I recently attended the mediatech 100 event at the Russel hotel.
From what I gather the economic down turn is going to actually benefit the media businesses as evidence from the previous recessions indicate that reduced spending money, causes consumers to stay at home …. and spend more money on media consumption!
The VC’s and business angels are especially backing games, virtual worlds and mobile applications that have micro-transaction engines.
I have just read this http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39325058,00.htm?r=2
This point of view is fundamentally flawed and forgets that “government” is the action of authority, and that it imposes jurisdiction without unanimous, majority or even minority consensus. Where as the social network is the interaction of individuals with other individuals using technology.
The responsibility of government is to improve the lives of individuals via the application of abstraction i.e. legislation against cigarette advertising. Its judgements are guided by the research that it commissions, or secret information that it gathers.
Today the contents of the social network is massively influenced by the intelligentsia, who are the early adaptors of the technology, but tomorrow it will have mass market adoption.
Information and recommendations that can be derived from the contents of a social network will tomorrow reflect the reactionary majority view. It would be dangerous and irresponsible to allow research and policy to be solely guided by such networks.
The eminent thinkers of my great nation have a long and checked history of engineering large scale social change, and engineering large scale … errr … engineering.
We are behind many of the “isums” and machines that have shaped the world. Our age sees the direct conjunction of the two. I can not predict the outcome of this union, but it is a safe bet that the UK will first see the changes.
Ive recently been asked to give my thoughts on a web site for a famous chicks shoes store. My thoughts were ..
the important thing about chick buying shoes,
is that they buy them so that other chick scan see them wearing them,
the shop, and the shoe buying experience is an important context
but not as important as the bar or outside context,
the site needs more shoes in their natural habitat, on feet, causing envy.
the web site is about the dream of what the product does for you.
the store is about actually living that dream through physical product experience.
dont make a website about a store
It does not matter which definition you use to describe Web2.0, they all agree with one thing, which is that it is being driven by the online community or social network. If you have never worked as a member of a virtual team then the collaborative and egalitarian nature of the Web2 tool set will seem like madness you. If you want to understand the lunacy then here is a list of things that will get you up to speed.
Im now assuming that you have done all of the above.
As architects we may be asked to deliver solutions for these online comunities, and there is a vast amount of technology out there for you to enjoy and sometimes suffer.
Successful online communities grow and grow with little or no traditional marketing. When you first start an online community it seems to take you ages to get the technology and design how you want it to be whole lives can be lost making the perfect CSS to scale the as yet unmade content, we have all worked on projects where the tek has taken literally man years to get to the first release candidate.
When the big opening day finally comes and you launch your web servers out into the internet, it falls flat. No one registers apart from the people who made it (and their mums). If you have done some marketing then you get a few views but after a few months that drops off and your community is a failure.
The content of your web site can be made up of manny manny, things, such as games, forums pages, papers, documents, movies, comments, ... the list is endless. It is best to think of everything as just content. A piece of text is content in the same way that a "mapping favourites" feature is. The amount of and quality of this is called a websites weight.
With respect to your community portal there are 4 types of people in the world.
The atoms of content that contribute to the weight of a website is created by it contributors, some of which you normally pay; people such as the developers and producers, some of which you dont normally pay; people such as the blogers and commentators.
A good piece of technology allows the community that uses your site to create good content, which attracts more contributors, which in-turn add to the content.This diagram shows how a successful community works. It is a relationship between content, technology and the community. If any part of this loop is weak then it lets down the others, which leads to a stagnant community. As architects we must decide on, design and describe the technology, but you must remember that we are only a third of the story. It is important to understand this relationship before you start designing
Sooner or later the community start needing more features or scale, which empowers the community to make good content which is passed on to others who then join the community ... who need more features ...
who make better content ... and so on
function randomiseArray(arr){
var ptr = 0;
var newArr = new Array();
while (ptr < arr.length){
var idx =0;
do
idx = parseInt(arr.length * Math.random());
while(typeof newArr[idx] != 'undefined')
var element = arr[ptr++];
newArr[idx] = element;
}
return newArr;
}
This function can be very usefully randomising small arrays, performance drops off when arrays get really large as it attempts to place each new element randomly, apart from the it works well. You are free to use and distribute this code.
Arround £10k for unlimited users, both JIRA Confluence running on a 3 moderatly beefy boxs
The main goal of a consumer facing website is to create a fun, engaging online experience that helps your consumers interact with your product. This is a challenge for people who have come from the business world. The three questions that you need to ask yourself when considering how you make good consumer focused web site are
This diagram shows what I feel is a good set of environments for a basic site.
This architecture is about trust. The user trusts the asserting authority with their personal information, who will be a vendor selected for their trustworthy characteristics such as Veritas or Microsoft. This trust is again repeated by service provider who will have a number of services on the right hand side of the diagram. The biometric vendor has a common standard to deliver to and importantly this can be changed if their solution is compromised without a redesign of any of the services. In-fact examination body will be able to extend trust to its students in different manners according to the student’s status, role or geographical region. In countries that prohibit the storage of finger prints, smart cards can be used. Students who have graduated can login using their user name and password, but students who have not finished all their exams would need to use a finger print identification. As new features come into the public domain such as OpenId and cardSpace the solution can be extended in a single place the Credential Authority (CA).
