Monday, April 09, 2007
ETech: Big Company Hacks at Yahoo
Written by Alex Iskold (from Read/WriteWeb) / March 29, 2007
Earlier today Yahoo launched a Yahoo Mail API. Recently we analyzed the current API and Mashup trends on the Web and noted that Yahoo is one of the big companies most active in this area. Also not long ago we profiled Yahoo! Pipes - a new tool that, we argued, treats the web as the database. We later expanded these ideas in our post entitled When Sites become Web Services. The major theme running through all these posts is that the Web is turning into a database exposed via APIs. Web giants like Google, Amazon and Yahoo! have been tapping into the large web development community, by exposing their services via APIs.
Here at ETech, Chad Dickerson, Sr. Director of the Yahoo! Developer Network, gave a session about Yahoo's experience in engaging its own engineers to utilize Yahoo! APIs in creative ways.
According to Programmable Web, Yahoo! currently has over twenty APIs
Yahoo's method to the madness
The self-organization is exciting and powerful, but to get results there needs to be control. Yahoo's answer is "Hack days", where developers can showcase their creations to their colleagues. Here are the rules:
- Build something in 24 hours;
- No Power Points;
- Present in 90 seconds;
- No prior review, anything goes.
These rules encourage small teams to do what they love, letting people create what they want and, occasionally, letting the bizarre out.
In addition to internal hacking, Yahoo! opened up the program to a group of external hackers and invited them in September to the Yahoo! campus for a full day of hacking
Examples of Hacks
What goes on during the internal hack days is kind of a secret. Chad shared an example of a rather controversial hack. It was a web site built in 'Hot or Not' style, showing pictures of Yahoo! employees and letting people choose who they think is the boss of who. The application kept track of all "mistakes" and then displayed a chart for who should be promoted or demoted. Apparently calls from the Human Resources department followed.
Another hack was a purse that would take a photo after you walk every 100 steps and then use the Flickr API to upload it online. Yet another interesting hack was created by a group of developers, who turned an old TV into a widget display. One of the widgets connected to the internet and showed (you guessed it) the current weather.
Conclusion
At first, this 'hack' culture might seem to be somewhat chaotic and wasteful. It is in a way, but there is also a big potential gain. By using self-organization, Yahoo! bets that while a lot of these hacks will be mildly interesting - there may be a handful that are profound and game changing for the company. Since there are so many APIs, possibilities are almost endless.
Yahoo! hacks is a great program that could lead to breakthrough ideas and products. The key question is how to add a process on top of this dynamic and fluid process, that drives productization and monetization of the best prototypes. Presumably, the really interesting solutions get noticed and get on the management radar screen. It is not clear if Yahoo! is doing this already, but it would seem that an nternal, Digg-like system where all Yahoo! employees would be able to rate creations, could be also helpful. We will see over the next year or so how Yahoo! executes this project, but the potential is definitely there.
Amazon enters PPA contextual market
Posted by Allen Stern | 03/27/2007
Amazon announced today to its affiliates that their new PPA model has moved into Beta. Named "Context Links" the program most resembles those by Kontera and Vibrant Media. I have used Vibrant Media's Intellitxt offering on HTMLCenter and it has provided some additional revenue for the site without being overwhelming. With Amazon's program, you just add code to your page and Amazon takes care of the rest. You are not technically "supporting" a specific product; Amazon figures out what to show. And the links are based on the words already within your content. So you might be wondering how this differs from the announcement from Google last week about their PPA offering. Pretty simple actually. With Google's PPA program, you add content to your page pushing the links. I believe Google's setup is more along the lines of the Payperpost model.
I have placed the code within some of the tutorials on HTMLCenter but it is not showing links yet (links are now showing). The Context Links setup is very easy and flexible... here is a screenshot:
Will these contextual (PPA) ads work long-term? I know they have worked for me for a couple of years and so far I have not had lots of pushback on HTMLCenter. You might be wondering if I will add them to CN... not yet, still working on the optimal setup for ads for CN.
It is interesting to think about how ads have evolved. We started outside the content, then moved inside with the 300 boxes and so forth and now we are linking the internal story content. Not sure we can go any much deeper than that!
No RIAA For The Comic Book Industry
Contributed by Mike Friday, April 6th, 2007 @ 4:43AM from the and-that's-a-good-thing dept Lee writes "The digitization and subsequent illegal distribution of copyrighted media isn't just affecting movies and music. The creators of comic books seem to be going through the same business model shift as the recording and motion picture industries. As with all such changes, some people are more willing to accept it than others. Steven Grant at Comicbookresources.com has an interesting article about how the comic book world is dealing with life in the 21st century. He makes some good points and clearly understands that things are not going to change unless there's some innovation in the comic book business model." He basically points out that file sharing isn't going away, and the industry needs to learn to accept it, use it for promotions, but ask people to keep buying the comic books they want. Considering that, for many, comic books are for collecting, this doesn't seem too far fetched. Though, at the same time, the industry may want to look at other changes to their business model as well, such as bundling other things into the mix as well (e.g., if you buy the actual comic you get entered into a sweepstakes to have your name used as a character in a future comic). There are plenty of ways to make buying the actual comic books more valuable than just downloading them -- and then if you use the downloads just as promotions, you can encourage more people to buy by exposing more people to the comic itself.
Apple sells 100 millionth iPod, deems experiment a success
from Engadget by Evan Blass
Filed under: Portable Audio
Has it really only been five and a half years since the first iPod rolled off the assembly line and into the initially-skeptical arms of music-loving consumers worldwide? Well since that time we've seen an entire ecosystem of third-party and DIY accessories sprout up around Apple's ubiquitous little jukebox -- from the pretty handy to the just plain weird -- along with endless humorous anecdotes, an infinite number of knockoffs, serious political, legal, and environmental movements, and of course, an almost daily barrage of wild rumors the likes of which the world has never known. So it's with mixed emotion that we welcome the 100 millionth iPod into the world (enough for almost every man, woman, and child in Mexico): on the one hand, it gives us warm fuzzies to see perennial underdog Apple come out on top for a change, but we also hope that the company employs its leadership position responsibly, such as being a little less quick to sic the lawyers on anyone who dares use the "Pod" name in vain. And as for the next 100 million iPods? Is PC-less downloading just over the horizon? When will we finally see the move to an all flash lineup? Will Apple finally take the leap and merge its prize pig with -- gasp! -- a cellular telephone? As always, only time -- and Uncle Steve -- will tell.
Why Google Isn't Stealing Newspaper Content
Contributed by Mike (TechDirt) Monday, April 9th, 2007 @ 6:45AM
from the make-it-stop dept
This is just getting ridiculous. Google may have signaled its willingness to pay up with its deal with AFP, and now it seems that newspaper publishers are interested in taking them up on the offer. OJR reports that Sam Zell, who is in the process of buying the Tribune Company, has lashed out at publishers for letting Google "steal" their content: "If all the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do, and how profitable would Google be?" This sounds quite similar to columnist David Lazarus' "plan" to save the newspaper industry. Unfortunately, they've got the situation completely backwards. Google is not "stealing" content. They're also not making their money off of other's content. What they're doing is making that content a lot more valuable by making it much easier to find. Google isn't making money on the content -- but on driving more people to that content (and on the news side, they don't make any money directly, since they don't run ads on Google News). It's bizarre that this is so difficult for those in the publishing industry to understand. You don't yell at the phone book for "making money" off of your contact information. You don't yell at tour books for "making money" off of other people's locations. You recognize that they make money by being a guide or a directory -- just like Google. Either way, it doesn't bode well that the guy who's taking over the Tribune Company doesn't seem to have the slightest clue how Google works or how it's helping, not hurting, the business he's in the process of buying.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Drobo - "storage robot"
One of the most awesome products I've seen in a while. From the user's perspective, it solves many of the practical hassles of using RAID. And furthermore, being able to boot from USB means you can build an entire new computer and not have to reinstall the OS and all your programs and settings again, which for me usually takes a whole day, plus the rest of the week to get it back to where I left off.
link to demo video http://www.drobo.com/products_demo.aspx
Friday, April 06, 2007
Ads to Turn Casual Gaming into Major Revenue Stream
(from MarketingVox) Ads are changing the casual gaming world drastically, with in-game advertising for casual downloadable games producing a 200-500 percent revenue increase compared with ad-free "try and buy" games. Research firm Yankee Group estimates in-game ad revenues will reach $732 million by 2010, and the primary demographic audience, women over 30, holds 80 percent of decision-making buying power in the U.S. - making advertising in the medium all the more lucrative, according to Next-Gen guest writers Ran Cohen, director of emerging media at Eyeblaster, and Chris Houtzer, director of new media for games at RealNetworks. Ads can be integrated by adding logos into the game, but the real future is video ads, which can be integrated between levels of a game. RealNetworks and Eyeblaster are working together to create a video ad system. Video ads are presented every 10 minutes of play during natural breaks in the game. If a user decides to buy the game, the ads are immediately disabled.
"What You See Is What You Get" concept phone
Yanko Design publishes news of another wonderful concept phone, designed by Pei-Hua Huang, an Industrial Design graduate student of NC State University. The see-through concept phone makes picture taking more intuitive.
"What You See Is What You Get" is Huang's latest concept project. The purpose of this project is to look for farther possibilities of future cell phones. With the 50mm equivalent camera module, this cell phone no long depends on the screen while taking pictures. By using the transparent frame as viewfinder, "What You See Is What You Get."
[via Mobile Magazine]
New Zealand peeps imitate plants to do solar on the cheap
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Solar power breakthrough at Massey
By MERVYN DYKES - Manawatu Standard Thursday, 5 April 2007
photo: MURRAY WILSON/Manawatu Standard
COLOUR THEIR FUTURE GREEN: Wayne Campbell, left, and Ashton Partridge with a tiny demonstration solar panel filled with synthetic dye. Not only is it environmentally friendly and capable of being made in New Zealand, but it costs a fraction of the price of silicon cells.
New solar cells developed by Massey University don't need direct sunlight to operate and use a patented range of dyes that can be impregnated in roofs, window glass and eventually even clothing to produce power. This means teenagers could one day be wearing jackets that will recharge their equivalents of cellphones, iPods and other battery- driven devices. The breakthrough is a development of the university's Nanomaterials Research Centre and has attracted world-wide interest already - particularly from Australia and Japan. Researchers at the centre have developed a range of synthetic dyes from simple organic compounds closely related to those found in nature, where light-harvesting pigments are used by plants for photosynthesis. "This is a proof-of-concept cell," said researcher Wayne Campbell, pointing to a desktop demonstration model. "Within two to three years we will have developed a prototype for real applications. "The technology could be sold off already, but it would be a shame to get rid of it now." The key to everything is the ability of the synthetic dyes to pass on the energy that reaches them - something that mere coloured water could not do. "We now have the most efficient porphyrin dye in the world," said the centre's director, Ashton Partridge. "It is the most efficient ever made. While others are doing related work, in this aspect we are the world leaders." The development of the dyes has taken about 10 years and was accomplished with funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand for fundamental work and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology in the later stages. Now the team is seeking extra funding to go commercial. "This particular technology does not require the large infrastructure required for silicon chips and the like," said Professor Partridge. It lends itself to being taken up by local and New Zealand industries. Other dyes being tested in the cells are based on haemoglobin, the compound that gives blood its colour. Dr Campbell said that unlike silicone-based solar cells, the dye- based cells are still able to operate in low-light conditions, making them ideal for cloudy climates. They are also more environmentally friendly because they are made from titanium dioxide - an abundant and non-toxic, white mineral available from New Zealand's black sand. Titanium dioxide is used already in consumer products such as toothpaste, white paints and cosmetics. "The refining of silicon, although a very abundant mineral, is energy- hungry and very expensive," he said. Professor Partridge said the next step was to take the dyes and incorporate them in roofing materials, tinted window glass and wall panels where they could generate electricity for home owners. The aim was to develop a solar cell that could convert as much sunlight as possible to electricity. "The energy that reaches Earth from sunlight in one hour is more than that used by all human activities in one year."Marketing in Second Life
from The Bivings Report by Todd Zeigler Wagner James Au of GigaOM has a fascinating look at why, despite the endless hype, marketing in Second Life hasn’t proven to be effective yet. This is a good companion piece to a link I posted yesterday that provides some practical reasons to be skeptical of Second Life’s marketing potential (put me in the big time skeptic category). Regardless of your personal feelings about Second Life, I think Au’s criticism of the execution of Second Life marketing efforts thusfar is illuminating: To play in Second Life, corporations must first come to a humbling realization: in the context of the fantastic, their brands as they exist in the real world are boring, banal, and unimaginative. Car companies are trying to compete with college kids who turn a virtual automotive showroom into a 24/7 hiphop dance party, and create lovingly designed muscle cars that fly, and auction off for $2000 in real dollars at charity auctions. Faced with such talented competition, smart marketers should concede defeat, and hire these college kids and housewives to create concept designs and prototypes that re-imagine their brands merged to existing SL-based brands which have already proved themselves in a world of infinite possibility. Or as the Komjuniti study suggests, they can keep building sterile shopping malls, and continue wondering why Residents prefer nude dance parties, giant frogs singing alt-folk rock, and samurai deathmatches– and often, all three at the same time. I think the same thesis applies to MySpace or Youtube or any of the new so called “social” marketing channels. Bringing an old mindset to a new medium doesn’t accomplish anything. Your only chance of having real and sustained success is if the mindset shifts as well.
NYC Tech Meetup mints some contenders
But the bigger problem was the lack of a legit purchasing mechanism. So, on top of his search engine, Fou has built what amounts to a peer-to-peer shopping cart. We’ve seen content mashups before, but this may well be the first pure e-commerce mashup: FlickrCash doesn’t host the photos or own them, it simply facilitates their retrieval and purchase. Way meta. Several in the audience raised the legitimate concern that Fou was forging a highly symbiotic relationship with Flickr-owner Yahoo (YHOO) without some form of commercial agreement. (Please to recall MySpace slapping cease-and-desist orders on various would-be “affiliates,” not to mention the recent Alexaholic scuffle.) Fou acknowledged the risk, but seemed undeterred. It’ll be interesting to see how Yahoo responds.
video transcript available at http://augustinefou.blogspot.com/2007/04/ny-tech-meetup-april-3-2007-great-hall.htmlMarketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why!
Last week, the Hamburg-based research firm Komjuniti published the first extensive survey of Resident attitudes toward real world marketing in Second Life. It’s been a long time in coming: a British branding agency established a forward operating base in SL back in early 2004 (and for their efforts, were greeted by throngs of sign-waving protesters threatening to boycott their island.)
In succeeding years, a miniature dot com boom has attracted a slew of big name companies and established brands, from MTV and Coke, to Dell, American Apparel, Coldwell Banker, among many more. Up until now, few have asked hard questions about what these companies were gaining for all that effort and cash (other than any publicity hit from the announcement.)
The early results from Komjuniti, as it turns out, are not encouraging: 72% of their 200 respondents [PDF file] said they were disappointed with real world company activities in Second Life; just over 40% considered these efforts a one-off not likely to last.
As bleak as these numbers may seem, it’s worth noting that they aren’t actually too far off from reactions to traditional Internet advertising. For example, four years after Net-based advertising had reached full fury, Yankelovich Parterns conducted a 2004 study and found that 60% of consumers had a significantly more negative opinion of marketing and advertising on the Web now than a few years previous, while 65% described themselves as feeling constantly bombarded by ads online. So in a relatively similar space of time, advertisers and brand promoters in Second Life have managed to annoy their potential customers only slightly more then their established brethren.
More worrying, however, are another pair of numbers: while 41% of respondents in the Yankelovich study said that Internet advertising had at least some relevance to them, a mere 7% of respondents in the Komjuniti study say that the SL-based promotion would have a positive impact on their future buying behavior.
Why has the failure been so thorough? Not necessarily for a lack of desire, because the Komjuniti participants also report “they would like to be able to interact more with the brands represented” in SL; metaverse versions of established hotels and retail brands garner the most positive reaction. These two points offer a sliver of hope to the metaverse marketer. As to the underwhelming results thus far, I can suggest three factors not covered in Komjuniti’s analysis.
Teleporting is to SL Advertising What the Channel Clicker is to TV Ads
The standard means of travel in SL is point-to-point teleportation, near-instantaneous transit from one x,y,z location to another. (Though it gets more press, Superman-esque flying is mostly used in short, localized bursts to get around obstacles.) P2P teleporting renders billboards and most other location-based advertising useless, and in any case, most SL marketers buy and develop on private virtual islands, where they can fully control the branding experience.
Due to server architecture, however, these islands are only accessible by teleportation, making it the ultimate opt-in experience. Giving marketers the unique challenge of getting Residents to voluntary dive into their ad, and stay long enough for any kind of meaningful brand immersion. So it’s not all that surprising marketers are largely floundering in Second Life: it’s like trying to create ads in a 3D Tivo.
Death by Green Dots (or lack thereof)
Residents navigate the world through a dynamic map; in it, every avatar in-world is represented by a green dot, and this feature has become a quick way for getting a visual read on where other Residents are in the world, and what they’re doing. In various locales and islands, green dots congregate in large numbers, and users’ immediate inference is, if lots of people are going to these places, something interesting must be going on there.
Any noticeable clump of green dots attracts more dots, and as those grow, more follow– a feedback loop colloquially known as “the green dot effect”. Second Life’s most successful entrepreneurs (who’ve proven far more agile and inventive then most of their real world counterparts) sustain this flurry of dots by holding constant events, giveaways, and games, and even go so far to pay Residents to visit. Amazingly, corporate marketers have been slow to replicate these homegrown strategies. (Surely several interns can host regular activities at their company’s SL site? Has to beat photocopying and bagel runs.)
A Failure of Imagination
To play in Second Life, corporations must first come to a humbling realization: in the context of the fantastic, their brands as they exist in the real world are boring, banal, and unimaginative. Car companies are trying to compete with college kids who turn a virtual
Fashion companies have it even harder. A thriving homegrown industry of avatar clothing design (free of production costs and overseas mass production) already exists, largely ruled by housewives with astounding talent and copious amounts of time, and since the designers are popular personalities in Second Life (whose avatars become their brand), they enjoy– and frankly deserve– the home team advantage.
Faced with such talented competition, smart marketers should concede defeat, and hire these college kids and housewives to create concept designs and prototypes that re-imagine their brands merged to existing SL-based brands which have already proved themselves in a world of infinite possibility. Or as the Komjuniti study suggests, they can keep building sterile shopping malls, and continue wondering why Residents prefer nude dance parties, giant frogs singing alt-folk rock, and samurai deathmatches– and often, all three at the same time.
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