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Thursday, August 24, 2006
River's edge 
| | I'm looking at some of the skepticism and pushback on the River of News concept. Ian Betteridge says, That's been around for about as long as there have been mobile devices and RSS. NewsGator's Mobile edition does it perfectly well. AvantGo sure did it. Matthew Ingram says I get the fact that he¹s working on something like mobile Bloglines, which Josh said changed his mind about the whole thing — I just don¹t see why he has to pretend that it¹s some kind of revolution. Paul Kedrosky says, what he's noisily done here is rediscovered the merits of a newswire. And as any journalist, broker, analyst, or fund manager will tell him, such things have been around as long as there have been terminals. Several folks source Josh Bancroft, who says, |
| | Yes, we're happy that you discovered why it¹s so cool, and yes, we have visions for how it could be made better in the future. But unlike podcasting, which was basically undiscovered territory, you¹re jumping into a world that has a ton of prior art. And we definitely don¹t want to turn you away from your newfound excitement, and willingness to innovate. On the contrary - I personally can't wait to see what you can come up with that makes mobile web browsing even better. |
| | Interesting... You coulda said the same thing to Steve Jobs when he came out with the iPod. |
| | Anyway, that's not my point here. My point is that Dave isn't just coming at this as a technologist. He's coming at this as a publisher. Specifically, he's proposing River of News as a new format for publishing. Or a new approach to it. |
| | His message with River of News isn't just for geeks like us. It's for the NYTimes and BBCs of the world, as well as for bloggers whose output is frequent and texty and newsy enough to work, as Paul Kedrosky says, like a newswire. But unlike the old newswires that went from AP and UPI to newsrooms at newspapers and broadcasters (or to professionals at workstations at brokerage houses), River of News goes directly from writer to reader. In other words, its a new, phone-friendly approach to publishing. |
| | There is also the matter of metaphor. (Bear with me on this one. It matters.) |
| | When we "develop", "architect", "design", "build" or "construct" a "site" with a "location" and an "address", we are doing more than borrowing the language of real estate and construction. We literally understand the Web in terms of real estate. Metaphors like The Web is Real Estate bring clarity to what we do, but they also bring limitations. If you're like most bloggers, you know how hard it is to convince some people that a blog isn't a "site" that requires a "designer"; but that it's a "journal" that you "write" and "post" or "publish". Some people can't get what you're saying because they continue to frame their understanding in terms of real estate, development and construction. They can't see that the Web is also a publishing system. |
| | Conceptual metaphors are what we think and talk in terms of. We unconsiously borrow the language of one subject to talk about another. Yes, we mix them all the time, too. But one usually prevails. |
| | Another example. Jon Stewart and a zillion bloggers have had fun with Sentator Stevens' description of the Net as a "a series of tubes". Yet most Net-savvy techies call the net a "pipe", and the Net itself depends on transport of packets. At a technical level you can't get away from the transport metaphor. Yet we experience the Net as a place — as something we build on, and publish on. Not just something stuff goes through. Even though that's what it is. So we're not just talking about what's true here. We're talking about how people understand something. |
| | "River of news" usefully combines three metaphorial frames: place, transport and publishing. Using all three, it proposes an approach to publishing that respects the fact that more and more people are going to want to get fresh newsy information on handheld Web devices. |
| | The River of News metaphor not only speaks a new kind of sense to the NYTimes and BBCs of the world. It speaks to a new blog sensibility as well. I'm starting to think about how I might want to change my blog to be more Webphone-friendly. Can I live without all the junk on the left and right margins, for example? (Probably. They're worse than useless to readers with Treos and Blackberries.) Alternatively, should I have a special feed just for Webphones? |
| | Whatever the answers, I'm not thinking about my blog, or what it does, as a "site". Meanwhile, that's how most big publishers think about what they do on the Web. That's why their sites are often so chock full of... stuff. They're all about being sticky and holding your eyeballs inside the sitewalls. That might be fine on a computer screen, which is big and placelike in the sense that it usually isn't moving around when you're using it. But a Blackberry or a Treo or a Nokia 770 is different. It's mobile. It's going somewhere. You use it in a much different way. |
| | Mobile feeds and systems for looking at them on phones may not be new. But getting publishing in alignment with the needs of Web users with cell phones is new. That's why River of News is a business hack. It's not a social hack, because the users are already there. The River of News idea calls attention to an opportunity opening up for everybody who produces news. Not just for those who consume it. |
| | Here's another thing. River of News is one more way that the Live Web is branching off of the Static Web. I've written and spoken about this before. If you read or heard that stuff, you'll understand why I see River of News as a Live Web development. |
| | I could say more, but I've probably already said way too much for readers on cell phones. Besides, it's 2:30 in the morning. See ya after breakfast. |
Blog on
| | I received a comment about my efforts to create a mobile feed from my web site. Here is the comment. |
| | Wierd url but it seems to work. What can I say? |
Fingered
| | Blogging With Thumbs is maintained strictly via my cellphone, a T-Mobile sidekick3. I use this site to post photos from my phone, and call odeo to post audio entries once every few days. My main blog can be found at wiphey.com. |
OrBitchz
| | I've always had good experiences with Orbitz, in part because it's been the only hotel search/reservation system that pays attention to my one necessity: high speed internet service. |
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