ReadWrite Web

From Horizon.au

Selected RSS Feeds Australia Tech News ABC Science and Technology AustralianIT TheAge Tech News mega.org.au Yahoo!7 Australia ZDNet Australia Australia Education Elearning Innovations Blog Flexible Learning Framework| edna education news The Knowledge Tree Outside Sources BBC Engadget EurekaAlert Many2Many O'Reilly Radar ReadWrite Web Research Buzz SlashDot TechCrunch Technology Review Wired Gadgtes and Gizmos

ReadWrite Web

• Startup Tips: Surviving & Thriving in a Down Economy (Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:59:57 -0800)
  This week's RWW Live podcast show was on the topic of how startups can navigate through the choppy waters of the current economy. We've already posted today on a two year old life-story repository startup called Dandelife, which is struggling - although we were able to draw some lessons from that. But it's also good to look at the startups that continue to battle away. Our podcast guests were two examples of that - BrightKite and Zoho. Both were recognized by ReadWriteWeb in our annual end of the year awards: Zoho won 'Best Little Co' and BrightKite won 'Most Promising Little Co'. In the podcast they had some excellent advice for startups, so in this post we review some of those tips; and we invite you to add your own tips in the comments. Sponsor RWW Live host Sean Ammirati started by asking Zoho and BrightKite how they got their startups off the ground. Zoho replied that they started small, bootstrapping with one product. They started in the desktop business software market and within 6-12 months they had begun to generate revenue from that; then in 2003-04 they began to develop web apps, which they did using the revenue from the business software. So they've always managed to bootstrap using company revenue - they've not taken funding. BrightKite started as a "nights and weekends" project that they submitted to TechStars, a small funding initiative similar to Y Combinator. TechStars provided mentorship, a bit of seed capital and generally got them off the ground - in return for some equity. BrightKite did a working prototype, then raised an angel round of $1M last year. I then asked the two companies about how their product plan will be affected, if at all, by the economy downturn. I noted that Zoho has a wide variety of products in their Web Office suite, so for example do they plan to fold some of those into bigger products due to the economy? Zoho replied that they make money from their business applications, rather than their collaboration apps. So they have made it a priority to integrate their collaboration apps into the business apps over the coming year(s). They will also continue to add new apps, however those will be money-making business apps. I put the same question to BrightKite: has their product plan changed due to the economy? BrightKite replied that it hasn't changed significantly, they were always planning to ramp up the marketing and do more partnerships this year. They also plan to introduce revenue drivers - e.g. location-based advertising and analytics for businesses. Generally the economy hasn't changed their revenue-generating plans too much, although it's perhaps brought it forward by a month or so. In terms of success factors, Zoho mentioned that "constant innovation" has allowed them to keep ahead of the pack. In the online word processing space, there were around 17 competing apps when they launched Zoho Writer - but continually improving their product helped them keep ahead. Zoho has about 250 staff, so that has helped. On the other side of the staffing coin, BrightKite is a small 10-person team. They believe that being open and iterating on user problems is key for their success. There are many more tips in the podcast, which we invite you to listen to below. Also let us know your own thoughts on not just surviving, but thriving, in this current economic environment. Download MP3 Cat pic: fofurasfelinas Discuss
• Return of the Cheap Decade (Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:15:24 -0800)
  In March 2003, Rich Kaarlgaard wrote a great article in Forbes detailing how the coming decade was all about massive reductions in costs and prices, driven by technology. We had grown accustomed to Moore's Law driving down PC costs. Kaarlgaard pointed out that this was happening across the spectrum of the economy. He was right, but many of the effects were hidden by the credit bubble. When money is so cheap, costs rise. Now we are in for an even cheaper decade, and today's headlines are showing the way. Sponsor Selling to the Bottom of the Pyramid Today's news from One Laptop Per Child was about layoffs due to difficulty in raising money. But the mission remains, and the core driver remains technology, as one of the commentors points out: "You have done a great job so far, revolutionizing Moore's Law for X86 computing, initiating the industry-wide rush to sell netbooks in the developed countries, thus accelerating the shift to cheaper and lower-power computing. "The next step I think should be shifting the PC and laptop to the ARM architechture. This would lower cost and lower the power consumption further. And it would accelerate also the industry-wide shift from the wasted CPU cycles and empty processing of X86 to the optimized embedded process and the complete removal of all bloatware from computers. How soon could XO-1.5 or XO-2 be ready with an ARM Cortex A8 core, running some Linux OS with a Sugar interface in collaboration with Google Android as software platform?" OLPC is not the only outfit with this mission. In India, Novatium has the same mission, and it has a for-profit model. It has been pointed out regularly for a long time that selling to the "bottom of the pyramid" is a good business strategy. It is now more apparent that these strategies will impact developed markets as well. The current downturn will accelerate this as individuals and companies seek to reduce costs. The Google Price In manufacturing, we have the China price. In outsourcing, we have the India price. In software-as-a-service, we now have the Google price. Reading the Forrester report on the cost of managing email, what jumps out is how radically lower the Google price is: $8.47 vs. $20.32 for the lowest-priced alternative. Despite all the chants of "You get what you pay for," most businesses will take that differential pretty seriously. Google has set the new benchmark. Every vendor that sells for more will have to spend a lot of marketing dollars explaining why. Skype on an Unlocked Mobile Device The rumor (based on a broken embargo, it appears) that Skype Lite will be available on Android and Java-enabled phones gets us closer to the deal we all want: Skype on an unlocked mobile device. Like many people, I don't use a landline at work anymore. I use Skype and a mobile phone. So I am okay when in my office, my home, or a friend's office or home where I can open my laptop and use Skype. But my mobile bills are way too high. I was intrigued by Validas' offer to reduce mobile bills by untangling their complexity. But I really want a more radical option, and Skype on an unlocked phone gives me that. I get free Skype-to-Skype and cheap Skype-Out calls wherever I have Wi-Fi. Wherever I don't, I use a pre-paid mobile calling card. No fixed costs. Big mobile bills... gone! Hint: don't buy shares in telephone companies. Don't Worry Apple, There Will Always Be a Luxury Market Aston Martins may not be selling so well today, but iPhones and Macs are flying off the shelves, and they are surely not cheap. Affordable luxury -- something that makes you feel good but does not really break the bank -- does well in a downturn. But this is a small counterpoint to the massive main trend of cheaper products driven by both technology and the need to sell to the billions who are joining the global economy. Now, if we can only figure out how to enable billions to join the global consumer economy without doing worse damage to the environment, we will be in great shape. Come on Mr. Tata, what about an electric version of the Tata Nano? Discuss
• Dandelife's Struggles Offer Lessons for Startups (Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:30:15 -0800)
  Two year old life-story repository Dandelife seemed to have everything going for it. It launched to praise from some of the biggest tech blogs on the web, it built a wildly loyal user base and its company advisory board was stocked with some of the biggest names in social media. Apparently that hasn't been enough, though. Last night Dandelife founder Kelly Abbott announced that the software will be made open source this year, acknowledging that the company hasn't grown or made money and that he made some important mistakes from the start. It's an interesting story that other entrepreneurs can learn from and Abbott has done a real service in opening up honestly about what's going on at Dandelife. Sponsor Dandelife's Strengths The basic idea behind Dandelife is that it's a place to record your life story. You can read and comment on other peoples' stories, navigable by time-line, topic or story teller. A lot of people seem to be using the service as a time-line based social bookmarking account for things they find around the web. The site spoke to a universal human need, the need to be heard. Abbott says all that content did well in search engines, too. When the company launched in the summer of 2006, it had a knockout team of advisors including the grand poo-bah of web design Jeffrey Zeldman, Userplane founder Mike Jones (who sold his company to AOL for $30-$40 million the next month), Bruce Livingstone (who had just sold iStockPhoto for $50 million months earlier) and a list of other luminaries. It was a great team. Dandelife won a Webby Award in 2007. It made early moves in favor of data portability, tying to the once-celebrated Attention Trust and later implementing Attention Profile Markup Language (APML), the protocol developed by Data Portability Working Group co-founder Chris Saad. The company got lots of attention. It got written up on Lifehacker, shared on Waxy Links and hit the front page of Delicious Popular. What Went Wrong? What went wrong? Apparently all those great backers didn't give Dandelife very much money. At least that's what's implied by founder Abbott last night when he said the site was terribly engineered because he was unable to afford to hire better developers. What's most important, though, is that Abbott says the site suffered down time and took up all his energy in fixing the back end. He's a marketer by trade, but now admits that he's spent almost no time marketing Dandelife. Feature-creep took over instead, he says. No matter how hard I wanted the site to be successful, and no matter how good the pitch for Dandelife was, I always feared success. Staying small and non-profitable became an excuse for failure to scale. Why won't this site grow? I kept asking myself. But in my heart of hearts, I knew why. I was pouring all of my effort into product development and in particular finding and fixing bugs, that I had no time and no confidence in marketing the site. Now Abbott says he's going to scale back on features, throw far more time into marketing the company and, most importantly, open source the code. "I think the Internet could use a thousand Dandelifes," Abbott wrote last night. He hopes that some of those new versions of the site will pay him to consult on implementation. That could work well. Abbot's initial monetization strategy was to leverage the life stories of users (with their permission) in service of brand advertisers - to act as an advertorial farm-team of sorts. I reviewed the service on TechCrunch when it launched and said I thought that was creepy. The company even tried to trademark the term "lifecasting", and any time spent on that was time wasted, obnoxiously even. It appears now that Dandelife never scaled up enough to be able to pull that branding plan off. Abbot said last night that it's a great site for "people who want to make a difference in the world." Presumably that's a different group than those who want to share stories about drinking Pepsi at a family picnic or looking great in brand name clothes when they went on a memorable first date. People who like Dandelife like it a lot. There is probably a lot of room for long form personal story telling on the web. The lesson Abbott seems to offer, though, is that launching such a company, even with an all-star advisory crew, a lot of press and solid search engine pull, just isn't enough. Prioritizing quality engineering from the start and remembering to do marketing after the launch are at least as important. Discuss
• Buzzwords of Web 2.0: RSS Down, Microblogging Up (Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:15:48 -0800)
  Like every other innovative industry before it, Web 2.0, too, has developed its own language. Our friends over at the Royal Pingdom blog took a close look at the buzzwords around Web 2.0 today and found some interesting trends. Using Google Trends as the basis for their research, Pingdom, for example, concludes that searches for term 'Web 2.0' peaked in 2007 and have been decreasing every since. Some of the main terms of the Web 2.0 world like 'RSS,' or 'cloud computing' have also been on a steady downward trajectory, while 'blogging' is still holding steady. Sponsor On the other hand, terms related to social activities on the net like 'social media,' 'social network,' or 'microblogging' (thanks to Twitter) have seen a steady rise in searches over the last few years. 'Web 3.0,' however, seems to have peaked as a term to describe the next wave of Internet innovation before it even had a chance to happen. For a the full list of Web 2.0 buzzwords, head over to the Royal Pingdom blog. Conclusions? We wouldn't want to draw too many conclusions from this list, as it is based on search terms, and as users get more familiar with these and start bookmarking their favorite sites, they will probably start using search less. Also, as these terms become household names, fewer users will look them up on Google. In some ways then, we might be able to interpret the decline of searches for 'RSS' or 'cloud computing' as a positive thing, as users have replaced searches for these general terms with more specific queries. Discuss
• Microsoft Tag: The CueCat Returns on Your Mobile Phone (Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:54:21 -0800)
  Microsoft today released Microsoft Tag, its own barcode technology for mobile phones. For this, Microsoft developed its own High Capacity Color Barcodes which can store a lot more information than the QRCode or Datamatrix barcodes we have become familiar with. Microsoft is specifically targeting mobile users with these tags and has released scanning applications for most types of mobile phones, including the iPhone (iTunes link), as well as Windows Mobile phones, Blackberries, and Symbian S60 phones. Sponsor Microsoft's promo video describes Tag as 'instant entertainment,' and while that might be true if you have a low threshold for amusement, it is really more of a useful than fun application. Do It Yourself You create your own barcodes on the Tag web site and download them in various formats (PDF, WMV, and XPS). The site also lets you track how often your codes have been scanned, which sets it apart from most other online barcode generators. Tags always need to include a title, but optionally, you can also set start and end dates for campaigns, secure them with passwords, add vCard information, phone numbers, or just plain text. The vCard information might be one of the most useful applications, as you could put the barcode on your business cards, from which your contacts can easily import all your contact information to their phones. Will it Succeed Where the CueCat Failed? Of course, there is no dearth of barcode readers for mobile phones. Some, just like Microsoft Tag, only read the tags and take you to a destination on the web, while others, like Big in Japan's ShopSavvy for Android phones, focus more on providing other services like comparison shopping. Other apps like A few days ago, we wrote about a research project that, once released, would allow you to access information about real-world places by simply aiming your camera at them. While Microsoft's tags are surely not even close to this, the project does have a lot of potential. At the same time, though, we have seen too many similar projects fail to be too optimistic about this one (think CueCat in the late 90s). Now that cell phones with adequate cameras are standard issue, however, things might be different and Microsoft's format does seem to have advantages over QR Code thanks to its ability to store more information, though the real question will be if consumers are actually interested in this technology. Note: For more info about barcodes and cell phones, also see our three-part series about the "Scannable World": The Scannable World: Mobile Phones As Barcode Scanners The Scannable World, Part 2: Scanning Your Web Printouts The Scannable World, Part 3: Barcode Scanning In The Real World CC-licensed image of CueCat courtesy of Flickr user Denn. Discuss
• Mr. Microphone 2.0: Microsoft Songsmith Puts Even the Worst Lyrics to Music (Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:17:28 -0800)
  Like to sing in the shower or in the car? Want to subject others to your incoherent warblings as if they were a real song? Microsoft Songsmith may be for you. And if you're a professional lyricist, musician, or someone with real musical talent? Songsmith may be incredibly helpful for you, too. Sponsor The technology is actually quite impressive. Songsmith takes a cappella vocals - no matter how disjointed - and interprets a musical melody to lay behind them. Meaning? Meaning that with no musical talent whatsoever, you can now compose, record, and share songs with whomever is willing to listen. But what if you actually have talent? Songsmith could be of potential use to you, too. "Songwriters can use Songsmith as an 'intelligent scratchpad' to work with new melodies, quickly turning your scratch recordings of new ideas into richer, deeper explorations. Musicians can also play instruments right into Songsmith, instead of singing." No doubt a great deal of research went into the development of the product, and it probably has some very interesting potential applications. But, I must admit, after watching the promo video, I'm having a hard time clearing my head enough to figure out what those uses might be. Who knows? This might be another one of those Seinfeld things. Scoble has just posted an interview and demo with two researchers from Microsoft - who coincidentally also star in the promo video. They provide additional insight on the product and highlight some of its potential applications. Interested users can download a trial version from Microsoft Research. The product is available for purchase for $29.95 US. Something tells me that the American Idol tryouts just got a lot more interesting. Discuss
• Cramming for Your Next Exam? Try Cramberry (Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:00:49 -0800)
  Just about everyone has been exposed to the concept of flashcards. Whether trying to study for a geography quiz or learning a foreign language, the method of using Q&A cards to train your brain to remember has remained a popular study method. But, the concept hasn't really made the leap to the Web, until now. Introducing Cramberry, the flashcards you know and love, only on the Web. Sponsor Granted, Cramberry is incredibly simple. The cards are fairly rudimentary, but they serve the purpose. Quite frankly, they're better than the scribbled notes on index cards that many of us used. And yet, Cramberry has the potential to be incredibly useful by taking a familiar technique and making it much easier to use. After logging in, you will be prompted to create sets of cards with any information you want to study. Questions on the front, answers on the back. Once the set is ready, you can begin flipping through the cards, testing your knowledge. Then, you can mark whether you got the answer right or wrong. All of this information feeds the algorithm, which serves up the cards in an order that helps you practice the topics that you're missing while keeping you refreshed on the topics you know. But the true value of Cramberry is the fact that the service makes your flashcards accessible wherever you go. Use them while you're sitting at your desk, at the coffee shop, or even on your phone. What if you don't want to build flashcards? Cramberry has just announced that they'll begin releasing a library of public cards in the not too distant future. Once available, you'll be able to choose from any number of topics on which you'd like to learn. Again, a simple service. But sometimes, it's those simple things - like something as simple as saving your bookmarks to the Web - that provide the most value. If you're having trouble remembering some important facts, give Cramberry a try. Discuss
• Report: Apple Dominates the Mobile Web (Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:01:00 -0800)
  The latest data from AdMob, the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace, shows that Apple now dominates the mobile web in the U.S. with a 48% market share. This growth, interestingly enough, does not just come from the iPhone, but the iPod touch also saw a meteoric rise in usage during the last month. Traffic from the iPod touch to AdMob's network in the U.S. increased 3.4 times from November to December. Sponsor Overall, requests from the iPod touch increased from 18 million in July 2008 to 292 million in December. While traffic from the iPod touch grew at a steady clip over the last few month, a good part of this growth came, not unsurprisingly, in the week after Christmas. After the iPhone (10%), the iPod touch (4.7% ) is now the second most popular mobile device on sites that run AdMob's advertising. Overall, iPhone requests grew 86% since November. Just looking at the smartphone market, Apple also continues to solidify its dominance. In America, the iPhone now accounts for 48% of all traffic to Admob's network, which is more than RIM (19%), Palm (9%), and Windows Mobile (15%) combined. It's All About Usability As we pointed out last month, Apple has created a user-experience that makes its users want to use the mobile web on its devices. It is probably safe to assume that most iPod touch users could easily have used their desktops or laptops to access the web instead, but for quickly looking up the news or reading email, the instant-on experience of a phone is often preferable over the more fully featured desktop experience. Discuss
• Semantic Web Wish List 2009 (Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:59:10 -0800)
  At the end of last year we presented our list of the top 10 Semantic Web Apps of 2008. ReadWriteWeb reader Zolt
• Video: History of the Internet (Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:22:56 -0800)
  If you've ever wondered how the Internet was born, but can't be bothered reading a whole book on the subject, check out this short animated documentary from Milah Bilgil. Entitled History of the internet, it does a great job explaining time-sharing, file-sharing, arpanet and internet. The video uses a new type of info-graphic called PICOL icons, which will soon be made available for free on picol.org. PICOL stands for Pictorial Communication Language - it's a project that aims to create "a standard and reduced sign system for electronic communication." PICOL is free to use and open to alter. Sponsor History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo. Discuss
• There is No Money in Phishing (But It Still Won't Go Away) (Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:06:59 -0800)
  Phishing, the highly illegal scam of tricking people into revealing their logins and passwords by creating fake emails, Twitter messages, and/or websites, does not actually make phishers a lot of money. A new paper (PDF) by Cormac Herley and Dinei Florencio from Microsoft Research argues that the basic laws of economics still apply to phishing. As phishing becomes easier, and as 'phishing kits' are being sold for less than $100, the actual income for each individual phisher has to come down. Phishing has become a "low-skill, low-reward business." Sponsor While, as the authors point out, the media has portrayed phishing as an easy (and illegal) way to make money, the reality is that too many phishers have joined the fray and that the income per phisher has been greatly depressed because of this. Phishers typically sell the logins and passwords they have harvested through their scams to other criminals online, who can then easily commit identity theft. Losses from Phishing Have Been Exaggerated The authors also argue that the economic losses from phishing have been greatly overstated. Herley and Florencio argue that the numbers don't 'survive basic sanity checks,' yet are widely quoted. At the same time, these mythical numbers lead more phishers into the business, which then depresses the per person income even more. According to PayPal's chief information security officer Michael Barrett, phishing "is not even in the top five threats" that could cause losses at PayPal. Why Phishing Will Continue The paper, however, also points out that this lack of revenue does not mean the end of phishing. Phishers, the authors argue, are not necessarily making rational economic decisions. Instead, their vision is clouded by by hopes of 'hitting the jackpot' (even when revenue is going down), and a constant barrage of reports of 'easy money' that will lead phishers to believe that revenue will go up again. Also, because phishing is generally considered to be very 'easy,' a constant stream of newcomers will replace the retired phishermen. The authors note that this cycle can only be broken through providing better information about the economic reality of the phishing business to potential phishers. (hat tip to Steve Ragan at the Tech Herald) CC-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user ToastyKen Discuss
• Bit.ly Plug-in Extends Tiny URLs, Shows Clickthrough Numbers (Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:51:47 -0800)
  Our favorite URL shortening service, Bit.ly, has just released a Firefox plug-in that you'll probably want to add to your browser. It lets users hover over shortened URLs from a wide variety of services, including TinyURL, and see the resulting full URL - as well as how many people have clicked through the shortcut. Along with Bit.ly's semantic analysis of destination pages, the data unearthed by this new plug-in holds a lot of promise. The plug-in also does some handy tricks on Twitter. It's not perfect yet, but it holds a lot of promise. Sponsor We profiled Bit.ly when it launched in July and recommended using it for URL shortening because it makes use of all the valuable data that other URL shorteners leave unused. The clickthrough data is great to see, but it's not without some serious shortcomings. Bit.ly queries a long list of URL shortening services' APIs to get traffic data and some of them don't update very frequently. There's also a lot of phantom clicks showing up; the company believes they've found a 3rd party app that's partially loading the destination pages and inflating the numbers, but we'll see if they can do anything about it. For now this data is better for determining the relative popularity of a shortened link than it is for literal numbers. Twitter users will like the extension because hovering over any username there makes the user's information pop-up. That works quite well and is very useful. It's a fast way to see who someone is talking to in a conversation on Twitter. The moral of the story here is that in little things like URL shortening, there's a whole lot of valuable information and room for innovation. We're glad that Bit.ly is moving to take advantage of that and we look forward to seeing what still other people will do with the data once it's stockpiled and made available by Bit.ly for further development. You can get the Bit.ly extension for Firefox here. Discuss
• Opera: One Web Across Multiple Devices (Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:10:38 -0800)
  Opera plans to unveil a new version of its SDK today that will allow Opera's partners to create a more uniform browsing experience across multiple devices and platforms. The new version of the Opera Devices SDK now gives developers access to Opera Link, the company's bookmark synchronization service. Once device manufacturers start integrating this, users will be able to easily access their Opera bookmarks from their mobile phone, desktop, or Wii. Sponsor Opera's Devices SDK allows hardware manufacturers to build browsers for their hardware devices like TVs, media players, cell phones, or gaming consoles. This synchronization feature was already part of Opera's desktop browser, but version 9.7 of the SDK will also give developers the ability to integrate it into their own devices. According to Opera's CEO, Jon von Tetzchner, Opera wants to give operators the ability to create a unified experience across their triple-play offerings and on phones, computers, TVs (or entertainment devices like the Wii). Opera Zoon The new version of the SDK also includes Opera's new hardware-accelerated zooming capability for devices with small screens. While not as elegant or intuitive as Apple's multi-touch gestures, Opera Zoom, which saw its debut on the Nintendo Wii, does work quite well. Syncing Bookmarks as Competitive Advantage Opera already syncs its bookmarks with the online version of Opera Link, but it would be great if Opera also allowed you to sync with other online bookmarking services like Yahoo's delicious. Other devices like the iPhone also allow users to sync bookmarks between the desktop and mobile phones. Now that web browsing is slowly becoming a standard activity on mobile devices, being able to keep bookmarks in sync is clearly starting to become more important. Opera is in a good position to leverage its experience in cross-platform development here, though Mozilla and other browser developers are also working on similar projects. Discuss
• Wibe7.tv: Visually Oriented Search for YouTube (Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:30:07 -0800)
  Searching by terms is great. But some things are just easier to find when you can actually look at them - especially if you tend to be more visually oriented. Book dust jackets, album covers, and product packaging, for example, tend to register with some people far more easily than names. And, then of course, there's video. When you're looking for a video, you're likely looking for that video. So, wouldn't it be great if you could quickly scan thumbnails to find that YouTube video you were seeking? Now, you can with Wibe7.tv. Sponsor Wibe7.tv allows you to perform YouTube searches and return results based on relevance, views, rating, or publish date. Granted, nothing earth-shattering there. Instead, it's the way the results are arranged that makes finding that video you're seeking much easier. It's strikingly similar to PicClick, a visual search of Amazon and eBay we reviewed last year. Rather than present an obtrusive column of thumbnails coupled with large blocks of text - like YouTube's search results - Wibe7.tv discards the text, opting instead for a mosaic of thumbnails - giving you the visual content you were seeking. Suddenly, scanning the screen for your favorite video becomes a great deal easier. Just as important, Wibe7.tv's matrix of thumbnails helps you weed out the inevitable duplicate videos that crowd YouTube. (In fact, I found myself entering a number of search terms just to see how many duplicates existed for popular videos.) Once you find the video you want, clicking on the thumbnail begins playing the full-size video in the lower corner of your browser window. Or, you can always click through to YouTube. While the mosaic is a helpful first pass, I found myself wishing for some mouseover functionality to deliver additional information on the content. Having to play each video to get more information becomes a bit laborious if you don't see what you want right off the bat. Still, the ability to quickly scan for the video - instead of scrolling through multiple pages of YouTube results - made the service a welcome improvement over searching on YouTube for content. To start looking for those YouTube videos you've been seeking, visit Wibe7.tv. Discuss
• Encouraged Commentary: Bringing Natural Conversational Dynamics to Commenting (Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:00:02 -0800)
  Commenting on blogs is - by and large - broken. Designed with the hope of proffering interaction among bloggers and readers, commenting has generally devolved into a series of one-off responses with little actual conversation. Why? It's not designed to facilitate conversations. That's why you see any number of people - Intense Debate and Disqus, most notably - working to provide technology that enhances the conversational dynamic. Now, a new open source project from Jim Jeffers promises to enhance commenting in a way that is both natural and conversational. Meet Encouraged Commentary. Sponsor The new commenting features - built using jQuery - take their inspiration from Ubiquity, allowing users to highlight the sections of text that prompted them to comment and immediately respond. Using that context, Encouraged Commentary begins to string conversations and content together. Encouraged Commentary currently offers three compelling features: First, highlighting any section of a post avails a "respond" button that allows users to immediately comment. Clicking respond grabs the highlighted text and adds it - in blockquote - to the content of the comment, simply and easily referencing the exact passage that the user is discussing. Second, working with comments, themselves, offers additional functionality. Highlighting and clicking respond within a comment automatically establishes the familiar "@user" addressing to make the intended recipient aware of the conversation directed at him/her. The highlighted text, again, is brought into the comment for reference. Third, the connections among comments are tracked. Mousing over any commenter's name reveals a list of his or her other comments in the thread. Clicking on list items allows users to "jump between related comments and responses quickly" - something that threaded conversations have been working to capture. Reply and Quote buttons allow the user to jump into the conversation without highlighting. Granted, the young project is not without its rough spots. Users are reporting issues with IE (shocking, I realize). And some of the implementation of the concepts could use refinement. No doubt that will come as more people engage in the project. But those issues are easily overlooked. Because what is most compelling about this approach is the natural conversational dynamic that Jeffers has captured. You do what seems natural: highlight and respond. And you do so with context. That dynamic provides both Encouraged Commentary with content and the "hooks" to track the history of the conversation without adversely impacting the user. What's more, it provides a series of reference points that encourages new users to enter the discussion - and to do so just as easily as the conversation began. If we see widespread adoption of this sort of thinking, it's quite possible that we may see the conversation returning to comments. To see Encouraged Commentary in action or to try it yourself, visit Don't Trust This Guy, Jeffers' blog. To download the source code, visit the Encouraged Commentary project on GitHub. Discuss