For a while now many in the microblogging community have been wondering how to add contacts and exchange updates & comments across services.

For instance, some of my friends are on Jaiku, others are on Twitter, and a third group use Friendfeed. How could I follow everyone without having to deal with creating and managing an account on all three?

In December 2007 Brian Oberkirch and I sat down in my home in San Francisco for a discussion about social objects. This week Brian added the conversation to his series of podcasts on social software.

It's been a little over a year since the Jaiku team and I joined Google.

My time has mainly been spent building infrastructure that makes it easier to share social objects on Google's Web and mobile services.

Joe has been working on something I like a lot, the OpenSocial Foundation (opensocial.org).

Recently more people have been tossing around the idea that an open social network enabler could be the Next Big Thing.

John Battelle wrote that "PageRank was based on a big graph: the links that make up the web. The
next breakthrough, many argue, will be based on the social graph, the
links between us all."

Wiki inventor Ward Cunningham is the guest in the latest episode of Janne's and my Verkko 2 podcast. We talk about the history and future of the wiki as a collaborative tool. Ward's interview is in English - if you're interested but don't speak Finnish, just skip the first couple of minutes where Janne and I yak in Finnish.

A journalist friend asked me for some things to watch in the online world. Here's what I came up with off the top of my head:

Tantek, I, Ryan, and Ulla looking jovial after lunch in SoMa (photo by Kevin)

Together with Janne Jalkanen of ButtUgly we've been working on a Finnish-language podcast titled Verkko2 on and off for a couple of months. The first episode is now out - so fellow Finns, we suggest a headlong rush to download the show while it's still hot!

A little while ago Janne Jalkanen asked me if I'd partner up with him to create a Finnish-language podcast about the second generation of the Web. I thought it'd be a good idea especially since Finland is strong on mobile, and mobility and the Web are now starting to integrate in cool new ways.

This week I was over at Tim O'Reilly's house in Sebastopol, so I asked Tim for an interview for the podcast and he agreed. I recorded the podcast while we were unwinding in the hot tub.

Ulla and I will run an introductory course on Web 2.0 and recommendation-based markets at the University of Industrial Arts in Helsinki on Friday. The course is for anyone who is wondering how the Web might affect the design and marketing of their product or service. It will probably benefit designers, consultants, marketers, and general managers across a wide range of industries. The course fee is 265 euros. The language will be Finnish.

Ray Ozzie is showing a demo of 'Live Clipboard' here at ETech. It's a way to copy structured (for instance, microformatted) data from a web page and paste it to another web service or desktop app while keeping the structure intact.

Popped in the Google NYC office and Yahoo's London office last week. Couldn't help noting how similar they are: very central, very hip, several floors. Google scored points with its afternoon tea service, whereas the Soho restaurant scene works to Yahoo's advantage.

Pretty stark contrast to the Nokia offices in both cities, which I'll just summarize as the boonies.

I'm quoted towards the end in Social Machines, the cover story of the August issue of MIT Technology Review. The article is the most comprehensive summary of Web 2.0 that I've read so far, and it does take a while to read through. The gist:

In his message to Dodgeball users, Dennis Crowley writes: