Why New Media is Dead - Manchester

New Media is Dead 3/8/07 Ian Forrester

What was New Media?

New media is a term that describes media which can only be viewed or used with the aid of computer processing power. Is is often said to be a form of media that includes some aspect of interactivity for its audience, to a greater or lesser degree. It is usually in digital form; which is what enables computers to store it, operate on it, and make it interactive.

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media

Web 2.0

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Web-based services such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Web 2.0, The Machine is Us/ing Us

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Digital Ethnography, Prof Wesch - http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=78

What changed?

Participation

Collaboration

Social

Collective intelligence

Web as a platform

The Long tail

Power Law of Participation

Collaboration

Blogs, wikis, tagging, etc are powering collaboration like never seen before

Social

The art of connecting people on-line and off-line

Everyone contributes to something greater that the sum of its parts

Web as a platform

The web is a platform or canvas for your creativity

The Long tail

So how does the BBC fit in here?

Turning around the good ship BBC

BBC Backstage

Innovation Labs

BBC 2.0

BBC Blogs Trial

BBC Feed Factory

BBC Creative/Open Archive

BBC Podcasts Trial

3 rd party content deals

BBC YouTube deal - http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/03_march/02/you_tube.shtml

What is Backstage?

“ There's two views on the BBC. One is the traditional view of centralised websites. The other is more open, de-centralised and a mess. That is Backstage and in there somewhere, is the future of the BBC ”

A developer/designer network from the BBC

An opportunity for the BBC to offer some of the content and services

A way to share with 3rd party, non-commercial developers

Our way of stimulating creativity and innovation in the market

Why is the BBC doing this?

The Governors response to the Review of the BBC’s Online services by Philip Graf committed the BBC to using open standards to allow users to find and repurpose BBC content in more flexible ways

Trust is the foundation of the BBC

We take pride in delivering Quality

Creativity is the lifeblood of our organisation

Audiences are at the heart of everything we do

We Respect each other and celebrate our diversity

Great things happen when we Work together

Common Questions

Cost of giving a way data and content?

Undermining commercial services?

What license is applied?

Were Poaching talent and ideas?

Is it all about prototypes?

So what's hot on our radar?

Transparency

Our audience require a deeper connection with the core of the BBC. They no longer consume or should be labeled users. http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic

Participation *

Collaboration *

Social

Collective intelligence *

Web as a platform *

The Long tail

Transparency

How in touch is the BBC with its audience? - http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2006/10/how_in_touch_is.html

Transparency

“ News Sniffer aims to monitor corporate news organisations to uncover bias” - http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/pages/about

'Watch Your Mouth' monitors the BBC's 'Have Your Say' website and detects when comments get censored

Revisionista monitors news websites and detects when articles change. The versions are viewable and the changes are highlighted.

Instant messenger bots

Instant messenger applications have existed on peoples desks for quite a while but building services which use them has been slow to come

Participation *

Collaboration *

Social *

Web as a platform *

The Long tail *

Imified is an instant messenger buddy that works across all major IM networks and offers access to a growing number of web applications, as well as productivity tools like notes, reminders, and todo's. Imified helps you get things done faster.

http://imified.com/

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2006/10/bbc_weather_bot.html

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2006/02/hourly_news_fla.html

Twitter

Although, not really instant messenger. Twitter is predicated around what your doing right now

Participation

Collaboration

Social *

Web as a platform *

The Long tail *

Twitter mash-ups

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/02/tv_twitter.html

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/01/bbc_news_just_s.html

Twitter Fan wiki - http://twitter.pbwiki.com/

Beyond the Browser

Widgets/Gadgets

A widget engine is host software system for physically inspired applets or web data on the desktop

Participation

Collaboration

Social

Web as a platform *

The Long tail

Widgets/Gadgets

Yahoo Widgets

Apple Dashboard

Google Gadgets

Vista Gadgets

Opera Widgets

Netvibes - Universal Widget API (UWA)

W3C's Widget specification - http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/

Desktop Widgets example

Start page Widgets example

Rich Internet Applications

Rich Internet Applications which are built like Web sites but share the space of desktop applications are on the horizon

Participation

Collaboration

Social

Web as a platform *

The Long tail *

Rich Internet Applications

Microsoft Avalon/WPF/XAML

AOL Boxely

Mozilla XULrunner

Adobe Flex/Apollo

Formsplayer Sidewinder

Firefox 3.0

Morfik

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Application_Markup_Language

Adobe Apollo

Mozilla XUL

http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/whyxul.html

Firefox 3.0

Off-line enabled applications will be possible without another framework

Getting real with devices

Taking pools of data off the web and into real devices, makes the web much more tangible and manageable

Participation *

Collaboration

Social *

Web as a platform *

The Long tail

Nabaztag (techno love bunny)

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/01/nabaztag_techno.html

http://www.nabaztag.com/

Chumby

Chumby Industries was formed by hackers who wanted to create something interesting, useful and different. The starting point was the humble clock radio - http://www.chumby.com

Mobile phones

Second Life

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 4,199,243 people from around the globe.

Participation *

Collaboration *

Social *

Web as a platform *

The Long tail

Second Life

http://kosso.wordpress.com/2006/10/06/bbc-news-rss-newsreader-secondlife-2/

Large Screens in Second Life

Virtual and Real - http://www.blugg.com/bbc/LCD1/WSHTON7.html

Secondlife - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nooribeom/242/179/23/?img=http%3A//nwn.blogs.com/nwn/images/rssl_1.jpg&msg=Koz%20Farina%27s%20RSS%20viewer

SL Video - http://kosso.wordpress.com/2006/10/06/bbc-news-rss-newsreader-secondlife-koz/

Maps and Geo-spacial information

Mapping where you are and where your going is completely in your control, like no other time before.

Participation

Collaboration *

Social *

Web as a platform *

The Long tail *

Maps, Weather and Traffic

Weather map - http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/01/world_weather_m.html

Travel map - http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2006/10/live_travel_new_1.html

Creative Commons

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

Participation *

Collaboration *

Social *

Web as a platform *

The Long tail *

Creative Commons

Attribution License

Attribution-NoDerivs License

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Attribution-NonCommercial License

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Attribution-ShareAlike License

Visualization

The visualization of data, content and information is becoming the difference between people understanding and not understanding

Participation

Collaboration *

Social *

Web as a platform *

The Long tail *

Visualization

A comprehensive archive of all the Homepages from July 14th 2005 onwards - http://www.bbc.co.uk/homearchive/

Visualization

Information aesthetics - http://infosthetics.com/

Data mining - http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/

Twingly screensaver - http://www.twingly.se

Packet Garden - http://www.selectparks.net/~julian/pg/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage

Internet Television

Joost previously the Venice Project

Participation

Collaboration

Social *

Web as a platform *

The Long tail *

Internet Television

Tape it off the internet (friendly bit torrent)

Internet Television

Things which are bubbling up...

BarCamp

The BarCamp rules are very clear and create an environment where there are no spectators, only participants: everyone who attends is expected to present, give a demo, lead a session or support the event in some way. This helps to get everyone involved, but also creates more of a community atmosphere - http://barcamp.org/BarCampLondon2

BarCamp

Web standards

The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all

http://webstandards.org

Use XHTML 1.0 transitional/strict

Separate the content from the style

Use Cascading Style Sheets with limited hacks

Use unobtrusive DOM scripting and JavaScript

Use Semantic markup, avoid Tables for layout

Do not build for a single browser

Semantic markup

Semantic markup is markup that is descriptive enough to allow people and machines to recognize it and make decisions about it. In other words, markup means something when we can identify it and do useful things with it. In this way, semantic markup becomes more than merely descriptive. It becomes a brilliant mechanism that allows both humans and machines to “understand” the same information

Semantic markup

Microformats

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

http://www.microformats.org

Microformats

People and Organizations

hCard

Calendars and Events

hCalendar

Opinions, Ratings and Reviews

VoteLinks, hReview

Social Networks

XFN

Licenses:

rel-license

Tags, Keywords

rel-tag

Lists and Outlines

XOXO

HTML 5

Apple Inc., The Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software ASA came together to define what they class as the next version of the web. HTML 5 as its being called includes some interesting parts including the Canvas element

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/HTML:Canvas

HTML 5: Canvas

<canvas> is a new HTML5 element which can be used to draw graphics using scripting (usually JavaScript). It can for instance be used to draw graphs, make photo compositions or do simple (and not so simple) animations.

Its supported by Safari, Mozilla and Opera.

Examples - http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Category:Canvas_examples

HTML 5: Canvas

Pipelines

Mashup? The Web is the API

I want to talk about the implications for that marvelous aspect of the fundamental UNIX design: the pipe, and its ability to connect small independent programs so that they could collectively perform functions beyond the capability of any of them alone. What is the equivalent of the pipe in the age of the web? ...This is one of the REALLY BIG IDEAS that is going to shape the next five or ten years of computing. - Jon Udell (microsoft)

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/02/pipes_and_filte.html

Pipeline examples

Unix Pipelines

XML Pipelines

AppleScript

Touchstone

Yahoo! Pipes

Xproc (XML Pipeline definition language)

Yahoo! Pipes

http://pipes.yahoo.com

Yahoo! Pipes

Pipes opens up mashup programming to the non-programmer, it's not entirely for the faint of heart. At minimum, you need to be able to look at a URL line and parse out the parameters (so, for example, you can use Pipes' "URL builder" module to construct input to a site's query function), understand variables and loops, and so on. But you don't really need to know these things to get started – Tim O'Reilly

Touchstone

Touchstone takes Widgets, Pipelines and Attention to the next level

http://www.touchstonelive.com

Touchstone

Adapters - http://touchstone.stikipad.com/adapters/show/Adapter+Ideas

Attention and your Identity

The Attention Economy

Attention economics is an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems. – wikipedia

The Attention Economy

"Attention economics" today is primarily concerned with the problem of getting consumers to consume advertising. Traditional media advertisers followed a model that suggested consumers went through a linear process they called, AIDA - A ttention, I nterest, D esire and A ction

Attention 2.0

Your Attention data/profiles has real value and needs to be protected. Attention 2.0 puts the user in control of their Attention data/profiles.

Attention Trust - http://www.attentiontrust.org/

Attention Profiling Mark-up Language - http://www.touchstonelive.com/apml/

Identity 2.0

Dick Hardt Founder & CEO, Sxip Identity, delivers a compelling and dynamic introduction on Identity 2.0 and how the concept of digital identity is evolving. - http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

Open ID - http://openid.net/

SXIP - http://www.sxip.com/

Open ID

When you post on a blog using OpenID, the blogger's site asks your OpenID provider to log you in; when your provider verifies you, you are guaranteed a unique identity without maintaining an account for that blog.

Simon Willison explains how it all works in a short screencast - http://simonwillison.net/2006/openid-screencast/

Digital Rights or Restrictions

Digital Rights Management is a controversial topic. Advocates argue DRM is necessary for copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work to ensure continued revenue streams.

Some critics of the technology, including the Free Software Foundation, suggest that the use of the word "Rights" is misleading and suggest that people instead use the term Digital Restrictions Management. Their position is essentially that copyright holders are attempting to restrict use of copyrighted material in ways not included in the law.

Others, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation consider some DRM schemes to also be anti-competitive practices, citing the iTunes Store as an example

We invited some of the most vocal backstagers in the long running debate over DRM, to come and join us at the BBC to discuss face to face what they felt about DRM and the BBC. The hour long discussion caused quite a stir... http://blip.tv/file/get/Matthewcashmore-backstagebbccoukDRMPodcast577.mp3

Your welcome to download and remix the MPeg3 file or the Ogg Vorbis file. Both are licensed under creative commons attribution v2.5

Final thoughts,

Ajax isn't that interesting...

Set up a blog and get involved in the conversation

Contribute to a open source project

Remember Bit Torrent isn't evil

Social networks for the sake of social networking are tiresome

Get out there and get social

Use a RSS reader or aggregator

Listen to IT Conversations.com

Keep an eye on the BBC and join the Backstage list

Thank you

Ian Forrester | backstage.bbc.co.uk | cubicgarden.com | geekdinner.co.uk | ian.forrester@bbc.co.uk

Credits

The power of participation – http://farm1.static.flickr.com/49/171420476_7346bf964c_t.jpg

Freedom fighters - http://www.flickr.com/photos/beija-flor/194900377/

Joost screenshots - http://www.flickr.com/photos/svonog/408587861 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/zemote/408945390/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/d88315v/408002501