Category Archives: mashup

Mashup University – Plaxo

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Joseph Smarr from Plaxo is next. He’s got an MS in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford so I figure I should be listening carefully. I need some artificial intelligence to digest the mashup data stream.

I just had a nice pre-presentation talk with Joseph who’s really bullish on the future of Plaxo. He explained that integration with AOL messenger is adding a lot more Plaxo users, now totalling over 10 million users. He also had some very interesting observations about AI in search and how early we are in that process. Matt Cutts was noting the same AI challenges at a Webmasterworld chat I had with him last year.
Social networking is a key web concept. Many – nearly all – sites should be using address book info. Viral propagation is critical to success but not a core competency for most companies.

How to get users to fill in their address book info? Plaxo Widget solves this challenge. Here’s the widget code.

Many services maintain their own address books yet users need a one stop solution. That is Plaxo which synchs via plugins to gmail, yahoo, aol, etc.
AOL Instant Messenger uses Plaxo to provide richer contact info for existing buddies and find new ones.

Plaxo handles the tricky parts. Plaxo books are *self-updating*

10+ million members >2 billion contacts 500 million uniques in all address books. Wow.

Heavy backing from Sequoia Venture Capital. About 50 working here in Silicon Valley – the Plaxo offices are right down the street from here. (Of course that can be said for literally hundreds of web companies.

A very impressive presentation, and I always like to see the level of enthusiasm and brilliance from guys like Joseph.

Plaxo API

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David Berlind:  Plaxo vs LinkedIn 

Plaxo “spam” debate

Mark Jen, the former Googler who was banned for what Google felt was inappropriate blogging, now works at Plaxo.

Mashup University – Windows LIVE

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Dan Thorpe  is introducing Windows Live.

What is Windows Live? It’s a HUGE user base. [also I think it’s MS’s noble attempt to catch up and ride the Web 2.0 wave]. It’s Windows Live Services.

Developer Center

Hotmail 240 million
Messenger 230 Million
Spaces 130 Million users

Wow!

The internet has evolved into a social mechanism centered around….”me”. Your life is about relationships first.

MS want to create a virtuous ecosystem that mutually benefits users, developers, advertisers, and MS. Sounds virtuous to me…… the MS Big Happy Family Paradigm.

Mashup University – Microsoft Virtual Earth

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Steve Milroy is one of the sharpest guys I’ve met in the mapping space. He’s talking about using MSN mapping in mashups via the Microsoft Live Local.

Windows Live Local Demos.

MS is licensing a national database of “birds eye” 45 degree angle views which are really appealing and can be embedded in the ap. Low altitude airplane pix. This is a great feature that (i think) Yahoo and Google do not have.

VE control is integrated with MS Atlas controls.

19 view levels, from street to above earth. Easy to geocode using ?

Geo RSS = very cool. If a blog or post has geo tags, you can then use VE to integrate that location-specific content with your map. I talked to Steve about this yesterday as it would be a killer approach if people were tagging their blogs with locations. Unfortunately they are not, but I’m thinking maybe Blogger , Typepad, WordPress et al shoud at do a basic auto-tag of the blog with geocoded info showing the city location of the blogger. This might be helpful in several applications that reference blogs and blog content.

MapCruncher – easily create layers and add them into mashups. This is COOL. Take floor plan and click to match with Virtual Earth points of reference. Then you can allow the user to navigate outside and *inside* the building. What a great way to show a Univ Campus map or navigate large, complex buildings.

MS is “investing heavily” to make this the best of breed mapping application.
Philosophy: “What it’s like there”
Streetside preview. (slow on this connection) Streetside is very cool as it allows a “drivers eye view” of Seattle and ?. Of all the stuff at Microsoft’s MIX06, streetside was the thing that got the big response from the crowd.

——– not part of Steve’s presentation —-

Nice comparison of Yahoo, MSN, Google, Mapquest, Ask mapping from CNET.

Mapbuilder.net is a neat place to make simple maps *really* easily. They were at Mashup Camp 1 and I think will be here tomorrow.

Mapping Anecdote: Homestead, where I’m staying, printed out Yahoo Directions for me from there to the museum when I asked them for directions. Cool! Yet due to geocoding or some other technical glitch Yahoo had me turning left rather than right when I reached my destination. Not cool. but I’m not complaining – these are simply great yet evolving technologies.

Mashup University – deCarta Mapping Mashups

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deCarta, formerly Telcontar, is talking about mapping mashups. Check out their developer zone.

Client side mashups as the “main approach”, with pushpins on locations in your data set.

They are experimenting with many advanced applications and these complex data mashups tend to be better run as server-side.

Map as picture vs map as … data.     Customizing how the map is drawn is a new developer tool and a valuable one.    Map for a game would have different look than the same map for a driving tour.

Given the very high quality of Google, MSN, Yahoo maps I’m not clear if they won’t become yet another victim of the giant .coms sweeping away early niche adopters, but hopefully they can remain competitive with free offerings to developers as here.

Mashup University – Day 2. IPSswap.com

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Mashup University continues…

I’m a bit late but after a double espresso at the Microsoft sponsored coffee cart (THANKS MS!) I’m listening to Peter Burris with IPswap a clever service that is seeking to help people create, buy, share, and manage digital services.   I’ve missed most of his talk so go see the site.

Mashup University – the UI is the API. ScrAPIs

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Assaf Arkin is talking about scraping content. I have mixed feelings about it since extensive scraping of our nicely hand-edited content seemed to be part of the problem with Google’s faulty indexing of Online Highways which still persists, but Web 2.0 sensibilities suggest that most content is now fair game. My new notions are that scraping, if accompanied with attribution, is OK and good for users since it helps them navigate the mess more effectively.

Assaf “Scraping is not evil”. He’s using Ruby. Ruby review: He started with Ruby a year ago and likes it. He’s reviewing example code for a scrape of EBay data.

co.mments.com 

Chef Chu’s for Chinese food…and travel.

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I’m informed by local Ned that Chef Chus is the place to eat chinese here in Silicon Valley. Probably won’t have a chance to check it out this trip. Apparently Chef Chu also arranges trips to … China. Cool

Jeremy Z adds this suggestion:

Chef Chu’s is good food, but my personal favorite is the House Of Orient down in Campbell: http://local.yahoo.com/details?id=21557385
It’s rarely crowded (though it should be), prices are good, and service is reliable.

Mashup University – LignUp

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LignUp is demoing PropAlerts, which he says can beat MLS database by 48 hours to give users early warning of property listings. They also are working on Voice over IP to put users in touch with agents and using text to speech to … read alerts to users.

PropSmart.com

Why Voice Mashups?   Communication as key element in biz process, significant revenue opportunities, more.

Mashup University – Higgens Trust Framework

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The Higgens Trust Framework is very promising way to standardize personal information for use across multiple platforms. Yikes – that sentence means I must be writing from Silicon Valley. If I was in Oregon I’d say it “tells programs who you are”.

I tend to agree with those that think filling out yet another form is a barrier to participation, though the upside of such things is that they provide an incentive to make sure the content / program you are signing up to use is worthy of your time and attention *before* you sign up. Will this openup a new plethora of junk applications just fishing for clicks?