I’ve had the opportunity recently to collect allot of feedback and input on my ideas surrounding the 10 areas that should be focused on in building an open mesh for the future.  I’m using these 10 areas as anchors on which to hang conversations, chapters of a book, wiki pages and tags.  In other words - I’m building a ‘knowledge base’.

I’ve done some BBQs (and will be doing more), and I’ve collected all sorts of feedback, some of which has made it onto my fence. I’ve been trying to keep things organic and not push it, and see what happens.

I’ve been pitching the idea and methodology to people, which helps me refine the rap and I’ve watched new kinds of infrastructure appear which maps right into the areas of focus and principles that my gut told me were the right way to go.

But go - where?

The purpose of me creating these 10 areas of focus was to establish a series of common notions, ontologies, constructs, principles and design goals which anyone could use.  Then by mapping, interoperating between, sharing and establishing  a plugable, inter-changeable world of user interfaces - many different approaches to implementing an open mesh could be supported - at the same time.

The constituents for these blog posts and methodology are people who are building the mesh and marketeers and sales people who will exploit, monetize and live within this world of our future.  It’s important that we’re all talking from the same hymn book and normalize our various approaches together.

Giving away these ideas to find a common ground seems to me to be the only way we can all move forward together.  Its not like Google or Microsoft are going to agree on anything.  Its not like Apple won’t continue to forge forward in their own direction, yet they don’ get to own smart phones, MP3 players or the bridge between the PC and the TV - which is so desperately needed for the living room.

So we’re all in this together.  Innovation appears, it’s copied by some, improved by others, consolidated into behemoths and monetized with viral uptake.  Our technology pipeline is already a mesh; in a chaotic state.

Microsoft has proven that it can invest and buy their way into new sectors, such as the game console market and Google has combined their cash cow and market leadership now with strategic acquisitions and open standards approach. It’s open as the new black - as marketing.  Have you ever seen a Google ad before?

China, India and the rest of the world are in focus - “how can we all establish common open platforms on which we can ALL make money?”

Out of all this ‘BigCo’ positioning, end-user exploitation and further consolidation in the market, the independent software community have forged ahead - creating new kinds of infrastructure, standards and platforms that we all can build upon.  Where barriers and stoppage have appeared, we’ve routed around it.  Where single vendor solutions have fallen short, redundancy has appeared.

The very word OPEN is exploited, misunderstood and victimized all at the same time.  Open Data, Open APIs, Open Source and Open Ideas have all helped form the principles on which we all build.

Here are some principles I’m using when I think about ‘building the open mesh‘:

1. Two-way APIs are appearing which present a level playing field - an inter-connected environment which Open Data can be easily shared and user’s profile data, social graphs and content can move effortlessly, without being locked in.  Only by allowing systems to both PUT and GET- can we ask vendors to participate in our open mesh.

2. By showing commercial entities the benefits of being open, they can balance their own goals and agendi with the wishes of their customers.  Semi-open alliances will form between non-overlapping networks of people - and vendors will incentivize end-users to come into their networks with fresh blood and warm bodies that then invite in more of THEIR friends.  By rewarding end-users on their viral behaviour, inter-connecting alliance members can offer real cash prizes and contests for the ‘most new members’ or ‘highest rated upload’.

3. Social is now everywhere, and widgets and modular code can now move legacy systems and productivity software into the realm of ‘recent comments’, activity streams and presence monitoring.

4. By looking for things in common, we can determine which elements should become part of our standard infrastructure - with redundancy and source code availability.  This new kind of infrastructure will enable software developers to piece together their own solutions, quickly easily and without a lot of time or money.  Right now - social networking platforms, IM plug-ins, Content Delivery Networks, storage and cloud computing services, media management, API layers, identity and routing servicesare all available.  More will appear over time.

5. Access controls and privacy are a HUGE issue and we’re seeing all sorts of progress.  July 23rd will tell us how Facebook is implementing their notion of dynamic privacy.  Until we get everyone thinking about ‘our data’ - the stuff that is neither yours or mine - we won’t have a collective ’social web’.

6. NEA - no one owns it. Everyone can use it.  Anybody can improve it.

7. What’s clear is that we’re heading towards a distributed world.  How do we keep track of everything?  How can we prevent first to market plays, like Twitter from dominating our future?  What are the techniques for federating together, for enabling distributed messaging, sharing, rating or groups?  Yes - I know these are questions, not principles - but perhaps one of our principles should be to keep pushing forward and asking questions. eg. we’ll never be done.

Here’s a status report on the 10 areas of focus that make up the open mesh.

#1 - ID - We wait for July 23rd’s announcements of Facebook’s implementation of their dynamic privacy technology.  ID is the #1 construct and built-in notion for EVERY open mesh app or service.  Call it ‘user driven’ or ‘user centric’ or whatever - it’s all about US, the ID, the individual.  MySpace has launched Data Availability which though disappointing, is at least a step in the right direction.  Google’s Friend Connect continues to be a state-of-the-art implementation of some pretty idealistic goals.  There is an effort afoot at creating a standard set of APIs and a schema for ‘portable contacts‘.  Stay tuned for that one!

#2 - Persistent Ubiquitous Content - is quickly becoming accepted.  It comes in the form of iTunes, Hulu, YouTube, Flickr, NetFlix and Rhapsody.  It’ll evolve into storage repositories for all our own stuff and by offering APIs into these clouds, new kinds of services and applications will be born that can treat every person, media item and piece of information as a URL.  Or shall I say URI?

#3 - Structured Content

The idea of an ‘Our Data Server’ has been proposed - but I have a lot of work to do - before it’s fully articulated. Basically its a simple, first step attempt at implementing the vision personified in ‘Brad’s thoughts on the Social Graph’.  I look at what Robert Scoble and Leo LaPorte have to do - every time a new service is launched and I think “Dam!  Isn’t this a GREAT application for a shared social graph anchored around some ‘web celeb’?  Isn’t that EXACTLY what the web celeb - wants?”

So the Our Data server idea is one example of what a structured content server might look like.  Freebase and Twine are general purpose structured content servers.  They’ll be others.  Its all about the ‘micro-content’.

#4 - Live Web

I really wanna hang out with the Meebo guys some more.  They called together a seminar on the Live Web and it really got my attention.

The fascination with Twitter, the goals of Gnip, the underlying fabric of FriendFeed - all feed on the real-time LiveWeb.  Lots more is happening here - stay tuned.  Just as long as there are two-way APIs - we’ll be set.

Steve Gillmor clued me into this real-time search feature called ‘track’ - that was there, but not now - in Twitter.  Sort of like what PubSub did, but in real time.  Summize provides some of that functionality.

Yah - more like that - with APIs - so we can pass tags into it - and get back feeds.

#5 - New kinds of applications that look like Tools and Services and Community - all rolled into one

Thsi is the one area which I have been given the most feedback on. When people hear the word tools - they think old school tools.  But I’ve been pitching a ‘new paradigm for tools‘ for a while now - and I really think it’s day has come.   Tools of tomorrow don’t come shrink wrapped in a box, or get charged for upfront - before they’re ever used.  Tools today come with community baked into them and can be modified and updated - instantly.

Tools come with a marketplace, built-in community Help and most importantly - can be tiered and priced dyanmically - based upon who the user is, what their skill level is, who’s paying for the sponsorship this week, what their other complementary services are - and which data sets and persistent content - they’re working with.

Tools can be dynamically adjusted to who you are, and if you’re interested in ratings, reviews, events or comments.  Tools can ebb and flow with the market, faster than you can hit the configure button.

This new approach to tools will form the glue of the open mesh.  We’ll be able to maintain multiple personae and have different levels of features, content and community associated with each persona.  Ever hear of Cut, Copy or Paste? Well imagine applying that your your entire social web?  Tools becomes an intrinsic part of the digital lifestyle aggregator.

#6  Reusable, plug-and-play, interchangeable User Interface objects

I was a disciple of Alan Kay’s back in the day. He taught us that if one can unlock the hood of a word processor and get in there and tweak things, then everything is tweakable, customizable and shoudl be personalized to fit each user.

Nowadays you can choose between which blogging tool you use -  Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress, what have you - and still be able to get an RSS feed from the output of that tool.  Well imagine being able to interchangeably choose between media galleries, LiveWeb clients or activity stream readers?

Why commit to one configuration, when you can assemble your own - even in choosing which dashboard/start page to  commit to?  This is the world we’re heading towards and a  big reason why we need standards in the first place.

#7 - Infrastructure

I added ‘redundancy‘ to the fence and where one’s ‘state‘ and ‘context‘ have also risen as important common facors to bake in.

It’s clear that we cannot rely upon single vendors and that some sort of DNS-like backbone approach can be applied to servers full of OUR data.  Sharing means sharing, not hording it to yourselves or providing access to only a few.

We also need effective, objective 3rd party testing and compatibility labs.  There are going to be so many intermixing, overlapping protocols and data formats - that we’d BETTER have the ‘Good Housekeeping seal of approval’ process in place or else everyone will be claiming that they’re ‘organic’ - and we’ll have no way of knowing if they really are - or aren’t.

#8 - Constructs

As I went over these 10 areas of focus with folks, I explained to them that I go from being very specific and drilled down into the ONE (the ID) - the individual person and that as we progress through all the others areas - we become more and more nebulous.  So #4 Live Web, #5 Tools and #6 Reusable UI Objects are kind of theoretical, whereas #7 Infrastructure, #8 Constructs, #9 Marketplace and #10 Standards are downright abstract!

So by #8 Constructs, what I mean is; the ontologies, design patterns, vocabularies, schemas,  and other sets of ideas - like containers themselves - which need to be utilized as common vencular in our design approach to building the open mesh.

I’ve assembled a pretty good set of lists of this stuff.  But the red section (Containers) has already faded and I haven’t put up all the ‘other’ UI objects - yet.

This is the stuff that could be called the IP (Intellectual Propery) of this reference design - and just to be official - I’m Open Idea-ing it - so that anyone can use it - free of charge.  You don’t even have to give me credit - just make sure you’re compatible and work with others.

#9 -Marketplace

As I was explaining this to some people who were non-technical, I summarized this by simply saying “it’s important to bake monetization into everything”.

‘nuf said.

#10 - Standards

Yes - this is what its all about folks - and that’s why I put it last.

Facebook created a new kind of platform - which standardized what ’social apps’ need to be. All social apps must  have activity feeds, friends lists, comments, RSS, profile pages, groups and some sort of expression or interaction.  Providing access to all that via two-way APIs is also ‘a standard’.

Other kinds of standards have been established for ID sign-in and registration. Now we standards for the user interfaces for authentication and data exchange.  Opting in and other kinds of  access controls issues are other ’standards’ which need to get established - soon.

Out of all this, I hope there’s some value in what I’m doing and talking about.  Now onto that dry rub.

Bye for now.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.