I’m A Fraud: Why You Should Trust Me

Posted on by
16

Let me be straight forward, right now. I’m a nobody, I know nothing, and currently my life is headed nowhere. This might sound sad, but what I’ve found even more disturbing is that I’ve been able to pass off my own personal delusions, as reality. What do I mean by that? I’ve managed to get people to praise me, by merely provided evidence of my delusions, sure they might look good on the surface, but behind it the whole structure is being held up by toothpicks.

I’m good at two things, making people believe in me, even when I know they shouldn’t, and continually learning. The first is disturbing, the second is nice and provides a way to make myself more appealing to others. Like I said in my post about social media experts and masters, the only thing you need to be considered an expert, is more knowledge than the person you’re giving you information to, that’s it. I don’t need to know much to know more than you as a regular person to be considered an expert, so long as I can provide even a minute amount of proof. Once I have you,  I just have to keep my story straight, and avoid experts who know more than me A contrary action to the education.

In order to learn anything you must break the topic down, and interact with those who are knowledgeable. Since the help of a mentor, or other expert, is beneficial, I love getting in to arguments or seeking out the experts to have conversation. I take their word as solid advice and information and break it down so that I can more easily understand it. This is occasionally easy and more often very complicated, but if you endure and have one skill, which will be mentioned in just a second, it becomes much more simple. Education is all about gaining access to the  information you want and need; there are two simple ways to find the data you want, discourse with an expert, or searching for it.

The one skill that you need to  make this all work is listening. If you can listen and understand others,  it will make you much more likely to learn something from them. I realize, I need to turn the tables and re-analyze what I project, because I’ve had a few people ask me questions about myself, that I don’t feel capable to answer without exaggeration or lying.

If they’re was ever one person, above all others, to listen to, it’s yourself and your’ gut reactions, they let you know what’s right and what’s wrong. I’ve been lying by omission about what I know for too long, and now it’s time for me to listen to myself, and even more importantly everyone I interact with, because I haven’t for too long. If I get schooled, I will admit defeat and ask for assistance. I’m tired of creating tension, so I’m going to begin bowing out  gracefully, rather than turning my face and walking away, like a coward. I need to listen, and I hope you  understand this and will allow me to be someone who you can trust.

P.S. If I interact with you on any service, I invite you to step up and slap me if I ever seem out of line. We all need it, at some point.

Splitting the Web Markets

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been looking into the web, trying to figure out what it’s going to look like in a few years. I’m still looking at various scopes, but I decided to analyze some of the more generalized markets that we have right now. You’re not going to find anything new here, just 5 areas of the web we will see changes in, and the coming monetization of the web.

Infrastructure = Hosting & ISP’s

Data Resources = Data

Data Access & Storage Protocols = API’s

Services = Applications that modify the Data through use of API’s to provide a value

Directories = Provide the ability to find what you’re looking for quite rapidly, can be pseudo-static or dynamic.

Each of these different markets can and most likely will be monetized within the coming years, most likely coming from the users themselves. Hosting & ISP’s have already done it. Directories that aren’t fully dynamic can do it with advertising, and even some of the dynamic real-time directories will be able to use the advertising model. The Data & DASP’s will be subsidized, for the most part, by the initial service’s charges, or possibly the service will be subsidized by external developers paying for access to the data, or just the data itself.

The benefits we will see is that our data is more stable, at least in the sense that the company isn’t going to go belly up, services should be better, and there will be more positions, hopefully. We all walked around expecting everything to be free, when we should have been asking how can we help make more services. Maybe the free world was just the accelerant for innovation to get the initial business models developed, promote an open generation, and allow everyone a shot at getting their ideas out there, it’s easier to pick up users, for a simple service, when you’re not charging them after all. The problem that we had with free is that we all became so jaded by it.

Focus on one of these markets and how you can change it. Each one is easily branched into another, you can traverse up or down that list from where you started. Look at Google, they exist in each of these markets. They started with a DASP that collected vast amounts of Data, then used initially used this data to create a Directory Service, along with quite a few other services, one of which is AppEngine which exists to share their infrastructure.

As the web evolves we’ll see these markets split and converge on each other time and time again, we may even see a new general market pop up. Just as an example of the splitting a market look at the services, there are so many sub-markets that exist within it that it would be hard to categorize them. For an example of convergence you just have to look at the various projects being developed to better connect the web, one of the most recent one’s to pop into my radar is Salmon, which is working to pull comments back to the original source and re-disperse them with the source feeds. Time to watch the ebb and flow, and maybe enter one or more of these markets.

(Social Media) Experts vs. Masters

Posted on by
2

I’m sick of all these damn “Social Media Experts”, but at least they have their name right. They are “experts” and I’m fine with that even if there are thousands of them. Maybe they should be a little bit more humble about their position, and we wouldn’t dislike the terminology as much.

You don’t have to know everything about a category to be an expert. You just need to be more experienced and knowledgeable than the person who is looking for an expert. If they don’t really know what they are looking for, besides maybe a few buzzwords. You can be an expert to those people, because they know considerably less than you.

To be an expert though, you have to know who you’re talking too, and if they actually know more than yourself. Never call yourself an expert in front of someone who knows more than yourself, unless you’re an amazing bluffer. Of course, even a bluffer will be found out a fool if he continues to talk about the topic, and the person discovers this. The best thing to do, is not self-label yourself an expert, unless you’re truly or near being a master.

A master knows the ins and outs of the system in which he works. The master’s knowledge of the system allows him to do things that regular people and even the majority of experts wouldn’t be able to understand it. The master is efficient with his work, he has the answers or knows exactly where they can be found rapidly. The master is at the top of his art along with very few.

If you seek a master for help, quality is guaranteed, but an actual response is not. A master will teach you everything, but he will always hold one kernel of knowledge back. The master is not fooled by experts, even if he trained them; he knows that they might try to take his claim. The master uses his withheld knowledge as a way to maintain the upper hand.

The truth is I’m just sick of “Social Media Experts”, self-labeling themselves, but I’m also sick of people bitching about it. The reason the people are bitching however, is because they are just as or more capable of discussing social media, than the people that are self-labeled. Some of these people, may even be very close to being a Social Media Master, but they choose to be named by their peers and not by themselves. Of course, the “Social Media Experts” are experts, we just aren’t their audience, so stop bitching.

Thoughts are Evolutionary: The Idea for Arclings

Posted on by
1

Do you really want to keep pushing ideas out, but have problems fleshing the concept out fully? Or maybe you just want to express the basis of an idea really quick, get feedback, and iterate. The problem with current systems is it’s hard to keep track of the evolution, if you post a lot of other stuff around it.

Micro-blogging lets you throw the idea out there, but doesn’t allow much room for the idea to evolve, or tracking this evolution.

Blogging in the conventional sense is much too concrete(though I’m doing it right now). I find the preconception of blogging to be you must push out a full thought. Why?

I propose a release quick, release often blogging structure and build arc’s as your story develops, making branching trees using link structures. Let the ideas build over weeks, or months, rather than waiting for one single burst of insight, and fleshing it out on the spot.

I propose using story arcs, along with links to the latest preceding events in the evolution, and trackbacks to the succeeding story events. Though this is possible in the current evolution of blogging systems, it’s complicated. I want an Arcling platform that makes the connection process easy, if not intelligent in managing the tracing of the structure.

10 Resolutions For 2010

Posted on by
Reply

Resolutions never turn out successful for me so I’m going to make 10 and hope for a 70% completion by December 31, 2010.

10. Build up my portfolio, while I’m unemployed.

It’s time I start building the base for where I plan on going. If you don’t have the foundation constructed first, everything you build will crumble or be extremely unmaintainable.

9. Find a Job

I’ve been looking even for the most basic job, just to bring money in, to know avail. May start doubling down on this, but at this point I’m stuck were I am, and the job market here is dead.

8. Go back to school

This is one I’m tempted to forget about automatically, but I’ll give it another shot in the fall if something has set itself up by then.

7. Set up a blog on Education

It’s one of the things that always gets me going.

6. Write a text on the Failure of the US Government

I want to see a future, and the actions of the government for the most part since before I was born is working to destroy the country. The infrastructure is failing and preparing to head off the cliff.

5. Post here at least once a week

I need to keep my writing fresh, active discussion keeps the mind fresh.

4. Open back up to the Social Media World

I used to be everywhere, but the past 8 months it’s been predominantly FriendFeed. I plan on moving back out to Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon, and new sites.

3. Comment Natively

I rarely comment on posts I read, especially on the smaller blogs I read. I want to change this, because I know how much it sucks

2. Release My Product & Maintain it

This one’s guaranteed, it’s just a matter of making sure I maintain it and build the application tree out in a maintainable fashion.

1. Keep on Learning

The number one thing on my list every year, an idle mind is a wasted mind. I want to learn and become fluent in at least 6 different things.

A Few Innovative Ideas for Short URL’s

Posted on by
1

Over the past 6 months or so I’ve seen numerous posts raise flags with the idea of URL Shorteners. Each of these focus on several issues, security issues, non-relative link titles, no pass through for SEO purposes, and the possibility of data loss. Each of the problems, have at least partial solutions, but these solutions are still not effective enough. Here are some of the modifications that I plan on working to enhance the service.

Pretty URL’s – Security & Relative Titles

Making the short URL as human-readable as possible is a plus, however, with the shorteners on the market, they are quite hard to get because every user’s URL is an ID that can only be linked to only once by the service. My solution to this is to embed user data within the link, this abstraction reduces actual URL location to 1-3 characters(b62 range, 62 – 238,328), and you can store the User data in between 4-6 characters(b62, 14,776,336 – 56,800,235,584) at the end. This means the minimal length required for a link is 5 and the maximum is 9. The benefits of applying the User encoding is that it provides the ability to parse the users links, along with any meta-data associated with the link, such as a secondary access to the url, via a user specific vanity title, e.g. http://examp.le/URLxUser = http://examp.le/SteveJ/apple and http://examp.le/XbUser = http://examp.le/LarryP/apple. The User encoding also allows the linking system, to be used as a quick account review if there is any suspicion of malware or spyware being sent by a specific source. One requirement of using the User encoding, is that you define the length that the User data takes up and where it is located. I feel that 5 characters(~1 Billion unique id’s) is optimal at this point in time, and that placing this in the very end of the string is slightly simpler to parse, but that’s just user preference. However, at no point can you change either of these choices without destroying the entire system of links that have been spread over the internet, so you must choose wisely before you begin.

Multiple-Links – More Data, Less Space

Allowing users to batch related content, reduces the total length per link to 22/n to 24/n, where n equals # of links. Applying link specification to the API will extend the length, but also make large batches more usable for sharing data, (e.g. http://examp.le/XbUser?link=1,3). Next topic of discussion for this is how to handle statistics, because regular statistics become a bit blurred by having the ability to access multiple links at the same time. The most accurate collection is only the inbound links to the page, outbound is much more complicated, as it is multiple-permutations on exit paths. The best that you can do is calculate clicks for links, and measure selection for the Open All button by counting all active links. One benefit to the multiple link structure is that it encourages users to become link curators, this provides plenty of data for machine learning, as well as providing associations that aren’t easily discernible to machines, such as what the user likes. It also makes the system an active aggregation center for real-time data. An example of a multi-link(Safari 4 has issues and will open windows instead of tabs) http://lnkr.hiphs.com/socialme

Data Storage – Open Access, Uptime, and Redundant Stores

After, stories such as Ma.gnol.ia’s data loss, Cli.gs hacking, and various services shutting their doors, link rot becomes a very big concern. So I’ve looked into various solutions and one that sticks out is based on work by Directeur for use in federated real-time systems, Socnodes, and the Oruboros & Lamaean Hydra problems that he had to solve. His solution to the Oruboros was using Atom Feeds UID’s with service title to allow the systems to check against themselves. The usefulness of the Socnode layout is you can store and update remote databases with your data, creating a remote redundant store, but also n-ary accessible domains. Assuming you use separate data storage sites, DNS’s, and build otherwise independent systems that operate with the same data in parallel.

There will be a point that URL’s aren’t going to be nearly as important and I see this as a step to reaching it. These steps toward ease of access, safely securing the data, through redundancy, encoding and embedded data, and review systems, and the ability to collect related and relevant data are steps in the right direction.

The Social Web: Defining Real-World Social Factors

Posted on by
Reply

I noticed this a while back, while watching FFundercats, as they discussed the possible loss of the service, with founder Paul Buchheit. They also discussed why Friendfeed captured the audience it did and why most of the users hate/dislike Facebook. It’s the content and community that exists on each, and what value you receive from them. I ended up breaking the real-life social experience into 3 fields, to try and explain this.


Introduction

Commonality
A shared interest in similar items, friends, or favorite places to hang out or eat. It should be easily distinguishable to find a similarity to begin with as your mutual friend introduces you or you end up at the same location at the same time. You may both go to a place to enjoy a hobby you both share, and make a connection from that.

Mutual Experience
You have both being through an incident or event in which you share similar experiences, this could fall under commonality, but it is something that isn’t common enough that you would normally share with a stranger. It could be your profession, a disease that has affected your life, or going to an exclusive event. It is a personal connection that randomly comes out and creates an initial connection.

Notable Interaction
This is the kind that is often used in movies, but occurs quite often in life also, the cliche in films is when someone drops there books and gets assistance from someone. It’s just an accident that creates an opening for introductions. In real life this could be any unplanned event where people share some information about each other, whether it be a car accident, being stuck in an airport due to a delay, or any accident that causes people to offer assistance.

Acquaintance

Re-occurrence
The event that any of the aspects of the Introductory Field reoccurs often enough that you begin to know each other on a more personal level, than you would on a one-off meeting.

Mutual Shared Personal Knowledge
The information that most people don’t want you to have if they don’t know you very well, their birthday, their relationship status, where they’re from. It’s the most basic of info that provides accessibility to each other and also a little detail about one’s current state of affairs.

Caring
The use of Personal Knowledge to express yourself to the person. You can wish them a happy birthday, with out it being to awkward, or provide condolences when they lose something/someone very dear to them. It is the ability to express without being perceived as fake that you are willing to be there for the person in the moments they need support.

Friendship

Deep Interaction
The point in which you can discuss things that matter to you, that you might not share with people you don’t know very well. Discussions which involve personal knowledge to be gathered that isn’t public information. It is the ability to trust the other person with more personal information.

Experience
The effect of Deep Interaction is that you are begin to know more about the person. You have inside jokes, can pass on interests, and know how to change their mood for the positive or negative. The insight that comes with being a friend allows you to interact more fluidly with the other person.

Ease of Access
The ability to start a conversation with a person relatively simply, you make time for each other to have a discussion. It can also be, likely is, the provision of multiple channels to reach the person for such discussions. Having such ubiquity helps further and accelerate, the relationship.

Catalysts

Real-Time Discussion
By now we should all understand what this means, but I will clear the meaning up for those that don’t know. Real-time discussions are fluid interactions that happen rapidly enough, within a short period of time, that they can be seen as a seamless conversation.

Randomness
The spark that can ignite a friendship. It is the driving force of introductions and fosters connections. You see someone grasping something that you like as well, you have an accident, you trip. It is the key to mutual experiences, and notable interactions. It also keeps everything interesting, you may come across something new, at any time.

Currently, I haven’t found an online service that offers all of these qualities, but the top few have hit some sweet spots that make it much easier to manage socialization on all levels. Below I posted a chart of what factors Friendfeed, Facebook, and Twitter have become useful for. And I’m not saying that they don’t have ways to do all of this, it’s just not simple, if it’s not simple to manage the social factors, it’s useless.

Factor Chart