Toluu

everwas

you may ask yourself, how do I work this?

Jyri Engestrom on Social ObjectsJuly 2

I ran across some notes from the Web 2.0 Expo back in April that are still relevant and worth sharing. Today I’ll post on the talk that Jyri gave on Building Sites with Social Objects, tomorrow I’ll post notes from a talk given on iPhone Development Anti-Patterns.

Jyri Engestrom founded Jaiku which was later acquired by Google and is involved in some of their most interesting social networking products including Google Latitude.  In his session, he started by giving a quick run down of successive social networks from the past emphasizing that despite media coverage of facebook (and more recently twitter), the game is far from over:

Firefly, grew to 2M users, acquired by Microsoft
Six Degrees, grew to 3M users, folded
Friendster, grew to 90M users, collapsed under it’s own weight
MySpace, tens of millions of users, acquired by Fox
Facebook, over 250M users, still growing and independent

The game is not over. We are still talking about a segment of the population. Social Networks have not (yet) replaced e-mail, sms, or the telephone as the lowest common denominator way to get in touch with someone.

Jyri went on to describe how social networks are built and what differentiates a successful social network from others that fail. Most importantly, social networks are about connecting peopl

Dance, Dance Wheelchair RevolutionJuly 1

This past weekend we headed out to the Heureka Science Center about a 20 minute train ride North of Helsinki. There are a ton of interactive, hands-on exhibits which I took photos of but this wheelchair exhibit was the most interesting.

The concept is simple. The quadrants of the circle light up randomly, one at a time and you have to roll at least two wheels over the quadrant before the next quadrant lights up. There is music playing in the background so if you take too long, the music begins to slow down, letting others in the room know you’re not doing too well.

It’s a very effective exhibit because kids immediately know what to do and it teaches you very quickly the limitations of moving a wheelchair around in a tight space.

Swimming in FinlandJune 28

The weather in Helsinki has been fantastic the past week. T-shirts and Keen sandles type warm. We’re even sleeping with our windows open in the evenings. Today we swam in the ocean!

Real-time Search, Art or Science?June 26

Erik Schonfeld at TechCrunch posted a thought-provoking piece on real-time search. Twitter and Facebook are falling over each other in the media spotlight, fighting to be the place to go to find out the now.

There is something about human nature which makes us want to prioritize information by how recent it is, and that is the fundamental appeal of real time search. The difference between real time search and regular search didn’t really crystallize for me until I had a conversation with Edo Segal, who sold his real time search company Relegence to AOL a few years ago and holds three patents on the subject. “Real time taps into consciousness,” says Segal, “search taps into memory. That is why it so potent. You experience the world in real time.”

Like a moth to the flame, we are drawn in by the seductiveness of the freshest information but when we get too much of it, we’re overwhelmed with the banality of everything by everybody at the same time. It’s like listening to 1,000 CDs at once - perfect resolution saturates the senses.

What we really want is a way to zero in on the patterns that matter. Like the proverbial early bird, when you get fresh information that’s relevant and actionable, you

Crazy Tennis Court in the SkyJune 26

In 2005, the helipad of the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai was converted into a tennis court for a promotion featuring Agassi and Federer.