Born On The Web

I’m explaining this to a lot of people recently so I guess it was time to make a blogpost about it.

I manage a few domains, mostly for myself, but also for a couple of friends. I do this because my hosting packet is pretty extensive, it doesn’t cost me more if I add extra domains to  it.

The only thing I found that was a pain, was managing dozens of emails for each domain. Most hosted mailboxes get pretty spammy after a while and have a limited storage. So for me, google for domains really came as a solution, and now I use it almost exclusively for handling my emails. Here are a few reasons why :

• It provides unlimited storage , well not unlimited, but I haven’t met anybody who came close to the limit.
• It has a nice and lightning fast interface (a real upgrade for users who are used to work with squirrel mail)
• It supports imap and pop3 access
• It’s free
• It can be accessed on a mobile phone.(via web or a mobile tool)
• Easy to use control panel to create new users, you can create extra administrators, administrators can create aliases for email addresses. (so most of my friends can manage their emails themselves)
• Easy to create mailing lists
• Possibility to use more than only email: docs, chat, sites, …

However changing email provider without any problems is considered impossible. Since I’ve done it a few times now, I think I’ve found the best way to do it. Without loosing any mails.

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You RSVP (It is standard practice to reply to an RSVP request whether confirming attendance or declining) to an event at last.fm, facebook, upcoming, meetup, …

Wouldn’t it be easy to have an universal RSVP web service… which is coupled to your openID. So if you RSVP to an event on last.fm, the event is automatically added to your events on facebook and other …

I have to get this of my chest, I wanted to do a BarCamp presentation about it, but I can’t wait … So here is my small rant!

In Belgium we have a public transportation company, NMBS(trains). The NMBS has a pretty good website, so it’s relatively easy to find the correct times of trains and since I’m an avid train traveler. It’s really necessary being able to quickly check what time your train leaves or at what time you’re going to arrive somewhere.

But mobility is strangled into our daily lives, strangled into our professional and private life. So why isn’t it possible to integrate the mobility data of the trains in more life-managing-applications like Outlook, Google Calendar, … But also more specific needs for example school lesson schedules, contact information of companies, … So integration of relevant travel info with time data would be incredibly useful.

If you have a good database (which I hope nmbs.be has), it shouldn’t be to difficult to build a web service on top of it. Or am I wrong? The data is already public, so you don’t really have security issues.

These are the first 3 methods I would love to play with: 

GetStationInfo

Parameters: Stationname & Time

Returns: all the trains on a certain time, different directions with all the stations which are reachable. Maybe station location info.

GetTravelRoute

Parameters: Start station name & Destination station name

Returns: route & possible times of departure.

GetStationList

Parameters: State

Returns: List of stations in a certain state.

Of course this is really basic, just to give you an idea how cool this could be.

I think it would really be an added value for a lot of applications. I’m just going to list a few example mashup/applications I’m thinking about: Decent mobile interface (do they currently have on?), iPhone interface, google maps mashup, integration on the contact information of company websites, school websites (integration in lesson schedule), integration on the website of Brussels airport, … I really think the possibilities are endless.

So my message to the NMBS web staff, please guys … open up your database, give us a nice web service to play with. The mashups will be stunning!

What would you make with the NMBS web service?

I’m currently reading Wikinomics, which is one of the best books ever on the topic. There is a very nice chapter about the new generations of people who’ve grown up digital. Because my blog is dedicated to the net generation or “born on the web” generation, I’m going to give you an extract from the chapter.

All the generations in developed (and increasingly, developing) countries use the Web. Seniors, for example, have time to spend and new motives for going online – communicating with their grandchildren may be the most important. However, a new generation of youngster has grown up online, and they are bringing a new ethic of opennes, participation, and interactivity to workplaces, communities, and markets. For this reason, they merit special investigation. They represent the new breed of workers, learners, consumers, and citizens. Think of them as the demograpgic engine of collaboration and the reason why the perfect storm is not a flash in the pan but a persistent tempest that will gather force as they mature.

Demographers call them the “baby-boom-echo,” but we prefer the Net Generation, as Don dubbed them in his 1997 book Growing Up Digital. Much of the following research we present has been updated from that book in a recent study with our colleague Rober Barnard, CEO of D-Code.

Born between 1977 and 1996 inclusive, this generation is bigger than the baby boom itself, and through sheer demographic muscle they will dominate the twenty-first century. While it is smaller in some countries, internationally the Net Generation is huge, numbering over two billion people. This is the first generation to grow up in the digital age, and that makes them a force of collaboration. They are growing up bathed in bits. The vast majority of North American adolescent know how to use a computer, and almost 90 percent of teenagers in America say they use the Net. The same is true in a growing number of countries around the world. Indeed, there are more youngsters in this age group who use the Net in China than there are in the United States. This is the collaboration generation for one main reason: Unlike their parents in the United States, who watched twenty-four hours of television per week, these youngsters are growing up interacting.

Rather than being passive recipients of mass consumer culture, the Net Gen spend time searching, reading, scrutinizing, authenticating, collaborating and organizing. The Internet makes life an ongoing, massive, collaboration, and this generation loves it. They typically can’t imagine a life where citizens didn’t have the tools to constantly think critically, exchange views, challenge, authenticate, verify, or debunk. While their parents were passive consumers of media, youth today are active creators of media content and hungry for interaction.

They are also a generation of scrutinizers. They are more sceptical of authority as they sift through information at the speed of light by themselves or with their network of peers. Though they have greater self-confidence than previous generations they are nevertheless worried aboutr their futures. It’s not their own abilities that they are insecure about – it’s the external adult world and how it may lack opportunity.

Research show that this generation also tends to value individual rights, including the right to privacy and the right to have and express their own views. Throughout adolescence and later in life, they tend to oppose censorship by governments and by parents. They also want to be treated fairly-there is a strong ethos, for example that “I should share in the wealth I create.” They have a very strong sense of the common good and of collective social and civic responsibility.

Further, this is the first time in human history when children are authorities on something really important. An N-gener’s father may have been an authority on model trains. Today young people are authorities on the digital revolution that is changing every institution in society.

The main tenets of Growing Up Digital have been borne out. However, in the last decade we learned a lot more about how the Net Generation will rewrite the rules for communities, markets, and workplaces. 

Thanks to the native interoperability between google maps and flickr. I can now embed maps with recent geotagged flickr photos on it. Sweet huh! Making mashups has become easy…

Photos from Leuven:

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Photos from Brussels:

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Photos from Gent:

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Or even my personal geotagged photo map:

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Presentation on slideshare.

A bit late maybe, but here is the presentation I gave together with Gunter Boutsen of Fishtank.

powered by ODEO

By Tom Coates

Community guidlines – a mish mash of tips and interesting theories. A lot of this theories are directly copied from Tom Coates his presentation at the future of web apps. So credit goes to him. But his slides are simply so true and so valuable I couldn’t have let them out. I hope you don’t mind, Tom…

I wanted to post this a while ago, but never came to it. During the world cup this year we held a small competition at Pickdee. Gary from Pickdee mailed me last week with a nice new feature he implemented:

Gary from Pickdee here, hope you’re enjoying the football.

I just came across your post on pickdee [ after having being introduced to your blog from the pickdee post ] — I also thought the facebook API opening up was an interesting event. It’s definitely of a different nature than most of the other web API’s.

It let me build this:

http://www.pickdee.com/facebook/

in pretty short order, it lets any facebook user use their login there to authenticate with pickdee and play one of the two new American Football games…

Funny seeing your two posts together.

A lot of mashup kids like Gary (from Pickdee) and me (sometimes) clearly see the advantage of building further upon existing services. He plugs his system into facebook, he doesn’t have to make a registration page, although he already made one now. The value of a facebook account goes up because you can use it in Pickdee.

The web is evolving to a nice ecosystem, where every platform has its specific task and focuses on doing that specific task very good.