Lately I've been noticing a number of people criticising the performance of the latest versions of Firefox, since 1.5. With IE7 coming very soon, with many of the features that Firefox has (tabs, RSS integration, etc), now is not a good time for Firefox to lose developer support. I don't mean to sound alarmist, but remember when Netscape got overtaken by IE circa 1997? From an article I wrote a couple of years ago in Digital Web Magazine:
"By 1997 Microsoft had finally caught up with and indeed overtaken Netscape in browser technology. While Netscape was the first to release its 4.0 browser, in June 1997, Microsoft soon trumped it with the release of IE 4.0 in October that year. IE 4.0 was widely seen as being a superior product—for example, IE’s stylesheet support was better than Navigator’s."
Well the signs are beginning to show that Microsoft may do it again - nearly 10 years later - and trump the technical leader in the browser wars. The ball is in Firefox's court though and it's by no means too late to stop the rot. Firefox desparately needs to keep the upper hand in browser innovation and performance.
One of Memeorandum's new competitors, Megite, is testing out a Personalized version of their product. You will be able to upload your OPML file and a personalized news cluster will be created for you, based on the RSS feeds you already track. Here's the demo page for my Personalized Megite.
In many ways, this is the next evolutionary step for RSS Aggregators. We all know by now that tracking hundreds of RSS feeds in an Aggregator like Bloglines or Rojo is very time-consuming and tiring. Having an automated filter for your RSS Aggregator is the holy grail for such services - because none have done it successfully so far.
btw I know Alex Barnett doesn't like the term 'Meme Tracker' - he prefers News Tracker. But I like Pete Cashmore's defence of the term Meme Tracker - it's not quite 'news' either and the term actually honors Memeorandum, the first and still the best such service.
Now I've heard that a number of the Meme Tracker services I reviewed last week are planning personalized versions, but Megite is the first I know to actually have developed one. If others have built one, then please let me know! Megite's is still pre-beta and only myself and a few others are currently testing it, but so far I have to say it's looking promising. Here's a screenshot of my personalized Megite.
The developer Matthew Chen says the clustering of Personalized Megite is determined by a combination of relevance, post popularity, blog authority and freshness. I don't think I'm giving anything away there - the secret sauce is of course how those elements are combined and mixed! He says they've been experimenting with different factors and formulas to try and get the best results. Indeed in my testing, I've noticed a gradual improvement as Matthew continues to tweak the product.
Also I should point out that it's not restricted to feeds in my OPML file - some external feeds get pulled in too, provided they are 'relevant'. So there's a lot of potential for discovery of new feeds, outside your initial OPML file.
Personalized Megite has got a long way to go, but there are signs it's coming together and I'm looking forward to see how this personalized news clustering develops. Plus I'd love to test out any other service that is doing this. I really do think this will have the traditional RSS Aggregators sitting up and taking notice. I don't know about others, but I'm struggling to keep up with my 150-odd RSS feeds on a daily basis. I desparately need a good way to filter them.
Update: Over on Robert Scoble's blog, Greg Linden reports that Findory does something similar: "Go to Findory.com, click the Favorites link in the upper right corner, then import your OPML. What you get is a personalized selection of top stories from your favorite feeds." The one difference is that Findory doesn't do any clustering of stories. That would be a great feature (hint hint Greg!).
I've joined the Media 2.0 Workgroup, which isn't associated with the Web 2.0 Workgroup which I co-founded - but was I believe inspired by it. I see the two workgroups as very complementary and so I'm trying to get the two groups to connect. On a personal level, the intersection of Web technologies and Media is what I'm all about this year - as evidenced by my current tagline on Read/WriteWeb. So I'm excited to make more connections and really try and move things forward in the industry.
Michael Bayler is the person behind the Media Workgroup and I've already had a great chat with him about it. Umair Haque, whose media economics work I've been hugely impressed with, is also a member. Plus my old blog buddy Noah Brier is involved.
Check out this recent podcast between Michael Bayler and Umair Haque, which gets into the nitty gritty of new media and the Web technology which is driving it. Btw I'm not crazy about the name "media 2.0". I'd prefer to just call it 'Web Media', 'Internet Media', or something like that. However it doesn't distract from what are very real concepts and a lot of new value being built in the media world today, using Web technologies. Michael, Umair and Noah are all extremely smart people, so I'm looking forward to working with them. Here's more from Michael about the initiative:
"We’re planning a soft public launch on March 2nd 2006 at the “Understanding Media 2.0″ event we’re co-hosting with Microsoft’s UK media team in London."
More soon … M2WG membership will be by invitation, please get in touch if you’re interested.
If you're interested in being part of the Media workgroup, send me an email or contact Michael directly. And if you're a Web/Media hybrid like me, well perhaps apply to be a member of both the Web and Media workgroups! They are both invitation only right now, I should point out. But if you're a high quality blogger who has built up a decent reputation in your niche, then you certainly stand a good chance.
Came across two great articles today that nicely summarize recent web development and design trends.
Marc Hedlund from O'Reilly wrote a post entitled Web Development 2.0. Despite the YA2.0N title (Yet Another 2.0 Name, pronounced "YAWN"), the article is a useful overview of software development practices that Marc has been seeing in the current era of Web startups.
This extract is quite ironic -- and Marc agrees with me:
"Ship timestamps, not versions: Gone are the days of 1.0, 1.1, and 1.3.17b6. They have been replaced by the '20060210-1808:32 push'. For nearly all of these companies, a version number above 1.0 just isn't meaningful any more. If you are making revisions to your site and pushing them live, then doing it again a half hour later, what does a version number really mean?"
Another great post is The Agile Web Design Manifesto, by Emily Chang and Max Kiesler of Ideacodes. They have come up with some core principles for this:
- Design the system not the surface
- Design as evolutionary and user-driven
- There is no page, only pathways
- Rapid and iterative over final
- Simplicity over complexity
- Collaborative and open design
The first and third principles - 'Design the system not the surface' and 'There is no page, only pathways' - are especially relevant to me right now. I'm currently writing a chapter about my Design for Data theory, in the O'Reilly book I'm co-writing with Josh Porter, and it's very much about going beyond the Page metaphor on the Web. More on that soon, because I have a feeling I'm going to need feedback on this chapter from my blog readers...
-
Edgeio Edges Toward Launch (Keith, Mike and team are just about ready to eat eBay's
lunch...)
- Fox getting set to monetize MySpace (another excellent analysis by Umair..."you're about to see a very expensive attempt at building edge competencies unfold (or implode) in real time.")
- Bill Grosso: "Microsoft is focused on changing the game entirely" (A bigco doing it right? Usually people say it's Google changing the game, so this is an interesting post...)
- GMail code hints at coming domain feature (intriguing... using Gmail as an Enterprise class email system - that would change the game!)
- New MSN boss John Nicol (who confirms they're not changing the name to MSN Media Network)
- niblette's Theory of Product Innovation (usability, utility and desirability are key...)
- Current state-of-the-art web design (Simple layout and using things sparingly -- is big)
- A Read/Write educator quits his job (I've been reading Will's writing over the past year or so... the education system needs more like him)
- anne 2.0: Churning and Burning (some big ideas in this piece... and great links, about feed grazing and similar ideas)
- How Feed Grazing fits into Web 3.0 (nice graphic and ideas... but please please please don't call it 3.0)
- Mobile Browsers Still Closed for Business ("...most experts agree that the software remains too limited and unpredictable for business use")
Flickr pics by Jeremy Zawodny
Martijn van Osch did an experiment with digg, in which he submitted a story about a company that made a girl undress in the shopping window of its store in Copenhagen.
In his post he linked to a short movie available of the girl undressing and the people gathering to get a glimpse of her. He thought it would be perfect for digg. Says Martijn:
"Entertainment and sex in one message. Great! The technology-element is the fact that the girl is only a projection on a see-through screen. Sex, check. Entertainment, check. Technology, check."
The story, entitled Girl undresses in 3D, got well over 800 diggs and apparently Martijn got around 11,000 visits to his site as a result. Despite this page views bounty, Martijn thinks the results of his experiment show worrying signs for the future of media:
"The fact that 'Girl undresses in 3D' can become the number one top story on a website which is referred to as an example of future media models, scares me."
My opinion? Well this really speaks more about digg's current target audience than the actual digg system. But in fairness you only need to look at the raging success of new Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag, to see that even us older geeks are prone to getting giddy on sensationalism.
Of course the same thing happens in 'old media' - e.g. tabloids and indeed most mainstream news publications serve up a steady fare of sensationalism. It sells and that's the ugly truth. In the new media world, it's just as true. Not just for digg, but the blogosphere - as Russell Beattie summed up nicely a couple of weeks ago:
Windows Live Ideas is a good place to bookmark (you know, that thing you used to do in the 90's with web pages when you wanted to regularly check for updates...). It outlines all of Microsoft's products on the Live platform, most of which are in beta currently.
Given the brand confusion about MSN and Live recently, here is a good definition of Windows Live:
"What is Windows Live?
Your online world gets better when everything works simply and effortlessly together. That's the basic idea behind Windows Live. So the things you care about - your friends, the latest information, your e-mails, powerful search, your PC files, everything – comes together in one place. This is a brand new Internet experience designed to put you in control. And this is just the beginning – you'll see many more new services in the coming months."
Also check out Marc Canter's view of Windows Live. He's excited about a possible open standards version of Hailstorm, which I commented on in my ZDNet blog.
I get a lot of product
pitches by email every day, but few of them are really compelling enough to grab my
attention. But this one did, perhaps because it is a product that promises a much-needed
media tracking solution. In this case, podcasting statistics (and later video-blogging).
From the SONR homepage:
"SONR (Sonar) is a media tracking tool for content providers. Specifically geared towards podcasters (and later, publishers of video content), SONR's goal is to provide detailed information on how listeners interact with your content. Currently, most podcasters only know when a listener has downloaded their content, but with SONR's media player, providers can now track how much of their podcast was listened to and what the user did while listening.
The SONR media player also gives listeners a playlist of your content so they can easily find other work you've published. There is also the ability to add flags to your podcasts so that users can immediately jump to sections of your file that they find most interests in, a table of contents of sorts for your podcast."
[emphasis mine]
This is something that has been needed in podcasting for a long time - ways to put metadata into your podcast AND track usage. I know Marc Canter for one is going to be very pleased about that!
The only catch is that users need to listen to your podcast on the SONR app. But you can embed your podcast file in your webpage, so that it opens using the app. The process is explained on the About page:
Sounds very promising! Future plans include video stats, "customizable media players" and a desktop client.
Feedburner, inaugural winner of the R/WW Best Web LittleCo award in 2004 (current holder is 37Signals) has just released the final stage of their FeedFlare rollout. FeedFlare is a set of web services plug-ins. I wrote about it in December when they released stage 1 and at the time I called it "interactive RSS".
In a nutshell, FeedFlare enables publishers to add a bit of 'social context' to their feed, with things like 'Email this', Technorati data, del.icio.us tags and more.
With the release of the API, Feedburner has invited external developers to create any third party plug-in to the Feedburner system. As they put it:
"The really big idea, however, was always the notion of providing a universal framework/API to enable any third-party web service to integrate with a publisher's content, without concern over what content management system the publisher is using."
Feedburner has come up with 101 ideas for external developers. The top 5 I want to see developed are (in no particular order):
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Web 2.0 Buzzword Alert [although I feel I'm pretty safe these days!]
This is Memeorandum'd
One thing I'd like to see added to the FeedFlare program is a central place where developers can submit their web services. I can see myself adding a number of these services to my feed and site, especially if they're one of the above 5.
Ex-Feedster Scott Johnson has an interesting podcast entitled The Young Engineer’s Guide to Startups. It gives a nice overview of the startup life, especially things like equity and the 'risk to reward ratio'. The latter can be summarized as: the earlier you join a startup, the higher the risk... but also potential reward. Other tips: the less cash you take when you join a startup, the more reward you potentially get; startups are "problem-solving paradises"; delay the valuation if possible. All of which are handy tips if you're thinking about starting a company, or joining a startup.
I learned some new terms too - like "vomiting in the data center" :-)
Interesting to note that Scott has a new startup called Ookles, while his old company Feedster is busy doing damage control over at TechCrunch. Incidentally, Feedster does have a point when they say their business is RSS-based and so it's not quite the same as Technorati - something we went over back in July 2005 when I did my own Alexa charts damnation post. All the same, I think Feedster would help their cause if they promoted some of the business arrangements they have - e.g. didn't they do a deal with AOL in June last year? What's the latest on that and other RSS-based business that Feedster does?
