Way Over Due Album of MESH

I've been horrid about this blogging thing, so I'm going to try to make up for it by posting a super old album that I never got around to posting... this is a bunch of photos I took and played around with while at Mesh.

Enjoy!

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An awesome resource for all you startup types...

For those of you that have been around the block a couple of times already, this is a great reference, for the noobs, its a gem.

Read.

My panel at Mesh Conference

Thanks for taking and uploading the photos for me Tom!

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Quote from Mesh Conference

Here's a great quote, the best quote from Mesh: "Niklas Zennström, the Roman Polanski of voice over IP..."

Some juicy photos to come...

Photos from TorCamp

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Fox/MySpace/MySpaceIM vs. AOL/AIMPages/AIM - Ironic or Prophetic of things to come?

Does anyone else see the irony of this?

MySpace launches a "AIMKiller" with its own MySpaceIM client (great, now I have to run MSN, AIM, YahooIM, ICQ, GTalk, Skype, and now MySpaceIM).

This is of course within 24hours of the launch of AOLPages, AIM's take on MySpace and the SNS scene.

My quick take: MySpaceIM is a great way to get more "screentime" off the web for Fox/MySpace -- leveraging their critical mass that already uses IM with yet another IM client taht fully intergrates is smart. Yes, its another stupid IM Network but from my perspective, I think its clever -- they will get traction because the MySpace kids already use 4 different IM clients, and are used to running multiple chat clients.

While AOLPages does have some neat features, its going to have a huge uphill battle. Its got some "hip" stuff, but its seems a bit too much "me too" and not enough distrputive innovations to take down something with as much momentum as MySpace. Its got some great features and technology, but I'm just not sure if leveraging AIM without something really compelling on the web is enough to get people to swtich. They also have a simlar look and feel as MySpace which means that they are unlikely to appeal to a broader target demographic than what MySpaceh as already.

The strategy AOLPages took was to "build more" and make things more "AJAXy" which is "cool" but perhaps not what I would have done. It doesn't FEEL any better or different than MySpace as its just as cluttered and hard to navigate. I like how they took advantage of a lot of drag and dropable elements for customization, but doesn't seem quite as clean/effective as TagWorld's implementation.

So in a nut shell, AOL is trying to "out hip" MySpace, but it doesn't feel like it -- and in some ways just feels more cumbersome. What I would have probably done instead is try to simplify the experieince. Rather than building more features to out-do MySpace, focus on doing a subset of what MySpace does (i.e. music, photos, or video), and make it better/simpilfied and providing a more elegant way fo doing one of those silos and make it really compelling and distrputive.

But its still early days, and it seems like they have a solid technical team there, and I'm sure things will improve. If they can keep evovling it I'm sure they still have a solid shot. Esp. if they are able to align themselves with some interesting partnership sand/or content.

What Fox seems to be doing to me is leveraging MySpace into more of a traditional portal with a social networking bent. First you have MySpace SNS, then MySpace Blogs, then MySpace Videos, and now MySpace IM... 'm sure you could dig up the portal metrix somewhere and just start couting down the rows to see what might be next. With their buyout of Ksolo don't be surprised if you see MySpace online karaoke.

At this rate, I am looking forward to my MSN Karaokay 2007 Live web service. Or the eBay bid-for-your-5 mins to sing along with Britney Spears Skype powered Karaokay (with with Podcast support)

Let the craziness begin.

Random thoughts on Mix06, WTF is WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), the "Multimedia Web" and other stuff...

I've been pretty bad about this whole blogging thing. I'm finding that it really does take a big commitment to do. Lately I've been in a slump and haven't felt the passion or desire to write up anything new or insightful. Its probably all the traveling that's been stopping me from being able to slow down and reflect. I'm just not totally used to being on the road again 60%+ of the time.

Its also a struggle for me to figure out what type of "noise to signal" ratio that I want to achive with this blog. Or maybe it really doesn't matter, since I'm frankly mostly writing this for my own personal sake/sanity.

One thing that I discovered while researching some of the players in our space was PBase's Camera Database and Museum (PBase is a really cool, and long standing whom some might consider one of our "competitors", but frankly, I feel like we are really going after a very differenent audience). They have this great setup that is sort of like an IMDB for cameras. I can't help but think there's an awesome opportunity for a mashup to do a sort of a DPreview with a network of photo sites.

I know that as a fairly passionate digital camera user that the actual images shot with the cameras is pretty important to me, problem with most of these sites that enable you to pivot/search on specific cameras is that everyone has different skillsets. But its still interesting to see the number of users that have purchased and actively use specific cameras.

I know this is probably old news for most of you now, but I must say that I was impressed by many of the technologies that were in the MS pipeline that were shown at Mix06. WPF (windows presentation foundation) is absolutely a tech to track.

So WTF is WPF?

Here's a good tid-bit from Wikipedia:

The Windows Presentation Foundation (or WPF), formerly code named Avalon, is the graphical subsystem feature of Microsoft Windows. It will be included in Vista, the next version of the Microsoft Windows operating system. WPF is also available for installation on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 as part of WinFX Runtime Components, a managed-code programming suite that extends the Microsoft .NET Framework. It provides a consistent programming model for building applications, whether they are installed on a system or are loaded into a web browser. It also enables richer control, design, and development of the visual aspects of Windows programs. It aims to unify a host of application services: user interface, 2D and 3D drawing, fixed and adaptive documents, vector graphics, raster graphics, animation, data binding, audio and video.

WPF/E is a subset of WPF, and stands for "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere". It is basically a mobile version of WPF, based on XAML and Javascript. 3D features are not included, but XPS, vector-based drawing, and hardware acceleration, are.

Regardless of how it plays out, by the very nature that it's going to be closely tied to a major MS operating system, any developer that is going to be building something for consumer PCs should keep tabs on the technology. I keep seeing the North Face Demo over and over again with its 3D + video capacities and vector graphics, and everything else that I had already saw in Channel 9, but I am really looking forward to seeing something that goes beyond that. I thought photo triage was pretty cool, but that stuff should be more than a year old now. There must be some really cool stuff in the pipelines form some of the MS ISVs (or at least I hope so ;). WPF (windows presentation foundation) is clearly a powerful technology, and yes, being a Mac fan myself, I recognize a lot of the stuff is already available in OSX (but not all of it). However, 2007 will be an interesting year I think for many vendors (and users) as we start to see the emergence of what I would called the "Multimedia Web." I call it the multimedia web as a reference to the old school definition of the term -- because I remember when the word multimedia were used to describe things that were built for CD-ROMs using something like Macromedia Director or Hypercard/SuperCard/Authorware/whatever (but not so old school as to reference film based slide shows synced to audio -- i.e. BubbleShare zero point oh). At last the web is finally catching up and going far beyond the stuff stuff I remember doing in Macromind (now Macromedia) Director in 1994. The 3D stuff and "ajaxy" interactivity we'll see in UIs in the coming year with WPF and next-gen flash and Ajax apps I think will make for some interesting apps.

Again, I have to say that from what I saw in the demos between sparkle, the layout engine, and other smaller demos of WPF, I walked away impressed by the valiant effort that Microsoft is putting into building a platform on Vista to defend the desktop and in trying keeping the OS a very relevant piece of the puzzle. As an ISV(independent software vendor/developer) myself, I still tend to lean towards building web based applications simply for the bang/buck ratio. However, some of the things I saw with WPF seem to be really blurring the lines between web and desktop -- but only time will tell. Lets hope for Microsoft/future of PC (P)OSes that WPF/Avalon v1.0 doesn't end up like Macromedia's first attempt at creating a more robust UI/app development environment that was Flex (which IMHO, I think has a lot of potential, but just not "there yet").

Since I've been rather lazy about making my blog look pretty, here's a quick album of the Mix06 party that I meant to put up earlier. Scoble, these pix are for you (even though, well, you're not in any of the photos... and neither is bill). ;)

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Creating Addictive Experiences

BubbleShare: Photos from Funny Mix06 Photos

I know I've blogged about this before. But what I forgot to mention is that part of the motivation behind the BubbleCaption feature is to introduce more game play like elements into BubbleShare.



BubbleCaptions along with our new community voting system are just examples of how game design and game play is important to building interesting communities and consumer oriented web services. Both strive to build entertaining and addictive relationships with their users with the only difference being the maturity of each category.



I regret not being able to attend GDC this year, a conference that I try to attend regularly for the simple fact that some of the most creative and talented people in attend the conference (i.e. Will
Wright, who happens to be on front cover of Wired). But I hope to catch up on some of the presentations and news bits that have come out of it.



If anyone out there has any pointers on some neat newsbits, podcasts, or reports coming out from GDC (I know, its been a few weeks already), please let me know.



Lastly, of course, go try out BubbleCaptioning yourself, and tell a story with BubbleShare. Let me know if you find the "captioning" game to be as addictive for you as it was for me.

My kudos to the Amazing Kris Tate of Zooomr (a so called 'competitor')

Why I love Web 2.0 - episode 1,015 » mathewingram.com/work

For what its worth, I think Kris is amazing. I met him on various occasions, and I’m proud to say that I even had the opportunity to “sponsored” him to go to a couple of events (well, I sponsored one, and drove him to another since he didn’t own a car, and I had my rental).

Kris is arguably one of the most amazing people I’ve met (and umm.. i guess that’s actually means since its been well blogged now that I had lunch with BillG). You only THINK
he’s amazing because people have read about him. I met him. He is better than amazing. =)

However, what is important to point out is that while Zooomr has way more cool stuff than flickr in many ways, its important to note that Flickr had to pioneer a lof of the ground work that we take for granted. That’s not to say that’s its not amazing for Kris to pull of all that he has, regardless of age and resource. I want to make sure credit is given to the amazingly creative
Flickr team that trail blazed a lot of the concepts we take for granted today.

Its my hope that we’ll keep learning from each other’s ideas (I have Kris on my IM list) and keeping each other on our respective toes. Its great to see all the competition and innovation.
But at the end of the day, the “rivalry” I think is a healthy one — and I for one look forward to Kris’s further innovations. Kris is a great testament of how great software can be built by ONE person, and the benefit of “zero overhead” software development.

Ali G on Entrepreneurship

A fun way to waste 6 miniutes of your time that you'll neer get back again.

The upside however is you get to learn how to masterfully pitch your product with venn diagrams and google juice.

YouTube - Ali G Invents the Ice Cream Glove