Category Archives: MIX06

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 – Day 2 begins

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… 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.

Mashup University – resources and blogs

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If you are reading my mashup posts you should ALSO be checking out these far better mashup info sources:

Programmable Web – John manages the holy grail of mashup info. He posts it all here.

Mashup Camp Blog 

Mashup University

Blogs of Mashup Maniacs.  Or at least people who came to Mashup Camp 1:

Mashup University – Microsoft Gadgets and AJAX.

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Scott Isaacs – The Architect for MS Live .. remixing the web. The LIVE team remains impressive.

Mashups are not new, but the Mashup revolution – the low cost, richer services and experiences, allow us to build things like Zillow.com that would have been totally prohibitive without the backup infrastructure.

Millions of IM users – HUGE reach at NO cost. Cool.

Leverage your investments by remixing. Mashups bring traditional software development … to the web.

Windows live has internalized the Mashup philosphy – Windows live properties are … mashups. The LIVE experience is built out of gadgets. Will be turning gadgets ON in MS spaces. Build a great gadget and get the viral impact. [ NOTE – IMHO how users will populate their increasingly customized browser window with widgets/gadgets/toolbars/messeging/etc is the coming *key* battleground for the big players. Seems Yahoo and MS understand this better than Google? ]

Live Gadget Framework – 100% Firefox compatible. Not yet supporting Safari for technical, not philosphical, reasons.

Demo of Concerts Gadget – concerts + flickr pix. Scripts plus style sheets into gadget. Can derive new gadgets from the old ones.

Demo: notepad gadget

A performance advantage and challenge:

Life Cycle of the applications is NOT driven by refresh, rather by the application itself. Must “clean up after yourself” and get rid of gadgets after they are not used anymore.

Future Thinking:

Microformats – great standards for data transferability.

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Mashup University – Windows Live Messenger Applications

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Ken Levy from Windows Live

[ I’m really impressed with the MS Live team. They have the kind of enthusiasm and drive normally associated with …. Googlers and some of the good startup and Yahoo folks.]

Build interactive multi users aps, 240 Million Audience, APIs are free, serve ads and share revenues [sharing is good].

Activities, Bots, Alerts

Bot becomes like a virtual person with whom you are conversing. Bot has it’s own email which is how you communicate with it.

Demos:

Shared map via IM. He “invites” the other person who now can control things.

Encarta Instant Answers. Build your OWN bot that uses your own database.

Movie scout lists local films and theaters.

Sign in is integrated, but I think he means ONLY with other MS stuff.    This is the problem Plaxo seems to be solving = cross site address book integration.   MS, if I recall from MIX06, has “identity card” but I have a feeling that is not catching on?

Tech Ed RSS feed was integrated into a web page via the bot.   Looks like this included the interior mapping stuff Steve was talking about earlier.

IE specific?   Support for XMLHTTP.

Follow up at the online video and these sites:

Live Dev

Live Ideas

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Also check out CodeZone.com 

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 – Jeff Barr from Amazon

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After the break it’s Jeff Barr from Amazon.com. (I missed the beginning where he may have coverdd some other stuff)…. Now he’s talking S3, Amazon’s super robust storage solution. Jeff’s presentations are always great because he’s a very good communicator as well as experienced technical guy. Jeremy Zawodny, Tim O’Reilly , and Matt Cutts are super impressive this way as well.
This short talk just focused on S3, but Jeff’s MIX06 talk was one of the best presentations I’ve attended in some time. He also has an interesting take on challenges facing Microsoft, where he used to work, but I’d ask him before I share those interesting nuggets of wisdom.

Mountain View – Mashup Camp Two

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Seems like a double life these days. At 1pm today I was home in Oregon painting our house, and now I’m in Mountain View, CA where the 2 day first of all time “Mashup University” begins tomorrow at the Computer Science Museum. Mashup U is followed on Wednesday and Thursday by Mashup Camp 2, the sequel to Mashup Camp back in February. Doug Gold, David Berlind, and supporters did a fantastic job in February and I’m sure this one will also be a great event.

Hats off *again* to Hotwire.com. I just booked the Homestead Mountain View, a great little studio suite with kitchen, for $47 per night, about half the rack rate. An extra 4.99 got me broadband wireless – for my entire 4 day stay! Sure beats the 10.00+ per day often charged by the fancy hotels.

Bill Gates to become full time philanthropist and leave Microsoft management over next 2 years

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Bill Gates' passion has become his outstanding philanthropic work, mostly relating to global health initiatives, and today he said he'd leave his day to day management of MS over the next two years.

Although the future of Microsoft may be in question thanks to the rapidly changing online, open source and competitor environments, this is a great day for international development efforts.  

In addition to saving over a *million* people from tragic deaths due to disease, the Gates Foundation has brought an entrepreneurial, innovative approach to the development of global health solutions.   I'm thrilled that Gates – still a young whippersnapper – will devote his substantial intellectual and monetary resources to the world's greatest challenges.  Bravo Bill!

Scoble leaves Microsoft!

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Robert Scoble, one of the world's most influential and well-known bloggers, is leaving Microsoft for startup podtech.net

It's not official until he announces it tomorrow at Vloggercon.com, but in typical blogOsphere fashion the news is out before it is news.    Looks like Robert notified a few folks who called a few others who posted about it and it'll be old news by the time he announces tomorrow.

I had a chance to talk briefly with Robert at the MIX06 conference and he's a great guy.  I'm very surprised that Microsoft allowed this to happen though I'm guessing it's because the corporate structure made it hard to reward him appropriately for his enormous contributions to Microsoft as one of their most prominent online spokespeople.    Also I'm guessing he was frustrated by the slow pace of change at MS. As such a well-connected guy I bet he wanted to jump into the excitement of Web 2.0.  Microsoft is missing much of the point of Web 2.0 as many have noted – in fact it they aren't careful Web 2.0 could kill Microsoft, and Scoble's departure is notable in that respect.   He was Mr 2.0 at Microsoft and now he's gone.

Microsoft's loss is Podtech's gain and I'll look forward to seeing Robert more often now that he's heading to Silicon Valley.