2007 August 07

iWeb: Was today the second step?

Last December I wrote Prediction: Apple Will Own Mass Market Web Applications and I think at least some of it came true today with the release of the latest iWeb and the ability to input and use widgets.

When I get back to Minneapolis I’ll stop by the Apple store and pick up iLife and iWork. This will give me an opportunity to get an intuitive sense of how easy it will be to drag-n-drop widgets from, say, Widgetbox into iWeb and deliver something with which I can test and play.

Just watched Steve’s presentation and it was interesting to hear him talk about the new iPhoto and its "Rich Web 2.0 experience." Clearly this is an overt recognition of the category of Web 2.0 and why not give power to normal users to build their own Web 2.0-like apps?

No serious developer I know believes something a mass market, Web application product like this is possible. Too many factors like latency, performance, using it offline, connecting it to the desktop and other needs are brought up as just a few of the reasons why non-developer types couldn’t possibly build ‘em.

You know what? I heard the same sorts of objections for years from people in printing and publishing as software like Pagemaker and then Quark arrived on the scene and that "desktop publishing" was a joke, only real graphic layout artists could build publications, and they loved it when mistakes were made (like an explosion of fonts used on a single page) but today I can’t think of ONE publication that ISN’T laid out with Quark or InDesign.

UPDATE (via Read/Write Web): Just found this video of Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and Apple board member, describing "Web 3.0" which proves the point better. According to Richard MacManus, "He said that while Web 2.0 was based on Ajax, Web 3.0 will be "applications that are pieced together" – with the characteristics that the apps are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, the apps can run on any device (PC or mobile), the apps are very fast and very customizable, and are distributed virally (social networks, email, etc)."

Filed Under: Web 2.0

Scarcity of Water in the Great Lakes

Posting this week is light as I’m on my 8th Annual Dad & Son Adventure with my 12 year old son. We are in Door County, WI (in between Green Bay and the main body of Lake Michigan) and will be hugging the south shore of Lake Superior on our return.

The picture you see in this post is the tip of the Door peninsula jutting out in to Lake Michigan. Since the water level is three feet lower than normal all the white rocks you see are normally covered with water and up several feet up the rock cliff. The stress of the drought on the trees we hiked through and the lake itself is quite obvious and very disconcerting.

Parasailing, jet skiing, swimming and hiking are some of the activities we’ve been engaged in this week so we’ve been in close contact with the lake and I’ve been seeing first hand the impact this water drop is having.

With my beloved Lake Superior down two feet — along with all the buzz about global warming — makes it easy to leap to the conclusion this water drop is due to that clear trend of human powered warming. But is that the reason? Others believe it could be part of normal hydrological cycles.

I’ve long suspected that as we pump water out of the acquifers underneath major sections of the United States, water will flow or drip in to fill them. Will that come from the system that may be fed by the great lakes thus causing them to drop quickly? Smarter people than I are looking at this exact question and no one knows yet.

Relying on scientific evidence of long term effects is the only way to measure all the macro effects. But I go to formerly wild places that I went to decades ago as a kid and I can see so many changes. Algae that has caused the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to designate lakes I used to swim in as "swimming not supported." Fields of wildflowers with butterflies now covered with condos. Trees in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness that look like the stressed-from-pollution trees I saw on the tollways and in the parks when I lived in Chicago.

Maybe this stuff is part of normal cycles or global warming related, but anyone with any observational skills and half-a-brain must realize humans are making one helluva impact on this planet.