there’s a long way to go before it is really useful. The geotracking of crime stats is interesting, but there’s a lot more like this one. Authentication is one of the tough areas that hasn’t been successfully addressed yet for Web 2.0 to truly take off. Companies like Sxip are working on this but it’s not quite there yet.

Love the whole description and idea of technology tribes. I think I’m a “Faithful Mainstreamer” as I love to buy new technology, but not immediately. I can relate to the fact that often things aren’t quite worked out, but I always feel they should be. There were a few things that I did do immediately – like the Treo, but luckily that worked out, even though I had to give Bell info on how to connect the phone as a modem on my laptop. Some other things, like the wifi speakers just sucked. And phone companies hate me as I refuse to sign any long term deal, and just jump around to whoever has the best technology.

I have really been working at our wiki and trying to understand its relevance. As outlined here, one big issue is the way to monitor content. The wiki is already big enough that I can’t get a handle on it too easily. When people post, it will be more and more difficult to monitor. I can only imagine what happens when the wiki gets as large as the wikipedia. My biggest fear is the more subtle falsehoods someone might post that can be difficult to detect. For example, changing a date in several entries to make something happen before another event. These would be hard for anyone to track down. I am interested in what a Wiki will be good for, but the general public “anyone can edit” might not be the possible way forward.