Open Culture

Final Post on Open Culture

2007-04-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

This is my final post on the Open Culture blog.

Don't panic. I am simply moving to a new location. Please update your links and RSS feeds.

I finally made the leap off of Blogger and onto WordPress with the launch of my new Fast Wonder blog. Fast Wonder is an evolution of this blog originally started in November 2005, so this is more of a re-branding than a change in direction. Like the Open Culture blog, Fast Wonder is focused on open technologies, open source, web 2.0, social media, online communities, and innovation. I was even able to import all of the original Open Culture posts (with comments)!

A number of other “Open Culture” blogs gradually appeared over the years, and the time came to come up with a more original name and a real logo for this blog. A big thank you to Stephen Way for designing the Fast Wonder logo.

Remember to sign up for BarCamp, a free tech event in Portland!

2007-04-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to sign up for BarCamp, a free tech event right here in Portland on May 11-12! We will also be kicking off the regular DemoCamp event series during BarCamp to highlight tech startup activity in the Portland area. Sign up now, and tell all of your friends!

How can you help promote BarCamp Portland?

email your friends (you may find the text below helpful)
add a button to your blog
hand out some flyers at local events

More information about the event:

Tech + Geek + Culture. The event for the Portland tech community, produced BY the Portland tech community.

What is BarCamp? It is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.

BarCamp is a FREE event and the content is determined by the attendees. The event will be hosted at CubeSpace, which has a number of conference rooms for breakout sessions, a large main meeting area, wireless access, easy access to public transportation, bike storage, and ample parking.

We need your help to make BarCamp Portland a fantastic event for the tech community in Portland. Here's what you can do...

1) Forward this email on to people in the Portland area that may have an interest in attending. As we have done little marketing of the event (so far), assume that your local tech social network doesn't know about it yet.

2) If you have not already added yourself to the BarCamp Portland wiki page as an attendee, please do so. This will help us get a more accurate attendance count and plan accordingly (you want food, right?):

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortland

3) Add a session idea for the event. This could be a talk, a demo, a roundtable discussion - whatever! Please add it to the Proposed Sessions section on the wiki page:

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortland

4) Attend the BarCamp Portland Meetup this Thursday (04/26/07) evening 5:30-8pm at Jive Software downtown and have the opportunity to network with the tech community in Portland, and help plan for BarCamp Portland. More details:

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortlandMeetups

I hope to see you at BarCamp Portland on May 11 & 12 at CubeSpace for a fun tech event!

Thanks to our sponsors (below) for making this event possible!
Monthly BarCampPortland Meetup Location and Beer: Jive Software
Facilities: CubeSpace
Facilities (Added Costs): AboutUs, Virtuous
Materials: Lumeno.us
Badges: JanRain
T-Shirts: Portland Development Commission
Logo Design: Lov.li
Podcasting coverage of the event: SplashCast
Friday Dinner: SPONSOR NEEDED
Friday Night Reception: SPONSOR NEEDED
Saturday Breakfast: Iovation
Saturday Lunch: ISITE Design
Saturday Dinner: Microsoft
Saturday Night Reception: SPONSOR NEEDED
Saturday Afternoon Tea (Bubble Tea): Portland Perl Mongers

Job Change: Joining Jive Software

2007-04-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

I am excited to announce that I will be joining Jive Software as their Director of Developer Relations as of May 3. I have really enjoyed my time at Compiere. I still believe that they have a great product and that they will do some really cool things in the ERP/CRM space. My reasons for leaving were purely cultural / logistical. While working remotely from my office in Portland worked really well when when the company was smaller and more distributed, as Compiere grew in size it became more and more difficult to do my job from Portland. The rest of the management team is now consolidated in Santa Clara, and I am the only member of the management team working remotely.

When working at Intel, location was largely irrelevant. At one point, I managed a team with members distributed across Oregon, Washington, and California. I also worked on a 3 person open source strategy team for a while with two of us in Oregon, one in Washington, and our manager located in Arizona. Working from home was also a weekly activity for me during much of my Intel career. I found that my productivity increased dramatically if I saved those tasks that required more concentration (strategy development, writing, presentation development) for my working at home day. Working remotely can be challenging, but it seems to work best in a corporate culture where remote workers are a common occurrence and not an exception.

I knew that I would eventually need to move on to a new gig based on the increasing number of issues related to working remotely within the Compiere culture, but I had not yet started looking for a new job. I regularly get email from people, either a result of this blog or from acquaintances in the industry, asking me if I am available or asking if I know of someone for a particular position. It was only because I got an email from Sam Lawrence at Jive software about looking for someone to manage Jive's developer relations that I considered leaving Compiere. Jive has been a great sponsor of our monthly Portland BarCamp Meetups, and I have met quite a few of the people working there through various local technology-related activities.

I think that Jive will be a great fit for me, and I am really excited about working at Jive Software. Jive's product line fits with my personal interests in online collaboration technology. They have managed to seamlessly integrate file collaboration, blogs, wikis, IM, and more into a recently launched enterprise 2.0 product called Clearspace. As Director of Developer Relations, I will be responsible for building a developer community program for developers with an initial focus on the new Clearspace product.

Jive is a cool company with great products. I am honored to be joining such a fantastic company!

Zillow Faces Potential Legal Issues in Arizona

2007-04-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

Zillow, a great web 2.0 tool for real estate, has been sent a cease and desist in Arizona. I used Zillow as a way to get a feel for what my existing home was worth during the sales process and to understand the potential value of the home that I was purchasing. Zillow pulls its data from public records and aggregates them together into a really nice interface based on Google Maps.

A few more details:

The Arizona Board of Appraisal issued two cease-and-desist letters to the company that operates the popular real estate Web site Zillow, saying it needs an appraiser license to offer its "zestimates" in Arizona.

"It is the board's feeling that (Zillow) is providing an appraisal," Deborah Pearson, the board's executive director, said Friday.

Zillow warns users the estimates it provides are not a definitive value but a starting point for consumers. Launched in February, 2006, the company claims it has 4 million users a month, including people wanting to how much their homes - or their neighbors' homes - are worth.

...

Zillow issued a statement Saturday saying it disagreed with the board's view, and pointed to an opinion issued by a national appraisers standards group that said online estimates aren't formal appraisals.

"We strongly believe that providing Zestimates in Arizona is completely legal and in fact an important public service, given that Zestimates are the result of our 'automated valuation model' and are not a formal appraisal," co-founder and company President Lloyd Frink said in the statement. (Quotes from The Columbian)

I seriously doubt that this would hold up in court; however, a small web 2.0 start up might not be able to weather the cost and resource drain of a court battle. I hope that they are able to come to some resolution. It would be a shame to lose such a helpful tool.

Stuart Cohen Announces New Collaborative Software Initiative

2007-04-16T18:25:00.000-07:00

Stuart Cohen, formally CEO of OSDL who left during the merger with FSG, has started his own for-profit company focused on applications built on an open stack using open source methodologies. Cohen wanted OSDL to focus on more than just Linux, including open source applications, but the OSDL and FSG were really focused on Linux. Forming the Collaborative Software Initiative was a way for Cohen to lead a company focused on open source applications. This initiative is funded by OVP Venture Partners and has a strong advisory council including industry luminaries like Brian Behlendorf, Dan Frye, and Eben Moglen. They are also partnered with IBM, HP, and Novell.

According to eWeek, the company will

“focus on building non-competitive, essential software for vertical industries in a collaborative environment that helps companies solve shared IT problems. The business model for Collaborative Software Initiative is simple: Develop and support essential code that does not exist today and that meets the needs of competitors in vertical industries, such as financial services, at a significantly lower cost than if the companies were to develop such code internally or outsource it—and then support it.”(Quote from eWeek)

This is an interesting model, but the details are still unclear:

“CSI is taking a cue from open source methodology, but it's not a "pure open source play," says Cohen. Right now, CSI doesn't have any specific licenses in mind to offer software under, though Cohen does say that they plan to open source the projects when they are mature, and indicated that they would prefer Open Source Initiative-approved licenses.” (Quote from Linux.com)

It will be interesting to see how well this works. Companies may not need a company like the Collaborative Software Initiative to help facilitate collaboration across industries. I also think that it will be difficult to provide support for a diverse range of vertical industry solutions, so I am skeptical about how well this will scale. I will also be curious to see whether communities will form around these efforts that are similar to the communities for other open source applications.

Despite my skepticism about the details and implementation, I really like the focus on open source applications. I do think that over time more applications will be built using open source methodologies building on the years of success that open source operating systems, infrastructure and tools have garnered. I hope that this initiative will lead to more successful open source applications.

Camps and Conferences – Synergy or Animosity?

2007-04-14T17:55:00.000-07:00

I was talking to Scott Kirsner yesterday about BarCamp Portland and other unconferences. He is writing an article for BusinessWeek on unconferences, and some of his questions got me thinking about the similarities and differences between camps/unconferences and traditional conferences. Are these two ideas synergistic or is there animosity between traditional conferences and unconferences? I think that answer is both.

Are traditional conferences worried about unconferences taking business away from traditional conferences? Maybe. Unconferences are usually free and are often local. The unconference is an adhoc gathering shaped by those who attend with the sessions and agenda being driven by the participants. The framework is defined in advance, but the sessions are organized and produced by the attendees. In other words, instead of a full agenda with sessions and speakers clearly determined in advance, you start with a blank grid containing times on one axis and rooms / locations on the other axis; lunches and any other common activities are often added to the grid in advance to provide some basic infrastructure for the event. You never what discussions, demos, and other interactions to expect before the event, but you can count on it being an interesting time!

Unconferences and traditional conferences may even attract slightly different types of people. Some people really like the traditional conference structure. They can plan out exactly which sessions to attend way in advance, and easily justify the cost of attending by making a business case to the boss for what will be learned from the conferences which appeals to many traditional companies. I know this because I used to be one of these people. I viewed conferences as a time to passively soak up knowledge from the “experts” while completely missing the value associated with networking and learning from the other participants. Traditional conferences also have the appeal of drawing in speakers who may not attend your unconference. For example, it is unlikely that Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt will show up at the Portland BarCamp; however, I could see both of them speak at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco next week.

Unconferences on the other hand may tend to attract people who enjoy shaping their environment and who may value networking and conversation more than presentation. You become a participant, instead of just an attendee. Sessions are proposed, refined, and often combined as the event progresses and conversations evolve. I also find more networking opportunities at unconferences, since many sessions are discussion based rather than a single person giving a presentation.

It seems like fewer people are attending traditional conferences and some of the large technology conferences have been canceled over the past few years (COMDEX). It used to be that we went to conferences to learn about upcoming technologies in an age before every company had a website and before we had thousands of blogs and podcasts providing information on any topic possible. Now, with more information available online, conferences have to provide compelling reasons to attend – amazing content, networking opportunities, and more.

Will traditional conferences suffer in this new environment? Some will, but it depends on how they react to it. Conferences that embrace the unconference format in some way are probably more likely to succeed.

O'Reilly, as usual, is handling the situation with style by being generous with their conference space and encouraging people to hold unconferences along side their traditional conference program. The most recent example is the Community Roundtable happening alongside the Web 2.0 Expo. O'Reilly also holds their own unconference, FooCamp, every summer. Companies like O'Reilly “get it”. O'Reilly knows that synergy and cooperation will be more beneficial than animosity. More conference organizers could learn from this example.

BarCamp Portland May 11-12

2007-04-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

BarCamp Portland, May 11-12, 2007

Tech + Geek + Culture. The event for the Portland tech community, produced BY the Portland tech community.

What is BarCamp? It is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment, with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.

BarCamp is a FREE event and the content is determined by the attendees. The event will be hosted at CubeSpace, which has a number of conference rooms for breakout sessions, a large main meeting area, wireless access, easy access to public transportation, bike storage, and ample parking.

If you are interested in learning more about the event, please visit the BarCamp Portland web site. Please add your name to the wiki if you are interested in attending, and tell your techie friends!

Operating System Convergence and the Palm Linux Announcement

2007-04-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Details are still a bit light, but Palm announced that they would be building a mobile computing platform based on Linux and open source.

The platform is described as a "new foundation for Palm." ... The Analyst presentation concluded without any technical or developer details revealed about the new Linux based platform. Many questions remain to be answered as to what the official name will be, what Linux technologies are included, how Palm OS Garnet compatibility will be handled and what the development environment will be composed of. Colligan ended the Q&A session stating that the Linux based platform will be a integral "core technology" for Palm for the foreseeable future. (Quote from Ryan Kairer on Palm Infocenter)

I suspect that this is actually part of a larger trend toward operating system convergence with Linux at the center of this trend as the primary open source operating system. Companies building set top boxes, mobile products, and other devices realize that there is not much value in maintaining an entire operating system when the value is higher up the stack. By using the Linux kernel and other Linux operating system components, companies like Palm can focus on the software above the kernel that adds real value to the product. We'll know more when they release the details, but my guess is that they will eventually replace low level PalmOS components with the Linux kernel and other parts of the operating system while focusing more on developing the user facing software.

Is DRM Uncivilized?

2007-04-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

Wireless Power Moves from Science Fiction to Reality

2007-03-31T07:25:00.000-07:00

It sounds like something out of Star Trek. Power broadcast through thin air to charge electronic devices like computer peripherals, MP3 players, cell phones, medical devices, and more. Darren Murph at Engadget sums up the idea pretty well, “energy without wires has always seemed like one of those novel concepts that sounds terrific in theory, but remains a tad difficult to imagine hitting the commercial scene for some time to come. Apparently, all that is about to become nonsense, as a Pennsylvania-based startup is set to capture the wireless-loving hearts of, um, everyone when it tackles contactless power products.”

An article in Business 2.0 Magazine has a few more details about the company and their upcoming products:

A startup called Powercast, along with the more than 100 companies that have inked agreements with it, is about to start finding out. Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are set to launch their first device powered by electricity broadcast through the air.

It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device's battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

Picture your cell phone charging up the second you sit down at your desk, and you start to get a sense of the opportunity. How big can it get? "The sky's the limit," says John Shearer, Powercast's founder and CEO. He estimates shipping "many millions of units" by the end of 2008. (Quote from Business 2.0)

The technology is not quite ready to charge large consumer devices like laptops, which currently require more power than what can be effectively generated by this technology; however, as manufactures continue to develop laptops with increasingly lower power consumption, this might become feasible in a few years.

Personally, I am pretty excited about this. I tend to charge my electronic devices in the living room, and I am constantly tripping over cell phone chargers, laptop cords, iPod connectors, etc. Being able to plug a charger into an out of the way location to charge a cell phone sitting on a table without any wires is really cool!

GPL v3: Yet Another Draft

2007-03-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

The FSF has released yet another draft of the GPL v3 today. Needless to say, people are getting pretty frustrated by the lack of progress and difficulty in completing this update to the GPL. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols on Linux-Watch considers how much longer it could possibly take: “Mid-2007? At least. Late 2007? Quite likely. 2008? Could be. 2010!? I wouldn't be surprised. I've got a bad feeling about this.”

Allison Randal at O'Reilly is pretty skeptical, and I have to admit that I have heard similar skepticism from others, including many who have been strong supporters of the FSF for years:

“I will say this much: I'm a believer in free software, and in the importance of free software in advancing the freedoms of individuals. But I'm beginning to lose confidence in the FSF as the primary defender of free software principles. The image they're projecting right now is more of an ineffectual nanny slapping the wrists of naughty children than it is of the bold community leader confidently striding on to the visionary future of the free software movement. It's unfortunate. Maybe we'll see change in this draft and the next. Maybe. (Quote from Allison Randal on the O'Reilly Radar)

At one point, I was following the changes and keeping up with the progress toward GPL v3, but I have to admit that toward the end of last year I gave up. I'll read the final version if they ever manage to complete it.

Are You a Twitter Ninja?

2007-03-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

News: Online or Print Format?

2007-03-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

InfoWorld announced today that it is folding the print magazine to focus on events and online content. I think this is a good move for InfoWorld, and it made me think about how I personally use online and print content.

I still subscribe to several magazines, and it is a great format for anything that is not time sensitive – cooking, business analysis, etc.; however, I gave up my print copies of technology trade magazines and other news sources long ago in favor of online access facilitated by RSS feeds (official news sources, blogs, and podcasts). Technology moves way too quickly to be suited to longer lead time print format publications. Even articles in daily newspapers are usually out of date by the time the print version arrives on your doorstep.

Most of my daily news comes from podcasts, which I listen to during any downtime activities (getting ready for work in the morning, doing dishes / laundry, grocery shopping, driving, and much more). Podcasts are an ideal news format for me, since I can get quick snippets of news from NPR, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNET, InfoWorld, ... If I need more details on any story, I can always check my RSS feeds or Google News to find a few in depth articles with more information.

Over time, I think that we will start to see news moving away from print sources in the direction of online content. Like with the InfoWorld example, this will happen first for technology publications. Although most newspapers have embraced online content, Newspapers will be one of the last to move their news to an online-only format. They are still the best source of news in rural areas and other places where access to the Internet is more difficult and for older readers who may never be comfortable using the Internet as a primary source of news. I could even see newspapers gradually shifting more of the news content onto the Internet while focusing the print version on news analysis, lifestyle (fashion, cooking, travel, etc.) and other features (comics, crossword puzzles, etc.) I still think that magazines have their place, but not as a primary source of news.

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) at the BarCamp Portland Meetup

2007-03-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to get to play with a real OLPC last night at the BarCamp Portland Meetup. I was surprised by how durable it looked. The keyboard looked like you could dump an entire drink on it without any adverse consequences; however, we refrained from testing it!

A few people commented that these would be great for kids ... regardless of whether they are located in an emerging economy. In places like the US, Europe and other areas, we might be willing to pay a little more to have a durable laptop for the under 8 years old crowd. This might help subsidize the costs and make it easier to provide an OLPC to more children around the world. In addition to providing a stable revenue stream among customers willing to pay a little more knowing that profits were going to a good cause, opening these up for sale to others would increase the volume enough to help reduce the production costs. I've heard that they are having a hard time making these for less than $100, and additional volume might help.

Thanks again to Alex for bringing it and generously letting us play with his toys!

Web 2.0: What CIOs Want vs. What CIOs Have

2007-03-21T20:23:00.000-07:00

I was just reading Richard MacManus’ coverage of Forrester’s recent reports about web 2.0 in the enterprise:

“Forrester Research has just released two reports concerning 'web 2.0' in the enterprise. Forrester recently surveyed 119 CIOs on the topic and their answers illustrate what IT honchos want – and don't want – from social software technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, social networking, and content tagging.

According to the report entitled 'CIOs Want Suites For Web 2.0', the enterprise Web 2.0 market "is beginning to consolidate". Apparently CIOs have a strong desire to purchase web 2.0 products "as a suite, as well as an equally strong desire to purchase these technologies from large, incumbent software vendors." 61% of respondents indicated that they would prefer both a suite solution and a large, incumbent vendor. According to the report, "integration issues, longevity concerns, and the occasional lack of polish" are counting against small vendors.” (Quote from Richard MacManus on Read/WriteWeb)

The data is interesting, but I am not sure that Forrester was asking the right questions or the right people. My experience with web 2.0, and other innovative technologies (open source, etc.) is that there is a big gap between what many CIOs want / think they have and what is really happening within their organization. Those of us who are passionate about web 2.0 technologies just tend to use them. This often means that we bring things like IM, wikis, and more into our corporate life as productivity tools regardless of whether or not the technology is officially sanctioned. For example, Intelpedia, an internal Intel wiki, was started as a grass roots effort on a test server without “official” buy in because Josh Bancroft and other Intel employees thought that Intel needed an internal wiki to help manage information. A better study might have been to ask people a few levels below the CIO about the web 2.0 technologies currently being used in their organization.

CIOs may want web 2.0 suites from larger, incumbent software providers, but I suspect that the reality of what is actually used within enterprises over the next few years will differ significantly from this CIO vision.

Web2.Open

2007-03-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

A few people are organizing a BarCamp style event dubbed Web2.Open to coincide with the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on April 17^th and 18^th.

“This open event blends some pre-scheduled content with an open grid where the attendees fill in the sessions they either want to discuss or present themselves. It is the perfect space to provide the community at large with a place to connect with other attendees, learn more about elements of Web 2.0, and share one’s knowledge and experiences.” (Quote From the Web2.Open Site).

I found this thanks to Tara's Twitter feed.

I haven't decided if I'm going to attend or not. It's pretty hard for me to justify a purely web 2.0 conference with my open source job, unless I get invited to speak on an open source or community panel (hint, hint).

Save the date! BarCamp Portland Tech Unconference, May 11-12

2007-03-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that BarCamp is coming to Portland on May 11-12! We will also be kicking off the regular DemoCamp event series during BarCamp to highlight tech startup activity in the Portland area.

Tech + Geek + Culture. The event for the Portland tech community, produced BY the Portland tech community.

What is BarCamp? It is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.

BarCamp is a FREE event and the content is determined by the attendees. The event will be hosted at CubeSpace, which has a number of conference rooms for breakout sessions, a large main meeting area, wireless access, easy access to public transportation, bike storage, and ample parking. Thanks to Eva and David at CubeSpace for signing up as space sponsors for the event (and to Ray at AboutUs for sponsoring the additional space costs).

We need your help to make BarCamp Portland a fantastic event for the tech community in Portland. Here's what you can do...

1) Forward this information on to people in the Portland area that may have an interest in attending. As we have done little marketing of the event (so far), assume that your local tech social network doesn't know about it yet.

2) If you have not already added yourself to the BarCamp Portland wiki page as an attendee, please do so. This will help us get a more accurate attendance count and plan accordingly (you want food, right?):

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortland

3) Add a session idea for the event. This could be a talk, a demo, a roundtable discussions - whatever! Please add it to the Proposed Sessions section on the wiki page:

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortland

4) Attend the BarCamp Portland Meetup this Thursday (03/22) evening 5:30-8pm at Jive Software downtown. Free beer on tap (thanks, Jive!), the opportunity to network with the tech community in Portland, and help plan for BarCamp Portland. More details:

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortlandMeetups

5) Help identify sponsors. CubeSpace and AboutUs are already onboard as sponsors for the space and related costs (and Jive Software has been our ongoing meetup and planning sponsor). We are looking for sponsors to cover food, drinks, and t-shirts.

I hope to see you this Thursday evening at Jive Software for our monthly tech meetup and BarCamp Portland planning meeting!

Informal Portland BarCamp Meetup March 22

2007-03-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

Our next informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled! We have also settled on the fourth Thursday of every month as a regular date for the event. Any local techies are welcome to attend.

When: Thursday, March 22nd
Time: 5:30pm - 8:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max / Bus (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

The meetup will be very informal and similar in format to previous meetings. We'll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Subscribe to BarCampPortland

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events and posted the event to Upcoming.org.

We are also trying to gain support for a real BarCamp event in Portland. We will start the planning process when we get enough people signed up on the Wiki, so please add yourself to the wiki if you want to attend a Portland BarCamp event!

She's Such a Geek

2007-03-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

I highly recommend reading “She's Such a Geek” edited by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders. Annalee and I were on a panel at sxsw, and I picked up a copy of the book during her book signing at the event. The book contains a series of essays written by various woman geeks of all types (science geeks, computer geeks, gaming geeks, and more). Even though I was already reading another book, I decided to read one of the essays while I was waiting for my plane home from Austin. I kept reading until I finished the ENTIRE book (granted, I had several delays making the trip from Austin to Portland a little longer than normal, but I could not put the damn book down!)

I do not typically read books “for women” or “about women”. Why? I am not entirely sure. Maybe it is my way of rebelling against stereotypical gender expectations. As a child, I was a tomboy more comfortable playing with snakes, salamanders, and frogs than with Barbie Dolls. Today I work in technology, blog for fun, and watch BSG religiously. Maybe I try so hard to resist gender stereotypes that I go too far in the other direction avoiding anything that looks feminine. This may just inspire me to write my own geeky girl essay.

I agree with Katie Hafner, Technology Writer for The New York Times, quoted on the back of the book: “These personal essays are exhilirating, hilarious, inspiring, and infuriating. Anyone with a daughter should read this book. Then make sure she applies to M.I.T.”

Open vs. Controlled Knowledge at sxsw

2007-03-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

I attended the Open Knowledge vs. Controlled Knowledge panel this morning, and Gil Penchina, CEO of Wikia, made a really good point. Robert Capps from Wired had just been talking about how vandalism has been a big issue for Wired whenever they open something up for community contribution. Gil's point is that if things have been tightly controlled and are suddenly opened up as a free-for-all, you can end up with what he called “principal for a day” mentality where the community wants to change everything and really mess with the people who have been in control for so long. At Wikia, since it has been completely open from the beginning, they have seen less vandalism. The Wikia community feels ownership for the content: they watch the content, monitor changes, and make immediate corrections when things go wrong because they have a vested interest and feel ownership for the content.

Gil also pointed out that not everything should be transparent. At Wikia, the content is open, but the bathrooms still have doors and walls – there are some things that people want to see and other things they do not need or want to see.

From my perspective, this balance is important. Too far in either direction (open or closed) can create problems within the community, and a drastic shift in the balance between open / closed can also result in issues. Achieving and maintaining this balance within a community can be a difficult and tricky process, but it seems to be better to err on the side of open rather than closed.

About Our sxsx Panel, “Open Source: Tell me Why I Care”

2007-03-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

This morning, I was lucky enough to be on the “Non-Developers to Open Source Acolytes: Tell Me Why I Care” panel with Annalee Newitz, Erica Rios, and Elisa Camahort organized by BlogHer. We had quite a few people attending, and some great questions and lively participation from the audience; one comment from Erica even drove the audience into spontaneous applause!

I love doing panel sessions, and this one was a lot of fun. Liz Henry was even kind enough to post a great play by play, live-blogging style post for the session, so I will skip the detailed summary here and point you to Liz's detailed notes.

Kimberly Blessing even called this the “Best SXSW Panel Ever” ... cool!

Update 3/14: A few additional reviews of the panel at InformationWeek, Techory.com, BlogHer, On Women and Technology, and probably others I missed.

Picture is also courtesy of Liz Henry - thanks, Liz!

BarCamp Austin near sxsw

2007-03-10T15:12:00.000-08:00

BarCamp Austin is running in parallel with sxsw today, so I have been spending the afternoon here at BarCamp. The side conversations with really cool people are one of the biggest benefits of a BarCamp. I found another person to help organize BarCamp Portland (Thanks Alex!), talked to Chris Messina and Tara Hunt about coming to kick off BarCamp Portland, hung out with Scott Kveton (is it a bad thing that we both have to travel from PDX to some other city to chat?), and discussions with many other cool people.

Chris and Tara also held a meetup to talk about co-working. We hope to get something like this started in Portland, so it was really interesting to hear about what has / has not worked for them. A few dos / don'ts: don't hold it in a space where someone lives; do use word of mouth rather than marketing to attract interesting and like-minded people; do have good insurance. I should have taken better notes in this session, but it was just too interesting to open the computer.

They are also doing print on demand T-Shirts, which we should think about for Portland. Pick a size, pick a color, pick a design, give them a little $$, and viola! you have a T-Shirt (they even had small T-shirts!) If you know anyone in Portland who can bring a mobile, on demand printing unit, please drop me an email (geekygirldawn at the gmail).

Thoughts on Anonymity and Identity in Communities from SXSW

2007-03-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

I just listened to an interesting panel at sxsw on World Domination via Collaboration. One of the many great conversations during this discussion related to anonymity in communities. One panelist allows anonymous comments on her blog because she wants to know what people really think, even if she don't like it or agree with it. Another panelist mentioned Slashdot's use of anonymous coward, which highlights the fact that people value comments more from people who share a name and identity. I also allow anonymous comments on my blog (with captcha and other spam filters). Some trolls hide behind anonymity to say nasty things, but I have been lucky so far to only have a few of those comments. I find that the vast majority of people commenting will chose to share a name or other identity, but I am not comfortable forcing it on people. I prefer to have people share an identity because they want to, not because it is required in order to leave a comment. Like many people, I value the comments from people who associate their comments with an identity over those who choose to remain anonymous.

The panel members talked about how people in a community can be anonymous from the standpoint of not sharing a real name / real identity, but having a log in and identity on the site. This is a better solution from a community perspective where people tend to interact together over a longer period of time. Community members get to know each other based on the site identity. I have noticed this recently with my interactions on Jyte. Some people share a real name, others share some other identity, but you get to know these people based on this identity whether it is an “anonymous” identity or a “real world” identity. Jyte uses OpenID, which is a great way to facilitate identity management within a community, since it gives people control over their identities and allows them to use their identity (or multiple identities) across sites.

I am looking forward to more really great sessions at sxsw this weekend!

OpenID Gains Additional Traction with WordPress.com

2007-03-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

I have become a big proponent of OpenID lately. I think it is a great solution to the growing problem of managing your online identity and login across many sites.

Today, WordPress.com announced that they would begin supporting OpenID:

“OpenID is a new standard that hopes to alleviate some of the pain, and we’ve just made it available to everyone who has a WordPress.com blog. This means you can sign in to a growing number of sites using your existing WordPress.com account.” (Quote from WordPress.com)

This is great news, but so far, it looks like a one way deal. You can use WordPress.com OpenID credentials to log into other sites, but you cannot use other OpenID providers to post to WordPress.com:

“Unfortunately, you cannot login to WordPress (at least from what I can tell) with an external OpenID. This means that WordPress.com is just a provider of OpenID’s and not a consumer of OpenID’s. So I can’t use my MyOpenID or my LiveJournal OpenID post comments on WordPress.com blogs. Hopefully support for that will be coming soon.” (Quote from Scott Kveton, CEO of JanRain)

I suspect that WordPress.com is testing the waters by becoming an OpenID to provider as a first step. If it is successful, I would not be surprised if they decided to accept OpenID's to login and post to WordPress.com.

Come visit me at sxsw!

2007-02-27T11:49:00.000-08:00

I will be speaking on an open source panel at south by southwest (sxsw) on Sunday, March 11 at 11:30 am. It would be great to see some friendly faces in the audience, so please stop by!

For any of my techie friends planning to attend sxsw, drop me an email. I'll be arriving on Friday evening and leaving mid-day on Tuesday.

Twitter

2007-02-24T20:33:00.000-08:00

I'm probably the last person in the world to join Twitter. Raven Zachary is the one responsible for finally convincing me to join. If I know you in real life, feel free to add me as a friend.

Portland BarCamp Informal Tech Meetup scheduled for Feb 22.

2007-02-14T20:27:00.000-08:00

Our next informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled! We have also settled on the fourth Thursday of every month as a regular date for the event. Any local techies are welcome to attend.

When: Thursday, February 22nd
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

The meetup will be very informal and similar in format to previous meetings. We'll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Subscribe to BarCampPortland

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events and posted the event to Upcoming.org.

Jyte - Claims, Votes, and Cred

2007-02-04T20:28:00.000-08:00

I have been playing around with Jyte, a recently released JanRain product, this weekend. It is a way to manage your identity via claims and cred:

Jyte is a place to make claims about yourself, others, or just about anything. It’s a place for web surfers to see what you are up to and what you’re thinking. It’s a place to learn more about friends, and for others to learn about you through your claims, votes, and cred. It’s a place to build out your social network and share it with other sites. It’s a place to use your shiny new OpenID, and a place for people who see your OpenID around the web to discover your world. (Quote from the Jyte Blog)

You should check it out, but as a warning ... it is highly addictive.

Super Bowl and RecentChangesCamp Weekend

2007-02-01T19:46:00.000-08:00

If you are nostalgic for the dot com Super Bowl ads circa 2000, you might want to check out the SuperDotComAds from Meebo, Technorati, and others on YouTube.

Where will I be this weekend instead of watching the Super Bowl? With all of the other geeks at RecentChangesCamp, of course! I just Tivo the game to watch the commercials anyway.

RecentChangesCamp is free, and it runs from Friday morning through Sunday afternoon in Portland. If you are in the area, you should check it out. Proposed topics include wikis, collaboration, identity / OpenID, and more!

Microsoft Tries to Doctor Wikipedia

2007-01-24T05:46:00.000-08:00

The short history of this story is this: Microsoft does not like the Wikipedia entry on Open XML. Since Wikipedia logs changes with information that can identify the source of the change, Microsoft decides that it would be a better idea to pay someone else to make their changes. Classy.

Doug Mahugh, a technical expert for the Microsoft format, Office Open XML, has identified himself as the Microsoft employee who contacted Jelliffe requesting his services.

In a comment posted on the popular Slashdot technology website, Mahugh published what he said was an excerpt from an email to Jelliffe, detailing “what I asked Rick to do”.

“Wikipedia has an entry on Open XML that has a lot of slanted language, and we'd like for them to make it more objective but we feel that it would be best if a non-Microsoft person were the source of any corrections,” reads the email Mahugh apparently wrote to Jelliffe.

“Would you have any interest or availability to do some of this kind of work? Your reputation as a leading voice in the XML community would carry a lot of credibility, so your name came up in a discussion of the Wikipedia situation today."

Wales said the proper course would have been for Microsoft to write or commission a "white paper'' on the subject with its interpretation of the facts, post it to an outside website and then link to it in the Wikipedia articles' discussion forums.

"It seems like a much better, transparent, straightforward way,'' Wales said. (Quotes from The Age)

Maybe this post is a wee bit snarky, but this is what happens when I blog from the airport prior to 6am without enough green tea :-)

Portland BarCamp Meetup on January 25

2007-01-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

Our next informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled! We have also settled on the fourth Thursday of every month as a regular date for the event. Any local techies are welcome to attend.

When: Thursday, January 25th
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

The meetup will be very informal and similar in format to previous meetings. We'll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Subscribe to BarCampPortland

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events and posted the event to Upcoming.org.

Open Source as a Marketing Strategy and a Compiere Blog

2007-01-19T13:50:00.000-08:00

Lately, I have been thinking about the different ways that an open source business model can benefit the companies that base their businesses on an open source product. Although there are many benefits, one of these benefits is that open source can be used as a marketing strategy. I blogged about this idea in some detail on the new Compiere Blog, and here is an excerpt:

Since Compiere is freely available for download, anyone can install the software, try it, and see if they want to use it in their environment. Many of these people will never generate any revenue for Compiere, but maybe they tell a few other people about Compiere, and maybe those people tell a few more people ... This viral marketing helps to promote and market open source products with little involvement from companies like Compiere. Having an open source business model can generate a level of awareness that might otherwise cost a substantial amount of money to achieve through trade shows, advertising, etc.

Using open source as a marketing strategy requires a shift in thinking for anyone coming from a proprietary background. As open source companies, we need to encourage people to download our software for free – the more, the better! It does not matter to me that someone gets our software for free without paying Compiere a dime. Yes, they are benefiting from our hard work without giving anything in return, but all I need is for them to tell someone who will eventually want to attend training or purchase some type of support or other services from Compiere.

Open source companies also need to be a bit careful not to be too heavy handed with pushing people into revenue generation. We cannot (and do not want to) force people into purchasing support agreements or other services, because this would severely limit our ability to benefit from open source as a marketing strategy. Instead, we need to provide compelling services (support and others) that benefit our customers. Those customers who need and want our help will pay for it. (Quote from the Compiere Blog)

World (Portland) Explorer Tag Maps Courtesy of Flickr Data

2007-01-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

I read about the new World Explorer from Yahoo today on O'Reilly Radar, and I decided to take a quick look at the map for Portland. A few interesting things turned up when I moused over some of the main tags to see the related tags.

The “Zoo” tag was fairly predictable: giraffe, animals, bear, etc.
“Edgefield” was related to McMenamins (not surprising since the Edgefield McMenamins is a very popular destination.)
OSCON was on the Portland map as a tag.
Beaverton, a sleepy and not always very nice suburb of Portland, relates to sunset, clouds, and sky – I can't even hazard a guess on that one.
The most interesting: Mt. Tabor was only associated with cat. Apparently “cat people” gravitate toward Mt. Tabor.

I also noticed that going back to the map after closing my browser yielded slightly different results. I encourage you to have a look. It provided me with a few minutes of amusement anyway.

Chaos

2007-01-15T20:34:00.000-08:00

Expect fewer and erratic posts from me in the next couple of months. I am selling my house in Hillsboro and moving to the east side of Portland. Moving is always a chaotic process. In other words, I will be kicked out of my house at random times of the day so that strange people can wander through, then I get to put everything I own into little boxes only to take them back out inevitably losing certain items for an indefinite period of time.

Despite the less than fun moving process, I am excited about moving to the east side of Portland. We are looking forward to living within walking distance of coffee shops, vegetarian restaurants, grocery stores, and more. It will also be nice to live closer to downtown.

If anyone is looking for a great house with good schools, a quiet neighborhood and suburban living, I have a great house in Hillsboro! Information about my Realtor and the house can be found here and you can visit my Flickr account to see way too many pictures of the house.

iPhone Envy

2007-01-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

I just bought a Samsung BlackJack in November. It is WAY better than my previous device, the BlackBerry. It looks great, is small and light, has a bigger screen, has better Internet access, and has a camera. Honestly, it's the first cell phone that I've really loved to use. The only drawback is that it runs Windows ... it occasionally gets a bit tweaky, which like most Windows devices can only be fixed by a reboot (not a very convenient solution).

Today, I saw the news about the iPhone and developed a serious case of gadget envy. A device with Internet, email, wifi, iPod, even thinner than my BlackJack, easy synchronization with iTunes, and very cool looking. I already have Cingular ... now I just need to find an excuse to buy a new device.

Compiere's New Partner Program

2007-01-09T11:39:00.000-08:00

Today we announced our new Authorized Partner Program at Compiere. As many of you know, designing a partner program within an open source company has a unique set of challenges. The program must be designed to provide Compiere and our partners with enough revenue to sustain our businesses while creating product offerings at appropriate price points for customers. This is not unique to open source companies; however, most open source companies have to find creative ways to achieve this balance without relying on revenue from product license sales. The new partner program is designed to provide the resources partners need to build their businesses by providing consulting services, training, and support, since Compiere partners tend to have business models similar to value-added resellers, system integrators, and service consulting firms.

When I started working at Compiere at the end of November, they had a pretty good idea about what they wanted from a new Partner Program, but they needed someone to pull everything together to define the exact specifications for the program, write brochures and other promotional materials, and draft a completely new legal agreement between Compiere and our partners. My skills are a bit diverse (I've done everything from UNIX sys admin to market research on roller bearing usage in steel mills), and at a small company, the “just get it done” attitude means that I can get my hands into all sorts of fun things and do something a little bit different every day. I really love working for a company where I can jump in headfirst and quickly have a real impact on the company. Prior to Compiere, I had always been at very large companies, most recently Intel, where as one of tens of thousands of employees, it can become very difficult to see how your work impacts the profitability of the company. Additionally, the bureaucracy inherent in large corporations can result in much slower reaction time, and it can take many months to launch even the smallest program. I started working on the partner program at Compiere during the last week of November and the program launched just over a month later, which is amazing when you take into consideration the holiday downtime and the effort involved in getting a new employee (me) up to speed!

I love my job!

Second Life Moves to Open Source

2007-01-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

Second Life has just announced that the Second Life client has been released under an open source license, and they described their move to open source as “inevitable”:

“At Linden, we have always been strong advocates of the use of open standards and the advantages of using open source products. Though Second Life makes abundant use of non-standard technologies, our basic UDP protocol message system for example, we rely on open standards and open source implementations when appropriate and available. Since many of the components that will make up this network are not yet done, we are not publishing long white papers or RFCs at this time — instead, we are giving everyone what we have along with a goal of producing those open standards with the input and assistance of the community that has brought Second Life to where it is now.

Releasing the source now is our next invitation to the world to help build this global space for communication, business, and entertainment. We are eager to work with the community and businesses to further our vision of our space.” (Quote from the Second Life Blog)

I also found it interesting that Linden Lab specified the GNU GPL version 2, rather than releasing it under the GPL and future versions ... another company hedging its bets on the still under development GPL v3.

I think this is a great move for Linden Lab, and an astute business decision. By releasing the client software under open source, residents can modify their client experience, while Linden Lab continues to provide the server side code, which is where they make their revenue. Linden Lab is providing a more flexible environment for users, which should translate to additional users, and at the same time, they continue to have the revenue stream required to keep Second Life in business.

Portland BarCamp Meetup on January 25

2007-01-07T12:12:00.000-08:00

Our next informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled! We have also settled on the fourth Thursday of every month as a regular date for the event. Any local techies are welcome to attend.

When: Thursday, January 25th
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

The meetup will be very informal and similar in format to previous meetings. We'll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Subscribe to BarCampPortland

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events and posted the event to Upcoming.org.

MySQL Hedges Bets on GPL

2007-01-04T20:45:00.000-08:00

MySQL “kind of sort of (not really) changes its license model”. Until recently, MySQL was licensed under GPLv2 or later, but they have changed their license to be GPLv2 only. This may sound like a small change, but it is a significant (and smart change). Anyone licensed under GPLv2 or later will automatically convert to the GPLv3 when it is released. This gives MySQL the option to decide whether (or not) to move to the GPLv3, instead of automatically converting upon release of GPLv3. MySQL will have the opportunity to review the final version of the GPLv3 license and make an informed decision about which license makes the most sense for MySQL's business needs.

Not every company (or project / organization) can change their license at will:

MySQL owns the copyright to its database code so can change the license any time it likes (and indeed offer the software under dual licenses). While the company is not ruling out a change to GPL v3 once it is completed, it is hedging its bets in case it does not like the results.” (Quote from Matthew Aslett on Computer Business Review Online)

Google's Algorithmic Hiring Process

2007-01-03T09:07:00.001-08:00

Only at Google. The company known for hiring the best and the brightest and only accepting those candidates with the highest grade point averages and SAT scores has now found an algorithm to help predict which candidates will make the best Google employees. Job applicants will now complete a detailed online survey including questions like: “Have you ever made a profit from a catering business or dog walking? Do you prefer to work alone or in groups? Have you ever set a world record in anything?” (The New York Times).

I am a bit skeptical. I do not think that an algorithm is an ideal way to select the right person for the right job. I like to think that we are much too complex as human beings to be reduced to a single number determining whether or not we would be a outstanding employee.

On the other hand, Google search algorithms are the best, so who knows, maybe Google is on the right track. Next in the Google product family: “Algorithmic Dating”, the online survey guaranteed to find your ideal mate brought to you by Google Algorithms.

Off the Grid

2006-12-21T18:47:00.000-08:00

I will be off the grid visiting family through Wednesday, December 27 in rural Ohio ... land of dial-up internet where the closest broadband is more than a 20 minute drive away at a Starbucks in a truck stop! I do have my Samsung Blackjack for email and web surfing "emergencies" ;-)

Happy Holidays!

Techies Working from Home in Portland

2006-12-15T17:25:00.000-08:00

There are many techies working from home offices here in Portland. In my case, I work for Compiere, a bay area open source company, and there are many others like me along with technology consultants, entrepreneurs, analysts, and others who wouldn't mind working at a “real office” occasionally. While I love my home office, it might be nice to have something other than a coffee shop where I could squat when I have company in town or every other Tuesday morning when my housekeeper is here. Shared office space would also provide a place where we can meet with other local technology workers to network, share thoughts, get feedback on crazy ideas, etc. by the “water cooler”.

The co-working idea could be popular here in Portland where we have so many independent technology workers. If you are interested, Raven started a co-working in Portland wiki where you can sign up or get more information about the idea.

The Distro of the Beast

2006-12-14T17:23:00.000-08:00

If you've ever wanted a Linux distro of the evil variety or a distro for Iron Maiden fans, you might be interested in this version of Ubuntu:

"Let him who hath understanding reckon the distro of the beast,
for it is a Linux distro,
its distro is Ubuntu Satanic Edition." (Quote from Ubuntu Satanic Edition)

Thanks to Todd for pointing this out!

How Many Cartoonists Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

2006-12-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, is awesome. Here is a link to his most recent blog entry detailing his failings as a “handy person”:

Beneath the cabinets in my kitchen is a row of fluorescent lights that illuminate the countertops. One of those lights has decided to go all Baghdad on me. It crackles and pops and blinks for the entire time it is on. You might be thinking this is no big problem. All I have to do is change the fluorescent bulb, right?

I have a confession.

I am not. . . mechanical.

Or to put it another way:

Q. How many cartoonists does it take to change a light bulb?

A. More than the number living in my house.

My problem is that the light bulb is encased in some sort of impenetrable container with no indication of how it opens ... (Quote from Scott Adams on Dilbert.Blog)

Enjoy!

O'Reilly's New Compact Definition of Web 2.0

2006-12-10T10:17:00.000-08:00

Web 2.0 has always been one of those nebulous concepts that has been difficult to concisely define. Each person seems to have a slightly different idea about what is and is not web 2.0. Tim O'Reilly's original essay, What is Web 2.0, was quite lengthy, and he is now trying to define web 2.0 using a short, easy to remember definition:

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I've elsewhere called "harnessing collective intelligence.") (Quote from Tim O'Reilly on O'Reilly Radar).

I am not sure that this is a business revolution as much as it is a consumer revolution that businesses can take advantage of by building “ applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.” I think the key to web 2.0 is how the expectations of the users are changing. Only a few years ago, most consumers saw the Internet as a passive medium, like radio and television, to be watched and enjoyed without any direct involvement. Many consumers now expect to be able to participate in the online environment by commenting, uploading, or participating in the content in a number of ways. I think that the key to web 2.0 is consumer driven participation and interactivity. Businesses need to understand this fundamental change and focus on building online participation into their business models.

I do think that O'Reilly has a great start toward a more concise definition of web 2.0.

Portland Free Wireless is Live!

2006-12-07T11:58:00.000-08:00

I have not been close enough to downtown to try it out firsthand, but several areas in Portland now have free wireless access from MetroFi. Click the image below to get a high resolution image (with zoom).

Clearspace Collaboration Environment from Jive Software

2006-12-05T21:16:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to get an early preview of Clearspace from the Jive Software team, a local Portland, Oregon company. They have just starting talking about Clearspace on the Jive Talks blog with a recent post from Sam Lawrence. They have not yet released details, and portions of the product were in varying stages of completion when I played with it, so I will not go into any specific details here.

What I will say is that this product is cool. It is intuitive to use and has a “web 2.0” feel to it with modern collaboration functionality built into the system from the beginning. None of the retrofit feel that older applications have when someone tries to cram a bunch of new technology into an ancient product. This will be a product to test drive when Jive launches it in early 2007:

“The idea for Clearspace actually came from our customers, who through their conversations with our sales, marketing, professional services and customer support teams had been asking for many different collaborative feature additions to Jive Forums and Knowledge Base. Some of these were very specific, others borrowed from a lot of the collaborative elements of completely different point solutions. At the beginning of last year we took a big step back and realized that the sum of what was being requested was a completely new, much more comprehensive product.

So, a year ago we faced very tough decisions. Up to that point we had planned to address our customer requests through a combination of improvements to our existing products and/or building a couple of totally new products. Our big decision was was whether to build three products or one. The more we talked about it the more we recognized the massive benefit that could be realized by a single, unified, flexible architecture– sort of like that quote from Lord of the Rings–”one ring to unite them all.” (ok, it was really “rule them all” but that’s too harsh.)” (Quote from Sam Lawrence on Jive Talks)

Compiere Press Release

2006-12-05T20:44:00.000-08:00

For anyone interesting in learning more about what I am doing at Compiere, you can read the press release issued today. Way cool ... I've never been the subject of a press release before!

OSDL Shake-up: Reduces Staff by 1/3 and Stuart Cohen Leaves

2006-12-04T18:31:00.000-08:00

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) in Beaverton, OR has just eliminated 9 technical and administrative positions at the labs. A staff of 19 people remain at OSDL including Tom Hanrahan in engineering, Diane Peters for legal work, Linus Torvalds, and Andrew Morton.

ZDnet writes that “CEO Stuart Cohen resigned to pursue opportunities with higher-level open-source software,” and that “Cohen's resignation as CEO was coincidental and independent of the other changes at OSDL”. According to ComputerWorld, Cohen will be working with Portland and Seattle based venture capital firm OVP Venture Partners. Mike Temple will be moving the COO position into the CEO role.

The now smaller OSDL will focus on the following:

“The lab's board concluded that a modified mission was appropriate because Linux is now mainstream, and companies have become adept on their own at some of the collaborative work OSDL was founded to oversee, Temple said Monday. The group is funded by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Novell, Intel and several other computing companies.

OSDL's middleman role--connecting customer requirements, computing-company resources and developers--remains unchanged, Temple said. "We will be a catalyst among those three, to bring them together, solve problems and create the code," Temple said.

Funding freed up through the layoffs is set to go toward legal work, which the group's members have found valuable, Temple added. The group either will contract with legal professionals or hire a staff attorney, he said.

In technical matters, the organization will stop focusing on projects defining broad categories of Linux--earlier examples including efforts for high-end servers, telecommunications gear, mobile phones and desktop computers. Instead, engineering work will emphasize narrower efforts to find areas where new software needs to be written.” (Quote from Zdnet)

“The OSDL is shifting its resources to focus on four key areas: continuing to provide a safe haven for key developers, sponsoring the work of Torvalds and others; providing increased legal support for Linux and open source to account for licensing and patent issues that are increasing in complexity (this expansion will complement current OSDL initiatives such as the Patent Commons, Osapa.org and the Linux Legal Defense Fund); supporting ongoing regional activities such as the Japanese Linux Symposium; and fostering closer collaboration among community developers, OSDL members and users to produce more code to advance open-source projects, OSDL officials said in a statement.” (Quote from eWeek)

Here is my take on the situation. I do not buy the “coincidence” argument. I find it very hard to believe that the CEO of any organization would just decide, completely of his own accord, to leave during a change of this magnitude. With a staff reduction of this relative size combined with a new strategic direction, Cohen's leaving OSDL would not have been a coincidence. There are a few possibilities (caveat: this is pure speculation):

First, the board of directors may have “suggested” that Cohen leave due to any number of potential issues: dissatisfaction with his performance, lack of confidence in his ability to lead the organization under the new mission, ...
Second, Cohen may not have wanted to stay under the new mission for any number of reasons: lack of agreement with the strategic change and new mission, expecting the job to be less exciting under the new mission and wanting to find greener pastures, ...

Despite my skepticism about Cohen's “coincidental” leaving, I do think that the new mission will be good for OSDL and for Linux. When OSDL was first formed, Linux as an open source project was less mature, and fewer contributors to the Linux kernel were sponsored by large companies who paid their salaries. As a result, the contributions tended to be made in areas of personal interest, which may or may not have been the areas needed to make Linux successful in large deployments of mission critical systems. OSDL helped to coordinate efforts and provide testing labs where Linux could be tested on large clustered systems not generally available to most people. Now, with companies like IBM and Intel doing more work toward sponsoring developers and helping with testing, OSDL's original mission has become less important.

The focus on legal matters makes sense. With the proliferation of lawsuits, concerns over software patents, licensing concerns and other legal matters becoming top of mind, having an organization to focus on open source legal issues could be a great benefit. 2007 could be an interesting year for open source legal matters: the GPL is undergoing a revision, and the Microsoft / Novell agreements related to patents could be clarified. Many open source projects are run by small groups of individuals or small companies, and it would be great to have OSDL as a legal resource.

Web 2.0 Poster

2006-12-03T22:18:00.000-08:00

A web 2.0 poster with all of the "cool" company logos just in time for the holidays.

Here is a little more about it on TechCrunch.

Firefox Crop Circle in Oregon Hits Google Maps

2006-11-29T19:42:00.000-08:00

Way cool! Here is the Firefox crop circle created in rural Oregon after OSCON. Unfortunately, I wasn't involved in the crop circle, but I'm still waiting for our Cylon Raider from Foo to hit the maps.

Guy Kawasaki's VC Aptitude Test

2006-11-29T19:31:00.000-08:00

Even if you are not drawn to the allure of the venture capital industry, Guy Kawasaki's aptitude test is worth reading for the amusement value. A few gems from the test:

Been kicked in the groin by a major, long-lasting economic downturn, so that you know how powerless you are. (add 1 point)
Worked at a failed startup, so that you understand three things: first, how hard it is to achieve success; second, that the world doesn’t owe you a thing; and third, what it’s like to be fired or laid off. (add 3 points)
What is your background? Management consulting (subtract 5 points)

The Open Source Gift Guide

2006-11-27T09:21:00.000-08:00

Make Magazine, the place where you can find instructions to make all sorts of strange things (the modern day MacGyver site), has released the “Open source gift guide - Open source hardware, software and more for the holidays” with many geeky gift suggestions for the open source hacker enthusiast. Tim O'Reilly adds his twist to the gift guide by suggesting donations to a variety of open source organizations.

My personal favorite from the list is the Chumby. I saw some early models at Foo, and they were way cool.

Mark Shuttleworth Invites OpenSUSE Developers to Join Ubuntu

2006-11-26T13:07:00.000-08:00

The recent agreement between Microsoft and Novell has drawn quite a bit of criticism from the open source community especially with respect to the patent portions of the agreement. Mark Shuttleworth uses this as an opportunity to invite OpenSUSE developers into the Ubuntu community:

“Novell’s decision to go to great lengths to circumvent the patent framework clearly articulated in the GPL has sent shockwaves through the community. If you are an OpenSUSE developer who is concerned about the long term consequences of this pact, you may be interested in some of the events happening next week as part of the Ubuntu Open Week:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek

We are hosting a series of introductory sessions for people who want to join the Ubuntu community - in any capacity, including developers and package maintainers. If you want to find out how Ubuntu works, how to contribute or participate, or how to get specific items addressed, there will be something for you.

...

If you have an interest in being part of a vibrant community that cares about keeping free software widely available and protecting the rights of people to get it free of charge, free to modify, free of murky encumbrances and “undisclosed balance sheet liabilities”, then please do join us.” (Mark Shuttleworth, here be dragons)

Mark's pragmatic response is certainly a more productive reaction to the issue than what I have seen elsewhere. I also suspect that Mark is on to something: Novell will probably lose quite a few good community members as a result of this action.

Web 2.0 Reality and Hype

2006-11-26T09:23:00.000-08:00

I have a huge amount of respect for Bill Thompson, but his recent article in the Register Developer takes an overly harsh view of web 2.0. Admittedly, the term is now associated with an amount of hype not seen since the last tech bubble of the dot com era; however, web 2.0 ideas and technologies also have strengths: an architecture of participation facilitating user generated content, an increase in citizen journalism, improved user interfaces, and more. Bill Thompson seems to be willing to forgo these benefits and dismiss the technologies that make them possible as pure buzz and hype with no substance.

“Now we must decide whether to put our faith in Ajaxified snakeoil or to look beyond the interface to distributed systems, scalable solutions and a network architecture that will support the needs and aspirations of the next five billion users.

...

Over it all stretches the 'Web 2.0' banner, a magical incantation that will bring attention, funding and respect to any programmer able to weave a little Ajax into their interface. It seems that it only takes a browser that can interpret JavaScript and a server that will let a page call for packaged data through XMLHttpRequest and we can have all the benefits of distributed systems without the need to write too much code or rethink the way that the different components of a service communicate with each other.

If Web 2.0 is the answer then we are clearly asking the wrong question, and we must not be fooled by the cool sites and apparently open APIs. Most of the effort is – literally – window dressing, designed to attract venture capitalists to poorly-considered startups and get hold of enough first-round funding to build either a respectable user base or enough barely runnable alpha code to provide Google or Yahoo! with yet another tasty snack. We need to take a wider view of what is going on.

...

Web 2.0 marks the dictatorship of the presentation layer, a triumph of appearance over architecture that any good computer scientist should immediately dismiss as unsustainable.” (Bill Thompson, Reg Developer)

A good architecture is always important, but we can also have a great user interface and user experience along with it. Shelley Powers does a great job of putting this in perspective:

“I'm not sure who is touting Ajax as a replacement for distributed systems. If that were so, I wouldn't be writing a book on the Ajaxian technologies. Ajax is nothing more than a way to create a user interface that's simpler, quicker, and easier to work with then more traditional web pages. It's handy, its helpful, but it's also limited and most who work with it understand this is so. Unless Mr. Thompson believes that user interfaces aren't needed in his distributed utopian environment, I don't see the technologies going away. Nor do I see them interfering with distributed development.

...

Even his dismissal of JavaScript and XML makes little sense. According to Thompson, we cannot rely on Javascript and XML since they do not offer the stability, scalability or effective resource discovery that we need. Need for what? XML is a standardized markup, a syntax, a way of organizing data so that multiple application can access the data without having to come to some kind of agreement as to format. It's use in syndication, for instance, has led to an explosion of communication; a version of which forms the basis of this page–in what way does this not scale, lead to resource discovery, or demonstrate instable behavior?

As for JavaScript, it's almost as old as Java, and is considered the most commonly used programming language in use today. It is not a replacement for Java, nor is Java a replacement for it. If I wouldn't think of using JavaScript to build a distributed system, neither would I consider using Java and EJB to validate my form data, or provide for live commenting. Apples and oranges.” (Shelley Powers on Mad Techie Woman)

No single technology (or even a group of technologies, like AJAX) will ever be the “perfect” solution to every problem. We need to keep this in perspective and focus on using the right technology for each job. Dismissing whole categories of technologies as hype without acknowledging that they have legitimate uses is not a productive discussion. It is black and white argument in a very gray world.

Portland BarCamp Meetup Scheduled for Nov. 30

2006-11-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

Our third informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled! Any local techies are welcome to attend.

When: Thursday, November 30
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

The meetup will be very informal and similar in format to previous meetings. We'll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Subscribe to BarCampPortland

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events. The next event will be held in January.

Web 2.0, Data Gathering, and Flickr

2006-11-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

Flickr has found an interesting way to leverage the data from their community of users. When pictures are uploaded to Flickr, meta-data about the camera used to take the pictures is uploaded along with the the photographs. Flickr is now providing this information for anyone to view, while using it to drive traffic to Yahoo shopping (as most of you know, Yahoo owns Flickr).

I like their innovative approach to reusing the data; however, Yahoo is not as good at Google about distinguishing between content and advertising.

For example, the main part of the camera page prominently displayed at the top shows a “Featured Model” camera, which is actually an advertisement. In tiny light gray letters under the feature, you'll find this small disclaimer: “Featured Model is a sponsored placement.” The idea is really cool, but credibility with users would be increased if Flickr / Yahoo flipped the approach to feature the content (which cameras are really being used) while still providing clearly delineated advertising from sponsors.

OpenID, Identity Management, and Single Sign-on

2006-11-19T14:52:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about my recent change of heart about OpenID and identity management in general. As we begin to rely more heavily and put more of ourselves into web 2.0 and other online environments, identity management becomes increasingly important.

We have an upcoming hackfest here in Portland on January 17^th called MashPit: OpenID for anyone wanting to learn more about OpenID in a hands-on environment working with the experts to make OpenID work for your sites and apps. If you've ever wanted single sign-on and OpenID, but did not know where to start or had questions about implementation, this event would be a great place to start!

The Details:
MashPit: OpenID
Wednesday, January 17, 2007 from 4:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Where: JanRain World Headquarters
RSVP here to attend this free event.
Visit the wiki for more information.

Moving on to a New Gig (Compiere)

2006-11-18T20:41:00.000-08:00

Friday was my last day at Intel. Changing jobs always brings mixed feelings: excitement about starting a new job combined with the difficult feelings associated with leaving so many great co-workers and friends. Intel has been a great company, and I have learned so much over the past six+ years; however, a few weeks ago, I made the difficult decision to leave Intel to return to my open source roots.

I have just joined Compiere as their new Director of Community and Partner Programs where I will be working in a small, start-up environment for the first time in my career. Compiere is an open source ERP/CRM software company, and I will be responsible for managing the relationship between Compiere and their open source community while also managing some partner relationships and programs. I am excited to be working in open source again, and Compiere has some really interesting technology that could make a real difference within the enterprise environment.

This is a great opportunity for me, and I am thrilled to be joining the Compiere team.

Troubling Trend in the Virtual World

2006-11-14T13:41:00.000-08:00

Those of you who regularly read this blog know that I am a huge fan-girl for web 2.0, online communities, and social interactions. I am also known to occasionally hang out in Second Life, and I think that virtual worlds hold tremendous potential from a community standpoint and from a corporate marketing standpoint.

However, I am a bit troubled by the recent trend of making corporate announcements and holding Q&As in virtual worlds like Second Life with no alternate means of participation. Sun hosted a Q&A in Second Life to talk about the open source Java announcement yesterday. This morning, Dell held an invite only press event to announce a new Second Life island where people can buy real world Dell PCs or virtual PCs for their avatars to use. Holding press events in Second Life sounds like a great idea until you consider the realities of Second Life:

Not everyone has a Second Life account
Many people do not know how to navigate within the virtual world to effectively participate in the event.
Most laptops (and some desktops) do not have the horsepower required to run Second Life.

Frustrating the press is probably not the best way to promote a new product. At least one journalist (according to TechCrunch) passed on the opportunity to attend the Dell announcement, since it was not worth the hassle. Allison Randall at O'Reilly had issues running Second Life on her laptop where “only half the avatars at the event and on stage were rendered (leaving me the interesting task of trying out "empty" seats to figure out which were actually empty and which were occupied by invisible avatars)”

I do think that these two examples are significant, and I am impressed by Sun's and Dell's ability to embrace new opportunities; however, the execution of these events was not ideal. Dell probably should have done a traditional press event with minimal information to generate some awareness and excitement followed by a Second Life event providing more detail to the residents. The reality is that the intersection between the press and Second Life users are probably fairly small, so the press might not be the best virtual audience. In general, companies should consider providing real world information using real world events while providing information relevant to Second Life residents within the virtual world.

Google: Friend or Foe?

2006-11-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

The New York Times today poses the question, “Is Google a friend or foe?”

Clearly, by the only measurement that matters (Google Trends), Google is a friend, not a foe. To test this theory, I ran Google Trends on several related searches:

Google Friend (blue), Google Foe (red)

Google Good (blue), Google Evil (red)

Google Angel (blue), Google Devil (red)

Please do not take this post seriously – it is meant to be a bit silly.

Why Attend Conferences? AKA Time for a Change

2006-11-11T10:09:00.000-08:00

The buzz around the Web 2.0 Summit this week got me thinking about why we attend conferences in today's world of near constant connectivity and information overload. I remember listening to TWIT sometime around CES when Dvorak talked about how he was “virtually”attending CES. He had decided to skip the travel and follow the news coverage virtually rather than physically attending the event. With thousands of other journalists in attendance, Dvorak decided that having one more technology reporter on the show floor was not a good use of his time.

Before every company had a website, before bloggers, and before RSS readers, we attended conferences because conferences were the primary mechanism for learning about new technologies. Now, we can read our favorite blogs, newspapers, and trade magazines from the comfort of our couches in our pajamas with wireless laptops. With so many great summaries of every conference appearing online and bloggers posting live updates whenever someone important sneezes, the need to attend conferences to gather information is greatly diminished.

Historically, we also attended conferences to hear the experts speak on relevant topics; however, podcasts are making conference keynotes, sessions, and even panels less relevant. I admit to being a podcast addict. I typically subscribe to more podcasts than any one human being could possibly process, but it does give me the opportunity to pick and choose based on my current interests. I regularly hear interviews with open source experts on FLOSS Weekly and the O'Reilly Foo Casts, web 2.0 experts on TalkCrunch, and a little bit of everything related to the tech industry from TWIT and PodTech. I do not need to attend a big conference to hear the experts and their latest ideas about technology.

Conferences have also become a mechanism for corporate PR and product launches designed to capitalize on the topical buzz around the time of a big conference, but in reality, the press releases and launches tend to get lost in the noise with dozens and even hundreds of press releases crammed into just a few short days. This is also a holdover from the days when people attended conferences to learn about the next new thing, and corporate types have the conference press release machine in motion.

I am not saying that we should stop attending conferences; however, our reasons for attending have changed over time. I currently attend conferences mainly to hold meetings with customers / partners and network with other smart people to generate new ideas and new ways of thinking about the tech world. The customer meetings and networking usually happen outside of the traditional conference format as lunches, dinners, and informal hallway conversations. Typically, I can learn more by spending 10 minutes in a hallway chat with someone than I can learn in an hour long conference session. Conferences are a great way to gather a whole bunch of experts and those wanting to learn more about a topic together in one place to facilitate learning and the sharing of new ideas and thoughts.

I am starting to wonder if technology conferences are due for a change. Maybe fewer talking heads and fewer keynote sessions with a larger number of small discussion groups giving people an opportunity to share ideas. I am also becoming a fan of the “un-conference” format popularized by FooCamp and BarCamp, which provide a framework for a conference where intimate discussions can be more easily organized; however, I do not know how well the un-conference format would scale when you get larger numbers of attendees. I recently had a discussion at a party with Identity Woman aka Kaliya who is an advocate for a hybrid approach like the un-conferences, but with a little more structure to keep people on track.

I am not quite sure if there is an “answer” to the conference dilemma, but I suspect that the time is right for a broader change in how we organize and attend technology conferences.

The GPL and Antitrust Law

2006-11-09T17:56:00.000-08:00

A U.S. court has found that open source software provided free of charge under the GPL does not violate antitrust laws ... or as Matt Asay says “Duh!”. An excerpt from Evan Brown's Internet Cases blog provides a nice overview:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has issued an opinion in which Judge Easterbrook declares, "[t]he GPL and open-source have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws." The case is called Wallace v. IBM., No. 06-2454. [Download a copy of the opinion.] Internet Cases covered the lower court's decision from last December here.

Plaintiff Wallace filed an antitrust suit against IBM, Red Hat and Novell, arguing that those companies had conspired to eliminate competition in the operating system market by making Linux available at an "unbeatable" price (free) under the General Public License ("GPL"). The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana dismissed the case, finding the plaintiff had suffered no antitrust injury. The Seventh Circuit affirmed.

Will Red Hat Survive the Recent Assault?

2006-11-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know ... everyone else blogged about this last week (I was having one of “those weeks” where blogging suffered as a result of my being consumed by other activities), and I just had to weigh in on this issue if only briefly.

I think that Red Hat, as a business, could be in trouble. First, Oracle begins offering support for Red Hat Linux at a price below Red Hat's support cost (ouch), and then two of Red Hat's biggest competitors Microsoft and Novell sign an agreement to collaborate that includes indemnification (Dana Gardner said this agreement was akin to “Fox marries chicken, both move into henhouse”).

Nick Selby from the 451 group has an interesting analysis comparing Red Hat to the “Poland of software vendors” including not just the recent Oracle and Microsoft / Novell but also some insight into how Ubuntu may contribute to Red Hat's decline:

And Red Hat itself now faces the real possibility of extinction … Overnight, Red Hat has become the flattest piece of land between two battling superpowers: the Poland of software vendors.

Less obvious is the effect on Ubuntu’s plans to burst onto the enterprise scene in the West. Ubuntu’s sponsor, Canonical’s, overriding strategy hinges on two key pillars. First, Ubuntu is feature-rich and easy-to-use, to appeal to non-fuddy-duddys - that next generation of young whippersnapper admins coming up in enterprise as we speak.

Second, the support model is flexible. Years before the Oracle and Microsoft announcements to provide support for someone else’s Linux distro, Canonical set out to provide support not just from itself but from an entire eco-system of other support companies. And the support could be bought for as little as a single server in a cluster.

The model was appealing precisely because of the Red Hat and Novell’s Soviet-style lock-ins - the very models which are now in flux. (Quote from Nick Selby on the 451 CAOS Theory blog)

Unless Red Hat pulls a rabbit out of their hat or Oracle, Microsoft, and Novell fail to execute on these announcements, I predict that Red Hat will really start to feel the pain in 2007.

JanRain Helps Sites Manage User Identities

2006-11-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

I rarely (if ever) blog about online identities or OpenID, and if you had asked me a year ago about OpenID, or any other technology designed to provide a single point of authentication where the user manages their own identity, I would have responded with something like “dream on”, “when pigs fly” or some other “no way in hell will that ever really happen” smartypants answer.

Maybe I have been spending too much time talking to people like Scott Kveton and Kaliya Hamlin (AKA Identity Woman), but I am becoming a true believer and advocate for identity management. With the recent proliferation of web 2.0 sites, an easy way to manage my online identity without needing a billion username / password combos is very appealing. Yes, I know that wishful thinking will not make something come true; however, OpenID has made an amazing amount of traction over the past few months.

Now, JanRain is making it even easier for companies / websites to use OpenID with their new affiliate program:

I am excited to announce the launch of our Affliate Program aimed at sites that want to use OpenID but don’t want to have to manage an OpenID server or their users’ identities. Now with just a few clicks of your mouse you can have a place for your users to get OpenID’s. In addition, sites will get added to our ever-growing directory of sites that support OpenID. There are hundreds of sites that support OpenID today and that number is growing everyday.

By hosting identities for end-users we’re hoping that sites that support OpenID can focus on their “main thing”; blogging, photo sharing, wiki’s, etc. OpenID lowers the barrier to engagement for users and increases stickiness on sites; no more forgotten usernames or passwords. If you’re a developer and interested in OpenID enabling your site, head over to our sister site www.openidenabled.com and learn more about the open source libraries, patches and tools available for making that happen. (Quote from Scott Kveton's Blog)

I have an OpenID through ClaimID, and I would like to see more websites start to support it. It really is a win-win for both sides: ease of use for the consumer and less overhead for companies / individuals maintaining sites requiring authentication.

Fluckr / bLaugh

2006-10-31T07:33:00.000-08:00

I highly recommend reading bLaugh: The (Un)Official Comic of the Blogosphere.

Danah Boyd: The History and Future of Social Networking

2006-10-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

Financial Times calls Danah Boyd “The high priestess of internet friendship”, and the title is well earned. I attended a few web 2.0 sessions with Danah (and a few evenings of Werewolf), and this women “gets” social networking better than anyone else I know.

If you want to better understand the evolution of social networking and get a sense for where it is headed, this article based on a Financial Times interview with Danah is a great place to start.

The MySpace Migration aka The Death of MySpace?

2006-10-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post claims that “In Teens' Web World, MySpace Is So Last Year.”

"I think it's definitely going down -- a lot of my friends have deleted their MySpaces and are more into Facebook now," said Birnbaum, a junior who spends more time on her Facebook profile, where she messages and shares photos with other students in her network.

From the other side of the classroom, E.J. Kim chimes in that in the past three months, she's gone from slaving over her MySpace profile up to four hours a day -- decorating it, posting notes and pictures to her friends' pages -- to deleting the whole thing.

"I've grown out of it," Kim said. "I thought it was kind of pointless."

Such is the social life of teens on the Internet: Powerful but fickle. Within several months' time, a site can garner tens of millions of users who, just as quickly, might flock to the next place, making it hard for corporate America to make lasting investments in whatever's hot now.

The high school English class cites several reasons for backing off of MySpace: Creepy people proposition them. Teachers and parents monitor them. New, more alluring free services comes along, so they collectively jump ship. (Quote from The Washington Post)

I can attest to the creepiness. I have received “friend” requests from all sorts of creepy people to the point where I cringe when getting ready to look at a request to see whether I know the person in real life, and I do not spend much time on the site. Younger girls may be even less equipped to handle these situations, and by spending more time on the site, they probably see many more of these requests than I do.

With all of the press around MySpace drawing parents, teachers, and prospective employers to view MySpace pages, young people must feel like they are under a microscope instead of hanging out with friends in a casual environment. As a teen, this might drive me to switch to another social networking site.

It will be interesting to see if Facebook continues to grow to become the dominant social networking site for teens / college students. It will also be interesting to see if Facebook users entering the professional workforce after college continue to use it or whether they migrate to another social networking site or give up the idea of social networking entirely (doubtful).

Teens have always been a fickle crowd. What is hot one day becomes uncool the next. Cynthia Brumfield compares the switching behavior of teens in social networking to television shows:

This meteroic rise and ultimate dwindling puts me in mind of hit TV shows. At their best, hot TV shows can dominate the cultural consciousness, generating huge (although that’s a relative term given the increasingly fractionalized) audiences and scads of ad revenue. If it weren’t for the artificially (i.e. regulation-induced) complex nature of the TV programming marketplace, with most producer profits earned in the back-end during syndication, a hit TV show that soars and then fizzles (remember “Twin Peaks”) could be a very profitable enterprise. In other words, a TV show that becomes a hit but doesn’t stay a hit could make lots of money.

Moreover, hit TV shows can become the springboard for more money-making ventures, even when they fade (“Cheers” spawned “Frasier”). The trick for any given TV production company is to keep the creativity and business ingenuity going, and not rest on past successes.

The same thing holds true for hot web properties such as MySpace. MySpace is bound to fade—the Internet is a very contestable market, as economists say, and rivals can step in at any time, particularly for something as technically simple as social networking. But there’s little doubt that News Corp. has a chance to make money with MySpace while it’s still popular and the company is doing everything it can to exploit MySpace while it’s still warm.

The trick for News Corp., or Google, which just paid $1.65 billion for YouTube (another site highly vulnerable to competition) or any other entertainment business on the Internet is figuring out where they go from here. They can’t just sit back and expect to rake in the dough, hoping that their hit sites stay hot. They have to move forward and leverage their hits to create the next big thing. (Quote from Cynthia Brumfield on the IP Democracy blog)

This could be a sign that MySpace is fading into oblivion; however, I am not ready to predict the death of MySpace yet. Despite the migration of some teens to other sites, MySpace still has quite a bit of momentum. I expect that MySpace can continue to ride this momentum for a while before heading into a death spiral. It is also conceivable that News Corp could find a different, and profitable, niche for MySpace around music, other age groups, or some other aspect of social networking.

Next BarCamp Portland Meetup Scheduled for November 30!

2006-10-29T10:19:00.000-08:00

Our third informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled! Any local techies are welcome to attend.

When: Thursday, November 30
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

The meetup will be very informal and similar in format to previous meetings. We'll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Subscribe to BarCampPortland

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events. The next event will be held in January.

Political Google Bombing

2006-10-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

As we approach election season here in the United States, political groups go to great lengths to make their favorite candidates look good while making the competition look bad. The latest tactic used is Google bombing, the practice of manipulating Google's search results to inflate certain results. One of the best known Google bombs resulted in George Bush's biography page being displayed when someone searched for the term “miserable failure”.

According to the New York Times:

If things go as planned for liberal bloggers in the next few weeks, searching Google for “Jon Kyl,” the Republican senator from Arizona now running for re-election, will produce high among the returns a link to an April 13 article from The Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly.

Mr. Kyl “has spent his time in Washington kowtowing to the Bush administration and the radical right,” the article suggests, “very often to the detriment of Arizonans.”

Searching Google for “Peter King,” the Republican congressman from Long Island, would bring up a link to a Newsday article headlined “King Endorses Ethnic Profiling.”

Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated “Google bombing” campaign intended to game the search engine’s ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results.
...
Each name is associated with one article. Those articles are embedded in hyperlinks that are now being distributed widely among the left-leaning blogosphere. In an entry at MyDD.com this week, Mr. Bowers said: “When you discuss any of these races in the future, please, use the same embedded hyperlink when reprinting the Republican’s name. Then, I suppose, we will see what happens.” (Quote from Tom Zeller, New York Times)

While not illegal, the ethics behind manipulating search results seems a bit questionable to say the least.

Digg Acquisition Rumors

2006-10-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

Who will acquire Digg? Michael Arrington from TechCrunch claims that Digg has been in acquisition talks with News Corp. and other companies: “However, the company was unable to land an offer in the price range they’re looking for - at least $150 million - and will likely close a Series B round of financing instead.” (TechCrunch Quote)

I am curious who those “other companies” might be. Here are a few random guesses (pure speculation):

AOL / Time-Warner: Calacanis might be interested in an attempt to merge Netscape with Digg (bad idea in my opinion).
Yahoo: The rumor is that they were in discussions for YouTube and FaceBook, and they have already acquired a number of web 2.0 companies. Digg might be an interesting fit for Yahoo.

Who should acquire Digg? Maybe Google. Due to the recent, and large, YouTube acquisition, I doubt that Google is currently in discussions to acquire Digg. Digg would be a great way for Google to get more involved in the collaborative, user generated content space to expand their web 2.0 offerings, and Google could probably add quite a bit of value in helping to optimize Digg's promotion algorithms. Digg has sometimes struggled with attempts by users to game the system to promote their own stories using all types of devious mechanisms. Designing creative algorithms to prevent people from artificially inflating search results has been one of Google's strengths.

Personally, I think that Digg will stay independent for now, but then again, I am frequently wrong about acquisition predictions. (I'm still waiting for Borland to be acquired – I predicted an imminent acquisition back in 2002 / 2003).

SpaceShipOne Google Rumors

2006-10-21T15:58:00.000-07:00

Rumors were flying this weekend, courtesy of TechCrunch, about Google's purchase of SpaceShipOne. The recent YouTube acquisition rumor in the billion dollar range also seemed far fetched, and it turned out to be true, so you just never know with Google. Lending additional credibility is the fact that Larry Page is on the board of trustees at the X Prize foundation; however, this rumor turned out to be only partially true.

Google seems to have acquired a very realistic looking mock-up of SpaceShipOne. Still pretty cool.

Portland BarCamp Meetup Scheduled for October 25

2006-10-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to RSVP if you plan to attend our second informal Portland BarCamp Meetup next week!

When: Wednesday, October 25
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

The meetup on October 25th will be very informal and similar in format to the last meeting. We'll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Subscribe to BarCampPortland

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events. The next event will be held on November 29.

The New York Times Discovers Technorati

2006-10-16T12:30:00.000-07:00

I like the New York Times, but I was surprised by the quality of a recent article about Technorati. The title, 55 Million Blogs, and Now a Service to Track Them written by Eric Pfanner, implies something new, but Technorati has been around for at least 3 years. The new part is that Technorati will begin publishing a Top 100 list for French, German, and Italian language blogs. A nice new feature, but just a new feature.

Pfanner also quoted Peter Hirshberg as the Chief Executive of Technorati; however, Dave Sifry is the CEO while Hirshberg is the Chairman and Chief Marketing Officer. A simple fact checking exercise should have uncovered that error.

I am disappointed in the Times. A misleading title and obvious factual error both in a relatively short article.

Google Takes Over the World?

2006-10-15T18:48:00.000-07:00

The New York Times had an interesting article, titled Planet Google Wants You, today about how Google is taking over more parts of our lives every day:

Marketing experts consider a Web site an experience — different from using a product like a soft drink — because it’s someplace you go, an arena in which you live out your life. And in this way many people develop a sense of intimacy within it, even trust.

...

Donna L. Hoffman, a founder of eLab 2.0, a research center at the University of California, Riverside, that studies online consumer behavior, said that Google has in the minds of many users “become one with the Internet,” achieving a meta-status because as the most-used search engine, “it literally augments your brain. I don’t have to remember quite a few things now because Google can remember them for me. Google is an additional memory chip.”

...

Like Apple, Google has lured the young and the early adopters by making the utilitarian — say, Gmail — seem hip. Part of the allure stems from the clean Euro-minimalist design of its applications. Part of it stems from the company’s reputation for innovation. (Quote from New York Times)

I'll admit it Google has taken over my life, not out of any need to be hip and trendy, but because I simply like Google's products better than the alternatives. I like Google search because it seems to find what I am really looking for more quickly than the other search engines. I am addicted to Gmail, and I use it not because it is free, but because I like it better than Outlook. Despite owning a copy of Outlook, I have stopped using it for personal mail (I still have to use it for work) because it is consumes too many system resources, and everything about it is just slow. An Outlook search for an email can take minutes instead of seconds in Gmail, and I love using tags in Gmail for those complex topics where filing them in a single folder makes no sense. Google Calendar helps my family find me when I travel. Google Analytics keeps track of my blog traffic. Google Docs provides a place to collaborate with my boyfriend to track household expenses. Google Groups gives my Portland BarCamp Meetup participants a way to keep up with the latest news about our events. I could go on, but you get the point.

Security does concern me in this environment, since Google knows more about me than my family, but it is a risk I am willing to take for the added convenience.

High Tech Marketing in a Virtual World

2006-10-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

Many companies are initiating marketing campaigns designed to generate revenue in the "real world" via virtual world marketing through Second Life and other online environments. If you are interested in hearing my thoughts on virtual marketing, you can visit my Intel Trends in Web 2.0 blog.

Google Just Acquired YouTube for $1.65 Billion

2006-10-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

Like everyone else, I heard the rumors, and I was skeptical. Acquisition rumors usually turn out to be exactly that ... just rumors with talks falling through at the last minute or casual talks between companies spawning rumors of impending acquisitions; however, in this case, the rumors were accurate.

From the Google Press Release:

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.

On the one hand, this is a risky move for Google. The copyright issues within YouTube content could escalate now that companies could sue with the hope of making money by tapping into the deeper pockets of Google. On the other hand, Google has never been afraid of a few copyright skirmishes (the book searches and Google news come to mind as a couple of examples), and Google can usually find a creative way to make even very difficult situations work for everyone involved. I will be curious to see what happens.

Google's Blog Hacked ... Google is Not Cancelling Click-to-Call Service

2006-10-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

The blogosphere has been speculating about the cancellation of Google's Click-to-Call Service over the past few days as a result of a Google Blog post stating that Google was cancelling the service. According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, “the real story here is that the Google blog has been hacked.”

In reading the original post (which was quickly removed from the blog), this should be obvious. Google is known for hiring brilliant, well-educated people, and this blog entry just does not fit:

Notice that the wording of the post makes little sense combined with spelling errors throughout. This reads more like a spam email than an official Google blog entry.

Update 10/8/06 12:00 PM: Om Malik reported that a Google spokesperson has confirmed that an unauthorized user created the fake post. The Google spokesperson also said that the Click-to-Call service was proceeding on schedule.

Just Arrived: My Flickr MiniCards from Moo

2006-10-07T17:40:00.000-07:00

I just received my Flickr MiniCards from Moo. They are very small (hence the mini part), so I'm not quite sure how I will use them, but they are definitely cool.

Searching Inside Books Boosts Sales

2006-10-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

Google's plans to digitize libraries of books has come under fire from publishers eager to protect copyrights; however, publishers participating in Google's Book Search Partner Program are seeing a significant benefit. According to Reuters, publishers participating in Google's book search and Amazon's Search Inside programs are benefiting from additional sales:

"Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers," said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press.

She declined to provide specific figures, but said that sales growth has been "significant". Scollans estimated that 1 million customers have viewed 12,000 Oxford titles using the Google program.

...

Specialty publisher Springer Science + Business reported sales growth of its backlist catalog using Google Book Search, with 99 percent of the 30,000 titles it has in the program getting viewed, including many published before 1992.

"We suspect that Google really helps us sell more books," said Kim Zwollo, Springer's global director of special licensing, declining to provide specific figures because the company is privately owned.

...

"Our experience has been that the revenue generated from Google has been pretty modest, whereas the Amazon program has generated more book sales," Penguin Chief Executive John Makinson told Reuters at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. (Quotes from Reuters)

These examples highlight the importance of open marketing that lets people see some of the content prior to buying. In many cases, showing some of the book can generate interest in a book that would not have otherwise caught someone's eye. It also gives people the opportunity to see what they are buying, mirroring the brick and mortar book buying experience of leafing through a book. Hopefully, this trend will continue, thus giving buyers more information about potential purchases leading the way for Google and others to find similar opportunities to add value outside of the book market ... who knows what Google might come up with next.

Are MySpace Users Getting Old?

2006-10-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

According to the latest comScore report, over half of MySpace users are the in 35 and older age range.

“The most significant shift has occurred among teens 12-17, who accounted for 24.7 percent of the MySpace audience in August 2005, but today represent a much lower 11.9 percent of the site’s total audience. Conversely, Internet users between the ages of 35-54 now account for 40.6 percent of the MySpace visitor base, an 8.2 percentage point increase during the past year.” (Quote from comScore)

According to Liz Gannes at GigaOm, they called “Fox Interactive spokesperson Ann Burkart to ask if comScore is off the deep end on this one, and she said the numbers are actually totally accurate with what MySpace is seeing internally.”

Because the press release only has percentages, it is really hard to tell what drives these numbers. Keep in mind that the report also shows a dramatic decrease in MySpace users in the 12-17 age range making it difficult to tell how fast the over 35 age range is really growing. Increasing as a “percentage” relative to other age ranges can also be caused by dramatic decreases in another group.

Assuming that the over 35 crowd is driven by real growth, I have a number of ideas about what could cause this growth.

99 year olds: MySpace has a large number of 99 year old participants, which typically fall into a couple of camps: the “too young to be allowed” group and the “old enough not admit a real age group”.
Parents: With the recent press coverage over the past year focused on the dark side of MySpace (exploitation, sexual predators, etc.), I know quite a few parents of teenagers who use MySpace to better understand it and to keep an eye on their teenagers who use the site. Most parents of teenagers would fit into the 35-54 age range.
Bloggers, Techies, and Journalists: I am 35, and I have a MySpace page. I created it as a way to better understand social networking for the purpose of blogging and other writing, but I have found that it helps me keep in touch with a few of my younger friends.
Perverts: I assume there are also a few wackos in the over 35 age group that join for less than honorable reasons.

It would be great if some ambitious social networking researcher could do an in depth study to figure out what exactly is driving this change in the MySpace demographics.

Corporate Blogging 101

2006-10-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

More companies are starting to blog every day, so I decided to spend some time providing my perspective on how to write a good corporate blog. If you are interested in corporate blogging, you might want to read the Corporate Blogging 101 post on my Intel Trends in Web 2.0 blog.

Next BarCamp Portland Meetup Scheduled for October 25

2006-10-04T10:59:00.000-07:00

Our second informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled!

When: Wednesday, October 25
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Subscribe to BarCampPortland

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events. The next event will be held on November 29.

Censoring the Blogosphere: The Right and Wrong Ways to Respond to Criticism

2006-10-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

We know that the world of media has been evolving as bloggers become more prevalent, and our methods of interacting with the media must also evolve with these changes. Some blogs (TechCrunch, Engadget, The Huffington Post) have become more popular than many traditional media sources, but many people are struggling to adapt to interacting with the blogosphere.

An example from the Washington Post about how NOT to respond to a blogger caught my eye this morning:

“Memories fade, but the Internet is forever.

Murry N. Gunty found that out the hard way this summer. Well known among Washington financiers, the head of Milestone Capital Management LLC ran afoul of bloggers for an attempt to censor a Web article about a 1992 incident in which he manipulated the election for officers of the Harvard Business School's Finance Club.

...

The Harvard flap seemed like ancient history until Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mark Pincus -- no relation to Gunty's business partner -- resurrected it.

...

'I have nothing personal against the guy at all,' said Pincus, whose original post included numerous disparaging personal remarks about Gunty. 'I write about ethics all the time. It's something I'm passionate about. If Murry had responded on my blog, the whole thing would have just ended there.'

...

Gunty or someone representing him sent an e-mail to Six Apart Ltd., the company that hosted Pincus's blog, asking that the article be changed because it was a violation of privacy.

...

When a Six Apart staffer asked Pincus to at least remove Gunty's last name from the posting, Pincus responded by posting the request on his blog -- escalating the issue beyond corporate ethics to a matter of free speech.” (Quote from the Washington Post)

Needless to say, cover ups and censorship are not an appropriate response to the blogosphere unless you really want the situation to escalate and spiral out of control.

Blogs require a different approach to criticism. Tim O'Reilly's lynching in the blogosphere over the web 2.0 trademark controversy provide an excellent example of how something can escalate out of control and still be diffused by the right type of response.

The best way to respond is with an honest and thoughtful (not defensive) comment back to the blogger on her blog along with an entry on your blog providing your side of the story. The response needs to come directly from the person (not someone on his staff). In order for this approach to work, the responder must admit to any mistakes and help people understand what was learned and how the situation evolved. This should be followed by clarifying any errors in the original post and next steps that the person is taking in response.

Approaching bloggers on their own terms through comments and posts on your blog create a conversation where the issues can be discussed and explored in the open.

New Netvibes Update

2006-10-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

Netvibes just released a new update (code named Cinnamon) with new features, new modules, and a better user interface.

I have been using Netvibes for a couple of months, and I use it constantly. I tried more RSS readers than I can count, and I hated all of them. Prior to Netvibes, I could not find any RSS readers that worked better than than the RSS functionality built into Firefox. The beauty of Netvibes is that they manage to cram a bunch of feeds on the screen, but organize it in a way that never seems overwhelming or cluttered. I can see all of the posts from more than a dozen blogs without scrolling, mouse-overs give me the first couple of sentences, and I can chose to read any post within the Netvibes interface or natively as a new tab in Firefox. Almost everything is configurable; I can have multiple tabs; and the content is easily organized by dragging and dropping.

Netvibes has also integrated a number of very useful modules. Michael Arrington uses it daily for one stop access to a variety of web services. I can see my unread Gmail messages, my delicious bookmarks (including sort by tags), the front page stories on Digg, the weather and more from a single page.

The best part is that I rarely have to wait on anything. Quick, configurable, intuitive, and easy to use ... everything I want in a web app.

Women take Yahoo Hack Day by Storm

2006-10-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

Yahoo Hack day is a geeky weekend of coding competitions held at the Yahoo campus. This year the winner was a team of women who created a mobile blogging solution. According to Michael Arrington (one of the judges for the event):

“The winning project, called Blogging In Motion, combined a camera, a handbag, a pedometer and the Flickr API to create a device that takes a picture after every few steps and then automatically blogs those pictures.” (Quote from TechCrunch).

Web 2.0 Exit Strategies

2006-09-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

Marco Rosella has an interesting idea about how companies can promote their exit strategies at the upcoming Web 2.0 Conference ... (Note – this is meant to be humorous):

“The success of a new service, if really demonstrated itself different from all the others, however could decree the end: where there’s a lack of Venture Capitals and/or the ads are to cover the band costs, naturally proportional to the traffic, the only reason of survival remains the sell to a big company.

...

As we know by now, Web 2.0 web application’s interfaces have their peculiar style defined by reflections, fades, drop-shadows, strong colors, rounded corners and star badges, these standing out in the header of every homepage.

Badges are the key element of this kind of design, being the first to flash user eyes, and so extremely important for the right communication of a message with fundamental importance.

Below you’ll find some example badges, arranged in four incremental levels, each one related to a different business model.” (Quote from Central Scrutinizer)

This is a humorous way to portray the current environment; however, it highlights a serious issue facing web 2.0 companies. With so many new web 2.0 companies, it becomes difficult to stand out in the crowd. Not all of them are looking to rise above the crowd in order to exit the business, but even getting mindshare with users can be difficult. Those that succeed in growing a large user base tend to do so virally, YouTube / MySpace / del.icio.us / etc., which is difficult to predict. Web 2.0 companies will need to focus on finding ways to get attention. Maybe the acquire me badges are not such a bad idea :-)

Is MySpace worth $10 - 20 BILLION?

2006-09-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

Doubtful.

According to RBC Capital analyst Jordan Rohan, it might be possible. “Rohan said MySpace could demonstrate a value of between $US10 billion and $US20 billion within a few years. Acknowledging he was making an 'audacious claim' he justified the forecast on the basis of MySpace's 'raw, unprecedented user/usage growth.'” (Quote from Sydney Morning Herald).

This is bubble talk. Paul Kedroski thinks that “putting up oversized estimates of a company's value is mostly a marketing move for a financial analyst, not an exercise in company valuation. The number doesn't matter; it is simply a piece of red meat to attact the media pack.” (Quote from Infectious Greed).

Occassionally analysts get caught up in the excitement of the next new thing to make wild predictions about technology (aka the hockey stick projection). We saw way too many of these predictions during the dot-com bubble. Looking back at projections made in 1999 and early 2000, how many predicted that [insert name now defunct company here] was in a position to take over the world in just a few short years?

In reality, technologies rarely, if ever, continue meteoric rises, and MySpace is no different. Yes, MySpace has had tremendous growth. Yes, they are one of the most frequently visited sites on the Internet. However, two things are likely to prevent MySpace from hockey stick growth:

First, young people are fickle when it comes to trends. MySpace is the hottest social networking site right now, but it may not be as hot in a few years. The younger participants may find another site more interesting as they become old enough to participate, or another company may target the below 14 crowd and keep them as they grow older.
Second, growth will stabilize as the market gets saturated. A new group of 14 year-olds become old enough to use the site every year; however, at the same time, others will drop off as they outgrow it or move on to other interests.

I am not saying that MySpace will crash and burn anytime in the near future. I suspect that it will continue growing at a *reasonable* rate (just not at an exponential rate).

Class Action Lawsuit Against AOL for Privacy Violations

2006-09-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

In classic AOL fashion, when receiving complaints about privacy concerns related to the release of search results for 600,000 customers, AOL responded by offering them a free month of AOL ... a service that is already free. Interesting.

Here are the details from John Paczkowski at SiliconValley.com:

Filed Friday, the suit accuses AOL of violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, of fraudulent and deceptive business practices, and beyond that of a peerless ineptitude in its handling of the matter. "As of the date of this complaint it is the understanding of plaintiffs and their counsel that AOL has not done anything to help the members whose personal sensitive and confidential records were released to the public by AOL," the complaint alleges. "AOL members who sought assistance from AOL about the disclosure of the Member Search Data were not offered any assistance. AOL's only response, if any, was to offer the victimized member a free month of AOL service, a service which AOL is now offering for free." (Quote from SiliconValley.com)

As we move more and more of our lives online, we need to spend more time thinking about privacy and security concerns, especially when we start to centralize our searching, email, calendars, blogs, chat, etc. with a single provider (AOL, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) At the minimum, people need to better understand the risks of what can happen when our private information is made public.

New Sponsorship Model for Blogs / Websites

2006-09-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

TechMeme just released their new sponsorship model, and their approach is bit different from what we have been seeing on most sites. The typical sponsorship model involves either Google-style AdSense ads or TechCrunch-style sponsorship logos. Both of these are great models; however, I think that the TechMeme model is the best possible model for TechMeme, and it would also work well on other sites.

For anyone not already familiar with TechMeme, it “is an entirely automated web service that looks at what bloggers are talking about, and linking to, and decides what is news based on that analysis.” (Quote from TechCrunch). The sponsors have a place on the sidebar (clearly labeled as the sponsorship section) where the sponsoring company's most recent blog entry is displayed along with their logo. In other words, to refresh their ad on TechMeme, the company simply needs to add a blog entry, and the new link will propagate to TechMeme via an RSS feed.

I love this model. I almost never click on banner ads or sponsorship logos; however, if I see an interesting blog entry from one of the TechMeme sponsors, I would certainly click on it. I suspect that this model will drive more people to click through the ad, thus driving more traffic from TechMeme to the sponsor than a traditional ad might be expected to generate. The end result is that these type of ads will have more value for the sponsoring companies and TechMeme just might be able to charge more for these ads in comparison to a traditional ad.

Jeff Jarvis, an expert in online advertising, says:

“I like it. It’s relevant; it’s human and not automated; it’s appropriate to the form. And it pays. ... I think this works and I’ll be eager to hear the sponsors’ experience. I’d love to have a such a unit here.” (Quote from Buzz Machine).

I will be curious to see how others follow this example or modify it to create similar ads on other sites.

Using Wikis for Corporate Collaboration

2006-09-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

I just posted an entry on my Intel Trends in Web 2.0 blog about how “Wikis can be a great collaboration tool for use internally within the corporate environment or externally for use with customers or clients.”

If you want to learn more benefits of using wikis and hear about how I have been recently using wikis for collaboration, please visit my Intel Trends in Web 2.0 blog.

Open Culture Blog Feed Issues

2006-09-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

The Blogger Beta seems to be doing something a bit strange with my feeds causing problems in some feed readers. I suggest using my Feedburner feed instead of the default Blogger feeds. I will attempt to keep it stable through any additional Blogger Beta feed issues.

Viral Goofiness

2006-09-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

These Dance Sister Dance videos are popping up all over the place, so I just had to do one of my own.

One of my personal favorites is the video with Scoble and Arrington.

Creative Uses for Flickr MiniCards

2006-09-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to easily hand out a few Flickr images? Moo has a service that prints your Flickr pictures on one side of a 28mm x 70mm card (about half the size of a standard business card) and contact information or any other text on the other side. As an added bonus to Flickr Pro users, you can get a free 10 pack of cards if you are one of the first 10,000 people to request a set. Others can order the 100 pack for $19.99.

I found out about this service on TechCrunch where many people leaving comments were getting a bit too hung up on whether or not people would use them as business cards. I tend to agree with some of the comments. Most professionals would not use these as business cards with the exception of a few artistic professions; however, looking outside of the business card box, I can think of several creative ways to use these cards.

Something cool and unusual to use in a more casual setting with friends and family.
Commemorative items for weddings, birthday parties, or some other event with pictures on one side and event details on the other.
Teenagers and college students using cards to share their email address, IM, cell number, and maybe a MySpace / Friendster account with new friends.
Invitations to an event.

Moo says:

“...business cards are boring.

In an ambitious reinvention, that will address both form and function, MOO will take the business card back to its roots as a sophisticated social tool for non-business use and will introduce a new, advanced generation of calling card for the networked, mobile and social young communities of today. If you’re reading this, that’s you.” (Quote from Moo.com)

Informal Portland BarCamp Meetup Scheduled for Sept. 28

2006-09-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

Our first informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled!

When: September 28
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00 pm
Where: Downtown Portland (exact location TBD)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required): http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortlandMeetups

You may also want to join our Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/barcampportland) to receive email announcements about any last minute changes (including location), future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications.

The meetup on September 28 will be very informal. We'll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

Art of Community

2006-09-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

I have been talking recently at conferences (OSCON and FooCamp) about the Art of Community as part of a project that Danese Cooper and I are doing for O'Reilly Media. We are in the process of writing a book on the Art of Community, which will start as a wiki with plans to write an initial first draft of the chapters, post them to the wiki, and allow the community to be our editors / collaborators on the project. We also plan to record a bunch of podcasts to include on the wiki and use as vignettes in the text of the book. We are still in the process of writing the chapter drafts, so the wiki is not yet public; however, we are looking for input and ideas.

If you have something interesting to say about community and would like to talk to us, please contact me: dawn at dawnfoster dot com.

Web 2.0 Company Pricing

2006-09-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

Cartoon from Geek and Poke (found via Michael Arrington's CrunchNotes blog).

MySpace is #1 ... on the Worst Web Sites List

2006-09-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

PC World just rated the 25 worst web sites with several classic oldies, like BonziBuddy, Rentmychest.com, and The Dancing Baby, making the list along with several modern sites including Hotmail and Microsoft Windows Update.

I was a bit surprised to see MySpace at the top of the list, but the MySpace site has its share of problems. I previously blogged about how MySpace could make better use of web 2.0 technologies and better leverage the MySpace community to improve their online help functions, but PC World has some different concerns.

PC World had several concerns about MySpace. First, the use of MySpace by online predators fuels politicians who can leverage parental fears about the Internet to win votes and promote other actions that impact our use of the Internet (net neutrality, VoIP wiretapping, etc.) Second, PC World suggests that many MySpace pages “look like a teenager's bedroom after a tornado--a swirl of clashing backgrounds, boxes stacked inside other boxes, massive photos, and sonic disturbance” in addition to hogging your CPU and being a haven for spyware. Third, MySpace could take more actions to protect minors.

I'm not sure that these are really fair concerns. First, if the politicians didn't have MySpace to fuel parental concerns to get more votes, there are plenty of other sites they could use as the poster child for why they should regulate more of the Internet. Second, of course it looks like a teenager's bedroom. These are teenagers, and MySpace is the online equivalent of their bedroom. It is their online haven complete with the typical mess and hazards akin to finding a slice of leftover pizza forgotten under the bed. The best that parents can do to alleviate their fears with online (and offline) concerns is to educate their children and give them the guidance and support to help them make the right decisions.

PC World wraps up their analysis with this:

“Is MySpace totally bad? Not at all. Are we old farts? Yeah, probably. But the Web's most popular site needs a serious security reboot. And probably a makeover. Until then, MySpace won't ever be OurSpace.” (Quote from PC World)

As an ancient MySpace user (at the age of 35), my page looks clean and tidy (like my house), and yes, I get annoyed by the busy pages that you can barely read due to clashing backgrounds combined with poor text color choices playing music I would never choose to listen to while taking forever to load. However, I know that teenagers will be teenagers, and this is their space, too.

Too Addictive

2006-09-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

Thank you very much Marshall Kirkpatrick at TechCrunch. I just saw the post about blufr and had to check it out. I am now addicted.

Blufr is an online quiz with True / False answers (Way! or No Way!), but it keeps a point tally that goes up or down based on your responses. Careful, it is addictive.

LonelyGirl15 Identified

2006-09-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

There has been quite a controversy brewing in the viral world of YouTube recently. I won't bother to rehash the summary, since Danah Boyd did a fantastic job of outlining the events leading up to the discovery that LonelyGirl15 was the creation of a group of filmmakers, and not a lonely, young teenager making videos in her bedroom.

Today, Silicon Valley Watcher has identified LonelyGirl15 as Jessica Rose, a 19-year old New Zealand actress.

LonelyGirl15:

Jessica Rose:

I think we have a match!

Thanks to Google cache, unless you were dropped into the online world out of thin air, your past can never be completely erased. A little scary, perhaps, but it reminds us to be a little cautious of how much we share online knowing that someone, somewhere, can unearth our online past.