1. Geocaching. Notice the little map on the right side of this block that tracks where people are accessing this site from? Well apparently similar technology is being used to restrict webcasts for the 2006 World Cup by Brazilian media company Globo to just the Brazilian market. I'm actually surprised this technology did not exist from the earliest stage of the internet, and, while nifty, especially for a blog, I'm not sure I'm happy to hear about its development. I see it as in conflict with the free and open architecture nature of the internet and more in agreement with the tactics of the PRC and other totalitarian regimes that seek to restrict the freedom of information. Still, worth noting as it rises in importance and doubtless has very useful implications (even this Globo example is relatively innocuous since without this ability, webcasts would be more restrictive due to stringent broadcasting guidelines).
2. Tags. Everyone is doing it. Technorati and the blogosphere. Flickr. Mac OSX. Even Amazon these days. and of course, I imagine it all basically started with Google and the search engines. It's not an entirely accurate way of categorizing information, but given the convenience/speed factor, I'd say tags have been a pretty elegant solution. Will we see an evolution towards intelligent tagging where software becomes smart enough to label data itself? Sites like Riya seem to be moving towards this. Information evolution... thoughts?
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