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?
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.
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
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…..
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.
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)
Patrick Chanezon from Google is talking about and showing his excellent concept to mashup Google Maps and Google Calendar. This is a natural combination and it seems like a lot of applications would benefit from plotting events data spacially like this.
… Mashup Thursday begins with MSN sponsored coffee, for which they deserve major caffienated credit. Part of the interesting buzz here (and I htink at MIX) is how good the LIVE people are and how different LIVE at MS is from the “old” MS culture which has a reputation for slow development and cumbersome approaches. Maybe it’s the coffee?
HERE is a list of today’s schedule here at Mashup Camp 2. Great to see more from Yahoo and Google today.
Am I wrong to be skeptical that Wikis are the right answer to “loose” forms of collaboration such as those found at conferences or within non-corporate interest groups with many different types of folks?
Yet Wikipedia works fanastically? Is this because it’s a big, long term project?
I’m noticing challenges with the Wiki here at MashupCamp. I cleared spam last night only to find the *same spam* had been returned this morning. Hardins “Tragedy of the Commons” comes to mind in the sense that it’s hard to manage public spaces due to incentive issues.
But more important than spam is the challenge of updating. In a world where so many conference participants have blogs and websites isn’t there a way to collaborate where people update their blogs (high incentive to update, clear spam, etc) and then this content flows into the collective space?
A blicki system? Barriers to participation in Wikis must be reduced and it seems fundamental that successful collaborative systems don’t ask people to do things they won’t naturally “just do”.
Wikis certainly work very well as envisioned by my fellow Oregonian Ward Cunningham who coined the term “Wiki” from, I think, a Hawaiian Bus stop sign. I wonder if his original notion was for more structured and incentified forms of collaboration such as in a company?
Mashup Camp 2, day 1 wraps up with here at the Computer Science Museum.
Despite some good presentations, I think the Speed Geeking Session was the best part as in Mashup Camp 1, but it seemed the mashups in the competition are not quite as strong though there are several good ones and I only saw about 15 today. David Schorr’s WeatherBonk, which almost won Mashup Camp 1, is back and better than ever. He’s got GolfBonk as well which is very clever. The best viral marketing idea was a mash of maps and myspace called Frappr.com
Frucall‘s callback with shopping data was neat and Intel’s up to some great stuff with their shopping mashup that takes a *picture* of the UPC and fetches shopping data. Also strong in this space SecretPrices.com
Some of these are too complex to digest, especially on the tiny screens some people were using to show off their applications (Marc, dude – you call that a screen?!) But his PeopleAggregator roll your own social network looked really promising in many ways. Yobie’s online mega shop GoodStorm.com also needs a lot more than 5 minutes and has very powerful features.
IBM’s getting Web 2.0 and will be presenting their “mashup maker” here shortly.
Also, Tessa gave a nice intro to IBM’s internal project Koala yesterday.
Joe Duck 