Richard Giles Blog

Rick Segal has by far the best post so far regarding Web-2.0-Gate.

Third, always leave room for conspiracy theorists. In this case, Sara gets some points. As the VP of Corporate Communications, what better way to give the company even more room to wiggle around, then to have the big guy himself on a “rare”, off the grid, vacation. Brand currently burning like a Turkish Airport? Simple. Be off the grid, let the corporate PR person take a few bullets, then simply glide back in all rested, ready to show (in no particular order) horror, remorse, and a determination to ensure these types of things don’t happen again.

Tim on vacation? Hah, I say! Okay, I’m kidding. Poor guy probably is on vacation.

Finally, an exercise for the reader. For some fun and homework, grab the list of O’Reilly conference speakers and friends of O’Reilly campers found around the internet. Cross reference those people’s blogs via Ice Rocket, to see how many of them step up and smack O’Reilly over this rather aggressive IP protection move. You won’t find many. You won’t find tons of people boycotting O’Reilly books or conferences. The reason? Brand. Tim has personally been the true good guy face of his company and you can be sure that he is no dummy. Barring a massive overdose of stupid pills, Tim will step up own it and give an apology/explanation that will calm people down. In my view, a bunch of overeager corporate types will get a WTF, wet noodle beating and the rest of us will see a smart business owner take responsibility for this, oopsie. I would expect nothing less.

Hope the vacation was relaxing, Tim.

Read the rest on Rick’s blog.

There are two problems with today’s shit-storm over the term “web 2.0.” (As discussed by Cam and I this morning in G’Day World.)

Firstly, that IT@Cork received a letter from lawyers that not so subtly tells them they have no right to use the term Web 2.0 in the name of their conference. That sucks, especially such a letter that pulls no punches.

This has now been addressed by brady at O’Reilly Radar, the blog of O’Reilly Media. He points out that the letter wasn’t smart, and that they should have called to chat with IT@Cork first.

The second problem, and a much grander one, is the actual application for service trademark of the term “web 2.0.” It’s actually an ironic move. You see, “web 2.0″ is meant to embody the current thinking of the Internet, which is partially about sharing and communities. Trademarking the term, for whatever reason, is exactly the opposite: it strips away any sharing and slaps on control that makes it hard for a community to use it.

As part of my degree I studied trademark law, but not being a lawyer you should take this next thought with a pinch of salt. I think they’d find it hard to prove they are eligible for a trademark on the term. As Tim himself pointed out last September, the term had “9.5 million citations in Google,” now it has 812 million. When a term falls into generic use, its impossible to defend a trademark against it. So, should CMP/O’Reilly own the term “web 2.0,” or should the community?

On a related note, I see that O’Reilly Radar is licensed under Creative Commons, but also claims a Copyright at the bottom of the page. It seems they can’t make up their mind if their open, or closed.

MyHeritage thinks I look like Robert Patrick (a 64% match). I’m not going to argue, mainly because he’s cool as the T1000 and Colonel Tom Ryan in The Unit. We can ignore the last few seasons of the The X Files.

I’m intrigued about other parts of MyHeritage. My mum loves researching our family tree, so I’m hopeful that it’ll turn up some useful features.

My mate Jon, who seems to be able to launch a new social site in minutes, has just announced News 2.0.

I love the way Jon works. He takes a concept, cuts it down to the bare bones (37 Signals would be jealous), and launches on a dime.

News 2.0 generates the latest news around the Australian Blogosphere every 30 minutes. It does this by monitoring weblog posts submitted to AustralianBlogs. It’s that simple.

In a conversation with Jon, it looks like a few more features are due. So it’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

Ben Barron, my 2web compatriot points out that Australia’s ninemsn is beginning to offer downloads of some of its television shows, such as McLeod’s Daughters.

It uses MPS Broadband and Space Coin, at least that’s what is in the terms and conditions. Having said that, it says everything is covered under UK law and charged in UK pounds. So I’m guessing they haven’t changed the terms and conditions yet. A bit sloppy.

I’d love to have a go of the service, but I tried it with Firefox on OS X, which wouldn’t even launch the Flash application, Safari, which couldn’t play any of the videos (including the 30 second preview), and IE on Windows, which played the preview but I couldn’t download the episode. Perhaps it’s a Windows Media issue, but without errors, it doesn’t make it intuitive.

So if anyone can get it working, I’d like to know how, and next week the cost.

I’d love to say it’s a step forward for Aussie television, but given it doesn’t work, I can’t say it is.

I chatted with Auren Hoffman with Cameron on G’Day World the other day. He’s the CEO of Rapleaf, a new reputation system that we liked to compare to whuffie: the concept Cory Doctorow introduce in his novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

I convinced myself today I should “advertise” my Rapleaf profile when I noticed Clay mention it in his blog.

We’ll see how it goes. I tend to find these services take a good few months to show value.

Click the icon to give me a rap.

With Skype announcing free calls with North America, and Nokia announcing the inclusion of GTalk on its Internet tablet, Telco’s must be starting to have real concerns.

Not long and we’ll be staring at a device that encapsulates Negroponte’s lily pads and frogs.

Look for Google to announce a GBerry service or device, and sit tight for community owned freenets, and we’re home and hosed

I bit the bullet and bought some land in Second Life today. That might sound a tad strange, buying virtual land, in a virtual world. However, over the last few weeks I’ve participated in several business meetings in-world. If you have a look around you’ll find several companies planning a variety of business activities.

We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto.

Stay tuned for more news on some exciting things I’m involved with in-world. In the mean time, join me at my new abode, Qlics Home Away From Home, with speed boat.

I interviewed Markus Frind, along with Duncan Riley of B5Media, this morning for the 2web Crew podcast. He created and runs Plentyoffish.com. Clay Cook of Minti put me on to him.

I’m still getting over what Markus is able to achieve, but as a one man show, he runs the world’s largest free dating web site, and earns over $10,000 a day from Google Adsense.

If you don’t understand the world of online advertising, then have a listen to the show, and you’ll be inspired to look into it.

There really is a shift in the world of business, and Markus is a great illustration of that.

The world of 3D online just gets more exciting.

Google’s Sketchup has a Google Earth plugin. Now you can view 3D models in a real landscape. Imagine the repercussions for architects and designers.

I’ve mentioned it on G’day World a couple of times. I’d love to see a Second Life plugin for the application. There is a need to make SL construction simple.

Besides these interesting developments, it seems pretty obvious that one of the webs developing areas is 3D worlds. It’s not long before business begins to move in-world.

Here’s an example, The Statue of Liberty created in Sketchup, inserted into Google Earth.