A major topic at the Web 2.0 Conference is the web-based office suite. The competition is getting heated, to say the least. Many companies are throwing their bets into the ring, and several have released word processor type applications recently. One recently one was the minimalist Writeboard, released by the 37signals crew, riding an always […]

Continue Reading: Web-based Office Competition Heats Up

The following bit emerged out of the Mash-ups 2.0: Where’s the Business Model? session at the Web 2.0 Conference. Despite it’s name, there was only one salient point about business models to emerge from this session, in my opinion. The point came from Paul Rademacher, the creator of the most interesting mash-up we’ve seen so […]

Continue Reading: Web2Con: Remixing/Mash-up Apps and Competitive Advantage

I need a tool that allows me to remember places using Google maps. I envision a web-hosted service on which I can add “places”, by address, to an ever-increasing inventory. I wanted to be able to open up my “places” and see all the locations that I’ve marked. This would make travelling much easier. Right now, I’m entering and re-entering addresses into Google Maps and it’s really a pain.

Kind of like bookmarks for web pages, but bookmarks for places instead. Really simple. A lot like FoundCity but more personal and, of course, not just New York City.

If someone already has this, please let me know!

(via tech.memeorandum) Google is testing two new services that promise to change what we do on the web (again).

One is personalized search history. If you have a Gmail account, sign in and on your Google home page (http://www.google.com/ig) you can find your Google Search History in the top right nav bar, at this address (http://www.google.com/searchhistory/).

Personalized Search History is important for privacy issues. We’ll trust Google more if we know what information they’re keeping about us. Folks are are getting leary about what Google knows and what they would potentially use it for. This is a great way to increase transparency and alleviate public fear. And who knows, if they provide RSS feeds for this…someone will come up with some really cool way to aggregate it.

The second is a way to provide feedback about search results. They’re testing a new feature designed for giving feedback when you get spam in your search results. Presumably, over time Google would be able to offer a better search by gathering this sort of feedback from users.

Search Feedback is huge because it’s including users in the filtering (architecture of participation). In addition to giving page links weight, this would be a more community-involved way to refine search results. Just yesterday I wrote how I think filtering is incredibly important right now. I think this feature is the tip of the iceberg.

This is incredibly big news! I can’t wait to see where it goes from here…

On your first glance at the tech.memeorandum home page, you won’t see anything all that special. You’ll see some links to blog items down the left-hand side labeled “Top Items”, and some smaller links to the right labeled “New Item Finder”. It looks like a hundred other blog aggregators being released nowadays…no big deal, right? […]

Continue Reading: Tech.Memeorandum’s Filtering Illustrates Web 2.0’s Most Important Skill

Doc Searls has a nice writeup of Blog Search engines, including the new Google Blog Search, IceRocket, PubSub, Technorati, Blogpulse, and A9.

He answers the question: What’s the difference between a Wide Web Search and a Live Web Search?

The difference? Syndication. I wonder how long that distinction will last.

I now have veritable proof that Web 2.0 as a term is working to describe the changing web. How do I know? People told me so. Last night I led a talk for the Macromedia Boston Users Group called “Web 2.0 Interfaces, the Future of Design”. I used Keynote for the first time, and I […]

Continue Reading: Talking about Web 2.0 with Designers

“At one point, Battelle paints a disturbing picture, sketching out a scenario in which the federal government could demand that Google provide personal information about its users in the name of national security.

If that were to happen, Google would have to notify all the affected parties, right? Not under the U.S. Patriot Act, which specifically forbids companies from making disclosures about government requests for information.

Didn’t know that? Don’t feel bad. Neither did Brin when Battelle asked him earlier this year about the potential perils of Google becoming a secret tool for the U.S. government.

Via A book that googles Google

‘Gross said companies, such as eBay, Yahoo and Amazon.com, that treat their Web sites as customizable platforms, offer a starkly different technology vision to developers than traditional software companies do.

“We are very much competing for the hearts and minds of developers and bringing very different value propositions and ideas,” Gross said. “One model says build for Windows and the Microsoft ‘stack’; the other says build for the Internet.”

Gross noted that some of the software industry’s leading lights are working hard on making the Web a platform. Not so surprisingly, some of those high-powered engineers work at Google.’

From Google aims for Web developers’ hearts and minds, published by Cnet.

Jonathan Boutelle brings up an interesting point after attending the BayCHI Web2.0 panel the other day: the Web 2.0 companies heavily promoting their APIs (Technorati, Flickr, Google) are glad to have developers create interesting new interfaces out of them…unless you want to make money from that interface. This discussion is just the tip of the […]

Continue Reading: Interface Remixers will Pay for Privilege of APIs