Finally, I have to ask what these tools do to the old, low-tech concept of friendship. In some way, with their numbers and lists and classifications, these services can subtly make a social network into a trophy collection. Technology has made it easier than ever to count your friends -- but that doesn't mean you should.

Esther Dyson weighs in on the trends in social networking software.

Buying and Selling the Little Black Book

William Mitchell, the head of the MIT Media Lab media arts and sciences, has written a book, "Me++"

] Me++ describes the move from virtual reality - the old
] 90s idea of the net as a separate, alternative realm - to
] "augmented reality" (AR), in which ubiquitous computing
] and mobile wireless networks are used to reconnect us to
] the real world.
]
] Mitchell muses on how AR will change our sense of our
] selves. Me++ is "a play on C++, the popular programming
] language. Among programmers,++ means incremented or
] extended, so Me++ suggests the computationally extended
] self." He suggests we should no longer think of ourselves
] as "fixed, discrete individuals", but as nodes in a
] network. "I am part of the networks and the networks are
] part of me. I am visible to Google. I link, therefore I
] am."

"I link, therfore I am," has resonance for MemeStreams.

Guardian Unlimited | Online | I link, therefore I am

] Like the Segway, Bombardier's Embrio concept--a prototype
] that may or may not make production--uses gyroscope
] technology to balance riders but adds a dash of flair
] absent in the Segway, which we as car nuts find slightly
] nerdy.

leet!!

Canadian Segway

] Huminity is a free social networking software that allows
] you to chat with anyone, navigate animated maps of
] connections and view the links of friends between you and
] anyone else - introducing - Huminity 6-degree
] chat!

Just got word of this via Jacob Levy via Dana Boyd.

This looks very cool. However, I cannot run it right now because everything I have around is some variant of unix.. I'll find myself in front of a windows machine at some point soon, but in the meantime I'd love to hear some people's thoughts on this.

In particular, some detail about the protocols its using.. Is this something I can export data to in FOAF? I am _really_ interested in chat and client end stuff.. We are in the process of making massive changes to the MemeStreams backend that's going to allow us to push out all kinds of data to stuff like this. This looks exactly like the type of application we envision this system being able to work in concert with.

From the "About Us" page:
] We are two guys, 30+. We believe that people will achieve
] more by helping each other and that it is time that the
] Internet evolves for people as much as it has evolved for
] corporates.

That sounds familiar...

UPDATE:

via #joiito:
[21:38] [adamhill] M: Huminity is incorporated in Antigua and does not allow trademarked nicks

Hmm..

Huminity social networking & chat software. 6-degree chat!

"Can you imagine the nightmare our roads would be if everybody had one?"

Device Lets Drivers Control Traffic Lights

Decius wrote:
] You blog, but don't oped....

Sure, call me out. That does work after all.

What can I say, I'm usually busy doing stuff, I always intend to revise later, I never do. I'm sitting on the floor, laptop propped up on a cardboard box. Phbttt.

] Monotone vs. Subversion vs. CVS???

There is a clearly perceived problem among the Digirati. Managing source code with multiple people working on it is a royal fucking pain in the ass. There are many people working on this problem for that reason.. It really picked up when there was a big stir about the Linux Kernel not being developed with an open tool chain when Linus switched his repository to BitKeeper. Everyone knows its time for CVS to die, but there are many ideas of which direction to go.

The key engineering design point in play here is the good old centralized authority vs. decentralized structure.. And well, I don't necessarily know what to make of this Monotone yet. All I did was read the FAQ. Let just say its interesting:

] Monotone does not have a specific networking protocol. Each
] type of change or certificate has a serialization format called
] a packet, which is a pleasantly-formatted stream of ASCII
] text. The state of a monotone database is captured by a set
] of packets. Packets can be sent to mail or news servers, or
] posted to web CGI programs, and retrieved by other users.
] Packets can also be emailed, printed out, backed up,
] or whatever.

] An important fact about packets is that they are informative,
] and do not represent a conversation or any commitments by
] the sender or receiver. A packet is simply a representation
] of some fact. For most functions, monotone decides what to
] do by interpreting the facts it has on hand, rather than
] having specific conversations with other programs. Only the
] fetch and post commands exchange data -- in the form of
] packets -- with anyone else on the network. The rest of the
] time, monotone is "offline".

] Monotone ships with simple client implementations of the
] NNTP, SMTP and HTTP protocols, so that you can exchange
] packets with existing servers 'out of the box'. If you want
] to transmit packets through some other means, monotone
] can produce and consume them on the command line, as
] ordinary data.

So basically, it determines if there are changes by comparing SHA1 hashes.. Files don't have version numbers, they have hashes. Changes go out in packets, and any given repository gets to decide what it wants to do.

I have not really done all my homework here, but there are a few things about this I find intriguing. If I read this right, everything this RC system does, it can do blind. Or at least doesn't require any kind of state to be kept between clients. If it was necessary to distribute changes to an app in a way where it was not possible to maintain any kind of centralized resource - even a place to send changes to - this would be very useful. It would be possible to "broadcast" changes in situations where proper level of anonminity could be maintained, and as long as the proper people were looking they could merge any changes. Newsgroups, message boards, stego sequences in frames of Bin Laden video, whatever.

So anyway, there is some op-ed.. I'm going to Home Depot to buy a door and two cheap sawstands to use as a desk.

RE: monotone: distributed version control

] On October 16, 2003, VeriSign announced the sale of its
] Network Solutions (NSI) business unit three years after
] its purchase from SAIC. This is a report on the
] historical snapshot of Network Solutions and a collection
] of commentaries made in response to this event.

Some good comments here.

Reaction to VeriSign-NSI Break Up

] And those are the people who still dominate the standards
] bodies?
] They're speaking out of both sides of their mouth right
] now. It's not OK to say standards are important, unless
] we don't like someone who implemented it. And it's not OK
] to say these services at the core should not be built
] out, unless you're one of the small guys and nobody
] really cares. How do we build a commercial business with
] ground rules that seem to shift based on personal agenda
] and emotion versus any particular logical data set?

More blood boiling commentary from the people who broke the internet.

The cultural divide and the Internet's future |CNET.com

Cute flash.

Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

] There is currently a healthy robust competitive market
] for expired domains. The WLS seeks to kill the entire
] market and allow a system devised by Network Solutions to
] decide who gets every name, and allows them to charge
] domain consumers exorbitantly for the privelege of using
] their monopoly.

The actual product is named "Next Registration Rights".. I commented on this awhile ago. http://www.memestreams.net/users/rattle/blogid3252412

Another reason to hate Verisign