Panel: J Wynia (wynia.org) / David Swedlow (metastorming.com) / Mary Hodder (napsterization.org) / Liz Lawley (mamamusings.net)

Blog: http://www.beyondfolksonomies.com/

Wynia: What is a folksonomy?

Swedlow: It’s a bottom-up way of organizing information. More informal than taxonomy — “dog” instead of some long latin name.

Lawley: They are a way that people classify things — language and classification are not the same things. In folksonomies, people get to define their own organization, not have it defined upon them by some kind of authority.

Hodder: Usability of current folksonomy interfaces are pretty bad. Flirckr and delicious can have useful elements, but they still have a way to go. Users can be overwhelmed in both the collection and entry phases. Fear of more slicing and dicing as it won’t actually get us anywhere.

Wynia: Recently saw article on tagging problems with delicious: Five months you may have tagged something web design, but now tag it web design. Article suggested implementing rigid taxonomies, which kind of misses the point.

Wynia: Traditional way of handling problems with tagging is to go back and adjust them, but most in the population will be lazy about it and just leave outdated tags. But the fact that these things are already related is already evident in delicious. Maybe build tools that implicity tie specific tags together — web design and webdev, for example.

Swedlow: It’s not folksonomies vs. taxonomies — you really need both. Folksonomies get you to the general area, taxonomies get you to the specifics.

Swedlow: Maybe use implicit tagging.

Check attentiontrust.org. (Hodder is on the board.)
Hodder: Not a big fan of automated tagging. Systems just need to be in place to allow tagging — video site she working on right now pulls from both tagged and untagged sites — sites that allow tagging have almost 100% use. The fact that it’s a little bit hard and that someone had to think what to put forces better information — someone has to care to do it. You’d lose that context if automated tagging was implemented. Quality of information wouldn’t be as good.

Swedlow: Distinction between implicit tagging and automated tagging. Implicit makes use of work already being done. (What? Offer suggestions instead of automatically placing information.

Lawley: Asks for show of hands for who here uses tagging. Most do. “You are not most people.” Most people, even in IT, don’t want to use these sites and features. But it’s giong to start to happen in different contexts — Vista will have some tagging componenets in it. We don’t spend time thinking thourhg use scenarios. How are we going to make users’ lives better? The wisdome of crowds can be overstated (If you look at what democracy has given us it doesn’t always give us the best options).

Audience: Users already use folksonomies with folder structures on their computers — just to need to make that kind of work easier elsewhere.

Audience: Opositie positions or opinions can be just as useful. Ex: Movie reviewer who always endorses movies you hate, but hates movies you’ll love. Also, folksonomies need to be effortless.

Wynia created a tool to search the content of his own bookmarks. Lots of held breath during his description.

Clustering technology in Flickr resolves some of the issues of confusing tags — sxsw, sxswi, sxsw2006, sxswi2006, etc.

Lebowsky / Peter Rojas (endgadget) / Marc Canter (broadbandmechanics)

Canter: Beware the person who says all the solutions will be on one device. Consumer Electonrics, mobile, video games, etc, are all separate and have the potential to continue to do so.

Need open APIs so users can move information between platforms and systems. Can create an archipeligo of functionality, which can then compete with Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.

Rojas: Islands are developing on the hardware side. All hardware is trying to lock in users, not let them use other services and companies. For end users, makes trying to move towards a convergent lifestyle less attractive, as they have to worry about what’s compatible. Average users will have trouble understanding how all of this works together. “Why can’t I use this iRiver player with iTunes?”

Companies are so focused on controlling ecosystem of convergence that they aren’t really interested.

Canter: First companies in usually try to prevent others from getting involved.

Rojas: One of the biggest reasons mobile devices are held back as platforms is because there isn’t a single or leading platform to develop for. Consumers don’t want to worry about interoperability, but companies would have to give up some control to do so. One of the great things Microsoft did was give, mostly, a common development platform for PC development.

Developing for apple is a lose-lose scenario. If you’re successful, they’ll rip you off. If you’re not, you’re not. But watch them for R&D.

(Look up Oragami.)

Q: What’s the financial incentive for a company to open their standards?

Canter: Apple will be the last one, followed by Verizon. But everyone else will be open, forced by customers. As Yahoo asks, how do you get the next 30 billion clicks?

Rojas: Companies have to ask, do we want to control a small closed market, or have a slice with a huge open one?

Canter: Three percent of fiber is turned on. Other companies that aren’t in it right now will eventually run around closed big guys in the company.

Statement from Yahoo guy: Open APIs is their big area right now, as they see much of what they do as commodities.

Q: What about customers scared of the bill from their convergent, wireless functionality.

Canter: Keep supporting open in way shape or form. One of the big boys will eventually figure out it’s to their competitive advantage to work with the open people, and then they’ll jump on it.

Rojas: I think consumers are much more intelligent than we give them credit for. They refuse to spend their money until they’re offered a solution that works. Slow uptake of 3G. It’s too expensive and complicated to use.

Canter: The battle for convergence is for the wire into the home. Is the telephone wire, or the cable wire? There is no endgame — it’s what’s next.

Q: What about PVRs becoming obsolete because of broadcast flags or other DRM on broadcasts.

Rojas: It’s a broadcaster’s super fantasy to control what people watch, and lots of efforts to do so. Again, though, there’s a competitive advantage to a company that goes a different way.

Canter: Best features/Brand is what gets customers, not closed devices.

(Look up songbird. Open source that wants to support Microsoft DRM.)

Well, we’re in Austin. It would be pretty generous to call the Park Plaza hotel three stars, but for $40 a night, I’m not complaining. Well, almost: I can’t get online tonight–the network connection on the desk doesn’t actually plug into the wall–so this will have to be posted tomorrow. (Other hotels call maintenance for network problems. The Park Plaza calls security.)

The trip down went well. It sucked that we had to stop for a layover, but American ran on time and I guess it wasn’t that long. It’s in the 80s down here, and while the weather hasn’t bothered me too much yet, I’m glad I brought sandals. Ye dogs would be stinky without them.

Dinner came at Stubb’s near downtown Austin. Great briscuit, and mashed yams that might as well have been dinner. Beyond that, there was the requisite walk down Sixth, and a quick mental remapping of the city.

Just over 10 hours until the first panels begin. It feels good to be back in Austin, and at SXSW.

More later.

Friday will bring temps in the low 80s in Austin, while Saturday will verge on 90. I guess I’ll be forced to break out the short-sleeves and show off my pasty white arms. As annoying that is for me, it’s potentially horrifying to everyone else, so hopefully cooler weather will prevail.

Mid 60s or low 70s would be nice. Then again, if I could control the weather, I probably wouldn’t be here.

The days since the housewarming have been packed, and the coming weeks aren’t looking much better. Between now and March 29th, my spare time can be measured in hours, not days. It’s kind of ridiculous, but I guess life just brings periods like that sometimes.

For the most part, there’s not much coming that’s worthy of note, with one glaring exception. On Friday I head to Austin, Texas for South By Southwest Interactive. Four full days of forward-thinking web geeks talking about industry, web culture, and technology in general. It’s been a great, brain-filling time in the past, and I expect this year to be no exception. (Well, there’s not quite as much web 2.0 stuff as I expected, but that could be either a good or a bad thing depending on your point of view.) I’m not entirely sure about what tracks I’ll be taking during the sessions, but one of the nice things about the conference is it’s easy to skip around, not to mention just skip a session to continue an interesting conversation.

So, take this as a bit of warning. Over the coming days this site will temporarily turn into a venue for note-taking. I’ve been a bit of a Luddite as far as web publishing until recently, and while I miss messing around with HTML on a regular basis, I’m going to try to make as much use of WordPress, Flickr, del.icio.us and my wireless connection as possible. Granted, I’ll be starting to do this four to five years after everyone else, but it should be fun regardless.