See the video.

New year, lost your way, need inspiration? Troll the web.

Mike Rhode, who I became aware of via his sketches of SEED, is so inspiring — from thoughts on journals and pens at Journalisimo, to his blog (Rohdesign), to his logo work, to his sketchtoons…

Another similar inspiration: Butter Label.

Obligatory post to explain absence. However, it’s not why I wasn’t posting that’s worth talking about — it’s actually why I’m starting to post again (or at least have the desire to). The Black Swan, and Taleb’s love of thinking and writing, has sparked that (recently) latent desire. I want to write… but what about? I no longer spend my days in the world of innovation and web 2.0…. at least not so directly. I have, however, been reading quite a bit more and the blog could give me the discipline to work through analyzing and synthesizing it.

Maybe I’m way behind on this — but here’s an idea. Write very detailed blog posts about a topic or question you have. Something worth speculating on — but isn’t really out there in the blogosphere or media. Then just use a halfway decent traffic analysis tool and read the tea leaves.

I posted a clearly over the top post, “Apple Acquires Last.fm“, on 19 August of this year. It’s a provactive title that gets a little bit of search traffic my way. I didn’t write the post to get traffic. The web 2.0 acquisition market seemed so heady. I thought it’d be funny to package my iTunes wishlist as a critique of the silly enthusiatic part of the web2.0 lexicon (my GenreFolksonomies). I also have written another “wishlist” post to Apple — about wanting to switch to Mac. And in some weird sort of synchronicity, they addressed most of my needs by introducing the Mini.

But looping back to where I started this post. While my intention in writing the Apple/Last.fm post wasn’t to “bug the internet,” I’m learning that, in fact, I have. I don’t have that strong of a signal on this blog — I haven’t consistently written or made people aware that it exists. So any traffic bumps are caused by waves and ripples of the web. I just had a spike of searches like: “how many last.fm users, last.fm acquire, last.fm itunes.” Sure, it’s a lot of noise — but think of the potential for parsing the signal?

Yes, you say, of course that’s what Digg and Technorati and the hundreds, if not thousands, of sites have been trying to do with blogs. But I think those are more about parsing the signals through the existing “microphones” on the web. I’m talking about strategically placing the microphones — not for traffic — but to learn.

What better model do we have for open sourcing (besides the cost of the books) than cookbooks? Programming books, not unlike the 242 at O’Reilly, proudly use the metaphor made famous by Betty*. Those books capture much of the commonly agreed upon principles, standard methods, and terminology… but they are just the beginning. Communities spring up around sharing and improving applications that begin with the cookbook recipes.

You’d think that a model that came long before the Web would have flourished by now, but real recipe hacking hasn’t really blossomed. Sure, you can search and store recipes, but the wiki or digg-like communities of participation haven’t formed in mature ways. What might a mature one look like?

The recipe would be divisible at the ingredient level–where the corollary could be tracks in a playlist. Each ingredient has an associated amount and state, like a track has length, bpm, artist, and album, at a minimum. These ingredients could then be built into playlists, or recipes, but also live in clouds of a folksonomy. This kind of organization could really allow for a community of learning, experimentation, and preparation optimization and customization.

Some of the sites worth checking out, if you’re in the recipe hacking state of mind:
CtrlAltChicken: Alex Albrecht of diggnation fame hosts a self-proclaimed geek cooking videocast
NPR: Food Hackers Make High-Tech Geek Cuisine
Wired: The Thermochemical Joy of Cooking
Cooking for Engineers
Microformats: Recipe Examples
khymos.org - molecular gastronomy and the science of cooking
My del.icio.us cooking tags.

*Funny enough, Betty is a persona, General Mills turning a persona inside-out way back when… not quite true to the Hacker ethic, yet…

A note from the author: I thought the content of this post would clearly indicate this was a work of fiction… but the web has never been good at capturing irony. It has been dugg… and rumors have begun. I must be watching too much Colbert. Regardless, I can dream of a better iTunes–one that takes advantage of many of the features something like last.fm could enable. Read on. And as you read, imagine the voice of Colbert reading this to you… Further updates will be added to the end of the post.

In a completely unexpected move, Apple insiders say they have quietly acquired the social music site last.fm. What can we expect from the acquisition? A user friendly iTunes. Here are some of the new features iTunes will roll out:

SmartTransitions
Track sequencing algorithms will tap in to the collective dj prowess of the masses. Sequencing of songs will be rated based on how many users play tracks adjacently in playlists, etc, with appropriate weighting of best rated playlists, most novel combinations, and other methods not yet disclosed.

GenreFolksonomies
No longer will iTunes tracks be chained to single categories. Users will be able to create multiple tags across all track variables, as well as at the album, artist, and playlist levels. This intelligence isn’t tied to individual users either.

SocialMeta
Users will be able to share meta tags on all tracks and music. Find groups and users who have meaningful tags–adopt them based on the same smart playlist selection criteria and up the intelligence of your track data in a few clicks.

iMixCasting
No longer are your iMixes just a vehicle to promote sales of files on iTunes. Make your smart playlists podcasts and streaming stations automatically. Users subscribe and tag your casts and stations.

PersonaSettings
The magic of the new algorithms won’t just be social, you’ll also be able to use them to gain better intelligence about your own listening habits. Let the software create your listening personas automatically, or define your own through mood, context, etc. All iTunes settings get stored in the personas including track display variables, equalizer settings, airtunes destinations, and playlist and track tag criteria/filters.

PodTagging
Another useful new feature comes via the iPod. If the iPod is your primary music player you’re currently not capturing a good amount of meta data for your tracks. New iPod software will allow you to quickly tag and rate anything being played–including video, podcasts, playlists, and tracks.

We’ll share more information as it comes in.

Update 2: A couple forums chat about this as well. Interesting take on this post. I’m lucky I didn’t post it during the week. This makes me wonder how the majority of people read blogs. That’ll be for another post.