Posts

I've created the title Webosoof, because it's my niche market so to speak. I'm constantly thinking about the internet as the new alphabet, the new printing press, the new radio, the new television, the new information medium englobing every the other media. The world is one global village and social media and especially microblogs are there to proove this point: people from all over the globe connect in ways never seen before. What was the change of me having contact with people from China, India, Russia, Brazil, the USA and Australia just twenty years ago ? Almost none existing before the internet except when I would have been some professor or some CIO of a really big company. Nowadays, it's possible for almost each and everyone in the developped world and more and more people in the developping world. Imagine everyone having high level contacts as had Erasmus, Thomas Morus or Leonardo Da Vinci - BTW, I find this strange: Wikipedia's article spelling is Leonardo da Vinci , with a small d. Wikipedia makes the knowledge available worldwide and in almost every modern written language, even about subjects no other encyclopedia ever had thought to write an article. Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Orkut, Hi5, make it possible to connect with friends and acquaintances from all over the globe. Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo make videos available from every single little village or big city to almost every other single place here on Earth. Ning.com , Yonkly.com and Qonversation.com make it possible to come together around themes. Twitter is the XXI century's Who's Who and Google Wave is ready to become this century's postal service - like email was for the last part of the former and the early beginning of this century. We're living in exciting times, my friends, we're living in the digital age...

Check this out : http://twur.li/users/webosoof/friends

Je prévois une situation où on connaîtra une langue locale (néerlandais dans mon cas), une langue régionale/transnationale (le français dans mon cas) et la langue mondiale (l'anglais).

Le français a été la lingua franca pour la noblesse et l'haute-bourgeoisie internationales, donc la survie de cette langue me semble assurée dans le temps.

À la base du succès du français et de l'anglais se trouve les emprunts massifs à la langue latine pour les notions abstraites faits par les humanistes.

L'anglais ayant une morphologie moins complexe que le français, y compris l'élimination du genre des mots et une simplification nette du système verbal  a pû conquérir le statut de lingua franca.

Le pouvoir économique et géopolitique du Royaume-Uni, puis des États-Unis a certes aussi joué son rôle là-dedans.

Actuellement, c'est grâce à l'internet et l'informatique que l'anglais maintient sa position dominante. L'abstrait de n'importe quel article scientifique se fait en anglais.

Même en France, on apprend l'anglais à l'Université dans ce but précis: comprendre au moins les abstraits des publications scientifiques et pouvoir chercher dans les catalogues internationaux.

Je remarque d'ailleurs que le futur se rêve en anglais avant toute autre langue. La science-fiction est quasiment exclusivement écrite et filmée en anglais...

The way I see it you have today the following language situation worldwide:

Microblogs do exist in English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, French, Korean, Portuguese,

Japanese, German, Turkish, Polish and Dutch. (see http://microblogs.ning.com )

A new fase of microblogging did arrise more recently: specialised and adapted to one of the

many possible usages of the concept.

emotions/feelings

http://moodmill.com
http://emotionr.com

Expressing what you feel and why you feel so was the earliest of the fonctions that did get

special attention and an own form to do so.

statements

http://floort.com

Stating your opinion, bringing the arguments you see and getting feedback from people who

care to do so by voting and/or answering to your statement.

help

http://help.com

Crying out for help and findable people willing to listen and maybe able of doing something

for you. Giving advice, support or even aid.

topics

http://babl.nl

Getting online together and sharing tips, advice, links, thoughts, knowledge and wisdom on a

specific topic in a simple way.

I suppose that microblogs specialized in posting urls will be findable quite soon.

del.icio.us , digg.com and reddit.com might be in danger...

Pieter Jansegers

http://microblogs.gemzies.com

Floort.com is a microblog for voting and commenting on statements.

Simple, easy and straightforward.

I did put up the next statement:

"Microblogs are changing the world."

http://www.meebo.com is a great online instant messager integrator.

Enabling to consult your AOL, Google, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and Jabber in one place that's what it does.

No installation at all required !

Give people 30 minutes to set up a website about a subject.

Let 2, 3 or more teams compete. (e.a. a Chinese, a Russian, an American and Europian team)

Let them publish their site in real time on the web.

Let an international jury of competent ICT executive judge their effort.

http://jansegers.newsvine.com/_news/2008/02/28/1332442-the-wizz-kid-tv-format

A discussion is on going about this program at

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/wizz-kid-tv-format

If people care enough about a service, they try the let them know what's still lacking about the way it functions at shoulddothis.com

Like they really have to go there aspecially for commenting upon a missing feature, we can be sure that the service is worthwhile putting all this effort into it.

Otherwise, they wouldn't bother at all.

http://www.shoulddothis.com/