.:Out-of-the-box:.

Two days ago I was participating in public debate opened up with following question: “If and How Internet has changed journalism”. Debate was taking place in Warsaw/Poland and was strictly regarding Polish media market. Debate was organized by quite fairly popular news and community journalism portal http://www.wiadomosci24.pl/.

Leader of the debate and chief editor of Wiadomosci24.pl – Tomasz Kowalski – invited interesting people to the conversation.
On one side we had very popular tech crunch bloggers (in the Polish Internet of course) like Przemyslaw “Spider” Pajak (http://www.spidersweb.pl), Maciej Budzich (http://blog.mediafun.pl/) and Krystian Kozerawski* (http://www.mackozer.pl). On the other, we had only one representative from classic press – editor of Polska The Times daily newspaper – Agaton Koziński. In the middle and between guys including me, who were invited to be a joint-company for those two very different groups of writers. I was sitting there as Microsoft employee – a person who understands technology and how it has impacted changes also in journalism. 

I’d be 100% ignorant, if I said that I was the most important guy in the company. We had two senior experts coming from academic world. Two well recognized Polish professors – Maciej Mrozowski and Włodzimierz Gogołek, who I suppose were invited to share their wisdom and distant maturity probably unknown to the rest. It was the first fail of the debate itself.

I have met those two fellows first time in my life. Post-mortem, I have huge respect to Mr. Wlodzimierz Gogołek who stood in the position of a person that tries to understand Internet and big changes in has introduced to our society. Mr. Maciej Mrozowski presented nothing but ignorance and arrogance in almost every word said. Too bad, he disrespected the audience. From quite interesting opening question and the perspective of discussion in subject, we had quickly switched toward war between amateur/enthusiast writing (blogs) and professional journalism which is “about serious stuff”. I’m writing war, because it was a smalltalk I often have with my friends during bar conversations. I expected higher level and argumentation worth the public debate.

I was terrified in lack of understanding of the Internet as a medium. I was shocked when Agaton Kozinski was more interested in finding funds for sending correspondents to Middle East, not asking a question first, if we here in Poland are interested in another news about the conflict in Palestine. Maybe we’re more interested how our freeways are constructed and why the heckwe need to pay so much for them? Not sure what is more important, but now I understand why, when I buy a magazine - out of 30-40 articles, I’m interested in maybe four. If editors do not ask themselves critical questions first, then they land in the abyss of sales falling down! In effect no money for the Middle-East guy.

I had a feeling that traditional journalists in Poland are bunch of celebrities who demand exclusive attention. I’m no expert, but I understand two ways of career development in journalism. The way of classic celebrity. With all steps in the food chain to gain respect and the way of rioter to jump over the food chain and piss on it. Regardless of the path folks enter, they should realize that it’s like five seats, not more, on the throne for the winners. The rest are forgotten and should demand nothing but keep fighting for the attention with good quality content and modesty. Good example with Mr. Agaton Kozinski. Before debate I didn’t even know who he is. No offense in that – I just don’t read daily newspapers.

I don’t, I have different sources of information that are faster. Honestly, all I know about the earthquake in Japan I’ve got from the Internet. I do not represent the majority yet. TV probably still is the winner. But such an audience, that takes Internet as primary source of information is growing. Now many Internet events are pimped up from classic media sources. Soon I’ll find info about new show in TV from the Internet, will turn TV on for that show and come back to Internet after it. Maybe all will be broad casted in the Internet and TV will be just a flat screen, yet another monitor in the living room.

On the debate I have realized that it is freaking out many traditional media guys. And they should be afraid. Sooner they realize that, they are not attractive to younger generations who are connected, sooner they will wake up. And some say we have about 20+M Internet users in Poland. Lots of people who are changing habits right now!

They have to wake up. We all together have issues to solve. Like privacy, like literacy of people who read true garbage and only that.
Internet represents very unique place where true democracy as I understand it, works. And from this prime experience I must say, democracy is very close to anarchy. Anarchy where arrogance has its beautiful yet unproductive power.

Mostly that is, what I’ll remember from the debate.

*) edited: Apologies to Krystian, I mistyped his surname little bit. Thanks (Dominic Warkiewicz) for pointing it out.

I am fascinated by modern tablets. By modern, I mean form factor represented by pads, slates & e-book readers – just screen, with multi-touch capabilities for human-computer interaction.

I’ve been playing with Tablet PCs since I started working for Microsoft. One of very first computers I’ve got here was Tochiba’s tablet with Windows XP (back in 2005). I liked it, but it’d never become my main computer. Reason was simple – touch screen was optional, secondary way of interacting with the machine. Some (in fact a few) apps were designed to take advantage from digital pen, but overall feeling of the OS and most of apps was simple – it was designed for keyboard and the mouse as primary tool for interaction.

I has taken me a while to fully understand why Microsoft has postponed the original Slate idea to go to market. Then when I started playing with iPad and I realized how much the OS and all apps I’d downloaded were designed for the screen as primary tool for interaction. For new developers designing apps for such devices, consider it as mandatory part of your UX focused design. Not only the beauty of High DPI vector based graphics, but well crafted and tested interaction through available and individually invented gestures.
If your design required keyboard then it’s worth checking how many pads users buy this optional accessory. I don’t have the numbers but I don’t believe it’s mainstream. If confirmed, then simple question should be asked: is my one dollar app good enough to convince user to go to app store and buy physical keyboard for additional $60. This is universal knowledge regardless of the device and additionally impacting design process if one device just doesn’t have such accessory available.

So this is the main reason now I understand why well known user experience of current Windows is not the best shot in consumer world of tablets. Different UX from both OS and Apps is a must. I have great hope in Windows v.Next to see Microsoft’s progress in subject but still now I haven’t played only with iPad, I’ve got Galaxy and Xoom in my hands, I have several Slates with Windows 7 and even though I agree current benchmark of quality is measured by iPad’s success I disagree that only if you have bitten apple logo on the back of the screen you can success. I found many imperfections of both iPad1/2, I found many opportunities laying in Android’s the state the art, called the Honeycomb. I found many interesting use cases where Windows 7 based slates are the easiest way to navigate. World is not that clear and I believe that real battle for tablets hasn’t yet started.

Few examples:
- I hate watching movies on iPad because of the process to move my movies there:
If you have great video-streaming services in your countries that might not be an issue but when to watch movies I have to rip my DVD, format it to right codec & size that is iPad compatible. It is time consuming and it heavily frustrates me. Then I have to run iTunes to find settings for my video playing app and upload my movies to the isolated storage for that app. Why can’t I plug my pen drive to be automatically discovered and handled just like on my game console?
- I’m not big fan of isolated storage. sharing data between apps is painful
- Switching between apps is no so fortunate either. 
- Several and non-complementary content license systems. I’m not sure if I prefer iTunes/app store only way to purchase new content, but when individual app has its own system of acquiring new content it’s not always that stable as I’d expect. I lost a few issues of my Wired magazines with one update of the app. It put me on hold toward new purchases.
- there was lot of dicussion in sense of having copy/paste functionality. For me it’s must-be. Additionally I’d add fast app switching to this critical group. Still I miss some fast way like alt+tab, ctrl+c, ctrl+v way of doing it on the screen. Current implementations barely help doing it subconsciously.

I can add lot more of small defects and imperfections but there is no sense in that. After all, it’s great device and user experience playing with it. Still as said, I perceive lot of space for new innovations and improvements better than different color, shape and camera.

I’ve been playing with Samsung Galaxy which is no competition at all. Its performance disqualifies everything. I’ve been playing Motorola Xoom which is kind of cool, but as I read it hasn’t got the traction yet. Windows 7 based slates with good hardware capabilities (Asus Eee Slate is cool enough) are really nice for commercial scenarios, especially as closed OEM boxes. But I think it’s where Windows Embedded was designed to go, so it’s unclear how to position those devices. Windows 8 should answer to all questions but it’s it too early to say something more but speculations. With a few tablets already in my hands, I have learnt a few things though:

- Apple for sure is big perception winner, nevertheless it’s far from perfect
- To win in modern tablet space as a vendor you have to consider:
     – high quality hardware (by means of cpu/gpu/ram/hdd performance and 2+ touch points capacity screen that really is responsive).
     – I believe, there is no need to own hardware part of the business, but you have to ensure high quality of hardware delivered (OEM certification, formal hardware requirements, etc.)
     – you have to have apps (from OS to 3rd party apps) designed with touch screen as primary interaction tool
     – you have to have successful electronic distribution instruments as your business model proposal for developers making consumer apps
     – you have to know how to make strong and long-term relations with developers considering business application that require direct selling. App stores do not fit. Alternative business models have to be constructed or polished.

Considering it, I believe that in future again, just like with iPhone, iPad will land in the exclusive area of high-end consumer devices for people who can afford it as portable, yet home computer. But to reach mainstream in measures of PC’s current reach, I think real battle hasn’t yet started. It will begin and will include more vendors. Which is good, for all innovations that it may bring.

I must say, I’m confused and amazed at the same time.

Confused, cause I perceive that real commercial apps examples show up how pointless discussion is which platform is better – native (not necessary c++) or web bound to the browser.

Amazed, because several apps I’ve been using constantly for a while show up how much we have moved forward in User Experience and aesthetic design of our apps.

Regardless if true web or native but still utilizing power of the Internet those apps still do not change my definition or priorities why I value Internet. So no big revolution in the Web itself, just more mature I’d say.

Internet has always been to me about three priorities:
 - to communicate (meet and chat with the right people)
 - to learn/get to know (gaining access to right information which can extend my knowledge, experiences and can help making better decisions)
 - simply.. to get the stuff, whatever stuff means.

Entertainment and consumer apps are the easiest example. Adoption of new trends has always touched those first. But I see all new interesting stuff for collaboration and IW stack of solutions like document management and knowledge management too.

I stopped using One Note some time ago and switch to Evernote. I stopped tracking tasks in my Outlook as even without tasks it’s filled up with so much info that I’m lost and frustrated every time I have to open it.

I envied that Mac users have Things. I’m glad to find Wunderlist. Evernote and Wunderlist are perfect examples of replacing one huge solution (call it Office) with smaller but dedicated pieces. And this is hard as I work for Microsoft, I have my free copy of Office, but still I preferred to un-install One Note (why the heck I’d need it now)

There are many more solutions like that. Preferences of users change, organization can block it or encourage it the same way as Facebook could have been blocked in many offices. Still users have those preferences and frustrations if they cannot choose the best possible solution they think is at reach.

This perception should encourage you if you make those decisions to look not only at software but also at hardware from different angle. Smaller is often better. Remembering not what but how employees work. With who and why they share information. Assess those and then pick up IT solutions based on real use cases not modelled by business or software requirements.

I’m deeply amazed by apps like Evernote, Wunderlist, new social networks like Quora or Convore which bind people by the professional interest they have not only by the will of sharing rubbish over web (like Facebook and Twitter). It’s only a beginning and I’m addicted to new hobby, searching for new stuff around me. Some are really a digital-life changers.

In last summer Wired Magazine published article about the Web. They spread the vision that in future Internet will obviously evolve, but Web – as we know it – will die. There will be no need for websites, but we’ll come back to apps and apps-bound content (think e-books, comics with dedicated reader, radio, music, video streaming, etc). If you’re interested to read that article, please go to this page.

When I read it, it triggered my loud thinking. I’m not sure if they’re completely true but there are some signals of such vision going through, right now. It’s well visible especially in mobile, portables devices, as well in game consoles.

Instead of raw web pages to access services exposed by vendors we choose dedicated applications. On some devices we have no choice. Xbox 360 does not give you an opportunity to browse the web freely, but gives you apps to access Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM services. Those services are good examples of on-line service, which has multi-platform clients and web page is just one among them. Not always the most important and richest in features.

To give you comparison, even on PS3 which has web browser, it’s much better user experience to work with applications. In Poland, where I live, market for those apps is not very well developed and the only app I see on my PS3′s dashboard is AXN network in TV section. This particular app is in fact completely hopeless, offers only a few clips (I’d not even call them movies). Just like YouTube player but only with some very limited AXN sponsored content. Sony’s problem, opportunity is huge.

YouTube player is another good example which for mobile/portable devices provides dedicated application instead of a link (icon) to the web page. I believe it came originally from technological limitations. They stream videos using Flash technology and have experimental support for HTML5 <video> tag. There is big escape from Flash on mobile devices and not each and every device and platform supports well HTML5 yet. So YT gives an app to search and play their videos. I think having those apps guys behind YT do realize the potential of dedicated UX coming through application, not web page.

If you look at electronic publications, slow migration to e-paper is coming and killing need for rich content on web pages. Why? It’s great business opportunity hidden there. Some believe a rescue wheel for publishers who struggle how to monetize well from the web, while paper subscription is at constant decline.

We’re so much used to see web pages free, that still as Internet users, we barely like to pay to read anything on particular URL. Sites like www.nytimes.com give content for free and install ads anywhere possible. They of course have subscription for on-line content. WSJ has it too, but I suspect that most of their customers are corporate/business, not consumers.

Now take NY Times Reader for PC, phone, iPad, whatever. Designed to emulate daily issue, paid the same way as daily issue comes to your door. Full of dedicated content and with User Experience suited for the device. Highly welcomed product, I find among my friends, people are eager to pay for it.

What a rescue for newspapers indeed. Electronic distribution of many different kinds of goods (on-line content) wins more and more shares and with our shift toward public cloud, it’s just sentenced to win.

Now, going forward. What if all that becomes true. We will have Internet A -> with browser and web pages – Obsolete and with legacy stuff. Another Internet (B) will come with apps, that will just use the infrastructure for connectivity. Little bit just like in old good times but with much more mature platforms, APIs and standards than in 90ties (Webservices and JSON as good examples which we didn’t have in previous decades).

So how about that current, mindset war against RIA versus HTML5 improvements. If apps come to win, is HTML5 really relevant? I think yes. In many scenarios, it’s right now the easiest way to start a project portable across all these different platforms and screens. Biggest risk is, that it’s still immature (both in standards and browsers implementation) and fragmented.

Many HTML5 enthusiasts yell that HTML5 kills all need for any other development platforms and first of all need for Flash and Silverlight as RIA platform for the Web.

I’ve played with HTML5 little bit and to set it 1:1 to Flash or Silverlight, I must say it’s incomplete. To really compare both at features level, left side has to include:

HTML5 + JS DOM extensions coming with HTML5 + CSS3 + SVG

Then I can start talking about any comparison to what SWF and XAP files can render themselves.

But this post is not about bitching at HTML5 versus plugin-based RIA. In fact I believe that in reasonable time maturity of HTML5 will finally come true. Standard will become complete and all popular browsers will support all relevant features. To handle HTML+JS+CSS+SVG complexity, we just need different tools which are right now absent. But I believe they will come too, they just have to be split to suit needs of both coders and designers (the way Visual Studio and Expression Studio is positioned in MS offer as an example). Then and only then we can start verifying HTML5 as dominant platform for the Web.

But wait a second, let’s go back to the beginning. Wired said Internet will survive (infrastructure level and connectivity across devices), but Web will become obsolete. So why HTML5, if not for Web pages? Web apps – yes!

Right now for more and more platforms we can build web apps behaving like regular client apps for the devices.

Pads/Slates are good example of devices which I call hardware browsers.
So, if my window to the Internet is hardware device not the browser application for PC, why to need a software browser inside it?

Still one core feature currently dominant for daily Web usage – search. For websites and on-line services, even content and apps download you need search provider to find them in endless wastes of the Internet. But when we talk about Web Apps, search can be easily replaced by something we see becoming mainstream right now -> App Marketplaces, App Stores, Steams or whatever the service is called.

I’m not a conjurer, I can’t predict the future, but some things are happening right now. And if it all becomes true, think why Google is building marketplace for web apps that are on-line not for download. To be prepared..

Think how many businesses will change operationally if that happens. SEO for example. Big risk to be killed or 100% controlled by app store vendor. App stores are closed and I see no reason why to open them up. If killed, then we will most probably come back for traditional model for billboard like advertisements.

Purchasing C-class infrastructure to set farm of SEO servers to pimp up your pages faster will just not work. You’ll have to go to the apps store vendor and just like with NYC’s Times Square LCD screens, you’ll pay heck of money to be on main page as app of the week.

I’m still fascinated by Facebook. I’m not surprised over its reach. Observing what’s happening there it still reveals endless opportunities.

Take one example: viral marketing.

I noticed two interesting examples of above where my female friends on my list just started writing on their own messages on their Facebook walls. First example was quite shocking.

What would you say if you read dozen of messages written by your female friends like: “I like to do it on a kitchen table” or “I like to do it on my favorite sofa” or “I like to do it at the shower”.. When you pass through twentieth of such a message you stop suspecting your friends of being exhibitioners & perverts that day, there had to be a second bottom. And there was. Message that triggered it all was a campaign to push women to check their breast regularly to minimize risk of undiscovered breast cancer. They manifested to other women where they liked to check their breast in that context.

I had to do my investigation with my wife to realize that. No man I know knew about it. Clever but kind of obvious as we barely risk it.

Second campaign is quite fresh. I still not quite get it, I presume it’s about encouraging people to read maybe. Again only women on my contact list bought it.

I see several messages like: “And the sun was beautifulin the morning” or other rubbish nonsense with a comment of their own: “open a book, do not pick your favourite one, check page 52 and write 4th sentence on your Facebook wall”.

I saw similar viral nonsense over IMs in the past but totally random in its reach I believe.
Above two seem to be well crafted or there is a genuine thought behind it:

Women are the best target for viral marketing.

…At least considering on-line, social networking as the platform.

That’s still quite funny. One of my FB friends joined the group created for one reason: to yell about closing another Facebook group named clearly: “I hate Poland”.
First – the closure – group yells about rasism and anti-Polish behaviors. Well, I checked that group and I didn’t find much of racism against Polish people, maybe beside some utter-idiots (many Polish) who live online by principle – write first, consider thinking next. It’s most of all blaming and highlighting cons of living in Poland.

Group was initiated by some Norwegian medicine student who picked up Polish city Poznan for studies. Some arguments he put on the table are quite idiotic, some are natural consequence of still developing country just 20 years after beating communism, still having infrastructure issues, broken mentality and other things we all Poles know very well. Some are just his personal bad lucks.. (just like I’d complain on US being screwed just because less and less stores accept American Express these days).

So what… still all that bullshit just sounds like frustration, cry-out and bad luck of a single person who picked up a place for studies which missed his overall expectations. Can’t it happen everywhere? It can.. so what’s unique in this one?

FB as massively adopted social networking spot triggers interesting behaviors. A person who says that is pissed-off at a whole country instead of pissing at it, leaving the country, having better memories elsewhere comes back occasionally to that country to point out new bad experiences. Truman Show of modern Internet, it’s so easy nowadays to join the community and say “Welcome to Web 2.0 asshole, by the way I hate you”.

There is other group then, who responds and here we go with virtual war over principles.. Some would say it’s democratic.. but as it doesn’t really change anything isn’t it just an online garbage who shouldn’t really care about? Estimates say that we right now utilize abstract amount of data over Internet.. most of that is for single use.. much is just the same garbage as one mentioned..

Speaking of modern Internet culture, I’m worried what dumbasses future will bring us.

First let’s check some numbers. Big winner in MMO world is still, undoubtedly, World of Warcraft. Last announcement (2008) from Blizzard reveals peak number of 11.5 (yes, almost twelve) million subscribers.

World of Warcraft census currently shows about 5.6 million active players. Certainly not a peak now, but for a 5 years old game with overgrowing competition in all possible dimensions, it still impresses me. If you consider their business model and potential revenue stream, it is a lifetime worth your envy. I filtered the census’ numbers and have found that European servers have gathered about 2.5M subscribers. Quite a slice from the overall number! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it is close to 1/10 of all Xbox 360 consoles in the UK.

Mentioning business model I started wondering it this genre is a good pick for consoles (if developed by third party like Blizzard). If Microsoft released one or Sony released one (or lets say they already have it with Home) it should not a problem. They both have engines to run subscription model and micro payments and the rest is described at the end.

But if 3rd party did one. If Blizzard ported WoW to Xbox, I’d not be so sure MS or Sony were happy. Reason is simple. First, if you imagine massive amount of console gamers playing WoW -> other games would not be purchased and played that often. Retail revenue would have become cut on hardware vendor’s and developer’s charts.

How hardware vendor could possibly react? For example, through smart revenue sharing deal. That would have balanced hypothetical loss. If so, there is a risk for developer, deal would become unprofitable, unbalanced and unfair, good reason to back off. Having only these conditions on mind I rather doubt if we can see in any possible future a successful (in WoW metrics) MMO example on game consoles.

The only possible exception I can imagine would become 1st party development, but only if included carefully in long term strategy. As for long term strategy I rather see that both MS and Sony are focused to chase Nintendo with equally unknown Wii phenomena, and Nintendo is just happy selling massive amount of their hardware. Another reason to doubt in good MMO game on game consoles in reasonable future.

Last week I spent in “The Fabulous” Las Vegas. It was my first trip to the Sin City. I believed it might become crazy and it was, both in my private time as well as on MIX10 conference.

I’m quite often attending major Microsoft conferences (those that attract global audience). I thought that PDC is the place to go. MIX is definitely an equalizer. Major announcements and keynotes not to forget long is one thing, huge content as for sessions and topics covered is the second. Add great people both from Microsoft and partner + customer space. Head can literally blow up, add Vegas to it – first trip of mine and here we go with my memories

(learning a lot from my friends whispers I didn’t take a camera. “Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” they said :>)

I’m used to perceive huge events by its major theme. PDC08 was about Visual Studio 2010, Windows Azure and Windows 7. PDC09 was little bit unclear to me, but with great Silverlight 4 announcements that made the conference worth its time. MIX10 all about WP7 at least for me, second message worth coming was IE9. These two products showed that even though Microsoft overslept many years in Mobility and Internet standards now was the time to show that it was just because dreams were huge and company showed truly that it can provide features audience demands. It’s not a victory yet but good pair of trainers to run after all again at full speed.

As for technologies behind products, Silverlight and Xna grow really fast to become a mainstream focus for Microsoft oriented developer. Both started as some tiny projects with portable aspirations in their specialties: Silverlight in RIA space, Xna to become the gaming primer. Both still have to win their developer audience but with extension to Windows Phone Series and features coming in version 4.0 of these two technologies I’m expecting fast reach and aspiration growth for other application types and scale utilizing these technologies.

To add more, Scott Gurthie and his wolf pack announced that tool-set to address these apps will be free and stay free forever. This includes SL and Xna projects and also (most importantly) includes Blend to keep designers busy with the company. That’s really great move.

Second day showed that under good and strong reign weak performers can go back to the good track. Most sessions I remember with Dean Hachamovitch speaking were rather subtle arrogant rather a visionary. Since Steven Sinofsky took the team over I see what I’d seen with Windows 7: a reasonable path from unfinished Windows Vista to Windows 7 we all love.

IE’s Platform Preview is first touchable proof that Steven has meant what he said during PDC keynote. Four months later and we have CSS3 selectors test passed and Acid3 at the mid point. Still much more to do but Html5 and CSS3 looks indeed like a priority. IE’s Platform Preview is in fact a technical demo to show current stage of IE’s rendering capacities. It’s hosted on an developer ready rather a consumer ready window, which suggests also (but it is only my assumption) that maybe they have rewritten IE9 from the scratch. If they switched only renderer from IE8 to IE9 version why not to use host windows, tabs and all else from previous version’s architecture. IE9 PR dropped it all, I hope for a reason. If all that’s true and 8 weeks release promise will be kept we should expect IE’s comeback very soon.

I had a discussion with one of my friends on methods how Internet works for me. This discussion started with thesis that URL is more for technical people. That was in consequence answer to a question: why people start browsing from search engine even for known pages and relatively known addresses.

Somewhere in that conversation I shouted that I almost do not use search engine, only occasionally when I definitely need to search for something I can’t find the other way.  Never on a regular way to find “anything”.

This triggered big questioning mark on my friend’s face and big “How?!” reply.

Well short and quick answer I could provide was that I’m a power user with very well defined needs. Search is one of them but only on-demand basis rather than regular access point to the Internet.

So how can I marginalize search engines while browsing and live these days?

It started with a dramatic reflection that Internet is full of garbage and 99% of it is just useless crap I don’t need. I started to split my needs into categories like: looking for knowledge (educational), looking for recent news in areas I’m interested, communication and participating in communities then undefined, occasional search for a keyword that for any reason popped up in my mind.

With that exercise I eradicated “just to waste some time” need, so “I’m feeling lucky” feature is not for me anymore.

For communication and communities it’s easy, Facebook simplified the thing to the very end. Adding Twitter and additional clients for both I have my connections and chasing for news managed.. somehow. Getting recent information cannot be solved at its full extend as it only depends on your contacts recommendations. It’s incomplete.

So for my areas of focus I have I found 9-12 top sites that are my news and new knowledge hubs as information on web sites is very well connected, usually I can follow one site after another without any single try on search. After a while I’ll be rather bored or completely happy with the information already gathered. These sites are speed dialed and thumbnails to these pages appear on my browser’s main window.

Not to get overwhelmed, sites like tweetmeme.com and techmeme.com are blessings more powerful than Google itself.  With these sites I realized that in 2010 information stored in the Internet is much better connected by communities than Index Servers maintained in big data centers of Microsoft and Google.

I also found that for community-driven information that’s connected, search engine like Ice Rocket seems to be more attractive than anything else.

This way I surprised that friend I have mentioned, because usually I find myself free from Google and free from massive search usage on my daily browsing routine.

It’s really fantastic experience because when you start feeling it, then on a question “what can possibly kill Google’s dominance in the Internet” you find simple answer – that what has created the Internet as we see it. Which is us – the communities.

With information so well connected outside search engine, I find Twitter and Facebook as the biggest threat guys in Mountain View probably perceive and they should. These relatively new services in Web 2.0 sphere have already marginalized my search usage and I assume that they can only grow.

Just short off topic note to have you informed. I’ve got feedback, several times, that reading white text on black background may not be the best option to keep readers focused. It may be true, so I decided to experiment little bit and change it. Some little details on these pages may disappear and appear for a moment. Not text obviously, rather some details like RSS icon on the bottom (which I think should be better on top) and other layout elements. Sorry for your inconvenience, at least it’s no more white text on black background.