Random notes from Kynetx 2009

Phil Windley

Here are other projects in this same space as Kynetx:

• Gist - Web content for your inbox via an Outlook plugin
  
• Switch Book - Search Context
• Adaptive Blue - Media Toolbars
• Kynetx - Context Automation Framework
• Google - SideWiki
  

"Content is less important than context."

• Clay Shirky did an experiment: only 6% of his local newspaper was local content. And we wonder why newspapers are dying.
  
• If content is so important, why does a Stephen King book cost the same as one by a first-time-author (pointed out by Paul Graham)?
  

Sam Currens

Where can Kynetx help with security, since it's all client-side and has the power to do very malicious things?

• Kynetx can turn off malicious scripts.
• Kynetx can create reputation and certification processes/systems for applications/organizations.
  

Dave McNamee

Endpoints

Who are the trust providers in the information card space? None needed: the stuff is encrypted.
Azigo Lite vs Azigo

Datasets
intrinsic, Ambient context vs active context
pick to parse out data

Sweetter - bookmarklet for recent tweets about a website
ClearPlay - to show if a movie from Netflix, IMDB, etc. is available on ClearPlay
SkullCandy - show on certain sites

Public apps (with source) are here: http://appdirectory.kynetx.com/

Doc Searls' talk about "The Intention Economy" at Kynetx 2009

He recommends the online comic "Gaping Point."

We're trapped into thinking that a "free market" means "your choice of captivity (vendor)".

Even with social media, each site is a silo. So how do we get to personal, and "prove that a free customer is more valuable than a captive one?"

VRM (vendor relationship management) is one approach for us consumers, the reciprocal of and complimentary to CRM.

• manage our own health care data, eg. PHR (personal health records)
• "personal RFP" for my personal needs
• assert our own terms of service
• "Have governance of and by - and not just for - the people"

(Take a look at public radio player, where the VRM "CD" logo gives their VRM compliance level.)

See projectvrm.org

"4th-party": someone who helps the buyer relate to the sellers (and their 3rd-parties).

(QOTD: "We're all climbing up the volcano of Google and allowing their free software to wash over us.")

(BTW, Doc never answered the question: "How do we prove that a free customer is more valuable than a captive one?")

Why does XML not allow nested comments?

I hate the fact that XML doesn't allow nested comments! Since I have comments in almost every source file I write, and since I frequently want to disable portions of my code, I hit this problem a lot

I finally found out why they don't allow nested comments, or any "--" inside: the original SGML has some complicated rules about double-dashes and how they change the parsing inside a comment, and the XML spec mandates that XML docs are valid SGML, so it is more restrictive and says that XML cannot contain any double-dashes.

So, basically, I want to throttle whoever came up with this complication in SGML. Maybe the person to blame actually introduced this in a previous spec... but anyone who puts this kind of trickiness into a standard should be blacklisted from IT work permanently. Argh!