March 28, 2007
Wikis: getting better all the time
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I recently had the very good fortune to sit down for an hour or so with David Boloker.
Who he? One of IBM’s seriously top dogs, that’s who.
David is the CTO of Emerging Internet Technology and a damn fine fellow, too!
Long-gone are the old days of stuffy white shirts and striped ties — David’s one of the breed that swaps suits for jeans and black lace ups for trainers. Which is how I like my clients, too!
During our chat — David visits Australia about once a quarter and we’d tried to catch up before but our diaries clashed — David filled me in on wikis, the Open Ajax Alliance and movement, and things ‘internet technology’ in general.
Now, I confess that some of what he was talking about went over my head (the ‘tech-geek’ bits), but the overall ‘take-home message’ I certainly did understand. Which is this:
1. Many of us in this business communication community have been saying that ‘widgets’ are the tool for 2007 — David agrees;
2. Many of us think wikis are far too cumbersome and unfriendly to be used in any general corporate setting — David disagrees;
3. Some of us are interested to know where mobile technology is going — David says it will be ‘the next big thing’ and proceeded to spell out why.
But before we look at mobile technology, let’s look at widgets and wikis, because David showed me plenty of examples of where they are coming together so seamlessly and sensuously that anyone looking to build an information portal really should pay attention.
Here’s an example to be getting on with:
Merino Innovation: a gorgeous website showing what can be done with the new ajax technology; scroll the image across and listen to the sounds change, links change, etc. Brilliant and Australian!
David also pointed to QEDWiki, IBM’s own development prototype for wiki technology (there’s a video, too).
What QED shows is that putting information portals together is just getting easier and easier, for both the IT department AND the end user.
‘Why’ they are all coming together easier is no doubt due to the ease with which Yahoo! has made its pipes available for developers to tinker with.
“Pipes?” I hear you ask… Yes, ‘pipes’ are bits of coding that allow you to grab data from a database and display the data in a form and format of your own making. Pipes are, according to Yahoo!, interactive feed aggregators and manipulators. Using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant to you.
I have already used a pipe to link to Neville Hobson, finding only his ‘Second Life’ posts.
Pipes and wikis are able to come together neatly and sweetly, as the QEDwiki video shows.
Here’s some more links worth taking a look at:
- mashups tagged with Australia on ProgrammableWeb (most as Australian but not all): http://www.programmableweb.com
- JotSpot: http://www.jot.com/
- Ning: http://www.ning.com/
- Yahoo Pipes: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/
The Next ‘Next Big Thing’
So, onto the ‘next big thing’, then…
David took me for an imaginary tour of the comms space in the next few years. It will come as no surprise to realise that mobile phones will take up even more space in of our communication toolbag, but just how much is what David shocked me with.
‘A shedload’ is my own description of it. What Apple have done by launching the iPhone is not just enter the mobile phone space (which, lets face it, Nokia has market dominance of) but signal to the mobile phone industry that their days of being a standalone product are doomed. What Apple have done is completely revolutionize how people interact with their mobile phone — no, I haven’t seen one myself yet, “but all reports from those ‘in the know’”, says David, “are that it is a completely different way of working with your phone.”
More and more applications — ajax ones — are being written for mobile phone technology. Already I have my bus timetables on my mobile phone (as well as the ubiquitous browser, mp3 player and low-res camera); what will come to us shortly, with Blackberry-like connectivity — is a whole stream of customisable data, turning our mobile phones into extensions of our desktop computer.
Imagine — I talk with someone in a taxi on the way to a meeting. At the meeting I connect up my iPhone to a data projector and give my presentation (which is the updated version I received during the taxi phone call). I then make my way back to my office, make and take a few more calls on the way, and via bluetooth or some similar technology connect my iPhone to my 30″ monitor, my keyboard and my mouse (if I want, or just use the iPhone screen keyboard and my finger as my input devices). Can your Nokia do that?
I walked out of the meeting with my head spinning and my heart racing even faster than my normal ‘pumped up’ self. I can’t wait for it all to arrive!
And I’m looking forward to catching up with David again when next he is over here. As he likes a drop of good Aussie red perhaps next time I’ll accompany him on his tour of Penfolds…
You can listen to David talking about Ajax, Web2.0 and the Open Alliance and other tech-geek stuff, if you like (the transcript is here).
Many thanks to Iwan Winoto, from David’s group in Sydney, for forwarding me some extremely useful links and background info.
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March 29th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
[...] Boloker, that fine and wise man from IBM I mentioned yesterday, has emailed me with details on a recent OpenAjaxInitiative [...]
March 30th, 2007 at 6:28 am
[...] Just to prove that I am right*, Reuters have published an article on the power of widgets (read my previous post on widgets). [...]
August 23rd, 2007 at 10:53 pm
[...] I go back to my chat with IBM’s David Boloker nearly a year ago, David predicted that where 2007 would be the ‘Year of the Widget’, [...]
February 5th, 2008 at 3:16 am
[...] will remember that the last time the three of us caught up a long and fascinating discussion on mobile computing being the ‘platform of the future’ occupied a large chunk of our [...]
March 12th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
[...] bloody Boloker bloke was right when, well over 12 months ago, he casually dropped into our conversation that widgets were passé and that mobile phones were going to be ‘the killer [...]