Entries Tagged 'website' ↓
August 7th, 2008 — collaboration, community, nichepedia, website, wisdom of crowds
FreeBirthdayTreats
FreeBirthdayTreats.com is a great example of a niche website that has maximal utility with minimal complication. I call sites like these Nichepedias — they have a very useful database for a very specific action or set of knowledge. The question is, how long do such sites exist before they are gobbled up by the larger compendiums of niche information? What meta-database of niche database sites is currently in greatest use? The birthday treat niche is not important enough for Mahalo and not a google-friendly search; you have to think up a question before you can search for it.
Much is made of social media and its collaborative and informational benefits. I love talking about the wisdom of the crowds and any form of collective intelligence online. But there are times where the objective is too niche for the crowd to care much about it, like where to go for a free birthday ice cream. Then again, what would this website look like if it were turbocharged by the community-at-large? Perhaps we just mash it up with Yelp and Google Maps and call it day? Continue reading →
May 28th, 2008 — Web 2.0, collaboration, community, non-profit/NGO, progressive, security, socialmedia, television, website
Recently I started working at Blankspaces. This is a coworking office environment designed for freelancers and independent professionals who work solo, but who want to do so with others in an office environment. This can be a temporary, or somewhat more permanent solution to the isolation of working from one’s home. It’s a fantastic idea that embodies the best aspects of collaborative work and the potential for cross-pollination of ideas. The proximity encourages conversations that might only arise seldomly at a cafe or cocktail party, thereby increasing chances of serendipity in one’s business and life.
Blankspaces is the paradigmatic example of the intersection between physical and online space–they have an online community that compliments and augments the offline community. Some of my graduate school work looked at examples of synchronous and asynchronous online/offline collaboration; I’ve been looking for more examples ever since. Continue reading →
May 12th, 2008 — On Blogging, Web 2.0, community, global collaboration, non-profit/NGO, progressive, security, socialmedia, television, website, websites, wisdom of crowds
It is not often that I tell people they “must read” something. Bill McKibben eloquently tells us in this article why it is necessary for us to act now to make sure our governments collaborate on climate change agreements in the next 3 years.
I will say this at the outset– I believe him. I believe the scientist Rajendra Pachauri who McKibben quotes as giving humanity a hard deadline of 2012 — if we do not begin actions to lower emissions before that date, we will set off irrecoverable chain reactions in the environment.
The goal is to roll back our CO2 emissions from 385 to 350ppm (parts per million).
A few of us have just launched a new campaign, 350.org. Its only goal is to spread this number around the world in the next 18 months, via art and music and ruckuses of all kinds, in the hope that it will push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality.
If ever there were a time for me to proclaim “this is the paradigmatic example of why social and collaborative media are crucial,” now would be it. If you’ve ever asked, “what’s the point of Web 2.0?”, here is Continue reading →
