ReadWriteWeb

Mainstream Web Watch: Why Alltop Rocks

Sarah Perez — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:00:00 -0800

Back when the RSS aggregator web site Alltop launched in March of this year, we compared it to another daily start page favorite of ours at the time, OriginalSignal. Designed to bring RSS to the masses, Alltop, like both Original Signal and Popurls, provides categorized selections of feeds that make it easy to scan a lot of news on a particular subject. Since its launch, Alltop has been adding new categories at such a fast pace that it has now clearly blown away its competition in terms of quantity.

Since launch, Alltop has moved from simply being yet another start page, to a valuable resource for anyone wanting to research a certain subject or industry.

Not For You? That's OK

If you haven't checked out Alltop since its launch, it's probably because you fall more into the earlier adopter set - you were interested in taking a look at the shiny new site at the time, but you're still more than happy with your RSS reader and see no reason to switch. For early adopters like us, using a site like Alltop seems be like moving backwards. That's OK - that's as it should be.

We tend to use services like Google Reader or a configurable start page like Netvibes to read our feeds and this is fine for us. However, we're not necessarily representative of the masses. Not everyone wants to tweak and customize their own personal reader - they simply want a web destination where they can catch up on the news. Alltop can serve that purpose.

Nudge People Into RSS With Alltop

Alltop is also a great resource for getting people started with RSS. Next time you're trying to explain RSS to a friend, you can just send them a link to an Alltop page instead with a note saying "here's a great example of RSS in use." There are so many different subjects covered now, it's easy to find a page (or two or three) that your friend would enjoy, no matter their interests. They've got pages on countries (ex: Argentina), Sports (ex: Hockey), religions (ex: Muslim), activities (ex: crafts), educational resources (ex: personal finance), professions (ex: sales), events (ex: summer Olympics), and so many more.

When your friend returns to you after a while asking if they can add another web site to their Alltop page, you'll know that it's then time to move them into a more robust RSS solution like Netvibes, for example. Alltop was just their training wheels - now they're ready to ride.

Web 2.0 For Beginners

Not only can Alltop help people get into RSS, it's also useful for those just signing up with various Web 2.0 services for the first time. One of the problems with getting into the social web is that when you come so late the game, you don't even know where to begin. The early adopter set has been re-creating their friend graph on numerous sites for years - we know who's interesting to us, who our friends are, who we want to avoid, etc. A Web 2.0 beginner, on the other hand, signs up for a service like Twitter or FriendFeed, and is at a loss.

But that's where a service like Alltop is, again, very useful. When your friend asks you who to follow, you can point them to the Twitterati and Frienderati "starter packs." Here, they can pick and chose from those sites' more prominent users. (They even have the Utterati covered now - who knows what next? Identerati?)

Conclusion

Alltop may not be the most glamorous of today's web resources, but its extensive pages are great tools to nudge people towards the more complex apps we embrace today as both techies and social media enthusiasts. As representatives of this movement, be it the "groundswell", social media, Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call, we need to think about how we can make transitions easier for those who still live very much inside the web 1.0 bubble (besides the occasional foray into MySpace, that is). Alltop is certainly a tool that can help with that move, which is why we felt like revisiting this application today.

Someone once called Alltop a "big pile of nothing" (you know who!). They couldn't have been more wrong. You may not have a use for Alltop yourself, but it's time you showed it to your mom and dad.

The ReadWriteWeb 12 Second Challenge

Richard MacManus — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:56:16 -0800

Earlier today Corvida set a difficult challenge for RWW readers, based on a new service called 12Seconds.tv. The challenge is to say "ReadWriteWeb" 5 times really fast in 12 seconds or less. Now, it's well known that the name 'ReadWriteWeb' is a tongue twister - even I have trouble pronouncing it at times, and I created the name! Check out some of the entrants so far, very funny...

Corvida herself was one of the first to give it a try:

"ReadWriteWeb" 5x's Really Fast on 12seconds.tv

MacTyler almost gets there, so close! At the end he slaps himself in the face (that's what the screenshot above is). This was his second attempt, his first is here.

Read Write Web Challenge 2 on 12seconds.tv

A bearded reader called beach makes a hash of it.

read write web challenge (5x fast) on 12seconds.tv

To add your entry, you can either click here for an invite to 12seconds.tv or use Seesmic. We have 500 invites for RWW readers to 12seconds.tv. Unfortunately though, the way the private beta invites are being given out isn't ideal. You have to fill in a brief survey and the invites are emailed out to you. But I did that and I haven't gotten mine yet! So if you'd like to participate and you don't get your invite soon, head over to Seesmic and upload your video there.

Whichever method you use, add the link in the comments below and we'll post the best ones!

Here's mine, via Seesmic:

Even after all these years of practice at saying ReadWriteWeb... but it was late on a Friday night and after a couple of beers ;-)

Android Is For The Masses, iPhone For The Rich

Richard MacManus — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:50:02 -0800

Our network blog last100 has an interesting interview with Nicolas Gramlich, founder of anddev.org - an online community for Android developers. As editor Steve O'Hear notes in his intro, there have been issues with Google's mobile OS of late - an incomplete and buggy SDK, favoritism towards select developers, lack of transparency, and concerns that the platform could become fragmented and that Google has ceded too much control to carriers. But all those problems may fade into the ether if, as Gramlich claims in the last100 interview, "Android is for the masses, iPhone for the rich".

Android is Google's mobile operating system and competes with the likes of Apple's OSX for iPhone and Nokia's Symbian open source OS. Gramlich told Steve O'Hear that "there will be a great variety of Android devices all over the world, where there will always be just the iPhone." He also dismissed the threat of Nokia and its recent acquired controlling interest of open source mobile OS, Symbian. "I think Android will win over Symbian", said Gramlich, "as there are so many companies behind the Open Handset Alliance."

So what draws developers like Nicolas Gramlich to Android? Gramlich says that "Android's main attraction is its simplicity" and that this enables the rapid development of "feature-rich applications".

Asked by Steve O'Hear what kind of apps we can expect from Android, Gramlich replied that "we will definitely see a lot of location-aware and social-networking applications, that will try to be the social app for Android. I've seen so many that I cannot even count them." He noted that integration with Google Maps is especially tight, which he says doesn't currently exist on other mobile platforms. Indeed his own Android app is a free navigation app called AndNav! (screenshot below).

Despite all the positive attributes of Android, currently it is vaporware (no commercial phones running Android yet exist) and there has also been developer unrest because the SDK hasn't been updated for some time. Gramlich admits that "the next SDK has to be overwhelming to get Android back on track".

For the full interview, hop over to last100. Also see last100's recent interview with the zintin CEO talking iPhone, Android and mobile future.

Microsoft Makes Calendar Sync Work

Sarah Perez — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:45:20 -0800

For anyone who uses multiple calendars, you know that one of the big issues that's being addressed by numerous applications is getting your calendars to sync up with each other. We've covered some solutions to this problem before, but we had not seen a truly integrated offering that allowed you to sync up a work calendar in desktop software with an onlne calendar without need of a third-party app of some sort...that is, until yesterday. It seems that Microsoft has finally given the people what they want and have provided a calendar sync tool that actually makes all of Microsoft's calendaring programs work together.

Outlook Connector Beta

The new tool providing this functionality is the latest version of the Outlook Connector public beta. This downloadable software works to sync Outlook's calendar with Windows Live Hotmail's Calendar with the Windows Live Calendar Beta. Such an integrated offering is a surprise considering that Microsoft is a company that's sometimes known for launching what are perceived as too-similar, parallel solutions (think FolderShare, SyncToy, SkyDrive, Mesh).

The previous version of this connector allowed you to sync email and contacts data between Outlook and Hotmail for free, but calendar sync required a subscription service. With this new version, however, calendar sync is now free and it includes the ability to work with Live Calendar beta. And because Live Calendar also supports calendar sharing, those shared calendars will sync back to Outlook, too.

For someone who uses an Outlook calendar at work, keeps a personal calendar in Hotmail, and perhaps has a shared family calendar in Live Calendar, this new sync tool will be incredibly useful. Whether you're online or offline, all your calendars are available from one place: Outlook.

The release of this connector is a great example of Microsoft's firm commitment to their S+S (Software + Services) architecture. They intend for software to be the hub for your activities with web services available as an additional layer. S+S combines the power of the internet with the richness that is still, as of today, found mostly in desktop software (although web software is quickly closing that gap). This is an entirely different mindset than what Google and other web companies are offering - in fact, it's just the opposite. Google Calendar, for example, will be implementing Google Gears which is software that makes a web app available offline and then syncs your changes when you connect to the internet again. The battle between these two similar, but opposing, methodologies will play out over the coming months. The ReadWriteWeb audience of early adopters and web developers tends to think the winner will be web apps in the end, but the truth of the matter is that it's still too early in the game for either side to declare victory just yet.

Of course, the missing piece to the Microsoft solution is the fact that Outlook (or any) desktop software isn't necessarily available on every PC that you own. However, considering their new Live Mesh platform isn't designed to just handle file sync, but is designed to handle application sync too, it's easy to see what direction they're headed. Microsoft is still betting on software - they're just using the web as a tool which makes everything work together more seamlessly than it did before .

Do you think S+S is a viable solution for computing's future? Or do you think today's web apps should be focused on implementing offline sync? Or can these two opposing agendas co-exist? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Blow Up Flickr...Images!

Corvida — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:34:57 -0800

Sometimes you just want to blow up your Flickr images. There's nothing better than a fullscreen display of your latest photographed memories. While Flickr's slideshow is great, you won't be able to stretch your images to fullscreen while viewing them. Well now that's about to change with Blow Up a Flickr web app.

Beautiful Images in Fullscreen Mode

Blow Up is aiming to offer "presentation quality for users and portability for developers." Using the Flickr API, Senior Interface Developer Jonathan Greacen has created a new viewing experience for Flickr users that may leave you wondering why it was never an option on Flickr to begin with. Blow Up allows your images to be seen in fullscreen mode while still maintaining your image quality.

The service is free and doesn't require anything put your Flickr username to get started. Other options include being able to download the Blow Up to display your Flickr images on your website. Blow Up all your images including the ones in your albums. However, for images that are set to private, Blow Up will not be able to grab them.

A New Type of Slideshow

Blow Up is a nifty new slideshow in the market of Flickr apps that serves up your images fast and easy. No password required, no downloads necessary. Just get in and get what you came for in fullscreen.

Enjoy 12 Seconds of Fun with 12Seconds.tv - 500 Invites

Corvida — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:40:45 -0800

Video services are really taking off this year! If you're a fan of lifecasting or the Seesmic video service, then you're going to love 12seconds.tv. 12seconds.tv is a cool new way to send out video message to your friends. Here's a look at the service and some great suggestions to get started.

Video Messaging Your Friends

12seconds.tv is opening up their private alpha services to our audience. The general overview of this video service is that users can record a quick video up to 12 seconds long. You can use either your webcam on your computer or your cellphone to send videos to your 12seconds.tv account. Follow friends, subscribe to their RSS feed to keep up with their videos, and leave feedback on how hilarious their videos are with 12seconds.tv. You can also embed videos in your blog, tag your videos, and connect with your Twitter account to send a "tweet" to your Twitter friends once a video is posted by you. The only downside to the service is that there's no east way to reply to a video, but this will be implemented in the future. My workaround for this technicality is to simply tag the people that I'm replying to.

The latest changes to the service includes:

Find your Twitter friends on 12seconds.tv

Video and People search

Site user interface changes

New Multiplayer widget to play all the latest updates from your friends

ReadWriteWeb on 12Seconds.tv - 500 Invites

There's a ton of things you can say in 12 seconds. However, if you're going through a block as to how to get started with the service here are two ways to help. Introduce yourself in your first video. This could be both difficult and fun depending on how long your bio usually is. I'd love to hear what you all have to say about yourselves.

The second suggestion is a neat little contest for our ReadWriteWeb audience. We'd like to know if you can say "ReadWriteWeb" 5 times really fast in 12 seconds or less! You can follow me on 12seconds.tv at: http://12seconds.tv/channel/corvida. Tag your videos with 'rww' and we'll be sure to view them. Here's my try-out:

"ReadWriteWeb" 5x's Really Fast on 12seconds.tv

All in all, 12seconds.tv is a great service for creating nifty video contests with friends. You can also use the service to give a quick update to your audience a la Twitter style by sending a video from your cellphone. Whether your shopping for new shoes and want an opinion, or just saw some old lady beat lift a car, catch it and send it to 12seconds.tv on the fly. Let us know what ideas you've come up with and ways you'll be using 12seconds.tv.

We have 500 invites available for the ReadWriteWeb audience. Simply head over to the link below and take a quick 1 question survey to get your invite. Click here for an invite to 12seconds.tv.

Facebook to Integrate Microsoft Live Search by Fall

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:48:30 -0800

According to a comment made at Microsoft's Analyst Day today, Microsoft and Facebook are preparing a search and advertising deal that would lead to the integration of Microsoft's Live Search and search advertising into Facebook. Microsoft already provides ads on Facebook as part of a 'strategic alliance' and Microsoft holds a $240 million equity stake in the company. No information about the financial specifics of the deal were mentioned so far and it is not clear if this deal would be exclusive.

Judging from the information available to us from the transcript of the call, Microsoft's main reason for doing this deal is to get more people to know about Live Search. As part of that effort, Microsoft will also ink a distribution deal for its toolbar with HP.

Also, according to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft will be providing an API to Facebook which will allow them to create a "rich search experience for the Facebook users and that is something that they will launch in the fall working with us. And it will carry both our web results, as well as our page search advertising."

This deal would mirror the one Google did with MySpace last year. In that deal, Google guaranteed MySpace $900 million in shared ad revenue for the next three years. However, it's worth noting that the Google/MySpace deal has not been a huge success for Google. Users do not typically initiate a lot of searches from within social networks and monetizing advertising in social networks has turned out to be even hard.

We are trying to confirm more details of this story and will update this post as we get more information.

Open Web Foundation Launches to Do the Dirty Work for Data Portability

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:19:41 -0800

A new nonprofit organization called the Open Web Foundation is launching this morning with backing from some of the biggest companies on the web and the involvement of some of the web's most innovative individuals. Organized in as a decentralized community of developers, in the fashion of the Apache Software Foundation, the OWF will serve as a placeholder for all the legal dirty work that needs to happen in order for data portability to become a reality.

Specifically, the Foundation will work with all the vendors in this space to secure Creative Commons copyrights and promises not to sue each other over the use of data protocols. Think OpenID, OAuth, OEmbed and lots more still in the works. In some ways this dreadfully unsexy work, but in other ways it's just the opposite.

As Scott Kveton, a participant in the the OWF and the Chair of the OpenID foundation, explained to us, the biggest companies on the web "need to know the lineage of code before they are willing to use it, so they know they aren't going to get sued."

Who's behind all of this? The group is going to great pains to de-emphasize the big names involved, but at the bottom of this post are lists of individuals and companies involved in the launch of the Foundation. The group says that much of the work that needs to be done is already underway in respective protocol working groups, but that the Foundation will serve as a placeholder and gathering point.

Who's Going to Be Making Decisions?

If someone's going to be taking legal control over these technologies, who exactly are they? The Foundation says its board will be voted on by members in August elections, but that membership is still being worked out. We hope that the whole process will be transparent and collaborative. We suspect that some people may complain that it is not, but we think there is a high probability that everything is going to be ok.

What About the Data Portability Working Group?

The much celebrated Data Portability Working Group has become a subject of heated debate. Critics allege that the group has been too headline driven, too focused on big companies that don't end up offering meaningful participating and too driven by one individual, co-founder Chris Saad.

Instead of telling Saad to go eat nails, though, the Open Web Foundation is positioning itself as a complementary organization. DataPortability.org can handle the evangelism and the Open Web Foundation will do the behind the scenes work to help developers bring code to market. Not completely behind the scenes, but you know what they mean.

We hope everyone can play nice and work together instead of doing things like publicly attacking individuals or spoiling each others' announcements.

We're excited about this new organization. There's been a clear need and demand for it and we wish them the best of luck in helping make our data portability dreams come true.

For an in depth look at why we believe data portabilty is in the interests of vendors, see our post Towards a Value-Added User Data Economy. For a user's perspective, watch for a forthcoming post here.

The First List of Supporters

Individuals

* Alex Russell
* Anand Iyer
* Angus Logan
* Ben Laurie
* Blaine Cook
* Brady Forrest
* Chris Messina
* Danese Cooper
* Dave Morin
* David Recordon
* Dawn Foster
* DeWitt Clinton
* Dirk-Willem van Gulik
* Eran Hammer-Lahav
* Geir Magnusson
* John McCrea
* Joichi Ito
* Phil Wolff
* Raj Mata
* Ross Turk
* Scott Kveton
* Tim O'Reilly

Supporting our effort

Our efforts are supported by a number of companies and organizations including:

* BBC
* Facebook
* Google
* MySpace
* O'Reilly
* Plaxo
* Six Apart
* Sourceforge
* Vidoop
* Yahoo!

AdMob Launches iPhone Ad Marketplace and Gives $1 Million in Ads to Developers

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:45:23 -0800

Today, the mobile advertising marketplace AdMob released a new, global marketplace for iPhone ads. The most interesting aspect of this is that these ads will be specifically tailored to the iPhone and will also be highly interactive. To promote this launch and the new platform, AdMob is giving away a total of $1 million to iPhone developers to promote their applications through AdMob.

To start, AdMob has lined up a number of large advertisers, including Electronic Arts, Universal Pictures, Movietickets.com, AccuWeather, and Ford, including its Land Rover and Jaguar brands. Other companies using AdMob include Stitcher, Loopt, Shozu, Mippin, and vsnax. Advertisers can target users browsing the web, as well as users of specific applications.

Just in June alone, AdMob already served over 50 million ads to iPhones worldwide, without offering any of this interactivity, so there is clearly a huge market for these mobile ads and this interactivity takes them to a whole new level.

Both Medialets and AppLoop already offer a marketplace for advertisers and application developers to connect. Chances are that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft will release similar programs in the future, but for now, none of them have announced anything in this direction.

As we reported earlier, AdMob (and the mobile advertising market) has been growing at a steady clip. Most of the mobile ads, however, never made much use of the 'mobile' aspects of the devices they ran on. Admob is trying to change this with the iPhone marketplace, which will feature ads that make use of the iPhone's capabilities.

AdMob is giving its advertisers the ability to access eight actions on the iPhone: open iTunes to buy music or video, open the App Store, listen to audio, view video, initiate a call, launch maps, and to visit a web site with Safari. AdMob is not, as far as we can see, making any use of the iPhones location awareness so far. Overall, though, some of the ads AdMob has showcased to far are more interactive than some of the web based iPhone apps we have seen lately.

Ads can, for example, bring up Safari to display show times for a movie from an ad, take you to iTunes to buy music, or let you initiate a call right from an ad. While these ideas aren't revolutionary, AdMob has executed them very well, with easy to understand icons which are, as far as we can see, standardized among all ads.

To showcase the interactivity of the ads, AdMob has put together this video:

The Final Days of DRM: Yahoo Music Store Closing, Will Eat Your Purchased Music

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:25:44 -0800

Digital Rights Management technology is dying, it's becoming understood that hobbling tunes to enforce scarcity isn't the best way to monetize the music business online. What about all the suckers who bought DRM laden music in recent years, though? When the Yahoo! Music Store closes its doors this fall, the company announced today, past customers dependent on their music "phoning home" to get license approval before playing are out of luck. They'll be able to continue playing purchased tracks on a single computer, until they make any changes to their operating system.

The rise and fall of the Yahoo! Music Store will make for an interesting story some day, but for now the DRM story is particularly important.

Yahoo! now encourages customers to burn their music files to CDs. That may not be a terribly onerous requirement, but the point is that when you purchased a license for songs, everyone really meant it when they said this might not last forever.

As Jon Healey wrote on his LA TImes digital media blog, both Microsoft and Sony have tried to shutter their music services without providing ongoing support for already purchased material. Both faced a substantial consumer backlash. Sony extended their support through the end of this year and Microsoft did so for 3 more years. Healey suspects that too few people ever bought music from Yahoo! to create that kind of backlash and doesn't seem to think it's a big deal any way. Given that Yahoo! may be the most trafficked company on the web, we find this hard to agree with.

We think this is an instructive tale about technology, rights to user data and DRM - which is sure to rear its head again if content industries are unable to find more effective monetization strategies.

Here's the email Yahoo! Music sent out to customers last night:

The Yahoo! Music Store, along with the ability to purchase and download single songs and albums, will no longer be available as of September 30, 2008.
Songs and albums that were purchased through the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store are protected by a digital rights management system that requires a valid license key before they can be played on your computer.

After the Store closes, Yahoo! will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for music purchased from Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and Yahoo! will no longer be able to authorize song playback on additional computers.

After September 30, 2008, you will not be able to transfer songs to unauthorized computers or re-license these songs after changing operating systems. Please note that your purchased tracks will generally continue to play on your existing authorized computers unless there is a change to the computer's operating system.

For any user who purchased tracks through Yahoo! Music Unlimited, we highly recommend that you back up the purchased tracks to an audio CD before the closing of the Store on September 30, 2008. Backing up your music to an audio CD will allow you to copy the music back to your computer again if the license keys for your original music files cannot be retrieved.

For further information on the closing of the Yahoo! Music Store, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions or contact Customer Care.

Stay tuned! While the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store will no longer be available, Yahoo! Music has partnered with Rhapsody so you can still purchase your favorite tracks. Plus, Yahoo! Music will continue to offer users a complete online music experience with the largest collection of music videos, Internet radio, exclusive artist features, music news, and more!

Thank you for using Yahoo! Music.

The Yahoo! Music team

New Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Causes Chaos

Sarah Perez — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:00:00 -0800

Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Punishes Community Managers and Causes Follower Counts to Drop

Did you notice a big drop in your Twitter follower numbers yesterday? It seems that the Twitter team recently decided to step up their Twitter spammer detection, and, in typical Twitter fashion, their algorithm sent the service haywire, leading to yet another sighting of the Fail Whale while the issue was resolved. Meanwhile, Twitterers everywhere were in an uproar over their lost follower counts.

Spam Detection Goes Too Far

Earlier this week, ZDNet reported that many Twitter users were no longer able to add followers thanks to the new limits put in place to discourage spamming. Unfortunately, this action caused some major trouble for community managers, like Pandora's Lucia Willow, for example, who stated her case over on Get Satisfaction. In addition to Pandora, Comcast, Jet Blue, and several others were also affected. In order to add new followers, they had to delete older ones - not a good idea for those that want to stay tuned into their community.

In addition to causing problems for community managers, there were even some cases of follower limits placed on those that had a 1:1 Twitter ratio. And although Twitter has not confirmed the cause of the dropped follower counts, it's likely that the the new anti-spam bot is to blame.

As we wrote earlier this year, many companies are using Twitter for customer service, meaning that they will be following people at higher rates than regular Twitter users due to the fact that they follow back those that follow them. This is certainly a legitimate way to use the service and one that should not be punished through a blind algorithm that can't distinguish a community manager from a spammer.

While we appreciate the fact that the Twitter team is fighting the spam problem (an "ongoing battle," says Biz Stone), you would think that they would have considered this potential ramification to implementing their new pattern-detecting technology. It's almost as if Twitter themselves do not even know what would constitute someone being a spammer. If that's the case, they should ask the community for guidance before rolling out a brand new anti-spam bot.

Ironically, in the midst of these issues, a post on the Twitter Blog on Wednesday was about a new Twitter app, TwitterCounter, that lets you track the number of followers you have on Twitter.

All we can say about that is...well...this may have not been the best time to release that news.

Were you affected by the follower limits? Tell us your story in the comments (or just share your thoughts on this issue!)

Beyond the API: Why Companies Should Have a Presence on All Major Platforms

Alex Iskold — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:38:45 -0800

Much has been written lately about the rise of the API. Offering a programming interface to an online service is now standard practice amongst this generation of web companies. Through APIs, we get to enjoy a range of innovative Twitter clients, wide availability of maps and location information, custom search engines, and more. However, delivering superior user experience on major platforms should be as much of a priority as opening up via an API.

Just because an API enables companies to create a third party ecosystem around their service, it doesn't mean that the company itself shouldn't be an active player in it.

Web sites are only one kind of presence that companies can have today. Social Networks like Facebook and MySpace, mobile platforms like iPhone and Blackberry, browser extensions and RIA Applications all have an equal - sometimes considerably larger - share of users attention. Figuring out which presence should be delivered by the website vs. a third party is an important question that each company should ask.

User Experience is King

User interface innovation is a major part of the ongoing web revolution. As we've recently written in The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces post, static user interfaces are 'dead'. The new interfaces are simpler and more contextual. Instead of revealing choices upfront, they present them based on user gestures and context. The new user experience is about fluidity.

The innovations have set the bar for UI high. Users demand simplicity and elegance, wanting to know how to use the product without a manual. They expect the software to work perfectly, for it to be helpful and smart. No company can afford to ignore usability, or it will lose users to someone doing the same product with a better UI.

Today the user experience is not just a set of widgets or a website design. As Leander Kahney explained in his book Inside Steve's Brain, for Steve Jobs design is the function.

This is increasingly true about any modern web application. Users perceive all elements of the service as the service itself. They don't distinguish particular widgets inside Twitter or Twitterific; the vertical conversational faceroll defines Twitter. The way the service is delivered is why users like it.

Why Controlling User Experience is Important?

Each service that we love, whether Twitter or Digg or Flickr or del.icio.us, has its particular look, feel and philosophy. Passionate users enjoy these services because of the elements, choices and collective experience that the services deliver. The clients built on top of the API would not necessarily channel the secret sauce. For example, RIA applications for Twitter are built for people who don't work for Twitter and don't regularly communicate with the Twitter team. They're not going to preserve the user experience philosophy.

Third party clients create new user experiences, which are at times confusing. As a user, on web, desktop and iPhone, ideally you'd like to experience the service the same way, but if iPhone application is delivered by someone else the experience might not be the same.

In addition to user experience, there's the issue of branding. Larger companies are strict about their identity. When a couple of guys build an Amazon application for iPhone, they won't pay close attention to Amazon branding. Some will argue it doesn't matter as long as it drives transactions for Amazon. Yes and no. Yes because the users will buy. No because the users will accumulate imperfect user experience and associate this with Amazon, which might add up to a big negative.

Monetization Factor

A strong reason for investing in user experience is monetization. Many consumer services today are monetized via advertising. Having additional presence on different platforms increases the potential volume of advertising.

Put simply, many Twitter clients, like Twitterrific, are already monetizing the service by adding a single ad on top of each result set. If Twitter owned the RIA client, it would be able to monetize it in the same way.

Any service that is transactional or advertising driven benefits from multiple interfaces. Whatever it takes to reach the user to deliver value and drive the transactions is what services have to do. In the world of APIs, we at times forget that service should tap into all its major channels to build the business.

Which Platforms Are Critical?

Which platforms are important to tap into? There are 4 major venues for companies to consider seriously: iPhone, RIA, Facebook and Browser Extensions. All these platform plug into the same audience, but in a different context.

iPhone is great on the go. With opening of the App Store, increasingly iPhone is going to be our personal computer. RIA clients are popular, particularly among early adopters who want richer, snappier experience compared to the web. Facebook, despite its recent scaling back on the platform, remains a major way to reach mainstream audience. Browser extensions enable the user to access the service from around the web.

Tapping into these platforms is not cheap. Building a specific and correct solution for each platform requires product management, development and testing resources.

If the company has correct API, the exercise is simpler. Instead of duplicating the application, the company builds a client for each platform and benefits from common API and common back-end architecture. It is not trivial to maintain presence in all these places, but it's likely to pay off.

Conclusion

APIs offer an amazing way for companies to scale, to create an ecosystem of innovation and tap into a wider audience. Companies should consider building and managing their presence on major platforms like iPhone, Facebook, RIA and Browsers. The way that people perceive and interact with the service is increasingly important; just rolling out an API and having a third party take care of the client could be dangerous. In addition an opportunity of being in front of the audience driving monetization could be missed.

And now tell us which of your favortire services you want to see build presence on different platforms?

Yahoo Gives IMAP Access to All Users Through Zimbra Desktop

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:26:24 -0800

Just last week, we wrote about rumors that Google would be bringing offline access to Gmail and Google Calendar using Gears very soon. Today, Yahoo announced that it will be giving offline access to all free and paid Yahoo Mail users through the Yahoo Zimbra Desktop. This is the first time that all Yahoo users get offline access to their accounts. Zimbra Desktop is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

IMAP for All

Until now, only users with paid Yahoo Plus accounts had POP access to their email. Now, all Yahoo users will get offline access to their accounts through the Zimbra Desktop via the arguably superior IMAP protocol.

Yahoo bought the email and messaging company Zimbra for $350 million in September 2007, soon after Zimbra had launched its offline capabilities. The Zimbra Desktop runs on top of Prism, a Mozilla Labs product, which, just like Gears, is meant to allow users offline access to their web applications.

Besides working with Yahoo mail, Zimbra also supports all other IMAP and POP capable accounts, as well as, of course, accounts hosted on a Zimbra server. Zimbra has predefined settings for Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo accounts.

Still Beta

After one alpha and two beta releases under Yahoo, Zimbra is still calling this new version a beta, but given that fact that they are releasing it to all Yahoo users, the company must feel pretty good about the stability of the application. In our tests, we did not experience any crashes or other problems with the Windows and Linux client, though we did not test the Mac version.

The Zimbra Blog also lists a large number of other updates and new features to the application, including built-in notifications, minimize to tray on Windows, showing the number of new mails in the tray, and a few other minor updates.

Only Mail

One thing that is still sorely missing though (or at least we couldn't find it), is syncing calendars, tasks, files, contacts, etc. Yahoo is surely planning to do this in a future release, but right now, this does reduce the usefulness of the Zimbra Desktop quite a bit.

Why Zimbra Only?

The big news, however, is definitely that all Yahoo users now have offline access to their email accounts. Of course, cynics might point out that all Yahoo would have to do is flip one switch and all its users could just use any email client they wanted for offline access. Those same cynics might point out that Yahoo is mostly doing this to justify the $300 million investment in Zimbra. However, at least Yahoo's users now have one option to get offline access to their messages.

Cartoon: Cloud Computing

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:17:31 -0800

There's a panicky voice inside me that wonders, whenever the power is knocked out for more than a minute or so, if this is it: the failure of the grid, the fall of civilization, the end of all things. And then the lights come back on, and it's all fine again.

The weekend's six-hour Amazon S3 outage caught a lot of people by surprise, including more than a few blogs and web apps who rely on it. Sure, it was just a momentary glitch. But whenever something big and supposedly rock-solid has a hiccup, it chips away just a little of your confidence...

Top image: VintFalken

Knol: Google Takes on Wikipedia

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:50:05 -0800

Google just opened up Knol, its Wikipedia competitor, to the public after announcing a private beta of the service last December. Unlike Wikipedia, Knol puts a stronger emphasis on authorship and even encourages users to start different 'knols' for the same subject. Google is also serving up AdSense advertising on the site, whereas Wikipedia stays away from any advertising on its site.

In many respects, Knol is similar to Jason Calacanis' Mahalo, though its scope seems even more ambitious and its tools a bit more refined. It does, however, validate the Mahalo model.

Authorship/Identity

Knol puts a lot of emphasis on authorship and, somewhat akin to Amazon's "Real Name" scheme, authors can validate their identity on Knol through either a credit card or phone number.

The default setting for every Knol is "moderated collaboration." In this mode, anybody with a Google account can suggest changes to an knol, but the author has to accept these changes before they go live.

Authors can also invite others to contribute to their articles and given them the same rights as the original author.

There is also an option for authors to write a short bio of themselves in Knol. While this is interesting here, it will be even more interesting to see if Google might start sharing these Knol identities (and maybe even the users' reputation) among more of its properties.

Usage

Setting up a Knol is as easy as clicking the "Write a Knol" button. The text editor, too, is pretty straightforward, especially in the face of the often cryptic mark-up language most wikis use.

Knol uses a rich text editor, which presents users with all the typical editing functions, including basic formatting options, links (all set to 'nonfollow'), and the ability to add references.

As of now, you can not embed any videos or other content, except for the New Yorker Cartoons that Google incensed for this project for reasons only Google knows.

Users who don't want to write their own articles can review and rate knols. There is also an option to leave comments on every knol.

Creative Commons

Users can choose between three licenses for their articles, the Creative Commons Attribution License, the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, and an "All Rights Reserved" license. The Attribution license is the default setting. Users can chose a different license for every knol.

Advertising

Authors on Knol can enter their AdSense data into Knol. Besides the cut Google already takes from the advertising through AdSense anyway, authors will get the regular AdSense payout for every click on an ad. This seems like a smart way to reward users who write the best (or most popular) content, while still making money for Google.

In the competition with Wikipedia, this might mean that some authors could divert their attention from editing Wikipedia articles to Knol. However, the question will also be if spammers can find a way of abusing this.

New Yorker Cartoons?

While there is no option to embed any videos or other content into the site, authors can embed cartoons from the New Yorker. This is done through a rather cumbersome process where users have to first search for a cartoon in the New Yorker store and then enter the ID number of the cartoon into Knol. Why Google chose the New Yorker's cartoon archive for this is anybody's guess, but chances are that Google will announce more content partnerships in the near future.

Is Google Going After Wikipedia?

Given how often Wikipedia results appear as Google's top results, it would make sense for Google to look at this and decide to start its own competitor. By incentivizing authors through AdSense and by giving its users simple, but powerful tools to start their articles, Google might just be on the right track. While Google keeps reiterating that Knol is not meant to compete with Wikipedia, it's hard to see how that wouldn't be the case.

Knol, of course, has far fewer articles now than Wikipedia, but as it grows, it will be interesting to watch if Google is going to give preference to its own pages over the Wikipedia results. After all, Knol carries Google advertising and Wikipedia doesn't, so Google would clearly have an incentive in doing so, though the potential public outcry if Google would try to do this might prevent them from even attempting it.