Trying to follow…

It is my second day in Berlin and just found the time to blog about the conference. In all not so bad although some presentations were a bit old or a bit to simple. But also some nice surprises, like the evolution amazon is undergoing or should I say started as a service company. It is nice to see that a lot of other companies are following that track.

The ginger presentation of Tariq Krim was not so good but the topic is interesting and more compelling. How to combine the social networks. Unfortunatly, it is about combining the networks with widgets like Google Open Social. And not yet about creating a network with the facebook profile pages, the meebo communication, the twitter statusses, the gmail mail app and many other services… That ’s more like it but widgets can be the first step. If they beccome bigger and more complex, the services become the added value and the networks become reality and I think I’m coming close to web 3.0 then…

Still a lot of tracks to follow and some interesing people to meet. Keep you posted…

today something strange and worse happened. Netvibes started up as startpage and a lot of my feeds were gone. And suddenly I realized a big fault in the system. When I went over my startpage the new statewas saved every time. which means that the error was gone and netvibes was now programmed to the new state.

This gives me off course a chance to re-organize my pages and tabs,God knows its about time, but I still miss a few. I made a backup so no big harm but I still like some new ones I added recently.

So the backup daemon, what is in a word, is back. I hoped for a while that the web2.0 services would solve that issue but …

Maybe I need to come up with a solution or a new service. Does anybody uses a backup web 2.0 service?
Back to the drawing bord…

a new toy software found www.backpakcit.com from 37signals (the guys from Ruby on Rails among other stuff). A nice tool but google already has something like that called Google Calendar, Google Notebook, Picasa and blogger. But I got to admit that Google doesn’t combine easily. Maybe we should try to create a mashup from some google service to acces them easily, like  notebook,  calendar, gmail and blogger…

I recently discovered MIcrosoft One note and I’m already an avid user. I like the concept of no save button, the organisation is splendid with maybe even to muh options (they still can get it right like Google or Apple) but the only thing missing is a automatic backup system (and the thing is performant but still I get the feeling of memory clutter.)

Check it out…and let me know what you think

A google web seminar called ‘away with applications the Death of the desktop’ is actually a very nice piece. It goes about the desktop apps as we know them and that is has become to expensive to really recreate the ‘office’ apps as they exist today. The support and release management of those tools and the low acceptance (in UI terms of course) are also cumbersome.

In the future the presenter predicts more apps made out of services. Instead of photoshop of XXXGB we get just the services needed on the fly and always the best version. All the services plug in in a central platform that hosts the file.

It is actually the ultimate personalisation widget, even internet becomes slowly a commodity. You will forget when you are online or not (as we already do), but you will also just install a small base for access to the local file system. The rest will come from internet, a la gears even offline.

Sounds like a very realistic future to me. Even taking the business models into account, which is most of the time the benchmark for succes. But it will need some years of cultivation before it starts to work?

Presentation can be viewed at google video or here.

Today in a Belgian newspaper: http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelid=UB1EB65A

BBC is going where we are thinking of going. They are clearly on top of their game. But I’m curious how the player will look and feel like. Because after all I’m NOT watching TV on my computer….

Something totally new is launched today. Microsoft, yes microsoft, has come up with a table and a touchscreen. Nothing special but watch the video. I want it, don’t know what to do with it but I want it….

Microsoft released their live platform a while ago (to react to the success of Gmail?) and now they copy something else of Google, the labs. But somethings are luckely different. The MicroSoft Live Labs have some other features they work on such as Photosynth. That is a tool in which you can load some photos and the tool makes a 3D image of it. Works great for panoramic pictures, check it at thisvideo.

You can find the link in my blogroll.

Is this again a case of the big ones overruling the little ones? Aparantly Amazon has stopped working with ZLio because Zlio pays the customer back with it gets as discount from amazon. And the reply of amazon is

It has come to our attention that you may be paying some of your referral fees back to customers as a form of rebate. While we are certain that your idea would meet with some success, we have decided against working with any Associates who employ this rebate model.

Under the Associates Program, Associates may choose to recommend either individual products or our entire service to their visitors in exchange for a small percentage of the resulting sales. The goal is to introduce our services to new customers this way, helping them find us through sites that offer value-added editorial assistance or which provide trusted advice in choosing e-commerce sites.

Given our relatively slim retail margins and our strong discount pricing, the referral fees we pay can only be sustained as we meet new customers through our Associates. Many of these customers return to us later for items unrelated to those recommended by the Associate web site, and this future business helps to offset the referral fees we pay. For this reason, we’re able to pay nearly all of our margins to Associates in referral fees.

When an Associate re-directs these fees to the customer, it changes the entire relationship in ways we did not intend. Under the ‘rebate’ model customers actually have a disincentive to return and shop with us directly, undermining the expectation of repeat business that is necessary to fund the program.

In addition, Associates are prohibited from placing orders through their own Associate tagged links. Please note, per the Operating Agreement:

“You may not purchase products during sessions initiated through the links on your site for your own use, for resale or commercial use of any kind. This includes orders for customers or on behalf of customers or orders for products to be used by you or your friends, relatives, or associates in any manner. Such purchases may result (in our sole discretion) in the withholding of referral fees and/or the termination of this Agreement.”

I understand the amazon position but my favourite is Zlio. great concept, good site. Check it out at

the article

zlio.com

One of the best movie clips that describe web 2.0. fantastic.

last week, there was some commotion about a girl (?) that posted a little clip on Youtube. In the clip you can see a controller of the public railways give somebody a fine for using a non-valid reduction ticket. It was a correct fine, but the man in question wasn’t really polite. The person who used the non-valid ticket knew that and ‘acted’ digraced. But in the end it was a correct decision. Now that clip is posted…but with some added comments and in the end gunshots. So we are talking about more then plain journalism.

On tv, in the sunday morning show ‘De zevende dag’ there was a public debate about the movie. Most of the attendees agreed that the clip was to personal (the gunshots) but that freedom of speech was also allowed.

I don’t think you can call freedom of speech on this. Werner Ramaekers was in the debate team and called it civilian journalism, if the editing was not done. I agree but I still think that the movieclip even without editing was over the top. People can not just record a person in function and post it on the web. The person is in function and has to do something of which we don’t know what he thinks about. But he has to do it (like police on a demonstration for a cause they can support). While the moviemaker is often NOT in function and thus personal. A journalist making the movie is also ‘in function’ and so abstract to the case. He is neutral, but public clips seldom are. So if there are rules for journalism and you call people making movies as civilian journalism, then the rules should also count for them.

It is a difficult issue, and I’m not completely sure about my own stand in this. But I feel its dangerous to just let everybody film everything and then afterwards let the community decide. In this case the comments on YouTube were horrible for the poster, but that was too late for the controller and his reputation.

Feel free to comment

A link to the debate (in dutch)

Google video Full Version