{"id":327,"date":"2009-09-08T20:58:38","date_gmt":"2009-09-09T04:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=327"},"modified":"2009-09-08T20:58:38","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T04:58:38","slug":"four-web-technologies-that-shouldnt-be-geeky-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2009\/09\/four-web-technologies-that-shouldnt-be-geeky-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Web Technologies That Shouldn’t be Geeky Anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blogs have been great. You can now create one without much technical knowledge at all, using Blogger<\/a> or WordPress.com<\/a> . This technology, originally seen as some type of journalism, really just makes it possible to create a web page without worrying about all the trimmings, or learning Dreamweaver or, God forbid, HTML. Facebook<\/a> works (though I find it’s interface unfriendly) — people figure out how to use it for what they want. Twitter<\/a> is easy. So is shopping for goods and services, at Amazon<\/a> or Craigslist<\/a> — sites that have to make it easy so you’ll come back. YouTube<\/a> just works, because it’s so big it’s easy to search.<\/p>\n

But why are the very best technologies the web have to offer so geeky still?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

1. RSS<\/strong>
\n\"\"I was trying to explain RSS feeds to people way back in 2006, with RSS the Oprah Way<\/a>. This really shouldn’t be necessary anymore, to understand RSS. It’s ridiculous to have to look for the orange RSS symbol, copy the feed URL, and paste it into an aggregator. It feels like having to crank up the car. Words like “subscribe” never caught on. And the readers are still clunky, even Google Reader, which is best because it finds the feed even if you just have the URL of the site. But why are we copying and pasting URLs at all? Why is the main improvement on this system disparate buttons on pages to help us “Add to Google Reader”? This should be a simple as bookmarking — a Save button. No one should have to know the word “feed”.<\/p>\n

2. Wikis<\/strong>
\nThey should have been like blogs were originally — set up as editable documents, but with multiple authors. Instead, they are awkward, with Edit tags on pages, and weird CamelCase linking. It feels like you have to be a member in the Wiki club. They should be drag-and-drop by now, like Gmail’s mail tags — just pull in a link. They should have sidebar menus that make themselves, or where you can make a map and it all falls into place. Meant for collaboration, they are now basically just webpages, run by a person or small group.<\/p>\n

3. Tags<\/strong>
\n\"\"Folksonomies be damned, without drop-down tag menus everyone does their own. Tagging is such a great idea — tagging instead of folders, so an item can go in more than one place<\/em>. It’s revolutionary, even without the idea of sharing or searching other people’s tags. But it’s so hard to search tags anywhere, since there is no obvious hierarchy or assumption of tagging. No, I’m not in favor of an approved list of tags. But you have to be a filing expert to use them properly. Why not something like a menu, but you can add to it and customize it if you want to? That way ordinary people can find stuff. I can’t even find my own stuff, my tags are such a mess.<\/p>\n

4. Embed<\/strong>
\nIt changes everything, yes. But why do we need to see the code? Why can’t you click Embed and have something just ready to put wherever you want. No clipboard, no “copy code”. Open your blog, wiki, or webpage, click Embed, drag the thing you want to embed from another window.<\/p>\n

These are the four technologies that will help us manage information, be creative, work together. So why can’t they be less geeky?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blogs have been great. You can now create one without much technical knowledge at all, using Blogger or WordPress.com . This technology, originally seen as some type of journalism, really just makes it possible to create a web page without worrying about all the trimmings, or learning Dreamweaver or, God forbid, HTML. Facebook works (though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","category-the-web"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}