I was surprised when Apple announced iPhone OS 4.0 (now, iOS 4) five days after the iPad launch. Tons of juicy features were immediately not available on their newest device. In that announcement, it was also evident that Apple was still very much in an experimental phase with the iAd, a release first and iterate [...]
Words Apple Won’t Hear (Right Now) – Code For Android First
Anyone who suggests that the “iPhone 4 is nice” but that developers should code for Android first is truly out of touch with the realities of developing for these platforms. Now, let me be clear, I’m rooting for Android because competition is what spurs innovation by giving consumers choice and keeping platform providers honest. I [...]
Flurry Launches Consumer Privacy Initiatives
In trying to drive mobile data collection privacy standards to be comparable with non-mobile offerings, mobile analytics provider Flurry has announced it’s “Privacy First Initiative” (PFI): “PFI is the result of months of consultation with customers and partners as well as a review of privacy standards in similar industries,” said Simon Khalaf, president and chief [...]
Mobile App Dev RAP BATTLE
via @KuraFire
This Week in Apps (3/21/10) – MacJournal, Grades, Osfoora, Street Fighter IV, Vlingo, and Proactive Sleep
Playing with apps on my ever-changing iPhone (and soon iPad) Springboard… MacJournal for iPhone (Mariner MacJournal) Yes, there’s Evernote, Simplenote, and any other number of notes apps but to me, MacJournal is unique. I’ve been using the Mac app as a “learning journal” for the last year. I have a tendency to do a crazy [...]
Tweeb – Twitter Analytics for the iPhone
Tweeb is a Twitter analytics app for the iPhone. It’s my longest ongoing iPhone creation that I’m finally ready to unveil. Initially codename “Nerdy Birdy” — Tweeb provides a simple, digestible, and yet comprehensive view of how someone is doing on Twitter. It currently looks through four lenses – tweets, followers, buzz, and clicks. Yes, [...]
The Science of Entrepreneurship Comes to DC
The hardest part of entrepreneurship, which also happens to be the most important part, is building something that people actually want. Startups are birthed to solve problems and theoretically give people what they want — solutions to their problems. Within this context, the failure of a startup may be the result of problems that are [...]
How Apple Can Improve the App Store (and iPhone) in 2010
No, this is not going to be another one of those posts. And yes, it’s a couple of weeks into 2010 yet this is a 2010 post. On the first point, I’m not even going to touch Apple’s App Store policies or the approval process, which by the way, are already showing signs of vast [...]
Debunking the “Smartphone War”
Gartner research shows that Android will surpass the iPhone in market share by 2012. With the Android push, Droid, and rumored Google Phone, the Google strategy seems to be clear – be the operating system of mobile devices. Assuming that actually happens, the question becomes if Google will choose to follow in the footsteps of [...]
Don’t Write a Business Plan. Build a Prototype.
At the start of this decade, I sat in my “b school” classes discussing case studies and dissecting business plans. As part of my course in entrepreneurship and venture initiation, the main deliverable at the end of the quarter was a business plan. This wasn’t a fluffy report…we actually presented the plan to a bunch [...]
AudioBookShelf – Listen to History’s Treasured Masterpieces on your iPhone
I first met David Smith of Traveling Classics at iPhone Dev Camp DC. He wound up winning a spot to give a talk and actually built an iPhone app, as a tutorial, in front of the group. Later, I learned that the fastest he’s ever built an app and submitted to the App Store was [...]
Want an iPhone on Verizon? There’s no app for that…but there’s Droid.
Will people switch from the iPhone? Of course some will. But that’s note the important point. What’s key here (and I’m focusing on the U.S.), is that the #1 carrier with the most comprehensive 3G coverage is going to get Droid. Walk into a Verizon store and there’s no option for iPhone. There’s something like [...]
TWTRCON DC ’09 and Twitter’s Future
“I don’t see where Twitter will get its next one million users,” chirped Steve Rubel at the final TWTRCON DC ’09 panel featuring him, Rohit Bhargava, Frank Gruber, and Clay Johnson. Steve believes sites like Facebook are the ones that are prepped for larger growth. Yet, he has been surprised by the way that Twitter [...]
Tweetie 2 – A Case Study in Making iPhone Apps Leaner
It’s really hard to make iPhone apps lean. With Apple’s walled garden (i.e., the App Store), it’s tough to both test applications and control the time between iterations. In the first case, there’s a way to do that – ad hoc distributions – but as any iPhone developer knows, it’s not very fun. In the [...]
Starting Your Startup – Assessing Options
Building a business is hard. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Having an idea doesn’t mean much. Executing an idea and getting people to use a product you’ve built is a good first step. Actually having a paying customer is better. But that’s not the definition of success…it’s a foundation for success. You’ve got to [...]
DC Tech and Startups – Ready to Breakout
I attended the DC edition of Startup2Startup this past Friday. The details of the event and the panelist are on Eventbrite. All of the panelist had a focus on early stage investments and engaged with their companies as angels or incubators. Since the event was focused on the government, Errol Arkilic of the NSF had [...]
The Best Advice to Entrepreneurs – Don’t Build a Dumb Idea
With all the advice for the TechCrunch50 floating around, here’s something entrepreneurs need to hear – don’t build something dumb. I understand that founders put their blood, sweat, and tears into their companies so, I’m not trying to be cruel. In fact, I’m being kind by hopefully preventing them from wasting lots of time, effort, [...]
The Five-Minute Guide to iPhone App Market Sizing, Pricing Experiments, and User Trends
In both developing my own iPhone apps and in discussing with clients or prospective clients, understanding data and trends behind the App Store and apps is critical. Jonathan Wegener provided a nice framework for market sizing. There’s also those in the community that have been kind enough to either due some homework or even share [...]
Ramp Champ – Combining iPhone Play with In App Purchases and Virtual Goods
While it’s been stated that the iPhone and iPod Touch are actually not easy to use (or perhaps more apt, not easy to design for), clearly they offer a paradigm that’s resonated with 60M+ consumers worldwide. There’s no shortage of apps on the App Store, with last official numbers reporting around 50,000 of them. Apple’s [...]
Recap of Social Matchbox DC – Summer Social 2009
“Open mic for startups” — Social Matchbox — convened in the E Street Cinema last evening with presentations from eleven startups in the D.C. area. The evening is mainly focused on 4-minute presentations, where startups pitch their ideas and share what they need — most need money, coders, and Mountain Dew. There’s also time to [...]
AppCritics – An iPhone App to Review and Translate App Reviews from iTunes Stores Around the World
iPhone app developers are often faced with a problem — how to quickly access and read reviews from iTunes stores in other markets. Not only is it annoying to have to get into other stores, it’s also often pointless because reviews are in other languages. AppCritics is a new iPhone app that solves these problems. [...]
How to Build a non-$0.99 iPhone App
iPhone app developers are stuck on a number — $0.99. Do they like this number? No. They hate it. But they believe that it leads to the lands of the Top 100 and the promise of riches and glory. With around 200 – 400 new apps going into the App Store per day, betting on [...]
Twitter as SMS, Email, Address Book, RSS, Answers, Memory, and More
I still get the “I don’t get Twitter” comment often — and I’m sure you do too. Let’s be honest — there are parts of Twitter that we don’t get too. But if you’ve spent any amount of time in the Twitterverse, you know all the places it does add value. Here’s a few… SMS [...]
Your Product Startup Needs a Product Strategist – A Five-Minute Overview
Product guys and gals continually face the challenge of describing what “we do.” Even for folks who understand job titles like “product manager,” these positions are typically viewed as required only in more mature and stable companies. And that’s a big “oops.” While hanging at iPhone Dev Camp DC, with a bunch of developers, I [...]
Google’s FeedBurner – Hanging Tough, Lazy Bloggers, or No Legitimate Alternatives?
Aside from the fact that many bloggers felt abandoned by the “FeedBurner love” since it was purchased by Google, FeedBurner was placed in the bull’s-eye of bloggers at the start of 2009 for two main reasons — feeds not updating quickly enough and changing their ping address without notifying anyone. During the migration from FeedBurner [...]
Apple’s iPhone – Modern Day Indentured Servitude
Apple is in a unique position. It controls the OS of the most popular phone ever and is also the creator of the device (hardware). More importantly, Apple plays the gatekeeper of the content that is allowed onto it through the management of the App Store. The only thing Apple does not control are the [...]
It’s Time to Bring “Old” Blogs into the Real-time Web
Today’s culture values, no, expects immediacy. And the latest technology is only strengthening the psychosis of now. What we see with Twitter and the “real-time” web is a world where information is old in minutes instead of hours (as if hours were so terrible). Like the blog, tools like Twitter have shattered the traditional channels [...]
Google Voice on iPhone – GV Mobile and VoiceCentral
There’s no need to be frustrated by the news that Google Voice is hitting Android and Blackberry devices but not the iPhone (yet). Well, maybe there’s reason for a little angst. The good news is that there are some nice alternatives. GV MobileGV Mobile by Sean Kovacs comes in two flavors – GV Mobile ($2.99) [...]
Recap of Real-time Stream CrunchUp
The Real-time Stream CrunchUp and August Capital MeetUp have come and gone. For me, the most interesting parts of the day were the product demos and initial morning conversation with Ron Conway and John Borthwick. My notes from the day are on Posterous and Twitter. I’ll provide some additional analysis and thoughts below. Paradigms and [...]
Will the New “Real-time” Web Last?
I’ll be attending TechCrunch’s CrunchUp on the “real-time” web. There’s a good agenda and some of the pioneering “real-time” individuals and companies will be discussing their ideas and presenting their products that help facilitate “real-time” activities. My use of quotes around “real-time” is because I find this term, similar to “social media,” to be an [...]
The Perfect Twitter Client (Hint: Not Quite Built Yet)
The Twitter client battle continues. Yesterday, Seesmic released the latest version of its Seesmic Desktop, followed up by TweetDeck doing the same plus launching its iPhone app. There’s coverage of the specifics on CNET and elsewhere but the highlights for each release are Seesmic Desktop’s integration of personal third-party accounts (like bit.ly) and cross posting [...]
Web Startups – Does Venture Funding and Geography Still Matter? (Part 1)
There’s been some good discussions on the role of venture funding and geography for web startups over the last months. These are topics that particularly interest me for several reasons: I’ve worked with web startups, either as an individual consultant, vendor, or employee during the last five years. I also have tinkered with a number [...]
The Role of Users and “Power Users” in Product Development
I’ve worked with web startups for the past five years and one of the most overused adages is that “users must drive product development.” Of course, users do play an important role in shaping a product. But they don’t play the only role. To state the obvious, users do play a role in product development [...]
Don’t Google Me – Abstaining from Google Profile
It’s no secret that I am a Google fan boy but I’m not signing on to a Google Profile. The main reason is that I don’t want Google to compete with other top search results for my name. For this same reason, I’ve disabled Facebook public search visibility. I want my blog, LinkedIn profile, Twitter, [...]
Facebook’s “Active Network” Definition
Facebook asks How Many Friends Can You Have? (but doesn’t answer the question) and then shares its new concept of the “active network.” The ideas build off of The Economist’s Primates on Facebook piece and the data provided by the Facebook Data Team: Your active network consists of all the people with whom you stay [...]
Making Web Apps Better
The digerati is no stranger to the dead pool – but there’s recently been a mega slashing by Google. Jaiku became an open source project, development stopped on Google Notebook, uploads ceased on Google Video, and Dodgeball went the way of the dinosaur. That’s after GOOG pulled the plug on Lively back in December ‘08. [...]
The Impending FeedBurner Exodus
If you haven’t heard, bloggers are getting fed up with their feeds. Well, not really with their feeds but with FeedBurner, the once beloved, must-have RSS feed analytics tool. The long and short of it — since the Google acquisition, support has waned, communication has been cut-off, and the service itself has stagnated or even [...]
Google SearchWiki – Less About Your Own Results, More About the Wiki
Google has rolled out probably one of its boldest initiatives since launching the sparse Google homepage – the Google SearchWiki. They are putting a lot on the line with this move. To read the details, go check out the announcement. At first glance, the Google SearchWiki leaves you scratching your head. Why bother promoting search [...]
From Blogs to Micro Blogs to Inviso Blogs
Back in 2006, I wrote that new media was becoming old media all over again through the lens of blogs. Nearing the end of 2008, new media is still becoming old media but there are just different players in the game. Look no further than the social media darling Twitter. Once out of graces with [...]
Five Reasons 1st Gen iPhone Beats 3G
Thomas Hawk beat me to it. Last night, I drafted my five reasons to stay on my current 1st gen iPhone. That’s even considering that it has a cracked screen. Yes, cracked. Functional but cracked. Did I mention cracked? 1. The Numbers Don’t Add Well, unfortunately, they do. With tax, my original iPhone was $420. [...]
Learning to (Really) Live with Email
E-mail is not dead. RSS was not the e-mail killer pundits proclaimed. In fact, we are getting more e-mail, more often. Terms like “e-mail bankruptcy” are becoming common vernacular. There are entire books and companies dedicated to managing e-mail, speaking to topics like e-mail etiquette or addressing its technical problems. The bottom line: e-mail is [...]
Search Engine Deoptimization
I now present to you an alternative view of SED…Search Engine Deoptimization. And yes, you read the title right. Please don’t excommunicate me from the web community. I promise…I’ll be good (well, maybe not). Sometimes there are cases where search engine optimization can really bite you in the butt (ouch, that hurts). An optimized site [...]
Web Analytics – An Hour a Day
In the ye olde days of web analytics, Internet marketers spoke about hits and pageviews. The web has changed, however, and the metrics to measure success are evolving (not dead…yet). Enter Avinash Kaushik, the proclaimer and educator of what analytics should be — and at an hour a day. Avinash hits home an important fact. [...]
Site Experience Optimization
Some people are not friendly to Search Engine Optimization. They think it is all about gaming Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines. There is some truth to that. Jason Calacanis’ new project — Mahalo – aims to eliminate traditional SEO. He’s got 5-years of funding to create a human powered search engine, SPAM free and full [...]
SezWho – A Step Toward Reputation Management
SezWho is an interesting new tool that helps blogs and bloggers establish comment credibility. It works via a plugin (presently only available for the WordPress and MovableType platforms). By allowing blog comments to be rated, SezWho helps: 1) Readers, who benefit from the ratings next to each comment. 2) Commenters, who are able to better [...]
7 Reasons Why Facebook is Rocking
Facebook is doing some amazing things – and it’s not just because it is a smart social network. Innovation is constant and is heavily influenced by Facebook members. As time goes by, Facebook is solidifying its grip on a very loyal userbase and attracting new members because…it’s just better. Take a look at some of the data [...]
The Pre-emptive Killing of the Pageview
If you know anything about web analytics, then you probably have heard of the term “pageview” before. It’s a metric to represent the number of times a web page is loaded in a browser and is one of the primary stats used to determine the health of a web site. Historically, it also has been [...]
Twitter me this, Twitter me that
Twitter – the “what are you doing?” service – is far and away the new craze of today’s early adopter crowd. The idea behind Twitter is simple; send mass updates about “what you are doing” to the Twitter community via SMS, IM, or the web. There are some powerful uses for Twitter. For example, imagine you [...]
Voicemail to Text – SpinVox
SpinVox is a great service that offers transcribed voicemails to text, both via e-mail and text message. They aren’t available U.S. wide at this point but they did just land a deal to leverage their “Voice-to-Screen” services (as they call it) with Cincinnati Bell’s customer base. They also are taking on select trial accounts for U.S. consumers. And I’m [...]
Pickle Releases the Channel Player
Photo and video sharing Pickle.com just gave word about a major upgrade to their “Pickle Player”, which they are now are calling the Pickle Channel Player (disclaimer: Pickle is a client of Viget Labs, although I have had very limited involvement in the engagement). The Channel Player is very innovative on a number of levels: 1) It [...]
Compete.com Grades Google
The last two years, Forbes.com has graded Google on the performance of its Search Properties (see 2005 and 2006 Google Report Cards). Compete.com’s Jeremy Crane took a more quantitative look at how Google did in 2006. The results: major growth in the Video, Blog, Scholar, and Desktop Search Properties. According to Jeremy’s analysis, Froogle, Local, and Directory fall [...]
Building THE MP3 Search Engine (and the Coolest Thing Since Sliced Bread)
This new tool scours the web for MP3s and then let’s you build a playlist based on what you find. The Flash player they provide to embed on social networks like MySpace and more generally websites simply loads the MP3s from the physical location of where the file exists on the web. Before adding a [...]
Gubb – Superb Web Based To Do and List Management
Gubb likely just became a staple in my workflow management. It’s a very cleanly designed web based to-do/list manager. It’s receiving rave reviews across the blogosphere. Gubb is the perfect example of why good design matters. It has a clean and visually appealing interface but more importantly scores highly in the usability department. Here’s where [...]
7 Ways to Get Quality Links
Links aren’t easy to get. Let me rephrase that, quality links aren’t easy to get. With RSS that’s even more true because your special sauce (i.e., the content of your site), can often get picked up by spammers and scammers and repurposed as their own. So, without further ado, I present 7 Ways to Get [...]
Snap and Cooliris Web Previews – Server-side versus Client-side
Web previews are becoming more and more popular. If you are not familiar with them, they provide a snapshot of a web page before actually visiting the web page. Snap is a search engine that has exported its technology across the web (and particularly on blogs) by enabling website owners to show Snap Previews for [...]
Add Tasks to Google Calendar (and Other Cool Things Remember the Milk Does)
If you are interested in adding tasks or to do’s to your Google Calendar, Remember the Milk is probably going to make your day. I’ve gone back and forth on my To Do list manager for quite some time but I recently converted back to Remember the Milk from Wallnote, after reading about their integration with [...]
Google Adds Trends to Google Reader
Personalization is going to be key to overcoming information overload. Yes, RSS makes things easier and at the same time, can flood your life with too much content. Google just rolled out what I imagine would be a first step towards implementing personalization into Google Reader – trends. The interesting thing about my Reading [...]
Trillian Astra – One IM Client to Rule Them All
Trillian is the geeks choice for IM. It allows you to use a single IM client across various platforms (AIM, Hotmail MSN, Yahoo!, and GTalk – the latter if you have the Pro edition) and have multiple identities for each. It’s an essential tool for keeping the different parts of your digital world distinct from [...]
Reflecting on 2006
2006 was another big year for the web. It saw the rise of YouTube, the dominance of MySpace, and more generally a focus on social networks and social networking on the web. I didn’t make predictions about this year. Instead, I noted that there were several big opportunities for established online players and their start-up counterparts to [...]
Intellicontact – Low Cost Alternative to ConstantContact
Intellicontact is a great e-mail marketing tool and has many of the same features as ConstantContact (CC). It is offered at a lower pricing point and even easier to use. The user interface is broken down into four high-level categories, including “My Contacts”, “Create”, “Send”, and “Track”. It is pretty easy to understand what each of those do. Simplicity [...]
Avinash Kaushik on the Real Conversion Opportunity Pie
If you are just brighter than a rock, you have some sort of stat tracker or analytics package on your website or blog. If you are smart and dilligent about your web presence, you actually analyze the stats that are collected. There’s a lot of data to pour through, especially if you use something like [...]
The Whole Web 3.0 Deal
Sometimes the web world makes me angry. My peers need to stop creating crazy words like blogging, vlogging, podcasting, and wikis. And please, it’s time to end the coining of terms like mash-ups or folksonomy. Technology is thankfully pushed forward by those on the edge. But advancements need to be communicated to those in the [...]
Serious Problems with RSS – Part 3 (Content Ambiguity)
Besides the fact that RSS subscribers can feel less connected or loyal to content creators (see The Wire Effect), content on a per source basis can also face ambiguity problems. RSS feeds are published based on timestamps and not on relevancy or interest. That means that one of my better posts could get buried beneath a handful of [...]
Serious Problems with RSS – Part 2 (The ‘Wire’ Effect)
You don’t create communities in RSS readers. You can’t really engage with readers. You really can’t do anything except consume raw content. – Phil Sim, Why I hate RSS readers Phil Sim made several great points when he wrote the piece quoted above. Another problem with RSS is that in many ways it turns content [...]
Serious Problems with RSS – Part 1 (Accurate Metrics)
Like some of you, I’ve tried just about every RSS reader out there. I’m more or less using Google Reader and Rojo now, which leads to one of the first serious problems I see with RSS: getting accurate metrics. There are tools out there to help but many of them don’t have the ability to [...]
Copernic Desktop Search
I installed Copernic Desktop Search on one of my laptops recently. I previously had tried Google Desktop but uninstalled it after a week. This tool is quickly becoming a must-have for me. If you are an Outlook or client-based e-mail user, it’s going to save you significant time finding old e-mails. And that’s coming from someone who [...]
FormLogix – Quickly Create Web and Email Forms
See my screencast review of FormLogix Relevant Links: – FormLogix – Wufootagged under formlogix, wufoo
ThinkFree – Online Office with a Desktop Feel
I was impressed when I met the CEO of ThinkFree – TJ Kang – at the New New Internet Conference. Both his analysis of the marketplace, as well as his product grabbed my attention. ThinkFree is an online MS Office alternative, offered at the low low cost of zero dollars. One of the distinguishing factors [...]
Central Desktop Live – Low Cost Alternative to Web Meetings
If you do web meetings with any regularity, you may want to give Central Desktop Live a try. From my research, they probably offer one of the lowest monthly fees on the market (in consideration of the feature set provided). Central Desktop Live is available at $35/month, whereas GoToMeeting goes for $49.00/month (WebEx recently followed [...]
Basecamp Integrates with Harvest
In a world of more focused or niche based web services such as Harvest, integrations are going to continue to be key (as I’ve noted in the past). Time tracking tool Harvest is now integrating with Basecamp. From the Harvest Gazette: If your organization currently uses Basecamp in conjunction with Harvest for time tracking, things [...]
SalesGenius Integrates with SalesForce’s AppExchange
SalesGenius, the lead qualifying e-mail tracking software tool, is now integrated via SalesForce’s AppExchange. According to the details of this announcement: “The combination of Salesforce and SalesGenius is a powerful enterprise mash-up for The Business Web,” said Tien Tzuo, senior vice president, corporate strategy, salesforce.com. “Salesforce.com customers can now install SalesGenius for AppExchange with a [...]
Web 2.0 Makes You More Productive
Many people get caught up in defining Web 2.0. I had breakfast with a friend yesterday and told him about TNNI conference. He said, “What’s Web 2.0? Is it software or is it an idea?” I said, “It’s an idea.” I shared a thought on TNNI’s social network last week that highlights this philosophy: When [...]
If You Build it, Will They Buy It?
Written by Joseph LeBlanc With recent eBay auctions of websites like Kiko and Huckabuck, there’s a lingering question as to how many new web services will sell. In the past, large companies like Microsoft, AOL, and Google have purchased smaller ones as a way of either removing potential competition or acquiring talented developers. In both [...]
Webtop, RIA, and "Webified"
There were some interesting discussions late last week regarding Rich Internet Applications (RIA), a new term called “webified”, and the webtop. If you recall, I’ve been doing a series on the webtop and how I disagree with it being called a WebOS (thus far, I’ve pointed to Bubbles and SimTimer as examples of what I [...]
The Long Tail of Linking
Back when the Internet and subsequently the blogosphere was in its infancy, there were two concepts that seemed to win the day: link exchanges and blogrolls. Each provided a way of gaining more traffic and visibility. As each matured, however, these models went from being mutually beneficial to annoying. High-volume traffic websites and “A-list” bloggers [...]
HitTail – The Long Tail Applied to SEM
The Long Tail has been quite the subject of late. The concept behind the long tail was popularized by Wired Editor’s Chris Anderson and is pretty simple (although I’ll allow Wikipedia to describe it for the sake of being concise): In many cases the infrequent or low-amplitude events—the long tail, represented here by the yellow [...]
Huckabuck Search Interface for Sale on eBay
Ala Kiko, Huckabuck – a search interface that allows users to ”tune their search” is now on sale at eBay. Kiko and Huckabuck won’t be the lasts of these auctions – but I wonder how many of them will actually sell? tagged under huckabuck
A Giant Web 2.0 Headache
As the long weekend comes upon us, I can’t help but admit that I have a giant Web 2.0 headache. What once was fun and interesting – reading about the new happenings of the web – now has become so overwhelming that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish the signal from the noise even on the [...]
SlimTimer – Webtop Time-tracking
I’ve reviewed a number of time-trackers in the past but none of them took advantage of the webtop like SlimTimer does. Richard White – previously of Kiko – has developed an easy time-tracking tool with SlimTimer. But the main reason I’ve switched to using it is that he implemented a Bubble module. Time-tracking is one [...]
SalesGenius – Qualify Sales Leads Instantly
SalesGenius is a product of Genius.com Incorporated. It’s an invaluable tool used to track e-mails, their open rates, and potential website visits from prospects and other sales leads. It can be used directly from Outlook via a plugin or simply from the web. I’ve often wondered why e-mail was not “smarter” – SalesGenius really is [...]
Bubbles – Refreshing the Web and Powering the Webtop
Bubbles help keep “favorite websites a click away” via the system tray. It is a client install that allows users to easily access websites and web apps outside the browser – and more specifically through “bubbles”. Currently, Bubbles supports several different Bubble modules including ones for Google Calendar, Gmail, and Flickr. But as I will [...]
Webtop – The Future of Computing
A number of people have thrown around the word “webtop” – but in doing so, I think they miss what the future of the web might have in store for us. Web 2.0 purists believe a Web 2.0 world where all functionality, all true computing occurs within the browser or some form of it. But [...]
Robin Good Remixes the TechCrunch Web 2.0 Documentary
Robin Good decided that 1/8 of the recent TC Web 2.0 Documentary was worthwhile: Couldn’t I remix and edit this video into my own version of what was really meaningful for me and my audiences? Isn’t that what the Web 2.0 spirit is all about? … I then decided to take humble self-permission to follow [...]
Widgetbox – Widget Management
As Richard MacManus opined, Widgets are the New Black. Widgets are particularly popular within social networks and on blog sidebars, extending the reach of news, websites, and product of services. But as Paul Kedrosky notes, “I like the idea of syndicating functionality via widgets, but without being tied directly to either ads or merchant programs [...]
PipelineDeals.com and FreshBooks set to Integrate
Just received a heads-up from Mike McDerment of FreshBooks that tomorrow, PipelineDeals.com and FreshBooks is announcing an effort to integrate their services. The result will allow customers to see a more complete view of their business from the sales through the invoicing process. I don’t know of too many web based (or SaaS, if you [...]
Yutter Goes Down Hard
It seems the RSS to e-mail service Yutter is down for the count and potentially out of luck. I just surfed over there to play some more with their service, only to see the notice below:
Meez – the Next Teen Addiction
Meez is an online tool to create a personalized version of your virtual self. Perfect for the vain MySpace crowd, who check their personal profiles 18 billion times per day, always tweaking their “digital persona”. I spent about 20 minutes on the site creating different identities for myself. Most styles, accessories, and backgrounds are free [...]
SnapBits – Needs to be a bit more useful
Trying something a bit different here by doing a review of SnapBits through screencast. It’s not quite polished from a production standpoint but I think I’m onto something here. Let me know your thoughts. tagged under snapbits, google notebook
The YouTube of Y
Today’s tired Web 2.0 metaphors are brought to you by the letter ‘B’ for boring and the number ’9′ as in the 92 million times someone has used phrases like "It’s MySpace for X" or "The YouTube of Y".The most recent example includes CNN Exchange being dubbed the YouTube of News. Besides the fact that [...]
Toggl – Another Online Timetracker
Time tracking seems to be hot right now. As of several months ago (or so), I didn’t know of any legit standalone web based time trackers. Since then, I’ve reviewed 14 Dayz and Harvest, heard about FreshBooks’ investment into a more feature filled time tracking system, and now have come across Toggl. Toggl is another [...]
Wild Apricot – Wildly Easy to Create Member Based Websites
I’ve been finding some really great products lately (thanks to Emily Chang’s eHub) and Wild Apricot is one of them. Wild Apricot is “web based software for professional associations and non-profits.” It’s very similar to SiteKreator.com (although easier to use but probably not as powerful). Audience and Features Wild Apricot is marketing itself for a [...]
PipelineDeals.com – Dead Simple Sales Tracking
PipelineDeals.com is the easy and simple way to manage sales. It’s specifically designed to manages sales, so it’s not a CRM: “Pipeline was designed by a sales agent for a sales agent.” Audience and Features This software focuses on serving small to medium sized businesses. Because it is web based, it caters to businesses that [...]
Snoozing through the Blogosphere
I opened up my feed reader today to see that everyone thinks it’s necessary to write about the same thing: – FeedBurner acquiring Blogbeat – 100 Million Daily Videos served up by YouTube – New Yahoo! Homepage Launches I’m not sure if it’s just a ‘me-too’ mindset or what. Do bloggers really think their numbers [...]
Guest Blogger at Read / Write Web
If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, then you know that I am a big fan of Richard MacManus . He writes the widely popular and ever thoughtful Read/Write Web. That’s why I was so excited that he allowed me to have a guest post on his blog, entitled MySpace – The [...]
Foxmarks and Google Sync – Great Tools for Mobile Workers
As a result of my work, the last several months has required me to utilize multiple laptops. During the first several weeks or so, I exported my bookmarks on a somewhat daily basis to my Gmail account and then re-imported them on my other laptop. That got annoying quickly. The solution was apparent so I [...]
Skype USB Phone Adapter -D-Link DPH-50U
If you recall, I began using Skype exclusively back in the beginning of June. Well, the Washington Post just ran an article about Internet and Land-Line Calls on One Phone. The Post article speaks to a $140 USB Cordless Dualphone. I only spent $59.99 to do the same thing with the D-Link DPH-50U – a [...]
SiteKreator.com – Just Add Content
SiteKreator.com is the easy and affordable way for small businesses and independent professionals to build and host their web presence. Their intuitive tool allows quick in-page edits to both the site layout and content – all without software installation or having the ability to understand HTML or CSS. Background and Purpose The origins of SiteKreator.com [...]
Update: Mailroom Does Branded E-mail
In response to my Hosted Gmail Goodness post, I received two notes from Sproutit. The first was this comment from Peter. The second was a note from Charles Jolley, the Sproutit CEO, via e-mail: I just wanted to let you know that we added the branded email feature you asked for a little while ago [...]
Harvest and 14 Dayz – Web Based Time Trackers
I’ve been using Harvest the last several weeks to keep better track of my time. Harvest is a web based time tracker – no software installation is necessary and it is available from any computer that has an Internet connection. This week, I came across 14 Dayz via Emily Chang’s eHub (read her interview with [...]
Internet Innovations at the Duct Tape Marketing Channel
If you have followed my blog for any length of time, then you know that I’ve worked with John Jantsch in the past. My introduction to him first started as a participant in one of his Ultimate Marketing System courses. Since that time, I’ve kept in touch with John, occasionally pointing him to new tools [...]
Hosted Gmail Goodness
I use Gmail for both my personal and business e-mail. The business side of things is relatively new (within the last month or so). I’ve fortunately been selected as a beta participant for the Hosted Gmail service – so I am using my TECHNOSIGHT e-mail address with Gmail, as opposed to an ‘address@gmail.com’. In order [...]
Instant Messaging 2.0? Yahoo! Messenger Still Not
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice now includes plug-ins “designed to let people to do things like track eBay auctions, see friends’ wish lists on Amazon.com, collaborate real-time on event planning and compare calendars with contacts” (via ZDNet). Guess what? I don’t care! I don’t need my chat application to do any of that – I already [...]
Lead Generation for the Complex Sale
Lead Generation for the Complex Sale is a new book by Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch Incorporated. In the book, Brian focuses on providing a proven process for generating business-to-business leads for complex sales, where ‘complex sale’ is defined as a sales process occurring over a period of 6- to 36-months. Brian is probably one [...]
New Media Becomes Old Media All Over Again
I was chatting on Skype with Pete Cashmore last week and I was glad that he came to the same conclusion I have about the current state of the blogosphere. If you haven’t noticed, the rich are getting richer – big blogs are getting bigger. They are getting more eyeballs, pageviews, and advertising dollars. The [...]
Goodbye Area 775, Hello Skype
If you recall, I cancelled Vonage back in April due to dissatisfaction with my service. I was ecstatic about the prospective of the features offered by Gizmo Project Area 775. After some initial issues (mentioned in the original post), I received an e-mail from Eric Johnson, who works for CallWave. CallWave teams with Gizmo Project [...]
More Net Neutrality – Getting the Facts Down
The Net Neutrality debate keeps getting crazier and crazier. My previous post about it should give you an idea why, as it was entitled Net Neutrality – It’ll Make Your Head Hurt. Hands Off the Internet is an anti-Net Neutrality group supported by the likes of the telcos. I just wrote about them at the [...]
Thou Shalt Hang out at Wells
I’ve been at the Buzz Conference the last two days – an event hosted by National Community Church (NCC). I pointed to NCC in an earlier post, in how they used Xanga to promote their Week of Justice. This morning I went to a Bloggers Breakfast at their coffeehouse Ebenezers. One of the core convictions [...]
Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business – Concluding Thoughts
There are those of you out there that have read through my series on Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business and thought to yourself things like, “Yarmosh, you’re crazy.”, “You’ve completely missed the boat here.”, or “Web 2.0 is just a buzz word. It doesn’t mean anything and is going to have no effect [...]
Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business – Knowledge Building
In the case of the Web 2.0 Watermill, there are primarily four areas where technology is beginning to facilitate a vastly improved Internet: knowledge collection, knowledge discovery, knowledge building, and knowledge sharing. – Ken Yarmosh, Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business In today’s job market, employees come and ago. But hopefully all of the [...]
A Harsh Reality: E-mail is a Necessary Evil
If you are like me, then you probably think that e-mail is broken. I know people who spend their entire days living out of their e-mail inbox – they barely can respond to the onslaught of messages coming at them. Keeping up with e-mail has become a large part of our jobs – for many [...]
Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business – Knowledge Sharing
In the case of the Web 2.0 Watermill, there are primarily four areas where technology is beginning to facilitate a vastly improved Internet: knowledge collection, knowledge discovery, knowledge building, and knowledge sharing. – Ken Yarmosh, Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business Knowledge sharing is what enables employees to get their jobs done everyday. Without [...]
Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business – Knowledge Discovery
In the case of the Web 2.0 Watermill, there are primarily four areas where technology is beginning to facilitate a vastly improved Internet: knowledge collection, knowledge discovery, knowledge building, and knowledge sharing. – Ken Yarmosh, Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business My series on Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business has been defunct [...]
Goodbye Vonage, Hello Gizmo Project Area 775
About a week ago, I cancelled Vonage. I like the features but hated the service. I constantly had calls dropped, sometimes randomly heard other conversations, and generally had at least 2-3 issues with it per week. That’s a lot considering I don’t use a landline that often. In an ideal world, I’d like to get [...]
The State of Online Feed Readers – An Addendum
My pappy used to say, “You’ve got to crawl before you can walk.” Ok, I don’t have a pappy, I have a Dad. Truth be told, he never used to tell me that. But it was a good way for me to introduce my point. When it comes to the state of online feed readers, [...]
Silas Partners and Web 2.0 in the Christian Community
Churches and ministries are really getting into blogging, podcasting, and yes, even social networking sites. Over the past three months, I’ve been working more and more with these types of organizations through a company called Silas Partners. Silas Partners’ aim is to help churches and the like to use the web more effectively. As an [...]
Dennis McDonald on Corporate Resistance to Web 2.0 and the Gartner ‘Hype Cycle’
I had lunch with Dennis McDonald yesterday. We were initially introduced through the LinkedinBloggers Group, where he is now one of the moderators. Dennis is a consultant focusing on “strategy, assessment, planning, and project management support to organizations that manage information technology (I.T.) and the business processes that I.T. supports.” As he described to me [...]
What Are my Going to Do with 403 links?
I’m a big social bookmarker, perhaps too big. As I was looking at my account yesterday, I realize I have 403 links bookmarked at BlinkList. And that is nothing compared to some folks. But what in the world am I going to do with 403 links? How can I reasonably use or manage this information? [...]
University 2.0 and Boston College’s John Gallaugher
As a Computer Science undergrad at Boston College, I regretfully admit that I only took one business class. But the one class I took was more than worth it. Professor John Gallaugher taught me how to think about the Internet and web strategically. His eCommerce class in some ways put me on the career path [...]
Empower a Steve 2.0
Two weekends ago, I went on a little trip with some of my old buddies who I rarely see any more. We caught up on a lot of things, including what I had been up to with TECHNOSIGHT. Yes, the geek jokes flowed but they also were really interested to learn more about blogs, podcasts, [...]
Why Experts are Rejecting ‘Generic’ Memetrackers
Last week Scoble explained why he was unsubscribing from Memeorandum. More recently he wrote: One thing I’ve enjoyed recently is just reading feeds and staying away from the Memetrackers (although, I’ll be honest, I’ve peeked at Memeorandum a few times, it’s a very hard addiction to break). Pete Cashmore also says that he has “eased [...]
Seth Godin on the Future of Blogs
I don’t necessarily agree with Seth’s premise that multiple posts per day “make it easy to lose loyal readers.” I think it is too generalizing. It really depends on the quality of the content. I’m happy to keep subscribed to a blogger that does multiple posts a day, as long as the content is relevant. [...]
Pete Cashmore on the Edge
I normally am on board with Pete Cashmore but he’s making some brash comments on a couple of his latest posts. First, he called coComment the best Web 2.0 service launched this year (if need be, check out this refresher on coComment): I love, love, LOVE CoComment! The idea is a good one: bring together [...]
Google tests out Hosted Email Service
Details at the Corante Web Hub. tagged under Gmail, Google
Yahoo! and Digg – Sign of the Times or Big Rumor
As you can well see, I stay away from the rumor mill both here and at the Corante Web Hub. So when everyone got in on the Yahoo! buying Digg talk, I steered clear. I don’t know what is up with the alleged deal at this point but I found something kind of interesting on [...]
The State of Search 2.0
How useful is search for you? I’m more than dissatisfied with it. I’m not the only one who thinks we are in definite need of Search 2.0. Just ask the founders of Wink, Delicious, Eurekster, or Rollyo. Or Google and Yahoo! for that matter. There generally seems to be two different approaches to Search 2.0. [...]
Interview with Sproutit CEO Charles Jolley
I first came across Sproutit via Web 2.0 Central and was immediately intrigued by the blurb I read: Everyday, small businesses, bloggers and freelancers waste hours answering their e-mail. This fall Sproutit.com will introduce the first software built exclusively for small businesses and individuals to solve this problem. To this point, few details have been [...]
Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business – Knowledge Collection
In the case of the Web 2.0 Watermill, there are primarily four areas where technology is beginning to facilitate a vastly improved Internet: knowledge collection, knowledge discovery, knowledge building, and knowledge sharing. – Ken Yarmosh, Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business Traditional collaborative and communication efforts in the business environment are soon to be [...]
FeedBlitz is Simple and Powerful
When it comes to staying connected to my writings, I prefer people to subscribe to my RSS feed. But I realize that RSS is just not ready for primetime yet. That’s especially true for my most coveted of readers – those trying to get a handle on all this new web stuff. In my presentations, [...]
Giving Blogbeat a try
Brian Benzinger’s post on Blogbeat prompted me to give it a try. I’ve disabled MeasureMap for the time being. I actually heard of Blogbeat prior to MeasureMap – I think via Steve Rubel, although I can’t remember – but they were closed to the public until recently. While I’m generally quite a big fan of [...]
Network Neutrality – It’ll Make Your Head Hurt
“How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm After they’ve seen Paree” – song from World War I Era Network neutrality is a phrase that has been the subject of much debate – and the discussion about it reaches far beyond the recent conversations of the blogoshpere. Previously unbeknownst to me, I came across [...]
Opportunities 2006 – Usefulness
2006 is going to be a year where the creators of web technology have the opportunity to make their services better in terms of integration, usability, and usefulness. – Ken Yarmosh, Looking towards 2006 I recently saw a man walking through the airport while on his cell. He had a hands-free device, where the microphone [...]
Details of Arrington’s Edgeio Released
According to this piece on MercuryNews.com, Edgeio is… a search engine blog for classified ads posted on blogs Those are the first details I’ve read about Edgeio. I’m sure it was no accident, as Mike and company plan to release it sometime within the next month or so. tagged under Edgeio, Mike Arrington
Opportunities 2006 – Usability
2006 is going to be a year where the creators of web technology have the opportunity to make their services better in terms of integration, usability, and usefulness. – Ken Yarmosh, Looking towards 2006 Usability – Web products and services must be dead simple to use Have you ever tried to show a non-blogosphere, non-techy [...]
FeedDigest and RapidFeeds
It seems my friends at FeedDigest are having some scalability issues – most likely due to their popularity. To catch up on what FeedDigest is, read my interview with its creator, Peter Cooper. I’m using cURL to pull in my digests because DreamHost does not allow PHP includes (yes, I’m still with DreamHost, they moved [...]
Roll your own Firefox Search Engine
Dave Pell was nice enough to give me a heads up on Rollyo’s new simplified means to create customized Firefox Search Engines. After adding sources, the user clicks “Create Search Engine” and then is quickly prompted to add the Searchroll to Firefox. While this sort of feature was available before, this tweak was a smart [...]
Goodbye, SearchFox
Unfortunate for me, one of my favorite Web 2.0 applications – SearchFox RSS – is going away. I received an email from Esteban Kozak, which read: Thanks for all your help in making SearchFox what it is. We have enjoyed providing this service, and hope that you have enjoyed using it. Please export all of [...]
Opportunities 2006 – Integration
2006 is going to be a year where the creators of web technology have the opportunity to make their services better in terms of integration, usability, and usefulness. – Ken Yarmosh, Looking towards 2006 Integration – Web 2.0 services must be seamless Yahoo! has the opportunity to be the poster child of an integrated Web [...]
Favorite Web 2.0 Applications
Instead of predictions, Mike is writing about the Web 2.0 companies he couldn’t live without. I agree with many of his selections, including (but not limited to) FeedBurner, Measure Map, and WordPress. I part ways with him on Bloglines and del.icio.us and also have a couple of other Web 2.0 like companies that I use [...]
Looking towards 2006
2006 will not be a year of massive Web 2.0 adoption The biggest lesson I’ve learned from my countless non-geek interactions this year is that we are far from reaching mainstream penetration of Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, RSS, tagging, social bookmarks, wikis, podcasts, etc.). Web 2.0 services are too disconnected, unintuitive, and often are impractical. [...]
Call it what you want, the Web is Changing
The tech blogosphere is troubling lately. Lots of echoes, as seen by the Yahoo! acquisition. Lots of silly debate, as exemplified by the current discussion about Web 2.0 being dead. I’m not against an old-fashioned dustup amongst geeks but debating the legitimacy of Web 2.0 doesn’t seem to be a worthwhile use of our intellect. [...]
Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business – The Web 2.0 Watermill
The historical origins of the watermill are quite simple: innovators sought a way to harness the force of water to accomplish work more easily and efficiently. Mechanical energy could boost production and reallocate human resources to other efforts. But prior to rotary motion, the watermill was not possible. Water existed and milling existed. Yet the [...]
Web 2.0 Powering Verticals
Take a quick survey of the ever changing Web 2.0 landscape and you will notice that the most successful services have two key elements. The first is that they offer some sort of compelling value proposition to users. The second is that this value proposition is driven by a laser focused service offering. If we [...]
Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business – First Steps
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 [...]
Web 2.0 Business Models
Today’s Web startups are not entirely unlike their dot.com predecessors when it comes to the way they are thinking about making money. The differences for “Web 2.0″ type companies stem not from their preferred business models – models that are very similar to their dot.com counterparts – but in the forces influencing the implementation of [...]
Mashingtonpost.com
I almost didn’t believe my eyes when I saw this page at a paper in my own backyard (and yes, I checked to see if this page was some sort of fake) but the WashingtonPost is now highlighting interesting mash-ups that its users create. They write over at their Post Remix, which is their new [...]
New Web Technology Outside the Blogosphere
One of things I do on a daily basis is scour the web for articles I think are interesting from the perspective of businesses and everyday Internet users – of course in relation to the evolution and use of new web technologies. I’ve come across some really great articles lately and I wanted to remind [...]
Interview with Rollyo Founder Dave Pell
My first ‘encounter’ with Dave Pell came when I submitted some feedback to Rollyo during their public beta launch – he subsequently addressed my points via email. For those not familiar with Rollyo, it allows a user to create a “personal search engine using only the sources you trust.” I’ve used it extensively for searching [...]
Bloggers are the New Marketers But Not the Way you Think
If you are a business blogger, chances are you have heard the idea of using a blog to make your customers into ‘evangelists’ for your products or services. While the term ‘customer evangelist’ just rubs me the wrong way, the idea is to get your customers so excited and passionate about what your company or [...]
Interview with Strategist and Blogging Guru Dave Taylor
I first met Dave Taylor at the Blog Business Summit this past August. He was the first presenter and by my estimates, one of the best (feel free to check out my notes from that particular session). I’ve kept in touch with Dave since then and his Intuitive Life Business Blog is one of my [...]
Yahoo! Maps Beta Impresses
Go check out Yahoo! Maps Beta. It’s got some amazing features, tightly intergrating its Yahoo! Local Search. I was impressed…how about you? update: for those interested, Mike posts a most extensive review on TechCrunch. double update: you’ve got to check out the Yahoo! Local Events Browser Demo that Jeremy blogs about tagged under Yahoo Maps, [...]
An Open Letter to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington
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. [...]
The New Face of Blogniscient
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 [...]
Post to My Web or BlinkList
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 [...]
Interview with Blogniscient Founder Ben Ruedlinger
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 [...]
Rollyo Adds Searchboxes
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 [...]
Bootstrapping Web 2.0
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 [...]
Flock – Another Browser for the Tech Community
Flock is a revolutionary approach to consuming the web. It integrates tagging, blogging, and feed aggregation all within the browser itself – no plugins, extensions, or add-ons needed. Built on top of the Mozilla platform (read: Firefox), Flock aimed at making life simpler (which is what Steve Rubel looked for) but missed the mark. Om [...]
Interview with Sphere CEO Tony Conrad
Last week, I contacted Tony Conrad for an interview about Sphere, a new blog search engine presently in private beta testing. Tony, who is the CEO of Sphere was gracious enough to agree, amidst a very busy schedule. I’ve been lucky to beta test Sphere and think Tony and his team are off to a great [...]
Another Mash-Up Mess Up
What happens when you take the ‘mash’ out of a mash-up? You get a mess up. Oodle, a search engine for local classifieds was requested to stop scraping craigslist for listings. They of course did so, stating We are no longer adding new Craigslist listings to our index. We received a request from them to [...]
Solution Watch Joins Web 2.0 Workgroup
The Web 2.0 Workgroup has been busy! Their announcement came earlier this week (starting with TechCrunch, Read/Write Web, and WeBreakStuff), followed by Dave Winer and his TheTwoWayWeb joining Wednesday, and now Solution Watch joins in on the fun. I’ve previously not been familiar with the site but its author, Brian Benzinger, describes it as …a [...]
SearchFox Listens
As a beta tester of SearchFox RSS, I’ve received several email announcements from the SearchFox Product Manager Esteban Kozak. Esteban has done an outstanding job keeping his testers informed of new features the SearchFox team has been adding to SearchFox RSS. The latest feature pushes towards addressing one of the five things I think web [...]
Memeorandum and Blogniscient
Want to read “the most relevant items from thousands of news sites and weblogs” or to “find the needle in the blog haystack” – memeorandum and Blogniscient are your answers. These aren’t blog search engines like Technorati and IceRocket. Instead they aim to give a snapshot of the blogosphere’s biggest buzz by highlighting the topics [...]
The Benefits of AJAX Quantified
A new article entitled Measuring the Benefits of Ajax by Alexei White on developer.com attempts to understand how AJAX technology can affect the bottom line. White writes, Often, in business, decision makers are interested mainly in how information technology can reduce costs, or make better use of information assets. The benefits of Ajax seem to come more [...]
Google Search is so Web 1.0
I’ve been beta testing wink over the last week. As opposed to other search engines (until today), wink combines the idea of search and tagging, in that order. Their motto is “People. Powered. Search.” At its core, wink is powered by Google search. Over time, however, people rate and tag results, thus in theory making wink a better, ‘people [...]
Google Launches RSS Reader
The latest in the growing Google empire…the Google Reader (via Read/Write Web) .
New Squidoo eBook and Beta Invites Open
Last week, I wrote about Seth Godin’s new project Squidoo. Based on the traffic I’ve received from it, people are quite curious. This morning, we have some more details. Seth has written a new eBook called Everyone is an expert, which seems to be the underlying motivation in his creation of Squidoo. According to the SquidBlog, Squidoo [...]
BlinkList Reloaded
Earlier this week, I came across what I assumed to be a super secret BlinkList URL that showed all the new improvements the BlinkList team was working on. No, I won’t tell you how I found it and no, I won’t tell you the URL. I decided not to reveal their hard work. They finally released the new [...]
Five Ways to Improve Web Based Feed Aggregators
I’ve been planning a feed aggregator “must haves” post for the last two weeks. Richard’s Has Bloglines dropped the ball? prompted to finally get my thoughts from the scribblings in my notebook onto my blog. My original idea was to focus on what I believed were feed aggregator essentials or “must haves” but I am [...]
The Great Web and Web 2.0
If we learned anything from “Web 1.0” (no, this term wasn’t ‘Web 1.0’ until recently, sort of like how World War I was originally just ‘The Great War’), it was the demolition of the Field of Dreams mentality – if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. While I spent the better part of last [...]
Interview with Findory Founder Greg Linden
Greg Linden, the CEO and founder of Findory, was nice enough to find some time in his busy schedule to do an email interview with me. As described on the Findory website, “Findory is about personalizing information”. Findory helps you make sense of news and information by recommending content based on past reading habits. You [...]
Blogoposium 1 – Calling all last Web 2.0 Contributions
Of course the Web 2.0 conversation will continue well past the blogoposium as it has existed well before it. Still, get in those last Web 2.0 thoughts today and tag your posts appropriately. To see what has been contributed to this point:
Cool Findory Features
Tech Crunch beat me to the punch and put up a nice piece on using Findory’s new RSS reading feature. In light of that, I thought I’d share some other cool Findory features – Customized RSS Feeds: Findory allows you to create customized RSS feeds based both on article source (News or Blogs) and article [...]
Interview with Peter Cooper
If you do not know who Peter Cooper is yet, chances are you will soon. Peter is the creator of FeedDigest, a tool that very neatly creates a way to include customized “digests” of live feeds in the content of your site (see the “New Internet Press” section on the TECHNOSIGHT homepage for an example). [...]
TECHNOSIGHT Interviews
As we push towards the “New Internet” or “Web 2.0″, some really exciting stuff is happening along the way. The “stuff” does not just happen. Rather, new technology or new uses of technology are pioneered by innovative people, those who “think outside the box” and are typically dissatisfied with the status quo – they know [...]
RSS and Google – Jargon or Standards?
Yesterday, Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web wrote about Google’s (inevitable) entrance into the world not of “RSS” but of “Feeds”. As evident on Google News, both RSS and Atom feeds are available (in version 2.0 and 0.3 respectively). The important point, as articulated by MacManus is that Google does not seem to be hot on [...]
