Category: The Web As Platform

Web 2.0 2005 Dates, Location Announced

Today at ETech we announced details about Web 2.0's sophomore edition. Once again we are doing the event in San Francisco, and even on the same dates: Oct. 5-7. We've upgraded the hotel to the Argent, which is right across the street from SFMOMA and the Yerba Buena center….

Web2Today at ETech we announced details about Web 2.0’s sophomore edition. Once again we are doing the event in San Francisco, and even on the same dates: Oct. 5-7. We’ve upgraded the hotel to the Argent, which is right across the street from SFMOMA and the Yerba Buena center. The program is in very early stages of development, but we’ve got a great initial lineup of speakers committed, including Jeremy Allaire, who’s doing some interesting things with video over IP over at Bright Cove, Stewart Butterfield at Flickr, Tom Barton at Rackable (the company which literally builds the web platform – the computers for Google and many others), along with Scott Cook, Mark Cuban, Rob Burgess, Mary Meeker, Microsoft’s new CTO Ray Ozzie, and many more.

Our initial thinking behind this year’s event reflects an evolution of Web 2.0’s original theme, which was “the Web as Platform.” This year we take that as a given, and focus on what the opportunities and challenges are in this new web ecology, in particular services and businesses which run over the platform. Hence the tagline “revving the Web” – both adding power and features, as well as the idea of building the Web’s next iteration. Broad areas of focus included media & entertainment – an area which is clearly accelerating this year, communications (including Mobile and VOIP), and computing and OS (including the whole Web OS concept).

Here’s where you come in, much as last year, except we have more time this go round. I’m looking for amazing ideas, companies, and people to feature in High Order Bits and workshops. Last year we had more than 90 speakers by the time all was said and done, and I’m sure we’ll have just as many this year. Send any and all ideas to me at jbat at battellemedia dot com, and I very much look forward to seeing you in SF this Fall!

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Ad Tags

I have a riff brewing – but it ain't quite fermented – about ads and tagging. Some of this has been spurred on by conversations with folks like Andy at Waxy. There's something there, and recent developments, like comments on ads, is starting to point that way. Adding to…

I have a riff brewing – but it ain’t quite fermented – about ads and tagging. Some of this has been spurred on by conversations with folks like Andy at Waxy. There’s something there, and recent developments, like comments on ads, is starting to point that way. Adding to the meme, Jeff Jarvis, who has been my posting partner on the whole PDA/Sell Side advertising concept, is already riffing on ads and tags. This is a brewing area, more to come…

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NYT On Search

Today's Times has a longish piece on search titled "Search Engines Build a Better Mousetrap." The article reviews alternatives to Google. I am quoted in it, but the reporter misheard one key detail: I said "millions" not "billions" in the quote below… John Battelle, who maintains a Web log…

Today’s Times has a longish piece on search titled “Search Engines Build a Better Mousetrap.” The article reviews alternatives to Google.

I am quoted in it, but the reporter misheard one key detail: I said “millions” not “billions” in the quote below…

John Battelle, who maintains a Web log about search technology (Searchblog, at battellemedia.com), said innovations like “Block View” showed how dynamically the search companies were taking advantage of new technologies – and new economies.

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BrightCove

More on the TV over IP meme – Jeremy Allaire, who has more than a few years of entrepreneurship under his belt – is launching Bright Cove, an "exploding TV" company, as Fred Wilson puts it. It's got serious money behind it – more than $5 million at launch…

BrightcoveMore on the TV over IP meme – Jeremy Allaire, who has more than a few years of entrepreneurship under his belt – is launching Bright Cove, an “exploding TV” company, as Fred Wilson puts it. It’s got serious money behind it – more than $5 million at launch from Accel and General Catalyst. Om has more coverage – he calls it “a platform for the little guy.” This sounds promising.

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Good Move, Yahoo: APIs for Search

Yahoo tonight announced the Yahoo Search Developer's Network (no link up yet). In short, this is a program to allow developers to build upon the Yahoo Search and Overture platforms (Overture will be rebranded Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions – I was wondering when the Overture name was going to…

Yahoo SearchYahoo tonight announced the Yahoo Search Developer’s Network (no link up yet). In short, this is a program to allow developers to build upon the Yahoo Search and Overture platforms (Overture will be rebranded Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions – I was wondering when the Overture name was going to be phased out). This is big Web 2.0/Web as Platform news, and I can’t wait to see what comes of it. From the release:

The Yahoo Search Developer Network features Yahoo! Search APIs which span Web search verticals, search engine marketing and direct advertising products including:

• Web search – leveraging Yahoo! Search Technology

• Image search – the largest image search index on the Web with more than 1.5 billion images

• Video search – providing users with one-click access to any video

• News search – with more than 7,000 news sources

• Local search – the most popular destination online for local information

• Spelling correction – advanced search query spelling correction technology

• Related searches – advanced search query recommendation technology

• Overture – access to its search engine marketing API program

Most APIs provide the developers with access to 5,000 queries per day per API, exceeding current competitive search API offerings.

That last part is a dig at Google, which limits its APIs to 1000 queries, hence there has been no real commercial development on top of the Google search platform. But will 5000 be enough? Not for really scaled innovations. Let’s hope they figure out the model to allow for more….full release in extended entry.

Cnet coverage.

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Conferences Ahoy!

Earlier this month we set the dates fro Web 2.0, the second edition. So mark your calendars – Oct. 5-7th, in San Francisco. Details to come! Meanwhile, I want to use this space to plug another great event. It's called eTech, and it's pretty much the kissing cousin of…

EtechEarlier this month we set the dates fro Web 2.0, the second edition. So mark your calendars – Oct. 5-7th, in San Francisco. Details to come!

Meanwhile, I want to use this space to plug another great event. It’s called eTech, and it’s pretty much the kissing cousin of Web 2.0. eTech is where the seeds of new and interesting technologies are first discovered, whilst Web 2.0 is where they take root in the soil of business. Of course you should go to both, but eTech is coming up first. It’s another conference from the great folks at O’Reilly, who I work with on Web 2.0.

In any case, Rael Dornfest, program chair and O’Reilly CTO, has graciously given me a registration discount code to pass along to you all for the event, which will be held March 14-17 in San Diego.

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Uber Tag Search?

Brian Dear imagines a search engine where all user-generated tag information is searchable – an engine that confederates the various nations of Flickr, iTunes, etc. Neat idea, and certainly another step toward the semantic web vision. . . . if more and more services in 2005 add user-generated tagging,…

TaggleBrian Dear imagines a search engine where all user-generated tag information is searchable – an engine that confederates the various nations of Flickr, iTunes, etc. Neat idea, and certainly another step toward the semantic web vision.

. . . if more and more services in 2005 add user-generated tagging, will “federated tagging” be far behind? And if someone were to index all the tags from these various sites…. would the result be Taggle? Imagine: a service where you type in a keyword, and you get back all the hits that have that word as a tag. If Flickr, del.icio.us, and umpteen other sites cooperated, then an uber-tag-search service might just work . . .

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Google Desktop Security: Welcome to the Software Biz

As I noted when GDS first came out, once you start providing serious PC-based software and integrate it with an internet service, you can become a target of hackers. The Times today writes about the security flaw initially discovered by Rice researchers. Google has already posted an updated version…

As I noted when GDS first came out, once you start providing serious PC-based software and integrate it with an internet service, you can become a target of hackers. The Times today writes about the security flaw initially discovered by Rice researchers. Google has already posted an updated version of GDS.

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AOL (Netscape) Tosses Hat Back In Browser Ring

From The Standard (I still love being able to say that, even if the site is only running IDG newsservice stuff): America Online Inc. (AOL) on Tuesday released a preview version of a new Netscape Web browser that is based on the open-source Firefox Web browser, but also supports Microsoft…

netscapeFrom The Standard (I still love being able to say that, even if the site is only running IDG newsservice stuff):

America Online Inc. (AOL) on Tuesday released a preview version of a new Netscape Web browser that is based on the open-source Firefox Web browser, but also supports Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser engine. IE is part of Windows and is used by the great majority of Web users. Many Web sites have been designed specifically to work with the Microsoft browser and may not work correctly in browsers using other engines, including the Gecko engine in Firefox.

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Grokking Wondir

Spent some time on the phone today grokking Wondir with its founder, Matthew Koll. Matt has a long and distinguished history in search, starting back in the non-web days (he created a text search engine in the early 90s which he sold to AOL in 1998) and running up into…

wondirSpent some time on the phone today grokking Wondir with its founder, Matthew Koll. Matt has a long and distinguished history in search, starting back in the non-web days (he created a text search engine in the early 90s which he sold to AOL in 1998) and running up into the present.

Wondir is, at its core, a question answering service. Wondir itself is more than two years old, but Koll only recently took the “beta” off the service and turned it into a for-profit enterprise. While there are loads of question answering services on the web, this one is different in some important ways. First off, it feels like a search engine. That’s intentional, Koll told me, as he feels the process of finding answers through chat rooms and usenet like forums is cumbersome and unintuitive. Secondly, Wondir aggregates questions and answers through the architecture of participation, essentially getting its questioners to become answerers, and vice versa. This is non trivial – getting people to answer questions is not as easy as it might seem. But Koll has thought through all of this, and I like where this service is going.

wondir2You don’t have to register to ask a question, but it pays if you do, because then your answer can be sent to you (and you can also tell Wondir areas of your own expertise, and it will notify you of questions that come in that you can answer if you wish to). When you do ask a question (in plain english), Wondir does a number of clever things. First, it parses your question’s text and categorizes it in any number of potential topic clusters. It then alerts registered users who have raised their hands as willing to answer questions in those topics, either through email, RSS (soon), or IM. It also posts the question right there on the service, in a scrolling ticker below the search box. Wondir has any number of categories in a pull down menu, and when you select a category, the questions scrolling across the bottom change as well (the questions in the “mature content” area are a hoot).

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