Robin Good suggests (quite accurately) that Internet 3.0 (or is it 4.0 ;-) is beginning to take shape.

Three years ago (May 2001) Bear Sterns Equity Research (Chris Kwak & Robert Fagin) published a lengthy report that introduced "Internet 3.0". There wasn't a mention in that report about the emergence of Weblogs or the growing demand for content syndication services and technologies. However, they did forecast the likely outcome of an information tsunami when decentralized and peer-to-peer publishing capabilities emerged.

"The Edge becomes the Internet and devices do more with what have to date been dormant native resources. PC's become dominant, and all clients are thick. The domain name system is no longer the only addressing system utilized by networks.The browser is no longer the gateway to the Internet." -- Bear Sterns Equity Research

Hmmm -- the browser is no longer the gateway to the Internet. They probably weren't thinking of RSS newsreaders, but they were right anyway. Lately I find myself using my newsreader and MS Office to find stuff. I'm biased of course because I help build the first (and only) RSS-to-Office search integration available - MyST SmartSpace.

RSS feeds, specifically collections of them in a particular domain of expertise, serve as highly effective pools of knowledge that are easily searched. In Google, I find myself continually trying to find a needle in a pile of needles. With Microsoft Office Research Services, (based on tight sets of RSS flows) I'm able to hunt for a red needle in a very small bag of multi-colored needles; much better odds.

"In these last few days, I have been particularly excited and encouraged by the growing number of articles, essays and posts hinting and describing in similar and complementary ways, the vision of the new Web that is already taking shape." -- Robin Good

These changes are now affecting our search behaviors because we have new resources to search that are both more timely and tightly focused on specific domains of expertise and interest. The notion of search is transforming to take advantage of discrete addressability of domain-specific content that (in the past) was typically persisted in large blobs of stuff. Weblogs and RSS feeds have open the door to the atomization of content. XML standards and aggregation tools have made it possible to reassemble the atoms in ways that are more meaningful thus fundamentally changing search requirements.

Eventually the concept of search will vanish - information will find us.

What can you do with a SmartSpace™?

This is where the creative technology and sales engineering intersect - it takes a detailed understanding of the MyST platform and a keen awareness of selling tactics to generate good ideas for using SmartSpace™ technology.

SmartSpace™ comes with a simple value proposition; seamlessly connect Microsoft Office users with valuable RSS feeds. SmartSpace™ makes it possible to create virtual repositories based on RSS information flows. These virtual repositories are enhanced with keyword categorizations and made available to Microsoft Office users through Smart Tags and Office Research Task Pane integrations.

Given the scope of SmartSpace™, new products and services are now possible and we're licensing the MyST platform for this purpose.

Imagine…

• Aggregating the weblogs of your competitor’s employees and deploying the resulting SmartSpace™ as a secure business intelligence application.
• Aggregating the weblogs of prominent writers and selling that as a SmartSpace™ that has technical commentary and ads laced throughout.
• Aggregating the RSS feeds of all sports news in a metro area (like New York or SF) and manufacturing secure (monetized) SmartSpace’s for news writers.
• Aggregating the RSS feeds of AROQ and licensing the SmartSpace™ back to AROQ for its on paying subscribers.
• Aggregating the RSS feeds of FeedRoom.com and licensing access to all television industry executives and their assistants.
• Imagine the use of specific FeedRoom feeds such as entertainment, health care, ecology, consumer products, and military as the basis for monetized SmartSpace™ products.
• Create a single SmartSpace™ for all FeedRoom feeds and OEM the entire package to FeedRoom.
• Using Yahoo’s financial RSS feeds to create the branded Yahoo Finance SmartSpace™ - Yahoo would love this I suspect because it pushes search out closer to the users (all people in the finance industry) and places their brand on the desktop in every Microsoft office application.
• Aggregating all the RSS feeds about the oil business and selling access to people in the oil business – especially those that manage information about oil.
• Use Market Syndication Services to create feeds about oil prices – then create a SmartSpace™ that bundles them up for businesses where a penny change in price means millions of dollars (airlines, trucking, shipping, bus lines).
• Create special SmartSpace™ packages for PRWeb – use each of the PR categories as the basis for SmartSpace’s that simply leverage their RSS feeds for people that write press or consume press.

If there aren’t 50 new [successful] products and services that could emerge from SmartSpace™, I’d be very surprised. Of course, we advocate the use of RSS feeds with complete authority and partnership of the owners of such content. Most RSS providers are interested in greater distribution, not less, so there's a strong liklihood that most content providers will be interested in developing partnerships that carry their information deep within the enterprise where Microsoft Office is being used.

SmartSpace™ is useful where content awareness is beneficial in the context of everyday work. Business and enterprise has talked about moving “knowledge to the edge” [of the organization]. SmartSpace™ makes it possible to deliver the last mile of information’s trek to “the edge” where employees really need it to make better decisions. Indeed, SmartSpace™ “pulls” knowledge to the edge in context to whatever an office worker happens to be working on.

If you have an idea for a SmartSpace™ feel free to give us a shout.