TechYob

Nice to be back from the break.

Was stumbling around Tanger, the live conversation network that I signed up for about 6 months ago. Looks like performance and functionality has improved leaps and bounds in recent weeks.

And it seams Nokia agrees. It is using Tanglers spiffy embedded live forum function as part of its official launch site.  See the offical launch site with Tangler here

In a previous version I would have told you to a look at the pre-launch buzz being captured by Tangler here

But now I can just share the action with you directly by embedding a snip of code by pressing the ’share’ button on the top right hand corner of each topic.

Bruce Joy, CEO of Everyday Interactive Networks is announcing at tomorrows XMediaLab Digital Worlds conference the release of their revolutionary “Worlds Collide” version of the VastPark virtual world platform. Unlike the overhyped Second Life where your content is captive to their proprietary platform, for the first time content developers can build and share 3-D worlds quickly and easily based on standards.

For example, say you designed an accurate 3-D rendition of the Opera House using Google’s Sketchup application. In the perfect world - or just a VastPark one - you should be able to resuse this in SecondLife, or publish it on your blog, or license it to a computer gaming company.

Web 1.0 was about separating content and presentation of data from the application so that the one webpage could be viewed from any standards compliant browser.

Web 2.0 is about providing the platforms for allowing users to contribute and generate content rather than the old-school publish and subscribe model. So today we can share text via blogs and video via companies like Youtube, but in a world where computer games now outgross the movie industry its only logical that digital worlds and digital content will be the next big thing in User Generated Content.

Today VastPark supports the ability to import standard .x files, but Bruce tells me he is looking to allow a much wider range of content to be published online in the future.

In a post a while back I tipped that political parties which grasped the realities of the YouTube generation would be the first across the line in a Web 2.0 amplified world.

The US presidential election, the ultimate popularity contest, just stepped up to the plate with potential candidates answering questions posted on youtube live to a TV audience. 

It looks as though Mike Judge’s Idiocracy is starting to come to fruition.  A world where dysgenics is a reality; smart people have abstained themselves out of existence, the lowest common denominator has proliferated and people have brands instead of names. 

How long is it till the first US election is decided with a HotOrWhat thumbsup/thumbsdown popularity poll? 

Im a believer in the value of natural language search, and the ability and promise of a cool californian company called Powerset to deliver a unique search experience for its users.  It was only last year that Dr Raymond Wong, one of Australia’s bright stars in data mining and information science, opened my eyes to the opportunity of any company that re-wrote the indexing strategy that is both Google’s strength and weakness. 

My fear is that Powerset’s genius will be un-done by its PR strategy. 

I remember the first day I discovered Google;  it was introduced to me by a close friend Simon Jolly, now head of Engineering for NetPriva, and I never looked back.  I had no expectations to disappoint.  Actually in retrospect Google had it easy in that the existing search players Yahoo and Altavista had conditioned us on what was a broken search experience.

The other advantage that Google had was that it was able to release its search engine to the public without the pressure to be an overnight success.  The only company in the world that pulls off a first time product launch is Apple.  Contrary to popular belief, PageRank didnt solve search.  It was the opportunity to test drive on millions and millions of queries without the pressure of a mainstream public launch that was a winning stroke for GOOG. 

By deliberately feeding the hype engine, Powerset is setting itself a hurdle that its incumbent never had to jump.  Instead of just learning on the job, Powerset now has to deliver with the execution of an iPhone but without the tolerance for failure.