This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2003 at 12:16 AM and is filed under Technology and Social Implications thereof.

Roland Tanglao comments on something Marc said in response to something Seb said in response to something Richard MacManus said, which had the very good question: why would people want to publish?

But Roland Tanglao offers a vision of what people might be publishing - different sorts of data - reviews, blog entries, foaf, multimedia, photos, etc….

So, take that vision and run with it.

I’m imagining a MS Bob style interface, with “what would you like to do today?” and a multiple-choice response: “write a review”, “write something else”, “upload a photo”, “upload an audiofile”, “upload a movie”, “edit my public address book”, “create/edit a recipe“, etc….

Or maybe not.

Users need a metaphor that works. Extensibility is not something that happens in everyday life - and few actual users want to think in terms of Legos - yet extensibility is at the heart of how to make full use of XML. Otherwise it is just a poor substitute for HTML.

I contend, as I did before that what will need to happen is have a specialized tool for each particular piece of “useful” meta-data that comes along. Furthermore, each tool will need to make it “fun”. This is where I really see bluetooth and other technologies coming into play - I’m imagining a biometric enabled, bluetooth enabled, version of the electronic fortune cookie that I can’t seem to find on-line that “auto-blogs” to a blog that matches the fingerprint of the person that held it what the fortune was, if they agree to such a thing (via voice feedback or something).

That’s a fun, silly little thing. Maybe it doesn’t actually make the entry - maybe it just creates a draft. I’d like it if every time I used my car, a draft entry on my blog was created, and if it were easy to merge temporally adjacent draft entries together, it would be wonderful.

If it isn’t “fun”, people won’t do it. People use LiveJournal and things like that because it is “fun” to have a diary. We need to make things “fun” for people to enter in the necessary MetaData in order for things to work. And to do so, we need more than just some generic one-size fits all data-entry method. That’s why I think we’ll need speciallized tools for each type of “fun” meta-data that people might want to enter.

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