claus - 12:56 pm on Apr 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

Wow, there's so much to comment on in this thread that i'll have to do it telegram style in order to get some work done today ;)

Privacy: That's the price you pay for a free service, sort of. You give some and get some. Your whereabouts are hard currency. That said, in my experience the behaviour of any one individual person is not really interesting at all, it's the aggregate figures that are useful.

Memex: That article is a true classic! Lots of food for thought and inspiration in that one. Must re-read it again soon. But: The memex device isn't really important, it's the personal "view" that is, which brings me to:

All the other sites: I visit many sites, so a truely universally usable memex thingy would be "neutral" in that it would integrate content from many independent (even competing) sources. Like desktop search does with web, email, docs, but more pervasive than that. Like the visions from the Hailstorm / MS passport thingy, essentially - only turned 180 degrees. Which could bring me back to "privacy" but in stead it brings me to:

The "My" that is not mine: All the "My whatever" sites are not really mine. Of course it's something that i use and something that i shape, but i can't take any of it with me. Ie. "My Yahoo" only works on Y! properties, Passport only works on MS soil, "My Google" will only work with Google. So, effectively, "My Yahoo" is not my personal interface to (or, version of) Yahoo, it's Yahoo's limited interface to (or, version of) me, aka. "Yahoo's me". And the same goes for the rest. None of it is really mine, as if it were i would have access to these things even if i was not on that particular property. It would follow me whereever i took it with me (as the memex). Which brings me to:

Walled gardens: Which is the thing that most of these login systems lead to. You have a lot of relevant and often necessary things which you can access this-place-or-that using this-or-that login. You don't have it all at one place, in stead you find yourself increasingly logging in and logging out; getting, setting, resetting and forgetting passwords as no single place can ever cover all needs. Which brings me to:

Feeds, RSS, XML: Somebody out there has already made a RSS thingy for Search History. A9's got the OpenSearch format. Me? I would like to have my own memex. A real memex. One with some stuff from Google, some stuff from Y!, other sites, news sources, several independent email accounts, PM's and IM's, my own document archives, some archives of peers, the library, various encyclopedias, a whole lot of different kinds of tables, tools, personal stuff, and whatever.

So, can i take it with me?
Even at places where there's no internet connection, and/or no Google?
Download/OpenSearch/RSS?

Just a few thoughts for future development... Or, rant as it is.