Yep – this blog has been around for over ten years.
Here's a link to the Internet Archive for one of my first posts. There were actually a few other iterations before this – but I can't find them. The site was initially created with Manila – a tool based on Dave Winer's Userland Frontier. A while later – a kid named Evan Williams and his team created a great tool called Pyra – which had a "daughter" product called "blogger." You know the rest of the story.
What's interesting is that both tools provided a successful user experience that was LESS than the designers initially intended. "edit this page" was a small part of Manila – but that is what worked. "Blogger" was a tiny part of Pyra. Evan has gone on to smaller things – and (surprise) .. that is yet another factor more successful than Blogging/blogger.
What's the next decade have in store for us? Smaller, simpler, yet more complex systems. Yes – smaller (like twitter) and simpler (like the ipod) yet more complex (like the ipod). John Maeda writes well about this paradox. To the user – it needs to be simple. Behind the scenes – it will be more complex – since the user's needs are understood and in fact anticipated. So when I want to log my exercise, I should be able to use a device that I own (perhaps even something that comes with me!) … that will track my exercise for me – and report it for me – to all of the right places: My insurance company, my physician .. my running coach? (if I had one) .. sure! .. wherever I decide I want it to go. Why not? The technology here is easy.
It's all about connecting.
That's what the blogs were a decade ago: A handful of signposts – meant to help connect the dots. Now there are certainly more than a handful. Yet (see my other post from today) .. there are far more examples of where we remain another decade away from thinking about these connections properly.
Exergaming communities: a gaggle of coaches to cheer u on, mobile…