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January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Web 2.0 to earn enterprise cred in 2008

The majority of IT departments that currently view Web 2.0 technologies as trivial, consumer-grade frivolities will eat their words by year's end and instead lead the charge to implement RSS, mashup, and social networking technologies, according to a recent report from Forrester.

Despite only 24 percent of companies citing Web 2.0 technology as a purchasing priority for 2008, Forrester remains convinced that the people-centric value add these technologies offer will soon make believers of 42 percent who have not yet earmarked a dime for blogs, wikis, RSS, mashups, and social networking in the coming year.

Why the anticipated change of heart? End-user desire for said tools will overwhelm CIOs into admitting that IT is already tapping the fledgling paradigm internally for managing and tracking IT projects. Moreover, "enterprise Web 2.0 tools will be a high-impact, low-cost method to show leadership and innovation," according to the report.

In other words, catch the wave before someone else benefits from championing a Web 2.0-influenced move.

Top on the docket, according to the survey, will be enterprise RSS technologies for keeping workers on top of the flow of information at their companies.

At the bottom of the list of currently slated enterprise Web 2.0 projects is buzz-worthy social networking, with 20 percent of companies testing the waters or having a look. But the drumbeat for internal social networking solutions is loud, Forrester contends, and by year's end, such profile-based networking tools "will eat up much of the limelight" of Web 2.0's gala entrance into the enterprise.

Other assertions in the report that could hold up to scrutiny include the potential for enterprise mashups to eat into the portal, search, and EAI (enterprise application integration) markets. Empowering end-users to discover knowledge assets through a mashup framework is certainly a compelling proposition, but as Forrester does admit, the chief obstacle -- other than IT buy-in -- to such technologies is cultural, as process re-engineering, change management, and training loom large as impediments to such paradigm shifts.

Posted by Jason Snyder on January 28, 2008 11:12 AM

December 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

'FoolTube': Jackass to launch user video site

Smack in the middle of a strike over digital intellectual property rights, one Hollywood studio is taking a two-footed approach to kicking striking writers in the crotch, as Paramount Pictures will debut Jackass 2.5 online, the first online premiere of a studio feature film, according to a report in today's New York Times.

Reality TV and the Web -- two ongoing sore points for scriptwriters these days, here, rolled up into one.

The famed LCD (least common denominator) franchise -- built in the main on filming the largely unthinkable -- will take its hour-long masochistic filth fest to the Web beginning Dec. 19 via Blockbuster's Movielink.

"There's more vomiting, nudity and defection," an anonymous executive told the Times, proving once again that standards-bearing quality content is fast finding its first home on the Web.

[For the record,the release date for Jackass 2.5, an unscripted, non-WGA film, was set prior to the writer's strike, according to a company representative.]

But the opportunity to watch Johnny Knoxville and Co. explore the boundaries of the body's ability to withstand creatively induced pain is only the first stage of this potential Web phenom rocket.

Not deaf to the clamor for community, MTV will launch jackassworld.com [Not an IDG affiliate. --Ed.], a site devoted to your idiocratic 2.0 needs, including blogs, archived content, and -- you guessed it -- user-generated video.

That's right, you will no longer have to troll through "in-the-nuts" YouTube meta tags to fulfill your at-work cringing fix.

And whereas Netflix continues to pursue Web 2.0-minded approaches to increasing its online DVD rental lead, tapping crowdsourcing to improve its peer-based recommendation engine, Blockbuster is parrying here with an old-guard favorite: exclusive rights to air Jackass 2.5 online for a week, thanks to corporate-to-corporate dealings between it and Paramount.

And for those of you who don't get that Sun Microsystems Project Sun Spot Development Kit sensor and robotics kit off InfoWorld's "Must-have gadgets for the discerning geek" gift list, Jackass 2.5 will be available for download ownage on Dec. 26 via iTunes and Amazon.com, according to the Times.

We may have to wait impatiently for the continuations of Battlestar Galactica and The Office, but in the meantime, at least we know those Hollywood bigwigs have an eye on "[opening] up and [changing] the game about additional content studios can create," as Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment President Thomas Lesinski told the Times.

And that, of course, is a potential cash cow for them, based on your interest in taking a server blade to the crotch.

What sort of IT-related jackassworld.com contributions do you anticipate seeing?

Posted by Jason Snyder on December 13, 2007 10:59 AM

October 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Cisco reveals entertainment OS

Cisco Systems introduced its Entertainment Operating System (EOS) Thursday, which is intended to serve as an open software platform for creating and managing a community-based entertainment experience.

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Cisco's Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Media Solutions Group, acknowledged that Cisco's foray into the user experience realm might draw some bewilderment. But the company already has been powering Web sites for NASCAR and the National Hockey League, he said.

"We have hundreds of thousands of users coming to these sites," Scheinman said "We've learned a lot from that."

Cisco's plans call for combining the best of elements such as community, publishing, video and discovery. Also, Cisco intends to incorporate the SaaS concept.

"We will be relevant in this marketplace," Scheinman said. He mentioned a launch target date of 2008.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 18, 2007 04:30 PM

October 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft's services: More marketing than meat

It’s official: Microsoft wants you to know it’s serious about this whole hosted software thing. Today they will articulate a long-overdue roadmap for "software plus services" -- a hybrid approach that embraces both old-school boxed software and the flavor-of-the-month hosted services model.

The announcement itself has the trappings of a big deal. In fact, it's more a case of rearranging the furniture and adding a light coat of paint. Specifically, all MS services will be divided into two distinct families: Live (for consumers and SMB) and Online (for enterprises and business that require high availability, scalability, security, etc.).

So we're mostly talking about a rebranding here. The services now designated as part of Online -- Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Office SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Communications Online -- already exist elsewhere in the MS hierarchy. As before, they're available as conventional software on premises or as a software-as-a-service offering hosted either by Microsoft or a Microsoft partner.

The Live family announcement is made a bit more exciting because it includes a new product: Office Live Workspace, a personal storage and collaborative environment in the cloud. You can store anything for free, but document collaboration works only with Office documents. Preregistration starts today at the Office Live site.

The company also announced Exchange Labs, an R&D effort that will supply Exchange as a hosted service to universities and other large facilities that want to innovate around Exchange. And they're launching a new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (code name Titan) to a limited number of customers. In keeping with Microsoft's strategy, Titan can be run on premise or hosted. Significantly, the next-gen Dynamics CRM is multitenanted, an architectural approach that is essential for real, robust SaaS. Many other Microsoft service offerings don't support multitenancy.

For all the elements in this announcement, it's hard to generate much enthusiasm. Microsoft's big splash feels more like a little ripple -- a dutiful set of launches and marketing moves designed mostly to prove that MS "gets it." Plus, Microsoft's insistence on keeping one foot firmly planted in the boxed software world (remember, it's "software plus services") indicates their embrace of Web 2.0 is fairly tepid.

Still, if Microsoft was slow to grasp the importance of the Internet, they'd like to prove they aren't asleep at the switch when it comes to SaaS and Web 2.0. Office Live Workspace may be a key piece of the puzzle here, but Microsoft is undoubtedly late to the party. Google has been making hay with its hosted suite, and other competitors are springing up all over the place.

Don't forget, though, that Microsoft has a built in advantage: a massive installed base of MS Office. A wholesale move to hosted services would undercut that still lucrative business. Despite the Web 2.0 enthusiasts and cockeyed optimists who are penning obituaries for conventional, non-browser-based software, Office isn't in any danger of going away anytime soon. Software plus services is really a play to hold the line and maintain the status quo, even as it seems Microsoft is embracing the newest software models. Smart, very smart.

Posted by Steve Fox on October 1, 2007 12:01 AM

September 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Xobni: Web 2.0 lipstick for MS e-mail pig?

Corporate e-mail users looking to leverage Web 2.0 functionality in Outlook may have an answer in startup Xobni, which presented its flagship solution, Xobni Insight, at the TechCrunch40 conference on Tuesday in San Francisco.

"That is a dumb-ass name," Guy Kawasaki offered during the feedback session. "Luckily it's clever, 'inbox' backwards, but man, if you paid 25 grand to a name lab for that, if I were an investor, I'd just shoot you."

Slavery to frivolous Web 2.0 naming conventions aside, Xobni expands on the admin assistant replacement proposition of Microsoft Outlook by filling the gap between current Outlook functionality and end-users' e-mail and contact management desires. Improving and automating integration between messages and contacts, Xobni Insight puts a social networking twist on the Microsoft e-mail client in the hopes of surfacing hidden value in historical messages and improving Outlook users' ability to stay on top of their e-mail communications game.

In addition to providing much needed message body search, the solution automatically extracts phone numbers from messages, threads conversations, organizes attachments and conversations by contacts, and, in the words of company co-founder Matt Brezina, "uses CCs to expose e-mail's hidden social network." The concept expands the notion of the address book beyond Outlook's Rolodex-of-business-cards metaphor and infuses it with profile information and statistics aimed at leveraging and developing relationships.

What is intriguing about Xobni Insight is that, rather than allow content -- i.e., messages, categories, and projects -- to be the de-facto engine driving messaging organization, it offers a contact-centric model of e-mail management that will likely prove highly beneficial to those who find Outlook's project functionality less intuitive than correlating communications with the people who send them.

Xobni is also part of an important shift in introducing social-networking technologies in the workplace in that it automatically exposes an already existent network personal to and inherently functional for the user. Rather than having individuals sign up for a profile platform that offers e-mail functionality and requires a forced transition period of social network aggregation and toolset adoption, it allows communication itself to drive networking organically, using a platform that -- for better or worse -- most corporate users are already bound to.

Where the solution may take the Web 2.0 model too far is in providing e-mail analytics for contacts. Meant to give users insights into how they and their contacts use their e-mail, such as providing fever charts of messages received throughout the day, the analytics functionality, merged with automated contact profiling, will likely blur the all-too-familiar border between productivity enhancement and invasion of privacy in the workplace -- especially given the inescapable hierarchical structure of corporate culture, as opposed to the more peer-based feel of opt-in social networking.

But what could be an intriguing development for Xobni is the promise of future functionality for integrating data from IM and the Web. The upside of a central repository for varying modes of communication is easy to see. And if data associated with Web-based productivity apps can be pulled into the e-mail client in a worthwhile and intuitive way, e-mail as the hub of relationship-based collaboration, including hooks into workflow, documentation, and collaboration tools, could be inviting. Especially to organizations already appropriating their e-mail platform as an under-featured work portal anyway.

For all its promise, Xobni is, however, one clever Outlook upgrade away from the toilet of intriguing startup ideas. And though the company road map includes support for additional e-mail platforms in the future, the end game here appears to be to keep far enough ahead of Microsoft's messaging and collaboration development efforts to force an acquisition.

More TechCrunch40 coverage:
• TechCrunch40: Startups gone wild
• TechCrunch40: Learning from legends
• Mobile virtualization gets smart
• Google rep glib on enterprise play

Posted by Jason Snyder on September 20, 2007 12:34 PM

September 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google rep glib on enterprise play

Placed before a Web-believin' audience at TechCrunch40 today to present Google's much-anticipated Docs presentation capabilities, Jennifer Mazzon (pictured), product manager of Google Docs, parried questions about Google's ongoing enterprise agenda with a wave of the hand and a series of telling shrugs.

TechCrunch40: Google Presentation: Jennifer Mazzon

Asked about the security, reliability, and functionality reservations of enterprises considering a SaaS-based productivity app such as Google Apps Premier, Mazzon responded with the very consumer-oriented slant that Google has thus far been hard-pressed to shed in marketing its products to companies.

Concerned about the security of your productivity assets hosted at Google?

"Change your passwords, and make them good," Mazzon said. "Ultimately, your own security is your [own responsibility], just like your stuff on your own computer is one password away."

Wondering why you can't yet shake your Excel addiction in favor of a more beefed-up version of the comparatively lightweight Google Spreadsheets offering?

"In general, we did not design Google Docs for the power user who is very [adept] in spreadsheet usage," Mazzon said.

How about backup reliability?

"Nobody yet has lost their documents," Mazzon quipped.

The key issue here is, of course, a lack of commitment to the kinds of SLAs (service-level agreements) enterprises have come to rely on, if only as a reputable stamp of accountability. And Google appears reluctant to ante up its end of such contractual concerns anytime soon.

"We do have user agreements that people sign and we absolutely feel very strongly that people's assets that they put into Google Docs are precious and theirs and we need to enable them to get to them," she said.

In short, Google will continue to try to do its best.

Or, as we've seen in the recent Capgemini announcement, consultancies will do it for them.

Either way, integrating online tools into a hybrid productivity model will likely prove the not-too-distant enterprise norm, especially as Microsoft continues to lag in providing the kind of lightweight online capabilities many departments are currently seeking from IT.

And, with Yahoo's acquisition of Zimbra yesterday, the competition is certainly heating up.

Asked about the impact the Zimbra acquisition will have on Google's Web app lead, Mazzon was not unsurprisingly vague.

"The Internet is a big place," she said, admitting to the triteness of her evasive response. "There are a lot of users in the world, and competition makes everyone better."

More TechCrunch40 coverage:
• TechCrunch40: Startups gone wild
• TechCrunch40: Learning from legends
• Mobile virtualization gets smart
• Xobni: Web 2.0 lipstick for MS e-mail pig?

Posted by Jason Snyder on September 18, 2007 11:56 AM

August 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Web apps use Google Gears to go offline

The appeal of browser-based desktop apps is obvious: They're free or at least very cheap. You don't need to install them. And they lend themselves to real-time collaboration. The problem is even more obvious -- without an Internet connection you're dead.

That's why, in June, Google came out with Gears, an open-source browser extension that enables developers to create an offline mode for Web applications. The first out of the gate to use Gears turns out to be Zoho Office, the suite that "blew the rest out of the water" in Oliver Rist's informal comparative review of browser-based desktop applications last year.

We haven't had a chance to check out the synching between offline and online yet, which will be key to the success of the product. And we assume Google is busily eating its own dogfood and prepping for the release of a Gears version of Google Apps. When both are available for review, we'll do a close comparison of Zoho's and Google's offline-capable versions.

Meanwhile, I can't help but notice that more and more people have caught on to browser based word processors and spreadsheets (mainly Google's of course) in just the past few months. Primarily for collaborative documents, it's true. But in my mind's eye I keep seeing the endless parade of "percentage complete" bars from the last install I did of Microsoft Office on my home machine. For $400. Will I ever do that again?

Posted by Eric Knorr on August 21, 2007 02:43 PM

June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Enterprise 2.0: Return of 'The Long Boom'?

You remember "The Long Boom," right? That seminal, late 90's Wired cover story (and then book) that predicted a 25 year run of wealth and economic expansion, fueled by technology and the Internet? The "Long Boom" argument became something of a wry joke in the immediate wake of the obvious "bust" that was the dot.com collapse in 2000. By the time Osama bin Laden's crew carried out the 9-11 attacks, the Long Boom idea seemed more like a millenial version of "Looking Backward," Edward Bellamy's touchingly optimistic view of the future. That's especially true when Long Boom authors Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden talk about how the Long Boom will wipe away intractable problems like poverty and environmental degradation. Crisis in Darfur anyone?

While nobody's quite so sanguine about the ability of technological change and economic growth to wipe away mankind's many ills, the idea of a Long Boom continues to have many backers and, in fact, is gaining traction again. This time, though it comes to us under a different guise: the writings of British economist Carlotta Perez. Keynoting at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference on Wednesday, Wikinomics author Don Tapscott cited Perez's ideas about the progression from disruptive innovation from creation, to bubble, followed by a bubble burst then a decades long growth in use and deployment. It struck my attention because Tapscott was actually the second person who mentioned Perez to me in as many days. Anant Jhingran, CTO for the Information Management Software Division at IBM also brought up Perez in my conversation with him yesterday. Now, I'm no authority on economics, but as far as I can tell, both men are referring to a 2002 book by Perez called Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. In it, Perez argues that "continuous technical change takes place within discontinuous surges, diffusing successive technological revolutions," and that "the types and amounts of profit-making opportunities vary significantly along the life cycle of each technological revolution." (Think "Cisco in 1996" vs. "Cisco in 2007")

Perez breaks out those surges in technological change into distinct phases: the first being what she calls the "love affair of the irruption phase," during which "financial capital begins a passionate relationship with the emerging production capital," followed by a "Decoupling in the frenzy phase," during which time "brilliant successes in a sort of gambling world make (financial capital)believe itself capable of generating wealth by its own actions -- almost like having invented magic rules for a new kind of economy." No surprise, then, that financial implosion is Perez's next stage, and that is followed by what she terms the "happy marriage of the synergy phase" and "maturity phase" during which a "period of deployment begins" in which there is a "recoupling of financial and production capital" that leads to a happy and harmonious marriage.

How long a marriage? That's the big question, and its the question that's on the minds of folks like Don Tapscott, who's been able to put his finger on a lot of the most salient technology and socio-cultural trends of the last two decades. Perez looks at five different surges dating back to the industrial revolution of the 18th century and including the revolutions engendered by the advent of steam power, electricity, automobiles and then information and technology. In each case, the synergy and maturity phases last anywhere from 20 to 30 years.

What does that mean? Well, if you believe (as Tapscott and Jhingran clearly do) that the dot.com collapse was a Perez-ian "implosion," and that Web 2.0 is evidence of the beginning of a "synergy" phase, then we've got another two or three decades of steady growth in which "innovation and growth can take place across the whole productive spectrum and financial wealth may take its share in the profits in what is clearly a positive sum game."

Sounds good to me. And Tapscott is persuasive in arguing that there's already evidence that this synergy is happening. Google, for example, may become the world's first global "digital conglomerate," capable of selling ads and media, and telecommunications services (municipal wifi, telephony, etc.).

The argument is remarkably similar to the one that Schwartz and Leyden put forward -- and with a similar time frame (they pegged the long boom as lasting between 1980 and 2040). But they also suggested, in 1997, that the World was in the early stages of "a 25-year run of a greatly expanding economy will do much to solve seemingly intractable problems like poverty and to ease tensions throughout the world. And we'll do it without blowing the lid off the environment." Those words rang pretty hollow on September 12, 2001, and even hollower today, with Iraq and mounting evidence of widespread climate change. Does that mean that Perez is wrong -- no. But it may mean that technology and capital aren't the only drivers of change, and that progress can easily be derailed by other forces -- poverty, hunger, environmental degradation and the political and religious extremism they tend to produce. Those perspectives sometimes get lost when you look at the world from the perspective of Sand Hill Road.

But even if the "Long Boom" --either Perez's version of it or Schwartz and Leyden's -- doesn't happen, it's not wrong for companies like IBM and Google to presume that it will and act accordingly.

Posted by Paul Roberts on June 20, 2007 12:35 PM

June 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Movable Type has delusions of CMS grandeur

Ubiquitous blogging platform Movable Type launches the beta of version 4 today, with a new architecture, a slew of Web 2.0-ish features, and the stated intention of standing in as a full-blown (if lightweight) content management system.

(Full disclosure: InfoWorld is a customer of Six Apart, Movable Type's parent company. I am writing this posting in Movable Type, an oddly reflexive exercise.)

Concurrent with the beta, the company announced the Movable Type Open Source Project, an open source version of MT due in Q3. Six Apart is already an open source proponent, having contributed OpenID and other OSS in the past, so this piece of news is welcome but not surprising.

But back to Movable Type 4: It's wildly ambitious. Not content with being the social software of choice for everything from one-man megaphones to major corporate sites, it now wants to function as a content management system (CMS) for whole Web sites. Two years ago, this would have been laughable. Today, it may not be. Blogs are at the center of many major sites, and a basic template approach to everyday Web pages (not just ones we think of as blogs) is viable. That assumes, of course, that MT 4 is still a competent blogging platform -- a reasonable assumption, given the quality of both the current MT3 and MT Enterprise edition 1.5. InfoWorld will put the beta through its paces over the next several weeks, though we'll be doing so gingerly. "This is a real beta, not a Google-style beta," according to Six Apart EVP Chris Alden; in other words, beta testers should not think about running MT 4 in a production environment.

The dev team's most far-reaching decision is the introduction of a "plug-in" architecture. The new base platform rolls up the code base of MT 3, MT Enterprise 1.5, community-contributed enhancements, plus some core technologies from hosted blogging platform TypePad and consumer lines Vox and LiveJournal (all part of the Six Apart family). Feature packs will sit on top of MT for specialized functions and community-based add-ons, ideally avoiding code bloat of the base platform. The architectural change is intended to make MT more flexible and scalable, a primary development goal of the new release.

The laundry list of new features is long and needed: installation Wizard, new UI, system dashboards, better image insert feature (yes!), redesigned template management tools and WYSIWYG editor, and so on. Even more significant, assuming they work, will be community-management tools for managing readers' comments. Readers who wish to respond to a blog will be able to join the Web site's community (through MT tools) and post their own photos, videos, audio, as well as text.

Exciting stuff. Still, I don't foresee many large, complex sites dumping their industrial-strength CMSes anytime soon, no matter how solid the new MT may turn out to be. The fact that it's even a consideration, though, proves how far blogging software has come.

Posted by Steve Fox on June 5, 2007 12:01 AM

May 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft online storage disappears overnight

Assuming you blinked this weekend, you probably missed an inadvertantly short sneak peak of what could be the next big services showdown between Microsoft and Google: online storage.

Microsoft's Live Drive cum Windows Live Folders -- which will offer subscribers 500MB of free online storage -- was caught in the screen-capture sights of LiveSide.net on Saturday before shutting down hours later. The much-anticipated service will someday lock horns with the rumored Google GDrive, which may in fact push the bounds of plausibility by allowing users to store an unlimited amount of files on the Web.

Not yet in beta, Microsoft's Windows Live Folders will allow users to upload files to the Web via Internet Explorer or Firefox and organize them into personal, shared, and public folders. The service -- in part fueled by Microsoft's 2005 acquisition of ByteTaxi FolderShare -- will tap Microsoft Live ID to enable users to restrict access to files, share documents with designated users, or open access to their files to the public at large as they see fit.

According to LiveSide.net's test-drive of the fledging product, users can assign read or contribute status to other users, thereby facilitating collaboration on documents among small teams or groups of friends. Undoubtedly, identity-based access to files via the Web will prove ripe for developing additional social-networking functionality into the product -- especially if Microsoft continues along the Web-centric path it has been outlining since the MIX conference by offering APIs to developers.

Why Microsoft unveiled and veiled the service so quickly is unknown. Perhaps, though, the premature launch of the pre-beta Windows Live Folders may simply have been a stunted attempt to establish an early lead on Google. But when it comes to delivering services in Google's wheelhouse, how many years' lead will be enough? If last week's Windows Live Hotmail Beta, which may finally have rendered Microsoft's free online e-mail service relevant again, is any indication, a decade ought to do it.

That said, iterations of what some are labeling "virtual hard drives" are already available in the form of startups such as Omnidrive, Box.net, and Streamload. Perhaps a series of key acquisitions could tip the scale in what will undoubtedly be a heavy-use market.

Posted by Jason Snyder on May 14, 2007 03:34 PM

May 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Is News Corp. overpaying for PhotoBucket?

News Corp.'s decision to snatch up MySpace.com parent Intermix for $580 million back in 2005 was a watershed -- a media industry "shot heard round the world" that declared the Web and social networking sites like MySpace the next front in the battle for eyeballs. By 2005 standards (practically the Jurassic period in Silicon Valley time), $580 million sounded like a lot, but News Corp. picked up a lot of eyeballs in the deal: 50.6 million unique visitors and 29 billion page views a month in the United States within six months of that deal, and the #5 most popular Web site today, with close to 5 percent of global Internet users visiting the site. All in all, a pretty good bargain -- even if monetizing MySpace has proved challenging.

That makes the published rumors today that News Corp. has signed a deal to acquire photo sharing site PhotoBucket for $250 million curious.

After all, it was only a few weeks ago that News Corp. was blocking photos and videos from PhotoBucket users in a spat over ad-sponsored slideshows that PhotoBucket users were posting on MySpace pages, which News Corp. alleged was a violation of its Terms of Service. That dispute was eventually resolved and, from the looks of it, acquisition talks started shortly thereafter.

In theory, this is a happy marriage between the world's biggest social networking site and the Web's most popular photo sharing site -- each with huge populations of young, tech and media savvy users. But as the bright folks over at TechCrunch point out, the PhotoBucket deal may not bring News Corp. nearly as many eyeballs as the MySpace deal did. Why? Because most PhotoBucket users already _are_ MySpace users, according to statistics from Nielsen Netratings. That service estimates the aggregate PhotoBucket/MySpace userbase at 57.7 million unique visitors each month, compared to MySpace's current flow of 55.9 unique visitors a month. That's a 3% gain for MySpace, or $167 for each of the 1.8 million users at slivery edge of the Photobucket.com, MySpace.com Venn Diagram.

Of course, it's also possible that News Corp and Fox Interactive Media Chief Peter Levinson know something that the folks at Nielsen don't -- The real numbers, for example. After all, more than one reporter has noted that there are serious problems with Web traffic monitoring and rating firms like Nielsen which still rely on panels of Internet users to estimate actual traffic, and are thus ill equipped to measure the true level of interest in dynamic Web sites like MySpace, Photobucket and Digg. In other words, don't take the Nielsen numbers as gospel -- there may be lots of traffic that Nielsen doesn't see. That said, it certainly shouldn't surprise anyone at News Corp. if the legions of PhotoBucket customers they're paying for already have MySpace accounts. If that's the case, News Corp. better have a pretty nifty plan for how to leverage the Photobucket site and photo sharing technology if it wants to make back its quarter billion dollar investment!

Posted by Paul Roberts on May 8, 2007 11:32 AM

April 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Corporate makeover, Web 2.0-style

If the vibe at this year's Web 2.0 Expo is any indication, the corporate customer-facing Web is in need of a serious makeover. And though the bugbears of user experience brought up at the conference -- inexcusable latency, insipid presentation, limited user control of data display and categorization -- are certainly well-established, in some cases, Web 2.0's answer may in fact be a vector-in-progress pointing toward a new set of warts rather than a cure.

In a presentation entitled "Corporate Makeover: Web 2.0 Edition," well-known designers took a crack at redefining large corporate Web sites with the tenets of Web 2.0 design, features, and user experience in mind.

"It is about putting services back in people's hands," Tom Hobbs, of the experience design group at Adobe, said in overview of the tenets of Web 2.0 design. But as much as the options opened up by the Web 2.0 design ethos succeed in putting users in control of their own site visitation destinies, the overall impression is that of a paradigm in which the designer remains more than essential, but central.

Central to the ethos appears to be an exuberance for anticipating every permutation of the user's experience throughout the design phase, oftentimes to the point of overstuffing. Category slicing for every possible data segment, tagging for every structurable element, relevancy meters of all ilk tracking back to myriad other users' opinions, immediate access to maps that plot any data entry in the browser that hints of location -- in many cases, simply because it can be done. And though there is wisdom in providing users with encapsulated previews to better inform them of the payoff of their next invested click, the proliferation of rollover scripts on many of these site designs seem intent on occluding access to the information presented on the present page, superimposing a trembling layer of where-next teases intent on making you sticky, a structure for encapsulating many possible futures into the present tense, begging the question of whatever happened to the here and now of the here and now?

"It's about guiding from one place to another," Hobbs said, in a sense summing up the panel, which by and large suggested that the competition for providing the most complete user experience has transformed into a competition for attention among islets of content themselves.

To be fair, the Adobe design Hobbs presented for a banking site proved more than compelling -- a worthwhile, trustworthy banking Web app, rather than the banking equivalent of a fantasy baseball information site UI. But with Adobe's design prowess, dedicated user experience team, and Hobb's real-world experience designing such sites, the results were unsurprising.

Naturally, the success of the Adobe demonstration was due in large part to having a team dedicated to reminding developers that one day there will in fact be actual, variably technically adept users on the other end of the line. Many in the Web 2.0 crowd simply don't have the resources or proclivity to incubate practical user experience design for corporate sites. That said, many of the innovations of the Web 2.0 movement (tagging, offering multiple views of the same content, and so on) are certainly worth incorporating in the corporate Web environment.

Next year, "Corporate Makeover, Web 2.0 Edition" will be a competition open to all attendees. Should be interesting to see where a year of Web 2.0 maturity and innovation will lead.

Posted by Jason Snyder on April 18, 2007 01:11 PM

February 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

QEDWiki: Collaborating on Mashups

Blending two central tenets of the Web 2.0 ethos -- an emphasis on community and the development of lightweight, integrated mashup apps -- IBM has taken the wrapper off QEDWiki, which the company describes as a "browser-based assembly canvas used to create simple mashups."

Written in PHP, QEDWiki -- which stands for Quick and Easily Done -- is a Wiki framework that enables business users and developers to come together to build ad hoc mashup applications quickly and collaboratively, using widgets developed within the framework as well as those exposed elsewhere on the Web.

The technology, which is part of IBM's alphaWorks Services, includes a rich AJAX-enabled architecture, meaning that each page of the Wiki is itself a rich, interactive app. The hope is that by inviting the developer and business user community at large to participate in the early stages of QEDWiki's development, IBM will be able to improve the technology's capabilities in a manner that better aligns with what its users ultimately want.

A demo of the technology has been posted by IBM on YouTube. From the looks of it, QEDWiki appears well worth a trial run.

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 8, 2007 06:10 PM

December 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Net evolves: Meet interactive elf

In the beginning, there was the Dancing Banana -- and it was good, at least as far as Internet amusements went.

Ever since that hyperactive banana hit the Net in 2000, we've witnessed a rise in both the sophistication and interactive nature of this sort of Net fluff that gets passed along via e-mail, IM, and blog postings. And it's not only creative developer types spawning them for their own amusement and notoriety. Companies are leveraging the Web medium to effectively spark viral marketing campaigns -- which not only give themselves some potentially inexpensive publicity, but also can showcase some rather inventive uses of ever-evolving Web technology.

Case in point: OfficeMax has launched an entertaining "Elf Yourself" campaign that generated plenty of chuckles and guffaws (as well as some eye-rolling and snorts of derision) at the InfoWorld office.

The idea is, you upload a photo of yourself (or someone else). After a couple of steps to properly size the pic, the Web app will generate an animation of an elf grooving to some swing-y Christmas music -- with its face being the picture you've uploaded. Want a sample? See Sir Bill the Elf get his groove on.

OK, that bit's not necessarily sophisticated, and it's been done before (e.g. the "Wedding Crashers" Web promotion from a couple of years ago).

The interesting bit is, once you've uploaded the image, you can add a voice message for the elf to utter as it dances and prances about. When I first visited the site, I assumed a mic was needed, but no; the Web site gives you a phone number and a code. Dial the number, follow the prompts to enter your code and record your message -- and within moments, the little elf is "speaking" it (though it's sped up to sound more elfish).

Now granted, this isn't the most useful application of Web 2.0 technology -- but it's still a pretty inventive creation. I was particularly impressed by how quickly the voice and animation were stitched together -- though the one I made with voice (not posted here) was done later in the evening, because I got a busy signal trying to record a message during the day.

Oh, and on a semi-related holiday Net-fluff note, there's also the Simon Sez Santa 2.0 site, which is sort of a rip-off of Burger King's infamous and disturbing Subservient Chicken -- but still fun.

Do you have any entertaining seasonal sites to share?

Posted by Ted Samson on December 19, 2006 08:35 AM

December 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Fakeyourspace.com: The online reputation hack?

Kudos to Bruce Schneier for bringing us word of a new variant on hacking: the social network reputation hack. Schneier is blogging today about latest social networking phenom: FakeYourSpace.com, a new service that promises to hook you up with scads of model-esque guys and gals to populate your Web page. For just $.99 a month/friend, customers can browse Fakeyourspace's stable of models and pick those they wish to join their social network. The fakeyourspace folks will then add that person as a friend to your network (picture included, of course) and give you 2 comments a week, to boot. For twice the fee, you can get twice as good a friend (4 comments a week).

Not sure if fakeyourspace.com is for real or not. The domain was registered back in June, but neither the model selection nor checkout features seem to work as of Thursday. But it's no secret that sites that allow you to game your online reputation are proliferating. And, as more social and business networking gravitate to sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn,and the like, who's to say that a few gonzo model friends on your friends list doesn't boost your appeal -- Sure, it's depraved and pathetic, but think of it as the online equivalent of a botox injection.

Posted by Paul Roberts on December 7, 2006 10:06 AM

October 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Getting a feed on the competition

Keeping tabs on the competition just got a little snazzier, thanks to a new competitive intelligence service from Dream This, as reported by Marshall Kirkpatrick at TechCrunch.

Sporting a moniker right out of Andrew Wooldridge's Web Two Point Oh! company name generator, Competitious boasts a "structured way to gather competitive intelligence," allowing you to keep abreast of feeds, blogs, and Alexa traffic data about your competition, and to aggregate all your automated 2.0 espionage bounty -- AJAX-style -- in one, shareable place. The service, now in beta, is free.

Clearly geared toward those in startup mode, Competitious does, however, present some intriguing functionality for obtaining and maintaining a competitive edge. Especially as it facilitates the tracking of competitive feature sets as they evolve. Create a matrix of your competitors' current capabilities and get a bead on how best to differentiate yours.

Could be a concept worth keeping an eye on.

Posted by Jason Snyder on October 4, 2006 05:48 PM

September 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Days of Awe 2.0

These are weighty days for those of us who are Jews. In fact, the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, are Yamim Noraim -- the Days of Awe, a time when Jews the world over reflect on their lives and their actions, fast, ask forgiveness of those we've sinned against and pray like crazy that G-d inscribes our names in the book of life.

But, let's face it, all that fasting and reflecting can be pretty isolating, so what better time to launch a social networking site just for Jews? That's the idea behind Koolanoo.com

Basically, this is another take on sites like Myspace, LinkedIn or Facebook. You can set up a profile with pictures, likes, dislikes, link to friends, etc. - but all with a distinctly jewish flair. The discussion groups sport thread like: "Skype in Hebrew," "The Top 10 Most Influential Jews are," "Would you marry for money?" and how to become a "Koolanoo Celebrity."

But, as this viral video ad for the new service suggests, the main draw for Koolanoo may be a bit more *ahem* earthly in nature, and lurk somewhere behind the "dating" and "hookups" tabs.

Still, dates and hookups are easier said than done. This is a pretty international crowd. With members scattered across from the globe from Israel, the U.S., and Hong Kong to the EU, "hooking up" Koolanoo style may involve a 6 to 15 hour flight. But, heck, with around 160 nobel prize winners and actors including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alicia Silverstone, Natalie Portman, Kate Hudson, Scarlett Johansson, Zac Efron, Evan Rachel Wood and Sara Paxton in "the tribe," it's probably worth it! ;-)

Posted by Paul Roberts on September 29, 2006 01:22 PM

September 27, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Day-trade grid-style with Gstock

GStock.com launched Wednesday what it said was the first-ever virtual supercomputer dedicated to stock picking.

The company said its new site harnessed the computing power of Internet-linked volunteer computers around the world, calculating and scanning stocks 24 hours a day, with over one billion strategies tested per stock, for "profitable trades with a high degree of certainty", said Oren Rossen co-founder of GStock.com.

So, just how certain is it? The company said it tested over a two and a half year period and it yielded an average 5.1% return per trade over a 53-day period, with 21,000 of the 30,000 trades -- or 70 percent -- yielding profits.

Tal Schwartz, Ph.D in Finance and Economics Instructor, California Institute of Technology, said in Gstock.com's press release: "Building a virtual supercomputer to test billions of algorithms in search of profitable investment strategies is certainly a tremendous leap forward in personal finance and portfolio management."

I'm looking for some analysts to comment and will post their response if I get one.

Hey day-traders: Would you trust your investing to a grid-style supercomputer? Talk back to us.

Posted by Mike Barton on September 27, 2006 09:18 AM

September 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

crazyeyesinfoworldshizzle.com?

As we all know, there's a cultural gulf widening between that oh-so-sought after "wired teen" demographic and the rest of us. As we've all read in [name your media source] everyone from newspaper and radio executives to movie moguls and prospective employers need to be boning up on Myspace, Facebook and the latest ringtone and viral video fad so they can appeal to Internet and tech-savvy teens and college grads. But looking at Myspace.com and Web hosting company Dotster's latest effort to appeal to teens makes me ask "Why bother?"

So just what is "Pimpedemail?" Well, basically its a "pimped" up version of the Web domain lookup and registration services that pretty much every other hosting service worth its salt offers.

The difference? Well...there's the "image" thing. You know: souped up vintage 70's sedans, piles of cash and that kinda gothic lettering that's somehow become synonymous with "pimps." I checked carefully, but couldn't see any exploited sex workers on the site though they, of course, are part of the "pimp" mystique. Hell -- they're what being a pimp is all about, right? So I'm not sure exactly what, at the end of the day, Dotster's pimps are pimping ... besides their own sorry service.

Then there's a kinda "teen" friendly domain name generation feature that turns your boring old domain name into a 'hip buzz phrase' (this is their wording, not mine) more likely to appeal to teens and the rest of the MySpace crowd.

Curious, I typed good old "Infoworld.com" in and here's what I got:

crazyeyesinfoworldshizzle.com
ininfoworldwetrust.com
infoworldatthedisco.com
justinfoworld.com
worldofinfoworld.com

Are these really cooler than infoworld1234.com? I don't think so. Dotster and Myspace should tweak their "hip and cynical" algorithm a bit to get it working just right.

Dotster's CEO, Clint Page, is quoted saying that he "hopes PimpedEmail will foster a greater sense of creativity and control for teens who purchase domains....PimpedEmail is a fun service that is accessible to Internet users of all experience levels, but it may also become an on-ramp into a new hobby or even a future career for some of our young customers."

Hmm...an on-ramp to a new hobby or even a future career for some of our young customers. You mean like ... pimping??!

Then there's the small print. Folks who sign up pay $7.95 a month for the e-mail forwarding service, with a "small additional fee" to do domain forwarding. Huh?

First of all, you can buy a whole Web hosting package with storage and e-mail accounts for a lot less than $7.95 a month, and companies don't typically charge you extra just to do domain forwarding, in my experience.

Second, why wrap the new service in a risque and, basically, misogynist image like "pimping." Yeah, I've seen Pimp My Ride, it's a good show, but given a world of possibilities with branding this new service, it's hard to see what Dotster and MySpace were thinking of with "pimpedemail."

Posted by Paul Roberts on September 19, 2006 08:40 AM

August 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Did Google kill Kiko?

Bloggers and pundits are engaging in a game of "CSI: Web 2.0" as they try to pinpoint who did in online-calendar startup Kiko.com.

Kiko.com -- including the Web site, the software, and the domain name -- went up for sale on eBay last week. One prospective buyer, who has no public buying or selling history on the popular auction site, has made a bid thus far for $49,999.00.

Whatever the future holds for Kiko, some people are taking this opportunity to point an accusing finger at Google, saying the release of Google Calendar was the fatal blow for Kiko. Take this article from the Guardian Unlimited, which invokes the phrase "Google creep":

"It only takes Google to experiment in a particular online area to kill off fledgling businesses. That appears to be what happened to Kiko. Google launched a test version of its Google Calendar application in April, and that seems to have rung the death knell for Kiko."

Google is becoming an increasingly common and easy target for these types of accusations. The company certainly is shifting more than a couple of technology landscapes as it dabbles not only in search innovation but also Web-based applications, news aggregation, and other projects not necessarily ending with -ation, such as its shiny new free wireless network in Menlo Park, Calif.

But did Google unfairly catch Kiko off-guard with the release of Calendar and pummel the upstart into submission with its hefty muscles? Not quite, if you agree with Richard White, who was a member of the Kiko team.

White shares his own perspectives as to what happened to Kiko, and opines quite explicitly that the company's demise was more due to self-inflicted wounds.

Among them, White writes, the Kiko team didn't stay sufficiently focused:

"We were on track to release the new version of Kiko in the middle of January, when we *lost focus* and starting working on something totally different altogether. This was obviously a suicidal move in hindsight as it cost us 2 months: Kiko 2.0 launched on March 15th instead of January 15th/ During that time two important things happened:
1. 30Boxes came out of nowhere and launched on Feb 14. Thus becoming the new internet calendar darling.
2. Screenshots of Google calendar were leaked and posted all over the Internet."

Additionally, White writes that the company released Kiko 1.0 too early while it still suffered a poor UI, souring some users' first impression. Moreover, he says the team attempted to cram too many features into Kiko 2.0, which resulted in a delayed launch.

I applaud White for his mature and honest perspective of what happened to Kiko and his restraint in not simply blaming Google. The company is a formidable beast, and thus an easy scapegoat: It has the brains and the dollars to crank out innovative products, combined with the enviable agility to do so relatively quickly.

But that doesn't mean that startups should just call it quits for fear that whatever they do, Google -- or Microsoft, or IBM, or any other tech giant for that matter -- will do it faster and better. We saw plenty of promising ventures keel over and die during the Web 1.0 boom, like WebVan and pets.com, but others, like Amazon.com and Salesforce.com (founded in 1999), not only survived, but thrived.

Now we're in the Web 2.0 era, and as hardware and software, as well as the needs of business and users, evolve, the potential for innovative and successful business endeavors expands exponentially.

Yes, the promising Kikos of the world might not survive, but inevitably, another young company will grow up to become the next seemingly unbeatable Googliath. But then a new onslaught of eager Davids will emerge, wielding slings the likes of which we've never seen.

Posted by Ted Samson on August 22, 2006 11:00 AM

August 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MS, AOL tag along behind 2.0 trend

Not to be left off the Web 2.0 radar, Microsoft and AOL this morning announced further forays into the social-networking and micropublishing craze. Microsoft's Windows Live Writer allows bloggers to preview their missives before posting. The desktop app, now in beta, works in conjunction with Blogger, Live Journal, and TypePad and -- oddly, coming from Microsoft -- has been built to save scribes time and alleviate frustration.

For its part, AOL has acquired Userplane, an IM and chat software vendor with MySpace.com and Date.com among its client roster. The deal, which gives AOL an even deeper hook into the social-networking trend, comes on the heels of the company's response to Yahoo's Flickr. AOL Pictures, now in beta, was announced Friday.

Meanwhile, those at the forefront of the Web 2.0 just got a little more face time last week, as Tech Crunch's Michael Arrington brought 13 Web 2.0 CEOs out from behind the green curtain to get an insider's perspective on the financial, technological, and ontological trends fueling what Bolt's Aaron Cohen labels "the user-generated media movement."

Whether or not you subscribe to Socializr CEO Jonathan Abrams' -- albeit self-deprecatory -- pigeonholing of the Web 2.0 phenomenon as "this narrow, self-referential subculture," Arrington's 24-minute video sheds relevant insight on what can be learned from this so-called vanguard. From the challenge of differentiating your wares and services in an era of increasing competition, to capitalizing on a more sophisticated user base, these would-be forward-thinkers have much to relay about bringing together what Gautam Godhwani, CEO of Simply Hired, aptly notes to be the four primary elements of the "new" Internet: search, applications, content, and community.

Unconvinced? Perhaps Rapleaf CEO Auren Hoffman puts it best when he says, "It's very hard to give an example of a service where the big guys are really beating the small guys." And, as agility on the Web becomes more and more essential regardless of industry, tapping the collective wisdom of these small guys could prove vital to attaining competitive advantage.

After all, as the window between early and mass adoption of Web technologies shrinks and users' relationship to the Internet evolves into "more of a conversation than a lecture," as Rojo CEO Chris Alden notes, these experiments in interrelating data and end-users are worth keeping an eye on, especially as Web commerce continues to shift from a consumer-based to a more consumer-as-participant economy.

How do you see this love-it-or-hate-it 2.0 trend shaping your industry?

Posted by Jason Snyder on August 14, 2006 10:37 AM

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