Web 2.0: It's happening, ever faster.

[rossshow]

Web 2.0 venerate the amateur and distrust the professional


http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/personal_technology/12976785.htm

An Internet fed mostly by amateurs is frightening


Silicon Valley has its share of would-be utopians. Along with others around the world, they are working overtime to build an online community where the Internet makes everyone equal.

But what if this movement ends up doing more harm than good?

This provocative question is posed by Nicholas G. Carr, an author best known for a controversial 2003 article in the Harvard Business Review arguing that computer technology is so widespread it no longer gives companies a competitive advantage.

Carr kicked off another debate Oct. 3 when he posted an article on his blog, Rough Type (www.roughtype.com), titled ``The amorality of Web 2.0.''

Web 2.0 is a buzz word representing the increasingly popular notion of a new generation of bottom-up Web services.

Blogs, for example, are touted as a way for people outside of government and media to influence public policy. Automated recommendations for books, music and movies are based on the preferences of people like you, rather than the opinions of experienced critics.

Carr, who lives in Carlisle, Mass., regards Web 2.0 as amoral in the sense that Internet is neither a force for good nor evil -- it's only what we make it. That's not a view shared by Web 2.0 true believers.

``From the start, the World Wide Web has been a vessel of quasi-religious longing,'' Carr writes. Believers envision a cyberworld ``that frees us from traditional constraints on our intelligence, our communities, our meager physical selves.''

But the first burst of Web utopianism didn't pan out, he continues. ``The Net turned out to be more about commerce than consciousness, more a mall than a commune. . . . The Internet had transformed many things, but it had not transformed us.''

If the first round was what Carr calls ``spiritual vapor,'' the ``hyper-hyped upgrade'' of Web 2.0 doesn't look much better.

``The promoters of Web 2.0 venerate the amateur and distrust the professional,'' he declares.

Carr's primary example is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), the free Web encyclopedia created by volunteers, with no restriction on who can submit or revise an entry.

``In theory, Wikipedia is a beautiful thing,'' Carr writes.

``In reality, though, Wikipedia isn't very good at all. Certainly, it's useful -- I regularly consult it to get a quick gloss on a subject. But at a factual level it's unreliable, and the writing is often appalling.''

As examples, Carr points out two biographical entries in Wikipedia -- for Bill Gates and Jane Fonda -- that were incoherent and dubious. (The entries have since been upgraded.)

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the informal leader of the Wikipedia community, conceded the point in several messages sent through the Wikipedia mailing list on Oct. 6 and 7 -- although Wales also made it clear he disagrees with many of Carr's ideas.

The entries on Bill Gates and Jane Fonda, Wales said, ``are, quite frankly, a horrific embarrassment.''

Wales continued, repeating a point he's made often: ``I will never accept that we should use freeness as an excuse. . . . We need to take a serious look at why some high-profile articles are delightful, and some are horrible.''

Carr added some perspective last week by proposing what he called the Law of the Wiki: ``Output quality declines as the number of contributors increases. Making matters worse, the best contributors will tend to become more and more alienated as they watch their work get mucked up by the knuckleheads, and they'll eventually stop contributing altogether, leading to a further fall in quality.''

I'm very much on Carr's side of the fence. I don't want to read blogs by political extremists, listen to podcasts recorded by droning amateurs, or watch videos produced by talentless would-be directors -- even though the Internet makes all that possible.

I want to get my news from highly skilled professionals, listen to music by the world's most brilliant performers and composers, and be entertained by big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas.

Of course, I'm biased. I make my living writing this column, and my paycheck is threatened if everyone decides freely available blogs -- even at lesser quality -- are an acceptable substitute.

Carr concludes: ``The layoffs we've recently seen at major newspapers may just be the beginning, and those layoffs should be cause not for self-satisfied snickering but for despair. Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can't imagine anything more frightening.''

Amen.

[rossshow]

http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=SNYC,SNYC:2004-13,SNYC:en&q=%22Web%202.0%22&sa=N&tab=wn

[rossshow]

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20051029UnderstandingWeb20.html

Understanding Web 2.0

[rossshow]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/index.php?p=43

Web 2.0 Humor

[rossshow]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1862522,00.asp



Web 2.0? Why Should We Care? By D. Keith Robinson


Opinion: AJAX, Ruby on Rails, folksonomies. The newest technologies powering the Internet put the audience first. Welcome to the People-centric Web.






If you've been following the latest developments in Web publishing, design and development, then you've certainly heard about "Web 2.0."

It's a term that is, in most cases anyway, meant to define the bleeding edge of Web technology, best practices and implementation. Depending on who's using the term, you could be talking about the Web as a platform for applications, a philosophy in building and designing Web applications, a group of powerful Web technologies, and much more.

You can find the generally accepted "official" definition on Wikipedia.

"Web 2.0" as a term, in other words, is pretty meaningless. And yet, many people are talking about it—and you will only hear more about Web 2 dot 0.

Today's Web and What Really Matters

As part of my weekly column here at Publish.com I'm going to talk about many things that fall under the vast umbrella that you could call Web 2.0.


Technologies such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), Ruby on Rails, Atom, RSS and CSS. Many of which are part of the Web right now, if not widely adopted.
Methodologies like 37 Signals' "Getting Real" and my own ideas of a people-centric Web.
Harder to define subjects like folksonomy and tagging, the long tail, and more.
Click here to read an interview with 37 Signals' Jason Fried.

It's an exciting time on the Web, both for publishers and application developers. I thought I'd take a quick minute to talk about why I feel some of the above items are important and worth paying attention to.

AJAX

AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a term coined by Adaptive Path's Jesse James Garrett. In many ways, AJAX is defining a technology that's been around for a long while—DHTML. Only now, AJAX is at the point where it's actually offering some real value to Web designers and developers. Why? Well, in essence, AJAX is nothing more than a technology that enables a much better experience on the Web. You can do things that help make your applications and pages easier to use and thus add value.

Sure there is a whiz-bang aspect to AJAX, as you can do some really neat things with it, but in the end it's the fact that it can help you help your readers and customers by making their online experience better.

Click here to read about how new technologies are changing how we search for video online.

For example, the way Flickr lets you edit the title or description of the photo simply by clicking on it. There is no separate form to fill out. Everything is right there, on the page, where it should be.

Ruby on Rails

What makes Ruby on Rails an interesting subject is its ability to build solid Web applications quickly. I'm not much of a programmer myself, but there is more than just hype to the whole Ruby on Rails "movement" in application development for the Web.

It's touted as the first "true" Web application development platform, but what really matters is that it's a way to very quickly bring very functional Web applications to market. Applications like 37 Signals' Basecamp are great examples of applications built on the Ruby on Rails platform.

Web Standards, Best Practices and CSS

In many circles this stuff is old hat, yet it hasn't yet been as widely adopted as it probably should be. CSS is a developer-friendly (after an initial learning curve) presentational technology that allows for great power and flexibility when it comes to publishing and designing for the Web.

Click here to read about CSS2 support (or lack thereof) in IE 7.

Web standards-based technology, like CSS (and XHTML), along with industry-accepted best practices like semantic coding, allows for a future proofed markup that has many benefits for both publishers and audiences. Increased accessibility, SEO, shortened development cycles, more flexibility and future proofing are among the most notable.

Getting Real and Smaller Is Better

The philosophies surrounding the Web right now all kind of relate to the idea that getting a lot done with a little is the way to go. There is a revolution going on right now, some say another Internet bubble, but this time it's different. As Seth Godin says, "Small is the new big."

Today the call is to build quickly with the resources you already have and address people's needs simply. Get started quickly and don't get too big too fast. There have been many success stories, like the aforementioned 37 Signals, to illustrate this kind of thinking and it's well worth keeping an eye on.

The People-centric Web

My own little addition to the Web 2.0 mix is what I call The People-centric Web. It's my way of trying to tie the advances in Web technology to the needs, wants and problems of the people that browse, shop, learn and play on the Web.

To me a technology like AJAX is pretty meaningless unless it's used to make something easier or more enjoyable for people to use. When you bring all of the above together and use it to build something that brings people together, then you're talking about a people-centric Web.

Folksonomy and Tagging

"Folksonomy" is an information architecture term coined by Thomas Vander Wal to describe user-created taxonomies of information. It's important because more and more Web applications and publications are making use of this via tagging or social bookmarking.

Flickr, one of my favorite Web applications, makes great use of tagging and social bookmarking services, like del.icio.us and Digg are other good examples.

User-created and/or defined content is going to play a big role in the future of Web publishing. People want to be able to tag, remix and share content across the Web. Tagging is an example of how understanding what people want—the people-centric Web—and then giving that to them can really pay off.

The Present Future

Even though you'll hear the term "Web 2.0" thrown about (although hopefully not too much by me!), it's important to note that most of the things you hear referred to as 2.0 are really things you can and should be thinking about and learning about right now.

We all know the Web moves fast, and while some of the advances seem way ahead of their time, there is a whole lot of room for this stuff right now—today.

[rossshow]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1879827,00.asp



Microsoft Needs to Say No to Web 2.0 By Mary Jo Foley


Opinion: Redmond is looking to extend its applications with Web-based services. But that's as much Web 2.0 as Microsoft needs. (Microsoft Watch)


Microsoft wants, in the worst way, to be cool. Apple and Sony and Google kind of cool.

To Microsoft's credit—at least so far—the company hasn't made the mistake of trying to get an instant infusion of coolness by jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon.

Only a few Softies seem to be all caught up in the Web 2.0 hype. The majority of them seem oblivious to the weak business ideas, buzzwords and bloviation that make me think "Bubble 2.0" every time someone mentions "Web 2.0."

Some Microsoft watchers may characterize Microsoft's failure to talk the Web 2.0/Internet economy lingo as proof that the Redmond software vendor has fallen behind the times.

Undeniably, Microsoft has had some infamous near misses when it comes to capitalizing on new industry trends.

The company almost missed the Web/browser revolution. It came dangerously close to letting Google and Yahoo completely dominate search.



And with its emphasis over the past couple of years on convincing developers and customers to forsake the Web client in favor of the "smart" (fat) client, Microsoft seemed like it was pedaling backwards instead of forward.

But just as there were some folks in the tech industry who wisely decided against trading their real, tangible jobs for spots at DrKoop.com, Kozmo.com and Pets.com, there are thousands of Microsoft employees who seem interested in building less-glamorous but more useful products like Visual Studio, Office and BizTalk Server.

On Tuesday this week, when Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Chief Technology Ray Ozzie will hold a tech show-and-tell in San Francisco, we'll see just how well Microsoft will be able to resist the temptation to claim it's a charter member of the Web 2.0 club.

[rossshow]

http://www.betanews.com/article/The_Buzz_Microsoft_Upgrades_to_Web_20/1130966734



The Buzz: Microsoft Upgrades to Web 2.0
By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews
November 2, 2005, 4:25 PM
Microsoft on Tuesday announced its highly-anticipated lineup of online services, called Windows Live and Office Live. The news has received much attention from tech pundits and throughout the blogosphere. Read on for a selection of what people are saying about Redmond's latest move and tell us what you think.

"There's been a lot of chatter about how this is a response to Google or how it's Microsoft being dragged into offering these type of services at the expense of losing it's traditional market for Office apps. Well, that analysis is all wrong. Microsoft has been planning this for quite some time, long before it would appear as a response to Google or anyone else. Let's also make one thing clear, these services aren't about replacing Windows or Office nor is this a retreat from the traditional Office applications. If you're looking to replace your Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook with this set of offerings, you're looking in the wrong place."

[rossshow]

http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2005/nov/1201196.htm

VoIP Fuels Web 2.0

By RICH TEHRANI
President & Group Editor-in-Chief

A new beta of Yahoo! Maps was recently released and I am impressed. Google has garnered much attention recently with it s new maps service and I am sure the pressure was felt by Yahoo! to one-up the company. They have. The new Yahoo! Maps beta is exceptional and I think I am a pretty tough critic.



The major difference between what Yahoo! does and Google is the technology behind the maps. While Google uses AJAX, Yahoo! uses Flash. I am a big fan of AJAX as it really speeds up web-based applications. Having said that, Yahoo!’s new map initiative is slicker and faster. It does however require an initialization/download before working. On our corporate T3 this took about 15 seconds.

I wonder if the success of Yahoo! Maps – assuming it is as successful as I think, will slow down the growth of AJAX. But these are esoteric issues best left to developers and the average person shouldn’t be concerned about what is behind the scenes.

What average Joes should care about however is the really useful feature of putting local search results on the map. What this means is that you an see the restaurants, ATMS and any other sort of business in a certain area.

Google Maps can do this as well but with Yahoo! when you mouse over the different businesses on the left hand margin, the corresponding icon on the map changes to let you know where it is. So the Yahoo! integration is as also slicker in my opinion.

The better mapping technology gets the more people will use these maps to find their way. Furthermore, the better the integration of local businesses with mapping, the more money Google and Yahoo! will make. You see it is only a matter of time before you are able to call businesses by clicking on an icon on one of these maps.

Will Google and Yahoo! charge vendors for this services? Probably. I would imagine this is the most logical way to generate revenue from such services. So VoIP now becomes a tool to not save money but instead to make it. VoIP itself, a technology that is looking for new killer apps is itself a killer application!

This is not the first time voice over IP has been viewed this way. After all Skype’s sales price of 2 billion dollars plus was predicated on the killer-app nature of the technology behind the world’s leading peer to peer communications service.

VoIP is more than just a way to save money. It is becoming the fuel powering Web 2.0 application engines! It seems every few weeks that VoIP becomes the enabler for another successful business model. The power and flexibility of IP communications is staggering to me and the future of VoIP 2.0 gets brighter and brighter as more and more Web 2.0 applications start to rely on VoIP to fuel their revenue-generating success.

[rossshow]

http://www.corante.com/getreal/archives/2005/11/09/web_20_compact_definition.php





Tim O'Reilly, who asserts that he is not fond of definitions (hmmm... what a strange world that would be, without at least approximate definitions) offered this as a handwave at Web 2.0:

[from O'Reilly Radar > Web 2.0: Compact Definition? (http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html) ] Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

In my recent travels interviewing a batch of incredibly focused Web 2.0 folks, I have uncovered a few central tendencies in their approach to developing Web 2.0 apps:


Users First -- The user experience is a proxy for the user, and all of the folks I touched base with so far agree that user experience is the pivot point of everything. That means that the norms of human expectations, social interaction, and interface goals become the central motif of these apps. For example, sharing with others becomes a basic principle, not something tacked on later.
Build from personal need -- In every case, these visionaries have decided to build something because they wanted to exist for their own personal use.
Build small, fast, and iteratively -- The nature of Web 2.0 app frameworks, and why they have evolved, is to support a extremely agile development mantra. But across the board, I have seen very small teams building the core functionality of some potentially larger product, and rolling it out to real users to see how it works. And then respond to feedback, and roll out the next version. This is not just a technique for the initial development stage of these products: its here forever.
Build small, focused apps, that could serve as building blocks in larger assemblages -- All these folks are resisting the tempation to bloat apps with more and more features, opting instead to build small, highly focused apps that could be integrated (though APIs) into larger assemblages (mash-ups).
More to follow, but I thought I would offer some bottom-up thoughts on the 'spirit of Web 2.0' discussion raging these days....

[rossshow]

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/science/20051108TDY18001.htm



Web 2.0tapping collective selfishness to create a revolution

John Jerney



Listening to people talk about Silicon Valley these days, you could be excused for thinking that everyone is partying like it's 1999. Companies, such as Google, Yahoo and eBay, are swelling in stature, smaller companies are getting media attention disproportionate to their size, and Web technology conferences are overflowing with attendees and the press.

But its 2005, not 1999, and careful listening reveals that the party has indeed ended. What has emerged in its place is a more guarded optimism, an understanding that technology can indeed change society, but not every technology, and not all at once.

Having said that, there is no denying a genuine buzz around the Silicon Valley about a loosely connected set of technologies that have come to be called Web 2.0.

The term Web 2.0 actually originated with Dale Dougherty and Craig Cline, who were looking to christen a new conference to highlight what they saw as an emerging new business model on the Internet.

The first Web 2.0 Conference was held in October 2004, and the most recent event finished just a few weeks ago.

But what is Web 2.0, and what makes an organization qualify as Web 2.0 company? In what follows, I have summarized what I think are the most salient factors to both questions, starting first with the technology.

Web 2.0 is about interactivity. Think about the differences between a typical desktop and Web application. Which do you prefer to use? For most people, the answer is obvious. Today's desktop applications are generally more responsive, more intuitive, and, in a word, more interactive.

Technologies associated with Web 2.0, such as AJAX, strive to bring this degree to interactivity to Web-based interfaces. AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, enables Web applications to appear as if they are executing locally on your computer. They do this by minimizing the number of trips to the server and refreshing only information that has changed on-screen instead of reloading pages completely every time.

To see a good example of an AJAX-powered application, check out Zimbra's Web-based e-mail application at www.zimbra.com

Web 2.0 is about reusing and mashing up content. One of the most important features of Web 2.0 is the ability for people to take content on one or more sites, and use it in a completely different context, with the blessing of the content owners of course.

This recombinant model for information generation is being called mash ups on the Web. One way to create a mash up is by subscribing to syndicated content from multiple sources. Protocols such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) package news using the popular XML data format, making it easy for third parties to add value and intelligence through correlation, analysis, visualization, or simple repackaging

Another way to mash up content is to use programming interfaces supplied by information providers. Paul Rademacher used this approach to create www.housingmaps.com, a clever combination of apartment listings on Craigslist visualized using Google Maps.

Web 2.0 is about making the Web into a platform. Not too long ago, computer applications were monolithic. Each application, for example, included its own logic for common operations, such as printing or for sending an email message.

Component technologies changed that on desktop systems, enabling applications to share services and pool their talents. A technology known as Web Services brings that model of specialized components and services to the networked world.

Web 2.0 draws much of its power from easily accessible services that developers and users can mix and match as required to perform novel tasks. With Web Services, the Web becomes a platform, much like Microsoft Windows or Apple's Mac OS X, only potentially much more powerful.

That is the technology. Now what does it mean to be a Web 2.0 company? Here are some basic rules.

Have your users produce the content. Tim O'Reilly, president and chief executive officer of O'Reilly Media, Inc., encourages companies to adopt an "architecture of participation," whereby "users pursuing their own selfish interests build collective value as an automatic byproduct." Larry Wall, the creator of popular Perl scripting language, has compared this model to an onion whereby users are encouraged by design to continually add value by expanding outer layers.

Key to the success of user-generated content is the concept of trust. Web 2.0 companies have to work under the assumption that, as a collective, users can be trusted to produce beneficial results. O'Reilly goes one step further and suggests that sites adopt "radical trust." The Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com), the Web's free encyclopedia, is perhaps the best example of radical trust.

Once you have allowed users to produce content, make that content easily addressable, in fine granularity, and give them the power and permission to mix and mash.

Enable users to characterize information. Sites such as Yahoo have spent countless dollars to organize information into a useful taxonomy. Web 2.0 companies are finding that there is great economy and value in enabling users to dissect and sort information on their own. This process can be as simple as enabling people to add keywords to content, such as news articles, photographs, or Podcasts, a process known as tagging.

Tagging often produces strange, overlapping characterizations with surprisingly beneficial results. Some have called the results a "folksonomy."

Lighten your company and adopt a nonstop delivery cycle. Web 2.0 companies are all about leverage, working with minuscule funding (compared to their dot.com predecessors) and a skeletal staff and infrastructure. These companies are quick to use existing components and technologies freely available on the Web and, in turn, publish their work as open source projects to encourage contributions from all quarters.

Web 2.0 also redefines the software release cycle. In extreme cases, updates and improvements may get posted on a daily basis. Software also tends to get released at earlier stages of development to encourage adoption, adaptation, and improvement.

As you can see, Web 2.0 could be the vanguard of an interesting paradigm shift in the computer industry. With a little luck and a couple more years, we might yet just be partying like its 1999 again

[tekobari]

Ross, this is fascinating shit. It makes my brain hurt. Please, keep us with this. It's like a damn seminar on the "future." (now?)

[tekobari]

Ross, this is fascinating shit. It makes my brain hurt. Please, keep us with this. It's like a damn seminar on the "future." (now?)I meant, keep us up with this. *sigh*

[rossshow]

I know! It's totally future tech!

When I first saw something on this, I knew it had to be locked on to my radar screen.

I set up a series of google search strings just to find more about Web 2.0...

[rossshow]

Mashing, Mash Ups, whatever you call it, I dig that part of it....

This recombinant model for information generation is being called mash ups on the Web

Web 2.0 is about reusing and mashing up content. One of the most important features of Web 2.0 is the ability for people to take content on one or more sites, and use it in a completely different context, with the blessing of the content owners of course.

OH, Yeah. This too:

Have your users produce the content

Duh. I've been saying that for years.

[rossshow]

http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m11/i10/s03

eBay Adds RSS Capability to eBay Stores
By Ina Steiner
AuctionBytes.com
November 10, 2005
eBay is set to announce a new feature in Stores. Storeowners are now able to create an RSS feed of Store inventory so buyers can see when new items have been listed using RSS readers. RSS is an increasingly popular way for Internet users to receive instant content updates from various websites or sources in one central location. Many classifieds and comparison-shopping sites offer RSS feeds by type of item and location to make it easier for shoppers to be notified when an item they are looking for is listed. eBay Store owners must set the RSS preference for their stores within My eBay in order to enable the ability to offer an RSS feed of their store inventory.

[rossshow]

http://www.computerpartner.nl/article.php?news=int&id=1860

Ozzie memo shows Microsoft rolling with punches
9 nov 2005 | 23:07 uur

A memo written by Microsoft Corp. Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie sheds more light on directions in which Microsoft already has been moving to ensure it doesn't miss the opportunity of the next generation of Web-based services, what industry analysts have dubbed "Web 2.0."

In recent months, Microsoft has showed that future versions of Windows and Office will support collaboration and personalized desktop services, based on a new business model that leverages ad sales and recurring services revenue, that have turned the company's most daunting rival Google Inc. into the darling of Wall Street. (Google's stock price closed at US$379.15 Wednesday.)

Rather than reflect a sea change for Microsoft, however, as some reports have said, Ozzie's memo, viewed by the IDG News Service Wednesday, merely reinforces strategic moves the company has been slowly unfolding for several months.

The memo, embedded in an Oct. 30 e-mail sent by Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates to Microsoft executives and engineers, proves that the company, which has shown a reluctance to let go of its software legacy, is finally ready to take decisive action to adapt to current industry changes. It's something Microsoft has had to do all along in varying degrees, said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director with Jupiter Research.

"Microsoft withstood an awful lot," Gartenberg said. "First it was the Web, Internet applications [and] Netscape, then cell phones and Linux, and now it's Web 2.0. We've come full circle. Microsoft has already proven they can weather the storm, so you have to assume they're going to play in this game."

Gartenberg said that a popular misconception about the rivalry between Microsoft and Google is the idea that Google must fail in order for Microsoft to succeed. "That's not the way the world is working," he said.

Microsoft already has many of the tools to continue to grow even as Google guns for it, he said, but the software company is not moving quickly enough. Now Microsoft's challenge is to turn its successful software products into a seamless services platform, something Ozzie calls for in his memo.

For example, one of the key plans for the Microsoft Business Division, according to the memo, is to extend Office so it can easily connect up to other applications. Microsoft already has said it would make standard XML (Extensible Markup Language) the default file format for the next version of the productivity suite, code-named Office 12, a move that could make it easier for other applications to communicate with Office for the creation of services.

"What should we do to bring Office's classic COM-based publish-and-subscribe capabilities to a world where RSS and XML have become the de facto publish-and-subscribe mechanisms?" Ozzie questions in his memo in a section that describes the notion of "Connected Office."

Microsoft also has revealed plans to include RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, as a thread running through multiple applications in the next version of its operating system, Windows Vista. Vista is scheduled to be available at the end of next year.

Rather than simply steal a page out of Google's playbook and offer free, ad-based services like the ones Microsoft launched last week, Windows Live and Office Live, Microsoft is planning to use its existing software as a platform on which its massive developer community can build new services to offer customers, analysts said

"Ad-supported software for consumers and very small businesses is only the beginning," Charlene Li, a Forrester Research Inc. analyst, wrote in a research note released last week. "Microsoft's real aim is to build and host a service platform that will attract the investment of developers looking for a way to reach these market sectors."

Ozzie's memo reflects as much. He introduces the concept of a "seamless OS" that is designed for "today's multi-PC, multi-device, work anywhere, Web-based world."

He also wrote that the company must focus on enabling "seamless productivity" so customers can "create, find and organize documents and data among all the desktops, devices, servers and services to which you have access, and with all the others with whom you need to work, through 'shared space' products that are Internet service-based, enterprise server-based and directly peer-to-peer."

However, one thing Microsoft must do to sell developers on this vision is to overcome a perception within the Web 2.0 community that it is slow to innovate and is inflexible when it comes to what tools can be used to develop on its platform, Li wrote.

Indeed, one of the things that has posed a problem for Microsoft is the speed with which Google has been able to deliver Web-based services and derive revenue from them. Microsoft, being a much larger company with a legacy customer base, is not able to change gears or deliver new services as quickly as the smaller, more agile Google. However, this does not mean Microsoft will get left in the dust, Gartenberg said.

"A company like Microsoft takes longer to do things, but that doesn't mean Microsoft is asleep at the wheel any more than they were in 1996," he said.

Ozzie acknowledged in his memo that Microsoft must be more supportive of lightweight development technologies such as REST (Representational State Transfer) JavaScript and PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) that developers find easy to use for quickly building new applications.

Microsoft is not just getting its technology in line with its services vision. The company also is taking steps to make its licensing more compatible with a services model, analysts said. Microsoft has said that enterprise customers will need to buy its Software Assurance service along with Windows Vista, when it ships next year. This shows that Microsoft plans to drive a model where customers pay regularly for access to a network of software updates rather than a packaged product, analysts said

[folies bergere]

oh ross, thanks for this thread and putting so much in one place.

tek is right it is fascinating.

i really appreciate it when you wrangle all these links.

thanks!

:1clap5:

[rossshow]

is THIS Ebay 2.0???


http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/08/etsy-is-ebay-20

http://blog.etsy.com/


A relatively new company called Etsy has recently captured my attention. Etsy is a P2P ecommerce company (like ebay) that currently limits sales to handmade items. It’s smart to focus on a niche to iron things out…and Etsy could easily expand into other categories as well.

Etsy does lots of things like ebay - They charge sellers a listing fee and final sale percentage (although at $.10 and 3.5% they are way below what ebay charges), there is an ebay-like feedback system (side note: there is a huge market waiting out there if someone would create an independent third party feedback system with open data and APIs), and they have integrated paypal as a payment option.

Unlike ebay, Etsy has architected the buyer experience from the ground up using web 2.0 priciples.

Tagging

First, Etsy has a very flat taxonomy - top level categories such as Bags & Purses, Toys, etc. Everything underneath these top level tags is based on seller tagging. For instance, look at the “Bags & Purses” category and note the tags (called subcategories) on the right hand side. Click on anyone of these and you go deeper into the taxonomy…although really it is a folksonomy. Further refine items by clicking on additional tags, or on a different set of tags based on materials used to produce the product. The benefit of this folksonomy is that it is user generated and based on popularity. If a new item gets hot fast, the folksonomy will take that into account. It’s a beautiful use of tags and the first launched product I’ve seen that does this.

Flash

Etsy also does some amazing things with flash - the geolocator on the home page is a great way to find sellers by location. You can also use their “shop by color” widget…less useful but an interesting feature. Finally, they have a time machine feature, although I can’t figure out what it does.

Nice product. It looks like more features are coming, too

[rossshow]

Oh! Very good link. Please, check it out.

http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228

[rossshow]

Wireless 2.0

http://rogeliochoy.blogspot.com/2005/11/wireless-20.html


One of platforms I help manage is eBay_Wireless (http://pages.ebay.com/wireless/) (the only wireless application which lets you actually bid and buy something via phone. Check it out on your phone - wap.ebay.com). While there's not much I can say about our future plans specifically, what I can say is that the potential for Wireless in general is huge. And no, I'm not basing this on the level of VC investment going into Wireless these days... that's completely effect not cause.

With the huge penetration of wireless phones and services worldwide (multiples larger than PC usage), the carriers, handset manufacturers and wireless solutions providers know they are sitting on something explosive. In the past, handsets were highly constrained in terms of the wireless OS and end-applications available for users (the reason RIM even exists to some degree). Having seen what's coming on the software side of things, the separation between PC and wireless phone is about to close completely. With the launch of EVDO and other super-fast wireless data access points, aggressive moves from Microsoft for both wireless OS and the 'mobilization' of MS Exchange (great article on this by Bill_Burnham (http://billburnham.blogs.com/burnhamsbeat/2005/11/500m_folly_wire.html) ), and the increasing concentration of wireless OS in general (Symbian/iMode/CE), ubiquitous/fast wireless Internet access (and in turn availability and usage of Web 2.0 applications on the handset) will become the norm within less than five years. This is all coming together quickly folks -- driving in part the fast emergence and focus on Web 2.0 applications and the increasing focus of so many major wireless and Internet players in the space. Wireless 2.0 is the here and now.

[rossshow]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=58


Yellowikis - A Case Study of a Web 2.0 Business, Part 1

Posted by Richard MacManus @ 10:16 pm



Continuing my series on disruptive Web 2.0 businesses (http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=36), Yellowikis (http://www.yellowikis.org/) is an open business listings site that has the potential to shake up the Yellow Pages industry. What Wikipedia is to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Yellowikis may be to Business listings. In an email interview, Yellowikis founder Paul Youlten explained the background of Yellowikis, its business model and why he thinks it's disruptive. I'm going to run the interview over 3 posts, starting with this one.

"We didn't really set out to be disruptive - but we seem to be causing some sleepless nights among the $22bn Yellow Pages industry", said Youlten at the beginning of our exchange. "Their management consultants asked us 'Who is funding you?' and 'Why are you giving away valuable business information for nothing?' They don't understand that it has cost under $500 to set the whole thing up. And $350 of that was on t-shirts."

I asked Paul to elaborate on that. How did Yellowikis come to be and what are its plans for the future?

It all started when Paul's 14 year old daughter, Rosa, added an article to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) about a small company she had done research on for a homework assignment. It subsequently got deleted by the Wikipedia editors because it was "non-encyclopedic". Wanting to find a place that would accept such information, Paul and his daughter Part 2 of this case study ("][/url]then spent a couple of hours Googling for a Yellow Pages "done the wiki way", but they couldn't find one. So, as Paul explained, "we decided to set one up."

Paul Youlten used to work in business development at Reuters Business Information (now Factiva), so he's familiar with "the business of business information". He says the information in the Yellow Pages is often poor and he saw an opportunity for wikis to improve the situation, using their collaborative and open nature.

"Setting up Yellowikis just seemed an interesting challenge", Paul wrote in one of his emails to me, "so I spent a couple of weekends struggling with Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP and actually managed to get the MediaWiki software up and running. Rosa designed a logo and we were off."

Yellowikis is still a young site, but Paul was encouraged when a couple of months ago someone he didn't know developed a Wikipedia bot that automatically transfers (or "transwikis") companies that are listed for deletion on the English Wikipedia to Yellowikis. So that's solved the problem his daughter had initially, when her Wikipedia article about a small company got rejected. There's a cliche in Web development that the best businesses come from 'scratching an itch' - in other words, building something to solve a problem you've experienced yourself. That's certainly been the case with Yellowikis!

At about the time the transwikis bot was developed, Paul noticed that his Yellowikis project was attracting the attention of management consultants from the Yellow Pages industry. Paul explained:

"They all wanted to know the same things: 1) who was funding Yellowikis and 2) what my plans to make money were. One of the leading publishing consultants for Yellow Pages in the USA asked me: "Unless you are in government development, why provide this business info for free?" Another European consultant asked "It seems a strange business model - without paid for advertising or subscribers, how are you going to make a return on your investment?"."

Paul was taken aback by these comments, because Yellowikis (like a lot of Web 2.0 businesses) was developed very cheaply, uses open source technology and relies on word-of-mouth for marketing. This means Yellowikis "can do things that traditional Yellow Pages publishers can't do" - for example adding a new language, Geo-codes, more categories. "It just happens", Paul said.

So the low cost of running the business, together with ability to develop and release upgrades rapidly, means Yellowikis has some distinct advantages over its traditional Yellow Pages competitors.

In [url="http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=59) of a young Web 2.0 business, I'll outline what makes Yellowikis tick (http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=59) and explore further its potential to disrupt the multi-billion dollar Yellow Pages industry

[rossshow]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=59


Yellowikis: a Web 2.0 Case Study, Part 2 - Industry Disruption and The Competition

Posted by Richard MacManus @ 9:10 pm



Yesterday I wrote (http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=58) about Yellowikis (http://www.yellowikis.org/), an open business listings site that has the potential to shake up the Yellow Pages industry. The reason I chose Yellowikis for this case study is because it has a lot of the characteristics of a Web 2.0 business - it was developed by a small team (2 people in this case), it was cheap to build, uses open source infrastructure, relies on word-of-mouth advertising, and perhaps most importantly it will only be successful if it achieves network effects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effects). Which brings me to the number 1 piece of feedback I got from Part 1.

Lack of data It's fair to say that Yellowikis hasn't yet reached the tipping point. There isn't a lot of content on the site so far and it has few users. Mike Arrington also noted (http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=44) that it doesn’t have tagging and an open API for the data. Mike thinks this will "get the network effect flowing" and I agree. Yellowikis demonstrates the classic dilemma of the current generation of web applications and services - in order The Yellow Pages Commando ("][/url]to be successful and/or generate revenue, it needs a lot of people to both contribute content and use it.

There's also a question around the structure of the content. Dick Larkin, who works in the Yellow Pages industry and writes a newsletter called [url="http://ypcommando.com/), wrote in an email that Yellowikis faces issues "gathering sufficient data that is consistently structured for ease of use by the searchers."

Can it disrupt an Industry? To find out more about the business environment Yellowikis is challenging, I exchanged emails with Greg Sterling, Program Director of The Kelsey Group (http://www.kelseygroup.com/) - a leading consultancy in the Yellow Pages industry. Greg thinks Yellowikis is a medium-to-long term experiment and that "had Wikipedia not gone before and, remarkably, proved what online communities are capable of it would be quite easy to dismiss this."

According to Greg Sterling, the traditional Yellow Pages industry took in revenues of approximately US$26.1 billion in 2004 on a global basis. The US market represented almost US$15 billion of that global figure. Web-based Yellow Pages services have so far not had much impact on this industry - Greg put their revenue growth in the very low single digits. However, he said "long term, the migration of usage from traditional media to the Internet will have an impact on revenues. That plays to Yellowikis’ long-term potential strength."

So the upshot, according to Greg Sterling, is that Yellowikis does not appear to have significant disruptive potential over the short term. "It's currently 'under the radar' and thus without much content", Greg wrote. "There's a kind of chicken and egg problem. Over the long term, however, it could ultimately affect the ability of established publishers to charge for inclusion in their online directories."

The Competition Let's not forget also the competitive threats to Yellowikis. The telephone companies are the major obstacle. In an article last year entitled The Story of YellowPages.com (http://ypcommando.com/articles/ypc.html), Dick Larkin outlined how SBC and BellSouth teamed to buy the domain name and business YellowPages.com for nearly $100 million in November 2004. So they're serious about business listings on the Internet!

The big Internet companies also represent a significant threat. John Battelle wrote a post (http://battellemedia.com/archives/001270.php) in February 2005 that suggested Yahoo could become "the new Yellow Pages", because of its ability to aggregate business listings through Yahoo! Local (http://local.yahoo.com/). Google also has such a product, called Google Local (http://local.google.com/).

Then there is the question of whether a Wiki is really the best way to collect and distribute Yellow Pages data. Software Consultant Marty Himmelstein wrote an article in Feburary entitled "Local Search - The Internet IS the Yellow Pages" (PDF download (http://www.longhill.com/docs/ieee-local-search.pdf)). The gist of the article is summarized in a comment Marty left (http://battellemedia.com/archives/001270.php#comment_9877) on John Battelle's blog:

"The question I pose and try to answer in my article is "What would it take for the Internet to duplicate and enhance the functionality of the print and Internet Yellow Pages?" A key challenge is to aggregate information for the millions of businesses that don't have a web presence. One way to do this is to decentralize the job of collecting this data, to entities that are close to these businesses, such as Chambers of Commerce, or trade organizations. These entities have relationships of trust with both the public and the businesses they represent. They can act as gatekeepers, ensuring the data they collect or certify is authentic."

So Marty believes entities such as Chambers of Commerce or trade organizations are best placed to take Yellow Pages data to the Internet - not collaborative wikis for the people.

Summary It's obvious Yellowikis is potentially disruptive to the multi-billion dollar Yellow Pages industry. But it's needs a lot of user help to do that. Data needs to be input - and in a structured format. Lots more people need to use Yellowikis and the system needs to scale up along with it. Things such as tagging and open APIs, as suggested by Mike Arrington (http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=44), may well help push things along.

In a nutshell: Yellowikis needs to achieve the same level of success that Wikipedia has had, in order to disrupt the Yellow Pages market.

In Part 3 of this series, I will look at alternative markets for Yellowikis and also investigate the design lessons for other Web 2.0 companies

[rossshow]

rogelio choy, again.

http://rogeliochoy.blogspot.com/2005/11/eh-tu-amazon.html


Keeping up the Roman conquest analogy, looks like the concepts behind Web 2.0 are winning hearts and minds.

Next to fall was Amazon which just introduced their ProductWiki (http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2005/11/amazons_custome.html), joining Yahoo's Shoposphere (http://www.shoposphere.com/) and Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/), and Microsoft's Max (http://www.microsoft.com/max/) (and yes Google's Base :P). You could argue that user-generated content is at the heart of eBay (listings, transactions, feedback, etc).

That said, the recently launched Reviews&Guides (http://reviews.ebay.com/) is a great new indicator of eBay's ongoing commitment to our community and the base principles behind Web 2.0. More to come, stay tuned :)

[rossshow]

November 29, 2005

http://www.corante.com/betweenlawyers/archives/2005/11/29/web_20_for_the_practice_of_law_a_must_read_from_th e_wired_gc.php

Web 2.0 for the Practice of Law - A Must Read from the Wired GC

Posted by Dennis M. Kennedy

As many of my friends know, I've been bitten by the Web 2.0 bug lately and done a lot of thinking (but not very much public writing yet) about how Web 2.0 might be applied in and to the delivery of legal services and practice of law. Steve Nipper (http://www.rethinkip.com/) has also recently raised the question about how to bring Web 2.0 into what is fundamentally a Web 1.0 world.

I think that this is a very important, yet quite esoteric, topic. However, The Wired GC (http://www.wiredgc.com/) has made an enormous contribution to the discussion with his post called "Web 2.0, Law Style (http://www.wiredgc.com/2005/11/29/web-20-law-style/)," which definitely makes my "must read" category. It's both a good introduction and a map of the territory and its implications.

I expect to see not only more discussion of the topic (and I invite you to use the comments to this post as one method to do that), but some actual announcements of things that fall into the Web 2.0 category, including at least one of the ideas mentioned in the Wired GC's post in the very near future. In fact, I'm quite sure of it.

[rossshow]

http://www.techcrunch.com/


Backbeat Podcast Network Launches (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/30/backbeat-medias-podcasting-network/)



http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/backbeatlogo.jpgThere’s a ton of podcasting news coming out. I’ll profile a couple of other companies tomorrow but I thought it was worth mentioning that BackBeat Media (http://www.backbeatmedia.com/) launched a podcast network (http://www.backbeatmedia.com/about/networks.html) today with three initial participants - Coverville (http://www.coverville.com/), Evil Genius Chronicles (http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org/) and The Mac Observer’s Mac Geek Gab (http://www.macgeekgab.com/).

My understanding is that Backbeat will provide advertising sponsorships and some operational support to participating podcasters. Press release is here (http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20051130005651&newsLang=en).




Gtalkr, Flash + Gtalk (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/30/gtalkr-flash-gtalk/)



http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/gtalkrlogo.jpg (http://www.gtalkr.com/)Gtalkr (http://www.gtalkr.com/), a flash-based website to access Google’s Gtalk, launched (http://gtalkr.wordpress.com/2005/11/29/gtalkr-is-out-the-door/) yesterday. It allows you to access your Gtalk instant messaging account without a client, from any computer.

Comparisons will inevitably be drawn to Meebo (http://www.meebo.com/), a similar service, although built on Ajax, that allows users to access a variety of instant messaging services (including gtalk). I wrote about Meebo (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/09/14/meebo-instant-messaging-with-ajax/) back in September, and the passionate user comments to that post illustrate the popularity of these services.

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/gtalkr.jpgGtalkr is taking a different approach by focusing just on Gtalk, and adding in additional features to, I assume, get users to use it more as a home page or dashboard. Gmail emails are pulled in as well as Yahoo maps (Google maps doesn’t have a flash API, Yahoo does). Gtalkr also plans on pulling in addtiional services, such as del.icio.us and flickr. Independent Flash developers can create (http://www.gtalkr.com/extensions/)these extensions as well.

It’s a useful tool, and like most flash applications I see, very well designed. It does not support gtalk voice (just text IM), and a few bugs are being worked out. See Brian Benzinger (http://www.solutionwatch.com/293/web-based-google-talk-with-gtalkr/) and Om Malik (http://gigaom.com/2005/11/29/gtalkr-web-based-gtalk-client/) for more.




Gada.be Refines Features (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/30/gadabe-refines-features/)



http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/gadalogo.jpgChris Pirillo’s Gaba.be (http://www.gada.be/) continues to roll out new features weekly (http://chris.pirillo.com/blog/_archives/2005/11/29/1427779.html). They’ve also made a change to the URL structure for tag queries to become better indexed by search engines.

This tag based search engine is still somewhat under the radar for many people, but it is quickly becoming one of my most-used sites for research. It’s also the best place I’ve found to do cross-application photo searches (http://gada.be/p/dog).

My original profile of Gada.be is here (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/10/gada-tag-meta-search-done-right/).

[rossshow]

New Web 2.0 services of note

Posted by Richard MacManus @ 12:21 pm

http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/index.php?p=72


I receive a lot of emails about new services and products, so I thought I'd share some of the recent ones.

Drag Drop Site Creator (http://www.dragdropsitecreator.com/) is being billed as "first AJAX based site builder". It is intended primarily for web hosting companies, to offer Drag Drop Site Creator as an additional service to their hosting customers. It claims to push AJAX "a step further by allowing users to build entire web sites within their web browsers." It sounds kind of like a Homestead for the Web 2.0 era? I haven't reviewed it myself, but it got mixed reviews at digg (http://www.digg.com/technology/AJAX_Drag_Drop_Site_Creator). I know there are a lot of IT people who read ZDNet, so I'd be interested in your comments in the Talkback section.

Atlassian (http://www.atlassian.com/) is an Australian company that provides enterprise software solutions. The reason I'm mentioning them is a tip I got from a reader, who said " rumour has it they are doing more business than JotSpot and Socialtext combined but with no VC and not much coverage as I can tell!" That's impressive, but note that it's unverified. Atlassian also have a number of blogs (http://blogs.atlassian.com/).

Strategic Board (http://www.strategicboard.com/) is a search engine that aggregates IT related blogs and commercial RSS feeds. Every search result has an RSS feed and it's a free service. Founder Dudu Mimran says that "you can use Strategic Board to easily track competitors, technologies and even specific people in the IT industry." In my testing, it reminded me a lot of existing blog search engines Technorati and Feedster.

ScoopGO! (http://www.scoopgo.com/) is another example of a 'roll your own' search engine, like Rollyo (http://rollyo.com/) and Eurekster Swicki (http://swicki.eurekster.com/). It's a search engine that enables you to search through feeds you choose. Incidentally I noticed Rollyo got mentioned on BBC's Click Online (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4491220.stm) program, so it's a hot company currently.

Jigsaw (http://www.jigsaw.com/) is a marketplace for business contacts. Its members buy, sell and trade business contacts ("think eBay swap meet for Hoovers corporate data" according to the email I got). Business 2.0 magazine called it (http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1054469,00.html) "virtual schmoozing", which seems an apt description.

Glypho (http://www.glypho.com/) is an interesting site that offers "a fun new way for everyone to participate in novel writing." It's basically a collaborative novel-writing app. Someone posts a story idea and then others contribute character and plot ideas. Anybody can write chapters and the best are voted in by the users.

Inform (http://www.inform.com/inform/inform.htm) is an online news platform getting a lot of attention. It recently added audio and video content, as well as new RSS syndication tools. TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/05/informcom-re-launches-with-major-feature-changes/), which was originally unimpressed with Inform, now thinks it's "an excellent resource and continues to improve dramatically."

That'll do for now. This is just a small sample of all the product emails I get and it shows just how much innovation is going on currently. I'm sure many people will wonder about how viable some of these things are as businesses, which is a fair question. But for now it's fun to get a taste of what's being built out there in Web 2.0-land.

[rossshow]

Protopage v 2.0 (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/05/protopage-v-20/)

Posted by Michael Arrington (http://www.crunchnotes.com/) | Discussion: 5 comments (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/05/protopage-v-20/#comments)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/protopagelogo.jpgProtopage (http://www.protopage.com/) launched (http://blog.protopage.com/2005/12/05/protopage-v2-beta-released/) version 2.0 of its Ajax desktop today. I previously profiled Protopage (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/08/18/profile-protopage/) in August.

There are a number of new and interesting features, which are described in the Protopage blog (http://blog.protopage.com/). It continues to be extremely fast and easy to use.

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/protopage.jpgProtopage was an earlyish entrant into the Ajax desktop market, which is now crowded with products like Netvibes (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/09/16/netvibes-personal-homepage/), Google (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/07/26/profile-google-rss-reader/), Microsoft Live (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/01/windows-live-more-than-an-ajax-desktop/) and Zoozio (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/04/zoozio-hey-another-ajax-desktop/). Goowy (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/17/goowy-charges-ahead/) is also a choice, of course, although they have chosen Flash over Ajax for their platform. Microsoft Live is the only extensible product, with a growing number of third party widgets (http://microsoftgadgets.com/) available for use.

And there is yet another Ajax desktop product entering the market in the next few weeks that also has an open API for third party developers to add functionality. As I mentioned above, this is an extremely crowded market - with uncertain economics.

[rossshow]

Boltfolio Launches - Share Any Media (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/05/boltfolio-launches-share-any-media/)

Posted by Michael Arrington (http://www.crunchnotes.com/) | Discussion: 2 comments (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/05/boltfolio-launches-share-any-media/#comments)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/boltfoliologo.jpg (http://www.boltfolio.com/)I received scored of emails on “Comparing The Flickrs of Video (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/06/the-flickrs-of-video/)” post last month from passionate users of various products as well as a number of stealth companies preparing for launch. One of the most interesting companies to launch in this space is New York based Boltfolio (http://www.boltfolio.com/). Until recently, Boltfolio was unknown to me.

What I like best about Boltfolio is that they have unlimited storage and allow uploading of virtually any media file - photos, video and audio. Users should not have to go to multiple sites to upload different kinds of content.

They incorporate tagging to assist with search, and also have blogging and other tools to allow users to share content. They also allow for private and public settings on each piece of content.

This is another worthy addition to the exploding ranks of media storage and playback. I’ve said this before, but one of the key tools to getting power users is having a client-based uploading tool like flickr (http://www.flickr.com/tools/).

[rossshow]

http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogtalk/wpn-58-20051206WhyWeb20MatterstoyourBusinessFirstSteps.ht ml


Why Web 2.0 Matters To Your Business - First Steps Ken Yarmosh
Expert Author
Published: 2005-12-06




Here is my first post in my new series on why "Web 2.0″ matters to your business.

I'll start by speaking to the concept of "Web 2.0″. Note that I am making no attempt to define it because I do not believe it to have a formal definition. Most definitions used by the larger technical community make absolutely zero sense to everyday users (business and leisure alike). I know because I've tried to use them when explaining Web 2.0 and they just don't work - blank stares and confused faces have been the norm.

What has worked is the following idea: Web 2.0 is not the next version of the web, nor does it represent a singular technical demarcation point like the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Instead, it is an effort to refocus and refine the web as we know it - it's a movement to make the web better, to make it smarter, more fun, and more efficient.

Unlike the first go around, that is, the outset of the World Wide Web (or what is now being referred to as "Web 1.0″), the primary focus of Web 2.0 is not the technology. This movement is not being propelled by a particular technology or set of technologies but there are new technologies that are helping facilitate Web 2.0 (crazy words like AJAX, RSS, tagging, and more).

The major difference between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 is that Web 2.0 at its best is not focused on technology for technology's sake. Rather, it is as Ross Mayfield puts it, "made of people." I'll make a slight modification to that. Web 2.0 is is an attempt to build the web around people instead of technology.

This new and improved interconnected relationship between people and technology is what we will examine next time, as we push towards understanding why Web 2.0 matters to your business. The series will continue on a weekly basis through the New Year.

[rossshow]

http://slashdot.org/



"Dion Hinchcliffe, who is becoming the closest thing outside of Tim O'Reilly (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html) to being a Web.2.0 popularizer and evangelist, has summarized what he considers to be the five major benefits of Web 2.0 (http://webservices.sys-con.com/read/161874_p.htm) best practices. Hinchcliffe singles out the tactical potential of aligning with Web 2.0's increasingly ballistic trajectory: 'You can use the leviathan forces of attention and enthusiasm that are swirling around Web 2.0 these days as a powerful enabler to make something important and exciting happen in your organization.'"




Read More... (http://slashdot.org/articles/05/12/09/1826206.shtml?tid=95)

[rossshow]

The best of Web 2.0 for 2005:

Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/30/web-20-companies-i-couldnt-live-without/)


There have been numerous 2005 “best of” and 2006 “predictions” posts over the last few weeks as the year comes to an end. I’m not going to write one of those. Giving out “best of” awards seems presumptuous to me, given that I’ve been blogging all of six months. And while predictions are fun, they aren’t all that useful in the end.

What I do want to write about as I reminisce about the year ending in a couple of days are the Web 2.0 companies that I love and use every day.

I’ve tested over a thousand products this year, and have written about hundreds. And while some of the companies I write about get very positive reviews, I find that the only true test of the value of a product is its staying power: do I continue to use the product, and maybe even pay for it, as the days and months go by?

So for those of you that are curious, here is a short list of the companies that have held my attention, and that I would not choose to live without on the web:

Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/bloglinessmall10.jpgI have a love/hate relationship with Bloglines, but they’ve recently improved performance (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/20/three-cheers-for-bloglines/) dramatically, and I really like that I can see the number of subscribers for each feed. This was the hardest one to include on the list, but at the end of the day I couldn’t leave them off.

Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/delicioussmall10.jpgI use Del.icio.us multiple times every day to store and retrieve bookmarks. I freely admit that there are better solutions out there and I may very well switch to one (http://www.shadows.com/) of them in the near future, but you have to hand it to Del.icio.us for inventing the social bookmark phenomenon.

FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/feedburnersmall10.jpgI love the statistics Feedburner provides on feed readership and has lots of advanced features (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/13/feedburner-integrates-web-services-into-feeds/) that are important to me. And despite what I’ve written in the past (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/07/is-feedburner-pushing-the-envelope-on-trust/), I know and trust the FeedBurner team. I just wish they’d get rid of the advertisement on my feed page. http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/flickrsmall10.jpgI enjoy Flickr more and more every day. I like seeing what my friends are up to based on the photos they upload as well as getting comments from others on my pictures. And I am starting to go back and upload old sets of photos from years ago. Flickr is just perfect.

Measuremap (http://www.measuremap.com/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/measuremapsmall10.jpgThe Measure Map blog analytics tool created by Adaptive Path gives me incredible insight into who is looking at what on TechCrunch. They need to deal with the speed issue for larger blogs though (it takes minutes sometimes to pull up stats, or just breaks).

Memeorandum (http://tech.memeorandum.com/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/memeorandumsmall10.jpgMemeorandum is how I keep up on the blogosphere when I don’t have time to read all of my feeds. It has also changed what I blog about, and how. Memeorandum is a cultural phenomenon.

Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/netvibessmall101.jpgYeah, there are a lot of Ajax desktops (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/18/yep-one-more-ajax-desktop-pageflakes/) out there, but Netvibes seems to stay ahead of the pack on functionality. The flickr stuff is great. Plus, how can I not love a service that includes TechCrunch as a default feed? http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

Omnidrive (http://www.omnidrive.com.au/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/omnidrivesmall10.jpgI’ve been waiting for something like this (http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/28/omnidrive-online-storage-perfection/) forever. I forsee a day when a service like Omnidrive comes packaged with a new PC, or is offered alongside web email solutions. I’ve only had it for a few days, but I’m smitten. And fair disclosure: there are some awesome competitors out there, too, that I am just starting to look at.

Pandora (http://www.pandora.com/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/pandorasmall10.jpgI listen to Pandora whenever I write - sometimes for hours a day. I’ve discovered countless new artists from it.

Skype (http://www.skype.com/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/skypesmall10.jpgWhat can I say? Along with Vonage, Skype keeps my phone bills down to next to nothing, and it is an integral part of my everyday business and personal life. I would trade application sharing for the new video feature in a heartbeat, however.

Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/technoratismall10.jpgI use it more than Google. No one has launched anything better, yet. And they’ve made great progress in search speed over the latter half of the year.

Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.org/)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/wordpresssmall10.jpgI love Wordpress. Actually, let me rephrase that statement: I love Wordpress 1.5. Version 2.0 makes me want to throw my laptop out of the window. But it is an amazing piece of software, and all of my blogs run on it.

Yahoo Maps (http://maps.yahoo.com/beta)

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/yahoomapssmall10.jpgI use Yahoo Maps because it allows multi-point driving instructions, something none of the others offer yet. This was incredibly useful when I had to attend three or four holiday parties on the same evening.

[rossshow]

Requested by up to one million people, maybe more, here's Randy Charles Morin's 10 Web 2.0 predictions for the year 2006.
http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/?guid=20051231155436




Let's start with some easy ones. Somebody will buy YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) for $millions. I love YouTube.
Somebody will release a new version of RSS or a competing syndication format.
Yahoo will release RSS integration in Yahoo! Mail and Microsoft will release RSS integration in Outlook. Although both will be incomparable to Attensa and NewsGator, they will dominate the new adoption of RSS and will become the top two RSS clients sometime in 2007. Microsoft will trail Yahoo! in 2006, but surpass them in 2007.
The number of blogs in the United States will exceed the number of citizens.
Some Web 2.0 companies that failed to get purchased and didn't have a revenue model will begin laying off employees. The majority of the fall out will likely not occur till 2007.
The number of AdSense-based (or YPN or Chitika) Web 2.0 start-ups will accelerate, while free, no ad Web 2.0 start-ups will stagnate and might drop off.
MSN, Google and Yahoo! will continue to compete for the API marketplace. A new API will be released by one the big three in every month of the year.
Advertising on the Web will continue to accelerate, but the massive number of new publishers and new ad servers will create a lot of chaos in the marketplace. More than one ad server will fail to make their payments to publishers and several, most, if not all ad servers will be sued by advertisers for click-fraud. Yahoo and Google will prevail through the storm, maybe Microsoft too!
Dave Winer will get pissed at somebody for doing something. And he'll blog about how much of a jerk he is for several months. I'm guessing it has to do with videocasting.
And here's the cake. RSS-based appliances will make there debut. Recipes on fridges, microwaves, ovens and through the roof from there.

[rossshow]

From Tech Crunch

The Retrievr Flickr Tool (http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/03/the-retrievr-flickr-tool/)


http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/retrievrlogo.jpgI’m not sure if Retrievr (http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/) has any commercial application, but it is a really beautiful piece of technology.

Retrievr has a Flash sketch pad built into the site. Draw something - anything - and it will fetch Flickr images that are similar. My very rough drawing of a black line intersecting with a red blog brought up some nice results (see image).

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/retrievr.jpgMore information is available on their about page, here. (http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/about) Thanks Nivi (http://www.nivi.com/blog/)for pointing this out to me (and I aplogize again for using your “special” towel to dry off Laguna’s feet http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif ).

[rossshow]

Wow. That's a time waster. It's pretty damn fun.

[pcgoddess]

AH...that is COOL. The pics its returns are very nice and contemporary....i wonder if they are public domain? Thanks for the link on this!

[rossshow]

http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/about




How?
retrievr is based on research conducted by Chuck Jacobs, Adam Finkelstein and David Salesin at the University of Washington (http://www.washington.edu/): Fast Multiresolution Image Querying (http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/query/) (1995).1

I first came across the algorithm when someone (I think Edd Dumbill (http://usefulinc.com/edd/blog)) linked to imgSeek (http://www.imgseek.net/) a couple of years back; imgSeek is a standalone image management application that incorporates that algorithm as well.

retrievr is a new implementation in pure Python (http://www.python.org/) (and a host of great libraries: Fredrik Lundh's (http://effbot.org/) PIL (http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/) and aggdraw (http://effbot.org/zone/draw-agg.htm) as well as numarray (http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/numarray)). The frontend has been created using Helma (http://www.helma.org/) and Macromedia Flash (http://www.macromedia.com/).

And now?
We'll continue to work on enhancing retrievr as well as a host of other applications. Stay tuned and watch this space (http://www.systemone.at/en/company/labs/)!

[rossshow]

from /.

"Designtechnica has published their 2006 Best of Web 2.0 list (http://reviews.designtechnica.com/guide46.html). Some of the sites include Flickr.com (http://www.flickr.com/), Vimeo.com (http://www.vimeo.com/) and Writeboard.com (http://www.writeboard.com/). From the piece: 'The next generation of the web is here! With new kinds of desktop-like applications being released left and right, how will you know where to go and what to use? That's why we're here: To show you the best of Web 2.0 sites that you can get the most out of. No matter the task, video, audio, or photos, we have a site that works great for what you want to do and uses all the great features of Web 2.0 technology.'"


(

Read More... (http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/06/02/24/2050253.shtml)

[rossshow]

10 Flickr Hacks

http://prblog.typepad.com/strategic_public_relation/2006/02/10_flickr_hacks.html


What Web 2.0 service boasts more than 100 million (http://www.kullin.net/arkiv/2006_02_01_mc.html#113999533755894760) examples of consumer-generated media?

http://prblog.typepad.com/strategic_public_relation/images/flickr_1.jpg (http://prblog.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/flickr_1.jpg)

Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/)—one of the most underutilized online pr tools in the blogosphere. Flickr makes it easy to store and share photos online, but it also empowers PR people with a powerful visual tool. Here are ten tips to get you started.

Flickr File Photos: Business 2.0 uses Flickr to illustrate articles. Sometimes they augment their content with a photo of the day (http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2006/02/flickr_photo_of_2.html). B20 also shows how easy it is to give the image’s owner full credit. (Friday Night Tribute to Flickr! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dsevilla/100960841) originally uploaded by dsevilla (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dsevilla))

Flickr Brainstorm: Looking for inspiration? http://prblog.typepad.com/strategic_public_relation/images/retrieverblue_2.jpg (http://prblog.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/retrieverblue_2.jpg) [/url][url="http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr"]Retrievr (http://prblog.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/retrieverblue_1.jpg) matches Flickr pictures to your sketch. It’s not an exact science, but it’s great for finding images that reinforce specific shapes and colors.

Flickr Portfolio: Face it. Attachments suck. If you’re angling for a new job and simply HAVE to show them a media placement, you can create a Flickr clip book (http://www.flickr.com/photos/prblog/89349523/in/set-72057594056620730/). Scan reprints or use images (http://www.flickr.com/photos/prblog/100761737/) from the article to link to it online. This works even better for any printed materials (http://www.adrants.com/2005/09/american-apparel-gets-consumercreated.php) you’ve created. Just be sure to adhere to online copyright rules and regs.

Promote Your Event: Instead of posting images, er, post event, PSFK is using Flickr (http://www.psfk.com/2006/02/the_future_of_m.html) to create more buzz around this week’s Future Marketing Summit (http://www.futuremarketingsummit.com/new_york.htm). Prior to the event, Piers Fawkes put a call out for images that expressed the future of marketing. The images (http://www.flickr.com/groups/future_marketing_summit/pool/) were to be used during the conference.



Flickr Photo Booth: Speaking of PSFK, they also point us to an example of a Flickr Photo Booth (http://www.psfk.com/2006/01/flickr_photo_bo.html). Consider adding it to your next event, especially an internal event. Why?



Flickr Recruiting: What better way to give a peek at your company culture? Photos of a fun event, or examples of work in the trenches. Edelman (http://www.flickr.com/photos/edelman_talkshop) (and their army of bloggers…mwah ha ha) do a great job of this--whether they realize it or not.

Accessorize Your Post: This is similar to Retrievr. Krazydad created a Flickr Colorpickr (http://krazydad.com/colrpickr/index.php?group=graffiti) that searches for specific photos based on the hue you choose. Categories include flowers, graffiti and doors.

Add Snap to that Map: Flickr’s Geotagging (http://www.flickr.com/groups/geotagging) group can help you add images to your maps, including Google Earth.

Flickr Bee: You can spell (http://metaatem.net/words) it with Flickr. Do the folks from Putnam County (http://www.spellingbeethemusical.com/index.htm) know about this?

http://photos10.flickr.com/11696441_715c0c7a5a_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/74008261@N00/11696441/)http://photos6.flickr.com/85985675_b12e5b2a63_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/85985675/)http://photos4.flickr.com/4677056_86b8481e4b_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/37613229@N00/4677056/)http://photos33.flickr.com/43486511_21aeb23f84_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/43486511/)http://photos21.flickr.com/30930137_7f21d9bbbe_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/54276164@N00/30930137/)

http://photos10.flickr.com/13505198_565eb071ef_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/84696467@N00/13505198/)http://photos25.flickr.com/52623249_08fed6848f_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/52623249/)http://photos32.flickr.com/62382355_5cfc94e110_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/62382355/)http://photos26.flickr.com/57484590_fb03c3b351_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/57484590/)http://photos24.flickr.com/44784296_ca57fb17fe_s.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/44784296/)

Land that Cover Story: Visualizing goals is key to making them happen. Well create your own magazine cover (http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/magazine.php) to visualize you or your client on the cover of your favorite dead tree media.

Speaking of which, there are so many Flickr hacks they filled a book with them. For more goodies, check out Flickr Hacks (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/flickrhks/), visit the official Flickr blog (http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/) or stop by Flickr Nation (http://flickrnation.com/), its fan blog.

Why do I have F-word on the brain? PostSecret (http://postsecret.blogspot.com/) shows us the power images can have on blogs. Flickr is fun, easy, effective and infectious. What are you waiting for?