David Duey

Email Triage

I’ve never given much thought to improving my email system until I watched a video of a lecture on time management given by Randy Pausch where he lambasted email systems.  Everyone is concerned about filtering spam, but amazingly it seems like little has been done to filter and categorize all incoming email.

Microsoft has an interesting research project named Snarf (I like that name) that addresses some of the email triage issues.

SNARF was built around the notion that social network information that is already available to the computer system can be usefully reflected to the user: a message from a manager might be seen differently than a message from a stranger, for example. SNARF applies this idea to email triage: handling the flow of messages when time is short and mail is long.

Other good email triage information can be found here.

Apps Following Data

Brad Feld mentioned something on his blog that I can't get out of head...

The dynamics this time around are pretty interesting to me.  Usually data follows apps.  This time the apps are following the data.  And the data is proliferating very quickly.

More interseting stuff here.

OpenID and OAuth

My friend Chauncey sent me a link to a good Wired article about OpenID and OAuth.  It's a short article and it has good links as well.

It looks like OpenID might reach critical mass soon.

Twitter on CSI

On last night's episode of CSI the investigators read a victim's tweets to find out what she'd been doing prior to her death.  It's amazing how quickly Twitter has been absorbed into the collective.

The Programmable Web

It's amazing how quickly a couple of APIs seem to be changing things.  Back when web services were first introduced, I thought we'd see a proliferation of APIs, but it didn't really happen to the extent I expected.  Now, with the Facebook API and the Open Social API, it seems like things are really picking up; the programmable web is happening.

Marc Andreessen has posted an excellent article that discusses the Open Social API.  He asks the question,

Are people really going to maintain multiple sets of front-end pages for their web sites for Facebook, Open Social, etc.?

He thinks people (websites) will maintain multiple sets of front-end pages.  I agree.  It's not that diffent than making provision for different browsers and mobile phones.  It's mostly front-end stuff; if you have a web site that's in demand, it makes sense to provide a UI for the social networks.

OpenSocial: Entreprenerial Opportunities

If you're a techie, you'd probably have to be a techie without a pulse if you haven't already heard about OpenSocial, Google's API for social networks.  If the Facebook API is any indicator, then OpenSocial will provide a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs to create new and interesting applications.

I think it's a hugely exciting time to be an entrepreneur; there's certainly no lack of opportunity.  With all of the new and cool stuff going on, I think the big issue for entrepreneurs is finding something to focus on and remaining focused.

TechCrunch coverage of OpenSocial is here. 

Facebook Strategy

Dave McClure, one of EventVue’s angel investors (as well as an angel investor in a number of other startups), along with Susan Wu have a great post on TechCrunch today titled, “Seven Steps to Graphing Your Facebook Strategy.”  There’s a ton of good information and lots of food for thought in the article.

Social Networks -> Knowledge Networks

Peter Rip posted a really juicy entry about social networks evolving into knowledge networks (well, there's actually more to it than that) titled, "More Than Who You Know, It's What You Know."  It's smells of the stuff of the implcit web. 

Connections

I’ve been giving a little thought to various types of connections between individuals.  I’ve come up with the following list:

• Genetic – family (aka “blood”)
• Marriage or relationship
• Friends
• Acquaintances
• Friends of friends (n degree of separation)
• Business
• Interests
• Geographic

How would these connections between individuals be represented visually?  Color immediately comes to mind, but if degree of connectedness (strength of the connection) is a consideration as well, what would work best?  Would a combination of color and line weight work best?  What would work visually as well as being intuitive?

Vertical Social Networks

Scott Converse, founder of Clickcaster, has a great post about vertical social networks.

If I was thinking 'next 3-5 years' and had to pick vertical social networks or social network aggregators, I'd put my money on the vertical social networks.

I'm finally "getting it" when it comes to social networking.  I think social networks will continue to be big and I think there will be a lot of potential in all of the peripheral stuff that will evolve due to the existence of social networks.