Open The Dialogue

I’m guessing there are people who look at today’s technologies and collaborative sites such as Flickr and wonder what the point of it all is, not realizing that there truly is a “conversation” going on there. Those of us who are ingrained in blogs, forums, and the land of wiki see what’s happening, and work hard to convey this to those who are interested in the subject, but what always works, in my eyes, is a prime example.

Oskar van Rijswijk posted one such example for us on Sunday, pointing to a photo of a car accident that he posted on the Flickr website, which was commented on shortly afterward by someone linking to photos of someone who was in the original photographs, taking pictures of the scene itself. It’s not such a large world after all.

Earlier today, Robert Scoble responded to Dave Winer’s reaction to a request from Microsoft’s developers to get input on what a new and improved RSS icon should look like and carry on it. He states that Microsoft “love[s] icons,” but that’s not a good enough excuse. Just because he’s right about having “RSS” or “XML” on a button not being the best idea – universally – doesn’t mean that it’s something that should be voted on for Microsoft’s implementation and other people to perhaps adopt, most likely further fraying any semblance of universal usage of yet another standard.

Sure, posting it on the MSDN blog is a great way to open it up for the public’s input, but what about putting this “out there” for all to chime in on? Surely there’s enough non-techspeaking non-English only people that would join in the fray and share some ideas.