Category Archives: computers

Yahoo: Piping hot content to websites near you. Brilliant.

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Yahoo Pipes (site may be down at the moment – I think they didn’t anticipate the instant global attention) is a perfect example of why I’m so bullish on Yahoo’s prospects as a company. Yahoo Pipes is a premier mashup enabling application coming along at a very opportune time.

Yahoo’s developer team is second to none, and in my opinion has a remarkable understanding of “Web 2.0” sensibilities. Pipes will simplify the process of connecting content, websites, and applications.

In an ideal world, innovation is constrained only by the human imagination, not by the limitations of technology. Yahoo pipes is a profound step in that direction.

More about Yahoo Pipes:

Jeremy Zawodny

Tim O’Reilly (is this guy ever *wrong* about stuff? I don’t think so. )
… enormous promise in turning the web into a programmable environment for everyone.

Matt Cutts

Anil Dash 

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Disclaimer: I  have some Yahoo stock and as of Monday some short term Yahoo calls.

Zawodny to Beal “Spammer!”. Beal to Zawodny “Get a Damn Clue!”

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You’ve got to love these spats between clever and prominent blog dudes. It’s not only the closest onliners generally come to schoolyard or barroom brawling, but often these debates give huge insight into the future of the online world.

When Yahoo bought MyBlogLog, the clever social community application, it fell to Jeremy Zawodny to help refine the project into the robust and scalable environment demanded by the world’s top website. Jeremy also decided to take on a bit of quality control, and accused Andy Beal, a top marketing consultant, of spamming MyBlogLog. Andy had used as his avatar “win a free zune” rather than using the normal convention of a personal picture.

Andy Beal shot back angrily that he was not spamming and even had permission to run the contest from MyBlogLog’s founders. Cheap trick or not, if he had permission I think Jeremy owes him an apology – or at least an upgrade to “officially approved MBL spammy tactic”.

Although I thought Jeremy was too hard on this marketing “trick” by Andy, I certainly agree with many who think that MyBlogLog is now suffering from it’s own popularity. Popularity that has brought a lot of questionable tactics outside of the spirit of a quality community.

There is no great harm in the win a free zune *except* it defeats one of the nice aspects of MyBlogLog which is that you can see the person’s face. Several prominent and clever SEO’s with great blogs like Andy’s “Marketing Pilgrim”, as well as several junk sites and junk SEOs are resorting to similar tactics. The most common is to plant a pretty woman’s face rather than your own face, encouraging signups to your blog community.

Avatars are the heart of this system since they appear at other sites. Therefore to preserve the integrity of MyBlogLog Yahoo should require that avatars reflect either the person or a highly relevant aspect of the community. I’d even consider requiring that if you want to play with MyBlogLog you’ve got to be the real person in the picture.

Andy’s a good guy and a quality SEO, but his claim that he’s helping MyBlogLog with this type of approach rings pretty hollow with me.

Update:  Jeremy retitled his post and apologized.  But hey, it was fun while it lasted!

Google + Kiosks = Coolness!

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Wow, I sure hope the rumors about a Google Kiosk project are true. I like Google and I like Kiosks. Here in Oregon I was involved in computer kiosks for over ten years. Back in 1990 I managed one of the USA’s earliest multimedia projects using IBM Infowindow Touch monitors, computers, and laserdisc players. That was a US Forest Service partnership with my former employer the Southern Oregon Visitors Association, and we had 30 units in tourism places all over Southern Oregon.

This project led to a new project I designed and deployed as part of a SOVA, State, and National Scenic Byways partnership that put internet connected units in about 15 places. The internet solved many of the problems with the early kiosk project such as real time information availability, though it brought a host of new problems with rural connectivity issues and eventually a lack of enthusiasm for a complicated, grant driven project.

Could Google bring the necessary ingredients to make Kiosks commercially viable? I think they could by deploying broadly and with enough of an advertising footprint to interest national players who would appreciate being both in the programs and on the sides of the cabinets.

Good luck Google, I’ll always root for touch computer kiosks!

Related link – HUGE touchscreen with mapping demo – fantastic!

Cisco to Apple – leggo of my iPhone!

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Well, at least Cisco didn’t come out fighting right away. They waited what – 24 hours – before suing Apple over the iPhone name? Ha!

These suits are always interesting because obviously Apple has legions of legal people who knew about what the legions of Cisco legal people were thinking. So I assume it’s mostly posturing to get a maximum payoff in court.

I won’t start fretting until I ask my kids what they want to be when they grow up and they say: “A big corporate trademark attorney so we can posture for the big bucks!”.

More about iPhone  and the euphonically charged litigation

iPhone – well, maybe it’s NOT so great after all?

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Ha – yesterday the raves came in about Apple’s new phone and now some of the ranting has begun. Always insightful Paul Kedrosky suggests that there may be a few key problems, though on balance I’d have to say I think the key innovation here is the better web browsing environment.

About 18 months ago I ponied up about $350 to upgrade to a Sprint Treo 650.   It’s a pretty good phone and Palm info organizer, but the browser is too small.   Also, as Jobs was pointing out in his keynote, simplicity is important and the combination of synching the thing with my computer to download pix and phone info is too cumbersome.   In fact I can’t even use it as a modem for my laptop though I think there are some cables and hack software to do it.

Food, shelter, and a web browser is pretty much all you need to get by these days, even if you are running many small to modest sized companies.

If you count the fact you can order Pizza online you can take food off that list.

I really should have kept that AAPL stock I traded for WCOM several years ago.

Don’t take stock advice from me.

Apple announces the new iPhone. Stock soars, tech peeps rave.

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Apple’s news today is shaking MacWorld and the Tech world.  They’ve got an iPhone, and it’s looking nothing short of spectacular.

In contrast Microsoft’s “big news” today was more pitiful than interesting:
“Zune will have video games by July 2008” 

July of 2008?  MS dudes, at the rate you are innovating you should just be hoping you’ll still be around in 2008 to play with your own little Zune.

Laptops!, Step right up and get your laptops! Only $100!

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$100 Laptop Website
News for the Community
Wiki

I love the $100 laptop project. It is hard to know this early on how the developing world children – and adults – are going to make use of these gadgets but if we let recent history be our guide it’s sure to shake things up a bit when you put a browser and a word processor in the hands of many more millions. Governments are stepping up to the plate and starting to buy these for their schools and children. Most importantly this device will accelerate the development of key skills and will pull the 1st and 3rd world together in ways that we can’t predict.

I’m confident we are now starting to dig into the meaty part of the most profound change in human communication since the invention of … language. Let’s hope we make mostly good use of this amazing global social connectivity.

More: www.cnn.com

Bill Gates and the Bloggers

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James Kim Search Discussion – Click here | Mount Hood Climber Search

Some very high profile and clever folks in the blogging community got to head up to Microsoft HQ and meet with Bill Gates yesterday to discuss the future of the internet, especially ways to make the upcoming MIX07 conference relevant to the needs of those attending.

I missed meeting Gates at MIX06 earlier this year but I know several of the bloggers that were invited so I’ll have to settle for one degree of separation. I’m a huge fan of Bill Gates’ superb global health initiatives though not at all a fan of many of his “old style” ideas about computing and the internet. I think he, and MS at large, continues to view the internet as primarily a technological rather than a sociological development (clue: it’s 80% sociological, 19% technical and 1% electrical)

The reports are starting to come in:

Mike Arrington

Steve Rubel

Ryan Stewart

Niall Kennedy

Liz Gannes

Todd Bishop

Dvorak on Vista

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John Dvorak is not impressed with Vista’s advertising or prospects as a buzz-worthy application, saying the promotional web info …

looks like an advertisement for an expensive prescription drug for constipation

and suggesting the market impact will not be very big.

I actually think he’s wrong, and Vista will usher in some significant changes, especially as users integrate sidebar and desktop “gadgets” and we see the desktop and websites look more like myspace pages, littered with dozens of mini applications. If Vista realizes the promise of facilitating RSS and gadget centric information architecture I think it could be a significant part of the significant changes sweeping the online environment.