(:addthis:)
CoEvolution > Oimp > InternetGuide
Internet guide
Principle
Go to a website an recruit a guide for a pre-determined price and period of time to help you travel the virtual world.
Our mission
Build a learning community sharing an always improving and growing knowledge regarding the Internet.
Proposed trails
- History of the Internet, the genesis of human specie largest tool
http://www.lonja.de/motion/mo_history_internet.html
- The deepweb, a clean but unknown underground
- Understanding security, the risks of the Internet
- Existing tools to manage information overload
- Preparing for the "web of data" / * Programming the web (mashup, pipes, ...)
- The underlying economy making the Internet sustain
Solution
- guides provide a description of their view of the web and what they generally are interested in
- visitors choose a guide based on his description, rating and comments but also previous trails done
- eventually a short questionnaire is offered to help automatically find the ideal guide based on the visitor competences and needs
- they both agree on a specific time
- they interactively browse together thanks to a dedicated tool (eventually based on Flock or a cross-browser plugin resembling the former me.dium plugin)
- the dedicated tool record information regarding time, places (basically an history) and the chat so that in case of conflict regarding the service, a third party can judge
- after the session, the visitor can
- annotate his history/chat with the guide
- publish this annotated session
- rate the guide
- send a tip
Functionnalities
- the visitor could keep a log itself to replay it in order to remember the question he asked and the answer he received.
- visual demonstration could replay online a past visitor/guide session to quickly explain the principle.
- with the agreement of both the visitor and the guide, a compilation of the best session could be published on the website
- with a fee for the viewer
- with a compensation for the visitor who get his session published publicly
Realization
- make a website with the guiding tool to download and a video on how to do it
- add a video of a simulated guided trip
- make a button with a "book this guide"
- recruit guides
- visit made by the recruiter and guided by the potential new guide
- tech-savvy people requiring an income and wanting to share their knowledge
- social and pedagogical "otakus"
- social and pedagogical students in IT/CS
- make few free or low cost "virtual trips" to tune the sysem
- make advertisement in some website to become popular enough
- make profits to re-invest in
- better toolboxes
- better guides
- teach guides thanks to dedicated live and real conferences from state of the art research
# stop doing it personally and delegate management
# move to Bahamas ;)
Marketing
- Adding obscure Internet map with "this is where you were 5 seconds ago" and with "this evolved that fast, now where are you, where should you be?"
- A new way to explore the Internet (and not just the web) different from the default page of your provider, following famous blogs or just the big search engines, this new mean allow you to follow also the smaller trails that really interest you.
- Propose "underground" trips (studying the concept of "deepweb" with some example but also non conventional network like FreeNet)
- Use a blog to publish articles as a form of potential visit
- Why is it imperfect but still always valuable?
- There is 1 Internet but an infinity of ways to experiment it. Even if you know a lot about it, experimenting the way somebody else uses it will potentially and very likely provide new insights to learn from and explore later on.
- vocabulary
- Internet Guide
- Internet Tour
- ...
- old school type of poster : "Welcome to our Internet"
- But why having a 1-on-1 guide instead of blogs on just watching the recorded sessions?
- Imagine a jungle that would be so full of life that its inhabitants but also its landscape would change overnight. Exciting life form and viewpoint appearing and disappearing very quickly. Would a good map be sufficient?
- Just look at the evolving pace (data? visualization?), that should be convincing enough.
Example toolbox of a guide
- staying up to date regarding the alternatives
- especially the websites for news through feeds
- social browser (flock, former me.dium, ...)
- social tools (IM, IRC, SNS, ...)
- sharing the updates of his toolbox with other guides
Alternatives
- specialized internet tutoring
- general tutoring
- automated tutoring
- faster movers in news websites (derivatives)
- technocrati/digg/reddit/StumbleUpon/OneRiot.com/...
- ma.gnolia.com/del.icio.us/...
- slashdot/ReadWriteWeb/InternetActu/...
- Alexia ranking/Google trends
- trails
How is it different from...
- a video on the topic (or a recording from a previous trail from somebody else) provides a passive mean to discover. We believe that learning is an active process requiring action from the learner.
- tutoring alternatives presented before are not specialized on the topic
- Yahoo! Answer regards a single question and not learning how to explore the Internet itself and become able to solve the same problem yourself next time
- former Google Answers was mainly limited to a single question and based on Google tools.
- Amazon Turk is general but probably too difficult to use for most users. Eventually this service could integrate it.
Mainly, existing services provide answer to quick question and not a learning experience on how to use more efficiently an always evolving tool.
They are on the time scale of a shorter period (few seconds) and not based on a conversation, a learning way that most people are used to.
The expected experience
(take the position of a visitor and express your wishes)
Target market
Who is the ideal visitor ?
Somebody wanting to improve his/her Internet experience based on his current needs or because he/she think he will need more in the near future.
How did he/she found the service knowing that he/she does NOT know the Internet so well?
- recommendation from a friend who know the Internet better
- luck (?!)
Who should not visit and use this service ?
- somebody looking for a technical problem (we don't want to become the international virtual call center but a community of growing knowledge regarding the Internet ! cf Our mission)
- a quick fix to a question that alternatives can easily solve
- somebody wanting to use the service to circumvent an unethical problem by delegating responsibility
Income streams
- specialized ads for very short trails
- paying package (plus extra for overtime) for longer trails or dedicated prepared trails
- gift packages (as a birthday present between family member)
- sponsored by institutions like the EFF especially regarding trails oriented toward the freedom of information and expression
- use experience to work on smaller scale projects by providing annotated screencasts for existing sub-networks (eventually just websites)
Inspiration
Discussion with Phantom and my pleasure in sharing links (numerous emails, delicious "2share", OIMP Internet sharing for friends, ...) and also my work on Geography of the intangible or Visual Ant Wiki (with its trails).
Probably Let Me Google That For You too but also my idea of the "the network traversal" blog (cf previous notes)
To explore
- Librarians good practices
- The Failure of Google Answers, 2006
- sociological studies on Internet usage, e.g. using FirstMonday
- As We May Think by Vannevar Bush, The Atlantic, July 1945
- "trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record."
- Wikipedia:Books lists books created by the community.
- a user-generated collection of Wikipedia articles that can be easily saved, printed, and ordered as a printed book.
- CrossLoop software application for desktop sharing.
- CrossLoop connects computer users with trusted, qualified service providers and friends who can provide the support they need quickly and conveniently.
