Play God for fun and profit (mostly fun)

Note: This is the third of Quinn Norton's five-part series on Drew Endy and synthetic biology. The earlier installments are Everything you needed to know about human-created life forms but were afraid to ask and The dummy's guide to engineering genes.

Three years after Tom Knight invented the first standard for hooking together genetic parts in a living programming language, the BioBricks standard, MIT put the idea to work. They started a contest for students around the world called the International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition. Students began to make and put together parts of DNA code into repurposed organisms. Some were bacteria that smelled like bananas, some glowed red or green, one team even created a cell that built itself protein balloons. Every year the teams can build on the parts they and other students have created. Theoretically, this means next year's iGEM winner could be a balloon-building organism that glows green and fills a room with banana scent. Today, the parts database at MIT boasts an impressive 2,500 reusable snippets of public domain DNA -- all for the taking.

Stringing together many parts or devices, creates systems -- those are what can sniff arsenic or take light impression like a film emulsion. They are the complex forms of many connected devices. Being student work, the quality of iGEM systems is all over the place. But once one student group has put something in the archive, anyone can see how it was done and how it was used. They can contribute novel combinations back into the archive, creating systems of DNA that still others can expand on. It's not at a commercial level, but provides a proof of concept for a much more sophisticated archive. In the mean time Endy sees this open source genetic model as a vital key to getting people playing with DNA.

Endy refers to the students in iGem as "freeform teenage genetic poets." He points out that what they do for fun is still a bottom line business decision in the real world of biotech. It's clear that he's not just trying to create an academic or business model for synthetic biology, but a full culture. Genetic artists as well as students, hobbyists, activists, researchers, and businesses are part of Endy's future. Genetics will be social, political, mainstream, and constructive in an entirely new ways.

[Also: Dr. Endy on Biobricks, iGEM, and a new project that takes parts to the next level. (MP3 format, 3.9M)]

(continue reading)

Social Graph API: One small step for Google, one giant step for the Internet Operating System

Google's announcement today of the Social Graph API is a major step in the development of what I've called "the Internet Operating System." In a nutshell, what the Social Graph API does is to lower the barrier to re-use of information that people publish about themselves on the web. It's the next step towards the vision that Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon outlined in Thoughts on the Social Graph.

How many of us feel frustration when we're asked to recreate the same information for each social network? The Social Graph API allows sites to query public data that Google's crawl has exposed about individuals, so that it can be re-used rather than recreated. More importantly, it is based on a vision consistent with what Dick Hardt calls user-centric identity. It uses XFN and FOAF, so that you can mark up information that is about you. When other sites contain information that claims to be you, a link from one of your sites that contains an appropriate XFN or FOAF assertion will help the Google crawler to aggregate that information about you.

Google is also providing a simple demo application that can best be thought of as a kind of Social Graph debugger. It's not live yet as I write, but yesterday Brad Fitzpatrick sent me a copy of a page using me as the root of an Social Graph search.

As you can see here, Brad put in two sites that he was pretty sure were mine, https://tim.oreilly.com/ and twitter.com/timoreilly. The API then returns a list of sites that it infers are also mine, either because I've linked to them in a way that indicates they are, or because someone else has done so. So, for example, it concludes that radar.oreilly.com is also my site because tim.oreilly.com, a "me" site, links to it.

But other sites shown in the second block below are ones that represent only one-way assertions. They may link to me in a way that suggests that they are mine, but since it's not reciprocal, they aren't yet aggregated as "me." (That's why I called this demo a kind of social graph debugger. It allows you to see what Google knows about your social graph, and then to correct it.)

To include my alternate repositories of identity in my Google-crawled social graph, all I need to do is link to them from a site that is known to be "me." So, for example, if I want to claim my Technorati profile, or my Berlin Web Expo Crowdvine profile as me, all I need to do is to link to them with an XFN "rel=me" tag. Meanwhile, I can also see that Google notes that Sarah Milstein has also linked to radar.oreilly.com, but because she isn't me, I won't confirm that as a "me" link. And of course, I can see that Google doesn't seem to know about my public Flickr photo pool, or my public linkedIn or Facebook profiles, or various private profiles like the ones I have on dopplr or goodreads.

The Social Graph API cleverly bootstraps around the problem that not many sites use XFN or FOAF markup by allowing the API to assume that the root supplied to the API query is a "me" link.

Now, this demo application is just the beginning. The real goal is to have a site that is asking me for profile information be able to query the social graph to find out where that information already exists.

It isn't yet comprehensive enough to give those sites fine-grained access to individual profile elements, but you can imagine that that's where it's going... (It would also be great for it to have mechanisms for querying truly private data. The Unix permissions mechanism of "user," "group," and "world" is a good model -- right now, this service traverses only the world-readable social graph. It would be cool to have mechanisms to rupport "group" and "user" level access as well.)

A bit more detail from Google's site and information they provided (click on the image to enlarge it):

The Social Graph API looks for two types of publicly declared connections:

1. It looks for all public URLs that belong to you and are interconnected. This could be your blog (a1), your LiveJournal page (a2), and your Twitter account (a3).
2. It looks for publicly declared connections between people. For example, a1 may link to b's blog while a1 and c link to each other.

This index of connections enables developers to build many applications including the ability to help users connect to their public friends more easily. For example, in the image below, Brad just joined Twitter but has no friends on it. Using the Social Graph API, Twitter could provide Brad a way to find out that his friend Jane is also on Twitter. Here's how: Brad has linked to his homepage (b3) from his Twitter profile (b1) and also from his homepage (b3) to his LiveJournal blog, Bradfitz (b2). On LiveJournal, Brad is friends with Jane274 (j2), but Brad doesn't know that Jane274 (j2) also has a Twitter profile (j1). Since the Social Graph API has indexed that Brad and Jane already have declared a public friendship on LiveJournal, it can let Brad know that he might want to add Jane (j1) on Twitter as well.

This is REALLY cool, even though it's just a beginning. As I said in the title, a small step for Google, but a huge step towards the internet operating system. Most importantly, it's a step that doesn't put the social graph under the control of any one company, but instead provides mechanisms for the user to control what information about him is available to applications.

Until now, I thought that Amazon was the only company that understood the difference between application level platform APIs and true internet platform services. (To understand the difference, compare Amazon web services like the Amazon Associates Web Services to much broader services like S3 and EC2.)

Facebook's F8 platform, like other first generation Web platform APIs that have taken the world by storm, such as Google Maps, are too tightly integrated with the originating company's own application to enable true distributed innovation. But a real platform service makes it possible for developers to do things entirely outside the realm of the originating provider's application. Unlike OpenSocial, which I found disappointing, the Google Social Graph API is a game-changing play in the social networking space. It's a huge step towards open standards and a level playing field in smart social apps, and exposes Google's data and infrastructure in a subtle and powerful way. I can't wait to see what comes next!

Microsoft's Bid for Yahoo!: The Long View

Microsoft's bid for Yahoo! is something that has been rumored for a long time, but it's really the first of many more consolidation steps for the computer industry. Every new industry starts with a few crazy innovators, who are followed by thousands of entrepreneurs engaged in a fierce Darwinian competition. Some of those entrepreneurs build large companies, but as the new industry that has been created matured, few of them make it to the finish line.

Almost everything I posited about Web 2.0 I learned by thinking about the lessons of the PC industry that preceded it: the migration of value from one business model to another (see The Open Source Paradigm Shift), the rise of new levers of competitive advantage, and, of course, the inevitable consolidation as the business ecology matures.

Virtually every first generation Web company will eventually be in play, and most of the second generation too. One or two may become the acquiror rather than the acquiree -- but even those apparent winners may be swallowed by an even more established company. (Think of Compaq's acquisition of Digital, followed by HP's acquisition of Compaq.)

The web companies that have a chance of surviving as independent entities are those that truly understand and exploit the rules of the new platform: harnessing collective intelligence to build rich troves of data that literally get better the more people use the application, running ahead of any possible competitor simply because of the network effects that pile on to keep them improving faster than any newcomer. Some of Yahoo!s properties (e.g. Flickr) have that characteristic, but Yahoo!'s business as a whole did not. It was ultimately a halfway house on the way to Web 2.0. It's original business was based on a literal aggregation of user generated content, but it quickly became a more traditional content and services portal. Later companies like Google leapfrogged it by building services that tapped more directly into the native network effects of the Web.

The other important characteristic of the winners, of course, is that they tap into a data stream that really matters. Owning network effects around consumer photos, for instance, is much less powerful than owning network effects around paid search. So one of the key questions we have to ask ourselves going forward is this: what are the major data subsystems of the future Internet Operating System. Location, identity (and social graph), search (and not just web search but also product search, in which Amazon has a very strong position) come to mind. In a lot of ways, finding the data associated with the old vectors who, what, when, where, and how is a good place to start.

In terms of the historical analogy, it's really worthwhile to think about any industry as a series of evolutionary layers. In the computer industry, the first layer was hardware. The second layer was software. The third layer is information services and APIs (where we are now.) I can't really imagine the next layer, but when it comes, it will strike us like an avalanche, starting small but then filling our entire world, just like the previous layers did...

More thoughts as this story develops.

Augmented Reality: A Practical Guide

I'm jealous. The Prags have just published a book I wish I'd thought of first: Augmented Reality: A Practical Guide.

I've been talking quite a bit about augmented reality lately, especially when people ask me about what I think might represent a discontinuity significant enough to represent a paradigm shift of the scale of the PC revolution or Web 2.0. Sensors instrumenting the world and driving collective intelligence applications that provide new information layers in our everyday experience is one big element of this next revolution.

The topic also comes up whenever people ask me about Second Life, because I'm much more fascinated by the possibility of SL to create additional information layers on top of this world than I am about the idea of it as a complete alternate reality. I usually point to an SAP project I learned of last year, in which SAP is working with a Swiss property management firm to build instrumented models of their buildings in Second Life. That is, you open a door in the building, a door opens in the SL model. The building catches fire, so does the SL model. And of course, that's why I was so excited about Google's acquisition of Sketchup. It seems to me to be a really important long-term play in the mapping space. After all, so much of the built world we interact with isn't represented at all on the maps we use. An address on the 37th floor of a building looks just the same to our mapping system as one on the first floor. But does it need to be that way? Not in a future where we've populated our maps (at first perhaps Google Earth, but eventually web-based maps as well) with additional layers representing the human-built world.

Augmented reality is also coming at us in the news, especially forward looking news outlets (hint: "News for nerds. Stuff that matters.") Take a look at these recent Slashdot headlines and think about them as all part of an emerging augmented reality trend: Smart 'Lego' Set Conjures Up Virtual 3D Twin, Cellphone App Developed that Could Allow For 'Pocket Supercomputers', Stanford's New Website Converts Your Photos to 3D, and The Coming Wave of Gadgets That Listen and Obey. Add in the recent Radar posts The Future of Cell Phone Headsets and More on the Virtual Reality Audio Headset. Season with a dash of Nintendo Wii and innovative cell phone games like Mobzombies (Radar post.)

We're clearly careening towards a world in which virtual worlds are overlaid on the real world, bits interpenetrated with atoms.

I should be clear that this broad-strokes definition of augmented reality isn't what's covered in the Prags' new book. They are focused on a more traditional definition: "to create the sensation that virtual objects are present in the real world." They provide some first tools for developers to explore interfaces and techniques for doing so, with an emphasis on overlaying rendered objects onto real time digital video. This is a subset of the big picture I'm drawing in this post, but an important one. And perhaps even more to the point, this book will help to socialize the idea and to get people started building the new skills that will be required as augmented reality interfaces go mainstream.

Two tools we need to improve online information

Everybody in the computer field recognizes that documentation is moving from print publications, bought and sold in the traditional fashion, to free Web content. But few people have looked at the implications for tools. As part of my research into free online content, I've discovered the need for two innovations that could spur dramatic improvements.

Note that these tools go beyond free software, or even computer documentation, and could enhance any online content created by a wide range of individuals.

(continue reading)

The dummy's guide to engineering genes

Note: Yesterday we began Quinn Norton's five-part series on Drew Endy and synthetic biology with "Everything you needed to know about human-created life forms but were afraid to ask."

Photo courtesy of Mike & Amanda Knowles, via flickr.

Dr. Drew Endy's approach to the next generation of bio technology depends on engineers, programmers, hackers, social theorists, lawyers and so forth, to inform biology. He believes we can make genetic engineering, like computers, part of every facet of our lives, changing the way humans do their business.

He seeks to put synthetic biology into the hands of the interested, not merely the professional. The potential is to widen the range of goals, to extend this emerging tool to many disciplines.

The key, says Endy, is what computer scientists call abstraction.

Fundamental to what created modern software was that idea that no one should have to type in that monotonous stuff twice. Once something was there, it should just be reused, not re-created. More important, once it was done the programmer didn't have to know how it worked to do it again. The common wisdom became that no one should have to know how a computer worked to make it do entirely new things.

Also: Dr Endy explains Abstraction (mp3, 4.9mg) and Standards (mp3, 3.1mg) for synthetic biology.

(continue reading)

Steamworks: Produce Games on Valve's Platform

Valve (creators of Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, and the amazingly awesome Portal) just announced the release of Steamworks, a set of services for game developers. The services include distribution, development and administration for PC games. They can be used ala carte (with any game engine) or as a package. A press release lists the available services:

• Real-time stats on sales, gameplay, and product activation: Know exactly how well your title is selling before the charts are released. Find out how much of your game is being played. Login into your Steamworks account pages and view up to the hour information regarding worldwide product activations and player data.
• State of the art encryption system: Stop paying to have your game pirated before it’s released. Steamworks takes anti-piracy to a new level with strong encryption that keeps your game locked until the moment it is released.
• Territory/version control: The key-based authentication provided in Steamworks also provides territory/version controls to help curb gray market importing and deliver territory-specific content to any given country or region.
• Auto updating: Ensures all customers are playing the latest and greatest version of your games.
• Voice chat: Available for use both in and out of game.
• Multiplayer matchmaking: Steamworks offers you all the multiplayer backend and matchmaking services that have been created to support Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2, the most played action games in the world.
• Social networking services: With support for achievements, leaderboards, and avatars, Steamworks allows you to give your gamers as many rewards as you would like, plus support for tracking the world’s best professional and amateur players of your game.
• Development tools: Steamworks allows you to administer private betas which can be updated multiple times each day. Also includes data collection tools for QA, play testing, and usability studies.

The press release is light on the financials, but I would assume that is a rev-share deal through the Steam marketplace.

Microsoft has also been making strides with games developer tools and platforms with XNA. XNA also offers development (through XNA Game Studio - recently updated) and distribution and rev-share through XBox Live Marketplace (and lots of tutorials).

I've been playing Portal (slowly) and find the Steam user-experience to be a good one. I think that the most compelling aspects of both XNA and Steampowerd are distribution. There are other game development platforms available, but only so many ways to find the right gamer audience. I look forward to seeing what comes of these platforms.

(via Brian Jepson via Geek.com)

Everything you needed to know about human-created life forms but were afraid to ask

One of the great pleasures of being involved with O'Reilly Media is learning from the many fascinating people who get involved with the company on one level or another. They're Friends of O'Reilly, or Foos. We have occasional get-togethers with Foos, our own Nat Torkington has taken the concept to New Zealand, and we have one -- on the social graph (see coverage in the next Release 2.0) -- coming up this very weekend. While the Foo events are quite off-the-record, the work Foos do is very much public. So we'd like to share with you some of what we're learning. Over the next few days, we're going to use this blog to introduce you to one Foo in particular, synthetic biology pioneer Drew Endy. This multi-part profile of Drew and his work is, appropriately, written by another Foo, Quinn Norton, who will be talking about body hacking at ETech in March.--Jimmy Guterman

Dr. Drew Endy tends to fidget. He motions frantically when he's trying to get something across. "It's hard because we've never made it simple," he explains with exasperation. Endy, a professor at MIT until the end of the school year (he's headed to Stanford), engineers new life forms. He's spent his life doing the hard work of bending the complexity of DNA to his will.

And he's determined to make it simple for you.

Drew Endy is a leading star in a field that's emerging to be the biggest thing since Walter Brooke suggested to Dustin Hoffman he should think about plastics. He's a synthetic biologist, a group of scientists and engineers that take microbes with familiar names like E. coli and yeast and make them do previously unimagined things.

Also: Dr. Endy explains what synthetic biology is. (mp3, 5.7mg)

(continue reading)

A rare post about the music industry that isn't completely depressing

The Qtrax debacle is getting most of the attention this week, with Warner Music's ridiculous CEO compensation close behind, but there is promising news in the music industry worth noting.

Late last year, there was much fuss around Radiohead's decision to eschew usual distribution schemes and release In Rainbows in a variety of formats, among them free downloads. It was no surprise that the marketing plan worked well and, more recently, helped the on-CD version of the new album top many sales charts. Radiohead is an extremely popular band; of course its experiment did well. But if there's going to be a music industry anymore, it's going to be because non-platinum performers can make a living as musicians.

Which brings us to Jill Sobule, ace singer and songwriter, composer of the catchiest TV theme in recent years, stalwart performer at tech conferences TED and D ... but not someone who has received a commercial break in line with her talent. So ... she's turning the tables on how records are funded. Instead of getting a label to advance her a recoupable recording budget, on Jill'sNextRecord.com she's asking fans to fund her next collection, with contributions ranging from $25 (Polished Rock Level; you get an advance CD) all the way up to $10,000 (Weapons-Grade Plutonium Level; you get to sing on the record). Sobule estimates her next set will cost $75K to make; she's $32K of the way (from 195 contributors) there already. (Disclosure: I made a contribution. You should, too.)

I recognize that Sobule, while not headlining arenas, is an established performer with a great reputation and a novel idea. She'll succeed at this because she has earned fans and goodwill. Brand-new bands, most of them anyway, couldn't get away with such a plan because they have no pre-existing audience. But the only way many worthy young bands will stay in the business will be if they have a sense that they can make a go of it if they don't wind up as big as Radiohead. Sobule, then, is a worthy role model for the whole imusic business -- a beacon of hope during an industry's long, dark winter.

Edward Tufte on the iPhone

I've been an enormous fan of the work of Edward Tufte for decades. His notions about density of content are extremely relevant in this age of information overload, and he has just released a video in which he evaluates what works and what doesn't on the device of the moment, the Apple iPhone. Before I give you the link, I should emphasize that the QuickTime file is enormous and may take many minutes to download, but its insights and presentation make it worth the wait. It's here.

Ignite Seattle on 2/19; Ignite Portland on 2/5!

The next Ignite Seattle is February 19th at the CHAC. It's great to be back! At the last one we had over 350 people watch 15 great talks (all of which can be found online). Watch the videos (courtesy of Bryan Zug) to see some excellent talks like Shawn Murphy's Hacking Chocolate, Elan Lee's LIFE: If you're bored, you're doing it wrong, and Dan Shapiro's Ten valuable lessons you shouldn't learn.

On the 19th we are going to have 16 Ask Later talks. These talks will each be 5 minutes long with 20 slides and only 15 seconds a slide. Anyone who did not speak at the last Ignite is welcome to speak. Topics should fall in the realm of web 2.0 technology, entrepreneurship, life hacks, or something else that you think a room full of internet junkies will appreciate. Stories and lessons work better than product demos. Submit your talk by 2/10 (talks are selected on a rolling basis; you're more likely to get in if you beat the rush that comes at the end). RSVP at Upcoming.

This isn't the only NW Ignite event. Ignite Portland is nearly upon us. It takes place Tuesday, February 5th, from 6-9pm at the Bagdad Theatrer on 3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd. As you can see from the image they've been getting some press. The talks look great. I would love to learn more about Why Deutschland Loves David Hasselhoff from Mario Schulzkeand or How to be an Undercover Hooker from my friend Jessica Bruder (author of the excellent Burning Book -- the only Burning Man book that I've gone past just flipping through to actually reading). RSVP at Upcoming.

If you happen to be in Helsinki on February 22nd you can catch the city's first Ignite.

We're going to have an Ignite on the opening night at ETech. You have to be attending to speak; submission information will be sent to attendees. Scotto Moore is the only speaker so far; he'll have a brand-new talk for us. You can see his talk from Ignite Seattle 4, Make Art Not Content, after the jump (it was one of the crowd favorites).

If you want to start your own Ignite go check out our community site. It will get you started.

(continue reading)

Why ETech is O'Reilly's Most Important Conference

I begin almost every talk I give with a brief version of my 2002 presentation Watching the Alpha Geeks. Time and again, enthusiasts rather than corporate strategists have showed us the path to the "next big thing." I show pictures of Jobs and Wozniak along with the prototype Apple I, its chassis carved in a wood shop. I show early snowboards, skis glued together by someone who just wondered what it would be like to surf a ski slope. I show Rob Flickenger with his homebrew wi-fi antenna made out of a Pringles can. [See oreillynet.com article 2001, Business Week article two years later] I show people a few of the wild innovations that show up in the pages of Make: magazine. And I remind people of William Gibson's insight that "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet."

I've used this quote so often that people who've been to my talks before are groaning when it comes! But it bears repeating, because again and again, the business world seems to be surprised when hackers and enthusiasts up-end the futures so confidently predicted by their market research firms and stock market pundits.

That's why, despite the success of conferences like the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the Web 2.0 Summit and the Web 2.0 Expo, I still consider the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (also known as ETech) to be our flagship event. It's where we focus on the disruptive innovations that we're seeing on the horizon, rather than the ones that have already arrived.

It was at ETech that we began talking about the internet as platform, long before we coined the Web 2.0 meme. It started with the O'Reilly Peer to Peer Conference, which I launched because I wanted to change the way people thought about P2P, persuading them that it wasn't about file sharing and copyright, but rather about the future of the internet as a platform. People were confused at first. Why did we have talks about web services and distributed (cloud) computation at a P2P conference? But they soon caught on. The internet as platform was indeed the next big thing.

In 2003 2002, we officially renamed the P2P Conference, and ETech as such was born. We wanted to have a conference that would focus on whatever was coming next, not just the internet as platform. And of course, in 2004 we launched the Web 2.0 Summit, and that became our main vehicle for web-related innovation. We continued to have a lot of next-gen internet content at ETech, with sites such as Flickr launching there, but we started bringing in more and more other technologies.

ETech 2003 focused on ideas like swarm intelligence, social software, and collective intelligence. Today, those ideas are on the tongues of investors and business pundits.

In 2004, Bunnie Huang talked about reverse-engineering and open source hardware. Today, open source hardware is everywhere. This is a topic that's just starting to hit the mainstream, but we believe that when it does, it's going to hit hard. (We just did a Release 2.0 issue on the subject, and of course, it's a frequent topic in the pages of Make.)

In 2005, Danny Hillis showed off his multi-touch map table. In 2006, Jeff Han wowed everyone with his heads-up multi-touch displays reminiscent of Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Science fiction? By 2007, Apple had built built multi-touch into a revolutionary next-generation consumer product, raising the bar for the entire mobile phone industry. And I suspect, for the PC industry as well. (I make this statement even despite the recent news that iPhone sales may be slowing. The genie is out of the bottle.)

Why am I telling you this? Because ETech 2008 is just around the corner, March 3 to 6 in San Diego, and early registration ends January 31. The program Brady and the conference committee have put together is just mindblowing. Because we've got Web 2.0 so well covered elsewhere, we've radically cut down on the amount of Web-related content. (I think we still had too much of that last year. While there's still a lot of web innovation to come, Web 2.0 is now the mainstream playground of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists rather than the blue sky innovation of hackers modding, breaking, and building for the fun of it. ETech at its best focuses on what's going to be making a difference not this year, or maybe even next year, but around the corner.)

Here are some of the talks I'm most excited about:

(continue reading)

Recent Posts

• Location-Based Content Platform: Wherigo on the Garmin Colorado | by Brady Forrest on January 28, 2008
• Comments Back On; reCAPTCHA Wasn't At Fault | by Brady Forrest on January 28, 2008
• GoogleMapsVision: A Semi-Realtime Edits Viewer | by Brady Forrest on January 25, 2008
• Books that make you dumb | by Artur Bergman on January 25, 2008
• Slow Comments on Radar | by Brady Forrest on January 24, 2008
• iPhone 1.1.3 Jailbreaked | by Brady Forrest on January 24, 2008
• Seattle Startup Weekend... This Weekend! | by Brady Forrest on January 24, 2008
• TOC Conference just around the corner | by Andrew Savikas on January 24, 2008
• O'Reilly Books and the Cuban Internet | by Sara Peyton on January 24, 2008
• Tomorrow's Ads session at World Economic Forum? | by Tim O'Reilly on January 24, 2008
• I'm at Davos, but not blogging it | by Tim O'Reilly on January 24, 2008
• Survey: what benefits do online communities bring? | by Andy Oram on January 23, 2008