Archive for October 2005 -- Ken Yarmosh

An Open Letter to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington

October 30, 2005

Michael-

I really appreciate what you’ve done for Web 2.0 and the larger tech community. In many ways, you have given Web 2.0 a face it previously didn’t have. TechCrunch is one of my ‘must read’ blogs and I’m always excited to check out the new Web 2.0 companies and products you review and profile. It’s obvious you put a lot of time and effort into what you do.

That being said, I was very disappointed with your coverage of Blogniscient on TechCrunch yesterday. I feel a friend and client was not given a fair shake on your blog, due to a rather obvious preference for what you perceive as a competing service – Memeorandum.

The New Face of Blogniscient

October 29, 2005

In my latest interview with Ben Ruedlinger the founder of Blogniscient, I mentioned that there were some significant and exciting changes on the way. Well, the changes are done and I’m happy to announce the new face of Blogniscient.

In working with Ben as my first official ~~Creating the Buzz~~ Web 2.0 client, we honed in on several aspects to improve the useability and value of the Blogniscient experience:

Design Overhaul

Blogniscient Screenshot The first item we tackled was the appearance of Blogniscient. Many users found the site extremely useful but visually unappealing. After presenting several design options from my network of contacts, Blognsicient decided to go with a small but talented group by the name of Subbu Agency.

Subbu Agency focused on giving Blogniscient a look that matched its innovative technology. They worked hard and fast to provide a more intuitive and appealing interface, so that site was not so ugly.

Blogniscient Screenshot

The bird’s eye view of the Blogosphere
The real selling point of Blogniscient is the breadth of its coverage, including categories like Sports and Entertainment. As seen in the interview, Ben has a grand vision for what Blogniscient’s reach may look like one day. After he bounced some ideas off of me, he decided to expand Blogniscient’s coverage to two new areas – Venture Capital and Poker. These are subcategories of Business and Sports respectively and are two areas with a great amount of interest outside of the blogosphere.

That latter point is key because Blogniscient is a tool that Ben hopes the non-technical community will find tremendously useful. For instance, the person who is interested in poker but has never read a blog could instantly get a bird’s eye view into the poker blogosphere by visiting Blogniscient.

Blogniscient Logo With that aim, the new tagline became The bird’s eye view of the Blogosphere. The change was the result of some brainstorming we did to properly communicate to users what they can use Blogniscient to do. The new logo although somewhat subtle ties in nicely with this message. The arch and dot connecting the two ‘i’s’ appear as a simple eye but also represents a musical term called a fermata. A fermata is often referred to as a bird’s eye.

Better Communication
Blogniscient wanted a better way to easily speak to core functionality, as well as detail the newest features. Of course, using a blog was a natural choice. Comments are not enabled due to the logistical nightmare that would present but Ben really values the feedback of the community and provides an email address for thoughts, suggestions, or criticisms .

Ben is quite an innovative and determined individual and I’ve been glad to work with him over the past couple of weeks. He has a great plan for Blogniscient and I suspect it will get better and better in the coming months. I’d love to hear your feedback on the new changes. Please feel free to comment below or to contact me directly after you’ve visited the new site.

tagged under Technosight, Blogniscient, Ben Ruedlinger, Ken Yarmosh

Post to My Web or BlinkList

October 28, 2005

update: This post is outdated and the code likely does not work anymore.

The Yahoo! folks added a new Save to My Web feature – it’s offered via javascript. I previously had a “post to My Web”, along with something similar for del.icio.us and digg. It was somewhat of a hack because I couldn’t quite figure out the syntax from the My Web page.

With this ‘new’ feature, I took a peak at their javascript and then pulled out the relevant portion (i.e., I didn’t want their button and all the extra stuff). If you have WordPress, it’s rather easy to implement using the < ?php the_title()?> and < ?php the_permalink()?> template tags. You can grab the exact code I’ve used by viewing this file.

I’d been bothering Mike Reining for this feature in BlinkList for quite some time (in fact, that was how I first ‘met’ Mike on the Informatoin Superhighway). Previously, in order for someone to blink into their BlinkList, the bookmarklet included the user’s unique ID. It made creating a ‘blink it’ or ‘save to BlinkList’ impossible to implement until they changed their approach (if I had implemented it, everyone would have been blinking into my BlinkList).

Their new bookmarklets use cookies to determine what ID is logged into BlinkList. With that in mind, I’ve been able to put a ‘post to BlinkList’ up as well. For WordPress users, you can get that code here. Mike also blogged about it, including code to implement this feature on other platforms.

Finally, if you been enjoying my coverage of Web 2.0, I’d ask that you blink my site into the ‘web 2.0 blogs’ tag. You can do that on my sidebar under the “GET SOCIAL” area. And of course, if you haven’t started blinking yet, I highly encourage you to do so!

tagged under Technosight, BlinkList, My Web, del.icio.us, social bookmarking,

Pajamas Media and the Value of Blogs

David Cohn of Wired News poses a very relative question, Will Pajamas Media Wake up Blogs? I would argue that blogs are already awake or at least they’ve awoken and just haven’t gotten out of bed.

From the most recent numbers that I pointed to in yesterday’s interview, there are a relatively small number of people reading blogs (in the case of those numbers, the people are Americans). Even with those small numbers though, blogs and bloggers have had a significant impact both in politics and in businesses of various shapes and sizes. When the FEC has to address how to regulate blogs and businesses are developing blog policies, the influence of this new technology is hard to debate.

The main question facing traditional / new media outlets and other problem solvers today is determining how to bring the value of blog content to the average consumer. On the traditional side, we see BusinessWeek embracing blogs alongside their other online efforts. The problem solvers include Memeorandum, Blogniscient, and some other techology based approaches.

Then on the new media front, there are various blog network types – vertical (DuctTapeMarketing), horizontal (9rules), and a mix (b5media).

Pajamas Media (soon to be renamed) puts an even larger twist in how to solve this issue. Although blogs and bloggers will be key to their success (somewhat of another blog network), they will wield the power of their 70 political pundits to attempt to put “the best of mainstream media and best of blog media, side by side” (as quoted by Roger Simon, a co-founder of the venture). There are many moves in this direction, which is why one would assume AOL bought Weblogs, Inc..

Bringing blogs to the mass market in an easily digestable format will be the real winner. When that is done effectively and in a way that consumers connect with, blogs will not only have woken up, they’ll have eaten breakfast and be on their way to a bright new day.

Interview with Blogniscient Founder Ben Ruedlinger

October 26, 2005

I was first introduced to Blogniscient via an email from its creator, Ben Ruedlinger. Blogniscient intrigued me because it attempts to distill the blogosphere’s biggest buzz for categories like politics, technology, and entertainment via its proprietary Article Ranking System. In layman’s terms, Blogniscient provides a snapshot of what bloggers are talking about, somewhat similar to memeorandum.

Blogniscient Screenshot
Ben passes through Washington D.C. quite often and as a result, we’ve had the opportunity to sit down and chat at length about Blogniscient. I planned this interview with him over a month ago but he’s actually become my client since then. Thus, I’ve edited out my “what’s next” questions because I’ve assisted Ben with what’s planned for Blogniscient in the coming weeks and beyond and it’s more than exciting.

As usual, this interview occurred via email. Enjoy and stay tuned for some breaking Blogniscient news by subscribing to my feed.

Rollyo Adds Searchboxes

October 25, 2005

Rollyo received a whole lot of buzz during it’s beta launch. Since then, I’ve not read much about it.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been keeping a sharp eye out for the release of their Searchbox. The Searchbox offers you the ability to add any number of Rollyo Searchrolls to your site, including a simple Searchroll consisting of one site alone (in the case where you’d want to add a “site search” feature to you blog or website).

I didn’t add this to my site because I think there is another Rollyo tool that is more powerful – adding a Searchroll to your Firefox Search Toolbar. This type of Searchroll stays with you all the time.

As some of my readers already know, I previously created a Searchroll called Everything Web 2.0 consisting of what I consider must read sources for Web 2.0 – TechCrunch, Read / Write Web, Emily Chang’s eHub, Ross Mayfield, and others (including my site – OK, I’m biased). It’s tremendously useful.

For example, whenever I want to look-up a certain Web 2.0 product or company (especially one I am unfamiliar with), I switch my toolbar to this Searchroll and hit enter. Chances are, TechCrunch has covered it. Similarly, it’s been great when trying to reference older material that I’ve written. I recommend creating something similar, even if you use it solely in this latter case.

If you’d like to add this Searchroll to your Firefox Toolbar, I’ve put together something that will allow you to do so under the “GET SOCIAL” area of my sidebar. Just click the “Everything Web 2.0″ link to add it.

I’ll be adding some other cool tricks I’ve created (or ‘hacked’ but in a good sense) to that area in the coming week.

tagged under Rollyo, Rollyo Searchbox, Technosightem>

Bootstrapping Web 2.0

October 24, 2005

David Hornick continues the discussion about the problem facing Web 2.0 start-ups – a business model built around “buy me”. I’ve wrote about similar sentiments in the past. He opines,

there are a large number of “companies” being created again for the express purpose of being acquired. I certainly have seen it. I have met with companies that clearly state their intention to be acquired by Yahoo or Google…

Like David, I’ve worked with and / or spoke with several companies who have been “built to flip” but this time via one of the funding options that Anil Dash refers to in his post The Flip 2K5 – bootstrapping.

I’m not an advocate of “built to flip” but I do think funding a start-up via bootstrapping drastically alters the mindset of a Web 2.0 ‘company’. It makes them more cautious and more apt to test the viability and the usefulness of their idea outside the confines of the geek community.

While I was not thrilled with PC Magazine’s recent review of the tagging space, I think it speaks to the difference in perception between what the technical community and early adopters think is “neat” and “exciting” versus what an average user could easily understand and find useful.

Web 2.0 companies need more than the techies to be excited about their product or service. They need more than the people at the TechCrunch BBQs. Flickr and Skype hit their homeruns because they had mass market appeal and presented innovative approaches in their respective spaces – they solved problems. Hopefully, those who bootstrap their start-ups with the “buy me” mindset will at the very least focus their efforts on refining their value propositions or in creating services that actually have one.

tagged under Web 2.0, Bubble 2.0, Web 1.0, Bubble 1.0

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Ken Yarmosh – Product Strategist and Technology Connoisseur