Author: Ben Werdmuller

  • Activity Streams and OAuth: a social web architecture

    My previous post was a response to Gartner’s prediction last month that social networking would replace email as the “primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.” In it, I named some properties that would need to be held by any social networking system that would successfully replace email. Ease of use […]

  • How social networks can replace email

    The analysis firm Gartner just released five key predictions for social software: By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users. By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than […]

  • Music!

    My sister is a singer-songwriter. Her songs are great, and you can find them in the usual locations: MySpace Music, Last.fm and Facebook. Interestingly, though, she’s decided there are different purposes to each: Her Last.fm page contains more polished recordings. Facebook has those too, but also contains more rough-and-ready demos, ideas and experiments; it’s also […]

  • PubCasts: subscribe to publications through RSS

    This is inspired by the iBooks launch, but it’s applicable to any ereader that uses the ePub format. (Or, indeed, it could use any ebook format – MobiPocket, Kindle, DAISY, etc.) A podcast is just an RSS feed with a file enclosure – part of the RSS standard – that points to an MP3 file. […]