State of Digital Media

Open Social Graph

2007-10-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

My biggest motivation of this conference was this topic of OpenFaced, takes me back to the dreams of web1.0 with XML and microformats and creating an interconnected web built on open standards of different sites.

OpenFaced panel: Opening Up the Social Graph - Tantek Celik (moderator), David Recordon SixApart, Chamath Palihapitiya Facebook, Joseph Smarr Plaxo, Ted Grubb Satisfaction Unlimited

Joseph Smarr Plaxo:
Online Identity Consolidator find the same person's account across twitter, flickr,ma.gnolia.com, pownce and everywhere else on the web , all without compromising the privacy if the user.
opensocialweb.com - lists a bill of rights to build out an openweb.

David Recordon SixApart

Ted Grubb Satisfaction Unlimited allows import profiles from other services which support microformats.
Love the ability to create an address book, where is a friend should get a friends phone if I have his email.
Facebook does not allow data taken out of facebook using Facebook API to be stored for more than 24 hrs.

Chamath Palihapitiya Facebook:

Facebook pioneered open technologies like Memcache.
The service itself itself is conducive to people trusting facebook.
There is one social graph of 6Bil users in the world, we have captured 45Mil of it.
Here is one model of it, we acknowlege we need people to help us.
Everyone including facebook is at the starting point, we need to measure progress over coming years.
Its a delicate balance between being open on the web on one hand and trusted and private on the other side.
Should be done methodically and systematically not reactively.
Consumer choice leads in the end.
We need to provide more and more control to App developers and will open slowly and cautiously.

Questions:
How about integrating Openid and symantic web?
How long will it take for developers to build to an open web across platforms instead of one facebook platform?
What is each panelist doing to share open social graph:

David: Implement Openid
Facebook : want as much information to flow across the graph and touch everyone in the world.( This is an ambitious and audacious goal, but does not seem to signal real open graph outside of facebook, or am I missing the point here?)

web 2.0 for small business panel -from Web2.0 Expo

2007-04-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

I am at this panel with Om Malik, of Giga OM who needs no intro, and I found he is a Mac user too! Wow. Others are Ismael Ghalimi of Intalio, Satish Dharmaraj at Zimbra and the coolest part is its moderated by Rafe Needleman of CNET , Webware.

Rajen Seth of WebApps from Google "Adding collaboration to a document suite is a killer App " Seth. I agree,, I am a big Google Apps fan.

Om raises good questions about Privacy and Security and lack of commenting on Google Docs, he uses Zimbra for email. Rajen agrees that Google Apps targets small to mid-size companies and its a leap of faith to switch to Google Apps, leaving desktop apps totally.

Om: Google Apps, and all Webware Apps expect users to give up existing usability features of MS Word, etc. Also lack of trust on private data, how can they be sure they will protect my privacy. He summarized as perception problem today not about technology.

Hale nails it as the fundmental problem with adopting the Internet right from the start!

Its an awesome topic, but the audience is quiet and polite, maybe its a signal of the uncomfortable evaluation stage of Webwares in the world today!

Nice question about need for channels for Web2.0 Apps, compared to established Enterprise VARs for desktop Apps. Satish of Zimbra says they exist for Web2.0 Apps.

Ismail quotes Zoho, integrates hundreds of Apps, and Salesforce.com, Webex Connect as good candidates to check out!

My question: When are development platforms for Webapps coming? Oh Ismail asked the same of Google. Rafe agrees Web Apps has to interoperate with others on the Web.

Question from Audience: Integrating voice to WebApps - Zimbra has launched a SIPzimbet, CISCO and VOIP switch, good plan to integrate to best of class Voice Servers. Google App has Voice on SNMP (open), showcase of select set of partners who integrated VOIP.

When will you voice enable your mobile Apps? Address cost issue - Open Source has not helped with low cost. Satish disagrees. Cost shd be thought not in terms of software cost, add maintenance cost and it adds up.

My question: What is the next Web2.0 Killer App the panelist are working on?

Om - An App that retains email properly, rethink email combined with RSS, Jabber, manages communication flow properly, so it increases productivity, not increases time we use with the App.
Satish - can't tell ,its all dynamically born., Google App
hale - Closed all all IM clients when he was working on an App.
Ismail - Aggregating diff feeds, translate it into task.

An Entrepreneurs Guide for Desiging Consumer Web Site FrontEnds

2007-03-10T22:44:00.000-08:00

I decided to write this article about how to build a clean Web Site UI in terms of developing specs for the web designer, communication tools and techniques and good guidelines for entrepreneurs because I could not find one overall primer on the web.

This is meant to help an entrepreneur building a web site with an application on the backend or outsourcing frontend to any web designer. The goal is to help articulate what you need and break it to manageable pieces so you can have a clear understanding of what to expect and how much it will cost in terms of time and money.

Thanks to my customer Dan Pouliot of Cabletron.com who challenged me to develop a process to spec out and communicate the user flow on a ecommerce site in 1998, to Perry Hewitt who excited me about caring so deeply for the customer with great usability for Harcourt.com and Paul English, we meticulously tabled product specs and screenshots and taught me focused execution as I built my first tech startup Coola.

A good web site design is what excites your users to do what you expect of them and builds loyalty to return to your site.

Here are steps to follow to execute on building a clean frontend for your Web 2.0 consumer site.

1. Always start with a CED (Customer Experience Definition), which forces you to clarify who is the user and what is your expectation of their usage of your site.

2. All sites have several different constituencies - customers, consumers, media, investors, job-seekers and influencers who judge the reliability, size and value of a company by their experience on a site.

3. List all users. Remember who is your target user when you launch your site, some type of users may come later, so plan for them but don't worry too much about all type of users for your initial launch version.

4. For each user type, list all possible actions they would take on the site. For example, a consumer can register/signup, try a demo as a guest, just surf and read about what you offer, refer friends, or turn around and become a customer as is the case in most B2C sites, in which case they transact and make a purchase.

5. Look at all possible combinations of these actions. For example a user may register first then try a demo, and refer friends. Another user may try a demo and surf around and then register.

6. Now plan a use case for all possible paths of action sequences for each user.

7. For every action, (this is a discussion between the product manager and UI designer) design the User experience by making screenshots.

8. Translate this (discussion between product manager with Engg) to become html for structure, CSS for presentation and Javascript for user behavior.

9. Find what user actions call the backend database or backend application (or middleware in a large system) by means of dynamic or interactive pages to send or receive data and ensure those are communicated in the product requirement specs.

10. Plan the best way to render data to the users in a clean and friendly fashion. For example, kayak.com is my favorite example of a Web 2.0 site that shows data and engages the users while they find travel deals with cool UI.

11. Decide on the branding message - cool and hip or funny and lighthearted or more formal and plan on content placement and graphics accordingly.

12. I am a big believer that all sites should have relevant apps to engage and communicate with the users. Place them strategically around the site.

13. Like the 90s had a blue as the favorite color, web 2.0 sites have an orange, or light shades of colors with simplicity as the key in their design.

14. Break the design into number of html pages, javascripts, widgets, flash apps, and CSS neccessary and execute on your design with a cool UI designer. This should get you a list of what needs to be built and what are the dependencies and help understand how much time and money it will take.

Here are my delicious links to good Web Site Design and UI. I'll add more here as I find them.

Hybrid Photo Apps - steps to take us from desktop to the SAAS world

2007-03-05T17:05:00.000-08:00

You have seen me track the online photo space from simple photo printing options from walmart to shutterfly to desktop apps like picasa.

Here is a potential new player, an expert in the Desktop world entering Web services with lot of promise - Adobe! (http://news.com.com/Adobe+to+take+Photoshop+online/2100-7345_3-6163015.html)

In 2001, before Picasa was born, I had approached Adobe with my mobile Server platform startup Coola, trying to sell the dream of how users would love to upload photos from mobile devices to the Server to create Web Services, offering a strategic sustainability of hybrid Apps across the desktop and Web. This was before Macromedia aquisition and Adobe was not a server company. We were walking with Kodak Pix cameras attached to Palm pilots before the days of cameras on cell phones.

Today I am excited by Adobe's entry in this space because

1. Adobe will increase the standards for photo processing on the web which is set to a basic standard with no differentiation among existing players.

2.Also, Adobe owns the photo space with Photoshop and knows the real users, not just web consumers who would like to gift picture mugs to grandma, but those who appreciate the beauty of creating good pictures and tools that help them express their creativity.

3. It will wake up the online photospace and we can sure see lot of creativity and new solutions.

4.Of course, since Adobe is a desktop software company, I am dreaming here to see not just web services, but Adobe strengthening its place with hybrid Apps that will create a new space taking us from the desktop to the hosted world with a series of products and services. Adobe is positioned well with customer access in the desktop world that a pure online company like Google does not have.

Video sites summary and Adobes bold moves

2007-02-19T23:27:00.000-08:00

Adobe has launched a new Flash for mobile and now a new tool to mashup videos, photos and audio available only for premium photobucket users currently. - I've been tracking the online photo space and cannot wait for the much awaited integration with video and audio.

Its one thing to be a leader with pdf format, its another to be agile to create new products for a competitive evolving space lead by startups. Now Adobe is a company worth watching in the new media space!

Oh! here is a neat Summary of the comparison of Video sites online - here thanks to Read/Write Web

The digital Generation of Web 2.0 Marketing

2007-02-12T12:01:00.000-08:00

I have been in marketing for the past 10 years focusing on consumer web and user generation and online communities, built an ecommerce site and transitioned a business from consumer to enterprise successfully. Its an ever changing fun landscape.

In 1996, when we knew everyone on the web, we went to newsgroups to let people know about a new site (my first was a RSS reader like site offering subscription for users to get feeds of select publications as they were being updating on the web), or we requested links from directories like Yahoo and mutual links from friends.

Then came the banner ads and link exchanges. I've learned the hard way that effective user generation was built on real passion for users and listening to them even when they say what you don't want to hear.

During 99, when I built my own Startup Coola, we got 1 million Palm users by old fashioned viral play among Palm user groups.

Somewhere down the line, Internet marketing became a bad word and consumer marketing was even less cooler as huge tools evolved to track user click-throughs and the path the user took in navigating sites. Google IPOed and SEOs went on a mad gold rush to generate eyeballs.

Now with the cliched web 2.0, a new combination of trends in technology offering clean usabilities and change in social behavior bringing us together to communicate, connect and build collective intelligence, has web marketing really changed?

I am a big believer of David Weinberger's Clue Train Manifesto which predicted that users will bring their social behaviors of looking for referrals and sharing good and bad reviews and biases from real life onto the web and change the fundamentals of business. It just got easier with Web 2.0 tools and techniques today.

The fundamentals of marketing are always the same - knowing who is your customer and finding what they want and communicating with them to generate revenues or whatever your metrics.

I am curious to hear your comments on the difference for internet marketers and whether you experience the digital generational divide as a marketer.

1. There is a digital generation of old-type marketers and new Web 2.0 marketers. Its obvious in job reqs asking for one or the other. However, what it means or how its valued depends on the startup founders and their interpretation of both. I see a lot of optimism and new thinking in the younger marketers who did not see the web world crash. I also see fear in those who carry too much of the past.

2. I was lucky to make the transition to the new web as I took a break after my last startup Coola, end 2002 and came back with new fervor to learn the new blogoshere just to connect back with new projects. There are a set of media folks, investors and entrepreneurs who have made the transition successfully.

3. Tactically what is the difference in marketing in Web 2.0 world?

Real marketing is about messaging the passion for a product (or service) and communicating it to customers (meaning you know who they really are) and successful marketers do it will clear metric driven campaigns and a love for speed to iterate and learn from the market.

Web 2.0 world makes it every juicier to make it happen because all components of marketing has changed:

A. Product - An online product is always about the core tech offering, related tools that help the user, some specific for the type of business, many generic, and most importantly the content that provides the context for the user to consumer the product and make decisions to evaluate , decide for or against a product, check feedback of fellow users and engage or disengage from the rest of the community of users, irrespective of whether the community is facilitated by the site or not.

Web 2.0 is all about harnessing the collective intelligence of the users and that part has to be built into the product by simple tools like ranking, feedback systems and self-propelling community tools.

I remember Content vs Commerce arguments in Harcourt as I built out Harcourt.com for $2 education publisher, a brick and mortor business transitioning to the web in 1999.

Now Content created by the community has become a larger component, how does this affect product development today?

B. Messaging/Outbound Marketing:

Print vs long tail of the web has become clearly differentiated. There are new set of influencers like Mike Arrington, Om and Robert Scoble for the new world, who will bring the young tech crowd. This is good for market validation and market acceptance. But to fundamentally build a business with real customers, it goes back to good old segmentation and reaching the core set of users.

Here I find companies targeting traditional customers, say an ecommerce site will benefit better from real print world PR from NY Times etc.

Of course, the tools have exploded and even Walter Mosberg publishes videos addons to his articles, so we have become a more visual society and marketing tools to help in that are yet to evolve.

C. Overlap:
I find that the product management cycle and messaging are more mixed up than before. This is because customers are talking everywhere, which seems like community and messaging, but thats changing the dynamics of products and the marketer has to be aware and be in all places.
For eg, thermaware offers a heatpad for pain relief that works differently from standard products by producing heat slowly by oxidation. When you look for them on the web, you'll find dicussion groups talking about using thermaware not for pain relief but for storing mattresses because it takes oxygen from the closet where its kept, amazingly comparing with a totally different product in the storage space that thermaware product folks won't even consider as competition.

This factor is huge for a new web company launching as the product is in early cycles and messaging and community competes with product management to build out the product roadmap.

This is a huge topic dear to my heart, I'd love to hear if you disagree, have any experience supporting this idea. Email me or post a comment.

Off to space with Jeff Bezos

2007-01-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

Jeff Bezos's new company Blue Origin is building a spaceship in Internet mode, incremental with lot of startup energy.

Nov 13, 2006, they launched and landed Goddard – a first development vehicle in the New Shepard program, a vertical take-off, vertical-landing vehicle designed to take a small number of astronauts on a sub-orbital journey into space.

It went up 300ft and came down smoothly. Awesome! (video here)

Its funny to see the Amazon plug for S3, Simple Storage Service to store and access info from anywhere to leverage their hosted infrastructure for picture storage. Sure hosted pics online is just scratching the surface of S3.

Amazon can sell lot of Blue Origin merchandize for sure. I'd love to buy a cool toy version of Goddard that I can control by remote for a take-off and landing :-)

Monetizing the Consumer Web

2006-11-17T06:29:00.000-08:00

I love the consumer web, I think there are real problems to be solved for consumers, but lot of good ideas stopped short of becoming businesses or got washed away with the net bust in 2001.

I am happy to see the energy of new entrepreneurs, many new and young, with no history or rather baggage of the past, which is the beauty of the startup world.

Even climbing on the shoulders of fallen giants gives a better vantage point over standing alone. So, heres my take on lessons learnt from the past about consumer web monetizing that startups today need to build upon.

1. Consumers are spoilt, they like stuff on the web for free. More important, consumers have become skeptics to understand that nothing is really free. They read about stories of young college graduates drop-out and build companies which they sell for millions (atleast on paper) within 2 years. Sure, there are that band of entrepreneurs who startup to exit, not exactly to build a viable business. This impacts consumer behavior on the web when they look at any new startup.

2. I find new consumer companies follow one of three paths today:
a) Its about building a community, with no idea about monetization. Some dream to get ad revenue eventually.
b) It has a core product for free with added features available for a monthly subscription usally in the order of $10 to $40.
c) Mostly content sites offer free previews and offer the content as a DVD or download, for a purchase from an online store anywhere from $1.99 to $10

I met Simon Clay Michael of Isabont, the career management site for consumers y'day at Boston Startup Meetup Dinner. He is very passionate about helping the job seeker manage job search across different sources of jobs with a CRM like system.

Isabont offers a free service with advanced features available for a monthly subscription and has a following of people who have paid a subscription fee. This was a viable model in web 1.0, but I am seriously convinced it does not make economic sense today. But Isabont has compelling value to its consumers which can be monetized by getting revenues from some other party interested in the same consumers.

Sites that offer everything for free, when offering a really cool product or a compelling value to a specific segment draws a decent community. When you see a site offers value for a fee, the American consumer who is trained everyday to shop for value, tends to shop for comparables and only a small percentage of users very passionate to the site's ideals signup. Even then there is no loyalty for long, so it cannot grow into an economically viable business.

Agreed, today the cost of hosting such a site is very minimum, software is virtually free, so many consumer sites claim to breakeven fast. They do not include the opportunity cost of their people's times.

I believe that the last phase of the web brought ephoria with everyone who was getting online and finding the beauty of the web believing that everyone else was online and would change behaviour to buy all products and services online. It scares me to see such a ephoria back with social networking sites started by young founders who believe the whole world is like them.

The businesses who has solid fundamental values with capital to sustain them during the recession survived. Sadly, many of them morphed out of consumer play into new products to survive.

Main street America, and all the S&P 500 was built one brick at a time, bringing one customer at a time. They survived past the Internet crash, they did close down their over optimistic Internet ventures.

I'd categorize the successful businesses of the web into:

1.Ecommerce (like Amazson), where the net access added clear value over going to stores, with the added ingenuity of Amazon to tempt the user with clean merchandising of all kinds of wares past the initial books they started. Lets not forget the New York Times full page Ads Amazon spent to build brand and ean eyeballs. That era is over, but they've planted ecommerce success on the web.

2. Auctions (like Ebay), essentially ecommerce of smaller scale, among people selling their own wares. There are a whole sleuth of players offering exchange of products on the web. Ebay behaved like a clear merchant and said,I am the middleman, I take my cut and hence they are here to stay.

3. Media (Google)/Content (Google, AOL, CNET etc) play, after they have gained eyeballs, from building brand, purchasing eyeballs from otehr players all are vying for the ad budget of a set of companies.

My advice to the new consumer web companies is to accept the reality of businesses who have built their loyal customer base and go up the food chain and find companies who can use your site technology as a co-branded hosted play to add value to the same base of consumers you are targeting. This is a win-win because you get to stitch your company into the web ecosystem, get the eye-balls and generate a recurring revenue stream while the other company gets to generate more revenue and built loyalty from the same base of users.

Digitizing daily lives by US government cities online

2006-11-06T08:01:00.000-08:00

I had to pay a parking ticket to the City of Boston , for a 5 minutes delay in getting to my car.(oh i hate it)

http://www.cityofboston.gov gave me a fantastic experience. I love sites that segment their content to different audiences without calling out those people. Online Services are clearly on the left,from my point of you, not by their different departments as they list it internally. Its an easy pull down menu for all payments, which led to the "Office of the Parking Clerk".

Parking Clerks Online Services is a whole different web application, but seamlessly integrated into the site. I typed my violation and could pay right away. Only caveat was that it showed that I could print my receipt and on clicking it timed out without giving me even 30 seconds. Still a wonderful user-experience for such a lousy job of paying parking tickets.

I decided to check out other US city gov sites. Heres my analysis:

I love the clean access and load of content layout of India government, with all state and local access information in one place at http://india.gov.in Why isn't there one for all US states and cities?

I found http://www.statelocalgov.net/ leads to all states and several departments. Still I found the site dry and not easy to reach the cities. Looks like a commercial site and not a government site, so I find it hard to believe the authencity of its content.

Heres my list of US city sites with my comments on them:
San Francisco http://www.sfgov.org Trying to find parking was easy but it looped after a point.

Boston http://www.cityofboston.gov Clean easr of use, everything automated online.

Chicago http://www.chicagoinfo.gov/ Just a link of all departments, not easy to find services.

Houston http://www.houstontx.gov/ I love the "I want to" tab, that talks to the consumers and leads them to different services, nicely automated online.

Tucson http://www.tucsonaz.gov/ Simple site, neatly organized for different user segments. Intersting to note :report Graffiti online automated to report graffiti on your property!

New York http://www.nyc.gov/ Confusing Portal full of news. Interesting is the link "things to do". Shows the personality of the city.

Philadelphia http://www.phila.gov/ Lot of news, but a clean left section saying "Help Me", "Find Me", "Get a" shows they care to help the consumer right away. Neat!

Milwaukee http://www.city.milwaukee.gov/ Proper URL, nice site and a clean "I want to" section. Good!

Fairfax http://www.fairfaxva.gov/ Confusing at first, but once you got residents section, its a lot of useful services.

Gloucester http://www.glos-city.gov.uk/ Colorful site, Online payments leads to very clean to use system for all sortf of payments Counsil tax, fines, and even a house rent which I wonder who pays to the city.

Seattle http://www.seattle.gov/ Clean URL, Fouused on services to users, neat search using Google to provide search of the site!

Los Angeles http://www.lacity.orgClearly reflects a city with its own personality. Uses a lot of new media and has blogs for city councils and lapd. The blogs for LA Animal Services and LA Recreation and Parksare great example of city services hosted on free Google blogger sites.

Tempe, AZ www.tempe.gov/ Colorful site, with a clear "I want to"section leading to services. Interesting stats on how many people have boarded a bus in Tempe :-)

San Jose http://www.sanjoseca.gov/ LOTS of information, not easy to navitage but its all there. A separate Customer Service web application offers segmentation of services to users.

Burlington, MA http://www.burlington.org/ Easy URL to remember. Lots of information organized by different departments. "Who do I talk to About ..108 Subjects" is very unique and should be adopted by every city. They could have a list of services like "I want to" that may cities have. I could not find information about who to contact regarding recycling plastics from a city home. One minor comment would be to offer a lighter background to make black letters readable.

JobCasts - Monster.com Beware!

2006-10-06T05:16:00.000-07:00

I love the Internet because there are so many people empowered by it and you can across new people and ideas everyday that it never ceases to amaze me.

We all know about Podcasts, thanks to ipods and phones carrying mp3s. Its everywhere in all areas covering news and providing entertainment. Then came video blogs where we see people and hear their stories,and stay on if its entertaining.

I know a whole bunch of podcasters and video bloggers who are trying segment the Internet to cater casts to a variety of segment of users and to get sponsors and make money.

The latest is a "JobCast". I think its cool. Its a video from FinancialAidnetwork.com looking for a candidate for their Director of Marketing. Making it a video blog like Cast and posting on Utube makes it like a TV ad, but more personal, as though you ran into Chris and he just told you about the job locally. The biggest element that needs to be communicated in hiring is the people and passion of the company, which is lost in all other mediums of hiring.

Yahoo hotjobs and Monster.com lookout! Theres an opportunity to marry the buzz of podcasts and community to find more people for jobs, brining real money to the job sites.

IT enabling commonman for real

2006-10-04T07:24:00.000-07:00

This is old news - etickets!

I have been involved in the transition of businesses to adopt technology, particularly the web for the past 14 years. So, grand visions are a great start, but the practical aspect of getting buyins and making it happen is a wonderful ride by itself.

So, when airlines started etickets, it seems easy and cool for us net-savvy folks.

I have been traveling in India and London this summer and the paperless ease of etickets is amazing at not just the technology, but the clean way of execution and adoption by people.

Of course, my international air tickets were etickets, with built in security asking me to update a web site with my personal data for confirmation. I flew 8 planes inside India, all new private airlines buzzing with entreprenurial energy and competing in making the customer happy. Everyone of them was paperless.

Now you have to understand the landscape of India to appreciate etickets there. India is technologically advanced with Internet kiosks in many street corners. With 70% villages in the country, they have adopted Internet even for their public exam results allowing students to check the net and not look in papers for results.

But I didn't have access to print my paperless ticket confirmation from many kiosks. I need this to show to enter the airport! So they have setup a booth for each airlines outside the departure entrance for us people without the confirmation copy to get a copy from them by showing our ID. Ah! that doesn't make it paperless, does it? So, one of the airlines uses SMS which is very ubiquitious in India (I could not understand the prelevance of SMS in India, while sitting in US). They sent me a SMS of an eticket confirmation number which is easy to remember or to scribble on a piece of paper to take it to the airline counter.

Thats what excites me, a seaminly simple use of a combination of technologies, but crafted for the particular geography of customers!

What topped it for me is traveling by Indian railways. They are famous for their volume of traffic. They had etickets too! They have used technology so well, that its effects are experienced and you can neither see the technology nor any expected change of behaviour anywhere. Reminds me of Prof.Venkatraman's "IT Enables Business Transformation" from early 90s.

In Indian railways they have several classes - First class, II class AC, II class non-AC. Earlier, when each class was not filled, those seats were left vacant. Now they offer those seats for free upgrades to randomly selected passengers of the next lower class, all done by computers behind the scenes. This allows people to taste the next higher price-range class and become potential customers of that class in future travel. Classic cannibalization of a segment to upgrade them to a higher price segment!

Then finally on my way home, I visited London. I love the London tube. They are yet to implement paperless tickets. We spent lot of time in lines (oh they call it queues) to buy the combination of ticket that worked for us - real human interaction! Well, as a tourist, I appreciated that interaction, but etickets would have saved my much time.

BarCamp Boston - the future of conferences

2006-06-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

A good conference is one that lingers on with us after we are back to our routine lives.

I attended BarCamp Boston weekend June 9th and partof 10th.

I went with the curiosity to experience an unconference, full of excitement about what to expect, how can anything be organized in real-time with all variables changing, and everyone is a participant ...

Entering the Maynard buildings of Monster Worldwide headquarters was nostalgic, bringin back memories of DEC and the several hundreds of DEC startups in the early days of the web.

Everything was in order, thanks to the smiling faces of the Monster staff walking in their bright orange T-shirts. There were directions everywhere, free parking, all communication clear, even for last minute attendees like me on the BarCamp Boston Wiki and the mailing list.

We got our badges and were ushered into a lively cafeteria of about 130 people. We were given a stack of large size sticky notepads where we could writeup a topic we want to present and stick on a wall showing the available rooms and time slots. We could put a sticky on a nearny section about topics we would like to hear if any expert in that topic is willing to share.

Only one topic was pre-organized by Ryan Sarver, on "Raising Venture Capital for Web 2.0 Companies". I'll write about this panel specifically later.

I presented a topic "Concept to Business - Technology Commercialization" at 11am. Thanks to Chris Penn of Financial Aid Podcast for the podcast of this talk. I enjoyed the audience and followups and was amazed at the number of entrepreneurs who attended BarCamp.

The topics ranged a wide variety and the ones I attended were - 30 Perl modules in 15 minutes, Building Scalable Web Services", JSON, Guerrilla Marketing and Your Podcast , Creating Content Networks with Chris Brogan (I loved this one), Bootstrapping, Amazon Web Services and microformats.

I am writing about Bootstrapping , Ray Deck's talk in my Startup Advisor Blog (http://coolastory.blogspot.com), it was great.

Amazon Web Services was a talk about using Amazon APIs and mashups. It was out of this world.

Some 12+ people camped for the night. The Monster Lab folks provided an enterprenerial backdrop to it all, which made it more amazing and wishing it could continue more days.
We'll be back for BarCamp at Monster next year, I guess.

Excitement of unconferences - see you at Barcamp

2006-06-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

I have spoken about various Internet topics in conferences since Internet World in 95 in Boston including several brand name conferences and recently speak at select conferences in select topics after checking out the quality of audiences.

So, when I heard about unconferences , I was not surprised that smart people want to create something distruptive to challenge the quality of conferences which mostly start with some speakers slotted by sponsoring companies followed by some good and bad speakers, many pitching their products, out of which some are arresting speakers and many pushing powerpoints insensitive to the intelligence of the audience.

I am writing about it here as I am excited that unconferences are possible because of the current state of digital space coupled with (call it web 2.0 or not) the maturing of online communities.

I was part of Boston Computer Society, a 30 yr old body in 95 and started their Web Group. This was my blessing to get me to experience the fervor of geeky grassroot communities in America and the power of what they can achieve. We spun-off as Web-Net Group after BCS closed with monthly meetings at MIT Sloan and so many volunteer driven group activities and online sites.

Apart from the concept that all participants are speakers and the community rates and allows presentation purely on merit, what excites me about unconferences is that they are spontaneeous with an entrepreneurial spirit which helped the web take off in the 90s.

The falling costs of hosting, open source softwares, wikis as registration tools all make it all the more easy for unconferences to flourish and produce quality interactions, learnings and seed new ideas for more innovation.

I'll write more after attending this weekends' barcamp Boston. Whats cool about barcamp is that its evolved into another participatory self-regulated community with its own offsprings organized worldwide.

Photo Fulfillment for community

2006-05-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

I just found qoop, a photo fulfillment site that has partnered with webshots (cnet), photobucket and flickrand allows users to print pictures from these sites into a mini photo book or poster of 1000s of pictures, all at a very nominal fee.

This is a small step towards my dream of digital scrapbooks, but its a sensible monetizing move in that direction. Qoop has the core competency in photo books fulfillment and the photo sites have done well in partnering in what I guess must be a revenue share deal.

The best part of what I like about qoop is that that market to social networks and college crowd, focusing on the community aspect of photo sharing which is an obvious revenue opportunity for photo sites.

I've been waiting for yahoo photos or shutterfly to offer this community aspect of sharing with some ecommerce options.

While Flickrs is integrated with Qoop, just wondering why Yahoo photos is not part of the qoop partnership. Didn't Yahoo Photos relaunch their AJAX version of their site saying they had more photo users ever at Demo 2006

Start with community and get local search

2006-05-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is all focused on communities and it can't be more apt for any hosted solution than local search.

Listen to "The Architecture of Participation" by Paul Levine, GM of Yahoo Local. Its focused on the marriage of search and local people looking for stuff.

Local communities in the offline world are all around us in the school clubs, alumni groups, PTAs, bars, networking events groups of all kinds, all different segments of population, with one thing in common - hudling of people seeking a common connection to find information about local referals to solve a specific problem NOW!

I think Yahoo groups is the largest collection of active online groups.

I think the solution to local search is not a typical search solution - search content and find information, focusing on better search algorithms and UIs around it. I think its one of bringing offline communities into the online world with little or no change in behavior to solve the problem they are looking for information, validated by their trusted network NOW!

The trusted community aspect is what made all the tagging community sites famous and built a community of people around them - friendster, delicious, kaboodle ...

It a low hanging fruit waiting for the larger portals and hosted players to marry this community into their existing group solutions and focus on the community and their needs which in turn should provide the local search solution as the end product.

They should not start with a local search product and find marketing to reach the community who will use it. Isn't our first wave of web 1.0 lession about personalization and customization?

Open Source Photo Management Software and Hosted Photo sites

2006-05-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

I've been writing about hosted photo sites and I am tired of the lack of differentiation amongst all of them! I believe in photos as a medium of communication of our society and archiving of our times.

So, hosted photo sites should not stop at allowing uploading and sharing of pictures and be happy with charging for printing. In today's Web 2.0 world where online communities are empowered with wikis and blogs and forming participatory media communities, I hope photo sites Yahoo or shutterfly would wake up to the potential of online communities beyond the customer communities on their sites and provide new offerings integrating rest of the web.

I got an email today inquiring if I had tried any of the softwares in this space.

I've written about Picasa.

I've used Gallery, the opensource Photo management software that can be setup online and integrated seamlessly into any web site. Its great for allowing a community of users to create directories and manage their own photos for sharing online with others.

My friend Raaj has been offering a gallery installation for his friends and family at his home portal gardenofhearts.net since 1997.

I like how gallery integrates with leading photo sites to allow purchase of photos as you are viewing a shared photo. I've tried the purchase link to shutterfly particularly. Its not easy to use them because the integration is not completely done with the companies blessings. So, when I see a picture I want to buy and click the "Buy from shutterfly"link, it treats me as a new guest user on shutterfly and doesn't my profile there, which I didn't appreciate.

Its a shame that the photo sites have not appreciated the value of such communities and lost the potential revenues from them.

Photo sites and participative community integrations

2006-05-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

I tried uploading some pictures to share with friends.

Yahoo Photos with their new AJAX view is cool. So I tried to upload a bunch of pictures. Was wondering, "hey its Yahoo, maybe if they integrate Yahoo groups to this and allow me to define groups of people who can access my pictures, I can dynamicaly change that list instead of separate permissions and adding user lists for each album".

Guess what? Yahoo picture upload tool is integrated with Yahoo toolbar and its bulky and takes time. I can understand the benefits for a user who wants the toolbar for everything else. But not me! Anyways, it didn't work for me for several technical combinations, which I'll skip here.

I like shuttefly for the quality of their prints and never use them for just sharing pictures.

I went to shutterfly, and when you click "add pictures', they seamlessly start installation of a plug-in and within seconds, I am ready to drag and drop pictures. Its clean UI and the mention at the bottom how long it will take for my type of connection speed, so I am off to write this blog in parrallel.

I am one of those spoilt web consumers, who assumes we've seen enough consumer sites over the years that its easy to understand seamless usability and expect companies to get those smart engineers who just take us through just the flow we want :-)

Now I wish shutterfly would build some community options that will allow people to share pictures and pay for selct viewers to order prints on their own choice. That way power photo users like myself can happily spend the dollars and not worry remembering everyone's mailing addresses or be forced to print everything for local pickup and old fashipn distribution in person.

I think if any photo site would think of the participative online community trend of today, we can see a whole lot of services which would be cool for us and worthy revenues for them.

v-shake - digitization of business networking with a new revenue model

2006-05-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

I was going to focus this blog on digial media in terms of technologies pertaining to digitizing all forms of content. Since content and communities are now interwoven, I think its appropriate to comment on social and business networking- on the increased digitization of our community interactions with hosted technology solutions.

V-shake brings a market-driven model to linkedin

I love linkedin. I get lot of people who google me and get frustrated and cannot find my contact and finally sent for introductions thru linkedin.

But, the limitation of linkedin is that the real people who vield power - particularly executives investors can rule out that they don't want to receive any inmails or introductions. So linkedin has resorted to selling some service as a membership package to allow spamming a whole bunch of people, atleast once. I think that revenue model is highly flawed because the segment of paid consumers is small and doesn't scale revenues much.
So linkedin has resorted to being yet another job site by targeting recruiters to reach potential hires, downplaying the whole potential of business networking.

I recently found v-shake.com, a new startup just launched in beta. They take a market driven approach, allowing people to charge different rates for people to contact them through different means and sharing the revenues with these highly networking individuals.

The social networking sites like friendster, myspace are famous because they are all free and built a community, lack a b-model and became famous only by their aquisition by Yahoo, News corp etc.

What fascinates me about v-shake.com is that they are clearly focused on a segment of business users who are power networkers - the sales people, bizdev partnership people, entreprenuers seeking investors, executives networking amongst themselves to keep their marketability.
These are people targeted by the conference industy which tries to segment them by verticals and earn their dollars for the overall conference program.

V-shake.com tutorial is proof of the smart technial people behind the company. Its the best written visual tutorial I've ever seen.

I hope the company would listen to the market and lock-in this segment of customers and create the first revenue generating new b-model of web 2.0 companies.

Nothing can get more human on the net than gethuman.com

My friend Paul English started gethuman.com by passionately wanting to make life as a consumer in America easy with faster access to customer service phone lines.

Its an amazing example of social networking clearly solving a problem bringing people to bond together as a community. I think this community has built itself on the net with so much passion like the early formation of real towns by the early settlers of America, guided by the marketing genius of Paul.

What is common with all online photo sites of most reatilers

2006-04-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

I've been writing about my experiences using online photo sites for pickup at retail shops.

And guess what? I found that this company PNI Digital Media is providing the Digital Media Platform, as a private label hosted solution for CVS, walmart, Hannaford and EchardRx and a lot many companies.

First, I appreciate them as any early provider of technology, especially hosted solutions.. I wish them success as I love all change agents and PNI has brought the into these retailers.

Wish they would improve their UI to keep up with times.

I stopped by at my local CVS and checked out that the local photo center guy knows about the kodakgallery deal with cvs for pickup at the store. He just thinks its in the works and I should wait for the operational details to be worked out.

Wonder is its a big company DNA, one arm not knowing what the other is doing? Why would CVS host at PNI and start another hosted deal partnership? Expecting better marketing through Kodak?

I spent another $20 at cvs for the prints and found that the local prints are much faster than I had originally calculated. I got 90 prints in 15 minutes, not bad!

PNI will lose if CVS and other strike deals with Kodak and others. They need to focus on two key things most needed for any hosted business - building brand so the end user knows them, and customer lockin of their retailers who host their private label sites.

Its good for me as the consumer to get more choice, but its not good for the retailers to keep switching unless the newer offer is much much stickier than the previous one, which is not the case with the Kodakgallery deal. I am likely to forget CVS altogether to move to someone else.

Remote photo printing - kodakgallery and Yahoo

2006-04-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

I got a coupon mailed to try digital photo printing at kodakgallery.com/cvs for pickup at CVS pharmacy. Don't ask me what I do with all these printed photos, I like to try them all out.

Ok, its a logical partnership, they've spent on marketing and reached me and I am a good potential customer. I've tried photo upload for priting at cvs.com many years back when it was buggy and liked that they've moved to Kodak Easy share.

I've been a regular user of Kodak Easy share from its early days.

But, guess what! http://www.kodakgallery.com/cvs routes to the regular home page of kodak gallery and it has no mention of CVS. Talk about falling thru the cracks!

Its sad that Kodak has the core competency in this business and has been a pioneer in several digital photo solutions from the same company in parallel, appearing to come from different groups inside the company and there are people like me ready to give another chance if they have a easy solution for me and we are here with a partnershuip that will make my life easy but all I get is marketing supported with no execution.

Yahoo Photos and Target partnership:

Oh! I noticed that Yahoo photos has a partnership with target for store pickup. Its a logical choice, since Target is walmart's competion who offer their own printing from their stores.

Since Walmart chewed corners of some of my pictures in their own intelligent sizing ( or is it some incompatability between their online site and store printers?), I am cautious to send a bunch of prints to target, though being a Yahoo photo fan, I'll try it out soon.

In fact, I saw this option on Yahoo photos, and thought, Hmm, I am not going to target anytime soon, so let me defer it for now. Then, guess what, I ended up in target and thought, oh, I wish I could just go online to Yahoo and upload the pictures now while I shop at target. Maybe target should setup an online kiosk to access Yahoo photos from their store as they'll make money in that process. Maybe Yahoo photos should demand that as part of their deal with target.

Mobile Photo Access:

Don't lets get started on all mobile upload options, its my dream, technically possible today, but, its a long way to go. My photos all sit online on an online photo site, say Yahoo photos. Yahoo can allow me an option to use my phone or PDA to select and purchase select pictures for pickup at target. Its not enough to allow uploading on my low resolution pics taken on my phone. That seems more driven by the carriers to charge me for bandwidth for the upload. It needs to be driven by Yahoo who owns the consumer and cares for their loyalty and direct dollars.

I keep going back to Yahoo as they are the market leader in digital photo space and have caught up well with Picasa (ok,ok, Yahoo did come up with the deskup photo upload option well before Picasa, but it wasn't as sticky as Picasa, ok) and everyone else in terms of all sticky features available in the market today with their AJAX version. So I am waiting for consumer centric mobile ecommerce...

Hosting your dreams digitally

2006-04-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

Digital Photos on the web started out for the photo labs and has seen several solutions for consumers. Digital photography has transformed how we communicate as people. Its given us a new medium to express ourselves and tell our stories.

Yes, there have been many site, and many successful acqusitions. But it still seems to be in infancy as far as consumer solutions go. Theres a startup opportunity for few more companies to come with better stickiness to make successful companies.

I categorize the different solutions for different segments based on type of customers based on their usage/need for digital photo solutions:

Photo delivery for photo labs

I think Pictra Inc was the first in 1996-97. They offered a hosted solution allowing industrial photo labs to scan and deliver photos to the web. It offered sharing features as much as available in todays photo sites for a fee, I think $49 subscription. It was a pioneer to offer selling of photos and photo products via ecommerce.
Photorolo, from MCL Software Service is founded by the same Pictra folks and has a good base with photo labs.

Photo sharing for consumers - We've seen a whole bunch of players from Yahoo photos, to flickr, snapfish, picasa, kodak (and their ofoto), webshots, photobucket.
My friend Malay Kundu founded invino software, the first instant messaging software in 1996 before the IM markt got flooded and had the best photo sharing on IM Invino was sold to Youthstream for less than $10m in 98 and they pretty much lost it in m&a integration. Picasa offers hello, a new IM for photo sharing, which is good, but I like Picasa's photo organizing on a desktop best. Of course Flickr is best known for its tagging.

The new AJAX version of Yahoo photos has IM sharing, tagging and a slick look. I like how Yahoo has integrated photo sharing via email with Yahoo photos. This helps people who share photos by email (I am generally not one of them) and stores the originals on yahoo photos.

Mobile photo uploads: We were ahead of our times with my first startup Coola and we spent a lot of time integrating with Kodak (before ofoto aquisition) with a cool software to upload pics from cameras to hosted sites. Coola allowed the photos from Palmpix camera attached to a palm pilot to be uploaded remotely anywhere you want, and Kodak wanted it uploade to kodak.com
Then all phones didn't have cameras and some sprint folks didn't think it was useful.

Today most every photo site has that as a photo upload feature. Its still long ways to go to solve a problem for a customer. These sites should allow me to click and buy the photo from Yahoo, or click and share with my friend, instead of asking mt to upload as a separate boring task.

Photo printing solutions - print delivery, store pickup, print at home.

I've tried everyone of the photo delivery options. ofoto was good, after the kodak merger they offer some large partnerships and deals for store pickup at local pharmacies (cvs, i think).
I love the print quality of shutterfly best of them all.
They all offer borders and some tools for red-eye reduction etc. Walmart.com seems to measure picture size differently and always chops off some pictures for me.

Why can't Adobe just do it? Here's another of my dreams. I used photoshop to edit my pictures. I should be able to simply click and order prints or share with others too. Adobe doesn't have to do built a hosted photo solution afresh. They can simply parter with any online photo player for starters.

International delivery of printed photos - Kodak was a pioneer in this and I loved kodak.co.in for delivering my pictures to India by a simple upload. They had similar options in competitive prices in many far east countries, now it seems to be a neglected site. I heard about 3 other options that has come up, locally from India. I'll check them out and write again.

Photo commerce - printing photos, ecommerce of photo gifts
All the photo sharing sites do this too. But I think this is a different market, different people who would like to buy or gift such products. Don't we all buy fundraiser gifts for our kids schools? I bought my child's artwork as a gift for grandma to help fundraise for her school or to get those people off my back. I think thats a much viable gift buyer channel than the same photo sites selling to consumers who want to share photos.

Photo search - Picasa took the first step. Riya is cool in its image recognition. My same friend Malay Kundu has a cool image search technology, but too bad he has decided not to focus on conumer photo markets.

Photo blogs - Blogger has done it as part of its mobile blogging, pretty seamlessly to upload photos to a blog, also from a mobile phone. I haven't had a chance to check Yahoo moblogging. There are also a few which are like slideshow software and varients of it.
Why don't I write again after checking these out?

Future: I've written about several of my dreams already.

I have my heart out for an obvious one - for photo sites to integrate into online communities to allow using photos to communicate (build upon photoblogs) and build a whole new business model integrating digital communication using pictures and communities.

One more is a digital scrapbook site. ok,this is not all for current hosted photo site customers.
There are a lot of site offering digital scrapbook components. I dream of one which will replace the $2b scrapbook market digitally allowing enough creativity to build and host our dreams and stories digitally.

Walmart again

2006-04-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

I was hoping not to focus more talk on walmart.com photo shop.

But guess what! Walmart photo shop allowed me to cancel my order after I realized that I could not get it the same day but charged my card and printed it in NY and shipped for my local store for my pickup. Remember the tactic of photo studios to print several poses of your child so you would buy more than what you planned for! I turned out such a sucker and took all my pictures and let the charge for the canceled order go!

Theres a b-model for photo shops to print extra copies to make people like me pay!

I've been talking only about printing copies from a photo store online.

I've tried every possible online store for prints ever since I heard of the first one. I'll write again as I'd like to do justice in evaluating all the players and how the space has evolved.

Printing at Kodak machines at CVS and the walmart.com process

2006-04-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

I used to be a fan of using the kodak machines at CVS pharmacy to print my pictures at 29 cents each, until 1 year back. It takes about 3 minuts for 2 pictures to print. I used to print copies from my digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 3100 and stayed in CVS for an hour waiting for the prints sometime.

So, I switched to this mode of "let me upload the pictures from home and pick it up at the store. I tried cvs.com to upload the pictures to keep it printed for me to pickup and it had problems. The other alternative was walmart.com and thats how I ended up where I started my day today.

So, I went back to CVS and got the bookmark pictures printed and am cutting it to bookmark size by the side now :-)

Interesting enough, this afternoon, as my print was waiting at walmart store (so I believed), having selected the store-pickup option, I was wondering how walmart.com folks must have implemented this.

Does my purchase from walmart.com trigger a remote printing to be spooled at the photo shop at Walmart store I selected or was it an intermediate stage of process change at walmart that made the web site email the store and they would continue their process of printing manually?

This thinking might appear crazy if you are reading this as a fellow consumer. But, I derive my web product building experience from going through this exercise with many brick and mortar companies who used the web to improve processes for efficiencies and it usually takes one step at a time in a large company. Its ok as long as the end experience for the customer is seamless.

Walmart.com offers the choice of 1 hour photo print, store pickup and home delivery (at no extra charge). Why would I, the consumer select a store pickup (after a week) option at 15 cents a print while they offer home delivery at no extra charge at 12 cents a print.

Is it the typical business myopia of thinking from inside the company and not from the customer perspective? I can understand how it will benefit Walmart by bringing people to the store if they picked the "store pickup"option, but whats in it for me, the consumer?

I am a big believer of extension of printing and lot other processes into remote machines across the web, lets hope these sites get better in understanding our needs.

BTW, Walmart has the same kodak machine that CVS has, that one can used for self-prints, but it was 35 minutes before the walmart store was closing for the day and the lady at the photo store had decided to shut it down for the day.

I had to call my husband to surf and find the nearest CVS that was open late. Another of my dreams is to be able to use my phone and find that store option from my cell. Better would be to send my photo from my cell to spool at the store printer.

We don't have to start the discussion of upload speeds and storage and resolution of cell camera photots. A hosted photo solution company like Yahoo or Shutterfly can still allow me today to store my photos online from my digital camera and just click and purchase prints from a remote store like CVS or Walmart for pickup or for delivery in I can afford the extra few days time.
It technically doable today. I am waiting ...

Digital prints from walmart.com

2006-04-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

I just returned from walmart, disappointed that the pack of pictures I uploaded for pickup was just not ready, its on its way to New York!

I am a digital space enthustiast. I have tried all possible web solutions to digitize, print and share photos since 1996, built technology to transfer pictures from palm pilots and cameras onto the web in 1999 (from my own startup) and amd quick to try all available solutionds today.

In the web democracy, this blog is my drop in the bucket to influence change to get digital media to work for me - the consumer.

I'll write again, sharing my experiences of the past decade in this space and lets track whats available out there today, together.

As for the walmart story, I have to get bookmarks for my kids class for a project and decided to make it as a photo and simply print from walmart.com last night. I have used walmart photos before with success. Now I chose the store pickup option and when I went there, it turned out I should have selected the 1 hour photo option, and the store pickup meant it was sent as an order to my store and the store shipped it to New York for me to pickup next week. I didn't see this fine print which doesn't appear on the site as I completed the transaction.

I have 12 more hours to get my bookmark photos, let me see the state of digital photos on a Sunday evening in America!