Web Stories 2007-08-31

Posted on August 31, 2007
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The title is misleading because the part I’m excerpting here refers to the NYT story about surfacing old news through SEO, and whether the Times should take extra pains to correct inaccuracies in stories newly refreshed. I wrote this up and down the other day [see The Justice of Truth and Money], but I like Scott Rosenberg’s free-market philosophy on the matter, and this is the last word you would think:

If the Times is capitalizing on its archives, it ought to take more responsibility for the new currency it has granted to old stories (and their errors). Shafer’s [with Slate] attitude is that people who are hurt by these old stories should go out and fix the problem themselves. I’d do that, if I were in their shoes, but I’ve been a journalist all my life. I don’t think the Times can take such a cavalier stance. Because in the end, if the paper tells its subjects that it’s their responsibility to establish an accurate public record, people will start wondering why they need the paper’s version of the record at all. - My Guardian piece on blog history

The Economist has written a brief introduction to the Semantic Web - Web version 3.0 - and with its customary writing skill makes the whole subject comfortably real. The article makes clear that adding metadata tags to information will be done by software, not people, for the most part - something I never quite explained in any of my treatments of the theme. Show this to anyone:

Whatever their origin, the metadata labels can then be used to do useful things. A piece of software can, for example, compare goods that are similar but not identical and then recommend the best (or the cheapest, or the best value for money) to a potential customer. In the field of travel, attaching metadata to everything makes it possible to link up airline schedules, car rental and hotel bookings. - The web: some antics

Robert Cringely hangs his latest prediction on the wall as a 42-inch flat screen. He’s talking about the imminent killer experience of telepresence in our homes. I wasn’t at all persuaded - a lot hinges on our crummy American bandwidth being broad enough - but towards the final paragraphs, he makes it look like Apple could pull it off. In 2008? I don’t know, but he’s the pundit:

So the bandwidth is coming and millions of people will have it, even in America, by 2008. What’s missing is both consumer demand and painless satisfaction of that demand through easy-to-use high-volume products, which come down to big screens, cameras, and PC systems running the right software. The part of this that is both hardest and easiest is stimulating demand. People aren’t demanding telepresence because they have never experienced telepresence. If you show them they will come.

This hang-it-on-the-wall iMac would establish yet another category of computers, which is what Apple loves to do. They’ll sell a million units to the faithful and all it will take is putting an active telepresence system in every Apple store connected to every other Apple store for prospective users to play with. - The Next Killer App: Telepresence may come to your house next year.

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