Category Archives: Science & Technology

Newsweek: Web 2.0 = The Live Web

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I enjoyed Newsweek's article about Web 2.0, which they preferred to call "The Live Web". It was fun to see several of the companies and people I've encountered recently mentioned in the article. Mary Hodder from MashupCamp was pictured and quoted as was Tim O'Reilly who I just met at Mix06.

They gave Tim far too short an interview. He is unsurpassed in his understanding of the new web but I'm guessing he was a bit too old (he's about 50?) to meet Newsweek's editorial slant on the story which was young, hip, and cool. (Whoops – they didn't mention how casual – sometimes downright disheveled – most of the new technorati tend to be.)

Newsweek's Cover girl Caterina Fake was supposed to be at Mashup Camp but missed it. I'd hoped to meet her and her husband who pioneered Flickr and then sold it to Yahoo. Caterina's blog is one of the most insightful personal views about 2.0 along with those of her amazing Yahoo tech dev co-workers Jeremy Zawodny and Danah Boyd.

Although I'm always VERY impressed with folks from Google, it's Yahoo that really seems to be aquiring the companies and minds that lie at the heart of the new Web's "social" vs "technological" emphasis.

Yahoo seems to have a better handle than Google (who in turn beats Microsoft) in understanding the implications of the vast social networking that is forming a new internet backbone. A backbone characterized by people far more than by technology. That said, I'm not sure anybody "gets Web 2.0", because it's changing fast, dramatically, and in unstable ways.

What a fun new world!

Scobleizer vs Mini-Microsoft

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Robert's April Fooling as well. You can never be sure with the new pace of business, but I think the guy who set up the prestigious few who had lunch with Bill Gates last week at MIX06 probably won't be jumping ship anytime soon. I'd be posting a pic here with me and Microsoft's king of Web 2.0, taken at the Myspace party in Las Vegas last week, but it didn't come out well.

Robert's Naked Conversations is intriguing at many levels, one of which has created a stir over at Amazon where the authors were received somewhat .. discourteously.

But Naked Converstation's intriguing points don't make them "right" about blogging. I'd suggest that Israel and Scoble overrate the positive aspects of corporate blogging and fail to note, for example, the significant harm done by bloggers like mini-microsoft , a mystery Microsoft employee with a blog that has become a very prominent whipping post for anti-Microsoft dialog.

I'd suggest blogs are more a reflection of what's up rather than a shaper of what is to come.

Naked Conversations with Robert, Jeremy and Matt

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Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's book Naked Conversations probably should have kept it's working title "Blog or Die", but it's an excellent read nonetheless.   The point they hammer home with many good examples is that corporations better jump on the blogging bandwagon or suffer the consequences of missing what many would say may become the biggest communication bandwagon of all time.

As if to emphasize the power of blogs and the freewheeling nature of the new corporation two of my favorite online guys – Matt Cutts of Google and Jeremy Zawodny or Yahoo have traded blogs as what has got to be the top April Fools online event so far today.

Given that these two represent two of the top public faces of their respective companies, it's obvious that the NEW corporate landscape – blogging and otherwise – ain't nothing like the old one.  

I like that.

Yahoo! It’s .community!

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Jeremy is always asking the right questions.  He notes in his blog today:

Yahoo Groups can serve as the collaborative (not just communications) platform for bringing people together in interesting ways…

Yes it can, though it needs to take some lessons from Myspace, which I'd argue is by far the world's BEST crappy-looking website and BEST example of a site that understands the simple and often unexpected needs and desires of a .com community.   The remarkable rise of Myspace should demonstrate that people are FAR more important than the application.  Also that MOST people will express themselves in what most savvy web folks would consider to be very unprofessional, sloppy, offensive, obnoxious, rule breaking and bandwidth breaking ways.  

Yahoo wouldn't have to have such a messy environment to succeed, I'd think all they'd need is better integration with the inspired but largely unused Yahoo 360, easier signups, and perhaps most importantly ways for people to import data into their profiles at other services to avoid the tedious chores of uploading pix and rewriting bios.

Yahoo – "If you build it, they will come … if they can get in very easily"

 

Taking Stock of Yahoo

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What do you get when you mashup Yahoo’s uber blogmeister with EX uber stockmeister Henry Blodget? A very interesting dialog about what’s up — or what’s NOT up — at Yahoo. The only thing for sure is that in stock terms YHOO is no GOOG, and this is THE key issue for many.

This follow up summarizes that mini-debate. I’m more interested in whether I should be buying YHOO or buying more puts on Google.

Jeremy’s bold stab was probably taken too far out of the intended context, though I think it will generate a good debate about a broader topic — that Yahoo and Google are similar in many broad respects but not even in the same ballpark in total company valuation. 109 billion vs 45 billion. Why is this?

* Search quality roughly equivalent according to objective measures.

* Traffic similar (though not search traffic in which Y lags significantly). I think search will begin to move vertically soon and people will use a different engine for different tasks. A9 recognizes this already. This could shake out in many destabilizing ways.

* Yahoo considered clear leader in Web 2.0 awareness

* MOST IMPORTANTLY, YPN is still in beta and will likely soon take a chunk of Google’s online publisher revenue stream (about 40% of G total revenues) as will MSN’s new publisher programs.

* I do think corporate leadership is VERY different at Google, and probably helps facilitate and motivate people in ways that are well tuned to the fast and flexible needs of the online biz world. I’ve heard that Googlers will be working in the wee hours on a project only to have Sergey Brin walk up behind them to ask them to explain the code they are working on. This level of interaction has got to be a VERY powerful incentive and motivating force.

At MIX06 I spoked with two ex-Microsoft people who noted slow change there frustrated them and inhibited the flexibility needed to compete in the new web environments.

But Yahoo is no Microsoft, and to my knowledge Yahoo was the company that brought the new informal but intense corporate culture to Silicon Valley in the first place. If this style has caused problems for Yahoo it’ll likely cause similar problems for Google in a few years. If not, then why is Yahoo stock languishing despite good fundamentals and huge revenue potential from online ads?

Wait … No free lunches at Yahoo Cafeteria? THAT must be the problem!

The DeviceOsphere – coming soon to a world near you.

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At the MIX06 conference the most provocative and exciting idea I heard was from Tim O’Reilly who also posted about this today on his blog. Tim suggests that we are on the verge of the evolution of a sort of *deviceOsphere* (I think this is my term not Tim’s), where the staggering amount of device data gets collectively shared in new mashup style applications.

Think of a traffic map where thousands of drivers are sharing in real time their personal observations and auto measurements (e.g. ONSTAR and GIS system data) about weather, road conditions, CRIME events, alternate routes, pictures, suggestions for restaurants. A moveable data feast where the conversation never stops and includes thousands of observers/reviewers.
Flickr has shown that people really want to share photos with the world. This notion gets really exciting when you broaden the idea of “content available to mashup” to include ALL the digital content that often simply swirls around in it’s own little world. Transportation road cams, navigation data from individual cars, camcorder and cell phone feeds and crime reports are only a few things that generally just swirl around in a limited space and are discarded or relegated to obscurity.

O’Reilly’s suggesting that this data store, combined with the collective intelligence of the burdgeoning online community, could generate masterpiece applications. And the best thing is that it’s not going to require a Leonardo Da Vinci to do it.

Pure Water for All

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This water purification system sure looks promising and Kudos to Rotary for working to promote it.  Using simple, low cost methods it can purify water using only ceramics and gravity.   A higher tech but also inspiring approach is  this machine promoted and invented by Dean Kamen of Sedgeway  and other invention fame.
Clean water is among earth’s greatest challenges to humanity since disease is often spread via unsafe water supplies in the developing and undeveloped world.
Hey FOX news – some might even want to hear about these innovations in between the latest celebrity gossip or missing upper middle class party people.

McCarran ROCKS with free WIFI

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It’s SO frustrating to pay 9.95 for an hour or two of access when you are travelling through an airport that I think most don’t do it.  Here in McCarran Las Vegas it’s free and I love them for it.

Airports like Salt Lake, that CHARGE for internet, should reconsider their strategy and either offer this as a great perk or use some ad supported model.   I’m happy to say I helped establigh free WIFI at my local airport Medford Oregon (MFR).   Portland’s PDX also’s got it and my email complimenting them was well recieved.   Tech people should try to send positive notes to airport administration about free WIFI – this helps them keep it going.