Category Archives: gadgets

Raining on the Gadget/Widget parade, Jeremy?

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When Yahoo’s Jeremy is concerned about something technical you *always* need to pay close attention, as he’s one of the most knowlegeable observers of the internet landscape as well as a key driver of Web 2.0 innovation over at the unrivaled Yahoo Development department.

Today Jeremy listed several concerns about the challenges of widgets (aka Gadgets) including security and bloated websites.   Considering that many, including me, see a coming gadget revolution where our desktops will become littered almost beyond recognition with site gadgets, desktop gadgets, and more, it might be a good time to listen to Jeremy and solve some of these problems or at least standardize things, especially to reduce spyware and malware issues which will likely become even worse as users become less sophisticated and gadgets become more complex.

Nomenclature Primer aka Yahoo and Apple say WidgeTomato, Google and MSN say GadgeTomatoe:
Yahoo still calls gadgets widgets as does Apple, but Google changed widgets to gadgets to be consistent with Microsoft which, at MIX06, was heavily promoting desktop gadgets as one of Vista’s strong suits and website gadgets as a key web innovation.   Google leads the Gadget pack now thanks to Adam Sah and the excellent gadget team.

I think everybody should rename all these things “Little boxes made of Ticky Tacky”.

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 

—————–

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!

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.

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.

Whoops, we missed Web 2.0 at Pubcon!?

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I’ve enjoyed Pubcon Las Vegas and I’m looking forward to the big bash today to wrap it all up.   Still, for the first time I’m leaving with a feeling of the growing disconnect between the really neat  developments in Silicon Valley I’ve been seeing at Dave and Doug’s Mashup and Startup Camps and what the mostly SEO focused and new business folks are up to here.

(Notable exception was Lawrence’s RateitAll.com presentation which was excellent and addressed several key points like the coming Gadget/Widget revolution and user content challenges and opportunities).   He’s in SF so I think he “gets it” more than a lot of the folks here who seem stuck in what have become “old school” concepts of highly manipulative SEO work, link networking, arbitrage and often risky SEO tricks.

I think the big story in computing right now at many levels are the issues that surround content ownership, content use, mashups, and gadgets.    Not much discussion of those here and I think that lack of awareness may come back to haunt those who don’t pay attention to the “new” internet, aka “what happened yesterday?”.

But hey, I’m in the cheap hotel so what do I know?

Widgets (aka Gadgets) and the Web

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Last week’s widgets conference in Silicon Valley would have been fun to attend but I’d just returned to Oregon from Startup Camp and my mom is already giving me a hard time about the Las Vegas trip tomorrow.    I give her credit though for asking what does this trip add to your company’s bottom line?     The obvious answer “Free microbrews and fried wings at the Google engineer event”  won’t impress her, but there are some tough jobs that just need to be done!

However I think Widgets (aka Gadgets) are clearly where the web is going, and perhaps more interesting is that fact that I don’t think this is well understood by many “internet outsiders” yet, and poorly understood by many internet insiders.

The impact of Gadgets  This will start to become clearer as Vista environments merge the browser, desktop, internet, and applications using gadgets for navigation, information, and advertising.     Standard page view and website metrics will break down quickly and we’ll see that publishers will seek to promote even more cluttered, busy, and interactive gadget filled computer screens in an effort to boost revenues.     The future isn’t pretty, but’s it’s sure going to be interesting.

I also need to add Niall Kennedy to the blogroll – he’s one of those folks you really need to pay attention to if you want to see where thing are going to be in a few years.