Recently in The Future Category

About three years ago, I bid on an opportunity to become a "patron of the arts" for an upcoming Will Shetterly book. The auction included a signed copy of the book as well as the opportunity to have a dedication printed in the front cover. I won and chose to make a dedication to a friend as a Christmas present. What could be a more unique gift?

This summer, I finally received the book and the dedication. All well and good -- I figured I could sit on the gift until Christmas and still surprise my friend. Which would have worked except for the author's decision to put the entire book under creative commons license and post it on his site. There, it was promptly picked up by Google and subsequently spotted by my friend on a routine egosurf.

I'm peeved. After three years of having this thing in the works, it's a ruined surprise because of Creative Commons, Google, and Mr. Shetterly -- three things that I was formerly in favor of. I don't know how a provision could have been worked to protect this secret, but there should have been some consideration given. Google didn't know it was a Christmas gift, but the author did.

I don't know how this situation may impact other gift-givers or receivers, but I thought I'd expose this new wrinkle in modern living. Enjoy!

I bought this domain a few weeks ago -- I hope folks noticed because I didn't exactly spread the news through the pipes.  It's something I've wanted to do for years, but for some reason my name has always been parked.

But now that I have this site, I wonder if I may pick up stakes again and shift my bits and bytes to another spot one day.  Why?  Well, it's not out of the realm of possibility that I could get married and change my name.  I may want to lay low on the Internet and not be as SEO -- after all, do future employers need to know about my celebrity shyness? I didn't think so.  What else...everything I've written may turn out to be a conflict of interest or a conflict of comfort for a future employer, thus driving me back to some form of pseudo-anonymity.

I don't know what the future holds, but I'm here today.  If you've bought your name as a domain, let me know how that's working out for you.  Thanks for following me around!

I'm seriously considering life without television.  I mean, it's time, right?  I can watch all my favorite shows on-line (including the hilarious IT Crowd and almost as funny ANTM).  I'm having hardware problems -- the DVD player in my laptop is less flaky than the dedicated machine under my television, and the remote control won't work on my television. 

By canceling cable television I could save enough money to buy a really, really nice cinema monitor for my laptop.  Plus, I won't have to worry about that looming HDTV business.

I think the only problem left to ponder is what to point my living room furniture at.  Though some of my friends wonder how cozy it's going to be to hang out in front of the laptop and watch movies.  That might be an issue.

I know document management and records management systems exist. They make me tired. They're too large, too expensive, too much.

I really want del.icio.us or some equivalent so I can manage my file system effectively. I'm past the idea of using folders and directories to organize and manage files. I don't want it anymore.

I want to tag & share files, not spend hours trying to remember which project folder I stuck something in. I don't want to worry about what I named a file or develop a file naming convention that will make sense to me months later.

I don't want to worry about others' file maintenance practices, either. A quick use of the "for:" tag, and it wouldn't matter what a file was called or if we're using the same tags.

Not too much to ask for, is it? Didn't think so.

Lately I've been hard at work coming up with a new Web strategy for my organization. I keep coming back to the idea of not putting all our resources into a massive, centralized Web site. Instead, I think we should focus on managing a distributed Web presence.

First, a little background.

I work for a NFP whose most significant Web output is research. Our Web site tries to serve many audiences -- researchers, media, the general public, outreach partners and educators -- but fails to reach any of them effectively. There are many reasons for this ranging from a cultural emphasis on print, lack of understanding of the Web, time, resources, an inward focus and overriding security concerns.

One of the strongest problems is the a lack of understanding about how information gets passed around on-line and how the movement between sites and via e-mail changes and adds to the information that was originally shared. Another is a misconception that our site is the first, primary and most authoritative source of our own content. Google. Wikipedia. Research networks. These all have much larger footprints than our site ever will and are likely to be the first encounter many will have with us or our research.

What do I propose?

1) We should put our content where our customers are.

If students want to know about us, I say we partner with WIkipedia, make a hell of an entry about our organization & work to keep it updated and correct. If researchers want access to our content, we partner with research distribution sites & make sure our content rises to the top. If people want to work for us, we should have an active presence on recruitment sites and professional social networking sites like Linked In. If the general public watches for mentions of us on Youtube, let's put our video content out there. If the media wants our press releases, let's use professional distribution services to get it to them.

2) We should work on our content placement.

Google. Digg. Del.icio.us. Flickr. Our content needs to be tagged and it needs to be advertised to strengthen its placement on-line. If it was good enough to put out in the world, then we need to make sure the world knows about it. We should also be a steady provider to sites that are always looking to "feed the beast". Content production is expensive, so let's make it easy and worthwhile for other sites to feature our content. Let's become partners with sites that would most benefit from our content. We'll benefit in return.

3) We should validate content.

Use our existing site to direct people to trusted content partners. This will validate them and our content, plus create prestige for sites that host our content and further strengthen those relationships.

4) We should interact with people who use our content.

Monitor the Web via Technorati, Blogpulse and other engines to find mentions of and uses for our content. We should then comment on the uses we find, partner with new, valid sites, and extend the conversation around our content. This may lead to new research ideas or a better buzz about our organization and what it's capable of achieving.

5) We should use our site for niche content

If we can't find placement for some of our content, create very small, focused blogs/wikis/whatevers to talk to the five other people in the world that may be interested in that specific research topic. The site could then focus on knowledge creation and collaboration instead of archiving.

Hoped for results?

• A cheaper, more manageable site that makes better uses of the resources entrusted to us.
• A broader reach for our content and greater exposure for our content providers.
• More satisfied customers.

I'm still kicking around this idea and fleshing it out. Your thoughts are welcomed!