A ticket to the edge and back

Bill Bailey is British Comedian and a very funny one. He was talking the other day about Stephen Hawkings a Brief History of Time . Bailey informs us that Hawking believes that the universe can be be 3 possible shapes.

1). Long and thin like a piece of tagliatelle
2). Round like a marble

or..... wait for it

3). Saddle shaped.

Saddle shaped, saddle shaped. Would it not be easier to say the universe was a saddle, strapped to a donkey that God was walking up and down a beach. It was so much easier before Columbus when you bought a "to the edge and back ticket," our comedian informs us.

Any way what has this to do with anything? Well a number of things.

John Batelle asks Where is the edge of the web?

Where are the greatest opportunities, and the greatest risks? At the Web's edge - the places where the Web is just beginning to take root: the industries, geographies, and applications that have yet to be conquered by the web's wide reach.

How is the Web infiltrating new beachheads in areas we never thought it could--or would? What are the majors doing at the edge, at the loony "ten percent time" at Google, in the labs at MSN, IBM, etc., that might inform entirely new applications, opportunities, even threats? What are the edge startups promising to redefine the center? What are the things we wish or know the Web can do, but so far, is failing us? What are the edges in terms of policy, politics, and morality?

You see, in a digital web/mobile 3.0+ world, we don't know what the shape of the universe is any more.

And I have come to the conclusion, that we are in the process of building new media/business models that will happily live in this world. That are open platform and provide greater value to users and advertisers alike

Batelle goes onto say

This framing context came to me as I considered how long its taken the web to truly swallow and morph mobile, for example. Even traditional media of all kinds - books, movies, TV - has taken longer than most of us thought. But we're also interested in new approaches to markets (S3 comes to mind), new areas of early lock in (Navteq comes to mind) or late market innovation (Flickr is a good early example of innovation in a space that seemed pretty crowded

One of his commenters said

The meaning of the word "search" will *begin* to become transformed. More and more, "one-size-fits-all" engines will fall by the wayside. Perhaps the "leader of the pack" (of more "focused" search) was flickr.com -- and others have followed (as people watching this space can readily attest). As these numbers (of engines) grow -- from single to double (and more) digits -- people will find it harder and harder to "keep up" (see e.g. www.battellemedia.com/archives/003349.php ). The "memex" will need to involve simple memnonics (rather than more newfangled brand names). Here, the "leader of the pack" will be sites like hotels.com, gifts.com, shopping.com, rent.com, movies.com and perhaps even a global "live" area. Each of these targeted "community" sites will develop advertising models that will reach more focused audiences than a generic "one-size-fits-all" engine.

Comments

[Replica watch]

I was reading something else about this on another blog. Interesting. Your position on it is diametrically contradicted to what I read earlier. I am still contemplating over the opposite points of view, but I'm tipped heavily toward yours. And no matter, that's what is so great about modernized democracy and the marketplace of thoughts on-line.

[ノースフェイス]

文体のスキルを把握する非常に一般的な概念です。私のユニットは、偉大な愛のチェスを持っており、低レベルの下に人を保持するための機会を持っている、と彼はLETS半分は勝つために応じて移動する子を上げて逃しません。

[グッチ]

もともと店舗前の道路は数十年前に決まった都市計画に基づく拡幅計画の対象。同商店街では約１０メートルの道路幅を１６～１７メートルに広げるが、震災前に着工の見通しは立っていなかった。しかし市は昨年１２月になって「道路拡幅は災害に強いまちづくりに必要」と計画を進める意向を示し、住民説明会を始めた。