As far as I can tell, TinyURL is not mobile savvy.
I get a ton of TinyURLs now via Twitter over SMS and click them most of the time. I am fortunate to have a mobile browser that can handle most things. But, what if TinyURL recognized a phone and sent the browser to a mobile-formatted page, maybe passed through Mowser?
Russ, if you read this: get on the line with the TinyURL guys and inject some mobile-savviness into them!
I’ve been doing some reading on Open Access Publishing, providing free public access to scientific papers. The two publishers I know the best are Public Library of Science and BioMed Central.
These two publishers are trying hard to change the current publishing model in science, where a journal acts as gatekeeper, selecting the best articles, and then charging readers to subscribe to the journals. Indeed, not only are the subscription prices astronomical sometimes, but authors pay the publisher to publish their paper.
PLoS and BMC therefore, have many reasons to turn this model on its head (and chuck it out the door). But, in the end, to me, they seem like the same publishers they are trying to change – they still do peer-review (gate keeping?) and publish article for reading only.
Of course, being a service designer in this day and age, I wonder how one could take these publishers even further, such as how to bring in the readers to participate via the current common community tools (without digressing on the existence of community), or how to bring in some intelligence (folks or robots) to add value to the large mass of info so that, as a total, the publication can drive more discoveries and insights.
PLoS has done something interesting, creating Journal Clubs online. Journal clubs, a staple in universities, are regular meetings to discuss a research paper of interest (like a book club, except more focused and more geeky). PLoS’s take on it is interesting (see below) – if the discussion around a paper is captured over time, one could chart the evolution of the thinking over time.
Alas, I would not ask someone to read _all_ the comments. To me, this suggests that in this area, the post-comment model might be insufficient.
Link: Journal Clubs – think of the future! | Public Library of Science:
There it is: all laid out – the complete history of molecular biology all in one spot, all the big names voicing their opinions, changing opinions over time, new papers getting published trackbacking back to the Watson-Crick paper and adding new information, debates flaring up and getting resolved, gossip now lost forever to history due to it being spoken at meetings, behind closed door or in hallways preserved forever for future students, historians and sociologists of science.
Previously, I mentioned Mowser, the mobile-savvy transcoder by Russ Beattie.
It’s really cool that he has so much traffic. But, it’s even cooler to see that the emerging mobile markets are well represented in the top countries of users, and a good quarter of it comes from India! Along with some other usage data from other services I know, I am really really wondering how things like Winksite, Mowser, and MOSH (from Nokia) are really catering to this unslaked thirst for mobile connectivity and content.
I think there is a place still for mobile-only solutions that cater to the mass-billions of users who have only access to XHTML mobile browsers for all their internet service needs. It’s going to also take a new way of thinking of how to connect folks so that they can form social networks, solely fueled through a simple mobile browser.
I always say that Europeans (North Americans, included) are snobby for thinking that folks in emerging markets and without PCs are clueless and don’t use the same internet-fueled services that most of us take for granted. On the contrary, not only do these folks know _everything_ that they could do if they had a PC, they are frantically looking for ways to hack or do the same things from the only browser they have – their mobile phone.
Before I joined Nokia Multimedia, where Nseries devices reign supreme, I was deep into thinking of what could be done to bring the mass-billions of folks with simpler phone, the last billion of which are in the emerging markets, into the Hyperconnected Age. One of my thoughts did include a transcoder (influenced at the time by Russ, himself). I was trying to add some of the functions that we are used to using in our browser, to be wrapped around this transcoder, giving some interactivity and action.
That said, while playing around with Mowser this past week or so, I was wondering how Mowser could be extended, and stumbled upon this post by Russ about a site that puts, what I call, a wrapper around Mowser. The wrapper makes it easy for you to save some bookmarks that are then opened via Mowser.
I like that and I guess I need to learn to code if I want to play around the same.
Indeed, Russ is encouraging folks to use Mowser in clever ways. There are a bunch of Mowser-types connecting at http://mowser.ning.com/ and publishers and hackers can visit the Mowser Wiki to learn how to take full advantage of Mowser. Guess that includes me, I suppose.
A CEO (who has now moved on to greater things) of a large and popular Web service once was relating to me a tale of one of his major embarrassing outages and mentioned something I now always look out for:
“It take two things to fail to really cause trouble.” (or something like that)
Y’know: you’re prepared and when the poop hits the fan, you’re respond swimingly. But then something else happens at the same time and it all spirals out of control. I think you all must have stories of such combo-punches.
Well, seems like the folks at Rackspace had a really krummy Monday.* First some stuff went down and then came back. And then a few hours later, a truck took out their power, leading to a second incident related to the power that led to even more servers going down.
Yep, stuff happens.
Rackspace posted a public letter to their customers explaining the outage (link, to which, in the article below). Read more below.
Link: Quick, Plug The Internet Back In: Major Rackspace Outage:
Rackspace’s generators kicked in but, as we’ve seen before, lots of other things can then go wrong. In this case, two chillers within the data center failed to start back up, and a number of servers were taken offline to avoid damage from overheating.
*Heh, I got a tip off on the story from one of my tweeps, @djacobs.
I was following a thread of interesting thoughts and stumbled upon this article from Bokardo that comments on a list of Best Practices that Google put up as part of the OpenSocial release.
Indeed, just last Friday, two colleagues and I were discussing how some folks misunderstand what ‘community‘ is. It seems that some folks think ‘community’ is a thing you build, much like a consumer electronic device: assemble the elements, package it, and, voilá, you have a community. And, also, it seems that these same folks view their target market as a _single_ community that can be serviced in a single way.
But, we all know that’s not the case, in all sorts of dimensions.
Eh, preaching to the choir here.
But, the one question that has been puzzling me is not ‘how does a social networking service capture that first pioneer who brings all her friends into the service?’, nor is it ‘what are the elements of a social networking service that lead to a healthy thriving collection of networks?’. The question that puzzles me is ‘when someone shows up at the door with a friend’s invitation, what is the catalyst* for that person to come in?’
The answer lies in the first point of this Best Practices list ‘engage quickly’. But, that’s a huge effort involved in a single line. For a service to engage quickly, it must be able to show the value of joining YASN immediately. The user is asking herself ‘if I connect to my friend through here, what do I get out of it? what investment will be needed on my part?’.
These answers need to be visible at the outset. And that’s the challenge.
Do you have any good examples of how a social networking service makes its value immediately apparent to a potential new user?
Link: Google’s Social Design Best Practices – Bokardo:
One is that we’re clearly seeing a set of practices emerge across all social software that centers around getting people started quickly, allowing for self-expression, engaged in real-life tasks, yet also allowing for flexible discovery and play. On both this site and others concerned with social design, these are the major themes that arise again and again.
*A ‘catalyst‘, in the way I grew up using it, means something that makes a reaction more likely (without being consumed by it). The reaction still can happen (it is chemically and energetically feasible, though might take forever), but the catalyst lowers the ‘activation energy‘ needed and increases the rate significantly. In this case, the catalyst shortens the decision time for the person join a social network service. 🙂
Things have been improving here and I seem to be returning to my ‘studies’ of where we are all going (that’s my real love and as I shed the burdensome organizational issues, it might return to being my core role here).
This past week I’ve been toying and thinking about Russ Beattie’s Mowser (see description below).
I remember talking to Russ a few years back and he got me thinking about transcoding and such. It’s great to see an idea he had become something concrete.
Mowser is sleek and fast and does a really good job in displaying sites that either are already mobile or need to be transcoded to be shown on a mobile.*
Already Russ says that someone has taken Mowser and created something new with it. The mash-up makes it easy for you to save some bookmarks that are then opened via Mowser. I am looking forward to more of these experiments.
If you want to get involved in Mowser discussions, go visit the Mowser-types at http://mowser.ning.com/ or, if you want to hack or publish via Mowser, visit the Mowser Wiki.
Link: About Mowser
Mowser lets you view the Web on your mobile phone.
Mowser mobilizes the web by taking HTML pages normally viewed on a computer and translating them so they work on your mobile phone. During this translation process, Mowser converts the page in a predictable, linear manner, details of which can be found on the Mowser Publisher Wiki. In order to ensure that the highest quality and most useful web page is displayed on your mobile phone or device, Mowser may alter images, text formatting and/or certain aspects of web page functionality, or forward to a publisher’s mobile version instead.
To send feedback or advertise on Mowser, please email info@mowser.com. Generally most advertising is handled through AdMob or Google AdSense.
See the complete privacy and terms of service for Mowser here.
Search thumbnails provided by Snap and search results provided by Microsoft’s Live.com
*Of course, transcoding is not without its detractors, who have valid points. See the comments here by Scott Rafer and a whole slew of articles by his colleague Dave Harper. Alas, I highly respect Scott and Dave, so this transcoding discussion tugs at me both ways.