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Icons of Web 2.0

There are many Web 2.0 services out there yet only a few have become iconic. In this post, I’ll run through some of the iconic images associated with the Web 2.0 and just why they have gained this status.

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A New Approach … That Works

I really do have to confess my love forStikkit Logo Stikkit. For such a simple premise it is executed incredibly well. Essentially it just lets you store small snippets of information, share it with others, create to-do lists, calendar items and people. The beauty comes from its intelligence, and this is what I fell in love with.

It’s occurred to me recently that allot of things about the Web 2.0 require work, hard work, work that we never used to have to do. Take bookmarks for example, before del.icio.us we would simply bookmark a site for later viewing and be done. Now, we have to worry about giving it appropriate tags and descriptions and sharing options. It’s allot to do. Stikkit, on the other hand, bypasses all this by picking up on natural language and doing all the work for you. There’s no jumping between fields and choosing options, its much more natural than that.

The power of stikkit comes from its ability to understand what you are writing. This is fairly arbitrary at the moment, and relies on certain keywords, but it feels natural. It feels better. The real benefit of a system such as stikkit’s is that it will encourage users who do not usually take advantage of Web 2.0 capabilities, to embrace them. Stikkit PeepUnfortunately, when it comes to this lofty goal stikkit isn’t quite there yet. Instead, it provides a quick and easy to use data capturing service for those who know how to use it. I think this is a crucial point to make. Hopefully, the ultimate goal of stikkit is to completely transpose the unstructured ramblings we type into structured data. Stikkit is making steps in this direction, if you type “Meet with Andy” it will know who Andy is and link the stikkit to the “peep” (stikkit’s term for people), providing they exist. The simple fact that the user doesn’t have to go and search for that person to link the two stikkits means that your less tech savvy users are doing something they’ve not done before, associating data. And bear in mind, in data terms, this is a somewhat complex idea. The net effect is that the user will end up with a better, more usable, set of data. If you consider the ease with which you can set up a meeting in stikkit, compared to something like outlook, it should be fairly clear this semantic interpretation is the future. In stikkit, you would create a new stikkit and type the details of the person you want to contact. Stikkit MeetingStikkit will realise this is a person and convert it into a peep. To create the meeting, simple pop up a new stikkit and type the meeting details. Stikkit will pull out the relevant details, such as the date and reminder and add it to your calendar. It will also notice that you invited the peep you created earlier and link them together. Now compare that to your Outlook workflow, where you would have to painstakingly complete all the fields across multiple screens and even then, you would have to manually link the calendar event to your contact.

Fortunately, stikkit isn’t the only service attempting to take advantage of this technology. We saw with 30boxes that you can add events using a sting of descriptive text. We’ve also recently seen with Gmail and gcal gMail Add to Calendarthat events that appear in an email can be easily added to your calendar. The reason I stated above that you need to know how to use stikkit is that, in its current version, its not quite there. For example, to tag something you have to write “tag as …”, variations on that are hit and miss. The same goes for linking peeps to events, sometimes the “aka” (or shortname, if you will) works and sometimes the long/full name works. By using very tight phrases as triggers, stikkit reduce the possibility of error while also limiting the scope and usefulness of the service. This is a fine balance to strike and many have failed based purely on this point. I’m not sure what the future holds for stikkit, it will be interesting to see which direction they go in. For the moment, its simply the fastest way to input complicated data and relationships.

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