Entries Tagged 'widget' ↓

Marcelo posted a note that Adam MacBeth has been building a Google map of all the software companies in Seattle. It is self service, if you own a software company, then you can pin it on the map. It makes an interesting contrast to the map of Silicon Valley that we are all so familiar with.

Seattle Software Companies . This is a map of companies in Seattle that do software work. It is not limited to companies headquartered in Seattle, but includes any company with a development office in the area. I’ve tried to keep companies off the map that are out of business or not yet viable, but please let me know if there is something that needs to be removed or edited. Source: Adam MacBeth

It is a neat map, then Adam’s blog is also interesting, in the longer run though, use the map, it is at least very interesting to see where companies are clustering.

Tags: google, map, adam, Macbeth, fun, seattle, software, companies

In the “about time” department, Techmeme announces that they now have a search capability locally on site. This is good, bit late, but better late than never. Gabe Rivera posted on the techmeme blog today some cool information about the feature, this one caught our attention.

What’s next? Search for Techmeme’s sister sites are planned but not active as of today. Also on the way are RSS feeds for search results, the simplest kind of search “API”. Source: Techmeme

So if I want, and many folks I know are going to do this right off the bat when the Search RSS goes live is sit there like a voyeur and watch what other people search for on techmeme, not only to help us figure out what is important this moment, but using some neat programming, make a flex based feed, mapping, and just about any other kind of “twitterish” process as techmeme search helps other folks figure out what is important this moment.

This could be interesting, can we have the RSS feed now, or should we just hang out for 36 months waiting for that feature set? (This is problem, you give someone something, then they always want more, never should have posted “what’s next”).
Tags: techmeme, search,rss,watcher, people, fun

Well it had to happen sooner or later, as there was pressure on Robert Scoble to redesign his web site from the pristine almost dull site he had before, to the spanky web 2.0 ish high color web site. Someone in marketing had a good time, and well, there are ads too.

The new mast head is ok, but they had to use the happy pointy finger picture that seems to show up on all of roberts profiles somewhere.

This seems to be the quintessential picture and portrayal of the man, a guy pointing a finger, and it is funny. Don’t get me wrong here, we like Robert a lot, we have met him many years ago (at Microsoft), and maybe he will be at gnomedex so I can say hi (I want a picture of you, me and the pointy finger ok?)

The bad part, ads, not too bad, nothing that is grossly overdone, which is nice (thanks nice marketing and web design team).

In the longer run, he has joined the rat race, the real question is what percentage of what percentage of click throughs does he get? Does he get all the advertising revenue, or just some small select amount of revenue off the ads? Annoying people want to know, what is your take?

The new design looks good, and at least the marketing and web design team didn’t go over board on this one.

Tags: robert scoble, website, redesign, pointy finger, gnomedex, humor

Most cloud computing has been at the business level, so Microsoft had to take it right to the consumer, which is not a bad idea. While there are a lot of pundits this morning talking about live mesh, and what it means to you, there are some things to know about that might keep this more difficult for users. Great for laptops that are being searched and seized at the border of the USA, interesting for people who have more than 5 gigs of stuff they want to store off.

Some cool screen shots can be found here. The picture below is from ZDNet. We agree with ZDNet, there are immediately useful things that people can do, which is a major plus when rolling out anything.

Many uses and applications are apparent here, storage space is not realistic, worth it if they offer a premium service in line with mp3tunes.com, where you pay for the storage beyond the initial five gigabytes that they give you.

The best demo is over on channel 10, you will need the silverlight plugin to watch the video, but the video is worth watching if you want to get a good overview.

Have you ever had to email yourself a file or found that you had four different versions of the same document on four different PC’s? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you had a synchronized copy of all your important files on each of your devices and access to them at any time via nothing more than a web browser? Source: Channel 10

The most interesting comments come from Robert Scoble, which is not surprising either. He goes on to state and we agree that:

It also gives key insights into how Microsoft is going to keep Windows relevant and keep us all from sliding into a Web that doesn’t rely much on the underlying operating system. Will Microsoft succeed in that? Well, they better otherwise we’re all very close to washing Microsoft out of our hair: forever. Source: Robert Scoble

Microsoft needs to succeed here, they need to move past the operating system as everything to everyone and into the next generation of computing where local storage is about dead, network or cloud storage and operations are what matters. While most everyone would like to see a stripped down OS that is simply an on ramp to the Internet where work is done (think extremely thin computing here), this is not a bad start, and with the right audience, the regular average consumer.

It is good to see Microsoft taking this step, but as with all things, it will boil down to adoption, will the proletariat use the system. Will the middle class adopt it, what are the legal ramifications of having all your stuff loaded into a Microsoft data center, how can it be broken, what are the security implications, and a whole host of other questions that we should be rightfully asking. While we look at data breaches in the web 2.0 space, you can bet that hackers are already at work with the beta trying to figure out how all this can be subverted. With EMI going after mp3tunes.com, how will Microsoft fair in the same space, or are they new lawsuit bait with deeper pockets?

Lots of questions, many that can not be answered any time soon, the first thing that needs to happen though is adoption.

Keywords: Microsoft, live mesh, channel 10, emi, mp3tunes.com, lawsuit, adoption, money, premium service, storage, cloud computing, money

No Advertising for you! The “Advertising Nazi” Louis Gray (the new hot spot bright kid on the blog) that has everyone all abuzz with how cool, how perceptive he is has gone off on a wild tangent thinking that small blogs just don’t need to be making money off of advertising.

On the other hand, maybe he really does have a good point, because he also hits on something that really does need to be addressed, the plain vanilla follow the herd mentality that many bloggers who only read techmeme have decided will make us a couple of bucks.

Louis is getting it, we wrote something similar back in March about how many Web 2.0 sites are getting as dull as ditch water, please god something original and new. Too many folks chasing too many headlines. The problem is not just with Web 2.0 bloggers, but Web 2.0 applications as well, too many folks chasing too few Facebook/Bebo/Myspace folks in the longer run that end up hurting the company rather than really helping it out.

The standard bit about get rich quick and the rest of it, agreed, it’s all a lark, and as people offer properties to run ads on, then the market becomes more dilute. This will only help the bigger blogs, A-C list bloggers and not help the little folks out. Frankly we use advertising to pay hosting costs, it has done that admirably, not up to the toy level yet, but maybe we will get there.

Blogging is fun, and people have the right to do what they want to do with their own web sites, regardless of what “No Advertising for You!” people want to think.

Keywords: Louis Gray, advertising, blogs, bloggers, nazi, vanilla, concerns, fun, humor

In the kinda cool department, google has tied you tube video statistics to their analytics tool to give people a simple overview of what and where their videos are being watched. Do you know what country you are popular in? Now you know.

These are generic statistics, which is good, but not perfect, and of course those folks who are really interested in stats will always find something wrong with anything given to someone free. That is part of the fun, the whining that goes along with it.

Today we’re taking our first step towards answering these questions with YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account — users, partners, and advertisers — to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload. For example, uploaders an see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks. For now, you can find currently available metrics by clicking under the “About this Video” button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos. Source: Google Blog

Not a bad idea, something that I didn’t know I wanted, and now that I have it, I don’t want to give it up. While google is still on its slide to be the “evil company”, things like this just make you stop for a moment and think that maybe things are not all that dark.

Keywords: google, analytics, statistics, youtube, videos, upload, uploaders, lifecycle, use, use case, fun

Too many of the applications that are coming out of the startup world are starting to look alike. The problem with looking like everyone else’s offering is that it is hard to come up with a marketing discriminator. If you made a facebook zombie super poke application, and one already exists which has been successful, at best you will ride the coat tails of the application that was there first, unless you have some zombie super power poking ability that makes it a market discriminator.

No wonder people are getting burned out on Web 2.0. From arbitrary facebook closures, to adult friend finder folks wanting to be your friend, to bloggers doing some amazingly stupid things, the compelling reason to be in Web 2.0 from a user viewpoint is gone. The developers view point, the startup that is relying on those platforms is in the same boat. If users abandon the platform that is being developed for, there is a smaller and smaller market for you application or widget.

Too many people doing the same thing, that is not market differentiated, in a place where people are still interested in web 2.0, but are starting to draw back from because it is the standard cesspool of stuff we don’t want to see, or deal with.

Real innovation comes at risk to do something that no one has done before. It is not following the leader, it is coming up with something new, the new leader, getting there first, and making something that someone wants to use. Why was scabbelishous popular? Why is any attempt at getting your music collection on line to listen to anywhere popular? Casual games, things that we want to do, listen to, interact with, these usually do well. They also get sued to death because they violate someone’s intellectual property along the way.

If you want to be a great startup, come up with something new, or something compelling. We don’t need 150 million ways of streaming music; we need one that will work and survive in our lawsuit happy country. We want casual games that are fun to play, but won’t be sued out of existence because of copyright. We don’t need another 3D interactive environment; we need one where touch, feel, look, and the other senses are represented. The first one with a truly immersive 3D environment wins, of course it will be used for sex, but that isn’t the point that is a byproduct and one that needs to be acknowledged.

Web 2.0 is bland and vanilla, we have the same thing on hundreds of platforms, doing the same thing, trying to duke it out for first. Why are Digg and Reddit so popular? They were first. Why is Stumble upon so popular? They made it easier than dig or reddit. What is next in social book marking? Something easier than Stumble upon, with a more compelling reason to be there and use the service. We would like to cover something that will unseat Digg, Reddit and Stumble upon.

We would like to see some innovation, if you have a truly unique product that is not a wanna be regurgitation of what is already out there, contact us at suggest@techwag.com and we will cover it. If you are like everyone else, well, we have already seen it, thanks.