The Next Big Thing — Why Web 2.0 Isn't Enough

An anonymous reader writes "TechConsumer has an interesting discussion about what it will take for the next big thing, and why Web 2.0 is only just the beginning. 'Realtors have been giving us the answer for years, although they didn't know it. The next big thing is..."location, location, location". Think of how we access all the information of the Internet. We do it at a desk, where wires keep us attached to a specific location. Laptops help us branch out a bit, but even then we are tied to a wireless connection. Go to far and you no longer have access to information.'"

Comments

Next Big Thing != Flying Car

[UncleWilly]

..and when some crazy has me buried in a 18 century dungeon, my PDA, from 2019, tells me 439 meters due north is a antique mill!

Re:Next Big Thing != Flying Car

[eln]

You're underestimating the true power of context-based search. When some crazy has you buried in an 18th century dungeon, your PDA from 2019 will give you driving directions to the nearest Ace hardware, and a printable coupon for $2 off lock picking supplies.

Re:Next Big Thing != Flying Car

[element-o.p.]

Does this happen to you often?!?!

We all know that you have to wait for...

[iknownuttin]

Web 2.1! Web 2.0 is going to be really buggy!

Re:We all know that you have to wait for...

[Anonymous Coward]

wake me up when we get to Web 3.11 for Workgroups

Re:We all know that you have to wait for...

[obergfellja]

Screw that. I am looking forward to hacking Web XP.

Re:We all know that you have to wait for...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to wait for Service Pack 2.

Re:We all know that you have to wait for...

[InsaneProcessor]

I am going to start a marketing company so that I can get the hype contract for Web Vista.

Re:We all know that you have to wait for...

[pileated]

i sometimes get bored with slashdot humor but this time i have to say you have hit the nail and the author on the head, and properly so............

Re:We all know that you have to wait for...

[rfreedman]

Come, now. We know that nothing is really stable until Service Pack 3.

GPS

[mrchaotica]

Ah, how I would love to take advantage of "location, location, location"... too bad the vast majority of laptops and digital cameras don't come with it built-in!

(On that note, does anybody happen to know of a reasonably-priced Type II PC card GPS that doesn't stick out of the slot? I'd like to get one that I can just leave in the slot at all times (including when it's in my bag, hence the need for it not to stick out).

Re:GPS

[slacktide]

If it doesn't stick out of the slot, you won't be able to receive a signal. That's the antenna, and the the GPS signal is too weak to bury it inside the card slot.

Re:GPS

[X0563511]

How about a large 'spiral' type antenna right behind the lid cover? big area, near the surface, and non-obtrusive. I imagine that a 1/8"-1/10" of plastic doesn't kill the signal TOO much...

Re:GPS

[DrSkwid]

usb/serial one on a wire

I think it's called the

[rolfwind]

iPhone.

Right?

I certainly don't browse the net or access info with my other phones, simply because it is too clunky. Of course, to be really nice, we will have to wait anywher from revision 2 to 4.

It will be interesting if Apple will ever decide to make a real portal of its own, or be content to partner with google.

Re:I think it's called the

[moderatorrater]

It will be interesting if Apple will ever decide to make a real portal of its own, or be content to partner with google. Isn't one of the founders of Google on the Apple board? I doubt Apple will have any problems continuing to let Google pay them to have their site as the portal on the iPhone, especially since Google does a decent job in copying the look and feel of devices/programs.

Re:I think it's called the

[Anonymous Coward]

no shit.

the problem is that websites are still checking the user agent and spewing nonworkable pages, "This page must be viewed in Firefox, IE, or Mozilla", when the iphone (and now safari) are perfectly capable of rendering their full page.

The iphone is where whatever this person wants to be.

Re:I think it's called the

[C0rinthian]

There are rumors of a significant .Mac revamp in the future.

Re:I think it's called the

[Anonymous Coward]

But the iphone doesn't know where the person is. When it does maybe we'll bother to support it, until then, why bother? Stick to your toy and read the RTFA.

Re:I think it's called the

[jb.hl.com]

Let's hope so. As of now it offers stupidly low value for money.

Re:I think it's called the

[myowntrueself]

It will be interesting if Apple will ever decide to make a real portal of its own, or be content to partner with google.

Hey, Apple chose to partner with AT&T, possibly the worst provider that they could possibly have chosen for the iphone. Could partnering with Google be worse?

Maybe one day Google will set up a nationwide open wireless network that the iphone can hook into at which point the AT&T partnership will be irrelevant. If Apple hadn't partnered with Google by then they'd look pretty foolish. Egg, meet face.

Re:I think it's called the

[Nullav]

Read the Read The Fucking Article? I bet you have a PIN number, too.

Where is far?

[Gman14msu]

Go to far and you no longer have access to information.

Where is this place "far" that you speak of and why can't we access information there? I feel bad for anyone from "far". Oh! You meant too far!

I understand but come on it changes the meaning and more importantly makes it difficult to read. Quick proof read next time please.

Re:Where is far?

[mrchaotica]

Where is this place "far"

It's in Nowhere, about 500 miles past Middle.

Re:Where is far?

[moderatorrater]

To be honest, I have very little sympathy for someone who finds that a lack of an 'o' in that context makes the summary harder to read/understanding. Judging a slashdot summary based on it's grammar is like judging presidential candidates by their teeth: it's somewhat relevant, but unless it's grossly deficient (which this isn't), it's not the most important issue.

Re:Where is far?

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand but come on it changes the meaning and more importantly makes it difficult to read. Quick proof read next time please. I found his typo much easier to parse than that monstrosity of a sentence you just wrote. Pot, meet kettle.

Re:Where is far?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, instead of reading the sentence once, one has to read it over again... or at least read that part of it over again. At least for me, my brain expects the rest of the sentence to make sense based on what I've read so far. If it doesn't, I have to re-read it, and if it still doesn't make sense, I have to consider any typos that may have been made.

In this case it was somewhat easier to figure out, since I'm so used to reading people screw up to, too, and even two, but it does make it more difficult to read.

Re:Where is far?

[MarsDefenseMinister]

And I have little sympathy for people who are too lazy to spell words correctly. It's a symptom of a bigger problem that starts with our failed educational system. It's time to enact a zero-tolerance attitude towards spelling errors. Forgive the first one gently; relentlessly mock all errors after that. It's not that hard to have a little rigor in the use of a language.

Re:Where is far?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh! You meant too far!

How do you know that? His sentence made sense to me as "Go to fart and you no longer have access to information."

Re:Where is far?

[HouseArrest420]

Ah, there's an English teacher in all of us:

Quick proof read next time please A quick proof read next time, please.

Re:Where is far?

[OptimusPaul]

And I have little sympathy for those who cannot see the simpler solution... change the spelling of too to to, or add another set of definitions to to.

Re:Where is far?

[The Great Pretender]

"Quick proof read next time please" I thought he was trying for a haiku. I'm not too good at these, but what about:

Quick proof read next time

For conflict begins on slashdot

When mistakes are made

Re:Where is far?

[HouseArrest420]

Yeah, but then you grow up and realize that the world is better than your english teacher let on...and how worthless it is to proof read thru someone's paragraph without getting paid for it.

Due u wanna change it? May-b you due! Due u have the power too? No. Will u change it? Probly not, so quit cryin.

Remember, the kids of today (who spell like crap on the internet and cells) are the adults of Web 3.0. If you think your mad now...wait till the information is streamed right into your brain instead of on a monitor. Then I'll accept you complaining over something that's only about 6 pixels high. Now, though, all you'll get is me rubbing my fingers together by my ear and saying, "Oh how I love that crickets music!"

The world is bigger than a tipo.

Re:Where is far?

[fireboy1919]

From the GP I get this:

I understandCOMMA but come onDASH it changes the meaningCOMMA and more importantly makes it difficult to read. Do a quick proof read next timeCOMMA please. Changes are marked in bold and spelled out rather than using the hard-to-see punctuation. GP's not really in a position to be asking for corrections by my estimation.

And from the parent's sig; the problem shown in bold:

Winning an arguement is simple. Just make everyone you argue with think they're wrong. Was that a Persian flaw, or a genuine mistake? Either way, nobody's perfect. Can you spot the flaw in my comment?

Re:Where is far?

[Anonymous Coward]

It should have read "goto far".
far: // informationd doesn't reach here

Re:Where is far?

[PaulMorel]

I agree with you, and I go through the same thing. On blogs, I usually just put up with it, however, people who write for a living really should be held to a higher standard.

Re:Where is far?

[QRDeNameland]

His sentence made sense to me as "Go to fart and you no longer have access to information."

Oh, you have Comcast too?

Re:Where is far?

[Warbothong]

Surely pervasive Wifi is the issue here, like meshes and things? I mean, if cell phones can connect from pretty much anywhere, then why not a PDA or a laptop? (In fact, they can connect THROUGH a cell phone).

Oh yeah, now I remember. Money.

Re:Where is far?

[thegnu]

And I have little sympathy for those who cannot see the simpler solution... change the spelling of too to to, or add another set of definitions to to.

To whom it may concern,
I miss the old spelling of to and to. It's not to-the-point. It's to complicated, to confusing, and darn it, to me it's clearly to be to ambiguous. To many times have we spent upwards of to days, to long to apply myself to to many to-tiered projects. Now back to my to points--to many come up, and I to have made sacrifices, paring them back to to--to point out what to you're try to talk about is to hard.

Yours is to simple an answer for to complicated a problem. Examine the following albeit slangy phrase: "You are to clumsy!"

Thank you,
Nathan Curry
like to pees in a pod

Re:Where is far?

[Jorgandar]

It's right before you get to the kingdom of far far away.

Re:Where is far?

[foobsr]

Get over it. Not too far into the future you will observe people using reduplication as a means of expressing plural or comparative degree, and, based on the well known developers theme, triplication in order to emphasize importance or any other type of attribution.

But you will have the nonsense at your rfid (no fingertips needed) E_V_E_R_Y_W_H_E_R_E, and you will be suspicious if you do not submerge.

CC.

Re:Where is far?

[dgatwood]

Can you spot the flaw in my comment?

Which one? I see four.

1. The second sentence in the second paragraph is missing an article:

   The GP's not really in a position...

2. The third paragraph begins with a coordinating conjunction. This is generally considered poor form.

3. It also has a semicolon where it should have a comma.

4. It also lacks a verb.

   Finally, from the parent's sig, the problem is shown in bold:

Yes, I am anal retentive. How could you tell?

I would also probably use a comma after the introductory adverb phrase in the first line, but that's more a style issue than a grammar issue.

Re:Where is far?

[PitaBred]

Where are my mod points when I need 'em... preach on :)

Re:Where is far?

[PitaBred]

So... what you're essentially saying is "I'm too lazy and stupid to do things right, so rather than feeling bad that I screwed up and trying to fix it, I'm gonna redefine failure as success"? You've got a career in politics ahead of you, boy.

Re:Where is far?

[Sunshinerat]

I feel bad for all those commuters who have to use the Fargo airport. Apparently, they are all without connection to the outside world.

A quick Google maps to FAR, showed me where 'far' is http://maps.google.com/maps?q=far.

Re:Where is far?

[fireboy1919]

The second sentence in the second paragraph is missing an article: Articles are merely clarifying adjectives. In other words, not having it arguably makes the sentence unclear, and occasionally completely changes the meaning, but it isn't wrong. Sometimes you want to be unclear - when you want to distract people from a real mistake, for example.

The third paragraph begins with a coordinating conjunction. This is generally considered poor form. See the above point.

It lacks a verb This could be so. But "the problem shown in bold" is as valid an independent phrase as, "the sun shown in the sky." It's confusing how that bold text, which didn't exist before I wrote it managed to shine in the past, but a valid sentence with a confusing meaning is still a valid sentence. I was of mixed feelings on putting this one in there - on whether I could count it as a faux-mistake like the others.

It also has a semicolon where it should have a comma. That's the only one that is necessarily a real grammar error. There isn't any way that the two phrase comprising that sentence are two independent phrases. A comma would also have been wrong, however, because there is no conjunction joining the two phrases.
A colon or dash would have been appropriate.

All programmers should be good parsers of English before they start working on other things.

Is it possible to be more off-topic?

Re:Where is far?

[PresidentEnder]

The sun shone in the sky.

Re:Where is far?

[Bonobo_Unknown]

"At least for me, my brain expects the rest of the sentence to make sense based on what I've read so far."

My brain auto-corrects. Does anyone else get that? I didn't even notice the said error until it was illustrated. So I don't get thrown off by little mistakes, but I did realize that overall the article was a waste of time.

Re:Where is far?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is the way you really think, chances are good that you aren't going to get laid anytime in the near future. Seriously.

Re:Where is far?

[MarsDefenseMinister]

Grow up? I'm a rich fellow, retired at 38, with millions in the bank. I'm disciplined, and a good speller too. It matters not if you or anyone else accepts my complaining, because bad spelling is it's own punishment.

Re:Where is far?

[GlL]

"Surely pervasive Wifi is the issue here, like meshes and things?" Actually, not just money is the problem with Wifi. I live in Washington state. I support a wifi ISP on the East side of the state. It's pretty flat and no trees around and we still have interference issues from cordless phones and the customer's own access points. (I didn't design the network, I just support it.) It still works pretty well. On the west side of the state a couple of municipalities have learned that trees (of which there are many out here) block wifi signals. You might ask why. Trees are full of water, water absorbs radio signals in the 2.4Ghz range. That incidentally is how your microwave works. So yes, your microwave can interfere with your wireless network if it is improperly shielded. For the above technical reasons, pervasive Wifi is not practical without a change in the direction of the technology. My 2 cents from experience.

Re:Where is far?

[OptimusPaul]

bravo... far funnier than that crap I posted.

Re:Where is far?

[neonmonk]

Bad spelling is it is own punishment????????

Re:Where is far?

[MarsDefenseMinister]

Yes, because your peers will consider you uneducated, and prospective employers will be wary. I would think this would be self-evident. If a person doesn't take the time to be educated, that person is always going to be in second place. In a world where either you kill the lion or the lion eats you, second place is an uncomfortable place to be.

Re:Where is far?

[Dakkus]

Actually Dutch language seems to have the same word ("te") for too and to. And it doesn't really seem to cause them any trouble, just as it doesn't cause you any trouble while you are speaking.

Re:Where is far?

[Sobrique]

So very true. If your CV (or resume) is badly written, then your odds of being called for interview go straight through the floor.

If your post on a forum is unreadable, it'll go unread.

If you're arrogant enough to 'demand' that the rest of the world make an effort to read inane 'txt spk' or worse 'l33t' drivel, then you receive what you deserve - everyone else assuming that you're both arrogant and lazy, and probably not worth reading as a result.

It should be noted, that this is NOT the same as not having English as a first language. I mean, leaving aside the stereotype that virtually all instances of 'really bad English' I've run into have come from native speakers. I find I can tell the difference. For one thing, the 'non native' writers are making an effort to make their writing intelligable, and any errors of syntax or grammar reflect a 'best effort'.

Re:Where is far?

[demon driver]

Right, same goes for German ("zu", having even more meanings, like "closed" or "intoxicated" [slang]).

Of course Dutch and German speakers are used to it, whereas English speakers are used to and subconsciously relying on the different spellings of "to" and "too" (and "two"), when reading.

None the less, the energy regularly wasted on nagging about and discussing misspellings like "to" instead of "too" to me seems larger by some orders of magnitude than the energy needed to simply and silently auto-correct while reading ;-)

Re:Where is far?

[Ciarang]

I think you should look again, since he wasn't questioning your statement but highlighting your poor grammar.

Re:Where is far?

[thegnu]

Actually Dutch language seems to have the same word ("te") for too and to. And it doesn't really seem to cause them any trouble, just as it doesn't cause you any trouble while you are speaking.

Yes, and the Dutch language evolved that way, so their language is designed to be clear with that rule. AND, there are about (give or take) 330M native English speakers world-wide. Should we send out a memo? Who's in charge of this to thing? When should we translate our textbooks?

The other problem with changing words' spellings is that etymology is very important in English, since it's got such a diverse range of borrowed words. The etymologies of to and too are intertwined, but still.

Plus, writing is different from speaking. Which is why I don't enunciate all the punctuation I write.

Re:Where is far?

[DrSkwid]

My laptop has a PCMCIA phone in it, 3/GRPS pretty much everywhere in my country (except, obviously, the only place I ever needed to use it).

Re:Where is far?

[fritzk3]

Dude, that joke just went way over your head. He was bashing you for your holier-than-thou diatribe on spelling, when you couldn't even use the correct form of its/it's. You just came in second place, Mr. Lion Food.

Re:Where is far?

[Dephex Twin]

As a matter of fact, there is a difference between "to" and "too" in spoken English that does not exist in all the meanings of "zu" in German (I can't say for the Dutch but probably it is like the German in this respect). In English, the vowel quality and stress on the words "to" and "too" are quite different. The preposition "to" is generally pronounced as [teh] or even [deh], and almost never stressed, whereas the word "too" is pronounced generally as [tu] and does get the stress (and the vowel quality between these words is mostly affected by the stress). The result is that the words are pronounced differently and spelled differently.

Another example of this is in the English word "just" with the meaning "very recently"/"only" vs. the meaning "right"/"fair". One can say the sentence "He just got here," and pronounce the word "just" almost with no vowel at all, like "j'st" or "jist". But try using that pronunciation with the sentence "It was a just decision." It just doesn't sound right, does it?

Re:Where is far?

[fbjon]

"Relaxing" is my name for that position. Good hunting to you.

Re:Where is far?

[aevans]

virtually all instances of 'really bad English' I've run into have come from native speakers

You've never met a Chinese or Mexican that spoke english, have you?

Re:Where is far?

[Dephex Twin]

Also, if English were like Dutch, then try saying something like:

"I have to try" (spoken as approximately "I hafta try") vs. "I have two tries" (Does anyone say "I hafta tries?")

Stress changes in English for different categories of words, and it affects understanding greatly (more than most native speakers realize).

Re:Where is far?

[HouseArrest420]

No, but I like the way you read into something that wasn't there to come up with the idea that I assumed your lazy and stupid.

What I did say, and did think was obvious, was that no amount of your rants or raves is going to change anything about how anyone does anything, unless your paying them to. So why waste your time pointing out mistakes that were either genuine mistakes, or shortcuts taken, especially when your not getting paid to do it. In either of those intsances your rant would be worthless because the mistake that was made probably wouldn't be made again, and the shortcut taken will always be taken again. All your pointing out does, in either of those situations, is show the entire forum how much you think your superior to the person your correcting. Redifine failure as success?? lol...how far in your ass did you have to reach for that. Spinning words into the form you like best is an excellent skill, maybe you'd make a better polititian than I would.

The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly. What does it take to get an adult to learn how to spell "too"?

Than, then.
There, their, they're.
Two, to, too.

If you can't pick the correct spelling, you don't deserve to have a high school (or whatever they have in your country) degree.

Re:The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

You left out my pet peeves:

• Your, you're
• Its, it's

Re:The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[Anonymous Coward]

where, were, we're

Re:The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't pick the correct spelling, you don't deserve to have a high school (or whatever they have in your country) degree. I hope you mean high school degree with English as a part of the curriculum. A person can be the top of a high school class and not know a word of English.

Re:The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[chris_mahan]

loose, lose

Re:The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[Literaphile]

Maybe if you felt so strongly about it you wouldn't post as an anonymous coward. By the way, what does "hunh" mean?

Re:The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[thegnu]

how many waning hairs left in your shiny baldspot, hunh douchebag?

Why, ALL of them!

Re:The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[Anonymous Coward]

My pet peeves are:
  allot, a lot.

There is no "alot". "Just as you wouldn't write "alittle" you should not write "alot".

Re:The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[Twisted64]

Not in Australia, English is mandatory all the way through high school. But then, we don't get a degree until we graduate from university either.

Re:The next big thing -- Learning how to spell.

[Sobrique]

rouge and rogue

Where do I get it?

[SnarfQuest]

I've got web 2.0 running on my mac, but I can't find a version for Windows. Can you get me a copy for Windows?

Re:Where do I get it?

[Glowing Fish]

That depends, do you have Dynamic Memory Modules running? Because without them, unless you want to pay for a Titanium Overlay Ohmage Breaker, you stand a chance of having your operating system stress your cross-channelled capacitors.

Re:Where do I get it?

[SnarfQuest]

Forgot the necessary link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdmnxcClEMc

I'm not sure I understand

[MontyApollo]

>>Today we have access to an unfathomable amount of information. Web 2.0 has helped us begin to organize and make sense of that information.

I guess I don't really get Web 2.0 then.

Not sure I get the "location, location, location" thing either. Yahoo has had local Yahoos for years now. How would tags work better than regular Google searches?

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[ContractualObligatio]

Well, the article's not about tag (as currently experienced) or regular Google searches as such.

It's about your phone being aware of its location via GPS, and automatically giving you access to relevant local information without searching. Which might indeed mean going to a local Yahoo page, except that currently you would have to navigate there yourself, and may not even be entirely clear on where you are to do so.

Sounds good to me, just last Sunday I found myself at a train station where (genius, this) the timetables were hidden in a waiting room that was locked. With a sign saying "Beware of the leopard", natch.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[DarenN]

I thought Web2.0 was AJAX!

Good point, the tagging/categorisation/everything-else-the-article -talks-about is rubbish without the one thing he forgot to mention, which is a branch of ubiquitous computing where there are small devices everywhere (well, everywhere important) that your own device connects to and gets any "relevant information". This is called "pervasive computing".

That was fairly lazy journalism. Without the aforementioned pervasive computing, how the hell does your mobile device know where you are? GPS (or Galileo/GPS)? That would be a poor solution for a problem that doesn't yet exist. Everything after that already exists, the only decision is whether to use "expert categorisation" or "democratic (or mob) categorisation".

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[MontyApollo]

>>...relevant local information without searching.

How does it decide what is relevant without search terms? I could see train schedule being relevant if you are in a train station, but more often than not you have to include search terms.

As others have said, most of this information would be pointless unless you were a tourist anyway, and I don't see tourism being the "next big thing". I think spam would also ultimately kill me much of the utility.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[ContractualObligatio]

I take the point, although as a general rule if you can seeing it being relevant in one situation, others will occur over time. In general, people find a way to make use of an extra dimension of data and so it will probably happen. Train stations, gig guides for music venues, booking for up-and-coming theatre performances, easy access to batting stats at the ball game, whatever. It's easy to rattle out ideas:

Simply popping up with a map that has e.g. underground stations, cash points, licensed venues, coffee shops, music shops would be useful to me on a regular basis.

I live in London, which has a great website for journey planning. A little thing like only only having to enter my destination to get travel time (walking, train, bus, riverboat) would be great.

I'm rarely a tourist but I travel a lot for work. The closet taxi firm or petrol station (the latter ranked by price) would be useful.

It could be fun in the major cities just asking for points of historic interest near by.

Localised weather forecasts could be popular.

Tourism might not be the *next* big thing, but it is already *a* big thing. There's already businesses sprung up around podcasts for walking tours e.g. Boston as narrated by Steve Tyler. That could easily be tied into location-aware mobile tech.

Perhaps food guides such as Michelin and Zagat would provide services to rapidly connect you through to booking a reservation. I've made good use of Time Out magazine in London, and I live here!

Phone photography hasn't really taken off, but perhaps as resolutions improve, live upload amongst a group of friends automatically grouped by time and location (e.g. every picture from the BBQ) will take off for family get togethers.

A lot of this could be done via personalised portals. And even with a need to include search terms, the location aware aspect simplifies things. Who knows what will happen? These things never live up to the hype, but I reckon we'll see a lot of location-based services.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[MontyApollo]

>>where there are small devices everywhere (well, everywhere important) that your own device connects to and gets any "relevant information".

That makes more sense, especially if the place of interest packages the "relevant" information. It would also cut down on the spam. Not sure it would be the "next big thing" though, since a lot of the utility seems to apply to mainly tourism.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[DarenN]

Tourism is obvious, but for instance - walk into a shop and get a list of current stock, or driving down the motorway, as you pass into a zone you get relevant information, in a office building, get the location of each of the companies, perhaps down to locations individual desk.

The cynic in me sees the potential for ads everywhere, but there are intriguing possibilities. Nevertheless, the article was still wandering around the periphery of the whole idea and missed the core.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[aevans]

It's a good bet if your GPS coordinates match those of a train station, the train schedule is something you might be interested in. If the next train happens to be going to the sports stadium, you might be interested in whatever event is going on there tonight.

My company has been in the space for about a year

[leather_helmet]

Geospatial technologies in general are going to be very important - We have been doing work primarily with Real Estate Brokerages and the Oil/Energy Industries

It has been exciting to see where things are headed with location based applications - for instance, google will be releasing AdSense in the Google Maps API, which will have some very seriously monetization implications for not only our apps, but anyone developing with their API

Shameless plug, but check out our site www.mapgroove.com

Hyperlocal web

[morgan_greywolf]

Bruce Sterling wrote a similar, but even more imaginative article in Wired, about a concept which he called the hyperlocal web. The dept 'long-way-to-go' on this article is interesting in light of Sterling's piece, because in a sidebar, he basically makes the point that Google is already building all the information necessary for this sort of stuff with Google Earth. Combine that with Google's recent interest in the wireless spectrum and GPS and bam! it sorta hits you: Google's already working on this stuff. How far off are they? I guess only time will tell.

Re:Hyperlocal web

[Kalle Barfot]

In this case, space will tell.

Re:Hyperlocal web

[morgan_greywolf]

n this case, space will tell.

Not that Google doesn't already have several massive data centers. Everyone keeps saying "Yeah, but will Google have enough to do that?" and the answer Google always seems to give is to keep expanding its capacity.

Re:Hyperlocal web

[ericlj]

Given Google's record with privacy issues, I don't want them to know where I am. If I could take the time to test other search engines and other web mail providers, I would try to avoid Google completely. Fortunately for me, I can take my time to figure it out because I'm not a Chinese dissident. (Same applies to Yahoo!, too, of course.)

Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop us

[zymano]

AT&T Trying to stop opening 700mhz spectrum auction. Ofcourse they are. Why would they want everyone to use cheaper access bypassing their $$$ service.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Hints-At-FC C-Lawsuit-85784

Gov wants to open access 700mhz

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Martin-Wants-Op en-Access-700Mhz-85622

I hope not.

[LWATCDR]

"If I'm driving down a dirt road, I can access the Internet, enter in the key words, "eat, roast beef sandwich'. The next time I pass within 5 miles of an Arby's my device let's me know."

So will it be giving you directions or providing a warning?

Yea this will be the next big thing. The problem is that you will get directions to Arby's but you will not get directions to Bill's deli. You know that little hole in the wall where they bake their own rolls and use real roast beef?

Yea the next big thing in advertising.

Re:I hope not.

[sethawoolley]

Actually the point of interest data vendors try to capture data universally. They don't just do RESTAURANT/FASTFOOD and skip the rest.

Think of it this way: Yellow Pages companies and Secretaries of State (and local health/sanitation departments) should have a pretty good idea of where you can get food -- it's not that difficult to integrate them into a digital form.

They'd otherwise have to go directly to the fast food chains and cull their franchise records. I'm sure some do this for completeness, but it's definitely not the only way they collect data.

On the other hand you might think fast food chains might lock out other places with exclusive deals. I don't think the market would ever settle for this given how easy the data is to get already.

So, in total, I think your comment highly unlikely.

Re:I hope not.

[MontyApollo]

I was thinking the same thing - more directed advertising by a limited number of companies.

I do wish more smaller companies had a web presence. Half the time I want to see a menu from a particular restaruant they don't even have a webpage.

Re:I hope not.

[MontyApollo]

If you just want a list then something like Switchboard.com does that now. Will the system translate "roast beef" to all restaurants or restaurants with "deli" in thier name? How would it decipher the others whether or not they have roast beef sandwhiches?

I think it is more likely to focus on advertisers.

Re:I hope not.

[bishiraver]

That's why you combine it with user submitted data... which is what web2.0 is all about.

Re:I hope not.

[LWATCDR]

"They'd otherwise have to go directly to the fast food chains and cull their franchise records. I'm sure some do this for completeness, but it's definitely not the only way they collect data.

On the other hand you might think fast food chains might lock out other places with exclusive deals. I don't think the market would ever settle for this given how easy the data is to get already."

Unless it works like Google ads. The highest bidder will get the top billing.
Even if it works like Google search it is likely that you will be sent to a chain. Even among locals most people will go to Subway or Arby's than a local deli.

Think about it logically. How will it decide where you should get your meal? Will it pick first one you go near? How do you know it is any good? Or will it pick the most popular? Or will it pick one based on where you tend to go? Then how will it know that Bill's deli is something like Sam's subs next to your office? Software can not do magic. It must have some way to decide what should go first. And in the example given it will give you only the top hit.

Google Roast Beef sub and you will see the first hit will be a chain. Jersey Mikes, which does make a pretty good sub for a chain.

If they don't put people that pay near the top of the list how will this make money?

Re:I hope not.

[ergo98]

Yea the next big thing in advertising.

There have been several stories about GPS-enabled advertising here on Slashdot over the years.

Ultimately it isn't the "next big thing", and the author seems to be imagining that they're onto something new. You can find people talking about this for going on a decade+ now, because it's blatantly obvious.

Location specific searches aren't limited to mobile devices, however. When Google was a noob I was emailing them asking them to ratify or anoint one of the geocoding standards, because as a searcher the web is simply too big when all I want are results pertinent to my own town. Google sort of achieves that by scraping addresses from sites, but that's prone to error and is terribly incomplete : It'd be better if content declared where it was appropriate for.

Re:I hope not.

[LWATCDR]

"I do wish more smaller companies had a web presence. Half the time I want to see a menu from a particular restaurant they don't even have a webpage."
Yes but I can understand why they don't.
Why should a small dinner pay someone to create a website for them. They could make one themselves but it will probably not be that great.
How many people look for websites when they are looking for someplace to eat?
A good website takes time and money. A bad website is close to useless. If you are a local sub shop or restaurant why spend the money? Good cook and a good sign are probably much better investments.

Re:I hope not.

[sakonofie]

If you have not been paying attention since the telephone, most modern major technology breakthroughs for consumers are also breakthroughs in advertising. I am not being entirely cynical either.

Think of radio, TV, and internet. These are huge society changing information technologies. Sure this technology is great and all to consumers, but the supply doesn't really take off until someone foots the bill. So far what has footed the bill is Phillip Morris, Kellogs, GM and Viagra.

Re:I hope not.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why you combine it with spammer submitted spam... which is what web2.0 is all about.

Fixed that for you

Re:I hope not.

[MontyApollo]

If it is a restaurant that I've never been to, I always try to look up the menu to see what they have and how much it costs. Even if I have been there, I might want to check their hours.

I think even a simple homemade template website would be beneficial (for my purposes anyway).

Re:I hope not.

[vertinox]

The problem is that you will get directions to Arby's but you will not get directions to Bill's deli. Maybe Bill needs to invest in Adsense.

Re:I hope not.

[moderatorrater]

I agree, but the gp seems to indicate that it's a failing of the internet rather than a failing of the business which I don't agree with.

Re:I hope not.

[LWATCDR]

It could be useful. Even better would be one that formats well on my cell phone.
In Japan they have a neat bit of kit that I wish we would use in the US. They print a type of "barcode" on signs and cards. You just take a picture with your cell phone camera and it takes you to that bar codes url.
Think how handy that would be?
If done right it would include links to call for reservations as well, the hours, menu, and location. Then offer a Bluetooth link to your cars GPS system.
A system like that would IMHO be the next big thing. I don't think it will happen because people would have to agree on a standard.
It would be hard to get a critical mass.

But back to the simple website. Just how many people would use it? I am pretty big computer user and I just don't use my computer to look up restaurants that often. My number one way is to just take a chance and see if it is open and what they offer.

Re:I hope not.

[MontyApollo]

They tried something similar to the barcode thing - Quecat I think it was called.

>>Just how many people would use it? I am pretty big computer user and I just don't use my computer to look up restaurants that often. My number one way is to just take a chance and see if it is open and what they offer.

I guess it just depends on the person. I would actually use this more than most of the pervasive computing stuff you are talking about; it is kind of funny how you are talking about all this info being the next big thing then turnaround and say you would rather just take a chance and not use the info.

Re:I hope not.

[LWATCDR]

Well the problems with que cat where that it only worked at your PC and it required some hardware. It really is just as simple to type in an URL. On your average cell phone it isn't so easy. Plus a lot of people make their websites Cell phone hostile.

For me the cell phone/barcode camera idea works so well because I know I would use it. If I go to a restaurant I like I spend time entering the phone number into my cell. If they offer call ahead seating. But it really is a pain to do so I don't do it all that often. I have to really like it and it has to have long waits.
If I could just point my cell at the menu or the card and capture the info then I would tend to do it more often.
I agree that having the menu and hours on the web would be good. But the problem is finding it. There will be a few hundred Bill's sub shops if you do a Google search. Google local is good but not often updated so just finding that restaurants website will be a challenge. But printing a coupon in the newspaper and or putting that little bar code on the take out menu or cards would be simple.

The reason that cuecat failed was because it was the wrong solution for a PC.
This works because
1. Odds are pretty good that you already have the hardware aka a cell phone camera.
2. It provides a solution to a problem. On many Cells entering data is a Pain since they lack a keyboard.

All that needs to happen is for someone to supply an application and start selling the barcode numbers.

Re:I hope not.

[Wordsmith]

It depends on where the revenue comes from. If the pervasiveness of the advertising-driven tips makes the site less useful, people may turn somewhere else. There will always be people looking for more than the Arby's; if site X doesn't give it to them, because only Arby's paid up, site Y will, but with a different revenue model supporting site Y.

Re:I hope not.

[necro2607]

Well, either you didn't read the article, or while doing so you ignored two key paragraphs before the Arby's quote:

The next big thing is to organize, tag, and link information to a specific location. Think of the last time you were at a national park. It's a very good possibility that the only information you had about the park fit on a tri-fold paper that you picked up at the visitor's station. In the information age, how is this acceptable?

Instead, imagine visiting the park where hundreds of visitors have linked information to specific locations. You have the architect of the visitor's center who tells you the history of the building. As you move around the park you access information provided by geologists, geographers, botanists, biologists, environmental scientists, conservationists, hiking enthusiasts, bikers, etc. etc. etc. The information is useful because it's relevant to the location. And it becomes manageable and in the same way that the 10s of millions of pictures on flickr have become manageable, through tagging.

So, it's not really going to be up to Arby's, because occasional public citizens will have tagged Bill's Deli already with "food, deli, sandwich, roast beef", and so on. You can already find photos on Flickr and similar sites where users just go around and tag peoples' photos so as to improve the amount of tagged-ness of photos through the site. I'm sure there will be similar actions by people who simply go around and tag locations and other physical items much in the same manner.

Re:I hope not.

[Slippy.]

Maybe they won't have a presence - that'll change if people start using it. Or other customers might put something online for the restaraunt. Of course, half the joy of a great hole-in-the-wall is that it was hard to find...

The key bits useful here (to me): Restaraunt name, type of food (description), simple map, distance

When I'm traveling, the questions I always want to ask: Can I skip this restaurant? What else is nearby? How about a motel? Hours would be nice too.

Even better - these simple facts easily searchable from a cell phone. Give me those, and I'll love it.

Re:I hope not.

[LWATCDR]

"So, it's not really going to be up to Arby's, because occasional public citizens will have tagged Bill's Deli already with "food, deli, sandwich, roast beef", and so on."
So how are you going to make money. Yes somebody has to pay for the bandwidth.
"So, it's not really going to be up to Arby's, because occasional public citizens will have tagged Bill's Deli already with "food, deli, sandwich, roast beef", and so on."
You see I did read the article. In the article he just entered roast beef sandwich. So will the tags locate the nearest, the best, or where John Doe once sat in a park and ate one? Also in the article his restaurant example didn't give you a list it just offered you one choice and no mention on how it picked it. That national park example while interesting is scary. Are we going to fill our national parks with Cell Towers? How do you grade the sources of data? And again who is going to enter all that information and why?

Re:I hope not.

[necro2607]

Sure, so Arby's pays to be a "sponsored result" and have their location show up first in the list.. ;)

In theory these kind of high technologies shouldn't be restricted to the whims of capitalism though. I'd like to elaborate I don't have the time to discuss all of my ideas on future communication/knowledge/info-sharing technology, though..

The data would be supplied by volunteers or those with a vested interest in that data being available (like a shop making their presence known). The info would be peer-reviewed not unlike the system we already observe here at Slashdot or on other sites (take urbandictionary.com for a good example)...

Re:I hope not.

[p0tat03]

Really? Maybe Arby's multi-million dollar ad campaign will push ads onto your phone as you drive by an Arby's, but Bill certainly isn't cut out of the competition. Heck, for pocket change Bill can set up a halfway decent website with store hours, directions, menu, prices, etc, on his own domain, and with a little bit of know-how and a minor amount of cash, Bill can get a fair amount of exposure in the form of Google rankings for "roast beef".

The web is the great equalizer. Now a tourist from Australia can know how great Bill's Deli is before he even gets into town. With a little bit of skill and a small bit of cash, small businesses can declare their presence better than ever before.

Re:I hope not.

[LWATCDR]

"In theory these kind of high technologies shouldn't be restricted to the whims of capitalism though. I'd like to elaborate I don't have the time to discuss all of my ideas on future communication/knowledge/info-sharing technology, though.."
Well yes they really do. Someone has to pay for the service. You would have to subscribe or there is advertising. Your sponsored result in the article would be the only result since the idea is that doesn't ask you which one you want to go to. BTW we already do have that system. When traveling to Texas I used Google Local on my cell phone to find what was available to eat in the next town while my wife drove. It worked pretty well. There are places in Louisiana where food is pretty few and far between. Peer review can be hacked. Take a look at Digg and the Slashvertisments you get on Slashdot. Moderation often fails on Slashdot. My favorite example was on of my own postings. It was about people that claim the Holocost never happened. Someone posted that it would be impossible to "fake" the evidence. I posted that yes the evidence could be faked but I know it wasn't because my Uncle served in WWII and helped liberate one of the camps. I got moderated down as flamebait simply because someone read only the first line. The amount of power that a small number of people have on sites like Slashdot and Digg is often hidden from view but it is there. Read anything post about file sharing on Slashdot. A well written post that voices concerns about the morality of downloading will be marked as -1 flamebait while a post that says "The RIAA sucks and rapes kittens for fun!" will be marked as insightful or funny. Frankly I read Slashdot more than Digg because I have a lot less crap to go through. The editors do a pretty fair if not perfect job of selecting stories even if they are a little slow.

I have to admit that Digg has done what I thought was impossible. It has a community that is more bad mannered and nasty than Slashdot. Slashdot looks down right friendly compared to Digg.

Re:I hope not.

[LWATCDR]

Yes and no.
Frankly have you seen how bad many local websites are? To setup a good website does take time and some skill. A good example of really bad and almost useless sites are most Motorcycle shops. I am talking about Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki.. You know the big boys. I am not a Harley guy so I haven't looked at those.
What to know what used bikes they have? Well you may or may not find out. How about the price of an Helmet? Maybe sales or Events? Heck half the time the email doesn't work.
The other thing that I find most of the sites don't do is make themselves Cell phone friendly. When I am in a car It would be great if I could find their number and hours on my cell phone browser.
Yes the Web really can help but it is often not used well or not at all. And then Bill has to decide if it is worth it to him.

Better RD protocols?

[vigmeister]

I for one have been struggling to find decent mobility with online access. Although slightly off tangent to the topic of a Web 3.0, I have switched to a UMPC (3lb vaio that goes on for about 6-8 hrs on a single charge), and tried PAM with my phone. Although satisfactory, intensive online tasks are still a pain as is computing power. Perhaps if we focused on having a powerful computer at home with a portable client, it would satisfy several needs. 3G down speeds are reasonable to make this realistic (EVDO rev A shows promise and DSM networks can go with European technology). Upload speeds required aren't very high. Minimal processing power needed on hand, which will allow extremely portable machines to be carried around with the processing done remotely.

Web 3.0 centred around all the processing you need available from Google-like services (online office suite, calendar etc..) would be nice, but that may take a while with more development work required than for my pipedream above

Any takers?

Cheers!
--
Vig

I'm not impressed

[khallow]

Until I get telecommuting, I don't really care for this new technology. The problem isn't "location, location, location". It's that I have to be places where I don't want to be.

Re:I'm not impressed

[C3ntaur]

Be careful what you ask for. If your job can be done remotely from the comfort of your home/a beach/a coffee shop, then it can also be done from third world countries by folks who are willing to work for much less than you are.

Re:I'm not impressed

[khallow]

Indeed. I have no problem with this since I might end being one of them! After all, my dollars would go a lot further in a place like India or Belize.

Re:I'm not impressed

[QuantumG]

Actually, some of us get paid the big bucks because we're one of ten people in the world who can actually do the job.

So, uhhh, speak for yourself.

Re:I'm not impressed

[moderatorrater]

Yes, but your employers may believe that just because you're one in ten that 20 coders from Bolivia can do the same job because, hell, there's 20 of them. Even if your employers don't, a lot of others do.

Re:I'm not impressed

[QuantumG]

Then they will fail and I will go work for the competitor who replaces them in the marketplace.

Re:I'm not impressed

[merreborn]

Be careful what you ask for. If your job can be done remotely from the comfort of your home/a beach/a coffee shop, then it can also be done from third world countries by folks who are willing to work for much less than you are.

That's less true than some wish it were. Wages for capable, experienced programmers in India have shot up dramatically over the last few years (thanks to finite supply and rapidly growing demand), to the point where someone in India with experience, talent, and decent communication skills costs just about as much as someone in a first world country with the same skills.

Bad programmers are cheaper overseas. Good programmers cost the same anywhere you go. Especially once you factor in the cost of the communications overhead inherent in having your workforce in a timezone 12 hours offset from your own.

Re:I'm not impressed

[appleprophet]

Just out of curiosity, what is it that you do? I tried to check your personal website, but it is down.

Re:I'm not impressed

[jrumney]

Even the bad programmers in India are getting expensive now, once you take into account the management structure on both sides of the pond that is required for managing outsourcing effectively, staff turnover and other hidden costs.

Hyperlocality - Wired Magazine

[Gybrwe666]

This month's wired features several articles about Hyperlocality and geospatial interfacing between the web and the world:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/ff_ maps

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/loc al

Bill

Tagged it mate...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know about everyone else, but I tagged this: 'whereisfar'.

Seriously that threw me for a couple of seconds, I can't be the only one.

I think he's means going straight to Web 3.0

[wsanders]

This is a whole new paradigm! Web 2.1 is so Web 1.0, nobody does QA nowadays.

Re:I think he's means going straight to Web 3.0

[Nullav]

Don't forget to put a big flashy 'beta' tag on there.

"Next big thing?"

[Red Flayer]

What the author is saying is take your PDA with GPS, walk around and have it automatically search for hits at your coordinates, with links to relevant info.

What this depends on is information being indexed by coordinates, via tags or elsewise. Not sure that'll take off.

Instead, why don't points of interest broadcast on an open (but secure, if possible) network? Go to a museum, a list of links pops up on your PDA.

Either that or index the whole world in google earth|maps or something similar.

Re:"Next big thing?"

[Jaqenn]

Instead, why don't points of interest broadcast on an open (but secure, if possible) network? Go to a museum, a list of links pops up on your PDA.
I like the concept, but what about spam-style advertising? If I scatter viagra ad beacons around the museum, what do you do to see the information that the painting is broadcasting without seeing the information that my ad beacons are broadcasting?

Re:"Next big thing?"

[kebes]

Why not all three?

TFA overstates its case a little bit, but the basic idea is a good one (but not really revolutionary--just an extension of the Internet as we know it).

I think this kind of thing will happen as wireless net connectivity becomes more widespread and more affordable. Also, the growing number of user-contributed sites are encouraging massive amounts of tagging. Combined, this will create a new way that the net can be useful to all of us. I see data coming from a variety of sources, many of which you mentioned. Consider:
1. User will tag documents, photos, etc. with locations (GPS coordinates, or names of places, or whatever).
2. Devices start automatically encoding coordinates. For example digital cameras have GPS and tag all photos properly. Maybe your laptop will store location information in documents you work on. (So that later when you are searching for a particular revision, you can search for "edited while in Paris"...)
3. Local businesses or organizations broadcast location-specific information. (You can sit in a park and browse the menus of all the nearby restaurants, rather than walking around randomly.)
4. Web-pages (especially businesses) go to the bother of adding meta-data that provides location information.
5. Automated algorithms (e.g. Google) cross-reference data and establish location-relevancy for data that wasn't originally tagged with a location. (e.g. pictures of 'mona lisa' become geo-tagged to the coordinates of the Louvre)

When combined, this would provide a ton of useful data. Any web-search could be geographically limited. Google Earth would have thousands of pictures linked to the proper physical locations (we're already seeing the start of this). So when you're sitting at your desk, you can be planning a trip and search for "italian restaurant" and use a GPS coordinate as a search parameter. You can even move the pushpin around on a map and see the search change.

When using a PDA, it could default to use your current location in the search, providing contextual information. Nearby businesses is an obvious use. Traffic, historical information, blogging commentary, news events... everything could be filtered based on location of the subject area of interest.

I can also imagine turning the tagging information backwards. Rather than searching for "protests" near your current location, you could mine the combined data... for instance generate a map of the earth color-coded by search relevancy to the word "protest." This would give new kinds of information that we have not really thought about to date.

None of this is revolutionary... but I think it is an exciting extension of the net as we know it... and I'm looking forward to many of these applications. (But not looking forward to dealing with novel types of spam.)

Re:"Next big thing?"

[kebes]

I like the concept, but what about spam-style advertising? If I scatter viagra ad beacons around the museum, what do you do to see the information that the painting is broadcasting without seeing the information that my ad beacons are broadcasting?

Spam is definitely a worry. Then again, the thing that keeps Spam under control when it comes to physical mail is the inherent cost of sending the mail. Email spam is cheap. Real mail is not.

Similarly, putting a bunch of beacons all over the place is very expensive. Even if each one is a dirt-cheap devices ($10?), it's still a very expensive way to reach a very small audience. Local businesses will be willing to spend the money because they want to draw people in to spend money. Pump-and-dump scammers probably won't bother.

Hacking of regional broadcast beacons is of course possible, but no worse than the danger of a website being hacked. Businesses will of course try to broadcast all kinds of annoying ads and whatnot, but presumably it won't be hard for the end consumer's device to filter this in some way. I mean if you turn on your PDA and see broadcast signals for various things, you'll only look at the ones that interest you. If you're hungry you'll click on the link for "Moe's Restaurant--Great Prices!" but won't bother with the "Best Deals in town on furniture!" links...

Re:"Next big thing?"

[MontyApollo]

>>Instead, why don't points of interest broadcast on an open (but secure, if possible) network? Go to a museum, a list of links pops up on your PDA.

I think this makes a lot more sense, and would probably help cut out some of the spam. A lot of this stuff would only apply to tourists anyway (not sure tourism is the "next big thing"), and the point of interest (or city tourism board) could package the content in the most useful manner instead of letting Google try to process everything and decide what was relevant.

Re:"Next big thing?"

[garcia]

What this depends on is information being indexed by coordinates, via tags or elsewise. Not sure that'll take off.

What world do you live in? Everything on Google (and plenty of other sites) is indexed by coordinates including my own. While I don't particularly care for the idea of push advertising to my GPS-enabled mobile device, I can see what a huge advantage it would be for advertisers and what a consumer's perceived benefit would be.

Hell, I spend a ton of time working with geospatial data for use with increasing marketing and recruitment range/success. It's a big deal these days and with the advent of Google Maps API, Google Earth, and other third party utilities like shp2kml, you can access a plethora of freely available GIS information to do your job better (like plotting data with KML overlays for counties).

Re:"Next big thing?"

[demi]

I wasn't aware it was "under control". Nearly all of what I receive in the mail (and I wager this is true for most people) would be what I would classify as spam if I received it in email.

Of course you don't get it

[Tony]

I guess I don't really get Web 2.0 then.

That's because it's a buzzword, implying much and meaning little. It's all about Dynamic HTML! No! It's all about centralized data! No! It's all about distributed services!

It's all just a little bit of what the web's been since 1998, only we're getting better at it, so people have to make it into something to puff out their vita, and make them "marketable," even though they were part of the reason we had the other buzzword, the "dot-com bubble."

IT marketers do love their buzzwords.

Re:Of course you don't get it

[Tazz_ben]

So seriously, which one is it. I work in "Web 2.0" and I have no idea if its about the technology (AJAX) or about the community. Can site that is a community be web 2.0 without ajax; how about without RSS. Can an application be AJAX based and still not be Web 2.0?

Re:Of course you don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not web 2.0 unless it meets ALL of the following requirements:
- must incorporate the round progress bar
- must incorporate a network of contacts
- must allow you to tag things w/anonymous comments or keywords
- must be FREE and pelt you with targeted ads
- must be accessible via RSS feed
- absolutely mustn't scale under significant load - ok now I'm trolling!

Re:Of course you don't get it

[Lehk228]

you forgot a minimum of 4 SQL injections and 4 XSS vulns each year.

Been there, done that

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool, looks like my agency has been Web 3.0 for years and didn't know it...http://www.weather.gov

There are two ways to say you're too carless...

[pstav]

to be writing articles. This is the nice way. --paul

Re:There are two ways to say you're too carless...

[Anonymous Coward]

People without cars can write articles too.

location? Great

[CrazyJim1]

I can't wait to use my laptop on the beach.

Re:location? Great

[element-o.p.]

Dude, if I'm on the beach, the last thing I want to be looking at is my laptop ;)

Mod Parent Up

[asphaltjesus]

Informative/Insightful?

I'd like to add to the parent: there's the ages old problem of tons of information and no moderation. So what if a hundred people have been where I'm going. 50 of them will be spam, 10 will be shillers from the Tourist advisory board, 15 will be from real estate something-or-other. What happens when you are review #101 and you don't like it?

Re:Mod Parent Up

[jmyers]

And everyone will ignore all of it by default. This is not the next big thing by a long shot. Large numbers of people generally do not go on the internet for local information. Local is real life. It is where you are when you are not using the internet.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Applekid]

So what if a hundred people have been where I'm going. 50 of them will be spam, 10 will be shillers from the Tourist advisory board, 15 will be from real estate something-or-other. What happens when you are review #101 and you don't like it?

Social Networking could easily fix that problem. You have a certain number of friends who automatically carry weight on the generated results. They, in turn, have friends who carry less weight and so on and so on. None of your friends or their friends or anyone else would willingly put Spamhouse accounts in their network so they can plant all they want and it wouldn't mess it up in the slightest.

Even if you do believe the Six Degrees of Separation thing that connects all strangers together, the curve could be user defined, too. If there's a lot of static (bad results), just lower the sensitivity so your first-degree friends have a lot of weight and it drops off faster the farther out you go than default. Not getting any results? Crank it up and your results might extend into 6, 36, or even farther degrees of influence.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[haystor]

Tell your local paper nobody uses the internet for local things.

Oh, come on!

[FiloEleven]

Go to far and you no longer have access to information. I've never been to Far, but surely they're not as backwards as all that!

Re:Oh, come on!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he means FAR - you know, Hector International Airport in Fargo, North Dakota.

Can't tell if they've got cell phone coverage or even any 802.11 hotspots...

Re:Oh, come on!

[chord.wav]

That or Far Far Away, you know, Shrek's land.

Re:Oh, come on!

[mux2000]

Ever been to the Most-a-Far system? Talk about backwards!

Some people still aren't on the web...

[benhocking]

Actually, I think the GP's point wasn't that Arby's was trying to lock out Bill's Deli, but rather that Bill (of Bill's Deli) doesn't understand why he should need a web presence, etc. I've often done web searches to try to find the hours of operation on some of my favorite eating places only to find that they don't have a web presence. I can usually find an article on them by the local paper, but those don't always have the hours of operation (or a menu).

Re:Some people still aren't on the web...

[sethawoolley]

Things like CityPoint data and the other many review sites are the web-2.0 way of finding store hours. Companies won't need to webify themselves anymore -- the rabble will webify them whether they like it or not if their roast beef really is good, that is, if the data vendors don't already have people walking the streets or using video camera trucks to get this data. Have you seen the TeleAtlas cars with gobs of cameras on them? Look at NAVTEQ's website and they talk about how some of their data collection methods involve going out on foot.

VRGIS

[Anonymous Coward]

VRGIS: I worked for them back in college when it was more or less a research project. The goal is to create a transparent layer to access a virtual world that sits on top of the real one, by pin pointing info to specific regions as defined by GPS.

Think about a Zoo and walking around a virtual zoo, while walking in the zoo and clicking on a virtual sticker that read about an animal. Or a guide for tourist, that gave info on every inch of a city.

Was an amazing job and I enjoyed it. That is where it's going I believe.

Re:VRGIS

[Anonymous Coward]

BuY new VRIGS today 20 % of f!!!
                  NO Where can you BUY This NEW VRIGS.
    oRder TODAY... http://www.vrgis.com/ PLease copy paste the URL. DO NOT CLICK. ...Joe, examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it to have been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off to the Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe's opinion was corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it had left the prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged; but they claimed to know for certain that that particular manacle had not been worn by either of the two convicts who had escaped last night. Further, one of those two was already retaken, and had not freed himself of his iron...

but this is slashdot

[Tablizer]

location, location, location

Which for us on /. is usually "basement, basement, basement". Is he talking about people who have a real life or something? Now, if a gizmo could help me locate the pizza I dropped yesterday...

The next big thing is Web 3.0: The Semantic Web

[Tokimasa]

You know, Resource Description Framework, Web Ontology Language, RDFa for putting RDF right into (X)HTML pages, the semantic wiki for expressing relationships and not just knowledge, Friend of a Friend (FOAF).

Following that, you have Web 4.0...

A coworker went to a conference where they had this: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/224/466336460_c9765 d262e.jpg. It's not his picture, but it's the same graph.

Re:The next big thing is Web 3.0: The Semantic Web

[SlowMovingTarget]

Following that, you have Web 4.0...

The Pedantic Web!

Developers are yesterday!

[fr4nk]

I'm expecting a "location, location, location, location, location, location..." rap from Ballmer anytime soon.

Re:Developers are yesterday!

[Paktu]

I'm expecting a "location, location, location, location, location, location..." rap from Ballmer anytime soon.

He's working on it. Right now, it's advertisers, advertisers, advertisers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj3FOHc-fgA

Now where did I leave my antiperspirant?

Depends on your point of view

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to [sic]far and you no longer have access to information.

Sometimes that's not a bug it's a feature.

How too write.

[E 99]

Go to far and you no longer have access to information.

To bad you don't know how two proof-read.

Four syllables is just too many

[michaelmalak]

"Integration" didn't become popular until it was renamed "mashup".

"Collaborative filtering" didn't become popular until it was renamed "Web 2.0".

So "ubiquitous computing" won't become popular until someone can figure out how to reduce the syllable count.

Re:Four syllables is just too many

[emurphy42]

"Collaborative filtering" didn't become popular until it was renamed "Web 2.0".

"Web 2.0" has four syllables, but the "2.0" part is likely some sort of special case.

So "ubiquitous computing" won't become popular until someone can figure out how to reduce the syllable count.

"WiMAX"? Is there a better term?

Re:Four syllables is just too many

[SL Baur]

Oh I wonder when
Ubiquitous computing
Will be popular?

Re:Four syllables is just too many

[Marty_Krapturd]

How about Weverywhere?
Or Webiquity?
Or Meta-Uber-Highway?
Or P3n1s_P1llz?

Re:Four syllables is just too many

[Lehk228]

definitely P3n1s_P1llz

Re:Four syllables is just too many

[Phorion]

So "ubiquitous computing" won't become popular until someone can figure out how to reduce the syllable count. The academics and practitioners working in the field call it "ubicomp."

Re:Four syllables is just too many

[laejoh]

Let me try:

u8s c7g

How about that!

Overrated

[Xeth]

I think the author of this piece overestimates how much time people spend touring. Sure, this could be handy in the few situations you're in a new place hunting for something new, but people don't spend a lot of time doing that. On the other hand, looking at the other two revolutions listed by the author, people need to find things on the internet all the time, and socializing is a daily thing. You could build a neat digital location tagging game, à la electronic geocaching, but I doubt it'd be long before it was polluted with idiots and spam. And how long can people play hide-and-seek? Sure, there are certainly niche applications, but I doubt it'll be the Next Big Thing.

Re:Overrated

[MontyApollo]

That's a really good point. The average person spends most of thier life within a few miles of their house and within a few miles of work.

Re:Overrated

[Glowing Fish]

I think that it is true that media people overestimate how much time people spend on vacation. Mostly people many people in the media get paid to go on vacation and go to trendy new restaurants, and forget to remember that the rest of us have to pay to do so.

Re:Overrated

[kendbluze]

Perhaps you should look into the size of the tourism industry? It's becoming, or has become, the Largest Industry on the Planet. http://www.drtomorrow.com/lessons/lessons2/13.html

Re:Overrated

[Xeth]

The linked article is pretty light on relevant facts, but this seems to be useful:

more than 350 million visitors intermingle annually

Meaning that one third of the internet-using population [1] travels at least once a year. I don't find that a particularly compelling statistic, when coupled with the sheer amount of time people spend on the internet at home. I'm sure location-aware computing will be convenient, but I really don't think the hype in the article is justified.

Re:Overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

nah.. I used a location based service yesterday

I wanted to see the departure times for alternative trains on the same station in Utrecht Centraal (The Netherlands, Europe) while standing on one of the platforms - so I used my phone to get to the website of the dutch railways to check the timetables at the nearest station and see the departure times of next few trains because it was faster and easier than walking up to the central announcement board or any other timetable.

So I believe the time spent doing those searches will be negligible, and those spammers wont be more of a nuisance than they are now on the 'traditional' web... there's no money for spammers to be found on those services unless there's adult entertainment involved, which means you would be in a certain neighbourhood anyway...

I still had to walk to a platform on the other end of the station to get to the train I needed, but it's the idea that counts ;)

Re:Overrated

[merreborn]

While I agree that having net access in the places you spend 90% of your time in is almost good enough, the 10% of the time you're not at home or in the office, the web is a really useful thing to have. Every time the wife and I are on the road and want to find something (the closest bank, the closest store, the closest cheap hotel...) we find ourselves really wishing we had web access. A cell phone with internet access like the iPhone/Treo/Sidekick etc. are half way there (although they're slow, sometimes lack features (javascript, flash), or render things wrong), and are vastly superior to alternate methods of finding things while on the road (find a phonebook, call someone who's currently in front of a phonebook, ask a local), but I'd rather just crack open my laptop (which has a fully featured browser, and highly functional keyboard/display), use the company's store locater, and look up directions in google maps.

All the technology you need is available (GPS, web-capable cell service, affordable and reliable mobile processors). The only thing that's lacking is convergence. Ubiquitous, high-bandwidth wireless internet access wouldn't hurt either.

Re:Overrated

[bob frost]

Exactly. Think about GPS-equipped cars, given that most driving is done on known routes--known to the point of absolute boredom. Do we need a map to get to work or the supermarket? Now, are you willing to pay an extra grand for that feature in your car, given that you might use it 2-3 times a year? I don't think so. Reminds me of how J&R's ads in the NY Times try to sell GPS as a way to save fuel. Puhleeze! Very good in rental cars, tho, where we can assume the driver is unfamiliar with the surroundings.

There's something deeper here, and it's about familiarity, and that's something that doesn't translate well into IT, as it's all about informal, non-structured knowledge--which defies easy mapping. Before we embark on trying to get fine-grained on defining location, from an interface perspective, we need to figure out a way to background what we already know so we don't have to navigate through an ocean of extraneous BS. (This is akin to me always looking for the "do it again, like last time" key combination, instead of having to work through several layers of commands/menus).

The point is, the capacity of our IT systems to inundate us with more info is apparently limitless, and piling on more info--locational, recommended/referred, etc--is self-defeating unless we can navigate it.

My personal IT Rule #1: what we need is not more info, but better filters. This is not about info overload, really, but about the need to develop solid algorithms to background intelligently what we don't want and to do decent second-guessing at what we do want. The MIT Media Lab understood this a decade or more ago, but got sidetracked on emotive robots and laptops that would magically rescue African children from their poverty. Clippy, for all her annoying intrusiveness and dull-wittedness, should have been a start, "understanding" users and their contexts, and "learning" about them. Compare her to the much-better contextual help in OpenOffice, and we might get at a starting point.

In short, remember the 1970s agenda of appropriate technologies. It's all about context, not gizmos.

Re:Overrated

[shannara256]

You could build a neat digital location tagging game, à la electronic geocaching...

Something like WikiMapia?

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[quampers]

I wouldn't be advertising a website that horribly fails its validation, in a discussion about Web 2.0 greatness... http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .mapgroove.com%2F 87 errors.. ouch!

Re:Web 3.0 is not enough!

[eln]

Now you're just being irrational.

Location. Duh.

[cowardE4]

IAAP (I am a physicist.) From my home, I have only 56kdialup available. From the South Pole, I have more. Shouldn't we be discussing why in the mid-US this is the case?

Re:Location. Duh.

[Mr. Underbridge]

IAAP (I am a physicist.) From my home, I have only 56kdialup available. From the South Pole, I have more. Shouldn't we be discussing why in the mid-US this is the case?

As Winston Wolf would have said, "Move out of the sticks, fella."

Of course, we could also talk about how connectivity at the south pole is subsidized rather heavily at extreme cost to taxpayers of various nations, a privilege you're unlikely to get in South Nowhere, Iowa.

Re:Location. Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the South Pole, I have more.Yeah, sure, but have you tried getting a pizza delivered to there lately? Bandwith isn't everything! What are the ping times to the WoW server from the South Pole anyway? (And by the way, I have a house where the best I can do is ISDN; dialup generally connects at 28Kbps maximum there)

Re:Location. Duh.

[Experiment 626]

From my home, I have only 56kdialup available. From the South Pole, I have more.

You're in a land populated by penguins and surprised they have good Internet connections? Where do you think Linux comes from?

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[Anonymous Coward]

will have some very seriously monetization implications

Please write English. If you're not a native English speaker, here's a tip: don't learn English from a manager.

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[A non-mouse Coward]

Oh ... Web 2.1 beta. Is that what this pervasive, location-aware encryption is all about?

Screw Web 2.0

[alexandre]

This horrible centralized, corporate controlled social marketing mayhem... what we need is a real social p2p based on amule, openID, bittorent freenet and whatnot...

Re:Screw Web 2.0

[bravebart]

Just that most people don't care about the technology underneath. They just see "Windows Live!... has Games, Video chat. ROCKS!" Same with Myspace and Skype. To build up such an on open standards based "network" we need a company that spends much money on full time developers and designers so "oh well, but linux just looks ugly" effect doesn't happen.

I guess we all are a bit too much geeks to take SIP before proprietary Skype and think that our new "distributed, opensourced app with Jabber and XML support (sorry for this one)" cannot fail because of these astonishing features.

Logical Failures

[asphaltjesus]

... it's not that difficult to integrate them into a digital form.

You are kidding right? Neither do they know nor do they care where you can get food. You can view their ads online already but it just doesn't work. Secretaries of State?

On the other hand you might think fast food chains might lock out other places with exclusive deals.

Of course they would. If they don't lock out their competitors they aren't good business people.

Your mind must be a wonderful, unspoiled place.

Re:Logical Failures

[sethawoolley]

> > ... it's not that difficult to integrate them into a digital form.

> You are kidding right? Neither do they know nor do they care where you can get food. You can view their ads online already but it just doesn't work. Secretaries of State?

My occupation is the processing of spatial data on compute clusters. Many of my co-workers used to be spatial data converters for the major spatial data vendors. Here in the US, you can get corporate records from some office of the state or county. You can't serve food in any state I'm aware of and not be on file with the state or county for health and sanitation reasons.

I also was secretary of a state political party and the spatial database manager for them. I got most of my records from the secretary of state and county elections officials. I had written programs that would take every county and merge them into a single database.

I'm not kidding -- it's not that hard, even with government data.

> > On the other hand you might think fast food chains might lock out other places with exclusive deals.

> Of course they would. If they don't lock out their competitors they aren't good business people.

My point was that they couldn't because the market wouldn't let them. Note:

1) every existing application that has POIs doesn't prefer one particular food choice.

2) if they could lock out food choices they would have tried already.

Where I work, it's also our policy to be vendor-neutral. We go to great lengths to do that. Why? Because if we did, the other vendors wouldn't let us use their data.

What's Next?

[RAMMS EIN]

Ye dogs! First Web 2.0's empty buzzwords, now location aware advertising?! What's next? No, wait! Don't tell me, I don't want to know!

GPS & EU Galileo Relevancy

[A non-mouse Coward]

I guess that makes the news about GPS & EU Galileo convergence relevant, eh? What timing ... but at the same time, not a dupe. ;)

The Next Big Thing

[rrohbeck]

The Metaverse, of course. Duh.

Relevance of non-Linux and non-OS/X software

[WillAffleckUW]

Relevance score 0.00001.

Hmm, as with Vista (a flop by all metrics), this fails to pass the business credibility filters.

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[R2.0]

Well, between "My company has been in the space for about a year" and "which will have some very seriously monetization implications", you have shown that you are:

1) Buzzword compliant
2) a very poor spokesperso for your "company", such as it is.

Seriously, leave out the link next time - that way teh world won't know what company hired you, and that's probably good for your career.

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[corbettw]

I wouldn't be advertising a website that horribly fails its validation, in a discussion about Web 2.0 greatness... YouTube: 192 errors
Flickr: 18 errors
Reddit: 28 errors
MySpace: 210 errors (no surprise there)

Seems like he's in good company, after all.

(I also checked Digg, they had zero errors, so someone in that space is doing something right.)

CityPoint?

[benhocking]

A Google search was less than helpful. Can you provide more information about CityPoint? I have not seen any TeleAtlas cars in my city (Charlottesville, Virginia), and I suspect there might not be any near Bill's Deli, either. :)

There's good hope that the solution you suggest will work great for Charlottesville (college town full of tech-savvy people), but I don't know how well it will work for Bill's Deli in more rural areas. Eventually, perhaps, but I don't see it happening soon.

Re:CityPoint?

[Nasarius]

I don't know what the GP was talking about, but Yelp is probably the best site of that variety. Great for real cities, not bad in suburban areas. Plus, Google Earth has an overlay for Yelp built in.

I don't know how well it will work for Bill's Deli in more rural areas. Eventually, perhaps, but I don't see it happening soon.

Sure. But that's just a lack of users, both locals and tourists. I suppose if there was a real standard for registering your restaurant online, more small business owners would do it. Though I doubt there's a large number of people driving lost around genuinely rural areas, looking for something to eat.

Re:CityPoint?

[sethawoolley]

Oops, I meant citysearch.

In soviet russia....

[Anonymous Coward]

spelling learns web 2.0!

Re:Web 3.0 is not enough!

[morgan_greywolf]

Now you're just being irrational.

No kidding! What he needs is a pi in the face!

Next Olympics Sport

[xelph]

Cliff jumping...

People already have too much information

[Glowing Fish]

I really don't see how this is a necessary application. People already have too much information, most of which they don't pay attention to,

If you are driving along a highway, and you come into town, do you really need to know what 500 previous visitors thought of Al's Coffee and Diner? Unless all 500 of them complained, they are probably going to end up saying "Its an Okay place to get a cup of coffee and a slice of pie". Which is almost exactly what most people would think to themselves, anyway.

I for one just don't see any reason to carry a gadget around to bombard me with information about the world, when I should be relying on my own senses.

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[cdrguru]

The government has a specific interest in not putting companies out of business.

If a "open" network that allows VOIP existed, would any cellular carrier still exist? OK, assuming Verizon still has out-of-major-city towers, would any carrier that is mostly big-cities-only (Tmobile) still exist?

Sure, the government doesn't guarantee that a business will exist forever, but if the government starts making a habit out of squashing businesses how long will it be before nobody decides to take the risk on a startup because the government might?

Sort of like competing with Microsoft - they release a new free add-on to Windows that replaces whatever it is you decided to publish. Nobody does that anymore just because Microsoft "might". It happened maybe 8 times total, so it isn't as if Microsoft did it to 100 different players.

So no wonder AT&T would fight it. It is their entire operation at stake. And it is a very difficult question to answer if the government should ever do something like that. Something I am sure the courts are going to have lots of fun with.

Wrong...

[msimm]

The next big thing will be INTEGRATION. Anyone not sick of having 1093094 account each with separate password/usernames please raise your hands. Web 2.0 has been all about features. 3.0 will have to be about better managing them. 4.0 would be a good point for the reviving of the thin client approach. Your system anywhere. Sounds good, but not before the mess of 2.0 sites can be managed.

National parks?

[mypalmike]

FTA: Think of the last time you were at a national park. It's a very good possibility that the only information you had about the park fit on a tri-fold paper that you picked up at the visitor's station. In the information age, how is this acceptable?

It's more than just acceptable. It's exactly what I want when I go to a national park: to get away from the hyper-connected world of technology. The only information I want I will get from the park ranger, who hopefully can't tell his DVD-ROM from his Firewire, but can answer my questions about lizards and rocks.

Re:National parks?

[ceoyoyo]

Come on, it could be fun, all the city folk wandering around staring at screens, tripping on roots, stumbling into bears, falling off cliffs.

Go to far ...

[jhurani]

Go to far and you no longer have access to information

Why go to far then?

I know such a device!

[Glowing Fish]

It might take more than two days to work, but eventually your nose will let you know where it is.

Re:I know such a device!

[Tablizer]

It might take more than two days to work, but eventually your nose will let you know where it is.

No, because it has to compete with lost taco's and socks.

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[leather_helmet]

Does this mean I suck? ;-)

God forbid that web 2.0 contaminates national park

[pileated]

I have to wonder if the breathless enthusiasm in this article is the work of anything other than an internet marketer. I suppose technology and especially technology in the hands of early adopters does lend itself to proselytization and hyper-enthusiasm. But when there seems to be no skepticism whatsoever I have to think "marketer!"

How dumb does the author think real people are? Do you really expect that I'm going to be driving around with nothing to do but type "roast beef" into some sort of device? It's like web-surfing in 3D. Yes there are always some people who have plenty of time to do nothing more than surf the web looking for something interesting. But most people have a bit more purpose. Same thing in the new 3D web surfing world that the author envisions. Some people may have the spare time to just type in "roast beef" and see where it lands them. Most people will be a bit more purposeful and, if they should want a roast beef sandwich, would like to have some choice, like "Bill's Local RB" rather than the normal chain roast beef as someone else mentioned. So the examples are fairly unlikely and certainly unconvincing.

As far as that national parks I hate to see the day when such technology reaches them. I'm sure it already has, but I'm just fortunate enough to have missed it. It's bad enough to be walking in my local park, wondering why the person behind me is yelling at me only to realize that it's some nut on a cell phone who has decided that the park is the best place for a private conversation in a voice so loud that everyone else is forced to participate. In my experience most of those little folded pieces of paper from a national park that the author denigrates have plenty of information if you have the patience to read them. As far as anything else most of what the parks have to offer is right in front of you. Turn off your electronics and enjoy them. (Same thing with multimedia presentations in museums. The art can speak for itself if you only unplug yourself long enough to look at it.)

It seems to me that technology, rather than being the tool that it can be, for many has become an ersatz reality, a way to ignore or filter the world rather than directly experience it. That seems silly. I'm not an anti-technology luddite. But I hate to see articles such as this. As far as I'm concerned they are what give technology a bad name.

You're certainly Qualified!

[encoderer]

Your post is late, under-delivered, and does nothing but copy those who've come before you.

Yep, you're certainly qualified to write about Vista!

Buzzwords buzzwords

[Anonymous Coward]

Buzzwords buzzwords... kaching, kaching

Next Big Thing = Merging Amazon and Match.com

[glockenspieler]

"People who liked this book dated this person!"

"People who dated this person also dated this person."

I'm only sort of joking...

Re:Next Big Thing = Merging Amazon and Match.com

[45mm]

So would you take that advice and choose said match, or stay away from them?

Re:Next Big Thing = Merging Amazon and Match.com

[darkpixel2k]

...depends on what sort of rating said match gets. I'll stick with three stars and above.

Location is just one aspect of context

[twenex]

The article is short-sighted and misses the main point. Adding direct or deduced context to queries and services will be a major driver of innovation over the next few years, but location is just a small part of this. We're already seeing this in Web2.0 where social connections are added to our context, but we'll see lots of new things become part of context including location, prior pseudonimized searches, "workspace" (personal or work), identity, device type, etc.

Too much information

[Jabbrwokk]

I know it's inevitable, but I don't particularly like or need the constant link to information that Internet-everywhere would provide. I don't need to feel connected everywhere I go. I'm perfectly happy to go into my office and use the computer to type an e-mail, or sit on my couch and read news headlines and check local weather on my Nintendo Wii.

I think the urge to move everything to a constant, Internet-everywhere connection is driven by some kind of mental illness. I really don't want to have people constantly e-mailing me, phoning me, text messaging me, sending me stupid links, pictures and trying to get me to join Facebook. If they really want to talk to me, they can come over to my house, or meet me for a coffee, or invite me over. Or even use the telephone.

I also think that most of the information we want so bad to have at our fingertips within seconds of it happening is useless garbage anyway. I don't need my life and my mind crowded with terabytes of crap.

That's why I only browse Slashdot every couple days :D

to, too and two!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Go to far and you no longer have access to..."

should read "..go too far and you no longer have information access..."

man sure i'm flamebaiting and trolling but this is why after 12 years of English in US public schools that we have to take yet another English class instead of some cool elective our first year of college.

Thanks.

Nah. Helio tried that.

[Animats]

The most "location aware" portable thing right now is Helio. It has GPS. It has Myspace integration. It can display all the pizza outlets near you. It has "Buddy Beacon", so your Myspace buddies show up on a map display. It's a true 3G device. Does music, video, data, and voice phone.

What it doesn't have is customers.

The Helio store in Palo Alto is across from the Apple store. And nobody is buying. The day the iPhone came out, the Helio staff were playing GTA on the store's big display, due to a total lack of customers.

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[zymano]

It's not up to the government to 'auction' our spectrum to the riches and most corrupt or make sure some companies exist. This is totally counter to all conservative economics. It's corrupt special interest bribed lobbied economics.

Context Categories Semantics

[lifeone]

IMHO the next or the only logical evolution of web has to follow some amount of context association for all contents deductive or with an externally imposed semantics. In other words, there must be a way to associate a web document or any other artifact to a context or category. Thats the way our human brain perceives things and thats the way web has evolved so far and will continue to. Semantic web is not an immediate future ... but it sure is the destiny.

m-Spatial

[PipingSnail]

http://www.m-spatial.com/ provide services like this (location based info).
The founding team used to work at Laser Scan (a GIS company).
I worked with them at Laser Scan, good people.

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[myowntrueself]

If a "open" network that allows VOIP existed, would any cellular carrier still exist? OK, assuming Verizon still has out-of-major-city towers, would any carrier that is mostly big-cities-only (Tmobile) still exist?

Actually, I think thats what the iphone is all about.

Apple chose the worst possible cellular carrier for the iphone. They also gave it kick-ass wireless.

As soon as there is an open wireless network that the iphone can hook into, the AT&T EDGE network will become irrelevant.

I hear Google have such a plan. Maybe Google and Apple have some fiendish plan between them to kill the cellular networks?

Location? Not really... integration or meaning!

[chiraz90210]

Hmmmm... I guess not. There's already a great deal of location-integrated services and location is just another way to group data together. Location is not always relevant. Besides this... Web 3.0 is supposed to be about a web that is machine-parsable. RDF, integration between services, etc. Whereas the business/enterprisey services are based on SOAP, WDSL and what-have-not, RDF is a less formal approach than XML and allows machines to parse the information (content free of markup). Somehow I also feel that RDF is possibly not the best approach, even though advocated through w3c and the likes. It's time someone in their garage comes up with something better ;).

By the way, where's the multi-lingual web in this case? Translation of web pages independent of written language and so on... (Google translation can translate it, but it's not indexed in different langs, so cannot be searched).

I also consider that the web of meaning becomes more important. Rather than searching on keywords and how machines operate, I reckon that machines must become more responsible for chewing the text in such a way that we're less burdened by chewing our query to the way the machine can process it. Ever got frustrated finding the exact method for querying Google to find very specific documents that are not often referenced and highly specific to a certain knowledge domain?

Check out the efforts on Natural Language Processing, LSI, LSA and so on. There are some interesting projects and researches on retrieving better semantics (meaning) out of regular documents. The problems are that we don't really know yet how to map meaning into a different representation than huamn-interpreted words (convert language into a map of meaning), besides extracting semantics out of language elements. Where these efforts have been somewhat successful, they prove very difficult to implement without enormous machine resources and unworkable for a search engine that processes a very high volume of queries... oh well... one of these days!

Of course...

[lloyd_powell]

And here I was thinking that Web 2.0 was enough, and that the web was all finished! Web 2.0 is not "just the beginning". It has got a two on the end. Web 3.0 will come along, then it won't be enough. Web 4.0 will come along, and then somebody will write "Web 4.0 is just the beginning, wait till Web 5.0.". And so on until the end of time. Web 2.0 is just a brand name anyways. It doesn't actually mean anything technology wise.

you missed it

[tacokill]

Ok, so maybe "touring" is not what I am thinking about, but lots and lots of people go to unfamiliar cities all the time. Business travel is loaded with people like this.

I would use it and I go to places I am already familiar with. I would use it even more if I had never been to that city. Hell, I use it in my own city for that matter.

Imagine, you are looking at your smartphone (whatever flavor)...."Let's see...where is my hotel in relation to the city? Now show me steakhouses within walking distance. Cool, just found a dinner place for tomorrow night. Actually, show me Italian also in case I am not in the mood for steak. Let's see - how about something to do tomorrow night. Is there a theater nearby? What movies are on? How about a ballpark or stadium nearby. Anybody playing?"....and on...and on.

Don't underestimate the need to fill boredom and lack of familiarity in business travelers. This will be HUGE, with spam or without.

Re:you missed it

[MontyApollo]

Most of what you described can be accessed using one of those GPS navigation systems sometimes found in rental cars. Fandango.com allows you to enter a zipcode and get a list of theaters and movies. Yahoo has had local Yahoos for years, which includes maps and user reviews.

It seems like if there was really that big of demand someone would have better packaged all this already.

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[Mattintosh]

The iPhone is lip service. A couple of days ago, that realization hit me.

1) The iPhone is released as a "regular" cell phone. It has a crappy service provider, a sketchy network, and all the lockdowns necessary to satisfy said SP+Network. AT&T takes the bait.
2) Speculation grew over a few days over how much in common parts/software the iPhone shares with iPod. iPod is an established product and brand with no ties to anyone else's product, service, or network. iPhone is "AT&T-locked crap" and even the "iPhone" trademark was disputed with at least 3 other companies. It's not long for the world because...
3) The next iPod is supposedly an iPhone device without the cellular capabilities. This sounds limited, but it's not. It'll still be a phone. Regardless of whether Apple includes an actual "handset" shape to the device, there have been microphone+speaker add-ons for the iPod for years. There's also an iPod SDK. This means...
4) Someone will develop a SIP client for iPod. Hell, Apple will probably make one themselves. It will use the iPod's soon-to-be-added WiFi feature. You will have a "cell phone" anywhere with a hot spot. That leaves you SOL if you're away from WiFi hotspots, though. Unless...
5) Google bought assloads of dark fiber and is talking up the prospect of a nationwide WiFi network.

Apple iPod-with-all-of-iPhone's-capabilities-except-actu al-cell-network-connectivity + Google's no-longer-dark-fiber-network-with-WiFi-access-poin ts-everywhere = no more need for a cell phone.

AT&T just stepped on a land mine and no longer has any legs. It was a land mine shaped like a stylized apple with a bite out of it.

OK ok... call me anal, but..

[EddyGL]

"Go to far".. should be "Go too far".

How will it know where you are?

[ascendant]

AFAIK the best resolution that GPS can locate you is about 1 meter. If this is the state of the art (and I don't forsee tons of satellites flying up there any time soon), how will all these PDAs and such be able to do anything close to what you're suggesting. Even if they're outfitted with the communicators to the ultra-GPS satellites (making them quite prohibitively expensive), I'm sure they (the satellites) won't be able to take that kind of load.

Wikipedia indicates a minimum 3 meters error as the limit of physics for standard satellites. That is much worse.

I personally suspect that we already have this >Web 2.0 stuff is already here. All I thould have to say is iPhone and Google Maps.

WAPs all over national parks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Puhleez. I'd rather give up the web than see such desecration.

How about I sit at home, at my wired desktop, and just look at some nice pictures of Canyonlands. And instead of a roast beef sandwich, I eat a taco like everyone else. Because it's there.

Not to mention the privacy concerns of my browser sending my location every time I access a site...

We all know that you have to wait for...Views

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Web Vista will be out soon, but it's Outlook looks slim.

Already done

[smoker2]

Far be it for me to piss off the iPhone fanbois, but there are already devices and apps to do all this.
My HTC PDA running WM5 (yeah yeah, I know) has GPS, HSDPA, GPRS, Bluetooth, WiFi, and an OS you can write apps for. Consequently, when TomTom lets me down I simply fire up Google Maps, set it to use GPS and it shows me where I am and tracks my movement, with markers for every listing I care about popping up on screen as I travel. Even TomTom tells me if there is a low bridge or a weight limit on my route (relevant when driving 44 tonnes). When I needed to find a branch of a particular fuel station I went to their website, downloaded the pdf of all the locations, and put the post code into Google maps. My email comes in regularly, I can SSH into the server, post photos (taken on the PDA) to my favourite truckers forum, listen to music, play videos (why I would want to, I don't know) and even make phone calls when necessary !
Ok, it's not as skinny as the iPhone, and the screen doesn't automatically flip round as I fumble with it, but I see that as a plus. And when I'm bored I can read an ebook.
So please don't try to tell me that I'm too far from my data, it's all in the palm of my hand right now (unfortunate pun sorry).
(oh and it's sold sim free too, with replaceable battery and works out cheaper than an iPhone even after adding 2x 2GB miniSD cards [it will apparently read a 4GB ok too])
You can even make WM5 look nice.

Re:God forbid that web 2.0 contaminates national p

[nasch]

Do you really expect that I'm going to be driving around with nothing to do but type "roast beef" into some sort of device?

A while back I was driving (driving to somewhere in particular, not really "around") and asked the guy in the back seat with the GPS and cellular on his laptop to tell us about the restaurants in Hot Springs, South Dakota. We settled on the local Chinese place and he directed me there turn by turn. So how big a deal is this whole location thing? The only difference is instead of typing in Hot Springs SD he could have just pressed a "here" button or whatever. So if you know where you are (not necessarily just what town you're in but can find yourself quickly on a map) it doesn't matter, but if you're lost or aren't good at translating between map and real world, it could be fairly useful. Not revolutionary, but useful. Ubiquitous cheap mobile broadband would be a much much bigger deal. And by ubiquitous I don't mean most places in the biggest cities, I mean everywhere there are any people.

Realtors have a vested interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, Sterling's hyperlocal web is just a natural outcome of his obsession with molding the future in the shape of the past, instead of the other way around. Yes, big business (and governments too) love localization because it's the source of profits (and power), but the future is not necessarily heading in the direction of recreating the past in a digital form. It will undoutbedly surprise us.

As for realtors, well, the less said the better, since their profits depend on location in the physical world, and they'd like nothing more than to extend the profitability of their business by modernizing its face with a sexy new digital makeover.

There is only one UI suitable

[Buddy_Gilapagos]

I read the article and could not help think that any mobile UI that requires people to keep their eyes glued to a screen can not be the Next Big Thing as far as information retrevial on the fly . In order for this to really be a paradigm shifting application it has to be voice input. Once I am able to say "Computer, where is the closest bathroom?", then things might get interesting.

Location?

[nmapper]

I have a BlackJack and can share the internet connection with my laptop via USB data cable. Really location isn't that big a deal imo. Now I just need to figure out how to explain the sound of crashing waves to my boss.

Re:God forbid that web 2.0 contaminates national p

[pileated]

I can't disagree with you and your example. But my point was that most people are like you in looking for something specific, like restaurants in a particular area, not just "roast beef." The end result is something useful (a list of local restaurants). I'm ambivalent myself about tying information to specific geography (see my comments earlier on filtered reality) but it's easy to see how this could be useful to many people, as it was to you in your example.

The breathy enthusiasm of the original article didn't go into this however, instead using vague generalizations about "roast beef" on a dirt road, or "trails" while out with your bike. I think most people don't have the time or energy for such "surfing" but instead are looking for something much more specific.

I think my reaction was not so much against tying information to geography, and plenty of intelligent articles have been written on this, as to the breathless enthusiasm which informed the article. It was all hyper-enthusiasm and no skepticism. Like marketing.

The much more interesting question is something like this: what is lost by a technology-mediated world and how does it compare to what is gained? What do you lose when you decide when first getting to a national park to grab some device and start a search rather than looking around you. I was very serious when I mentioned those horrible taped tours that museums sell. As far as I'm concerned they give people a cheap understanding of what's in front of them rather than letting them figure it out for themselves. Good art doesn't come cheap. It's not easily packaged into a few sound bytes. Neither is nature. Perhaps restaurant-listings are. It may be that some things work better than others. But my real point was the silly breathless enthusiasm of a technology-mediated world without a hint of skepticism.

Yelp and Charlottesville

[benhocking]

It does have a lot of restaurants for Charlottesville. However, they're not all placed correctly relative to each other. Some are misplaced by as much as a third a mile or so. (That might not seem like much, but it is if you're walking from the UVA campus!) Thanks for the link, though.

Re:Yelp and Charlottesville

[Nasarius]

Some are misplaced by as much as a third a mile or so.

Yeah...welcome to Google Maps' spotty ability to resolve addresses. It's not so bad in Manhattan, since it almost always gets the block right, though you can forget about it getting the correct side of the street. But elsewhere, good luck. User-correctable locations would be a nice feature to add to Yelp, and not too difficult, given that the Google Maps API is quite nice.

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[LuisAnaya]

My company has been in this year for over 10 years now. My company built a product that allows telephone companies to design their networks using geospatial technology and to interface these with their premises inventory system.

Although I concur that it is an exciting system, it has been 'round for a while.

(Nevertheless, good luck to you all!)

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[treeves]

In other words, ten years ago, your company was ten years ahead of its time, but it's been falling behind steadily ever since, and now it's not ahead at all? That's a shame, to squander that kind of advantage.

My web goes to 11.0!

[SimHacker]

Never use an even numbered web.

-Don

Yes, but what are we really looking for?

[viksit]

We already *know*,
- The fact that Web2 is a buzzword.
- That its component technologies have been around for generations.
- That geospatial data is important and will exponentially increase in prominence
- Devices using internet connections coupled with above technology will be a boon to some, and a bane to as many others
- Internet connections aren't upto the last mile yet, and will take some time to get to an "always on" state which we need to exploit the above.

What we're looking to answer is
- When? Who's doing the research, who's doing the groundwork for all this to happen? Google is a given of course, I refer to academic research which people outside of Google R&D can look at and incorporate into.
- How? As above, but with whose funding, which laws, et al?

Dos this sound vague? Of course it does - but the TFA does nothing but rehash what everyone already knows. And thats the reason I considered it a waste d 5 minutes reading it.

Another shameless plug... Slashgeo.org

[Lord Satri]

You're right. Geospatial is already everywhere (pun intended) and will just become more and more omnipresent. This might interest you: http://slashgeo.org/

The site has thousands of daily readers but the user participation is rather low at the moment. It has even been closed the last two weeks after two years online, but we're reviving it no less than tomorrow.

And oh... Slashgeo added GeoRSS and OpenLayers/Google Maps support to slash... but the Slashdot team has not contributed to the development of this plugin... yet! ;-)

I use BigTubes 2.0

[WillAffleckUW]

It sells wood faster, it uses Tubes to get around on this Net thingy, and because it's spider-free, it has no Web in it.

Seriously, while the Information Superduperhighway has evolved, it's still mostly just a graphical representation of the interrelated content which is presented to us by different providers.

Web 2.0 is a buzzword, signifying little, intended to get PHBs to buy software that uses even niftier buzzwords, instead of the faster open source software that does the same job cheaper, faster, and with fewer bugs.

Re:I use BigTubes 2.0

[petrus4]

Web 2.0 is a buzzword

IMHO it does signify a couple of things:-

- Websites that are inherently multi-user, by design. They wouldn't make sense in a single-user scenario. There also is no dividing line between content provider and content producer; they are both one and the same.

- Websites that primarily use AJAX.

- Websites that try and do the "online application" thing.

YouTube, digg, Flickr, and ghost are probably the best examples I can think of of 2.0 sites. They're difficult to quantify exactly, but I know a 2.0 site when I'm looking at it.

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[LuisAnaya]

Actually, we've been doing quite well, thanks for asking. Cheers.

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try Cringely Jr. but in the end your post makes no sense. Yeah, Apple is going to roll out an open API ipod with wifi at the same exact moment that google invests trillions in a nationwide wifi network... uhhhh.

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[treeves]

Apparently, you missed my pedantic grammar-nazi-ish point, which was that you said your company had been in this *year* since ten years ago. Re-read your own post. You'll see it.

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[ceoyoyo]

Sure. They'd be wifi dealers... I mean providers, instead.

Bell and Rogers, two of the three big wireless phone providers in Canada have decided to offer "portable Internet" by putting extra antennas on their cell towers. Their wireless modem is needlessly bulky and needs to be plugged in (!?) so they're obviously not ready to kill their cellular business yet, but at least they're hedging their bets for the future.

This voice/data distinction is something that's going to have to go away in the future. Probably as soon as people wake up and realize what a rip off wireless data charges are, particularly text messages.

Article written by Captain Obvious?

[PMBjornerud]

Did anyone else feel like the article attempts to horribly overhype something that is extremely obvious?

I think the location-based hype party was back in 2000-2001, with US/FCC or-what-you-call-it requiring location of cellular 911 calls. Back then I was still a student and wrote 2 businessplans as groupwork. One was strongly related to location-based services, the other was bascially all about location-based services.

It was obvious back then, it is obvious now. The missing ingredient is a stable, common and CHEAP positioning service. As opposed to the wireless providers' offer with ~50 meter approximation and charging for every single time they do it. Cheap GPS or galileo will do the trick, combined with a good gyroscope (Hello, wii-controller-technology) for maintaning position during satelite shadows.

Not sure what will happen when we add location to the mix, but I assume it will be about people bookmarking their favorite places and lots of small discussion groups that exists in a "location" instead of a URL. Digital scavenger hunts. Friend tracking. Happen to be in Singapore at the same time as Bob from high school you haven't seen in 7 years? Maybe you don't want to know, but if you do, you can meet over lunch.

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[myowntrueself]

Yes, this is pretty much exactly the conspiracy that I was thinking of. :)

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[merreborn]

5) Google bought assloads of dark fiber and is talking up the prospect of a nationwide WiFi network.

Apple iPod-with-all-of-iPhone's-capabilities-except-actu al-cell-network-connectivity + Google's no-longer-dark-fiber-network-with-WiFi-access-poin ts-everywhere = no more need for a cell phone.

I was with you up to that point. A nationwide 802.11x mesh is neither economically nor technically feasible. 802.11x is good for what it's currently used for, and not much more. In reality, something higher power and longer range is necessary -- like existing cell networks, and/or WiMAX.

It took hundreds of APs for google to cover the town of Mountain View, CA (population: 70,000). Oh, and you're capped at 1 megbit/sec up/down

Google's proposal to cover SF in a similar fasion is slated to provide only 300 k/sec speeds to free users, and 1 megabit/sec to those paying $22/month; At those prices, DSL is almost certainly a better option. Given the numbers on the page, google expects to use as many as 1500 APs to cover San Francisco, an incredibly compact city with an area of only 47 square miles (which it's probably safe to assume this project would only cover some of)

Even generously assuming that 1,500 802.11g APs can cover all of San Francisco's 47 square miles, that's still 32 APs per square mile. At that rate, covering the city of Los Angeles would take roughly 20,000 APs, and covering Los Angeles County would take 150,000. And while you may deem that somewhat practical, applying the same treatment to the rural US (which, coincidentally, makes up *most* of the country, by area) is far less practical -- covering the state of Wyoming would require 6 APs for every resident!

Covering the country's densest cities in 802.11g APs is just barely practical. Covering the entire nation is laughable.

Oh SHOVE off - as if !

[unity100]

as if web 2.0 took off, got widespread usage, everyone using it and it has become a cornerstone of the web and now its NOT enough.

just shove off. web 2.0 is the toy of big boys. small businesses and communities dont go even near it or see the need for it.

Timely Praise and pass the collection plate.

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it interesting just how much faith geeks put into an unlicensed band. WiFi is to geeks what "X" and "i" are to marketers.

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[Anonymous Coward]

Google: 50
Slashdot: 5

"everything would be great if it had google ads"

[sethawoolley]

Not everything works like google ads. I agree -- you're going to get shitty results when you use an ad-supported model.

Believe it or not some people pay regular price for their hardware and software and don't like to be ad-subsidized. That's one reason I don't buy a Dell -- the same reason I don't use google to find out where to buy stuff. Believe it or not you get better service if you pay for the data rather than let an advertiser pay for it. Think Consumer Reports. The advertising model's fundamentally broken. Is TV good? no. Cable used to be good because you paid for it -- then they got ads too.

Everybody on /. is always complaining about vendors getting close to their news sites. Wake up people. It's the nature of advertising.

It's very difficult to make ads useful. One technique I've not seen yet: if you can let the viewer of the ad determine whether or not the ad was actually worthwhile, and not by clicking -- by surveying them after they've seen whether or not the information was useful. If it's unuseful, charge the advertiser and give the money back to the viewer. I'd rather they pay me for wasting my time than having the service pay them because I clicked a misleading lead-in. Maybe also if the ad texts were actually vetted, I might use any google ad, but I never have -- I have no reason to.

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[lordSaurontheGreat]

AT&T just stepped on a land mine and no longer has any legs. It was a land mine shaped like a stylized apple with a bite out of it.

iMine?

Web 3.0 is technologically already available

[bizbuzz]

Like Web 2.0 it's more adoption than revolution or invention. More precise than location based services are item based ones. With http://semacode.org/ and other datamatrix-techologies like http://www.beetagg.com/ you can easily access specific content trough mobile phones. But this raises privacy problems to a whole new level, because you can be traced via your requested items. No proxies can help here.

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why bloggers are annoying.

Go too far and ...

[DrHyde]

... just switch over to using the cellular phone network. It's rare indeed these days to be somewhere that you can't do GPRS.

Er...

[brunes69]

http://local.google.com/ perhaps?

There are already several websites that let you leave notes to people "in the air", so that when your GPS-enabled phone is in the proximity of them they appear on your screen.

Couple that with the ability to do location-aware search and I don't know how much more "hyper local" the web could possibly get.

I'm from FAR

[Anonymous Coward]

you insensitive clod!

Seriously, people who can't distinguish 'too' from 'to' should be sent back to school, all their messages deleted, all their writings burned and made to start from scratch.

I'm a foreigner and even I can do it. Captcha: instruct :)

We know it: SL

[hsquared]

IMHO, the article is right in that Web 2.0 is not the Next Big Thing (NBT). But in fact, I think we all have been to the tender beginnings of the NBT: Second Life (or WoW if you prefer, don't even start to tell me why SL sucks and WoW doesn't.)

People just *want* to be walking around a virtual world with landmarks, and with avatars that help them put a "face" to person. And everything's there: User generated content, silly advertising, annoying spam, even goatse if you're looking for it. It really has all the ingredients.

What is missing? Simple: An open protocol a la http. Granted, the protocol would probably be much more complicated (or "richer" as they now call it). But it needs an open protocol to enable the IT community to write and run their own servers and connect them to the SL grid. It needs feature negotiation. ("Hi, I'm server X, my avatars can fly, can yours?" - "Yup, but my inventory is limited to 256 items. What about yours?") It needs security for identity management, optional payment systems, and for confidential member-only areas. But these are solvable issues, as http has proven.

The question only is: Will the Lindens do it or will someone else come and do it. There's even a business opportunity: Obviously, people wouldn't want their avatars hijacked or otherwise abused. So the Lindens could sell certifications for "well behaved" server implementations rather than selling servers or charging for content uploads. Of course, they could remain an active player and continue to do the latter two things and many more as well.

The thing is, if they don't do it, somebody will. And with the ever increasing capabilities of modern VR engines and end user technology, it's just inevitable.

What are you people smoking?

[DiamondGeezer]

The next version of the Internet will so pervasive that you can communicate and be contacted from anywhere on Planet Earth, apparently.

That's not a vision, its fucking Orwellian nightmare.

I for one am grateful that I'm not contactable and traceable 24 hours per day, that I enjoy the bizarre concept called "off-line" and this weird reality called "Reality" without being constantly monitored. One of the very large downsides of all of this cool tech that keeps you in contact with the office is that people are spending more and more time at the beck and call of their employers to do work, answer e-mails and queries and that the line between work and homelife has become blurred out to almost nothing.

All of this stuff on /. about loss of privacy through this or that court ruling or that White House memo and you'll get slashdotters wringing their keyboards in fear. But make it a cool vision like "Web 3.0 - the pervasive Internet that's always accessible" and you'll have those same slashdotters raising their hands and shouting "Me first! Pick me! Pick me!"

It's completely fucking incredible.

For Charlottesville, Yelp is better

[benhocking]

At least on my "pizza" test. :)

CitySearch seemed to favor the large chains more than Yelp, and didn't even report Mellow Mushroom. It also seemed to have a larger definition of Charlottesville without returning a significantly different number of results. (I.e., the density of results from Yelp was much better - I could have walked to most of the locations recommended by Yelp, but not those from CitySearch.)

Just thought I'd throw my not necessarily representative experience out there.

Re:God forbid that web 2.0 contaminates national p

[tzanger]

I can't disagree with you and your example. But my point was that most people are like you in looking for something specific, like restaurants in a particular area, not just "roast beef." The end result is something useful (a list of local restaurants). I'm ambivalent myself about tying information to specific geography (see my comments earlier on filtered reality) but it's easy to see how this could be useful to many people, as it was to you in your example.

I would love a device where if I've got a hankering for a good steak salad, or "roast beef sandwich" to carry on with the original theme, I could simply enter that in and get a list of locals. It's undeniably difficult to find good local places when you're an out-of-towner. Why is looking for a local chinese restaurant by name any different or more plausible than looking for "chinese food" without a name??

I think my reaction was not so much against tying information to geography, and plenty of intelligent articles have been written on this, as to the breathless enthusiasm which informed the article. It was all hyper-enthusiasm and no skepticism. Like marketing.

Agreed; the article did come off like a marketdroid slobbering all over a new technology and all the ways to sell it, but the idea is sound if you look beyond that. Also, to your last comment about the idiot with the cell phone in the park; there's no getting around idiots. Without a cellphone the same idiot would be talking loudly to anyone within earshot about something inane anyway. I'd love a device which would give me a wikipedia-like interface, maybe with text-to-speech, to tell me more about something and allow me to wander off and learn about something I never knew I wanted to know until the linkages between the individual items led me there.

The much more interesting question is something like this: what is lost by a technology-mediated world and how does it compare to what is gained? What do you lose when you decide when first getting to a national park to grab some device and start a search rather than looking around you.

You're missing the point; Go to the park. Look around. Find something interesting and learn more about it, and about things relating to it than you could on your own, or even with the ranger. Let the ranger talk, ask questions and augment his information with what the device shows you. It's not a replacement for the exercise; it's additional info. If you don't want it, don't use it. But don't pooh-pooh the idea simply because you can't get beyond the technology infiltrating life aspect you seem fixated on.

I was very serious when I mentioned those horrible taped tours that museums sell. As far as I'm concerned they give people a cheap understanding of what's in front of them rather than letting them figure it out for themselves.

This is precisely why I have a love-hate relationship with The History Channel, Discovery, TLC and so on; they give you just enough to get your appetite whetted; this device could work in conjunction with your library and channels such as these to allow you to get a deeper understanding. It's like interactive TV, only done right. You listen to the horrible taped tour and have questions that the tape (obviously) can't answer. Call up the item on the device, see where it leads you. Find an old fart willing to talk to you and augment his information. That's what this is about. The breathless enthusiasm is a bit much, but your seemingly infinite cynicism isn't any better. :-)

I've seen it

[ppp]

I've seen the Next Big Thing: it's watching a dog skateboarding on my phone. We truly live in a Golden Age!

Re:My company has been in the space for about a ye

[aevans]

Maybe the problem is with the W3C validator? All those sites seem to work fine for millions of people.

Since when hasn't a buzz word been enough

[sysadmintech]

You'll do as Microsoft says.

What?

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

What are you smoking?

Google's proposal to cover SF in a similar fasion is slated to provide only 300 k/sec speeds to free users

Which is almost 6 times faster than dial up, for which you need to pay line rental plus a fee, and are tied to a contract. Also 300k/sec is just fine for emailing and browsing, even live IM, which covers 99% of the population. 1 megabit/sec to those paying $22/month; At those prices, DSL is almost certainly a better option

Free is the first option, and I am hard pressed to see how you will find a better price than that. $22 a month is cutting out the line rental and contractual obligations you have with DSL, cable, or any of those alternatives, and at 1 megabit per second is plenty to do whatever you want on the web, including VoIP and MMORPGs.

Re: The proper use of a Fargo DVD

[Douglas Goodall]

For those people I recommend keeping a Fargo oDVD on hand so they can watch it in their notebook computer while they wait for their flight...

Re:Timely. Dsl Article on AT&T trying to stop

[Frohike Tango]

When I saw your posting last Monday, I immediately forwarded it to five of my friends, saying "This is the most insightful thing I've read about the iPhone so far." They thought so too. Well, with the Google news that came out Friday http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKN20 30115220070720?rpc=44, I just wanted to say -- Well Done!