[Sigia-l] Information-centered Design

[fabrizio ulisse]

> Don't get me wrong here. I am not just talking about a 
> marketing site with lots of products. I am talking about 
> everything associated with that content item being connected as well. 
> 
> Yahoo!'s new team pages do this well (at least this is a 
> start to what I am talking about). Take a look at the North 
> American NHL Team the Detroit Red Wings' page: 
> http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/teams/det/ 
[CUT] 
> Frankly, I spend too much time searching on Google, and not 
> enough time learning or doing what I want. Sooner or later, 
> we are going to have to make it easier.

Well, I think you're perfectly right, and I absolutely agree with your
vision. My only concern is that the risk here is to replicate in the
digital world the same vertical, closed hyerarchy within the real
business world, like in multi-level marketing. 

What if we're going to have only 4 big portals being the "glue", or
"presentation layer" of thousands of xml-driven web services, or
information nodes or whatever... In Italy, if you buy a branded
telephone (my case is Vodafone) you can have access to many services but
within the same realm (Vodafone, in my case). With this devices, access
to other web stuff is not forbidden, but it' not easy. Think about the
fact that for unknown reasons you actually cannot have access to tech
specs of this devices, so how can you develop for them? How many users
will have Nokia and Ericsson free (maybe) devices, and how many will
have brand-constrainted models that sell because the're cheaper but the
have built-in camera, full-scren colours, wow-wow ringtones and
oh-my-god downloadable pictures.  And this is only the beginning. I'm
sure that the information model we're talking about could drive a new
business model, but will the big corps. let us do the job easy? The
hyerchi-mall model is out there, with the promise to be the parasites of
much of our effort.

But I'm optimistic, as I've always been. Let's just take into account
the risks.

- fabrizio