It was a thrilling experience, from a bygone era. Of course, few people today would rush to the newsstand to read a paper to learn what a powerful reviewer had to say. For many today, there are no newstands, no papers, and powerful reviewers in print are few and far between (except, again, in the theater world, where an aging, well-to-do population still tends to support the entire enterprise). But it’s still a thrill to wake up on a Sunday morning and realize that there are a good number of people in San Francisco reading about our new venture, out on the street, inside cafes, around the breakfast table, on their treadmills, and that many are reading the article not on computers, tablets and other devices, but from the big, broadsheet, inky pages of The San Francisco Chronicle. Yeah, it’s a cheap thrill — there are far more important things to the life of a company than publicity. But it’s certainly not cheap in terms of the news business. It costs more than ever for a news organization to give you a small piece of real estate on their Sunday pages. And for that I am thankful to Benny Evangelista and his editors at the Chron for betting that local readers would care about this comeback story. We got lots of virtual ink this week, and I am grateful for all of it, because today it’s the whole, not the part — the long tail of coverage, not any one story — that ultimately matters. This one story — though small — was special for its unique, offline contribution to the conversation about BroadVision.

I’m a BIG fan of the new device. But that doesn’t stop me from whining and complaining. The iPad wants to be much more than what it is. And the more one kvetches in the networked world, the more, I believe, that Apple will listen. That’s why God invented early adopters.

1. No Flash. Sorry, but this very long — and very late — explanation from the chief just doesn’t cut it.

2. You can only run one app at a time (at least in the current versions). Serious impediment to productivity.

3. No phone (c’mon, this thing has 3G — it WANTS to be a phone).

4. No camera (this thing WANTS to have a camera).

5. You can’t edit live docs (Google, for example).

6. You can’t save real docs.

7. You have to wipe the screen clean at least once a day. It’s a germ farm extraordinaire. And that’s bad news for everybody ‘cept Klear Screen.

genus = notebook; species = HP

genus = notebook; species = Apple

I think we’re witnessing a similar kind of evolution with the word “site” — as in Web site. Consider: what we have been calling Web sites, for oh say 16 years – aren’t really “sites” — in the full sense of the word. From the Latin, situs: “place or position occupied by something.” The standard Web site is not a “place,” and it certainly is not occupied, certainly not by people. But in fact that’s how sites are evolving in the post-Web 2.0 world. The site has evolved into the social network, and networks, as anyone who has spent a lot of time in them will attest, are very much like places. Even their names sometimes evoke a sense of physical place (MySpace, Farmville, many others). And while they are not like real places, they are clearly an advance on the original concept. Once again, technology has evolved to meet the hype of a marketing metaphor (the “site”), in a way that more closely resembles what we have in “real” life. And that, I believe, is the most remarkable thing about online communication and computing. There is an irreversible march toward evolving the objects and tools we use to navigate the virtual world so that they better match the way we navigate the real world.

But unlike the notebook, the evolution of the Web site has implications for anyone in business (i.e., it’s not just HP and Dell’s problem). There was a time when it was understood that every company needed a Web site — it was one’s place on the “World Wide Web.” An entire industry was spawned at the dawn of that insight. No such thing has happened yet in the post-2.0 age, unless you look at the corporate blog as an evolutionary advance on the corporate Web site. Perhaps that’s true, but it’s only a small advance compared to the social network. And while practically every company now at least understands the value of a blog (or blogs), very few in comparison understand the value of an enterprise social network. But if you trust the consensus of the market makers in this particular world (I do), it won’t be long before that changes, too. In the meantime, here’s what’s confusing businesses from seeing the horizon ahead:

genus = real estate; species = Trump

genus = real estate; species = Facebook

–The good news: the emerging world of networks is just that … emerging. The world is changing. We are moving from a site-centric world (”site” in the Web 1.0 sense of the word) to a network-centric world. But it’s a new world with lots of uncertainty. How does a business deal with the fact that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn have such a great presence in the network-centric world? Ignore them? That would be wrong — just as wrong, in fact, as it would be to ignore the largest players in the real world of real estate. So much has been written about how companies should make their static sites more compelling and relevant by integrating with social networks and other services (again Jeremiah). I agree — in fact, this point of view informed a big part of my consulting practice over the last few years. But a safe bet would be for businesses — and non-profits — to also invest in a little real-estate of their own, create their own networks, and grab a piece of the American dream. There’s a nascent market of “enterprise 2.0″ companies (I am with one of them) ready to respond to the market, and already the market is beginning to see the value. I’ll share more as I move along — I’ve been on the job (officially) less than one week. But it’s one of the most interesting and exciting markets that I’ve competed in for quite some time. It’s a great place to be, literally and metaphorically.

The AiNDEE™ hosted dialogue customer service system is intended to simulate a call center’s best employee with text voice and animated chat, all from a website. It’s designed to empower organizations that operate call centers with a more cost-effective first tier customer sales and support. It’s different from traditional online help systems because it is 100% autonomous, does not require a live human operator to answer each question, yet rivals a human’s ability to converse in a narrow area of expertise. Its uniqueness is its ability to carry on true bi-directional conversation, where questions and answers are given and answered by both parties for clarity and understanding. It handles the redundancy questions that typically clog a call center and it facilitates a more natural and cost-effective escalation path to higher levels of support.

I like the bits about “redundancy questions,” and simulating a call center’s “best employee.” How about the system’s ability to answer annoying questions? Much has been written about the dangers of robotic technology. But one of the big plusses is the capability of doing things that the best employee cannot — or simply will not — do.

CNet: “Does your reality need augmenting? Try these apps.” “Reading the news about a University of Washington professor’s experimental electronic contact lens, I wondered if my dream of the ultimate personal technology has finally moved from over the horizon to in sight. Here’s what I want: to be able to walk into crowded cocktail party, and know exactly who I am looking at — each person’s name, last time we met, and other information pertinent for a pleasant social interaction. I want that information beamed into my field of vision, in text floating over their heads, like the health indicators over the bad guys in a computer game.”

Neoseeker: “Koreans building massive, massive giant robot.” “Maybe some South Koreans became jealous when hearing about Japan’s massive Gundam statue. Or maybe they just saw it and thought it was a good idea. But for what ever the reason, a much larger, massive-er, crazier giant robot statue is going to be built, in South Korea. Planned to be an epic-sized, 364 feet tall permanent tower, the new addition to Google Maps is going to be a star attraction at a new robot-themed theme park, being built, inventively called Robot Land.”

Wired: “Future of the Screen: Terminator-Style Augmented-Reality Glasses.” “The most efficient possible display technology would be something that bypasses the eyes altogether and sends information straight to the brain. Sadly, cranial USB ports are still pretty hard to install. The second most efficient possible display technology anyone’s devised projects images directly into the eye. The dream of a wearable virtual retinal display, or VRD, has been around for nearly two decades; it’s on the horizon, but it’s still going to be a while until it gets here.”

9&10 News (Northern Michigan): “Robots Help Kids With Cerebral Palsy Walk.” “Cerebral palsy is a neurological condition that affects body movement and coordination. Many kids have to rely on a wheelchair or walker to get around, but now technology is catching up with C.P. As Robyn Haines reports, with a robot as a teacher, one girl is gaining a new sense of stability.”

CNet: “iRobot gets single biggest order from Army.” “Best known for its Roomba vacuums, iRobot also counts the U.S. Army as a top customer. And the latest Army deal is the company’s single biggest. “iRobot said Tuesday it has received an order from the U.S. Army for $35.3 million for robots equipped to help soldiers safely evaluate dangerous conditions.”

NPR: “iPhone App Projects A New Image For ‘Augmented Reality’”. ” I tend to look for and use practical apps on the iPhone; think sports scores, financial markets data and news. All Tech contributor and editor Eyder Peralta has other priorities. This morning he turned to me and started talking through the animated mouth of a pink bunny. This was my introduction to the MouthOff iPhone app.”

Fox News: “Ant-Sized Microbots Travel in Swarms.” ” While Hollywood focuses on robots several times taller than humans, some researchers are building tiny robots that could fit on your fingernail. These microbots would work in swarms to collect data for a variety of applications, such as surveillance, micromanufacturing, and medicine. The researchers, from institutes in Sweden, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, use a novel approach to allow robots to be built cheaply and in large quantities. Working on a limited budget, they built an entire robot on a single circuit board.”

My odd experience came soon after reading about a 2006 blog debate about whether print or online offers the reader the more serendipitous experience — the experience of being able to discover things more easily, because of the way a particular world of information (print or online) is organized. What was making me dizzy was just how much stuff I might have been ignoring over the past few years when my reading was largely circumscribed by search, RSS and bookmarking (with two big exceptions: The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine). Sure, I probably read a lot more today than I did when I subscribed to every “new economy” magazine in the market. But my consumption of technology stories has been more structured, less daring, less serendipitous.

Which brings me to my favorite discovery during the flight — the emergent market for “body computing,” as evidenced by a string of mini-profiles in a section entitled “The Networked Body.” All sorts of interesting stuff happening here, much of it in the health-monitoring market. As it turns out, I was getting ready to train my searching robots on the general topic, but the magazine — one of the purest examples of bundled content, the driving business model in so many pre-2.0 markets — put the stuff right in front of me. And because I’ve been thinking about the topic (for this blog and another project) I especially joyed my magazine experience. I wouldn’t argue that this is the most efficient way of learning about something new, but it certainly was pleasurable.

One of the toughest things about life today is how much is planned and deliberate. A moment of freedom from the network — that is, pulling your body of the network — and you might feel an incredible surge of energy. And before we off off riffing on how technology might be developed to provide a digital equivalent to the print magazine experience, let’s not. No doubt we will have that someday. But let’s savor this moment a little bit longer. May not come again any time soon.

Wired (Bruce Sterling): “Virtual Mirror for Trying on Glasses.” “There’s been so much fuss about head-mounted AR displays that it’s fun to see the fuss inverted: fake glasses installed on somebody’s head by a screen-based system.”

Joe Lamantia: “Geek to Chic: The Cultural Branding of Augmented Reality Experiences.” “Since I wrote about the user experience of augmented reality less than two weeks ago, the most important development is the arrival of augmented iPhone apps (unofficially for the moment, officially in September). Why is this so important, when Wikitude and other AR Android apps have been available for almost a year? Bringing augmented reality to the iPhone changes the cultural assumptions made about AR experiences as a class of offering. Endorsing AR experiences for iPhone users moves augmented reality from the geek realm of Android and Google, to the chic world of Apple. Culturally, the assumptions we make about the new products and services from Apple and Google are driven largely by the differences in way we perceive the two brands. Apple is chic, while Google is geek.”

Associated Press: “At Singularity U, Tech is Savior.” “In the final weeks of their studies, students split into four groups and created projects whose only requirements were that they needed to focus on one of the world’s great challenges and have the potential to improve the lives of a billion people over a decade.” Full disclosure: Singularity University is a client.