Web 3.0 is coming soon…
Linking
IMHO the Web 3.0 revolution will consist of websites and web apps from the 2.0 era becoming closer.
I think that it will become easier to link together content across web sites to create new forms of content.
In the Web 2.0 revolution was helped by blogs with authors linking together information in posts. (This I might add has been very useful to combat the slew of dodgy sites that sit high in Google’s results but just spit back the search terms as results, nullifying your search. Nowadays I find use ‘blog’ in search terms, especially when looking for reviews.)
I can’t wait until someone puts together a really good way of visualizing all this data. As the internet grows the importance of being able to sift through the available data and collate it into collections on particular topics is becoming paramount.
I have been looking out for a system to visualize my internet links in some kind of subject oriented way with a timeline / time axis. So far the only thing that comes close is Basket Notes for KDE (screenshots). If only that were a web app! (if i had the motivation and focus, I’d turn my meagre php programming skills to that task myself, but alas like my sketched design for a social networking site written in my design book pre the advent of facebook, I think I’ll leave it to someone else!)
I guess the closest web based similar system (I’m aware of) currently in operation is Wikipedia!
Retrieval
Look at the useful plugin Ubiquity, and the fantastically useful cross platform application and search launcher, Launchy for example. Both of these are designed to give us quicker access to and search abilities for our data.
Workflow
Making computers integrate seamlessley to our lives rather than inturpting them.
Today the focus of computing is shifting from _ to the workflow -how we get things done. I think this is essential because your average end user doesn’t care how things get done, just as long as they can get done.
Digital Photographers often use a prescribed workflow when working on digital photos – ‘developing them’ as it were to bring out the best. PCPro Magazine suggests 1. Levels and Curves then 2. Colour adjustment followed by Sharpening. But I’m talking more than just the best sequence of events to achieve the best quality output. I’m talking about the process itself.
Our brains think sequentially, each action is broken down step by step and steps performed one after another. A break in our concentration, or ‘flow’ impacts our effectiveness. This is especially true for people with ADHD (like me). Reducing the need for context switching.
“Consider that it takes 15 minutes for a developer to enter a state of flow. If you were to interrupt a developer to ask a question and it takes five minutes for them to answer, it will take a further 15 minutes for them to regain that state of flow, resulting in a 20 minute loss of productivity. Clearly, if a developer is prevented from flowing several times during the day their work rate declines substantially. “
(Retrieved from http://softwarenation.blogspot.com/2009/01/importance-of.html)
For example, downloading pictures from your digital camera and uploading them to facebook. Recently I’ve been using ‘Windows Live Photo Gallery’. Ugh, I know, but the point is it that Vista offered it to me, and it was an easy to find and add plugin that allows me to upload direct to facebook, where most of my photos end up these days.
To download the pictures I simply flip out the SD card from my camera, and insert it into my laptop (useful laptop buying advice)’s SD card slot
And that’s the point, people will take the path of least resistance/effort.
Path of least effort Principle
According to my observations
like people walking down the high street striving to avoid collision with other pedestrians, my observation leads me to believe that everybody is operating on the principle of least effort, where the person you are approaching will attempt to take a path that will need the least amount of diversion from their original path in order to avoid collision, while you yourself will attempt to do the same thing.
how does this come back to web 3.0?
How many clicks does it take while searching for some long forgotten but relevant piece of information before a user will get bored and move on? [research advertising, google hotspots, number of clicks] Could it be as low as 3, and as high as 8?
Unified User Interface
Facebook for example. I was trying to find my note on laptops to include a link in this article, but alas my click on Notes from the home page only brought up a ‘feed’ of Notes. Where I ask is the Filter options that preside on everyone’s profiles? Why can’t I select ‘Just Garreth’ here too?
If something like that is useful, it should also be Unified, that is available everywhere!
In the time it took me to discover the ‘workflow’ to access my notes in this ‘fast/bitesize/information obsessed’ age my poor overloaded ADHD (video: ADHD impact on life) brain might easily have become bored frustrated and more importantly distracted and moved on…
Availability
Cloud computing and Rich Web Applications (Blog: Google and Rich Web Application)
Organisation of Data
TOC
Concise
It’s an inverse law – As our attention spans decrease, so the conciseness of the data we consume must increase ceterus paribus.
Why do my spidey senses tell me facebook, not google may be the winner in the Web 3.0 revolution?
- Reduce the need for context switching
- Make data transfer between devices, programs and operating systems simpler and more unified
- Make data easier to locate and retrieve
- Make locating an open program/context switching easier and more natural – in doing so reducing the impact on flow by automatically knowing how to get back to the other program/where it is.
- Design and create more natural interfaces – e.g the Apple’s iPhone and iTouch.
- Consider how context switching works in our heads and apply this to UI.
- Work on unified User Interfaces as not to interupt flow
What do you think? Leave some comments of your vision, and what you think of my ideas.
Me, I don’t even download my photos to my computer to get them onto facebook: they go straight from phone to facebook; then if I want to keep a copy, I grab it from fb… it’s all being flipped around these days 🙂
@Phil thats certainly true, although the compression on facebook can reduce the photo quality quite a lot which means it’s not the best solution for downloading photos.
Recently I’ve come across “m IQ” – http://miqlive.com/ which is very handy for backup of phone contacts, photos, videos and mp3s automatically. Fantastic! If only it didn’t want to hang on to hosting photos when you really want to push them to facebook.
There’s a real need for some kind of centralization of data with metadata. E.g. photos get pushed to server, tagged with people, and can be pushed out to other sites or downloaded as a simple example. I think Windows Homeserver had the right idea- the data in one place. (don’t talk to me about Ubuntu Home server, it still hasn’t arrived as a ready to go solution). At the moment it looks like Facebook and not Google or WHS will do it first. I guess if facebook are not already considering this, they need to be! The new option to download all your content at once is quite an interesting develpment in this area i guess.
BTW i worked out _ in “the focus of computing is shifting from _ to the workflow” was meant to mean ‘the development of faster machines with more storage and ever shinier graphics. I guess an example of this in Windows is the new run/search bar as crap as it is, and in Ubuntu the tight integration of the Instant Messaging/social network systems.
Someone remind me to check out the latest Ubuntu, otherwise JT may kick me off this blog lol
@Phil I suppose it’s possible the mobile phone will become the central point, but it’d be better to become more a creator of information that gets pushed/synced to a central point(clouds).
Themes for Web 3.0
Integration
Different systems working together to share data
Accessibility of data
Fast, intuitive retrieval
Ability to push data faster and simpler e.g. phone camera to printer, digital noticeboard (mini digital whiteboard) to facebook
(Assurance of security, e.g. through replication on cloud, although the transparency of this remains to be seen).
Intuitive and ‘natural user interfaces
Think Iphone/ipad touch or even hand gesture (Kinect) not necessarily for data imput as much as replacing the mouse I expect.
Uniformity and Intuitive interfaces – easy to get started(Interfaces like the Blackberry OS which strive to maintain uniformity throughout all programs and use only a few buttons) (this works well with gestures I guess)
Desktop workload increasingly moving to web apps
With the rise of HTML5 and the offline capability, the issues of accessibility/security of data while offline and latency will slowly fade away. I expect there will be missteps however, since syncronization will always be a headeach until systems are Integrated
I need to rewrite the article now lol
Wow it’s coming! Youtube, Twitter, Facebook are all revising their UI’s!!
Ah we’re still a ways off.
*Bemoans the loss of ubuiquity*
*Uses Launchy at work!! (I’d be lost without it in a sea of files with stupid names…now they still have stupid names, but at least I can find themn*
*wishes Siri was better, but is still fairly impressed and envious of JT’s iphone bc of this feature*