Category Archives: mashupcamp2

Shhhhh! Don’t tell all those Web 2.0 companies that there really is no Web 2.0!

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Over at Matt’s Place he noted some of his favorite 2.0 companies and asked for suggestions. What really surprised me was the number of people over there (a very tech savvy crowd) who, like Bill Gates, oddly question the significance of “Web 2.0” which is a significant development in the evolution of the internet.

As Tim OReilly, John Battelle, Mike Arrington and many others point out frequently, Web 2.0 is qualitatively different in terms of the way people use and process the growing body of internet info. Also, and perhaps most importantly, Web 2.0 is the begginning of how online communities are in the process of trumping online technologies. Myspace could hardly be described as a design or technological masterpiece, but it’s certainly a *community masterpiece* both literally and figuratively. Web 2.0 is “everybody’s” web, and that’s going to change the game. We just can’t know how.

I really like http://www.eventful.com – nice API and open approach.
Also liked several of the contenders at the recent MashupCamps in Mountain View.
http://weatherbonk.com (The Mashup 2 Winner)
http://frucall.com
http://realestatefu.mashfu.com/
http://podbop.org (Winner of Mashup 1)

Jeremy just pointed to a great Web 2.0 post by Dion that details seven ways to “embrace” the network and also has a nice summary of why Web 2.0 really is different.

CEO blogging brings CEO sympathy, so why not do it?

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New York Times notes that only ONE of the Fortune 500 CEOs is a blogger. That would be Jonathan Schwartz from Sun, who’s also a very cool guy for supporting MashupCamps in Silicon Valley and sporting very long hair.

Should the other 499 CEOs be blogging? Even if we leave aside the challenges they’d face from SEC and shareholder scrutiny of every post, leaving them and the company open to liabilities, I’m not at all convinced that blogging is suitable to old style business models.

However, it’s VERY suitable to new style business models and I think the early Corporate CEO adopters like Parsons at GoDaddy and blog Maverick Mark Cuban are going to see a lot of long term value from the practice, especially if they are ever challenged by the very forces that keep other company leaders from blogging. If, for example, ICANN or the SEC challenged Bob Parsons or Mark Cuban on some aspect of their business I’d be a lot more sympathetic to their side of things because I’ve read these guys and know they are straight shooters who often wear their business decisions on their sleeve. Without blogs they’d just be big shadowy Corporate insiders, with them comes a sort of friendly transparency that Robert Scoble and Shel Israel note in their excellent book about this topic, Naked Conversations.

Google Party at SES 2006

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Tuesday is the 5th annual Google Party in Mountain View at the GooglePlex, one of the biggest social events of the internet year. It’s held in conjunction with the Search Engine Strategies conference at the San Jose Convention Center. I was just down in Silicon Valley about 3 weeks ago for Mashup Camp 2, but I can’t miss the Google Party!

One of the highlights last year was a chance to talk to several of the Google Search Engineers. Here I am pestering Kekoa – I think about 302 vs 301 redirection and ranking items:

Kekoa at Google Party

Matt Cutts is generally in *high demand* at conferences as well as here at the 2005 Google Party webmaster talks, which are held away from the really big crowd outside. In fact in Boston at Webmasterworld he told me he hardly got anything to eat at this 2005 Google bash because he was constantly mobbed.  Thanks to my good friend John for shooting these pix.   He’ll be joining me again this year at the Party.

Matt Cutts at Google Dance 2005

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.

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…..

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)