Category: The Future!

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To Be or Note2be, France Answers The Question

The Cost Of Compliance

At the beginning of this month, the French government took a bold step in an Orwellian direction. Note2be, a hugely successful networking site where students could go and rate their teachers’ performance, was directed to censor all the content on its site, removing all teachers’ names from any post by any user. If the site failed to comply, the fine would be 1,000 Euros every day until the site was in compliance.

The site had been online only since late January, but already over 50,000 teachers had marks rated on them. And the marks were overwhelmingly positive, with an average rating of well over 65% favorable. And it’s not like this was a new idea. Other countries have sites like this as well. The popular e-magazine Techdirt reports:

“Sites like RateMyTeacher.com and RateMyProfessor.com have been around in the US for ages, but it appears that some other countries aren’t too thrilled with the concept. Last year, a teachers’ union in the UK demanded that the sites be banned which seemed a bit extreme.“

It should be noted that the attempt to ban those sites in the UK appear to have failed. So what was it that prompted the French government to rule against the site? The Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports it this way, as found on AFP.Google:

“A group of teachers and several teachers’ union asked a Paris court to decide whether the site broke privacy laws by publishing teachers’ names and ratings and whether it breached their right to be judged only by superiors.

On Monday, the court ordered the site to stop using teachers’ names both on the general site and in its discussion forums and said it would impose a fine of 1,000 euros per day for each day it failed to implement the judgment.

“The exercise of freedom of information and of expression has as limits that it does not damage teaching activities,” it said.“

A Different Opinion

There are a couple of things there that bother someone such as myself. The first: “their right to be judged only by superiors”? I should hope that I would not need to add an expository statement to clarify my abhorence to the logic that could justify that way of thinking. To me, it sounds medieval. I get a picture in my mind of serfs, and the men who walk upon them. The second thing: While I agree with the final statement there, I don’t see how it’s applicable in this case. How does publishing these names “damage teaching activities”?

This isn’t the 1st time this particular question has raised itself before the European people. The German courts last year decided something completely different, when faced with essentially the same question. AFP reports:

“Last year a German court, hearing a case taken by a teacher against a rating site, ruled that teachers could be rated online by their pupils.

It said the ratings, so long as they were not defamatory, were allowable under the principles of freedom of expression and that publishing a teacher’s name was acceptable because it could easily be found on the school’s website.“

Not To Be

In searching for information while writing this piece, I was surprised how much of the English speaking web was simply ignoring it. I was finally able to find a quote from one of the founders of Note2be, on WebProNews:

“This is an astonishing and surprising decision that has worrying implications for the development of the Web,” said Stephane Cola, who co-founded the site, Reuters reported. “The ranking and evaluation of professionals on the Web is a fundamental principle and a primary motor of the Internet around the world,” he told reporters after the verdict.”

In the end, for whatever logic or illogic there was behind the decision, the ultimate and unstated goal was achieved. By requiring the site to remove and monitor every single communication, the government placed impossible restrictions on the operation of the site, and it had to shut down to comply with the ruling. From the note on their front page: “This decision calls into question the operation even of all the forums of discussion, blogs and Community sites where the Net surfers could express themselves freely on the French Net.”

Note2be

Click on the thumbnail for a larger view. What you’ll see is a part of the website as it looks March 11th. The site’s in French, and though alot of you will no doubt be able to read it, some will not. So there’s a translation of the text which I got from Babelfish. It’s worth reading.

I am Jon. Thanks for stopping by.

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With Apologies… Heeeer’s Obama

Little People

I found this just now and you need to read it. I am sorry for the political nature of this post, and although I won’t reveal my stance on abortion right now on this blog, I believe this is just stupid and I want you to see it.
From an article on cnsnews.com:

“…When he was in the Illinois Senate, for example, he repeatedly opposed a bill that would have defined as a “person” a baby who had survived an induced-labor abortion and was born alive.

In a 2001 Illinois Senate floor speech about that bill, he argued that to call a baby who survived an abortion a “person” would give it equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment and would give credibility to the argument that the same child inside its mother’s womb was also a “person” and thus could not be aborted.”

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but if a baby is alive, isn’t that baby really just a little human being, which is to say, a person? And shouldn’t our laws reflect that truth? At this point, it’s not so much a moral question as it is a rational one.

So what do they do? The abortion failed and now there’s a screaming (insert word here, ’cause according to Obama it ain’t no person). Well, it has no rights so I guess they just continue with the abortion and kill it? What’s wrong with this picture?

According to this, Obama thinks preserving Roe v Wade is more important than making law which reflects real life. Real life. Real… as in right there, in the doctor’s hands, screaming. Denying this miracle (and miracle it is when a baby survives an abortion attempt) seems somehow not only wrong to me, but the accomplishment of a mind capable of any sort of deception required to reach it’s goals.

Mister Obama, in my mind, you are now not a “person”. You are a part of the self-serving mediocrity that is destroying America with short-sightedness and deception, and thinking like that can never help us. A leader who would deny an obvious feature of reality, such as a breathing child, who would deny even just that one living soul their natural and legal rights, is no “leader” I could ever support.

I am Jon, and I am calling Bullicus Shitticus on Obama.

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Android, 3G, The Web, Quake and More

Okay, Where’s the VGA port?

Below you’ll find a short video showing a genuine implementation of Android, demo’d by Andy Rubin, Director of Mobile Platforms at Google. The video, which I found searching the BBC, is less than 4 minutes and shows off some of the features we can expect in phones to be released later this year. You’ll see broadband web browsing, the game “Quake”, and for the 1st time on any mobile phone, Google’s Streetview. Android looks more like a desktop replacement every time I see it.
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Google’s Andy Rubin demonstrates Android features with Darren Waters of the BBC.

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I am Jon, and I think an external monitor is a great idea for an Android powered phone. All we really need is a USB port.

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Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope

This is gonna be so cool on a 52inch widescreen monitor.

Available Spring 2008 as a free download is the greatest thing Microsoft has done since the 80s. Below you’ll see the video showing Roy Gould, from the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, introducing Microsoft’s WorldWideTelescope in front of a live audience. The whole thing lasts about 7 minutes. If you don’t have that long, check out just the 1st couple of minutes. That’s all I was going to devote to it to begin with, but I couldn’t help watching all of it (Except the BMW thing at the end… out of my range).



Roy Gould Introduces WorldWideTelescope
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From the FAQ at WorldWideTelescope.org

WorldWide Telescope is an observatory on your desktop, allowing you to see the sky in a way you have never seen before; individual exploration, multi-wavelength views, stars and planets within context to each other, zoom in/out, and a capability for anyone to create and share a tour of the universe.

The Visual Experience Engine delivers seamless panning zooming around the night sky.

WWT delivers seamless integration of science:-relevant information including multi-wavelength, multiple telescope distributed image and data sets, and one-click contextual access to distributed Web information and data sources.

Imagine that. I’ve always wanted to be able to tie in hundreds of telescopes, capable of capturing multiple wavelengths and enhanced with the ability to find cross-referenced information on nearly anything I could find in the sky…

I am Jon, and I am just going to love this.

Thanks to GeeksAreSexy, Ted.com and Microsoft.

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Android – The Gphone At Mobile World Congress

Awhile back I published a piece on the so-called Google phone. You’ll find a link to it over in the Readers’ Choice widget in the sidebar (This, That and the Other Thing). In that post, I mentioned the Android operating system, developed by Google, then pretty much given away to any and every developer in the world. That was November. This month at the Mobile World Congress, Android was the big attraction.

Below you’ll find a couple of videos showing the current state of Android development. While most companies are focusing on designing new hardware to run the new operating system, a Chinese company called e28 has had some success using it on an existing, production model phone. You can see Android at work on a normal handset in the 1st video, which lasts just over 4 minutes.

The second video runs a quite bit shorter, and is more apt to be what we see for sale sometime before Christmas. Don’t worry about the size of the circuit cards, they’ll be shrunk to fit neatly inside a normal, pocket-sized phone once all the testing is finished. The 1st phones we see in the US will probably resemble the iPhone a bit, with a full face touch-screen and more features and web applications than you’d expect.

While I was researching this update, planning to write a great article on it, I came across a rather complete and well-written piece over on last100.com. It was so good, I decided to just link to it, instead of rewriting what was already so well-done. I highly recommend clicking that link.

And now, the Android videos from the Mobile World Congress:


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e28 shows off a working Android system on current hardware.
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Showing off the Android web browser.


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For more photos and info on Android, check out these links:
engadget
Wired

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I am Jon, and I still want my phone to fix me a sandwich, please.

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Giving It Away

Christmas gifts.Image via Wikipedia

Recommended Reading

I’d like to present here a rather long quote, from a work entitled “An Economy For Giving Everything Away“. You’ll find it listed in my Recommended Reading links in the sidebar.

When I first found this work, I was immediately fascinated by it, as it includes a concept I’ve held dear for several decades. I hope you enjoy this little snippet, the whole work is much larger. I hope it piques your interest to the point of clicking and going there, reading the entirety of it.

“Minimizing Anxiety rather than Maximizing Happiness

We have suggested that an individual can behave with the outlook that they are giving everything away. If they accept this, not as a special calling, but as a universal responsibility, then in practice, they will consider the extremes of both wealth and poverty as causing anxiety, and will naturally seek an equilibrium between them.

This equilibrium is in many ways compatible with the usual market forces, and in a behavioral sense, practically invisible. However, the motivation is entirely different. A consumer seeks to maximize happiness. But for a giver, happiness is exhausting, and interferes with their giving. A giver wants to be responsive, and their own happiness is an emotional noise that takes away their sensitivity to others. A giver wants to marshal their efforts on their life vision. Happiness and fun are helpful as indicators of what attracts us, but not necessary or even helpful when we are doing what we truly want to do.

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Minimizing anxiety leads to the same efficiencies as maximizing happiness whenever the giver lets the market decide what constitutes “best use”. The differences become apparent in the smallest concerns and the largest concerns. In small matters, a consumer will apply all of their unused resources if that can increase their happiness by just the slightest amount. This is a destabilizing strategy, and magnifies the consequences of competition, where much energy can be spent to award one winner amongst many losers. A giver, who is looking for peace, seeks to avoid distractions. A giver prefers simplifying responses, and defers in every matter, so as to open up more resources for the larger questions that typically have no rational horizon. In these large matters, the giver does not let the market decide, and takes personal responsibility for what is “best use”.

Certainly, there can be great conflicts as to what is “best use”. However, the vast majority of matters are distributed so that only one person has any reason to care. The few matters that do affect more than one person can be quite complicated, and lead to all of the familiar concepts of property, asking for permission, contracts, and so forth. What is different for givers is the underlying outlook that ultimately nothing is ours to do with as we please, but everything is ours to put to best use. This means that wealth cannot always be reduced to a single currency, but is often multidimensional because it reflects different ideas, perhaps not entirely compatible, as to what is best use.

Responsibility rather than Accountability

We may now imagine that there already exists a huge economy based on such an outlook. It actually is much larger than the monetary economy that we normally think of. This economy of giving grows in wealth by circulating it ever more rapidly. The monetary economy is simply a way of tracking this wealth when it can be reduced to a single dimension. The rate of increase in turnover of wealth can be measured by the amount that can be diverted from it, which is a profit, a proportional return. Unfortunately, the expectation of a proportional return is enormously destructive, unsupportable in any material form. Whereas if wealth is understood as an opportunity, then the circulation of opportunity can overlap and increase in number, frequency and complexity without bound.

Apologists for the monetary economy have portrayed it as a natural outgrowth of a barter economy. However, sociologist Marcel Mauss pointed out that there is no historical or anthropological evidence that any barter economy has ever existed.[1] Instead, his study of tribes living without money reveals gift economies where the goal is to give the most away. Exchange is about creating friendships, working out rivalries, fulfilling obligations. The MAUSS movement in France builds further on these ideas. We may think of the relationship between the economy of giving and the economy of paying as that of responsibility and accountability, which are not the same. It is not enough to measure, one must rely on imagination to understand and take responsibility. Whereas fixation on much, and more, and most predates money as pride, and greed, and envy.”

I am Jon. Peace.

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OpenID: Why Passwords Just Won’t Cut It


Passwords, Passwords, Passwords

I’d bet you have passwords scattered all over the net. It starts when you login to your ISP account. Then one each for all your email accounts. Then your Facebook, your MySpace, your iTunes, all your IM accounts, your twitter, your Flickr, your Amazon, the list goes on virtually for miles. And each one unique, with at least 8 characters, using a combination of upper and lower case, numbers and puctuation symbols.

Hate having to keep entering that over and over and over? Services like OpenID promise to get rid of that headache. With backing from giants like Google, Yahoo! and AOL, just to name a few, OpenID will most likely grow to become the standard by which all the others are judged. But is this a good idea?

Super-Duper Master Password

It’s nearly impossible to remember all those passwords. That’s why most of us, myself included, use what I call “variations on a theme” passwords. It limits the number of passwords we have to remember. The truth is, though, that these kinds of passwords are not that hard to guess or work out with the right software. With OpenID you could generate one really great password and use it everywhere. Up front, it seems like a great idea to reduce the load on your memory while still improving your security.

The problem is, there is no really great password. Especially if it’s being used to authenticate so many services. With each authentication, there’s the chance the password could be intercepted. A successful phishing attack could leave you with every account you have on the web, stolen from you. Your entire online identity, gone.

Passwords: The Wrong Way

In “The Beginner’s Guide to OpenID Phishing“, we find 3 easy ways to perform these “man-in-the-middle” attacks. The first two are pretty easy to code, and fairly easy to protect against, but the third is the real reason why OpenID, and any password-based login application, will fail every time. In the third example, the “phisherman” simply causes a standard login box to appear on the screen. Two fields are required, the Login and the Password. To quote from the article:

“At Level 3 we simply cut the provider out of the game. For a moment, consider how users think of authentication. In 99.99% of all cases they will think of entering a username and a password. Then how will grandma respond to the following little box once you have given her OpenID?”

The box shown requests the standard stuff, and I’m sure that nearly everyone reading might have fallen for it. If it was done well enough, I would fall for it. It’s just the way we’ve been conditioned to think. On the web, you need a username and a password. It’s always been that way, hasn’t it?

Passwords? A Better Way

What’s needed is a better way of authenticating ourselves. Back in the old days, your password was never actually sent anywhere. Again, from The Begiiner’s Guide:

“Web security has more or less become an oxymoron, but lets try really hard to remember how authentication used to be done. Alice and Bob shared a key. Alice would send a challenge encrypted with the key to Bob. Bob would decrypt the challenge, do some computation on it, create a new challenge, encrypt both using the shared key and send it back to Alice. Alice verifies Bob’s response, does some computation on his challenge, encrypts it using the shared key and sends it back to Bob. Bob verifies the response and they now both know that they are talking to the right person and not some man-in-the-middle (phisherman) called Eve. It is not trivial to get this right using shared keys, but since the arrival of public/private key pairs it has become fairly simple.

The point of challenges is that obtaining a single message doesn’t help Eve at all. Only the secret would help her, but that is never put on wire.”

Personal online identity verification is going to continue to pose a problem. From targeted advertising to online services, we need a way to identify ourselves securely from wherever we happen to be. We need to be able to control this information, to possess it like our drivers license, and it needs to be portable. As the web encroaches into our everyday lives, it will be more important in more ways and in more places. I’ll conclude this post with a quote, again from The Beginner’s Guide:

“In practice all of this means the web user will have to generate and respond to challenges and therefore will have to use some separate authentication mechanism. We can not rely on the webpage to compute challenges as the webpage may easily have been bugged. This could be done with a browser-toolbar or built-in, a program on USB stick, or a part of the Operating System such as Cardspace. Users will only be tempted into this way of authentication when such tools have become mainstream. Firefox 3 and Windows Cardspace are about to give a boost, but at this moment we’re simply not ready yet.”

I am Jon, really, I am.

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Save Windows XP Online Petition

Choose XP
Wordout is jumping on this bandwagon right now.

Microsoft has decided to stop selling Windows XP at the end of June. Here’s the story, as found over at GeeksAreSexy:

“Alas, if things do not change, Windows XP may currently be enjoying its last few months of existence. Even if it still dominates the market (76%), Microsoft has decided to stop selling the product starting June 30. From this point, updates and support for the OS will slowly start to fall into Microsoft’s room for retired projects.

As we all know, many people still prefer XP over Vista, and the Euthanasia of the OS is far from pleasing everybody. Fortunately, a bunch of journalists from the InforWorld magazine have decided to take the matter in hand and launch an online petition to keep XP from disappearing into Limbo.

For the magazine and many, many other Windows users, XP remains at the top of the hill when it comes to performance and stability, so why force people to adopt the newer, performance-gobbling OS? Of course, we all know the answer to that question, but this is not the subject of this article.

If you are interested in signing this petition, head over to Infoworld.com. Do your moral duty and help our old friend XP. It’s the least we can do! He’s been doing a hell of a good job after all.”

So let’s get over there and put in a word for XP. As a pc tech, I can tell you that Vista still isn’t ready for prime time. Maybe in a year or two, then again, remembering Windows Millenium Edition, maybe never. XP is the best Microsoft has ever come up with. Give it some support.

Unless you want Microsoft to tell you which Windows will be on your next pc. Right now, you could still buy one with XP. If they go through with this, soon you will have no choice but Vista.

I am Jon, and I already signed the petition.

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If You Don’t Do Anything Else Today


If you don’t do anything else today, take 2 minutes and go to Lauren Weinstein’s blog and read this.


Lauren Weinstein
Lauren Weinstein

Lauren is one guy I have respected since the first time I found him, a long time ago. He’s been a part of this net mess since way before it became so messy. Please read what he has to say. You will find it, at the least, thought provoking and perhaps enlightening.

I am Jon, and I agree with Lauren.

p.s. if you’re from LA, be sure you check this out on Lauren’s site, about the upcoming February ballot. seems the local politicians out there have a neat little tax setup for you guys to vote on. geez, even if you’re not from LA, read it, and see how evil our elected officials have become. they do this stuff right out in the open, as if they don’t care if they’re caught…

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Surface – Taking Touch To A Table Near You

Spaghetti
The poster child for how not to make an operating system has been, for almost a decade, Windows ME. I hate trying to make that pile of spaghetti work, and I know lots of pc techs who feel the same. With all the problems surfacing in Vista, there’s a chance that Microsoft might have to share that singular distinction with itself. I’ve seen at least one prominent writer compare Vista with a collander. And with all the recent hoohaa about moving everything onto the web, you might think MS is on its last legs.

surfacelogoMeatballs?
Well, don’t count Microsoft out just yet. They might actually have something with Surface. Surface is a slightly different way of looking at user interaction. No more mouse. No more keyboard. No more wires. No need for the ubiquitous pc desk. All that stuff, gone. Instead, there’s a table, the top of which responds to your touch. Like you see in those iPod commercials, point-and-click becomes just point.


From the Microsoft Presspass (May 2007):

“Picture a surface that can recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Today at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Microsoft Surface™, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.”

“The intuitive user interface works without a traditional mouse or keyboard, allowing people to interact with content and information on their own or collaboratively with their friends and families, just like in the real world. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that small groups can use at the same time. From digital finger painting to a virtual concierge, Surface brings natural interaction to the digital world in a new and exciting way.”

And from the Executive Q&A:

“As our world continues to be permeated by digital content from music and photos to games, surface computers will put users back in control by making it easy and natural to interact with the digital world. Over time, we envision a wide range of surfaces with surface computing technology and believe that this will become pervasive both inside and outside of the home.”

Point and click the Surface link up there and see for yourself.

I am Jon, and I don’t hate Microsoft.

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Three Things

Sears Spyware

“It’s not that Sears fails to notify users it intends to spy on them. Indeed, the email sent to users states that the application “monitors all of the internet behavior that occurs on the computer on which you install the application, including…filling a shopping basket, completing an application form, or checking your…personal financial or health information.”

The rub is that this unusually frank warning comes on page 10 of a 54-page privacy statement that is 2,971 words long. Edelman, who is a frequent critic of spyware companies, said the Sears document fails to meet standards established by the Federal Trade Commission when it settled with Direct Revenue and Zango over the lack of disclosure about the extent of their snoopware.”

Secret Crush on Facebook

“Unlike many social worms, the ‘Secret Crush’ propagation strategy does not rely on phishing or any sort of user-space customisation feature abuse. Rather, it relies on pure social engineering which is based on simple manipulation strategies such as ‘escalation of commitment’. Since users have freely chosen to install the widget at the cost of disclosing their personal information, psychologically speaking it is difficult for them to stop the process at that point.”

And now, something completely different from Mr. Cringely.

“Predictions 2.0: Things that will make you Cringe in 2008

It’s fun, it’s easy, and virtually everybody else does it, so why not Le Cringe? I whipped out the Oujia Board, spit into some tea leaves, examined a few goat entrails, and came up with some of the big trends in tech that will come to pass over the next 12 months. Some may surprise you; others are, well, utterly predictable…

…Apple goes bananas. The first phones based on Google Android will appear, though they will be easily outsold by Apple’s yet-to-be-officially-announced 3G iPhone. Steve Jobs will then sue this blog for revealing that piece of information, claiming it is a trade secret that could only have come from sources inside Apple. Shortly thereafter Jobs will shock the world by announcing that he is retiring as CEO of Apple Inc. He will name the Fake Steve Jobs as his replacement, who will then sue this blog for revealing that piece of information.”

I am Jon, and my vacation is almost over… thanks for waiting.

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AdaptiveBlue In Action – SmartLink Feeds


How Do I Share Thee? Dozens Of Ways!

One cold November night, while looking for an alternate way to display my links, I found AdaptiveBlue’s site on the net. One look at the BlueOrganizer Badge widget was all it took for me to see its value. Not only was I able to display my links in a new and interesting way, but I could also provide some relevant information and options to my readers who chose to use them. (Plus, there are times when I am just a sucker for a pretty face (3am) and you have to admit, my badges are cute. You’ll see them in a minute, as I work them into this story below.)

AdaptiveBlue’s SmartLink Widgets create an RSS feed made up of the links you choose. There are 3 basic ways of using them. You can set up a personalized feed based on things which are distinctive to you, such as your Amazon wish list, or your Last.fm or Netflix histories. Or you could set up an automatic list, containing things like iTunes Top Albums or NY Times Bestsellers. Or you could do what I did here at Wordout and set up a custom widget with only the specific things you want in it.

You also get your choice of 3 ways to display them. Examples of all three are shown below. Different styles have different options, and different items within the styles change some of the options that are available. Regardless of which way you use them, and regardless of which style you choose, AdaptiveBlue’s SmartLinks widgets are the best way I know to display and share your favorite things with friends, family and the Whole Wide World.

List Widgets

The List style allows you to show a brief description of the item, if a description is available. The only drawback to this type of list is the amount of room it takes on the page, but if you’ve got the room, and you want to show as much as you can, these are a great choice.

The List and Grid widgets used here are generic feeds I found at the AdaptiveBlue site. Everything about these widgets is customizable, allowing you to make the widget personally yours.

Notice that the list feed on the right does not display descriptions. But it also takes up far less room on the page. These are great for themes with narrow sidebars.

The widgets you see on this page are all live. Click on the little blue SmartLink launcher next to any of the titles to launch the SmartLink and see the description of the item. You’ll also find relevant links to just about anything you can think to do with them. Go ahead and play around with any of them. See for yourself.

Grid and Badge Widgets

The Grid Widget, shown left, is great when there’s alot of items you want to show.

Once again, I recommend clicking on a few of these if they interest you. For instance, I just found out that I can hear Bowie any time on Rhapsody, for free. I happen to like Bowie, so that’s a good thing to know.

Over to the right, you’ll see the Badge style widgets that I chose to use here at Wordout. As you can see, everything is customized with my own choices. I think they’re beautiful. And they’re all mine.


What’s Mine Is Yours

Yes, they’re all mine. And they could be all yours, too. Any of the dozens of SmartLinks widgets can be grabbed with a click. If you like my “Wordout Favorites” enough to want them, take them! And every time I change them, you will see it. It works the same with any of the SmartLinks feeds. If you see one you like, just grab it and go. After all, isn’t that the point of sharing? So take it from me! Or better yet, go make one of your own and give it away!

There are literally dozens of widgets available on the AdaptiveBlue site. Choose from widgets based on lists from Amazon, iTunes, Epicurious, Yahoo!, Rolling Stone, Wallstrip, and many more. Each of them are completely adaptive to your needs, just like the ones I’ve shown you here. And, if you’re a member of Amazon, eBay or LinkShare Affiliates, just enter your id to make yourself some cash. For more information on setting them up, watch this video from AdaptiveBlue.

Here Now

Looking back over the past week, we’ve just barely scratched the surface of AdaptiveBlue, SmartLinks and BlueOrganizer. We’ve met the team, heard some of what they have to say, played around a bit with their stuff and maybe gotten a glimpse of what the future holds for smarter browsing. We’ve seen just a bit past the screens and touched a few things. Every day the team is out there, working to make the web open up to us in ways we’ve only seen in Sci-Fi. But it isn’t Sci-Fi. It’s something much better.

It’s the future, and it’s here, now, making itself right before our eyes. All we have to do is look.

I’ll be touching more on AdaptiveBlue and the semantic technologies that enable smarter browsing in future articles at Wordout. It’s probably a good idea to hit the FeedMe! button below or the RSS icon and subscribe to the feed. Or maybe you want Wordout sent straight to your email. I know you don’t want to miss a thing.

And while you’re at it, doing everything I say, post a comment on what you thought about the series this week. It’s the first time I’ve done a weeklong theme, and I’d really like to know what you thought, about AdaptiveBlue, SmartLinks, BlueOrganizer and the feeds, the Semantic Web, things behind screens and just anything else that’s on your mind.

I am Jon and my eyes and ears are wide open.

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AdaptiveBlue – SmartLinks And Things


Things, Connected To Things

You guys might wonder that I even care about SmartLinks, from AdaptiveBlue. I seldom, if ever, mention restaurants, books, recipes, movies, or any of the other things that Smartlinks are currently set up to work with. So why do I care?

Look at that last link up there again. Right there is your answer. I care because SmartLinks is about things, things you might already know a bit about, things you might want to know just a little more about. SmartLinks gives you that little more, just when you want it. And even on a site like Wordout, you never know when I might slide in some obscure Waffle House reference. Or I might refer to Hemingway, or decide to talk about how Google’s stock has never split. Yeah, I might do something like that.

Welcome To The Future

But that’s not the whole story. You see, the internet is more than just these screens flashing by in front of you. All these screens represent some thing, behind the images, beyond the words. It’s these things which are important to us, not these screens. And some things are connected to other things. We know that, but until now, our computers haven’t been able to make that distinction. SmartLinks begins to change all that.

AdaptiveBlue’s vision is to enable us to interact with these things, by providing quick relational links which understand that this is a book, and this is a movie made from the book, and this is the guy who starred in it. SmartLinks is the first tool to do that, and get it right.

In the email interview with Fraser Kelton, we talked a bit about SmartLinks. Here’s a short snippet:

Wordout: SmartLinks are automatically generated to find more info on the linked site. Does the linked site need to be a book, movie, music,stock, etc..?
Fraser
Fraser: No, SmartLinks currently support 10 categories of objects. You can see the entire list here. We’re focusing on the most popular categories that individuals care the most about. Solving the semantic problem for the entire web, across all verticals, is difficult and won’t be realized for an awfully long time. We believe that bringing semantic understanding to a few critical, well defined, verticals isn’t just pragmatic but also delivers a lot of end-user benefit today.

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Wordout: Some people might think there’s money to be made off advertising for Amazon and the others. Can a SmartLinks user get in on this and share some of that bounty?

Fraser: Bloggers can enter a number of affiliate ids when they install the products on their site and earn 100% of affiliate revenue that is earned. AdaptiveBlue does not take money for placement of the links in the pane, we earn money from affiliate fees.

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Wordout: My site shows that nearly 70% of all my visitors are using Firefox. Can the BlueOrganizer addon enable a user to place SmartLinks on their MySpace or Facebook profile?

Fraser: Currently we support SmartLinks and SmartLink widgets on Typepad, Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, general web sites, squarespace, etc. but we don’t currently support MySpace or Facebook. We’re working on a solution for these publishing platforms.


Verticals

Installing SmartLinks on your blog or site literally takes less than 2 minutes, if you really take your time. And you’ll never have to go back and mess with it. If you want to customize your links, you can. If you want to make money off your links, you can. If you want to know if anybody is using your links, with the new Dashboard feature, you can. If you just want to provide a valuable service to your readers, you can.

The future of the internet is in getting past the screen and touching things, manipulating them, using them. It will take some time and alot of genius and luck to make it work, but it will happen. SmartLinks scratches the surface, shows us what is possible, if we’ll just do it. Think of the “verticals” Fraser talked about as the pillars holding up a great roof. SmartLinks begins to build those pillars and fill them in with walls. One day soon, when enough of the pillars have been built, the roof will be set on top of them, and the world will have changed before us.

I hope you’ll go back and read that last paragraph again, especially the last sentence. Take it with you. Walk around with it for awhile. Think about it.

Tomorrow we’ll be looking into BlueOrganizer, the best way I know of to manage and share your bookmarks and favorite places with the world. Click back to Wordout to see just a little more of the future unfold.

I am Jon, have been and always will be.

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AdaptiveBlue’s Fraser Kelton Gets The Wordout

Team Focus On The Individual

If you haven’t read yesterday’s piece on AdaptiveBlue’s team, you really ought to go there and check it out. These guys are real rockstars of the web, innovators who strive for perfection with a vision that gives you, me and everybody we know, more control over our information, our web experiences, and in the end, our lives. The AdaptiveBlue vision blends the utility and entertainment of the web seamlessly, invisibly, with our everyday world.

I was lucky enough to get an interview with Fraser Kelton, Director of Business Development, via email as he was recently flying to New York. Here are a few highlights:

Wordout: I understand that there’s only 6 of you. Just who are you guys and how can you get so much done with such a small team?

Fraser: When I joined the team two things strongly resonated with me. The first was how proudly Alex spoke about his strategy of hiring the best individuals for the team regardless of where they were located. Members of our team live in New York, Maryland, and Paris and Hamilton. The second thing that resonated with me was how highly Andy, Rion, Karen and Jeff spoke of Alex and the teams that he builds.
Being dispersed has its challenges but we’ve adopted a number of new innovations to make our lives more efficient. Basecamp, by 37Signals, acts as our communication hub and is a hive of activity that hums with activity 24 hours a day.
If you read Alex’s latest post on engineering tips for startups you’ll better appreciate AdaptiveBlue’s approach to building out our vision. The biggest thing is that everyone on the team brings it in a big way and is passionate about the future that we’re building.

Wordout: Several companies provide similar products to yours. What sets AdaptiveBlue apart from the pack?

Fraser: First and foremost it’s the team.
On the technology side we have a few powerful pieces of technology that differentiate us. Our lightweight, top-down ability to understanding the semantics of every day objects across the web is huge. We’re able to understand meaning, and can then create contextually correct connections. Alex’s founding vision was to create a smarter browsing experience by leveraging semantics and personal attention – we continue to build towards this exciting future and the columns that form the foundation for the future of the company are starting to take shape.
We’re also focused on the individual, which is a major differentiator. Many companies focus on technology first, and people become secondary concerns. We believe that if high user benefit is not delivered then the value of technology is minimal. This belief about the importance of people is visible from the level of support offered (not many other company’s have the CEO handling front-line customer support chats) to how we handle an individual’s data.

Wordout: Alex has written about turning web sites into web services. Hasn’t that term been applied, for the most part, to online retailers who might gain by having more sales? By installing SmartLinks on a blog, doesn’t this essentially turn that site into a web service as well, with the product being the content and the payoff being (hopefully) an increase in readership?

Fraser: Turning web sites into web services is related to having an interface by which people can [interact with] it. In a way, we are doing that via both SmartLinks and BlueOrganizer but not as directly as something like Amazon. A better way of putting what we are doing is automatically connecting web sites via context.

Wordout: We hear alot about the Semantic Web but many of us are not really sure what that is. What is it, and where does AdaptiveBlue fit into it?

FraserFraser: So first of all the tech community is in an odd place around definitions when it comes to all of this. “Semantic Web” is one very well defined thing, whereas a semantic web and semantic apps have other, different, meanings. The real promise in all three is in the ability to understand meaning and providing correct connections. Understanding that a page on linkedin is about an individual – and the person happens to be the same individual on pages on facebook, on myspace or wherever… is a powerful and useful thing. The same is true about objects – knowing that an object on a blog is the same object that’s on Amazon, is the same object that’s on a completely different website, is a wonderful thought to play around with. As the web of pages fades away to a web of things the future becomes exciting.

Wordout: Does AdaptiveBlue collect information on how a particular user might be employing SmartLinks or BlueOrganizer? If so, what do you do with that information? Can you personally identify where the info came from?

Fraser: Yes, we are currently collecting several types of information. First we are collecting anonymous usage of the organizer, just to improve the use of the product. We are also tracking clicks on SmartLinks for the same purpose. In the future we will be doing more with attention information, but our motto is to always put the user in control – if they are not interested in utilizing their attention information we respect that.

Wordout: How will all this semantic web stuff affect privacy and security on the web?

Fraser: Implicit and personalization technologies are going to have a major impact on privacy and security and there will be a lot of interesting discussions and debate occurring around these two areas, moreso than semantics. The key to all of this is to make the user have control over their data and information. Take the recent issues around Facebook’s Beacon – an implicit technology – a major source of the backlash was the implementation. They made it opt-in for companies and opt-out for the individual consumer. That’s backwards from how it has to be; the users [need to] have full control over their individual data.

Wordout: What’s the next step for AdaptiveBlue? Where are you guys going with this?

Fraser: Everyone on the team – Alex, Andy, Rion, Karen, Jeff and myself – are deep thinkers and dreamers who find ways to implement the vision in a pragmatic way. We’re building a number of exciting columns that support a cohesive strategy right now. If you let your imagination wonder to the edges of what can happen when the potential of the columns are connected … you’ll start to see our vision.

Be sure to click back to Wordout Wednesday for the review of SmartLinks, and we’ll dig just a little deeper into this Semantic thing. Until then,

I am Jon, and I’m closing my eyes and letting my imagination wander, and wonder.

.Find another great Fraser interview at leonho.com

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AdaptiveBlue – One Cold November Night

One Saturday Night In November

When Alex Iskold found me, I was messin’ around with his stuff. I don’t know how long he watched me there, or how he even knew I was there in the first place, but eventually he sent me an email that paraphrased, politely said, “Hey, what’re you doin’ with my stuff?”

A Quick Bit Of Background
Several readers had told me they never looked at my links because the links looked like ads, so I was trying to find a better way to display my links. I had come across SmartLinks, which led me straight to BlueOrganizer and the BlueOrganizer Badges. You’ll see one in the sidebar here, down below. I quickly grabbed the little badge and started toying around with it. I’m like that sometimes. I get wrapped up in seeing if I can make some piece of software do what it wasn’t exactly designed to do. I can’t write the stuff, but I can certainly drive it around the track.

The BlueOrganizer Badge from AdaptiveBlue seemed to be exactly the thing I was looking for, but for some reason (most likely a result of my fiddling) it just wouldn’t load the images. By the end of the night Alex had gotten several other key team members from AdaptiveBlue on the problem. I walked away from it about 2am, with this vision of people being dragged into the office on Sunday morning, bummed at having to be there. Little did I know how wrong that vision was.

Sunday morning I overslept and was rushing to catch up all day. I didn’t get to work at Wordout until about 3pm. I sat down and pulled up the site. The BlueOrganizer Badge splashed all 4 windows and, whoa, the images were there. Alex, Karen, Andy and the team at AdaptiveBlue had worked some magic and this little jewel was doing exactly what I had hoped.

So Just Who Are These Guys?

Rockstars. That’s who they are. These guys are the best in their field, each with a rare drive and determination to make a difference. Of course, I may be biased. You tend to get that way when you engage this team.

Theirs is a vision where the end user is in control of their own information. In the AdaptiveBlue universe, the experience of the web is determined by people, interacting with columns of interconnected things. Life on the net takes one step closer to becoming transparent in our real lives, becomes a tool for efficiency, choice and entertainment.

As Fraser says in our interview (tomorrow), “Everyone on the team – Alex, Andy, Rion, Karen, Jeff and myself – are deep thinkers and dreamers who find ways to implement the vision in a pragmatic way… If you let your imagination wonder to the edges of what can happen when the potential of the columns are connected … you’ll start to see our vision.”

The AdaptiveBlue Team

AlexAdaptiveBlue is headed up by visionary Founder and CEO Alex Iskold. This isn’t his first time around the block. His previous startup, Information Laboratory, was later acquired by IBM. Alex is a regular contributor to the influential blog, ReadWrite Web. He also publishes his own Technology Blog and regularly posts on the AdaptiveBlue BlueBlog. He does all this when he’s not solving weird customer service problems on the weekend.


Andy


Chief Quality Officer Andy Roth troubleshoots, tinkers with, smashes and generally does his best to break the BlueOrganizer. A frequent speaker at trade functions and with 10 years of experience, he’s just trying to make sure we never have a bad BlueOrganizer day.

Rion

 

Rion Nakaya is VP of Design and User Experience. That’s short for saying that she’s the one who looks at the products, the website, every-public-thing that you and I ever interact with, and then she works with the technical, design and business sides of the company to make every experience we ever have with AdaptiveBlue a great one.


Karen

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As Director of Engineering, Karen Teng “leads the development effort on their mission to add to and improve BlueOrganizer.” So that’s who fixed my Badge that Sunday, a month ago. Thanks Karen!

Jeff

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Software Engineer Jeff Condal joined the team after spending his early career writing Enterprise Java Applications for large banks. I am starting the rumor right here, that he may have been born with a microchip in his brain, bringing with him “programming experience that dates back to childhood”.

Fraser Kelton is Director of Business Development and may be the only competition I have in the “Who can write the longest sentence?” category, but he writes them so well, I just want to quote him here, from the AdaptiveBlue website:

Fraser

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As Director of Business Development Fraser is passionate about building. He spends his days building community, relationships, strategy, and, well, a business. He joins AdaptiveBlue from Trivaris, a Canadian seed-stage investment firm, where he was Director of New Ventures and developed strategy for portfolio companies as they commercialized innovative ideas into scalable businesses.
Fraser holds a degree in Applied Economics from Queen’s University, blogs regularly at his personal blog, Disruptive Thoughts, is a marathon runner, and struggles to write third-person, 100 80 word bios.


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I love his humor.

I was lucky enough to get an interview with Fraser Kelton via email as he was recently flying to New York. Be sure to come back later for the highlights of that interview, and all week for Wordout reviews of SmartLinks, BlueOrganizer and the BlueOrganizer widgets.

I am Jon, and oh yeah, I’m a fan.

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AdaptiveBlue Christmas – Next Week At Wordout!


Have a Blue, Blue Blue Blue Christmas!

Next week is AdaptiveBlue Christmas week here at Wordout! We’ll start off Monday with a quick intro to find out just who AdaptiveBlue is, and what they do. Then on Tuesday, see some of what sets AdaptiveBlue apart in the interview with Fraser Kelton, Director of Business Development. He discusses the team, the products and the vision that’s helping to usher in the next age of computing, the Semantic Web.

And that’s just the beginning. Throughout the week, we’ll be looking at SmartLinks, BlueOrganizer, SmartLink feeds and the dozens of widgets AdaptiveBlue has to offer.

The Semantic Web is something we hear alot about lately. Is it a good thing, a great thing, a scary thing? For that matter, do we even know what the heck it is? Clickback to Wordout next week and find out more.

I am Jon, and I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

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You Can Finally Follow The Money

You know the old saying, “Follow the money”? Well, now you can. The new USA Spending.Gov is online, open and free to the public. If you go there, you can quickly find out where all those billions are being spent and who, exactly is getting it.

From the Washington Post:

“The story began late last year, when two other political opposites, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), sponsored legislation requiring the federal government to set up a searchable online database tracing federal budget spending by Jan. 1, 2008.

The goal was to make both the executive branch and Congress accountable for their spending decisions by allowing regular taxpayers to follow the money.

The legislation was the realization of a dream long held by a coalition of libertarians and liberals, fiscal conservatives and social-justice types, all of whom believe that greater budget transparency is the ideal way to achieve that accountability.

The government already provided some information, but it was scattered among agencies, confusing and largely inaccessible.”

The editorial on Digital Journal gives us this background:

“What made this possible was the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which was sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, (D-Il) and Sen. Tom Coburn, (R-Ok), which requires a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free that includes for each Federal award:

1. The name of the entity receiving the award;
2. The amount of the award;
3. Information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;
4. The location of the entity receiving the award;
5. A unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.”

And finally a bit more from The Examiner from December 13th:

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, the original sponsor of FFATA, was the featured speaker this morning at a news conference at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for creating and managing USASpending.gov.

Coburn lauded bloggers as “the key group in getting this done,” and predicted that “somebody is going to correlate FEC reports, the earmarks database and this database, and that’s what this is about, holding us accountable.” He encouraged bloggers to “get out there and start using this. I think it’s going to be a wildfire.”

In a separate joint statement with Coburn, Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL, who was the first co-sponsor of FFATA, said the site “helps us achieve a very simple and powerful vision, a vision that in a democracy, people ought to know how their government is operating. This isn’t a Democratic vision or a Republican vision. It’s a vision that rejects the idea that government actions and decisions should be kept secret.”

I am Jon, and I found this kinda interesting, wanted to pass it along.

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Dude, Where’s Your Fridge?


Dude!

Isn’t life grand, here in 21st century America? For most of us, it’s a wonderland of technology. We’ve got our internets, our Tivo’s, our superhighways, air conditioning in the summer and automatic heat for the winter. Truthfully, we have it made in lots of ways.

So when a friend of mine, whom I haven’t seen in awhile, walks into my kitchen, it’s a natural question to ask. “Where’s your fridge?” It’s at the office, I tell him. Along with the microwave and the other things you’d expect to find in my kitchen. I don’t use these things at my home. It has very little to do with money, and very much to do with the future. My childrens’ future, and their childrens’ and theirs.

Just Hippie Schlock?

I’m a holdover from the 60s or the 70s, I can never tell which. Back then, I started reading about conservation, renewable resources, all that stuff that now is mainstream and at the forefront of our consciousness. I could see back then that this was not just more hippie schlock, but was indeed real. I made a deal with myself to do something about it, even if it was a small thing I did.

So when I moved into my office a few years ago, I decided that the fridge should be there, along with everything else in the kitchen. If it wouldn’t fit into to break room at the office, I gave it away. Why the office, instead of my home? There are several reasons. I’m single. I work all the time, which usually puts me at the office. I don’t date (much). If you actually see me in the flesh, it’s probably going to be at the office. So the amenities should be there, and not here(I’m writing this at home).

This does have an impact on my lifestyle, assuming my life has style. I eat out every meal. I don’t go to the grocery store, ever. Toiletries and such are bought in one of 2 bi-annual trips to the local “dollar store” where I buy a dozen toothbrushes, 48 rolls of tissue, about a gallon of shampoo and maybe 20 bars of soap, among other things. I am not a “good” consumer. Shopping is alien to me. (Makes Christmas kinda hard.)

The Cost Factor

So with all that eating out, I must be spending massively on food, right? Not really. The cost of food in the house is more than just the cost of the food. There is the electricity to store the food in the fridge, the cost of cooking the food, the cost of cleaning up the cooking, the cost of dishes, pots and pans… the list could go on. I have none of those costs here at home. A small container of dishwashing soap lasts me over a year. I need it because, although I am willing to give up my food-at-home, I really want my coffee. So I do have a coffee maker in the house.

And what’s my monthly food budget? I spend around 500 dollars a month to put chewables in my mouth. That’s actually a bit less than I spent when I cooked at home. Adding in the savings on electricity, water and the drudgery of washing things up, I think I’m looking at a profit.

Not For Everybody

Now, if I was married, or had kids at home or a roommate, I probably wouldn’t be able to live this way. I can do this alone, but I’m not sure it would be accepted as a way of life for anyone else. I’m certain it would be unjust for me to expect anyone else to accept it. So this lifestyle may not be for you, or anyone you know.

Then again, if you’re single, work alot, are not trying to impress anyone with all the stuff you’ve got, maybe you should think about it. Done well, this can save quite a bit of money and time. Of course, you’ll have to be ready for the inevitable question, and the strange looks, and the reputation for being, well… weird.

Does It Make A Difference?

If it doesn’t make a difference, then it’s just pointless. Looking around the net, you can find alot of sites that will calculate your “carbon footprint” and compare it to averages for your state or country. In checking mine, I found that my footprint is less than half of the average for North Carolina, and about a quarter the average in California.

This is a lousy estimate, in my opinion. For one thing, this site didn’t bother asking me how many computers I have running at any given time. That answer alone would bump me right up there with the worst of them. My TV may never be on, but I have at least one PC running all the time, sometimes 3 or 4 at a time. So my household output of about 5 metric tons of CO2/year is not quite accurate. Add to that at least another 5 metric tons due to the office. That gives me about 10 tons of carbon output per year. That’s about what the average household in NC produces. But if you add in the computers, the amount explodes. My impact seems to be quite small.

But at least it is something. I’m toying with the idea of closing the office and moving everything into my house. It will be a tight fit. I’ll lose the “move-around” room I have, and will have to deal with customers in my private space. But it will eliminate about half of my real carbon footprint. I think that’s important.

What do you think? Do you know your carbon footprint and how it compares to the rest of the world? How about your computer, do you know it’s footprint? Do you think all this talk about footprints is just hogwash? Let me know, I’m curious.

I am Jon, and I’m thinking about bringing the fridge home.

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Psychedlic Cat! The “Tied Stick” Theory

Psychedelic Cat, That’s Where It’s At!

By now you’ve probably seen on TV or read in the news about the “glow in the dark” cats, cloned in South Korea. Beyond the aesthetics, this has real implications for treating some genetic maladies afflicting humans, in the future. From the Associate Press:

“Cats have similar genes to those of humans,” said veterinary professor Kong Il-keun of Gyeongsang National University. “We can make genetically modified cats that can be used to develop new cures for genetic diseases.”

Keitaro Kato, a geneticist at Kinki University in western Japan who has cloned fish, said the research could be significant if it eventually helps treat people with hereditary diseases.

“People with genetic disorders usually have to receive treatment throughout their lives that is very hard on them,” Kato said. “If these results can help to make their lives easier, then I think it’s a wonderful thing.”


psychedelic cats
“This picture taken through a special filter in a dark room shows, a cat, left, possessing a red fluorescent protein that makes the animal glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet rays, appearing next to a normal cloned cat, right, at Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, south of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007. South Korean scientists have cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays, an achievement that could help develop cures for human genetic diseases, the Science and Technology Ministry said. (AP Photo/ Yonhap, Choi Byung-kil)”

Cat Lovers?

On the other hand, the New York Times reports that 60 million Americans are infected with the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, which, among other things, makes the host more susceptible to being eaten… by cats. From the NY Times article:

“The basic facts: Toxo can infect many species, but it undergoes sexual reproduction only in cat digestive tracts. Once the parasite reproduces, the cat passes it in its feces, where the next unwitting host picks it up by digesting it (intentionally or unintentionally). Then the cycle starts again. In the long run, Toxo must find its way back to a cat’s stomach to survive. So the parasite has evolved a complicated system for taking over its hosts’ brains to increase the likelihood that they’ll be eaten by cats.”

In case you’re thinking that this is just funny, check this out. According to the Times article, research has shown that “people infected with Toxo have slower reflexes and are 2.5 times as likely to get into car accidents.”

The Conundrum

Which brings me to this question. Are we using the cats, or are the cats using us? They have developed this parasite to control our minds. There is a possibility, however slim it may seem, that those South Korean cats were exposed to some very powerful hallucinogen in the past, liked it, and decided they wanted to be psychedelic. Truthfully, wouldn’t you like your partner to glow in the dark sometimes? Why not the same for a, kitty?

I am Jon, and I’m wondering how tight that stick was tied.

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w00t! Not Just Another 4 Letter Word!

w00t!

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2007 has been announced, and the winner is a 4 letter word with no vowels. There are 2 consonants at each end, separated by double zeros. It’s pronounced to rhyme with “hoot”, and a hoot of a word it is. It had some tough competition this year, from words like “facebook”, “conundrum” and “quixotic”. In all there were seven candidates for the honor, which was decided by voting at the MW website. There was a bit of speculation that “facebook” would win the day, but short and sweet little “w00t” took the honor by a “vast majority”. From the announcement at MW:

This year’s winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t (“leet,” or “elite”) speak—an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. Although the double “o” in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for “we owned the other team”—again stemming from the gaming community.

W00t follows in the steps of some words that, just a few years ago, weren’t heard much. In 2004 the word was “blog“. In 2005 it was “integrity“. Last year, thanks to Colbert Nation, it was “truthiness“. It is, as far as I know, the first word in the dictionary to have numbers instead of vowels. Of course, it’s just the online dictionary, but who knows, maybe w00t will soon find itself in the complete unabridged version?

I especially liked this, from the MW website:

“w00t (interjection)
expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word “yay”

[usage:] w00t! I won the contest!”

If you read my last post, then you’ll understand why I like that usage example. Hopefully, that’s the title of an upcoming article here at Wordout.

I am Jon, and, well… w00t!

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