Sociate

BJ Fogg has one of the more interesting jobs on the planet. The "captology" program he runs at Stanford University studies persuasive technologies: things that make us change our behaviors, such as a TV that runs only when you ride the exercycle attached to it.

A few moons ago, we sat over dinner while he described a startup he was launching. I liked the idea lots, but was curious why he wanted to be so secretive about it. Today, BJ blogged a very nice answer.

Here's what he was creating.

The call today at 10:30am Pacific time is titled "IMpasse?". Here's the description:

You can pick up a phone and call pretty much any other phone in the world, so why can't you do the same with Instant Messaging systems?

Since buddy lists' 1997 debut, the major system hosts - AOL (AIM), ICQ, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger - have been at an impasse. AOL bought ICQ, but didn't integrate the name spaces. Recently, Google Talk joined the fray, adopting the Jabber standard, which does offer interoperability. A few products such as Trillian, GAIM, Adium, Gush and Meebo have eked out a niche bridging the major systems. (I use Trillian, Skype, Google Talk and Gizmo pretty much daily.)

Now there is talk of interoperability talks between MSN and Yahoo, presumably to combat AOL (the big player on the block, with as many users as MSN and Yahoo combined) and Google (and perhaps Skype and Apple's iChat). All of which prepares the ground for a groovy discussion in which we can cover:

• What forces kept IM interoperability from happening? Why is it happening now?
• How far will it go? Will all the players play nice and create global interoperability?
• What are the commercial benefits from such IMteroperability? What happens to the smaller IM players?

(From the Yi-Tan wiki, here. Email me if you'd like the dial-in info.)

For over a year now, I've been quietly producing a tech-oriented call-in "show" with Pip Coburn, who recently left his gig at UBS to start Coburn Ventures. We call this series the Yi-Tan Tech Community Calls. (Yi-tan means "conversations about change.")

So far, we've covered topics ranging from the post-Katrina grassroots responses to China, DIY, kids' online behavior, games, Ajax, open source, the Long Tail, tagging, podcasting and assessments of Google and Skype's strategies. You can see the whole list here.

Here's how it works: Every Monday at 10:30 Pacific Time, Pip and I invite a guest or two or three to join 25 to 35 friends and co-conspirators on a conference call that lasts 30 minutes. It's an open mike call, so people jump in to ask questions or offer answers. We mute our lines when not speaking, so it's not chaos, but we still get some odd noises. It's fun.

Please join us. To hear about the calls, subscribe to this blog or (better still) join the Yi-Tan list.

Blogger doesn't have Trackback, so I'm doing the next-best thing, which is to repost my comment on David's blog here. To wit:

Thanks for the nice post, David. It was a pleasure meeting you.

My Brain's back on the Web, so you can see what it's like to live with the tool for a decade. Head here and login as guest/guest, or follow the updated link I put on my blog (beware, the link in the sidebar doesn't work). It's been some three years since my data was available, so I'm thrilled it's back up.

Let me touch the comments more or less in order:

Luca, I principally use Firefox. What didn't work for you?

Guy, MindManager and Inspiration have a two-dimensional, paper metaphor. When you get to the edges of the "paper," you're kind of out of luck. TheBrain is 2.25-D. You're not flying through a 3-D space, which I find disorienting, but you're in a multi-directional, non-hierarchical space that is both huge and locally comfortable -- at least to me. That's a start.

Karl (and Mike, and Nathan), sorry you found TheBrain's personal info queries irritating. It's not much more than your name, rank and serial #, is it?

Jim, I find TheBrain scales wonderfully. For ten years I've been putting all my thoughts in the same Brain file. I thought for sure I'd have some part of my Brain feel like the "lost forest," but that hasn't happened. There are parts that are untidy or have dead links, but I'm always gardening and the dead links turn into live history with the Wayback Machine, so I don't mind. I now find all hierarchical organizers (and therefore all outliners, though I use Natara Bonsai on occasion, because it works with my Palm) somehow very limiting.

Anyone use DevonThink, the program Steven Johnson loves?

Randy, I hear what you're saying about forgetting. We do need to let things go from our memory... a lot.

Nevertheless, one of the things I've realized is that there are precious few tools to help us remember things and make sense of the world. TheBrain is my favorite, and it's not for everyone, but I'm constantly thrilled at the depth of things I find I've put in it, and seldom irritated that I put crap in. Maybe I'm filtering well before I add things.

sawtoothbarbie (great name!), thanks for the pointer to NoteStudio, which seems very wiki-like.

I've been thinking quite a bit about the relationship between TheBrain, wikis and tag spaces (folksonomies, if you like). I don't have any great answers, but I see these as complementary, not duplicative. They each seem to offer a different kind of power, and I like them all.

Jack, I agree that at close quarters (lots of emails and documents about some specific item or project) TheBrain gets cluttered or cumbersome. At some point, I keep things out of it to keep the name space clean. Like you, I use TheBrain instead of the Windows Explorer (the Finder equivalent, not IE), making it easier to find files.

Isn't it ridiculous that Microsoft is still selling an operating system that doesn't have lightning-fast search built in? And that they're torn about whether it'll be in Vista? And that Google can spin one out, just like that? It amazes me.

Brian, the WebBrain isn't supported the TheBrain folks anymore. They've been busy selling the enterprise version of TheBrain, the EKP (enterprise knowledge platform), which lets groups share a Brain. Frankly, I'm a fan of PersonalBrain and wish the company had opened it up and put a little more marketing thinking behind it.

Beirne, sounds like you're on that wiki/Brain borderline like me. I put very little text in the Notes section of my Brain. Mostly, I think of my Brain as a web of links, a super-context that ties together everything else in useful ways.

The Palm sync function is key, too, though I find I'm using my Palm less and less. Wish my Sidekick ran Palm software.

Zsolt, I'm glad you're captivated by TheBrain. I recommend you be thoughtful and slow in what you add to it. Throwing lots of things in automatically or thoughtlessly will bite you later on.

If you tried the Brain link in my last post, you might have seen a note for an expired certificate. You also had to log in (as guest/guest).

Both of those issues will disappear if you bookmark and use this link instead.