Yes, it’s probably true
when you think of the future of the Internet and Web 3.0, you think of extending the semantic web concept, weaving together technologies and creating the ultimate user experience.

Well, WRONGO!!!  :)  Okay, perhaps not wrong, but have you instead considered that Web 3.0 will really center up (drumroll please):

Social Shopping!

Yes, it’s true - forget about following what fashion analysts say online or TV.  Instead, you’re going to become a fearless leader of lemmings (or perhaps a gung-ho lemming yourself) and first see what others are buying online before bravely making that critical fashion choice yourself.   To wit:

…What happens when following the fashion herd becomes wisdom of the masses? When everyone can become his or her own fashion editor? When “citizen” journalists replace glossy magazines as oracles of fashion?

The next big thing in fashion is not a hot young designer or a new label but an online evolution driven by peer-to-peer recommendation and consumers who want what they see others are buying online – in short, a new kind of conspicuous cyber consumption.

“It’s what I call Web 3.0,” explains Dawn Bebe, managing director of the UK’s first social shopping site for women, Osoyou.com. While the Web 2.0 label is used to refer to the current interactive phase of internet development, defined by blogging, social networking and “wiki” sites built with user-generated content, Bebe believes, “The next evolution for the web is social networks that have a purpose – vertical social networks…. This is where social shopping comes in. The thing that bonds these people is shopping and fashion.”

“We believe that peer-to-peer recommendation is already essential in e-commerce because shopping is a social and emotionally driven experience,” says Malte Goesche, chief executive and co-founder of iliketotallyloveit.com, a social shopping site based in Germany and named after a phrase used by Paris Hilton. “Recommendations by friends help you to discover products you weren’t aware of and didn’t know you needed  ….MORE….

Love that line…"didn’t know you needed." 

Remember, you’ve heard it here first!  When 3.0 comes roaring in like a freight train, daintily refer people to:

• I LIke Totally LOVE It!

You’ll definitely, like, make an impression. 

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - and if you’re looking for designer fashion you can, like, totally love:

Want to build
a website…but don’t know how to build a website? Not to fear, it’s Google to the rescue! To wit:

Google Sites’ ease-of-use, tight integration with Google services strengthens company’s position in Web-app race

Google today unveiled a powerful new weapon in its arsenal of lightweight Web-based productivity applications: a tool for easily and collaboratively creating and editing Web sites. Dubbed Google Sites, it’s built around JotSpot, the wiki platform that Google acquired in October of 2006 — and whose previously unclear fate has been cause for quite a bit of hand-wringing.

The search behemoth appears to have a broad range of applications in mind for the freely available tool, from building a private company intranet, accessible and customizable by users on a permissions basis, to developing a public-facing Web site for all the world to see.

Google has aimed to make the Google Sites easy enough for a beginner yet feature-rich enough for a power user. For example, building a Google Site requires no HTML, according to the company: It’s “as easy as editing a document,” the company says. There’s also a “growing list” of page templates to get users started, including “Web page, announcements, file cabinet, dashboard, and list,” according to Google…..MORE….

At first glance, it looks very promising! I wonder, though, how many business folk will actually exert themselves to take advantage of the technology?

More information can be found at:

• JotSpot back (still a wiki)
• Google Sets Its Sites on Google Apps
• Google Sites Finally Launches

What do you think?

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - want newbie books on website building?

Just came across
this post from my diet/fitness community -

…..You know a funny story? (I should actually post this in the lounge, but I’m too lazy.) I was sleeping the other night, and at around 12:00, I woke up my roomate because I was mathing in my sleep. Yeah. Mathing. That means spitting out formulas from an overdose of math….MORE…

Now that would make such a nifty new sleep aid! Can’t sleep? Mumble to yourself about mathematical equations until it’s dream time!

I can see the marketing potential already.

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - and if it’s math for which you are searching, check out:

Tell me the below clip out ISN’T cool!

Breaking Rumors, News, Truemors via kwout

I just came across the free site Kwout - it allows you to easily make quote copies or website images of any page online.  Truemors is a great site that offers breaking news, rumors and the like.

So!  Let’s say that I wanted to quote something from Steve Pavlina’s blog - I could snip out a picture like so:

Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog via kwout

and include it in my post.

What do you think?  ‘way cool thinks I!

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

Awesome
doesn’t begin to describe:

5978 High Quality Icons for Web, Apps & RSS

I spent a lovely morning poring over them - WOW!   

I think whatever you could possibly need for a web-based design is there (along with credit to the original author/artist).  Words really don’t describe this page and blog posting - you MUST see it for yourself.

5978 High Quality Icons for Web, Apps & RSS

And if you’d like some graphic design resources, check out:

• Graphic Design Blogs
• List of Graphic Design Blogs
• Top 50 Graphic Design Blogs

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - more hi res goodies include:

Ah, the Internet.
The ability to uncover anyone of any technical ability IF…you knew the secrets of Internet sourcing.

I came across one fascinating account over at ERE - Forgotten Fun. To wit:

I’d forgotten the fun of Internet search.

I had a job come in during January. The position was for a senior-level manager in the R&D software group of a major storage business. The customer told me in the specifications that the person we were looking for was “an uber-geek who has the capacity and the desire to talk business to customers.” Further clarification pointed out that most qualified candidates “have blogs, or they’re named on the Web because they are conference speakers, award winners, or as with ____, have a brief profile of their background.” They were also likely to have been awarded patents.

It was apparent we weren’t looking for the average software engineer; what we needed was someone with many (in the range of 20) years of experience and the ability to be a spokesperson for a company or, in the least, a product line. “Chief Technologist” was one of the titles they were allowed to carry.

An “evangelist” type. We haven’t seen that word much lately. The word “evangelist,” according to many online dictionaries, points to a religious perspective. According to Wikipedia, a “Technical Evangelist” is “a person whose job or role is to promote technologies. This may be, officially or unofficially, on behalf of a company or organization or on a personal basis; for instance, open source evangelism. An evangelist promotes the use of a particular product or technology through talks, articles, blogging, user demonstrations, recorded demonstrations, or the creation of sample projects. The word evangelism is taken from the context of religious evangelism because of the similar recruitment of converts and the spreading of the product information through the ideological or committed.”

I noticed that the definition included the word “blogging” and this reminded me, humorously, that five years ago that concept would probably not have been included. How things change. Recognizing that this was a job that would require a sizable amount of Internet research on the front end, I got to work over the weekend. The following is my experience….MORE….

It’s definitely an eyeopening experierence! If you’re in the employment market, do yourself a favor and check it out - Maureen is one of the top experts in this field.

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - and if you need employment marketplace style, consider:

I’ll never forget
the SPARC 670 or SPARC 690. The size of a healthy refrigerator, it powered our department’s networks with the greatest of ease 18 years ago. Ah, memories.

SUN has certainly changed from those humble roots back then! But the big exciting news to me is that they just bought MySQL.

Now, you might know that MySQL is one of the most popular databases out there in the world - it powers just about every database-driven application used by the common masses. Talk about an impressive reach! Here’s more background:

….. Sun Microsystems Tuesday completed its $1 billion acquisition of MySQL AB, a decision that was announced back in mid-January. Coinciding with the completion of the acquisition, Sun also made available MySQL’s complete portfolio of products through its global sales and services organization. The company also recently announced several new universities deploying its systems.

MySQL Acquisition
MySQL is the most popular open source database and is behind some of the highest-volume sites on the Web, including Google and Facebook. According to information released by Sun, more than 100 million copies of MySQL software have been downloaded to date, with the current pace reaching about 60,000 downloads per day. Sun said that the reach of MySQL will help “bring new markets for Sun’s systems, virtualization, middleware and storage platforms.”

The acquisition included $800 million in cash and $200 million in options. Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, has joined Sun’s senior executive team as senior vice president of the new Database Group within Sun’s Software division.

Sun, along with O’Reilly Media, will present the annual MySQL Conference & Expo April 14-17 in Santa Clara, CA.

MySQL software is available for download now through Sun at no charge….MORE….

What do you think?

And if you’d like to learn more about MySQL, check out:

• MySQL Forums
• Webber Forums
• Sitepoint MySQL forums

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - MySQL goodies are abundant including:

Sounds like an intriguing perk
to me!

…..An Apple iPhone or iPod Touch will become a central part of Abilene Christian University’s innovative learning experience this fall when all freshmen are provided one of these converged media devices, said Phil Schubert, ACU executive vice president.

At ACU - the first university in the nation to provide these cutting-edge media devices to its incoming class - freshmen will use the iPhones or iPod Touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances - among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed, said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts.

ACU’s innovative plans for this technology have attracted the attention of Apple executives and leaders at Ivy League universities. In fact, Roberts returned to Abilene Monday from Cupertino, Calif., where he was asked to present ACU’s creative vision for converged media devices at Apple headquarters to executives and to selected leaders from universities including Harvard, Yale, MIT, Duke, Stanford, Oxford, Princeton and UCLA, Schubert said….MORE….

I wonder what kind of deal Apple is giving them?

Anywhos, colleges nowadays are already taking advantage of the teaching opportunities such consumer electronics offer, for example:

• iPods at the Gate
• Stanford on iTunes
• University podcasts

I wonder when Princeton will follow?

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - if you want your own iPhone goodie without paying a college tuition, check out:

I’ll never forget
the day I visited an Apple store in my local mall. Compared to other packed-to-the-brim shops, the store was notable by its HUUUUGE open spaces and how the the customers were talking with each other as they migrated to various parts of the stores.

When you think about products in the past, it was all about, well, the product. A computer (and accessories), a TV, a stereo system, a reclining bed, a refrigerator…all stand-alone products with perhaps accessories satelliting around them.

Not so any more! Think about buying a TV today. You can focus on the TV, the speakers, the surround sound, the furniture in which you’ll sit, the Wii that wants to be attached and the like.

People are moving not so much to buying individual products, but buying components for entire experiences. Relaxing at home! Playing a game! Listening to music!

The question is, how will retailers address this issue? There’s a super article you must read over here - it begins:

Those that are in those businesses, as we all know, like to operate on a pretty low operating margin when it comes to selling those 11 or five SKUs. It’s a complete reversal of activity, whereas we used to make a lot of money on lots of hardware, and we’d let the assortment sort of self-destruct over time. Now the consumers are choosing. They want five different gaming consoles, and that’s it. They want 11 iPods plus maybe three or four other MP3 players and that’s it.

The interesting elephant in this room is we’ve now talked more about things that aren’t TVs and computers for the first time in memory. Those are smaller economics and the honest truth is those are smaller businesses. These are smaller dollars, smaller margins, less service, less warranty and the dynamics of the industry are never coming back, at least not in the same way. It will be very different.

Dave Workman, PRO Group : When you look at the retail stores, the old school of retail was really product-centric. Now, with the Internet and excellent retailers like Amazon, the dynamic in the market is that if you are just dwelling on the product alone, there isn’t enough margin to keep a traditional brick-and-mortar retail operation in business. I think there will be a paradigm shift for retailers over the next five to 10 years, and those that will come out of this as successful retailers are those that move from a product-centric to an experience-centric merchandizing scheme.

Part of that is a smaller footprint because you don’t necessarily need the size that you needed before. It’s not about having 600 televisions necessarily and maybe all of the choices that are available everywhere, because the thing that Apple has figured out, and which has resonated so much with the consumer, is the experience at the Apple Store. It’s not a product showcase as much as it is an experience people continue to come back for and talk about…..MORE….

What do you think?

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - speaking of entertainment:

Picture the following
you have a digital camera and the potential for creating an Oscar worthy shot…if only you had the bazillion-dollar lighting rigs that the pros use! Oh the agony, as that perfect shot gets away!

But lo! Hope arises on the horizon! For the Digital Photography School blogged about 10 DIY lighting hacks for photography, and wow, they’re impressive! To wit:

Lighting can be the difference between a good shot and a great one.

Walk into most professional photographer’s studios and you’ll be confronted with truckloads of lighting equipment. To the average hobby photographer it’s enough to make your mind boggle - and for your stomach to turn as you think about the cost of it all.

Most of us can’t afford a full lighting rig - however what if there was a way to experiment with the type of lighting gear that pro photographers use without spending too much money? What if you could make it yourself….MORE….

It includes:

• 1. Multi-Super-SB-Ring Light
• 2. Poor Mans Ring Flash
• 3. Inexpensive Light Tent
• 4. Party Bouncer Card
• 5. Turkey Pan Beauty Dish
• 6. DIY Ghetto Flash Extender
• 7. Disposable Camera Flash Slave
• 8. Flash Mounted DIY Softbox
• 9. Flash Bouncers
• 10. Full Budget DIY Lighting Studio

You’ll get some great ideas there.

Want some digital photography ideas? Check out:

• DPreview.com
• DPreview Forums
• Free Online Library of DIgital Photography
• Photography on the Net

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - some digital camera goodies: