Here’s a little experiment in social software.

I’ve been talking with Jack Bury, a 20-year-old American poet living in Amsterdam, who is part of a tiny start-up trying to get some traction for “Eyebees,” a Microsoft IE add-in. (It’ll be open sourced eventually.) The add-in puts a frame on the left of your browser that shows you up to 200 little dots (Eyebees), each representing another person in the “swarm” you’ve joined. Their relative position shows which pages they’re currently viewing. If a few people are each looking at, say, Doc’s blog, then you’ll see the five Eyebees clustered together; clicking on any of them loads the page they’re looking at. You can also send a message to any of the Eyebees visible in the panel. Cool idea.

So, Jack is proposing that at noon EST tomorrow (Friday), we do a “peace swarm,” i.e., a bunch of people who are sorry about the war we’ve started will all click on the appropriately-named swarm at www.eyebees.com and we’ll browse around together. So, if you wanna hang out for a bit tomorrow, download the software and join the swarm.

And now for the main question this raises to me: Why can’t I be a 20-year-old poet living in Amsterdam? Please?

Categories: Uncategorized dw