practicehacker

Another day another buzzword. Today it’s the real-time web - one in a series of recent developments making the web more useful. Now the web

• travels with our handheld devices (mobile web)
• alerts us when something happens (web of things)
• keeps us informed as things happen (real-time web)

Much high-quality writing about this comes from Read/Write/Web, host of the Real-Time Web Summit going on right now. Here are some of the companies they’ve featured thus far:

• identica.ca: open-source twitter client like status.net (formerly laconi.ca)
• superfeedr.com: real-time parsing of RSS feeds
• waze: crowd-sourced traffic tips and directions
• zensify: social network topics via weighted tags
• allvoices: distills input from citizen journalists
• pachube: the www connected to your house, etc. (my addition to the list)

While the legal applications for these developments are virtually limitless, even day-to-day applications are intriguing.  At last my refrigerator can call, IM, or e-mail with a reminder to go grocery shopping; or it may just transmit a pre-programmed list to the store based on the fridge’s lastest contents (adjusted for plans to have the neighbors over). Events that I upload from my phone to my calendar are communicated to the refigerator which can remind me to buy party supplies, etc. The list goes on and on.

Now if you don’t mind I’m going to tell my house to raise the room temperature in time for my arrival this evening.

Social IRM Engagement Chart

Social IRM (noun) (so-shal eye-ar-em):  the discipline of managing relationships between influencers (ie: bloggers) and brands (ie: LexisNexis, Westlaw, etc.)

by offering real value with the goal of exciting, maintaining, and harnessing positive word of mouth. Used mostly by marketers and forward-thinking professionals.

light blogging (lyt blo•ging) Noun. Child of WordPress and Twitter.  Posts contain few  or no words. No account needed. Built for speed. Post by e-mail. Zero maintenance.

Are  you spending more than 60 seconds on your posts? Wish there were a better way? Then you’re in luck. About 2 years ago a mysterious site called Soup.io began displaying whimsical, stylized bursts of information with few hints as to the authors’ identities.  Last year one of my wife’s suburban hausefrau girlfriends starting communicating via  Posterous. This year the trend has blossomed into a veritable cottage industry dubbed light blogging by Twitter luminaries such as Steve Rubel, Louis Gray, and Robert Scoble. All that remains is for Oprah to give her blessing and the charge of the light (blogging) brigade will begin. Until then, you can find your bliss via services such as

• Tumblr
• Posterous
• Soup.io
• Noovo
• Vox
• Profilactic

If you still want to write a novel (more than 10 sentences) you can always go to

• WordPress
• Blogger.com
• Typepad
• Livejournal
• etc.

But that would be so 2-years ago. Whatever.