Archive for Mashup

Sometimes its the quality not the quantity that counts…

December 5, 2007 at 8:02 am · Filed under Blog, Feature, information overload, long tail, Mashup, mass, quality

Hi,

Long time no blogging…

Here are some thoughts from this morning:

Zulo is our current-major project at Vaya. Its a wiki-style site dedicated to young people interested in Free and Open Source related technologies and topics. When we decided to create Zulo we knew that there weren’t going to be millions of users for the site. Not because its a low-quality content site but because its in Hebrew and because Free and Open Source aren’t major areas of interest for most teenagers at Israel. Nevertheless we believed that the few interested people who were into Linux, would create valuable, high-quality content, and that over time a small community would evolve.

But Zulo is just an example for sites or other content places over the web that create content that will never have, and is never meant to have, a large group of users. The problem with such sites is that they never reach the charts (on sites such as Digg, Technorati and others), they remain unknown , even if their content is high-quality. Thats because sites such as Digg are all interested in the number of recommendations or connections the site generates, and not necessarily the quality of the content produced, and the long tail remains untapped…

Which brings us to the next problem…The opinion of Moshe does not count as the opinion of Jacob, and the difference between what Moshe tagged as important and what Jacob tagged as worthy is becoming ever more important.

Information overload is everywhere, sites such as Outbrain offer to assist with overcoming RSS overload by providing users with recommendations about which of the contents on their RSS is truly worth their read. However the fact that 100 people voted for that peice of content is not always reassuring.

What ToDo?

Phase I: Acknowledge that Moshe’s vote does not necessarily have the same value as Jacob’s…

Aggregate information from wherever possible (social sites?) and find the best experts in varies topics (it all depends on the criteria set…).

Phas II: Seamless rating process
Allow those proven-experts to rate content in their area of expertise. This should somehow become a seamless operation (while reading an article these experts exclusively get the Stumbleupon thumbs…). Even offer your experts something for participating.

Phase III: Become a Jacob Follower…
Allow the user to choose the expert groups of his liking at sites such as Stumbleupon or Outbrain. Or somehow mash-it-up with Twitter so readers (signed-up to an RSS reader) know, who they are following and can be sure that in that specific area its worth their read.

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The all-in-one social netwrok spaces

August 2, 2007 at 8:21 am · Filed under Blog, Feature, Mashup, social network, Uncategorized, unpopular view, Web 2.0, widget

Ok, where do I start here? Doesn’t this remind you of the old portal’s?

Ok, where do i start here? Doesn't remind you of the old portal's?

Many things have been said about the Myspace’s Facebook’s and the Israeli social network TheMarker Cafe and their many features/widgets (blog’s, forums, like-linkedin services, e-mail, like-twitter services… and the list is endless) .

This may currently be a very unpopular view, especially as 60% of the world’s Internet users are estimated to be in one of the social network sites [my profiles alone consist at least 12.5% of the 60% world-wide figure] however, this aspiration to tie your users to your site by providing them all they need, so they don’t go else-where belongs to the web 1.0 days…

If you allow people to go, and do whatever they feel like on the web, then you may get new innovative ideas/businesses. Tie them to your all-in-one services and you get lousy content. Open API’s, mash-up’s and new tools that make mash-up’s even easier to create promise to become a strong force on the web. Instead of many sites where you get all-in-one people will also be able to use many of services offered as their building blocks to be used for their own needs and creations.

If you’ve ever tried to maintain a social entity on one of these sites you’ve probably discovered that its a full-time day+night job. Takes time to master the many features they each offer with their unique ways of delivering them, that is if you have the time. Most people don’t have the time. And to make things worse, many open a few entities, which produces lousy content.

Why not produce great single, flexible, much needed applications with open API’s, preferably open source app’s, that are easy to maintain by the end user (and the service provider), and that can easily be tied to other services/applications. Even Google with its many applications releases them one-at-a-time.

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Mashing up

April 23, 2007 at 10:35 am · Filed under Enterprise web 2.0, Mashup, mass, platform, Product, start-up, Tools to expect, Web 2.0, web application

The run to provide a mash-up tool or a programming platform for the non-techi’s is gathering pace. At the same company’s such as Worklight partner to create a larger offer, while Zude promises to provide it all. Here is a short list of some of these technologies:

Programming for the masses

For managers/business people who know what they want but have little or no programming skills, and want the job done fast. And for the masses with little/no programming skills (people like me) we have company’s such as Tersus . Tersus is an open source platform for visually creating applications (truly visual, no coding needed). The company is currently building its own new web site based on the Tersus platform, also to be released as open source.

Coghead is also a visual platform for creating web applications. Their product is part of a bigger vision to be part of an agile office, of the kind that can easily be created at the coffee house near you, or in your preferred location. This makes sense when you consider consumer generated app’s that are making their way into organizations with the promise to change organizations, and with it the way people can choose to work and make business — why then not create small applications on the fly?

Small-medium size business could also be good candidates for such platforms. They can easily and cheaply create the app’s they need and later maybe even make a few buck’s by selling the app they’ve created on a Coghead or Tersus like site, or even better, open source them and release them for free to get others, to use, maintain or further develop the application.

Tools for organizations joining the big feast

And than there are the many new mash-up companies who offer to democratize the mash-up experience for the masses. Teqlo for one, which allows to build web app’s with its drag and drop interface, has recently partnered with an Israeli company named Worklight.

Worklight allows organizations to export their SAP information as a secure feed service over their Myspace or other site/service their using, and will probably be offering many new features (apart from a secure feed for inside organization info and a mash-up tool) some time in the near future as part of the tendency to offer a complete service.

Something to keep an eye on is, how do you provide a bundled service with many features, without making it too constraining for the individual user and especially the individual worker? If I understand correctly Web 2.0 for the organization is about lightweight tools that provide the worker with greater freedoms to do the job the way he does it best.

Mine not their’s

And to complete the picture, there are the new portals (not so new any more), such as pageflakes that have to my view redefined the term portal, just by changing the term “our” portal to “my” portal, generating a really convenient service that allows to find the many services I’m using in one focal point.

More on the future – the Zude way

And finally there is Zude (final just for now) which is still not available, and until it becomes available David Berlind from ZDNet, who has tried it and wrote about it extensively is a point of reference. Zude offers all in one — a personal portal, a mash-up tool and agile way for creating small web app’s, it will be offered for free. For more information read or hear David Berlind.

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Enterprise mashup tool

February 6, 2007 at 9:41 am · Filed under Demo, Enterprise web 2.0, Mashup

There is a very interesting article by Dion Hinchcliffe from ZDNet, that introduces an IBM mashup platform for enterprises called QEDWiki
its also possible to see a short demo of the platform in action by Mr. Hinchcliffe at this address.

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