He confirmed to us that he'll be starting on Monday with the title Senior Open Programs Manager. The move was first reported by Spencer E. Ante this afternoon in BusinessWeek.

David Recordon traveled all over the world advocating open standards apparently in the belief that an open web would ultimately benefit SixApart. By the same logic that more web use and thus more search is good for Google, so too is more blogging and more online activity good for an activity stream-savvy SixApart. But the company's activity stream products don't appear to have flowered as much as its blogging software, and Recordon's international advocacy must have been expensive.

Facebook, on the other hand, may have a clearer interest in fostering increased activity and syndication of that activity data. While some critics, including this site, have noted Facebook's tendency to both horde user data and push definitions of privacy in directions most users are unlikely to approve of, the company has also been an active participant in standards discussions concerning both data syndication and privacy. (We worry that users are being pushed to open up data that developers will only be able to access in aggregate for a high price.)

Recordon has been a key leader in the movement to advance standards-based technology concerning identity and activity. We hope that he will help usher in future developments at Facebook that will both make user data available to as many developers as possible to build on and help users stay in control of their privacy in ways they are comfortable with. That's not going to be an easy job.

Just like when open source advocates take jobs at Microsoft, it's hard to know to what degree they are changing the nature of the company and to what degree they are being co-opted.

Meanwhile back at SixApart, long-time team member Anil Dash has greatly increased his public profile in recent weeks with big posts about what he calls the Push-button Web.

Key questions then seem to be these: can Dash and others at SixApart keep pushing the Open Web agenda by bringing new technologies to market effectively? Can Recordon help the part of Facebook that favors open innovation and not just put a happy face on what departed Forrester marketing analyst Jeremiah Owyang recently predicted would be a future of big social networks "colonizing the rest of the web."

Facebook recently announced that it will be expanding its staff by as much as 50% this year, and blogger Robert Scoble notes that he was told by Google employees today while visiting that they are being recruited hard by Facebook as well.

Photo by Joi Ito.

Dimdim has made a name for itself in the web meeting space by offering a quality product not only for free, but also open source. This has led to organic growth for the company both in market share as well as in VAR integrations, including such commercial products as TimeBridge (which we cover here) and SugarCRM, and OEM branding for internal deployment in a number of big companies.

Widget

Since Dimdim lives in a browser for both the presenter and meeting attendees, inviting someone to a web meeting has always been as easy as copying the meeting URL to your clipboard and sending it to someone via email or instant message, thus being able to give people a destination page with meeting information. To that end, version 5 pro now offers a very functional widget that can be easily embedded on a web site or deployed on any of a number of social networking platforms, including MySpace, Facebook, iGoogle, and Microsoft Live. This widget contains all the information needed for an attendee to see, at a glance, when the meeting is happening (or if it is live already), register or join, and optionally to see a recording or view a transcript if the meeting is over.

Security and Performance

Both free and pro levels benefit from an overhaul of the Dimdim screencasting engine, the part of the client that sends and receives data with the server. According to Steve Chazin, Dimdim founder, the rewrite caused an almost 2x improvement in speed and responsiveness. In addition, Dimdim now supports full SSL connections for pro accounts. This means that web sniffers won't be able to eavesdrop on the session while it is happening.

Synchrolive Co-Browsing

Dimdim diverges quite a bit from its competitors when it comes to displaying web pages during web meetings. Instead of relaying a static image across the conference bridge, the software opens the presenter's URL directly within a controlled window. This means that live web pages, including rich media sites like YouTube, open locally and with no performance or sound penalties, while the presenter retains control of which part of the page is displayed.

Recording, Transcripts and More

Dimdim Pro allows a web meeting to be recorded directly from a button within the live session. Both the recording and the chat transcript are made available immediately after the web meeting is over, based on the organizer's wishes. Pro users can also request for their Dimdim sessions to be customized to show custom logos, messaging and entrance and exit pages if requested. Other features of a pro account include 2-way video support (with more to come), annotation of shared documents, private messages within the meeting and email support if needed.

Update: *Adobe Flash does need to be installed in the browser in order for Dimdim to work.]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dimdim_version_5_speed_security_and_widgets.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dimdim_version_5_speed_security_and_widgets.php News Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:00:00 -0800 Phil Glockner Two year old life-story repository Dandelife seemed to have everything going for it. It launched to praise from some of the biggest tech blogs on the web, it built a wildly loyal user base and its company advisory board was stocked with some of the biggest names in social media. Apparently that hasn't been enough, though. Last night Dandelife founder Kelly Abbott announced that the software will be made open source this year, acknowledging that the company hasn't grown or made money and that he made some important mistakes from the start.

It's an interesting story that other entrepreneurs can learn from and Abbott has done a real service in opening up honestly about what's going on at Dandelife.

The basic idea behind Dandelife is that it's a place to record your life story. You can read and comment on other peoples' stories, navigable by time-line, topic or story teller. A lot of people seem to be using the service as a time-line based social bookmarking account for things they find around the web. The site spoke to a universal human need, the need to be heard. Abbott says all that content did well in search engines, too.

When the company launched in the summer of 2006, it had a knockout team of advisors including the grand poo-bah of web design Jeffrey Zeldman, Userplane founder Mike Jones (who sold his company to AOL for $30-$40 million the next month), Bruce Livingstone (who had just sold iStockPhoto for $50 million months earlier) and a list of other luminaries. It was a great team.

Dandelife won a Webby Award in 2007. It made early moves in favor of data portability, tying to the once-celebrated Attention Trust and later implementing Attention Profile Markup Language (APML), the protocol developed by Data Portability Working Group co-founder Chris Saad.

The company got lots of attention. It got written up on Lifehacker, shared on Waxy Links and hit the front page of Delicious Popular.

What Went Wrong?

What went wrong? Apparently all those great backers didn't give Dandelife very much money. At least that's what's implied by founder Abbott last night when he said the site was terribly engineered because he was unable to afford to hire better developers. What's most important, though, is that Abbott says the site suffered down time and took up all his energy in fixing the back end. He's a marketer by trade, but now admits that he's spent almost no time marketing Dandelife. Feature-creep took over instead, he says.

No matter how hard I wanted the site to be successful, and no matter how good the pitch for Dandelife was, I always feared success. Staying small and non-profitable became an excuse for failure to scale. Why won't this site grow? I kept asking myself. But in my heart of hearts, I knew why. I was pouring all of my effort into product development and in particular finding and fixing bugs, that I had no time and no confidence in marketing the site.

Now Abbott says he's going to scale back on features, throw far more time into marketing the company and, most importantly, open source the code. "I think the Internet could use a thousand Dandelifes," Abbott wrote last night. He hopes that some of those new versions of the site will pay him to consult on implementation. That could work well.

Abbot's initial monetization strategy was to leverage the life stories of users (with their permission) in service of brand advertisers - to act as an advertorial farm-team of sorts. I reviewed the service on TechCrunch when it launched and said I thought that was creepy. The company even tried to trademark the term "lifecasting", and any time spent on that was time wasted, obnoxiously even.

It appears now that Dandelife never scaled up enough to be able to pull that branding plan off. Abbot said last night that it's a great site for "people who want to make a difference in the world." Presumably that's a different group than those who want to share stories about drinking Pepsi at a family picnic or looking great in brand name clothes when they went on a memorable first date.

People who like Dandelife like it a lot. There is probably a lot of room for long form personal story telling on the web. The lesson Abbott seems to offer, though, is that launching such a company, even with an all-star advisory crew, a lot of press and solid search engine pull, just isn't enough. Prioritizing quality engineering from the start and remembering to do marketing after the launch are at least as important.

In Paul's post, he notes that "Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing. And when you agree there's less to say. You could expand on something the author said, but he has probably already explored the most interesting implications."

It's true. When you're agreeing with an author of a blog post, it just seems kind of silly to take the time to write out a comment that simply states: "I agree." So instead, the agreement or the liking of the post stays off-record. This means that even on a more universally well thought of post, the comments will often be the domain of the discordant few. This doesn't give a fair representation of the thoughts and reactions of the readers and, therefore, doesn't provide any true insight into the way the issue is perceived. It could be that 90% of the readers think the author is correct in their opinion, but only the 10%  who feel differently have made their voices heard.

Additionally, as those of you who are also bloggers know, it can be disheartening for authors to read through blog comments to only find comments consisting of "well, actually...," "this is old news," and the equivalent of "that's so lame!" filling up the commentary section. Perhaps the post was lame, but then again, it could be that those who enjoyed it haven't taken time to respond.

Commentary and opinions don't have to be pigeon-holed as being in agreement or disagreement, though. Yes, some opinions could be in favor of or against the post, but others could be undecided, confused, or neutral. Unfortunately, it seems that readers with those sorts opinions just move on, not bothering to post anything anywhere until they happen across a blog that sufficiently riles them up over an issue.

Where the Positive Reactions Are

Maybe it's just human nature to only be inspired to opine when you're vehemently against something.

So for generating positive reactions, a service like FriendFeed (sorry in advance to those of you who are sick of the hype) fills a void. In FriendFeed, a simple click allows you to "like" a blog post. You don't have to comment. You aren't whisked away off-site like you are when clicking a Digg button. It's just one click in your stream of content. You see a smiley face. The blog author sees a smiley face. It's nice.

In fact, in this respect, FriendFeed is the new Digg. Yes, I said it.

Whereas at one time, digging a post meant "this is interesting, I enjoyed it," these days, digging is a serious business. Writing for Digg, the logistics of getting to the front page, befriending the elite diggers, the potential for buries...it has all made Digg an interesting and important ecosystem to generate traffic and interest for a web site, but soon, it will no longer the best way to see the true popularity of post. Instead, highly dugg stories are more like a combination of various forces, metrics, timing, and luck. 

Instead, it's the smiley faces of FriendFeed that will be the metric of the future for judging popularity of a blog post. Especially since the FriendFeed API has introduced a way for a Wordpress/FriendFeed plugin to exist. All we need now is a universal plugin that's tweaked so as to let you "like" the post on FriendFeed while still on the blog's web site itself. Then we'll really be in business.

Example of the FriendFeed plugin in action

For what it's worth, the plugin also addresses earlier concerns that the conversation has left the blogosphere. And with blog commenting system, Disqus, being able to integrate back into FriendFeed, it all comes full circle. But that's another post.

More Difficult - Continuing the Conversation via Blog Comments

While FriendFeed makes it easy for people to mark their enjoyment of a blog post, having people comment on the blog with something useful, constructive, or positive is far more difficult.

Referring back the Geek News post, the author writes, "There are loosely 3 groups in increasing order of prevalence: those that want to add something to the conversation (constructors), those that have a strong contrary opinion (objectors) and those that just want attention (detractors)."

It's easy to get detractors. Just throw up an inflammatory post, make some wild claim, or post something that's knowingly inaccurate. Comments ensue.

Objectors aren't so bad, either. They sit on the other side of the fence and offer a differing viewpoint. Sometimes, an objector can also be a constructor and add to the post. I think of this example, where our "Comment of the Day" winner, Jerome, was so convinced about Google Docs' brilliance that he took the time to give numerous examples of what the service can do, which led to a discovery of a feature that many of us were unaware of: GoogleLookUp. So objectors can definitely add to the blog.

Other times, the objectors fall somewhere else on the "Paul Graham Scale of Disagreement," desperate to share their opinion, but going about it in a less convincing way (see DH3 and below). While sometimes the name-calling (DH0) can be humorous (yes, I'm guilty of have voted up the occasional hilarious Digg comment), more often than not it's a detractor to the conversation.

So how can you entice the elusive constructor to add their thoughts to a blog post? To get this sort of blog commenter, you have to first attract a quality readership to your site. This is more difficult. Articles have to well-researched, well-written, intelligent, and insightful. For a blog to provide regular posts of high quality is difficult, but it can be done. And once you have quality readers - those who thoughtfully read the article, think about what they want to say, and then compose their thoughts in a way that creates a valuable addition to the original post - you have a conversation of merit and something worth reading.

And shouldn't that be the true goal of blogging? Intelligent conversation? As a blogger, the focus should be on starting that conversation; for readers, it should be adding to it. Blogger and reader don't always have to agree with each other, but being able to at least constructively debate the issue brings something to the table that straightforward reporting does not.

In this age of information overload, constructive conversations will win out in the long run. You'll find the best conversations through your network of friends - shared in Google Reader, posted on FriendFeed, or maybe even the old-fashioned way (email!). As you narrow your focus to this unique and personal slice of the web, you'll remember why you love blog reading in the first place - not to get Google Reader to stop saying "1000+" - but to join a conversation, add value to a discussion, find like-minded people, debate an issue, learn something new, and maybe even better understand yourself and the world. 

For those of you who don't know, the Chumby Touchscreen Internet gadget is a popular...and darned cute...gadget that can be customized with various channels that feature widgets, videos, feeds, games, and more.

To use your Chumby, you plug it in and configure it to work with your Wi-Fi network. Once that's done, you log on to Chumby.com and customize yours with the widgets of your choosing.

These widgets can be anything - web clips, RSS feeds, games, videos, Tweets, news, weather, a clock, photos, or a million other things. Some of the widgets come from deals made with content providers, like the widgets available from CBS, MTV Networks, MySpace, The Weather Channel Interactive, AOL's SHOUTcast and Scripps Networks.

The Chumby also has speakers, so you can hook up the Chumby to your iPod via the USB connector in the back and play your iTunes playlists with it.

Made for Hackers

However, what's really great about the Chumby is that the device is designed for customization. Want to hack, mod, extend, or improve Chumby? Have at it!

The Chumby lets you upgrade your Chumby in four different ways: developers customize the software, build Flash widgets, or even hack the hardware. Arts-and-crafts types can also mess around with the Chumby in their own way, decorating it or putting in a case of their own design.

Software: The Chumby is a Linux-based, open-source platform which means developers can do nearly anything with it. A quick glance on the Chumby forum shows posts about Python & Ruby for Chumby, Java for Chumby, Perl for Chumby, MTASC for Chumby, and much more.

Widgets: For Flash animators, the Chumby can be a showcase for your talents. Artists can upload widgets to the Chumby site and share them with the community so others can add them to their own Chumbys. These widgets are the bread-and-butter of Chumby, bringing most of the cool stuff like news feeds, videos, games, viewers, utilities, and other fun and/or useful tools to the device.

Hardware: The Chumby is made for tinkerers. You can open up the Chumby, take it apart, upgrade it, add to it, and mod it. They even tell you how and provide extensive documentation.

Crafts: You don't have to be a computer nerd to enjoy modding your Chumby, though. Even artistic types can enjoy making Chumby their own. The Chumby is designed so that the core electronics can be easily removed from its casing, letting you create your own look for Chumby without having to write code. See?

Modded Chumby on Chumby's flickr Group

You can even embed a Chumby gadget on your own web site to show people what your Chumby looks like:

Virtual Chumby

Now, don't you want one?

Author's Note: I have a Chumby and I love it.

Xoopit is aimed at the widespread practice of sharing media like photos, vidoes and PDFs by email. If anyone but the big webmail vendors is going to launch an "inbox 2.0" type product, though, there's going to have to be a better API that lets me access content without giving up my password.

Xoopit doesn't offer a Flash player to listen to music or view PDFs in your inbox, you still have to download those locally and consume them with other applications. (See PDFmenot.com, by the way.) The service may be appealing to more mainstream users who communicate almost entirely through email. Will those users give up the usernames and password to their email accounts, though?

If you'd like to try it out yourself, you can access a beta account through this link. We've written about email password horror stories here before and RWW does take any responsibility for anything that happens if you give a third party yours.

We Need Webmail Content APIs

Gmail released a Gmail Contacts API this month. That's a great way to see who among your friends uses a new application you're using. It does not allow access to the content of your emails, however. All the webmail vendors, most prominently Yahoo!, are working on creating an "Inbox 2.0" experience for users - moving beyond simple one-off messaging and offering an Attention Data driven, media savvy communication hub.

Should users demand more portability, though, for the actual content of our email? Secure portability of content into the hands of 3rd parties seems like a vital step in enabling a whole ecosystem of innovation. Otherwise instead of best practices in user authentication, we get stuck with virtual home decorators unable to anything for us unless we give them a copy of our house keys. At least the people in an analogy like that would be licensed and bonded. Let some brand new web app startup into my email account, with my username and password? No thanks.

Google's pranks each year are probably the most anticipated on the web. Last year, they hit users with two: Sewage-based home WiFi, and printed Gmail. Other classics from the Google prank archive include: the Google Mentalplex, Google Gulp, Google's jobs on the moon, Google PigeonRank, and Google Romance.

Being the tricksters they are, Google also sometimes makes some extaordinary real announcements on April 1, like in 2004 when it used a rather tongue-in-cheek press release to announce Gmail. Google also inspires others to create Google-centric pranks, such as Google Maps Rooms from Google Blogoscoped in 2006.

2. Ebay

Auction site eBay is another great place to trawl for April Fools jokes. Some intrepid auctioneer usually tries to pull a prank each year, perhaps most famously that distinction fell to prop-maker Dan Baines. In 2006 he caused quite a stir when he put up for sale what was purported to be the body of a dead "fairy" on the site. It took him days to respond to all the email he got as a result. ""I've had all sorts of comments including people who say they've seen exactly the same things and one person who told me to return the remains to the grave site as soon as possible or face the consequences," he told the BBC.

Sometimes people play off of other pranks on eBay as well. In 2005, one could find invites to Google's fictitious "Gulp" program being auctioned off on the site.

3. ThinkGeek

Geek-friendly shopping site ThinkGeek sometimes gets in on the Apirl Fools Day act by putting up all sorts of fanciful objects for sale. Last year, for example, they offered the Wii Helmet and inhalable caffeine sticks.

4. Wikipedia

While the validity of Wikipedia for serious research is in doubt already, don't be surprised if everyone's favorite crowd-sourced encyclopedia site gets just a tad be more unreliable tomorrow. In 2005, for example, the site announced that it had been taken over by Encyclopedia Britannica. The article, now labeled a hoax, claimed that the new encyclopedia would cost £99.97/page to edit.

5. NASA

The American space organization has been pulling a prank on its "Astronomy Picture of the Day site on April 1 for many years. Some of the best include last year's space Quidditch match, 2003's Ollie the Owl constellation, and 1998's lunar field goal. Our favorite, though, is 2005's hilarious Water on Mars -- pictured below.

6. Facebook

Though a newcomer to the fraternity of April Fools prankers, Valley-darling Facebook got in on the act last year with some interesting stuff delivered to users via the News Feed. They announced their new "LivePoke!" feature, in which users could pay to have their friends literally poked by a real person. They sent out humorous relationship updates, such as, "Harry and Voldemort have set their relationship status to 'Mortal Enemies.'" And existential status updates like, "You are on Facebook, reading your News Feed." They even announced, much to the chagrin of sports fans everywhere, that Ohio State and Florida -- who were set to meet in the 2007 NCAA championship basketball game -- had mututally agreed upon a tie.

7. Blizzard

Blizzard entertainment, makers of the ultra-popular "World of Warcraft" games, likes to have a little fun with its fans on April Fools Day. In 2006, for example, they announced the creation of BurgerCraft, a chain of theme restaurants based on their games. "At BurgerCraft, players will have a chance to truly taste the flavor of Blizzard's games and savor traditional dishes from all the company’s popular game universes," the company wrote in a bogus press release that included the names of some of the dishes that would be served at the restaurants, such as, Red Dragon Wings, Zealot Fries, and the Frost Shock Smoothie.

Last year, Blizzard got in on the act again by announcing the World of Warcraft tinfoil hat which was of course the "logical result of [a] profound insight, combining tinfoil's powerful mental shielding properties with the excellent counter-hexing effect of troll tears and the outstanding mind-focus powers of one of Azeroth's most precious gems."

8. HowStuffWorks

Beginning in 2006 HowStuffWorks has begun to put up a fake article on the first of April each year. So far, they've been must-reads. In 2006 it was animated tattoos, and last year they brought us cell phoe implants.

9. Craigslist

Though not a guaranteed place to seek out an official prank every year, the one that Craigslist pulled in 2002 was just too good not to mention. Known for its simple, and ad-free design, Craigslist has grown to be the largest classifieds sites in the US serving 27 million unique users monthly. In 2002, those users got quite a shock when founder Craig Newmark announced to its visitors that the site would start running banner ads.

"Craigslist represents virgin territory for banner ad placement," the site said on a page that even included a form for purchasing ads. However, even without the guarantee of an official prank, like eBay, expect Craigslist to be flooded with prank adverts tomorrow.

10. Newspapers

Newspaper, especially those in Britain, love to publish fake stories on April 1. Ever since the 1977 seven-page supplement published in the Guardian detailing life on the fictional island of San Serriffe, newspapers and magazines have been bonkers for April Fools Day hoaxes.

Just last year there was CNet's April 1 homepage, which sported some fanciful stories including the Dalai Lama being exiled to Second Life and a preview of a new Wii knitting game. There was the grow-your-own Viagra craze in the Independent, Tony Blair heading to the stage via the Observer, and the Register's fake story on Google and Apple joining forces to make a phone.

Conclusion

Of course, the web isn't the web isn't the only place you might be fooled. Companies have a long history of spending real money to put out fake news on April 1st. In 1998, for example, Burger King took out a a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the "left handed Whopper" -- a new version of their famous burger specifically made for lefties. In 1996, Taco Bell announced that it had purchased the famed US historical landmark, "The Liberty Bell," and was renaming it -- you guessed it -- "The Taco Liberty Bell." So keep your eyes peeled, and remember to take everything you read tomorrow with a large helping of salt.

Even we're not immune. Late last year we reported that CoRank and Menéame had merged before realizing a tad too late that it was actually a prank for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which is sort of a Latin American and Spanish equivalent of April Fools Day.

Be sure to check out April Fool's Day on the Web which has been attempting to catalog every web-based April Fool's Day gag since 2004. ]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_places_to_get_fooled_on_april_1.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_places_to_get_fooled_on_april_1.php Trends Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:34:35 -0800 Josh Catone The founders of the data extraction and API creation service Dapper announced this week that their aim is to leverage Dapper in the service of ad networks and derive a semantic index of pages around the web from that activity. They will launch their ad powering product at Ad:Tech in April. Essentially, it will perform ad funded indexing of the semantic web.

Here's how it will work: Dapper lets users identify and tag particular fields on any page. It then extracts the value in that field and makes it available in XML. As a result of this advertising activity, Dapper believes a substantial quantity of pages around the web could have fields of interest delineated and tagged with relevant terms. Relationships between pages and fields and terms and tags can all be extracted and analyzed from this aggregated activity.

Dapper currently has 35,000 extraction functions (Dapps) created, but they are betting that a clear profit motive will incentivize advertisers to create many, many more. Advertisers will pay to have web content delineated by field and categorized.

The company argues that advertisers see substantially increased relevance and click-through if ads can be served based on very specific fields of content on a page. Early prototypes run on top music site Pitchfork and book summary site Shvoong saw 100 to 500% increases in CTR.

While Dapper's approach would likely leave the vast majority of fields on a page unindexed, it could also rack up a whole lot of semantic knowledge by riding the profit motive to discover the semantic meaning of the most monetizable fields on a far greater number of pages than would likely be analyzed otherwise. What better way to analyze the web than to ride along with ad networks? I can't think of any better way.

I think Dapper has a shot at helping fund the semantic analysis of much of the web. What will they do with the data other than use it to contextualize ads? That's another question, but an interesting one to consider.

Dappercamp was a great event this week and the tool itself is one I highly recommend. It's in startup mode and I'll be frank - many of the output formats simply don't work and there are a number of errors throughout the site. None the less, I derive significant value for my work every time I engage with it. Here's a screencast tutorial I recorded on the service. Several Dapps, Dapper-created data extractions, have become daily go-to sources of information for me - but I also recognize that only so many people are going to be as excited about this technology for research purposes. For the rest of the world, for the viability of the company, and for the potentially gigantic secondary benefit of widespread semantic indexing - I think putting Dapper in service of ad networks is a plan of simple brilliance.