Thematic tracks

Although I have problems with naming it Social software, there are some very interesting ideas floating around these days.

Roos Mayfield :

Social Software adapts to its environment, instead of requiring its environment to adapt to software.

As Shelly Powers points out:

And we even have SOAP and instant messaging and wireless and other techie tools to make it gadgety enough.

That reminds me of Howard Rheingold and his recent work on new forms of social networking, smart mobs:

Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for cooperation. The impacts of smart mob technology already appear to be both beneficial and destructive, used by some of its earliest adopters to support democracy and by others to coordinate terrorist attacks.

Roos Mayfield again:

Social People are smart about how they get their work done. If a software-driven business process fails to serve their activities, they will adapt using their informal network resources to get it done. In other words, when business process fails, business practice takes its place.

(with reference to John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid’s Social Life of Information).

All of the above to introduce what I’ve spent the last day of my holiday on, my thematic trackback ping lists:

• Trackbacks: Collective Web (XML)
• Trackbacks: eCitizens (XML)
• Trackbacks: eDemocracy (XML)
• Trackbacks: eGovernment (XML)
• Trackbacks: Netlife (XML)

What are these for? Basically, they are pages that shows the result of XML-files flowing around between my server and whoever sends their XML-files my way via trackback pings. So, ping me and you news will be added. Since TrackBack is a XML-based framework for peer-to-peer communication and notifications between web sites, and since my trackback lists are thematic, the basic idea is to create a number of thematic news services, thematic tracks. Let’s see how it goes. Start pinging!

Coders: Get the standalone trackback source code, and read the documentation. Also follow the TrackBack Development Blog. See also Ben’s related comments here and here.