ProductiveWise » future and current trends

The web gets smarter with Schema.org – how will you be affected?

Eyal Sela — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 04:38:00 +0000

Schema.org is a new initiative by the three major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo!) to make websites more readable for machines. It was announced a few days ago, accompanied by the Schema.org website, aimed at web developers.

Machine readable?

Machines, like search engines and any other computer on the internet, can't understand the content of webpages. They can only present it to human beings to make sense of. There are several ways to make this content more structured, allowing machines to better 'understand' it.

The concept of adding meaning to webpages in not new. In a way, it has been around since the web was invented. However, the combination of lack of the right technology, and more importantly, incentives for websites owners to take the extra effort in making the pages more readable to machines, has left this field obscure.

Machine readability of webpages, called by some The Semantic Web, got a major push last year when Facebook announced about the Open Graph protocol. The Open Graph uses structured information in webpages to make better use of their content.

For example, presenting the correct image and name of a website when it is liked and added to a user's stream on Facebook. Facebook announcement of the Open Graph protocol caused lots of websites owners to add structured information to webpages, including some of the top ranked websites.

Now, an even stronger force – search engines – is taking this factor into account, officially.

How will you be affected

Web users

As a web user, you can expect new, smarter applications and extensions that use the structured information (like the demo-extension Creative Commons Laser Highlighter does). For example, your browser might be able to automatically detect events in webpages and ask if you wish to add them to your calendar.

People mentioned in articles could be detected and offered more information about, such as their profiles on social networks or other items about them from across the web.

Products showing up in webpages will be added extra information that was not written by the original author, maybe even a comparison to similar products in other websites. The potential is huge.

Google Recipes is an example of an existing service that takes advantage of the structured information in webpages. It offers faceted browsing, searching recipes by their ingredients, and more.

Websites owners

As a website owner, you should start thinking about enriching webpages with semantic information. Expected results include better recognition by search engine, potentially leading to more visits. These visits will be more focused, since visitors will be more informed about what they're about to see.

To sum up

I think that this initiative has a lot of potential, and I hope we will see its fruits soon. However, as great projects can fail (see the Google Wave case for example), you should exercise caution with decisions you take about your website's markup.

As users of the web, we only need to wait and see if indeed Sechema.org get's picked up by websites owners. I hope that within a few months I'll be writing here about new apps and services that leverage these new capabilities.

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The web gets smarter with Schema.org – how will you be affected?

Video – Jimmy Wales speaks at GarageGeeks – October 2009

Eyal Sela — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:42:11 +0000

I took this video of Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, at a GarageGeeks meetup. The image is bad but the sound is good. Enjoy.

Jimmy Wales speaks at GarageGeeks – October 2009 from Eyal Sela on Vimeo.

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Video – Jimmy Wales speaks at GarageGeeks – October 2009

Facebook Acquired Friendfeed

Eyal Sela — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:55:22 +0000

Facebook has just announced it has acuired Frindfeed. Frindfedd says in thir blog that:

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop — keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.

Facebook’s offical press realse:

PALO ALTO, Calif. — August 10, 2009 — Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.
“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”
“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founders. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”
Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.
“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”
FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

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you migt alos whant to learn how to Make Yourself Easier To Find On Facebook by Adding an Alternate Name And IM Nicknames.

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Facebook Acquired Friendfeed

Web Trend Map – A Visualization of the Most Influential Internet People and Domains ‎

Eyal Sela — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:35:02 +0000

The following map, by iA, display the 333 most influential web domains and 111 most influential Internet people.

How to read it

Height: A station’s height represents its domain’s success by traffic, revenue and trend.

Width: A station’s width represents the stability of the company behind its domain.

Position: A station’s location on a train line indicates the group it belongs to. Also, if a station is positioned inside the main line, it is a classic site; if it is on the main line on the main line, it is a main site; and if it is outside the main line, it is a marginal site.

Web Trend Map 4 [Via The next web]

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Web Trend Map – A Visualization of the Most Influential Internet People and Domains ‎

Report: What is Web 2.0 and how do Professionals Use it?

Eyal Sela — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:16:45 +0000

If you’re lost into the clutter of web 2.0 buzz words and definitions, CCH’s recently published survey report might come in handy. The objective of the report is “to gauge the effects that Web 2.0 and user-generated content are having on the way professionals access, absorb, and disseminate information”. It offers short and clear definitions for “Web 2.0″, “Blog”, “Wiki”, “RSS”, “Social Bookmarking”, and “Social Network”. What’s more, it presents paragraph-long scenarios for using each of them in professional settings (starting page 9), which can be useful if you’re looking to make a case for these kind of tools in your organization.

They conclude that:

“While results show there is some reluctance for many organisations to adopt
Web 2.0 before value can be established, a high percentage of ad-hoc use (at least 25.8%) is occurring due to the accessibility and functionality of the tools. This suggests Web 2.0 applications have gained a signifi cant share of time spent online. We are increasingly using these tools to search, communicate and contribute to the web in both a personal and professional context (…)”
“the research has indicated that whilst Web 2.0 may be revolutionizing the web with user-based content, professionals are careful in their use of these types of tools for professional research.”

Read the full report – Professionals and Web 2.0 [Via KM Space]