Jeff Clavier's Software Only

Web 2.0: Jason Shellen demonstrates the Google Reader

Google Reader is a web-based  RSS aggregator, with lots of Ajax UI components, offering integrated access to BlogSearch. I have uploaded my OPML file, and it is apparently busy loading up my 220+ feeds (they have not shown yet).

I have uploaded my feed manually in order to check out the interface. Cute. I like the fact that you can navigate posts through keyboard commands.

Using the Search functionality, you can get a list of feeds/posts that you can subscribe to -  optionally adding labels (= tags, a term they want to get rid of). These "labels" actually allow you to categorize your feeds. I'll ask Jason whether these are personal or they can be shared, like Rojo's Jason confirmed to me that they were personal, but they were thinking about the shared model.

Like Bloglines, the display of pictures does not respect placement statements (I always put mine on the right side of posts, and they appear on the left).

Interestingly items can be displayed by date, or relevance. Not sure what the latter means. The relevance is based on an analysis of your blogroll, and surfaces posts that relate to your areas of interest (this is reportedly work in progress).

Will add more thoughts once my feeds have been uploaded. Still nothing after 30 minutes.

Bye bye Bloglines ? Not exactly yet, since customary speed of Google mainstream products is not there yet, but scaling is something that these guys do well. But Bloglines has had its issues very recently.

Mark Fletcher is on another panel and shares that Bloglines has doubled its user base in six months, and tripled the number of blogs covered, sucking in 2.8M posts yesterday. He explains that the architecture they had originally built did not scale to these kinds of numbers, and sort of hints that they are re-architecting - which explains why no new functionality has been seen for a while now.

Congrats to Jason and team (but please, get me my feeds).

More:

•    Official announcement from the Google blog: Feed the world

Tag: web2con

Web 2.0: Jeremy Allaire unveils the Brightcove service

Jeremy Allaire is officially launching Brightcove’s services at Web 2.0: distribution services for content producers, consumer services to search and access content, and monetization services (Advertising, Premium Content, Syndication).

The service will launch in the coming weeks, through a controlled beta process.

Brightcove will offer a rich application, developed in Flash (why am I not surprised ?) for maximum reach, allowing content owners to assemble, package and deliver media for target audiences. The packaging involves adding metadata that will be used by search engines and end users: title, producer, genre, etc. A piece of packaged media can include videos, photos, music, animations, etc. Different quality and size of videos are supported.

Brightcove allows content owners to create white labeled players that will include the publisher’s brand, choice of functionality, and  specific advertising. The player can then be integrated in any  container through a piece of HTML code, and play the content that has been packaged through the service. This is very similar to what client Userplane offers to 8,000+ communities in the real-time communication space.

This NY Times piece contains an interview from Jeremy, who clearly has ambitious goals:

As with his earlier ventures, Mr. Allaire intends to shake up an industry - this time, the world of television - by allowing all types of video producers, from media giants to anyone who has a camcorder, put their work on the Internet and make money if anyone watches it.

Tag: web2con

Web 2.0 Launchpad: ZVents - local and events search

ZVents just presented during the Launch Pad of  the Web 2.0 Conference. Zvents is a local and event search startup that extracts and aggregates events information from unstructured and semi-structured sources. They then offer a simple What/Where/When search interface allowing users to enter queries like “jazz music”,”san francisco, ca”,”tonight”. Results are displayed as a list, a Google maps mashup or a calendar.

Features of the beta version look pretty solid, and there are some coolio ones like the ability to embed scheduling information directly on a blog – which I have not managed to get working yet  (Ethan, the CEO of Zvents, explained how to do this).

Zvents also offers a set of web services, the expected social networking functionality, etc. What I like about it ? Like Trulia, it provides instant gratification.

Tag: web2con

The 24 Hour Laundry has closed, and is replaced by Ning

Remember the story of the stealth startup that sucked ? Well, it is now out of stealth mode, and  has officially launched as Ning. From their FAQ:

What is Ning?

Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for people to build and run social applications. Social "apps" are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.

Our goal with Ning is to see what happens when you open things up and make it easy to create, share, and discover new social apps. These might include for any city, your own take on Craigslist...for any passion, your own take on Match.com...for any interest, your own take on Zagat...for any event, your own take on Flickr...for any school, your own take on the Facebook...for any topic, your own take on del.icio.us...for any mammal, your own take on Hot or Not or Kitten War.

You choose the app, decide for whom it's most relevant, create the categories, define the features, choose the language - or just clone an app that's already up and running on Ning - and be on your way.

So after being offered a large number of social media applications, we are now into the meta-framework to build social media applications. The notion is interesting:  as we have come to expect that any consumer application will include some element of social networking, collaborative filtering, tagging, etc., Ning has the first shot at claiming platform status in the social phenomena by offering building consistent building blocks (though wikis could probably claim anteriority). The list of applications is a bit limited for now, but there are certainly a number of interesting ideas.

I have asked for a developer account, and presumably I will grok more on the service when I get it. Fred over at TechCrunch thinks that it is potentially significant, and as has been in the past when users have been turned into developers.

However, having used over the years Lotus Notes, Groove, and having built the equivalent for the financial markets (now called Reuters 3000 Xtra), these kinds of platforms are only as good and interesting as the best applications that have been developed using their framework.

I guess that we can expect a catalog of great applications that will show the power of the platform, and allow users/developers to copy code, tweak and deploy. This one looks a bit similar to wondir for example.

There is actually an interesting knock-on effect here: web 2.0 applications just got potentially even cheaper/easier to develop.

Congratulations to “Mobile Monday” Mike and Diego for working hard with the rest of the team to deliver this interesting (meta) application/platform/framework.

Lots of new good from Buzznet

Quite a buzz today around the official launch of Buzznet and Flickr photo printing powered by our friends from Qoop, even if the functionality has been available to Buzzneters for at least a month (press release here). Posters are a particular favorite of mine, especially for $10 a piece (plus tax & shipping).

I thought that this was a good opportunity to summarize some of the features Buzznet has added over the same period.

So, have been added:

• Journals, so that you can publish your thoughts and personal diaries alongside your photos. And links to pictures can be added to text posts with just a few clicks. New journal posts are displayed on your Buzznet home page.
• A new search interface: keyword search and a powerful people search. The keyword search is also integrated in your home page (below your list of galleries).
• Presence: you can now see who in your friends list in online.
• QuickEdit of galleries has been enhanced to batch edit all data related to a number of pictures in one go.

Many more functionality to come in the next few weeks, as well as the much expected overhaul of the back-end server infrastructure.

And if you are in LA on Sept 1st (tonight), don't miss the Buzznet Party (the first 300 Buzzneters showing up will get a free admission).

Disclosure: I am a shareholder and consultant to Buzznet Inc.

Introducing the SDForum Search SIG

We're back! After the smashing (let's keep it modest) success of Vertical Leap, the SDForum Vertical Search conference, Dave McClure and yours truly have agreed to co-chair the SDForum Search SIG, and we are excited to announce the first event - taking place on Sept 14th on the Yahoo campus in Sunnyvale: "Audio Search : Selling Picks & Shovels at the Podcast Gold Rush". If you don't understand Dave's English, it means that we'll talk about Podcasting Search and Directories.

For our readers outside of Silicon Valley, the SDForum is a key local non-profit that is organizing a large number of events around different technologies, and a SIG (for Special Interest Group) focuses on a given technology or market. The Search SIG is all about, well, Search... and its tag line will be (until we find something more catchy) “the Search for Search".

The purpose of the Search SIG is to offer a communication and collaboration platform to the Search ecosystem: search engines, marketers/advertisers, users and developers. Through a series of monthly events, the SIG will cover a large diversity of topics: from the latest developments in search to the needs of brands and advertisers, through the issues and key learnings of starting, funding, building, and exiting a search company.

We plan to use different formats for the SIG as well: fireside chats with key executives of the ecosystem, panels, presentations + Q&As, unconference - i.e the panel is the audience, etc. Once thing we request, demand, beg for, is the participation of the audience.

We also want to give companies the opportunity to introduce themselves, launch their products, in short segments of 5 to 15 minutes max. And at the end of each session, anybody having an announcement to make will be able to do so.

The Search SIG will take place at a few locations in Silicon Valley, and rotate amongst them, most likely on a quarterly basis.

We are set for the first two sessions, September and October (Mobile Search - a joint event with our friends of Mobile Monday) , beyond that we are welcoming your input.

• Fireside chat with a search engine Founder
• Unconference format + holiday bash (kind of what we have in mind for December)
• Search and the law of very large numbers - a look at the architecture of a search engine

So let us know what you think, topics you would like to see covered, and if you want to use the Search SIG as a launch pad for your Search startup, get in touch with us.

We can be reached through searchsig [at] gmail [dot] com.

Tag: SearchSIG

Just tested Google Talk: neat, still a bit basic, more open and as clear as Skype...

which is not surprising since they are reportedly using the same technology from Global IP Sound.

As you can see, the Windows client is pretty basic, but functional. It is necessary to have a gmail account to sign up for the service – by invitation it sounds like. I just tried a voice call with my friend Dave, and was quite impressed by the sound quality. And since it picks up default devices, it is very easy to connect. The online help concerning the service is here, quite comprehensive for something that has just been released.

The client also acts as a Gmail notifier, which displays rather large popup messages when a new email arrives. This can be turned off by users who like me, pop their email out of Gmail.

As pointed out by Om and Niall, it is possible to connect other IM clients to the service through a Jabber/XMPP interface. This is the list of compatible clients, which can also be found here:

The fact that they are using XMPP is notable since the non-interoperability of IM services has historically been a big pain in the b..t. I wonder if they will get into offering access to “the others” through back-end plugins, or if Trillian will be the stop-gap solution (which is a great stop-gap, even for the $25). And the reported interoperability "under way" with SIP signaling and the Gizmo Project is also worth noting.

As rumors that Skype’s growth is stalling develop, Google jumping in with both feet with a solution that looks more standard is not without consequence. Update: Skype just released a suite of IM APIs, so Google can only claim more standard, not more open - for now.

Competition is always good… even for making free phone calls. And thanks to my friend Adam, the co-founder of Truveo, for being the first one to send me an invite.

Tag: googletalk

More:

• SiliconBeat just published a long piece, including interviews from Googlers.
• Russ tells us more about Jabber and XMPP
• TechCrunch's Mike Arrington points us to the Wikipedia entry of Google Talk
• Dave McClure calls Skype "Dead Meat"
• SkypeJournal provides a detailed account of the functionality: available and missing ones
• Off topic, but the NYTimes has a "Google Baaaddd" article that is worth a read - from darlings to borgs - in one year

 

Introducing the Glendor Jobs Search Showcase

I have done tens and tens of product launches in my 15+ years in the software industry, but they always look the same: even with a lot of planning, you end up spending the last night polishing the final details, and sending bunch of emails to your poor team members who’d like nothing but relaxing a bit after having been under pressure for a long time. And the excitement of unveiling something that you have been working on for months or years is (thankfully) always there.

It is therefore my great pleasure to announce the official launch of the Glendor job showcase, developed by one of my clients, Glenbrook Networks. Glenbrook was founded in 2001 with the objective to deliver a next generation search technology, one that would enable the extraction of information in a given vertical market with a high degree of precision. The company has developed over the past four years a unique technology platform that automatically extracts unstructured data from Internet sources (company web sites, online publications, semi-structured feeds,…) and turns them into structured facts that can be aggregated and stored in a database. Unlike standard search engines, theirs are capable of providing precise answers to complex business or temporal queries. The business of the company is currently to license its products and data services to search engines and large information providers, and will include at some point the development of its own vertical search engine(s) in specific markets.

One of the common issues one deals with in the search and information extraction space is that you need to demonstrate, at some scale, the capabilities of your product. It is even worse when you have a platform that can be equally be used in a number of verticals. That’s why we have decided a couple of months ago to develop a vertical search engine showcase – in the jobs market. Why a showcase, and not a beta? Because it does not intend to cover hundreds of thousands of companies, and millions of listings – just enough to prove that the technology delivers on its claim to fame: automatically extracting job listings from “the long tail”, which in the jobs market refers to individual company web sites and local classifieds sites. So the initial scope of the showcase is to extract jobs from hundreds of Bay Area company web sites, local jobs from one major board, and eventually a classifieds site.

Why the jobs vertical market – which is already well served by talented teams ? Because extracting listings from company web sites exercises all aspects of our technology to produce quality, structured results: surface and dynamic web crawling, layout recognition, natural language processing,... And we believe that the “deep web”, guesstimated at 500B+ documents a few years ago, is where the action is going to be: extracting information available behind dynamic forms and DHTML rendering, and delivering high quality results. And this deep web crawling requirement can be found in local search, travel search, fraud detection, etc. – and is a tough nut to crack automatically, mixing AI and search algorithms.

We’ve also strived to build this showcase as a (modest) Web 2.0 application: we deliver search results through RSS, and we map job listings onto Google Maps. Yep, a first in the jobs listings space – for a few days or weeks, now that the API has been released we expect that most of the players in the space will add that cool functionality (our engineers built this application without the API). And we have a couple of other things up our sleeves that we will be rolling out in the coming weeks.

So enough said: have a go at the jobs showcase, make sure to try the mapping of jobs (and play with the zoom), do let us know if you find any issues, and give us your feedback. We also have a blog that will talk about the showcase and the typical challenges one is facing in developing a vertical search engine. It will also relay interesting news related to the development of the vertical search industry - which is booming, if you consider that Vertical Leap gathered almost 300 people for its first edition last week.

You can also find some information about Glenbrook's technology and products. Feel free to get in touch to find out more about the showcase, or what we can do to help.

And congratulations to the Glenbrook team for this great work.

Update: Glenbrook Networks, and its Deep Web trawling technology, have been featured in the San Jose Mercury News. Read about it here.

Stealth Start-Ups Suck ? Yeah, right.

I have genuine respect for Mark Fletcher and what he has accomplished with ONEList and Bloglines, and therefore consider that he has credibility when writing about entrepreneurship. His ETech presentation on the topic was actually very practical and interesting. That's why I was surprised with  the title and the content of his post: Stealth Start-Ups Suck. Because in most startup cases, I believe in the contrary.

Mark contends:

[...] Here's the thing, stealth mode for a web start-up is the kiss of death.

Stealth mode is when a company is operating in secret for some length of time before launching their product or service. In many industries, creating a new product or service takes significant time and effort. During this time, being in stealth mode may make a lot of sense. But creating a new web service is not rocket science and does not take a lot of time or money. My rule of thumb is that it should take no more than 3 months to go from conception to launch of a new web service. And that's being generous. I'm speaking from experience here. I developed the first version of ONElist over a period of 3 months, and that was while working a full-time job. I developed the first version of Bloglines in  3 months. By myself. It can be done. And I suck at it! Just ask all the engineers who have had to deal with my code.

Why go fast? Many reasons:

• First mover advantage is important.
• There is no such thing as a unique idea. I guarantee that someone else has already thought of your wonderful web service, and is probably way ahead of you. Get over yourself.
• It forces you to focus on the key functionality of the site.
• Being perfect at launch is an impossible (and unnecessary and even probably detrimental) goal, so don't bother trying to achieve it. Ship early, ship often.
• The sooner you get something out there, the sooner you'll start getting feedback from users.

[...]

Why is this post a dangerous generalization ? Because this "advice" only applies to certain types of startups, in certain markets/features, led by certain teams. Mark's "3 months to build" rule does not work with companies having to develop "deep IP" algorithms and complex implementations.

I fully agree that involving users as early as possible in the development process is an absolute must, but doing it too early can also be "the kiss of death". There are so many applications, services, cool web sites out there - crying for our eyeballs and attention - that launching something in front of users that is half baked, limited or too unstable might turn them off for a while, or for good. And will certainly not generate the positive buzz that is required for viral marketing to work.

The second argument for laying low is that your ideas might not be unique, but your overall product approach, and implementation, might be - for a period of time. Since very early stage startups generally don't have a lot of development "manpower", coming out of the closet too early might make it very easy for competitors to replicate some of these (good) ideas.

There might cases where Mark's suggestion is applicable, but I don't see them as being majority. And then I would ask whether these companies are the ones that are "built to flip".

Update: Paul Kedrosky also disagrees.

I have been browsing through the Slashdot thread on the topic, and there seems to be a bit of confusion around building 1) a startup in stealth mode and 2) being open and leveraging standards, 3) engaging with customers/users and 4) using a short/iterative production cycle.

I am advocating that not being stealth until the product is in some form of alpha or pre-alpha form is only applicable to a portion of the startups out there. These might be open source (Monty Widenius announced his intention to build an o/s SQL database to gather requirements, and co-development support), category creators or first movers (like Bloglines as a Web-based RSS readers "for the masses"), etc. Feel free to suggest any other "non stealth mode" candidate.

But I am totally for 2), 3), and 4) as characteristics of early stage startups.

Update: Just came across the account from SiliconBeat on the whole 24 Hour Laundry "saga". Be sure to check the comment left by Gina Bianchini, the CEO of 24HL.

And let's leave them in (stealth) peace.

Yahoo!360 is out of the oven

And my first impression is that Y!360 is not bad - at all, very MSN Spaces like, with a cool integration of Yahoo services. A bit challenging to setup though, I have to agree with Dave Winer on this one.

One question now: who is this service targetting, and who is planning to use it ? Is it like MSN Spaces, i.e getting Yahoo and Yahoo SBC users into blogging ? Deploying an alternative service to Blogger (which given the instability of the service nowadays might be feasible) ? Need feed syndication, trackbacks, pings, stats, referral lists, etc. though. Any timeframe for that ?

Here is my 360 home page. And my initial rant feedback on the service, cross-posted from my 360 blog:

It is a bit overwhelming to setup all the elements of the Y!360 account, as I do consider myself quite familiar with all these blogging, SNs, photoblogging capabilities.

  A few things:
- WHY ON EARTH CAN'T I ENTER MORE THAN TWO LINES IN MY PROFILE ? At least tell me how much words or characters I can enter, as opposed to telling me that my text is too long.
- Lots of fields are displayed even if they are empty (like locations for current jobs).
- The caption of pictures should be displayed instead of the filename.
- I want to put links in my profile to point to the companies I worked for, etc.
- Navigation is sometimes confusing because you keep on switching between edit mode and view mode.
- If I put HTML links into apost, I want these to be usable in the "My Page" syndicated view.
- Will be great to import OPML files as opposed to re-enter the blogroll.
- It would be great to be able to do "bulk invites" in the list of people who are already on the service, but I suppose that this would lead to abuse.
- The multi-layered privacy/visibility is great, but I am wondering whether it is bit too complex to grasp for "casual" users.
- I tried to edit this post in HTML (clicking "View HTML Source") and my CPU went 100% for 3 minutes, until I turned the option off. I am using Firefox. Actually this happens in regular Edit Mode as well.
- The integration of multiple Yahoo services is great, but their settings should eventually be accessible through the 360 "portal", at least the basic ones. The navigation from 360 into another service back to 360 needs to be figured out.
- The People search needs to include filters like "people who have joined since you last logged in", like LinkedIn basically.
- The "Beta Feedback" should be implemented as a forum so that we can see what others report, and get information about fixes and changes. I am particularly annoyed that I got an automatic message stating that my feedback would *not* be answered to.

Oh, and it is great that you do not get any email confirming the sign-up of people you have invited. LinkedIn should do the same :-).

Update: And as usual Chris Allen is doing a fantastic job at testing all the features, and finding quite of a few issues. Hopefully the good Yahoo folks will get to read them.

Some more:
- The blog editing panel is too small. Should have a way to increase its size (at least double).
- The moblogging functionality expects blog posts to be sent from an email address phone_number@carrier_url which is too limiting. The usual email validation + secret keyword should be used instead, or as a complement.
- There is a bug in the search functionality where the 3rd (or nth ?) result page can't be displayed ?
- Boy, I want that Outlook address book import , and I want to see who is already in Y!360.

And finally:

1. Allow me to edit a review I have entered (I know it is Yahoo local)
2. The top message bar at the top of My Page is cute, but I should be able to review previous messages (of the day ?)
3. Is there a blog for 360 support, feedback, announcements ?
4. Figuring out who is inviting you is sometimes very tricky if one does not disclose his/her lastname or email address (See Esther's comment).

I am happy to invite people to the service, but here is the catch: like for LinkedIn, we need to have met in the "real world" for me to invite you. Send me an email or leave a comment below if you are interested.

Back to work now. Spent about two four hours on this thing today.

Hey, it sounds like you can get emoticons in TypePad by copying them from Y!360 and pasting them into your post. Must be a feature of the WYSIWYG control that has been turned off. Cool!  These are simply gifs loaded from the Yahoo web site.