Thinking about the Future

From the mouths of babes

In several conversations with a friendly five year old recently, she has consistently, completely, and unchangeably failed to understand the distinction between content and services on our computer, and content and services out in the cloud.

Her email is “in the computer”. Her Angelina Ballerina DVD is “in the computer”. CBeebies and Google are “in the computer”.

I don't think I'm explaining it badly, and I don't think she's necessarily 'wrong'. But it does point, interestingly, to the broader set of shifting realities with which we all live; realities that those of us used to 'dialling up' that Interweb thingy are perhaps adjusting to less rapidly than we think we are.

And please don't tell her I called her a 'babe'. Either definition is likely to get me no end of grief.

Biting off big universities.

Oxford last week. Cambridge tomorrow evening. Where shall I go next week?

AutoRoll widget

In amongst the spam, I uncovered the following;

“Hi Paul,

From what I read, your blog seems to cover a lot of interesting topics around Web 2.0. Your blog is quite visible (I found you in the first results of Technorati), so I guess you must receive loads of messages.

We are just a small tech startup running a beta test for a new widget for blogs.
As the topic of your blog fits pretty well with the type of high end blog we are looking for, it would be very interesting if you could join our AutoRoll beta test.

What's all about? AutoRoll is the blog roll of your readers. It’s a widget that displays links to blogs your readers are visiting the most often.

How does it work? We trace the number of visits of each unique reader on each blog that has installed AutoRoll. The more often a reader visits a specific blog, the greater his affinity is with this blog.

What are the benefits for you? First of all, you will provide your readers with a very entertaining blog roll, based on other readers with similar reading habits. Moreover, you will get highly qualified incoming traffic for your blog. Indeed, as other similar blogs display your blog on their AutoRoll, they will feed you with new readers with a strong affinity with your blog.

It takes 1 minute to install: http://autoroll.criteo.com/

I would be really interested in your personal feedback on this widget.
Thanks for your help.
Regards,


Peter

Project Manager CRITEO”

Intrigued to see whether or not it can build sufficient critical mass to generate useful blogroll-type functionality in this way, I'm giving it a try... for now. If it works well, it may make the leap to the work blogs.

If, on the other hand, you or I find it throwing up too much rubbish, it'll be removed. Let me know if any of its recommendations strike a serendipitous chord, or cause you problems...

Technorati Tags: criteo, autoroll, Talis