Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
Data control
Opera just released Opera Unite, a version of their web browser that also contains a built-in web server. As Harry McCracken explains over at Technologizer: While it’s impossible to judge at this early date whether it’ll “forever change the fundamental fabric of the Web” as Opera promised, it’
Software development
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
Consultancy
I believe a truly decentralized social web is required to fulfill the web’s potential as a platform for business collaboration, and I’m very interested in helping to push the technical and conceptual boundaries in that direction. I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about that,
Consultancy
1. The rise of social networking 2. Monetization vs. collaboration 3. The open web 4. 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
Web
The emerging news out of WordCamp 2009 in San Francisco is that WordPress and its Multi User cousin are to merge into one product (further discussion). This makes a ton of sense, and makes it even easier to create a community of blogs. I’m looking forward to this – I
Web
For almost five years, I’ve had a dream of creating a decentralized social networking system with granular access permissions and a customizable workflow. It would be open source, with an underlying, decentralized open protocol based on XMPP that anyone could build on top of and extend. It would redefine
Data control
The following is an expanded version of the short talk I gave in Oxford yesterday. My original slides follow the transcript. There’s a new kind of web development afoot, which marries old-school object-orientated programming techniques with the distributed power of the web. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are published sets
OutMap
OutMap is sponsoring BarCamp Transparency by donating a portion of my time to developing the website (for which I'd already provided the copy), as well as providing Twitter walls and projectors on the day. If you're in the UK and interested in open government, cyber activism
Web
I thought I'd share two small bookmarklets I've been using to find references for a page I'm looking at: * Web references: page * Web references: site To use them, drag each link to your browser toolbar. This will create a couple of buttons that you
Web
Standards geek: "I think we need to establish a standard for representing poetry on the Internet. I've drawn up this draft which encapsulates stanzas inside an Atom feed. It's pretty simple; the spec fits on a page, so it should be easy to implement."
Elgg
Congratulations are in order for the Curverider folks: over on the Elgg blog, Dave's announced a new round of funding for the company. Additionally, Leonard Lin is working with the team on a consultancy basis. Although I left to pursue other projects last month, Elgg is close to
General
North Oxford is the wealthiest part of a wealthy city, where BMWs sit in gravel driveways and wine bars nestle amongst delicatessens and stylish cafes; a part of the city I always yearned to belong to as a kid, but never quite did. It was where I went to school,