On this site I write about my various projects and share my thoughts on areas that interest me including, but not limited to, vertical search engines, cloud computing, social networking, Twitter, space exploration and the semantic web.
Vint Cerf, co-creator of the TCP/IP protocols that just happen to be part of the core internet and SpaceRef adviser recently spoke about the future of the internet.
I’m working weekends now to get On Orbit ready. This weekend I created the new Video area and made some breakthrough’s with the Drupal code. I’m debating whether there’s time to create some new modules. I’d post them as open source on the Drupal site if I do.
The biggest obstacle to launching the site, other than the time constraints, is that I want to launch with the new collaborative area ready. I’m still deciding on what tools to make available to participating organizations.
Unfortunately I can’t spend as much time as I would like working On Orbit. Other responsibilities abound including the post HMP field season review with the Mars Institute team and then a meeting on September 6th in Montreal with the Canadian Space Agency.
When Twitter first came across my radar screen many months ago I admit I just didn’t get it. And it took me awhile to get it. But it was not just Twitter I was struggling with it was this whole Web 2.0 thing. But then the light bulb went off and I realized what I wanted to do with SpaceRef and Project Phoenix and how they would fit into what is called Web 2.0. I just didn’t know at the time the why, how and when it might all come together.
My exploration into what is being called Web 2.0 started last summer. Since then I’ve been to
the Web 2.0 Expo, ApacheCon Eruope, and the Participatory Exploration Summit hosted by NASA Ames. While I was going to the conferences I was also doing research on social networking. I joined Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Jaiku, Meebo, StumbleUpon and others. Some I got right away, some I didn’t. My favorites now for business are LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Twitter. I like YouTube as well but have not used it for business purposes yet.
So where does this all lead. Well SpaceRef has been around since 1999 and the basic format hasn’t changed in all that time. It’s expanded and added another 19 sites to the network but evolved into Web 2.0 it has not. So Keith (my business partner for SpaceRef) and I, decided nearly a year ago it was time to change SpaceRef. How we would change it has taken many months of thinking and it’s an evolutionary process. The first step was to create a new site, a whole new service that would be Web 2.0.
The new site as it turned out would be On Orbit. On Orbit is to become a social networking site, wiki, news and much more. But the main point is to make it participatory. Thankfully we have a large audience at SpaceRef/NASA Watch to draw upon. And we’ve had nearly 2,000 people sign up to be alpha testers for service we practically told them nothing about.
Posted the other day on the Google Lat Long Blog is mention of a new NASA layer being added to Google Earth. It incorporates Astronaut Photography of Earth, Satellite Imagery, and Earth City Lights. The photography layer shows the best images going back to the Mercury missions and is from the online Astronaut Photography collection. The satellite imagery is also a compilation of the best NASA images taken over the years.
Just over a week I was at the NASA Ames Participatory Summit, something I’ll write about later, and met Mark Jannot the editor of Popular Science Magazine. He had just finished giving a talk on a new service they had just launched a couple of weeks ago called the PopSci Predictions Exchange (PPX). Here’s how they describe the service;
“Welcome to the PPX, the first place to bet on the future of science and technology. It’s easy and free: Log on, and we’ll give you POP$250,000 in our virtual PopSci Dollars. Use that money to buy propositions you think are likely to happen. If other traders also want to buy, that proposition’s price will go up, and you’ll make PopSci bucks. Expand your portfolio with bets on energy, space, consumer technology and extreme science, and compete against other players for prizes and bragging rights.”
What a cool interactive service that encourages learning about so many different things.
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