Last week I did a presentation at one of our major universities. I spoke about the need to create content specifically for mobile devices. I will reflect more on this in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, as I was flying back home after the presentation, I mulled over the notion of small/short units of content. This led me to a delightful historical safari around the subject; here is my safari-log:
I have actually met people who believe that the importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is overstated. Someone emailed me, arguing that SEO is a media crock “just like the Y2K bug, push technology, stickiness and other dead concepts.” The following quote from the legendary Pink Panther may serve to illustrate the basis on which SEO denialists got it wrong:
Some time ago, The Guardian’s Charlie Brooker wrote an article knocking the idea that 9/11 was some sort of demonic conspiracy by sinister industrial-military stakeholders in the US government. No ways, argued Charlie, for conspirators to bypass the gigantic pile of bureaucratic dust that is likely to be required in order to commission a governmental shady operation.
My late granny used to tell stories about life of adversity in poverty stricken Romania. “I was too poor to lift up my head” she once said “and too proud to bow it down.” I thought of granny when I stumbled upon Robert W. Fuller’s concept of Rankism, defined as “Abuse, discrimination, or exploitation based on rank.”
Digeratus (singular form of the term Digerati, a useful misnomer) Michael Masnick founded Techdirt in 1997 and is now the blog’s President and CEO. The blog’s name alludes to its purpose; Techdirt’s team of experts gets its digital hands dirty in order to provide “the right information to the right people at the right time.” Strangely, it appears that Masnick will be less remembered for his pioneering, visionary work in the fields of Knowledge Management than for the term “The Streisand Effect” he coined jokingly in 2005.
As an afternote to my previous posting: Reading Adobe’s press release, one can only guess why Google and Yahoo! were invited to the ‘open’ Flash party while Microsoft is not mentioned. I have a strong sense of Déjà Vu here — remember what happened to Sleeping Beauty’s parents when they didn’t invite the 3rd witch to their daughter’s birth party?… Muhahahahahaha indeed.Cnet.com’s Ina Fried picked up the trail as well - she reminds us that Microsoft has been working on their very own searchable, Silverlight technology. Fried then links out to Mary-Jo Foley’s delicious comparative piece on the issue. Foley quotes Microsoft’s assertion that it “designed Silverlight from the beginning to be easily accessible by search engines.”
Adobe, the giant producer of content handlers like Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, illustrator and Flash CS3, has kept its digital technology close to the chest, guarding its intellectual properties with fervour and conviction.This is, of course, understandable, as one can only imagine the enormous investment involved in the development and marketing of premium products like Photoshop, for example. Photoshop doesn’t come cheap. The product’s extended CS3 version retails at over $USD 1000. What was always less acceptable was Adobe’s refusal to allow developers access to its Flash technology.
Symbian is the DOS of mobile phones. The ubiquitous operating system sits snugly behind 110 million Symbian smartphones), according to the Symbian website. Ten years ago, Symbian was formed as a private company owned by then trendsetters Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Psion - the UK based company that developed Symbian originally. As things stand today, Nokia owns 42% of Symbian’s shares and the other 52% are divided among Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens and Samsung Electronics.
Over the years, I found myself returning to the Gilbane Group website. Gilbane, Cambridge, Massachusetts, based group of analysts and consultants specialising in information technology strategies. The site is choc-a-block with articles and white papers, many of which are worth the time taken to register, download and read. Frank Gilbane’s report has been around for years - and as it grew and became a media powerhouse, when Gilbane was joined by other keen observers.
The terms Googles almost half-a-millions results, top-of-mind are a 1955 book by American philosopher Daniel Dennett on Darwin’s theory of evolution. Dennett argues that natural selection - a central concept in Darwin’s theory - is nothing more than an algorithmic hogwash. In another Googled pointer, an article entitled Transhumanism: The World’s Most Dangerous Idea?, Nick Bostrom - Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, argues against the notion that Transhumanism is a dangerous idea.