ReadWriteWeb Continues to Astound

I know I come down hard on the folks over at ReadWriteWeb. But I continue to be astounded by a site that’s supposed to convey intelligent thought about technology, thinking, reading and writing but continues to consistently produce muddled messes of text that really don’t do much by way of explaining what the hell it is they’re writing about.

Here’s the latest installation.

They’re really excited about this “Internet of Things,” which Wikipedia succinctly describes thusly: “the networked interconnection of everyday objects.”

I think I understand that. Thankfully, Wikipedia adds a little further explanation that brings it all into focus:

The idea is as simple as its application is difficult. If all cans, books, shoes or parts of cars are equipped with minuscule identifying devices, daily life on our planet will undergo a transformation. Things like running out of stock or wasted products will no longer exist as we will know exactly what is being consumed on the other side of the globe. Theft will be a thing of the past as we will know where a product is at all times. The same applies to parcels lost in the post.

OK. I’m hip with that.

ReadWriteWeb offers no explanation that I can find, only links to previously-tagged “Internet of Things” posts. That’s well and good. They’re writing to their audience, perhaps. Their audience ought to know already what the Internet of Things is, right?

So if they’re writing to their audience, I must assume that their audience, at least for this post in particular, is corporate marketers.

This is what they say about “Crossbow” – which I’m not exactly sure what it is. Not that they help me out:

The 2.4ghz Iris is meant to connect the world around us to product and information management tools. As of today, the software development kit that can run the Iris is available for download for free. What's unique about the IBM platform is that it runs on a small footprint. So it takes very little energy, memory and processing power to operate these devices even though they can be linked to more complex energy-intensive languages like Java.

Wow. It can connect the world around us to product and information management tools. Really? That’s revolutionary. We don’t yet have things like smartphones, netbooks, laptops, desktops, and probably Tamagotchis that do that, do we?

C’mon, ReadWriteWeb. Tell me what this thing is. Not that the site you link to is going to tell me anything, either. So I guess sometimes it’s the material you’re dealing with, right?

I know you’re preaching to and reaching a tech-savvy audience. But in this jungle of the Interwebs, you’re going to find people coming to your site who aren’t as technically savvy as you think they ought to be. And if you want the masses to be excited about a technology that can link sensors for electrical equipment, agricultural equipment, inventory management systems and other complex bits of technology together in a way that will help solar power stations generate maximum power, tell pumps only to water crops when the water is absolutely needed and let stores know when their inventories are getting low and automatically place orders for them, you’re going to have to do a bit more in the exposition department than you’re doing currently.

You do better with Arrayent, telling us this:

Arrayent offers embedded system designers the tools they need to connect their products to Web apps and Web browsers in only one day. Arrayent has been previously featured here as the company that wants to become the Cisco of the Internet of Things. Companies that make smoke alarms, thermostats and children's toys are currently working with Arrayent. Given the potential of the Internet of Things to revolutionize consumer products, we're picking Arrayent as one to watch.

Still, you’re only giving us the idea, not the reason behind the idea. Why, for example, would we want a smoke alarm to connect to a web app or web browser? Oh, so the fire department knows when an alarm goes off at our house, using existing and vastly less expensive technology than traditional, hard-wired alarms? Great. Tell us that. I did that sarcastically in one sentence. I’m sure you could do a lot better.

The problem is, this post is so rife with mission statements and stuff that’s likely cut in slabs from press releases that you’re offering a lot of noise for only a little bit of data. A blog’s job – this is where you can define yourselves as journalists – is to look past the PR crap and actually tell your readers what this stuff is and does and could do. Like the Nabaztag, which you seem pretty excited about. I know what it is (though I’m not exactly sure why I’d want one: Wow! It reads news to you in a robotic voice, and tells you “Your stocks went up a lot today!” when you pose the question “Stock market!” And it also takes VOICE MESSAGES! Unbelievable!) by visiting this site, but your description of it leaves a bit to be desired.

http://www.violet.net/_nabaztag-the-first-rabbit-connected-to-the-internet.html

I love how “It moves its ears,” is included as a product feature. You couldn’t tell me that, ReadWriteWeb?

Another Read Write Web Chuckler

Haven't I said that Read Write Web is a great place for Internet humor?

Check this one out.

No, the concept of every tweet twitted since 2006 going into an archive at the Library of Congress isn't the chuckler here, though you have to wonder what kind of academic research could be aided by the meaningless twattle on Twitter. Here's the howler:

When the Library of Congress was founded in the year 1800, publishing was very expensive and relatively few people did it. Today, thanks to blogs, YouTube, Facebook and certainly Twitter it's a new world. Publishing is far faster, easier and more accessible today than at any point in human history.

Yes, it's as if the following, taken from Britanica Online, never happened, and likely would not have brought printing and publishing within the realm of the common man until, you guessed it, the Internet.

In the 19th century a whole new era in publishing began. A series of technical developments, in the book trade as in other industries, dramatically raised output and lowered costs. Stereotyping, the iron press, the application of steam power, mechanical typecasting and typesetting, new methods of reproducing illustrations—these inventions, developed through the century and often resisted by the printer, amounted to a revolution in book production.

By the 1850s the application of the new techniques of mass production had brought down the price of an inexpensive reprint to one shilling, as in the Railway Library of novels (George Routledge, 1,300 vol., 1848–98), for instance, or in the three series of classics issued by H.G. Bohn in 1846, 1850, and 1853. Later reprints were cheaper still.

Yep. Relatively few people could afford books back then, but no matter since relatively few people were printing them. This is also forgetting the advent of the penny press and the boatloads of pamphleteers and itinerant printers that littered the nation with weekly papers and snowed us under with printed matter.

Yes, the advent of the Internet means there are a lot more people out there publishing. But cost and accesibility are relative terms -- you have to have a computer to read what I've just published, whereas to read a penny paper, all you really need are your eyeballs. And sometimes folks in this digital age forget that that old-fashioned printed matter, it got passed around. A lot. As did the papyrus and the clay tablets and such before it.

Then there's this one, from Read Write Web, same article:

It's hard to imagine a more significant milepost in social media's early march toward becoming an essential component of our social experience.

One of the difficulties with Twitter is preserving context. Because tweets are limited to 140 words, and because many tweets include links to other Web pages, one has to wonder if the preservation of this data by the Library of Congress includes the linked matter as well -- or will that be left to things like the Wayback Machine and its ilk? It's probably being preserved somewhere, but sorting through all this published data, even with the use of computers, will be daunting. Doable, but daunting. but funny here is that Read Write Web seeks validation of all this Twitter nonsense by preservation by an old-fashioned academic institution that attached a patina of scholarship to our daily Twitter (and, let's face it, social media in general) drivel.

Yes, maybe it's all stuff not "intended for publication," as postulate the experts cited by Read Write Web and Ars Technica -- but then doesn't that negat the ubiquity of publishing they chirrup about earlier on? I don't know. Preserve it. Mine it for data all you want. Just ease off on the generalizations.

Now, I know journalism is the realm of the sweeping generalization, but betimes Read Write Web really has perfected them. It's their niche.