Meme - A definition

“an element of a culture or system of behaviour that may be considered to be passed from one individual to the another by non genetic means, esp. imitation.” -from The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary (2004)

The best example of a meme in Internet world is BoingBoing: a directory of wonderful things, which is described Cory Doctorow in an interview as being “is a place where four eclectic people catalog every thing they think is interesting.” It has an audience every day somewhere in the realm of 2 million netizens.

That just blows me away. I am sure all types of marketing suits are trying to work out how to harness this potential. It also indicates how if you can sort information and filter it in a meaningful way on your website then you are providing a very useful and popular service. What is it that is so attractive about Boing Boing? I think it is also important to note that is a collaborative effort. Not the work of just one person.

The reason I became interested in Mr Doctorow is that I read a great article about the Metadata called Metacrap. His writing style is intelligent and funny and I respect his opinions. I hope one day other people can say that about my writing. I don’t think I have got to that level yet.

Australia’s copyright law breaks search engines

I was interested to hear about Phillip Ruddock and his role defending the copyright laws. Since the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with America copyright has been extended from 50 years to 70 years. It is making it difficult for those in the libraries who often have to verify copyright. Learn more about the changes in this article
An article from Boing Boing: a directory of wonderful things

RSS feed ’scraping’ is stealing! is it or isn’t it?

Check out these pages for a good article and debate on this difficult copyright issue. I wonder where Australian copyright law stands on this. Hmmm. I will have to check that out when I get some more free time.

seen originally on Breaking New Media News - Last 48 Hours - Monday Aug. 28th - Robin Good’s Latest News

Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS” « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger
On the Sclobleizer Blog Mgreenly says, basically, that by putting a full-text RSS feed out there it’s like giving everyone a license to copy my content and use it however they want.

Ahh, so if it’s easy to copy it’s OK to steal?

American copyright law says “not true.”

I think it is getting harder and harder to enforce the copyright laws which is one of the key factors to making laws work in the real world. It is similar to advertising on the web where people always try to ensure that you watch there ads. First there were pop ups then there were pop up blockers. People put up with banners so long as they don’t block what they really want to see. Being able to cut and paste using software apps you can filter what you see. The user/advertiser creator/copyright infringer battle continues.

Nowdays javascript is used to produce cleaner pages and customisable pages with the ads cut out. Where will it end?

What Tim Berners Lee has to say about Web 2.0

I really like this design and I agree with the quote by Tim Berners Lee.

So what is this Web 2.0 thing?

When I first heard about this Web 2.0 concept I thought it was some kind of concrete thing, like a new version of Windows OS or a new browser. Having read a little wider about it I’ve realised it is an abstract concept. According to the Wikipedia

Web 2.0 can also be called the

…”Participatory Web”, emphasizing tools and platforms that enable the user to tag, blog, comment, modify, augment, select from, rank, and generally talk back to the contributions of other users and the general world community

I don’t really know if we have had that much of a revolutionary step happen. I do think however, that organisation of the Internet has become more complex but I don’t know that has become any more useable. I am certainly interested in the development of collaborative tools and the so called ‘architecture of participation’.

The development of decentralised, collaborative tools will hopefully boost communication and interactivity both in corporate intranets and between organisations and their users. Already wikis are widely being used by companies for this purpose. However there is always the problem of ‘knowledge as power’. People who are worried about maintaining their postions in the organisational hierarchy may be unwilling to share their knowledge for the greater good. Also many people have domineering personalities and may only be interested in sharing a wiki if they control the way content is delivered.

However, on the whole I think these lightweight content management systems (CMS) are very useful and I am interested to see how they will be further developed.

Trying to get more of an idea about Web 2.0 I read an article called The amorality of Web 2.0 which I have highlighted interesting ideas out of below.
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: The amorality of Web 2.0

‘perpetual betas’ (one of the Web 2.0 articles of faith)

This is one of the things that annoys me about the use of technology having to constantly update to the next big thing. I remember reading a humourous book about computers I think it was by Dave Barry and he said that computers are great for people who like to tinker and fiddle. The idea of being able to control and filter information is half of the attraction for me of customising my GUI with new browsers, plug-ins, and extensions.
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: The amorality of Web 2.0

Without a rigorous editorial process they will never achieve encyclopedic greatness, but on the other hand, it’s still a handy reference. It’s not as if they’re spreading disinformation on a mass scale, there’s just a general quality problem.

I thought this quote captures some of what is wrong with Wikipedia.

I also think there is more than a grain of truth to the idea that perhaps Web 2.0 is just an aesthetic movement. Here’s an example of the Web 2.0 school of graphic design.

Digg’s getting gamed… what we really need to do is learn to question, and learn to trust

Personally, perhaps it’s just how my brain is wired up, but I connected the dots between “Digg popular = traffic”, “lots of friends = lots of diggs” pretty much right away. But is it worth the backlash doing it so blatantly? I know kids with 1000 friends on MySpace, how easy would it be for them to do?

Source: The Secret Group-Digging Conspiracy | Performancing.com Chris Garret Aug 18 2006

I think Chris Garret has hit the nail on the head with what can be oh so wrong with the latest system of organising web stories with social ranking. It always seems to come back to the issue of trust. Trust ratings and other systems are always open to manipulation but in the end I guess you just gotta trust somebody.

Del.icio.us… Deliciously hard to remember URL.

Del.icio.us… Deliciously hard to remember URL. August 19, 2006
Posted by infomanblog in Uncategorized. trackback , edit post

Can’t remember the del.icio.us website URL ? Read this » Digital Inspiration

‘http://delico.us http://delic.o.us How Do I Spell Delicious. Where do I put the dots ? The world’s most popular bookmarking service - del.icio.us - is also the most ugly URL on the internet that gets even more confusing when typing the web address by hand.‘

Source: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/04/cant-remember-delicious-website-url.html

I totally agree with this article what are they thinking with this URL? I just don’t understand what it is supposed to mean. I think I will have to investigate this further when I have more time. This just doesn’t make any sense at all. I guess it is all about marketing you want a name that isn’t been used and hasn’t existed before. Like sony this is a good idea because if you pick an existing word it may have other meanings in other languages or have another ‘euphenistic’ meaning.