Monthly Archives: July 2006

Gadgets – the desktop revolution begins

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One of the best sessions at Mashup Camp 2  was Adam Sah’s “Google Gadgets” which outlined how rapidly gadgets are sweeping onto the desktop.   These were formerly called Google Widgets but Adam told me they have been renamed to avoid confusion.  Yahoo “confabulator” concept has a nice ring….but….perhaps some term standardization is called for here.    Apple can keep the widget idea because… they are Apple.
Gadgets are sweeping onto the desktop.    At MIX06 the MS Live team was also very bullish on the concept and has been developing a desktop and OS environment that will rely heavily on people populating their desktop with gadgets.     Although many of these are “whimsical” in nature, the number of functional gadgets is growing very fast.  I think this is the coming “battleground” – or at least a coming very fertile ground – for those vying for eyeballs.    In the meantime it’s a great way to customize the desktop easily.

Portland Airport PDX has free WIFI

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Hey California – Oregon’s got it’s act together, so get with the free Airport WIFI program!       Google will pay for it, right?   I’m at PDX in Portland enjoying another free wifi airport.   PDX correctly lists local tourism and travel resources at the login page which is something we really need to do at Medford.  Those listings can then pay for the fees needed to run the free WIFI.   Advertising continues to fuel internet innovation.

Have you thanked an advertiser today?

MFR Medford Airport has Free WIFI.

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Here I am waiting for the PDX flight and thanks to some clever visionary I’ve got a good wireless connection that is …. free.     Free wireless airports = pure goodness.  $9.95  wireless Airports = bad badness.

I guess I should thank *myself* and SOVA since we pushed so hard for this when we installed the byways and travel touch kiosk travel info system here a few years ago, but mostly I credit the MFR Airport’s great directory Bern for seeing the need and benefits, and Hunter Communications for setting up the system.

Bound for BWI and on to Virginia

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The house is 99.5% painted and looking really nice.    We even got to some of the spots I missed ten years ago during house paint number one.   4 colors…fancy!

Off to the Virginia Reunion tomorrow with mom.    MFR to PDX to ORD to BWI.    Thanks to hotwire.com I got great deals on rental car (200 for 8 days) and hotel (Ramada near Airport for 55+tax).    I’m so pleased with hotwire results over the past few weeks of travel I think I may shift my booking sites over to them, though it’s not clear to me that most people are comfortable booking without knowing the hotel or even the exact location.   I’m finding that since motels are clustered together anyway you are likely to get a desirable location as I did in Silicon Valley and tomorrow near BWI.

Mashup Camp 2 Roundup

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I wanted to throw out some closure items for the Mashup Camp 2 experience, which indeed is a bit like a disney theme ride through Web 2.0 land.   Doug and Dave did a fantastic job pulling together hundreds of folks and making it all come together in the unconference format.

Lots of good notes on sessions:
Wiki details for most mashup camp sessions

Mashup Blog

Programmable Web

For me a key question remains “Can great mashups become great businesses?”.     I think I’m inclined to agree with Peter Rip, a Venture Capitalist who has been to both camps and discussed the major challenges facing new companies that depend on other company’s technology and data.     Mashups can be a great value add to an existing company but it’s not clear that a mashup website alone can become a thriving online business.

That said, mashups are certainly destabilizing.   Their importance could be in shaping the way the web moves forward.   That’s more than enough to make mashups a significant online force of change.

PS Microsoft:   Thanks for all that free espresso.   It just … wore … off…..

House Painting

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We are almost done painting our house and most of the neighbor report it’s looking good to them.

We’ve gotten fancier than last time with 4 colors, the last two just for highlights. I’d started this because I thought we might be selling the place to buy the Nut Ranch – a cool old historic place just out of town, but I’m no longer enamored with that house.

Mashup Camp 2 – and THE WINNER IS …. WeatherBonk!

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The wooden nickels are getting counted and the top number will determine the winner of the 5000 top prize here at Mashup Camp. I voted for WeatherBonk this time which is a very good mashup of NOAA, traffic, and many other feeds over Google maps. David Schorr had a good stack of nickels last time I passed that table. But I have a hunch Frucall may win – it’s a very usable and clever mashup as well.

The format here is such that the “simple to grasp” mashups may have an advantage over the more complex ones. PodBop, the last winner, carried this simplicity advantage.

David Berlind is keeping us in suspense … thanking the great sponsors of this event.

….now final ungiven nickels are getting distributed to the mashup people …

Here are some counts:

LoveCrunch 7+2?
Frucall 8
Jeff’s picture captcha 24 – this could be the winner?
Yobie Goodstorm
Bart with TrainCheck 8+1?
David WeatherBonk 21+1
Jeff with Elephant Drive 20
Cameron Jones, Public Radio Travel Planner – 2
Kurt? music/pix mash…. 2
Foto Tiger 5
Mark with SecretPrices – 13+1
Kung Gao, Frappr – 2
Chad MileGuru – 13
Tom TIKI mash 3?
Mindjet 3
411Synch 2 (surprising – this was GREAT!)
Dave StrikeIron – was not soliciting nickels -1

PubWalk -13
Eric Small Town Guides – ?
RealestateFu – Greg from FrozenBear.com 0 (!) This was a superb mash…what’s going on?

Wait – we may have a TIE! ?? Redistribution is happening….

It’s a tie between WeatherBonk and Mecommerce…(who also had the picture captcha )

The tie has been broken by voting by people moving across the room and it’s David Schorr’s WeatherBonk.

Mashup Camp 2 – Cassie and Drew

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The youngest attendees are getting interviewed by David, who points out that they are the builders of the future….of mashups and the web.

Drew Dara-Abrams is a PhD student at UC Santa Barbara and sister Cassie, at age 16, led some sessions on social networking. She skipped High School (spending a week there) and goes to college now. Drew counsels the next breed of mashups to “think things through” a bit more. Good advice for all of us.

Mashup Camp 2 – Google Gadgets

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Adam’s talking about Google Gadgets and how powerful they are as a mini content distributor. They are easy to create and are attaining huge usage worldwide. Adam and his team have done a super job of making this fast, easy, and fun. Good google! This is dynamite stuff, and in typical Google fashion they have made it easy, fun, and open.

The Gadget directory is algorithmically generated so the most popular gadgets tend to rise to the top as they are selected by users. Don’t be evil helps define decisions virtuously rather than GoogleOptimizably. Engineering constraints trump marketing ones.

GoogleModules.com and hotmodules.com (these are NOT Google sites) are good sources of inspiration and gadgets.

Translation is easy by having a few lines translated, the upload as a country specific gadget.

Top author? 16 year old Caleb from Arkansas. Countdown gadget is his top and he has several.

Design: Minimize brand unless you are really big where it’s a value adding feature.

Hyperlink at bottom for more info

Hyperlink in title

Promote gadget on your own site (add-to-google button)