The Third Year Anniversary (2)

Analytical Insights

Again, the posts are ordered in accordance to my self-preference.

1. The Web is Expanding

World Wide Web is expanding, simultaneously in four facets---in the physical world, in the computational world, in the world of network communication, and in the financial world. The post supplements to my ThinkerNet post "a closer look at the expanding Web."

2. Five Web Trends Into 3.0: (1), (2), (3), (4), and (5).

Web 3.0 is coming. But what on earth is it? In a five-installment series, I expressed my viewpoint of Web 3.0. There are five major trends together pushing the Web to its post-2.0 age. The ultimate consequence is about to upgrade the Web from a web of platforms (filled by the user-generated content) to a web of marketplaces (filled by the user-generated asset).

3. Think beyond Build-A-BearVille (the Second Life for kids)

Build-A-BearVille is a fun place for kids. It, however, suggests much more than the primary intention. Build-A-BearVille shows us how we may virtualize the real world into the virtual world, and monetize the connection between the two worlds. Not only does this business model build true exchangeable value, but also it is generically applicable to nearly all the domains.

4. We intelligent because we connected, and unless we connected

Where does intelligence come? More and more evidences should that we intelligent only when our knowledge is connected to a greater network of knowledge. It is the quality of the outward links, in contrast to the quality of the inner knowledge nodes, that ultimately determines the level of intelligence. Thus, it is not hard to build a machine knowledgeable, but it is much more difficult to develop a machine intelligent.

5. From GeoCities to MySpace, another side of Web Evolution

MySpace is GeoCities 2.0. History repeats itself, but in an upgrading way.

6. Wall Street, Fall 2008: crisis, capital, risk, computation, and information

From studying the definitions of five terms (crisis, capital, risk, computation, and information) we can understand the financial crisis better. What the Wall Street hedge fund brokers have tricked us is making up equations measuring the equivalence between matter and information (in particular the information of risk). According to the quantum theory we discussed, however, the value of information per unit decreases definitely in time due to that the total amount of information constantly increases and the total amount of matter keeps constant. This is the theoretic reason behind this massive financial crisis.

7. The newspaper crisis

Newspapers are in crisis. "The cost of the raw information generation is minimized. The cost of static analysis over the raw information has been cheap. The cost of posting advertisement has been cheap. If the Web has decreased the value of nearly all the information asset in the traditional mean, what should we do to produce new type of information asset that can be charged decently in this new Web age?" It is really a question.

8. The Microsoft-Yahoo deal, Part 1 Yahoo, Part 2 Microsoft, Part 3 Google.

I have varied views about the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. The apparent winner might not necessarily be the ultimate winner and the apparent loser might indeed gain a chance of reborn. Moreover, we must not forget Google, the target of the deal.

9. The real-time web in a nutshell for Web developers and researchers

The real-time web has been hot. From the perspective of Web developers and researchers, what, however, is the real-time web? This post answers the question concisely.