ez.spikesource.com — February 2006

There is a new exuberance brewing in the technology world. If you have been in meditating in the cave for a year, this new thing is called Web 2.0. Although Web 2.0 has never been officially defined, many people has attempted to do so. They do not always agree. Here are two definitions that I think worth comparing.

Our own Alan Williamson wrote a list of requirements of Browser 2.0 , the tool appropriate for this Web 2.0. According to him, Web 2.0 is a collection of groundbreaking technologies that make Internet screens to be as good as desktop applications. Web 2.0 is Webtop. Paul Graham set a much lower expectation. In his few, a site is worthy to be attributed Web 2.0 if it has the following 3 components in Web 2.0: Democracy, Ajax, and excellent usability (in his language: "the web that doesn't suck").

So which version of Web 2.0 sites are popping out these days? Well to a certain extend both, but certainly not with the same velocity. I can only mention 3 web applications that I don't mind calling as webtop applications. They are Gmail (now with Google Chat integration), Google Maps, and Zimbra groupware. These applications have revolutionized the use of AJAX to a new level of browsing experience. They did so such that Alan rightfully said the tools cannot be called browsers anymore.

In the other camp, new sites are popping up everyday. Among the pioneers are del.icio.us, 43things, flickr, and digg. The appeal of these sites is not technology, but democracy. This foremost ingredient is often facilitated by tagging. These guys are basically community sites.

So what is the cause of the excitement in the community camp? Well, one is the relatively low barrier to get one out the door, certainly much lower than the barrier to get a webtop application. A good hacker can probably push a functional alpha site in a week, and a beta version in a month. (Oh, did I tell you the other ingredient of Web 2.0 sites? The perpetual beta status). The other cause is the appetite of Google and Yahoo in buying community sites. These two causes are enough to compel young starving hackers everywhere to start a community site.

To conclude, Alan's Web 2.0 is the fruit of technology revolution. Paul's Web 2.0 is the fruit of social revolution, with some technology (AJAX) sprinkled over it. Alan's version is certainly more noble, at least from a technologist point of view. But maybe we are still too far from it. Maybe we shouldn't call it Web 2.0. What about Web 2.1? Web 3.0?

Note: Page Rank (relative importance) of these sites are as follows: Google Map: 9, Gmail: 8, del.icio.us: 8, 43things: 8, flick: 8. digg and Zimbra trailing with 6.

Finally, a chance to get this notes out!

A few interesting observations from the first day of the Mashup Camp:

• Rather balanced representation between the senior persons and professionals and the younger people. I was expecting the camp to be full of amateur hackers.
• Principles of Open Source
  Whoever comes are the right people.
  Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
  Whenever if starts is the right time.
  When it's over, it's over.
  Document on the wiki. 
• The Law of Two Feet
  If during the course of the gathering any person finds themselves in a
  situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use
  their two feet and go to some more productive place.
•  Wooden nickles as a currency. Someone campaigned, "I'll recycle them!"
• Free, and will try to continue to be free.
• Mashup community is bigger than what I thought, 100+ APIs already. Check this out: http://www.programmableweb.com/apis
  

Monetization of Mashups:

• Seven models for monetizations
  1. APIs that generate money by the usage
  • APIs are free
  • People who use the APIs are actually driving revenue for the API owner
  • Usually content API
  • Ebay, API is free, when people use them, ebay profits.
  2. Up-selling in usage
  • APIs are free for a certain usage level.
  • Cost associated with additional usage.
  • Amazon API
  3. Up-selling in content
  • Free for regular content.
  • Cost associated with premium content.
  4. Charge for the API
  • Charge them for usages.
  5. Mash free contents with ads
  • Free contents most of the time, some ads are delivered
  • User must pay if they don't want the ads.
  6. Get people to underwrite them.
  • Write specific mashups for certain requesters.
  7. Use them as Portfolios
  • Get noticed by big companies, get bought and dissolved, get big sign up bonus.
• The question remains, how viable are they?
• Interesting fact: There are way more developers who do not want VC funding than those who do. 

Discussions around web widgets/module containers

• Google and MS have their differences.
• There was a discussion that Ajax alone is not enough. Some tool for offline browsing is necessary. Certainly reminds me of the offline wiki that our CTO, Murugan Pal, blogged about. 
  

Ebay API, Ebay developer program

•  Bi-direction API, both for consuming and pushing information to Ebay.

Opensearch

• Search on unstructured contents like web is difficult.
• Search on non text media is difficult.
• Search on long tail (less visible) contents is difficult.
• Optimizing long tail search (less common search term) is even more difficult, and generally overlooked.
• Is Page Rank the only good way to automate search?
• Is Folksonomy the only good way to higher quality search?

Closing presentation and evening social

• Awesome presentation from the Museum about computer history and marketing. The first dumb terminal was really, really dumb. It was just a panel full of blinking lights for a nice TV campaign.
• A great social sponsored by Yahoo and Zend. Yahootini was a great drink!

Today's Mashup Camp was a bit more relaxed. We had a few discussion sessions and speed geeking, a cool way to introduce several mashup sites to all attenders in a rather personalized way.

There were slightly less than 30 sites that were displayed, they competed for the title of the best mashup site. Attenders were to vote the best mashup site by giving our wooden nickle to our favorite site. Among the sites that I saw, a few caught my attention. These is the list:

• podbop.org, by Taylor McKnight & Daniel Westermann Clark
  A cool mp3 and local concert finder. Type your city, and see who's performing this weekend. Artists can also publish their schedule at the site. Real cool!
  Podbob is the winner of the contest. An awesome 8 way Sun Fire server with 32G of RAM will be shipped to Gainesville, FL.
• chicagocrime.org, by Adrian Holovaty
  For some of us, both Adrian and chicagocrime.or are not strangers. Adrian is the author of Django, a well known Python web framework.
  Chicagocrime.org is a nice tool to display crime activities in Chicago. Different filters are created to display the information that you want, the way you want it. You can even see past crime activities in a route that you create on the map.
  Chicagocrime.org receives the second place in the contest. I personaly think thats chicagocrime.org was the best site among the ones demoed today, both in terms of originality and functionality. However, I can see that people may feel happier thinking of the next local concert than the past robery in their jogging route.
• mastrBeta.com, by John Herren
  With Web 2.0 sites being announced every second, it's really hard to keep up with them. Would you like to be notified it be when there is a new one popping up? Sign your self up with mastrBeta.com!
  Why beta? Well, do you have to ask?
  By the way, John is also the creator of tagcloud.com
• eventful.com, by Chris Radcliff
  Eventful.com is a website to track what is happening in your area. However, the novel feature is their tool that allows users to publish their events to other event sites including upcoming.org, zvents, del.icio.us, etc.
  Very nice!