Category Archives: Web 2.0

Mashup University

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I’m at the Adobe FLEX presentation at Mashup U here in Mountain View. He’s talking alot about Flash, I think to make the case that FLEX adoption will be rapid and deep, which I assume is what most developers want to see to justify the learning time.

Thanks to Microsoft sponsoring a free espresso cart I’m already…. awake and alert.

The intro referenced John Musser’s excellent resource Programmable Web which is the best Mashup information site online.

I count only about 50 people here at the university, though they expect about 350 at the main event Wednesday and Thursday.

Dave from Toronto told me that they’ve got an active “Demo Camp” going up there that meets monthly, with about 100 people.    They showcase projects and network.    I’m beginning to think that these “camp” events are the future of how computer people stay informed and connected.

The Wired 40. Yahoo as the “McDonald’s” of Cyberspace !?

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Wired Magazine has named their top 40 “wired” companies.  The selection sounded a bit vague and trendy to me but lists are fun.    Wired says this is how they picked them:

We start by looking for the basics: strategic vision, global reach, killer technology. But that’s not enough. To land a spot on our annual Wired 40 list, a business also needs the X-factor – a hunger for new ideas and an impatience to put them into practice.

Notable points:  Google at top of list, Apple second. Yahoo at number 5, the “McDonald’s of Cyberspace” (!?), Microsoft 36th.

Social Networking challenges/problems detailed at GnomeDex

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When he’s asked to do it, Jeremy Z is very good at cutting through the technobabble and getting to mission critical ideas about how programs can be put to work for people.

Here’s a nice summary of his “bitch session” at GnomeDex where it appears they had some great ideas about social networks.

Looks to me like a lot of these apply to many types of tech development.

Markus is one insightful Canadian Web Guy

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One of the great things about the internet business space is how one person can build an empire with the same revenues / impact / influence as a very large company.

Markus is such a fellow and I’m glad to see he’s blogging about his ongoing adventures creating and running one of the top dating sites in the world – PlentyofFish.com.    Markus provides a lot of detail and insight into how he created the site almost as a lark and now effectively competes with major corporations in the social network/dating space.

With 200 Million page views monthly and climbing, Markus really knows his stuff.  One observation he makes I’m still trying to digest suggests that eventually *only* small companies will rule the internet due to their much greater flexibility and effeciency.     Yahoo, Google, MSN are betting billions that they’ll maintain the huge stakes in the online world rather than small niche companies.   Frankly, I’m guessing there is room for everybody in the expanding online business space.

Google Sitemaps. My good news and my bad news.

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Elite SEO Dave Naylor was complaining a bit about Google Sitemaps and I've also been unconvinced that sitemaps really does help straighten out ranking confusion.   According to Google Sitemaps my old-and-in-need-of-great-repair Airport Directory has some incredibly impressive sitemaps stats  (e.g.  Sitemaps says I'm number ONE for term "hotels")

Term   |   Rank 

  1. hotels in new york   1
  2. airport codes   1
  3. ord   1
  4. washington dc   1
  5. international airports   1
  6. hotels   1
  7. ord ohare   1
  8. chicago   1
  9. houston airport   1
10. airport city codes   1
11. airport maps   1
12. charlotte nc airport   1
13. john wayne airport   1
14. orlando   1
15. las   1
16. airline codes   1
17. city codes   1
18. major airports   1
19. salt lake city airport parking   1

Unfortunately QuickAid.com does not  rank for any of these terms.  In fact I'm under some form of downranking that means I get little Google traffic at all despite the fact I'm one of the most linked to Airport sites on the web. 

I've seen this type of bizarre sitemaps stat for some time so I'm not sure what's going on, though I do have some framed content and this could reflect the rank of sites appearing in the frames.

The good news is that my NMOHWY.com experiment has been languishing but it may be because I failed to load the sitemap when I moved to new server over a month ago.   I just loaded it now so hopefully my new pages at NMohwy.com will get indexed soon rather than Google showing the old supplemental pages, using old cache dates of June 2005 and similar.

Yahoo 2.0 Trumps Google 2.0 …. again.

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As Jeremy has noted, microformats are slowly but profoundly moving the web to the open, data rich, info cornucopia we’ve all been dreaming about. Yahoo is clearly the leader as “Web 2.0 Stylist” and one wonders if Google is going to be left wondering what hit them as developers and users move increasingly towards the simple but data rich environments Yahoo’s been creating for some time.

I’m beginning to wonder if Yahoo’s challenge in increasing market share, and thus stock price, is counterintuitive. Yahoo has effectively matched Google in search quality and has created a LOT of excellent applications and rich APIs while Google has simply stuck to a few great basics like gmail and search.

Perhaps the choice is simply overwhelming people who are thus choosing to stick with Google’s search interface (still simpler than Yahoo’s). Malcolm Gladwell has noted that when presented with too many purchase options people actually may choose fewer items than if presented with a smaller number of options. Could Yahoo’s problem be that they simply are doing too GOOD of a job ushering in Web 2.0 ?

Update:  When Jeremy over at Yahoo took me to task on this post I realized I’d not expressed myself clearly and it looked like I was talking about a search comparison.  (I’m leaving the post intact since he references it with a lot of comments.)  I was not talking about  Yahoo vs Google in search as much as Yahoo vs Google in the many other 2.0 projects like Flickr, APIs, and social networking features where I think Yahoo is beating out Google but not getting enough credit for seeing the future of the internet more clearly than most.

Airline flight update frustrations..

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I praised Kayak's flight selection service a few posts back, but I'm finding they are listing flights that are not available even after what appear to be many hours of non-availability. However, this does appear to be an American Airlines data problem more than a Kayak one so I'm still bullish on Kayak, but it sure is frustrating to see this note which appears at AA.com:

Check below for errors:

  • The flight you selected is no longer available. Please select another flight or modify your request

Arrgghhhhh!

A detailed study of the many services really is needed. Maybe I'll put that on the list.

UPDATE:  Using Kayak.com which sent me into AA.com booking system I did get an excellent rate MFR to BWI of $384 which appeared cheaper thanat AA.com's rate when I searched there independently of Kayak.  The 384 was over $100 cheaper than Orbitz, Farechase, or TravelNOW.

Kayak.com shines as airline ticket tool

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My initial experiments with Kayak over a year ago left me unimpressed, but Kayak.com has evolved into one of the best tools for finding cheap flights.  There are several notable features that make it a great way to search for flights when you have some flexibility and want a good price:

* You can select a date range of up to 3 days before and after your departure and return.  Without this feature Orbitz was probably better than Kayak for discount flight seekers, but now that Kayak's got it you are able to get a good fare picture for a range of dates.  

You must sign up for this but all that requires is a 10 second email signup.  A huge hat tip to Kayak's team for recognizing that even requiring a name and address is a barrier to sign ups.  Get all that mundane detail from people later or not at all.

* Also great is Kayak's ability to select different arrival airports with immediate fare updates allows you to fine tune your driving to flying ratios.   Especially helpful when traveling to areas where several major airports may be in close proximity to many final destinations.   BWI, IAD, and PHL for example or SFO, SMF, and OAK in California. 

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!