Archive for July, 2005
O’Reilly on Web 2.0 and new business models… 
July 17th, 2005
O’Reilly Radar: Sometimes it takes someone else to replay what you said…was the recent post by Tim O’reilly. It was in reference to a very interesting point by Tim “The likes of Google, Amazon, and Ebay take the intelligence of all their users–and put it in the interface.” These are examples of companies that have used customer feedback and usability as a core part of their business model.
The rest of Tim’s quotes in the post are below, however some I think are very dot.bomb-ish and show make entrepreneurs and business managers quiver…my thoughts in-line.
“As far as the average consumer is concerned, Close Enough seems to be Good Enough”
-This one makes sense, I like it. Although it’s about mapping services it has broader implications most developers and technology companies would spend all the money and the time in the world before releasing even an alpha, gettin a product to market that is close enough and getting customer feedback for refinement is likely a better strategy.
“The API is a reflection of the richness of the data”
-Not sure about this one.
“Change the Business Model, Change the Rules”
-I remember reading about changing business models and rules back in the late 90s. Guess what some rules we need to keep, like at some point revenues must exceed costs, you need paying customers and revenu somewhere in your business, and market share alone won’t make your business work.
“Syndication of Data is the Future”
-OK. But I don’t see the value in simply syndicating everyone elses data all the time. But there is definitely some strong business cases for data syndication.
“It will Self-Brand if you do it right”
-This makes a lot of sense and is quite different than the first dot.com era when start-ups spend all their time on logo, name and other BS that doesn’t help anybody. If you build a good product and provide value to your customers then your brand will be worth something, Seth Godin agrees.
“Drive Usage THEN figure out how to monetize it”
-I guess so long as you can afford to wait long enough, but I think you should start thinking about this day one, or way before even. But many companies and websites built huge amounts of users and still went out of business really fast.
“To push your API, do something NOT business-related”
-This does make some sense, and we’ve been thinking about to do it with our AJAX components. Word of caution though, this alone is not a business model.
My two bits anyway. I’m thinking if we’re not already in it, we’re coming up on another big tech boom and crash cycle. The more web2.0 stuff I read the more I have to believe it. However, I’m going to try to put my cynicism aside and ride the wave this time. Like the first boom, we need to take the good with the bad and hope we come out on top.
Posted in AJAX, Business, Software Development, Technology, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
WebVisions 2005 - Usability, Blogging and Flickr
July 17th, 2005
Overall I think it was a great conference, I met many interesting people. It was good to see that there were many talks on usability, which is a very important topic more developers should be aware of. But it was also quite hype driven and I couldn’t help but think some of the things I heard were reminiscent of the dot.bomb days, you know business models based on users and passion. I’ll post more notes and thoughts soon. Stewart had something like “obligatory mention of AJAX and tagging in his opening slide” which was a kind of funny cool way of playing the hype. However with as much press as AJAX has had recently there was very little mention about it that I saw…
Posted in AJAX, Business, Software Development, Technology, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Simplyfing Technology and the Internet
July 14th, 2005
I just read a great speech by Adam Bosworth (http://www.adambosworth.net/archives/000031.html) about trying to use simpler more flexible technologies and the benefits of doing so. It compares the difference between structured WS specs and the more pliable xml formats such as RSS. Worth reading even if you’re not up to speed on these specific technologies.
Posted in Business, Software Development, Technology, Usability - HCI | No Comments »
Hybrid v10 that gets 35MPG…
July 14th, 2005
Not bad for a car:-)
http://www.autoblog.com/entry/1234000063045483/
Slowly but surely we see more hybrids out there. I see at least a Prius per day and now the hybrid Escapes are becoming more common on Vancouver streets. I heard recently that in some cases old an prius is selling for more than it’s original purchase value because the waiting list for a new Prius is so long. A car appreciating?!?! Anyway, it’s all good news for the environment. I just don’t understand why the auto co’s can’t crank a few more out every year…other than the fact it’s not great for our oil baron’s down south;-)
Posted in Business, Ethics and Sustainability, Technology | No Comments »
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. - Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
July 14th, 2005
I just got back from dinner and a few beers with a good friend and ski partner of mine. Our meal time discussion was quite philosophical and focused on how to make choices in life and determine what’s important to us. I’m sure most young men ponder these issues on a regular basis, at least they should. As I sat back down at my laptop, with far to many apps open in the taskbar, I noticed the web page with a speech Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, gave recently to a group of university students. The theme of Steve’s talk was do what you love, which I agree with. One quote that stuck with me, as I share this philosophy is “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”. Basically life’s short, likely shorter than I can imagine right now, so make the most out of every moment!
Posted in Business, Technology | 1 Comment »
Connected Technologies for Local Living Economies
July 14th, 2005
Here are the notes (http://interraproject.org/partners/ballebc-technologies) from a the discussion John Ramer and I hosted at the recent BALLE conference.
Some of the topics include:
- Augmented Social Network
- Coop America
- Cooperation Studies
- Free Cycle
- Jot Spot
- Manas Journal
- Seattle Green Map
- Smart Networking
- Think Cycle Thanks to all who participated.
Posted in Business, Ethics and Sustainability, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Web Business 2.0? Dot.bomb 1.0?
July 14th, 2005
So we’re heading full steam ahead to be a web 2.0 type company. Mostly because we’re embracing the AJAX buzz and methodology since we’re using those technologies in our software development projects and software components. However we’re not jumping into the RSS / Blog and other web 2.0 stuff that is supposed to be based on empowering end users and easier sharing of data and content. Some of it I don’t really understand that well…especially the business model side. I just heard a new term “Lightweight Business Models”, which made me laugh and think of the dot.bomb 1.0 era. Then I read an article about it that said:
“Paradigm shift. It’s about the end-user experience, not about how much money you’re going to make. Get that right. It works in reverse to the way you’re used to.”
In reverse to making money…that was definitely the business model the dot.com crash;-) Although that’s not the intent of the article I’m still fuzzy on the business models of many of these web 2.0 companies. As we all saw the last time around merely having lots of users and providing new web tools doesn’t guarantee a good business. Being a cynic and quite pragmatic (guess that’s one reason why I’m not gazillionaire), I’ve chosen quite a simple business model: build some cool “AJAX” components that save developers days to weeks of dev time and charge them a few hundred bucks for that benefit. And we pay for this by doing consulting contracts and outsourced R&D for other software companies and channel the profit to our component team salaries. The more components we build the more we can sell. Black and white. Anyway I’m going to be studying these companies like Sxip and Flickr in more detail. There’s a lot of smart people working in this space, and the momentum in building…so hopefully I can figure it out before it gets away from me again;-) Here’s to riding the wave!
Posted in AJAX, Business, Software Development, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
RSS Reader - You Subscribe
July 14th, 2005
I’ve started using a new RSS reader that integrates seamlessly with MS Outlook, You Subscribe, it’s really handy since it integrates right into your outlook folders. Let’s me get email reading and news updates from a single interface. Another neat feature is being able right click an RSS link from the web browser and add it your RSS subscription list automatically.
Posted in Software Development, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
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