Google Tool Talk

Persona Editor
A tool for the
two-way open web

Two-way APIs
We need to be able to write as well as read
Level playing field
No lock-in

A tool for the open web
Tools got a bad rep in the 90’s, copied Director and Photoshop
Tools today can only do 1 or 2 things
Tools today are just another form of lock-in
Need tools explicitly designed for the open web

Persona Editor is an Outliner
Edits and maintains your digital lifestyle
Works with data from any:
Social network
Media repository
Blogging platform
Social media service
eCommerceplatform
Portal
Dashboard

And if they have two-way APIs, we can sync with them

Many different kinds of data, in the same Outline
People, Profiles
Friends, Groups
Images, Video, Audio
Text; structured or flat
Feeds, Links
Events, Reviews
Drill down till you
find the actual data

Open Web data organized into the way you think
Mix and match anything once it’s in the outliner
every URL is a hierarchical node
Work w/different kinds of data at the same time
Turn data into ideas; tag or categorize them

Flexible model, no constraints
Build new structures, new nodes of the hierarchy
Create mashups –> on-the-fly
And if a system has two-way APIs
we can send the data back from whence it came

Combine static and dynamic data
Archival data
Activity streams, subscriptions, feeds
Media
Changing social data
Web Services

Start off simple
A two-way tool

Don’t let iTunes lock you in!
Our tool can break users out of their lock-in

Playlists can be made up of songs from multiple sources
Keep it legal, but give users what they want
But make it convenient
This is how it should have been all along!

This is how it would look in our tool
Each service is
it’s own node in
the outline
The category
“Artists” and the
songs themselves
are also nodes
Drag and drop
playlists

Associate any struct
To any node of the hierarchy

Aggregate photos from multiple locations
Collect photos from different sources
Create albums, based upon logical notions

Store combined albums back….
Return aggregated albums to their source
Keep these albums in sync, as new photos are added to each source location

What enables us to do this?
Outliner
Two-way APIs
Open Web
This is how the web is supposed to work
No one owns it,
Everyone can use it,
Anyone can improve it

Outliners are the perfect tool metaphor
Hierarchical editor
Nodes
Text
Links
Media (images, video,
audio)
Other nodes
Drag and drop nodes
Indent/Promote nodes
Create structures that represent how you ‘think’

Everything is a URL
All posts, notes, feeds, media, people, groups are a URL ‘somewhere’
Each of these items is a node in the outline
We can combine these items into any structure
And mix and match any kind of data in these structures

Editing an ID Hub Outline
Navigate thru the Outline
Expand
Collapse
Select
Cut, Copy, Paste, Edit
CRUD (create, read, update, delete)
Drag and drop
Send a Message
Move and Synchronize
profile data

Once data is in the outline
It can be structured into any hierarchical form
Reordered or turned into a playlist or album
Aggregated
Filtered, Sorted
Meta-data added
Associated with:
People
Groups
Tags

Aggregate and Manage your Media
An outline can keep track of where all your media is stored, and keep those accounts in sync
Manage and organize
your media into new
structures (collections)
drag from source and
drop into new structure
These collections can
be albums or playlists
or completely new
kind of structures

Aggregate and Manage your Friends
Each social graph can be a separate outline
Drag and drop to create new lists or tag people

Manage Blog Archives
Edit, prune and archive your history of blog posts
Migrate from one publishing platform to another

Use Outliners for many things
1. Edit my personal knowledge base
2. Normalize the open web
3. Create new dynamic structures

Feeds, Links, Bookmarks and Tags
Organize your raw data into logical structures
The tool uses tags to create structures for
Personal Knowledge Bases

Logical structures are used to build Personal Knowledge Bases
Combine archival static data with dynamic data
Include logical structures
Then map all this into personal knowledge bases and divide it all up into “personae”

The user’s digital lifestyle is their PKB
We can map and update user’s knowledge bases into personae widgets (one for each persona)

Our Outliner manages Personae- so we call it a Persona editor
Divide up your life into ‘personae’:
Dad
Employee
College buddie
Cut, Copy, Paste and Edit between Personae
Send them out to the Open Web via:
Widgets
Facebook app
OpenSocial app

Editing Personal Knowledge Bases
PKBs are a mashup of everything you’ve ever created and everything that you’re interested in
The tool maps URLs and site maps into outlines
Converts all URLs into nodes (malleable items)
Mimics the structure of the source pages or sites
User Interfaces adapt to the context of the Personal Knowledge Base
URLs become thumbnails
Audio and video can be heard/watched
People have profiles, activity feeds and status
Groups have members, activity feeds and status

Normalize the Open Web
http://pokemon.broadbandmechanics.com/~martin/wo2/

Create dynamic structures from the user’s open web data

Create new kinds of communities made up of people, content and services from different accounts – a mashed up on-the-fly community
Combines dynamic and static data, keep all sources in sync
Generates Personal Knowledge Bases
Dynamic structures can then be rendered into

widgets, Facebook apps and OpenSocial apps

Editing a dynamic structure outline
An outline can
represent a group
of people inside of
a dynamic structure
College reunion group
Members
Photos
Events
Class statistics

A College Reunion community
Multiple viewpoints on the same data
Normalized accounts can be aggregated into a new structure

Dynamic and static data

Drag friends images into new structure, set what gets updated

Build new structure

Add photos and statistics to create new virtual community

Export/Sync this community anywhere

These new kind of structures can then be output to any other service, synchronized and kept up to date

Everything will be stored in an Outline
The outline is the ‘unifying’ element of one’s digital lifestyle

One tool, many functions

As Director was to multimedia,

…so will our Persona Editor be to the Open Web

General purpose tool for editing one’s personal open mesh
It’ll enable user’s to:
1) Edit and maintain their personal knowledge bases
2) Convert, move, manage and edit open web data
3) Create new kinds of structures which combine dynamic and static data
4) Aggregate ‘on-the-fly’ and edit your personae
5) Edit Dashboard Outlines (either user’s or entity’s)

Prototype Outliner

UI prototype
Mockup

Dashboards can be a common notion that can connect users together
Dashboards can be:
a start page (iGoogle, NetVibes, MyYahoo)
a social network (Facebook, MySpace)
a blog (Wordpress, TypePad)
a meta-aggregator (FriendFeed)
or practically anything else (profile or account page)
Entities will also have ‘Dashboards’
Each dashboard will have an outline

Dashboard outline schema
I - Config info on the dashboard
II - ID Hub
III - Social Info
IV - Feeds/Channels
V - Access controls
VI - Content
VII - Media
VIII - Modules
IX - UI elements

Dashboard outlines
Distributed friending
Distributed access controls
Discover, share, scale
Community ‘shared’ info
Aggregated Groups
Aggregated musical tastes

One’s virtual dashboard travels with them
Holds all your info
Adapts to the context of the environment you’re in
Allows you to keep control over all your data