Ben Werdmuller

Category: Software development

  • Building the user-centered web

    The following post contains my notes for a talk I gave at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University on June 25, 2009. What is a social network? I would like to reclaim some language: Social is an adjective that means relating to human society and its members. A network is an interconnected […]

  • Adapting to the real world

    I’ve spent the last week in a series of very interesting mind-sharing meetings. First, the American Association of Colleges & Universities flew me into Washington DC to discuss the future of assessment in higher education with education professionals as well as new techsphere friends like Silona Bonewald and Amber Case. Second, Michael Byrne from Harvard […]

  • XMPP: powering the real-time, really live web

    When Google Wave was previewed last week, most people focused on its Gmail-like user interface and the slick way it handled collaborative spaces in real time. What was more exciting from a web technology point of view, although much less sexy, was the underlying protocol: Google Wave is built on top of an extended version […]

  • Social networking: beyond the silo

    The rise of social networking Monetization vs. collaboration The open web Fluid collaboration The rise of social networking Social forces have been the driving force behind application innovation on the web. Whereas previously we might have looked to advances in computer science for new directions, now some of the most dramatically impactful applications are lightweight, […]