This is a preview of the dynamic AJAX news feed and user commenting page that will be released on @T (Always the Twain) in the New Year 2009. Content is dynamically loaded from multiple rss feeds which users have control over. In the top corner there’s a dialogue box into which the reader’s choice of feeds can be input. This then generates a feed box.

Most importantly each of these boxes is fully…………DRAG+DROP like iGoogle’s UI so users can prioritize their viewing panel. 

Additionally, once the feed box has been generated it’s possible to edit the feed — for example if instead of choosing the Technology pages from BusinessWeek users can change it to the Business page feeds. Over time images will also be automatically pulled in. The image below shows that some adjustment on the DIV css needs to be made first — LOL!

Once the RSS-all-in-one feature has been tidied up the next stage will be to incorporate the DIV which houses the Media Sensors rating tool into the xhtml. 

MEDIA SENSORS

This is completely my original idea. There are several variations on the 5-star rating system coded in Ajax / PHP / CSS as well as the “thumbs-up-thumbs-down” alternatives but there is absolutely no other system like Media Sensors with its proprietary calibration system, ratings pH, 360-2020 perception wheel and savable to a database — initially SQL.

It is arguably the best innovation I’ve originated to-date and something I’m really looking forward to developing further in 2009 because it is………..DISRUPTIVE………..UNIQUE………A GAME CHANGER!

Dynamic rating systems are typically built with Ajax, JSON, php and an SQL database. For the Media Sensors it’s helpful to be able to track who’s designated a rating (so incorporate some type of log-in for each rating or recognition of cookie information), allow only one rating per user on any particular item on a site and to facilitate analysis of that rating on an ongoing and dynamic basis. Elements of semantic search querying will also need to be included.

Ultimately, the Media Sensors solution will be integrated with comments and rss feeds in an intuitive manner as shown by this example using a 5-star rating solution.

There are lots of ways to include comments in rating systems and what would be interesting is to investigate whether it’s possible to modularize comment panels so they can be propagated elsewhere to similar content.

In any case, I spent this weekend creating SQL databases. Here’s an example of an extremely simple one with its query:

//declare the SQL statement that will query the database
$query = “SELECT id, name, year “;
$query .= “FROM cars “;
$query .= “WHERE name=’BMW’”;

with its generated result:

It isn’t only the front-end UI / applet that needs to be user-friendly and simple. The back-end or database also has to be highly functional and enable accurate surfacing of previously input user-generated content so that it’s searchable, semantic, can be analyzed and serves to also calibrate 360-2020 insights on users’ tastes, preferences and perceptions — in conjunction with the front-end Media Sensors.

It’s shaping up, as they say………………….

The image below is a pre-loader I designed today. Originally I was going to go with the concept of chemical titration, fractional distillation or even nuclear fission involving da Vinci’s Vetruvian Man image and some quotations from Tesla / Nietszche / Monty Python (I created a swish of something similar two years ago and was going to be green and recycle that).

Then “Eureka!” struck: Dolors Reig (a Spaniard I know who researches the Semantic Web) once flagged a great image of the network connections of the World Wide Web and they’ve been poetically captured like it’s the rainbow RDF of the human brain.

I recalled having done a Powerpoint image of a “neural spin cycle” in response to one of pomlover’s postings about perception and intakes.

Hence, pollinate the two and produce a pre-loader that (((shows+tells))) what Media Sensors is about:

In any case I’m very happy with my progress.  I love the challenge of innovating solutions and flexing my brain cells throughout the process, end-to-end from conception to execution. Of course there are days I feel like no progress is being made at all but, by-and-large, I’ve achieved what I set out to do in most things in my Life to-date, so I’m fairly well-prepared for the work involved on this journey too.

It’s going to be one of the best sense-making tools around!

Incidentally — not to initiate a battle of the sexes or anything — if “content is king” then “context is Queen” and she’s the one who achieves check, mate! I wrote that deliberately; it means the Queen is the one who monetizes the chess game for the skilled player. In the case of the online Global Brain and all these social networks, widgets like twitter and semantic search tools seeking investment, traction and return on investment (AND HARDLY GENERATING ANY REVENUES MUCH LESS MAKING PROFITS)…………..

I’ll bet anyone a can of Coke that it’s female ingenuity that will crack the elusive business model conundrum for all of Web 2.0, Web 3.0……Web to the Infinity platforms. It will probably need to be a female who is as comfortable and conversant with code as she is with balance sheets and bottom lines as with languages (English and more), and knows how to apply structured scientific methodologies to what is a social science: interpreting and understanding what people REALLY MEAN — not simply classifying it under ontologies.

No battle of the sexes please. Some men have female brains and some women have male brains.

It genuinely doesn’t matter what your gender is. If you’re attuned, smart and assimilate content X context at quantum speed it isn’t to do with your gender. 

It’s to do with your personal commitment to extract wisdom from knowledge, cross-apply, free associate and mnemonic it, and then innovate and retransmit the solution to (((show+tell)) others.

Practice makes perfect. That or be born capable of divining for and navigating towards sense! 

Most of us have to practice………

[Btw, the woman I may be speaking of is Marissa Mayer of Google or Sheryl Sanberg of Facebook!]