Breaking the Web Wide Open review

Now that the last part of this article by Marc Canter is up, I decided to comment it here.
 
I like the intro and his comments on walled gardens. It is about time that things open up a bit more and thus the article has a great title. Marc Canter sees 10 developments that are important in the future. One might even add the connotation Web 2.0, but that is starting to get lame.
 
Identity
This is a very complex subject and ranges from single sign on, to profiles and attention. The problem is the combination of all these things. Profiles imply structure (and thus MicroContent). Profiles can be become extremely complex. There is a relation with access to this profiles: who may see what and for how long? And then there is the single sign on part. It is time we had some progress here. Since W3C worked on it (forgot the name of that project), I did not see much happening. I like to see the owner of the profile in the centre. The owner should be the one who decided who gets to see what.
 
Attention
This stays an interesting thing. I think however that first the Identity-part should be solved. It will take a while before businesses can really use attention on an individual basis. They are still not able to use all my blogs and there is much information in it on me.
 
Open Media
I am not quite sure whether I understand this. I always understood that there are a lot of standards defined for media in the various standardisation organisations. The fact the Flash, QuickTime and Windows Media also contain proprietary standards seems less relevant. People have a choice and they indeed should use the open choices. And that now also feeds can contain media enclosures is just a next step. I have the impression that this item is nearly realised.
 
MicroContent Publishing
Sure, just read this blog.
 
Open Social Networks
This has a strong relation with my profile. In fact it is just part of my profile. And I agree that service providers should be able to re-use my social network profile. FOAF seems to be a good start, only service providers should start to use it.
 
Tags
A very interesting development. One sees tags developing in a network structure of its own. One can relate photo’s, blogs, bookmarks based on tags. Next step will be to do the same thing based on geotags. One could browse the blogosphere on a map using coordinates: see all items related to a certain location. One could combine this with datetags to see the history of blog items on a location. And also the identity of a person will become a persontag. These are however still a very horizontal type of tags. One can also image vertical tags, which have a more limited scope. Think of ingredients in a recipe. I would like to see all information on the web around a specific ingredient. I call this development the MicroWeb: the linking of MicroContent items around field types, such as tags, location, date, identity, ingredient, etc.
 
Pinging
Yep, a very important part of the infrastructure. I would however put more emphasis on the aggregator function. This is essential to get the data outside the service providers. Service Providers should be able to share data, such as pings. But they can also share other MicroContent data, such as bookmarks, reviews, etc. Users do not want to import all their bookmarks again and again with each new provider. Just point to a common feed and update only in a single location. Blogs, bookmarks, any MicroContent data are just part of your profile / identity.
 
Routing
I agree that this is an important subject. I have a feeling that a limited view is described here. It is all about the actual creation of the MicroWeb: the linking of one MicroContent Item to another one. One could call this a quotations. When I blog about someone else’s blog Item, I add a link to that item. When I get inspired by a blog item, I add a link to that item. I just use a copy&paste procedure to get the data over to the new item. One could use a reblog-function as Marc Canter says, but I doubt that that will be general enough.
 
The other example is the quotations of a part of the MicroContent item. Indeed the integrity of the structure should be maintained. I am afraid that we now only the blog example here. What should it look like when be quote part of a recipe or even the entire recipe? Or how does it even work when we want to keep a copy of an item?
 
It is indeed an important subject and it seems that we have only scratched the surface.
 
Open Communications
No discussion here. The description reminds me of the walled gardens earlier. The creation of a standard and the acceptance of it are two different things.
 
Device Management and Control
Indeed an interesting subject. One should add synchronisation to the list. One should also look at keeping address books synchronised between PC and mobile. A lot has been happening in this area.
 
Very interesting overview of things that are close to my heart as well.

Categories/tags: general
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About the meaning of open media, data formats aren’t the main character.  It is open in the sense that it is (or can be, depending on the person) participatory.

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