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« Previous EntriesFlickr Releases Handy Embeddable Slide Show
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Yahoo’s photosharing service Flickr is one of the more wonderful things on the web and today the company made a small release that a lot of people should enjoy quite a bit. There’s never been a really easy way to embed a nice slide show of your photos off site, until now.
The new Flickr slide show (example below) is available for the photos on any page you’re looking at, meaning you should be able to display your friends’ photos, photos with a particular tag etc. We are happy. Thanks to the fabulous photographer Scott Beale for pointing to the new feature release.
The above are the latest from my personal account. I’ve tested it and privacy settings appear to be respected. A couple of changes that would be nice would be a link in the player to each photo’s page on Flickr and the ability to turn on captions.
I’ve been posting to Flickr far, far more than ever before now that I’ve set up posting from my phone. To do that you go to the settings tab, find the post by email address, make that a contact on your phone and send it there by MMS. I’ve also been uploading a lot of screenshots using the wonderful Mac app Skitch. I’ve also got my Flickr account tied to my account at FriendFeed, which gives me more reason to post photos since I know more friends will see them.
How about you? Tips on making good use of Flickr in general and the new embedded slideshow in particular would be great to share in comments.
Originally
from ReadWriteWeb
by
reBlogged
on Aug 21, 2008, 4:55PM
Microformats and RDFa are not as far apart as people think
Thursday, August 21st, 2008The BBC have caused a bit of a storm recently by announcing that they won’t be using the hCalendar Microformat on their pages. The reason is the well-known problems with accessibility. One of the proposed solutions is to look at RDFa.
Confusing syntax with vocabulary
Whilst the BBC obviously understand their web-pages, and are conscious of the issues of accessibility, they may have demonstrated here a bit of a misunderstanding of the semantic nature of the web. And in my view, most of the follow-up discussions I’ve seen fall into the same trap.
The main point is to not confuse the syntax used to convey information, with the information itself–the vocabulary. The reason I think this is what is happening is that when the BBC say “we’ll be looking at the possible use of RDFa”, they may have missed the point that when you use RDFa, you still need a vocabulary, and if one doesn’t exist, you’ll need to create one.
It would be far better to look at the Microformat that is already in use (in this case, hCalendar), and see if it can be tweaked to make use of the generic nature of RDFa–but that requires a new approach to both Microformats and RDFa.
So before panic takes hold of the Microformats community, or smugness grips the RDFa one, let’s try to get underneath what these two technologies are actually about.
Microformats are about vocabulary
Microformats were devised as a way to let authors add little pieces of semantics to their documents, in such a way that applications could make use of them. An application might be a search engine that can improve indexing and search, or a browser that can display extra information based on the embedded values.
There are three key advances that Microformats made. The first was to say that you can still do useful things, even if you only have a small amount of information. This was pretty radical, since up until that point the semantic web seemed to be an ‘all or nothing’ proposition. (For many people it still is.)
The second was to say that we should be able to publish semantic information in the same easy way that we publish web-pages–through content-management systems, blogs, and so on.
But the third advance is perhaps the most important; Microformats essentially said that we can teach end-users about a specific set of terms that help them do something useful, without having to teach them ‘big picture’ stuff. This meant that authors could be taught just enough mark-up to add contact details, events, licensing information, geo locations…and so on.
Problems with Microformats
Microformats opened the way for a new approach to the semantic web, but it does of course have its weaknesses.
The first is that it ‘overloads’ many of the HTML attributes to carry semantic information, in such a way that they can interfere with the normal use of the attribute. This is why people are now having accessibility problems, because some of the attributes are trying to play two or three roles.
The second weakness is that mixing vocabularies starts to get messy; because each Microformat is a combination of vocabulary and syntax, then it is actually quite specific, and they can therefore interfere with each other.
The third weakness if that because each vocabulary also requires ’syntax’, then even if a perfectly usable vocabulary exists, it has to be ‘converted’ to be a Microformat.
RDFa is about syntax
RDFa started life at around the same time as Microformats, and holds with many of the same philosophies–that the semantic web is never going to happen unless metadata is as easy to publish as a web-page, and that authors should have an easy way to add information without having to understand the ‘big picture’.
But RDFa set out to address a slightly different set of problems; instead of defining new vocabularies, it sought to create a generic syntax that can accommodate any vocabulary, allowed multiple vocabularies on a page, and did so in any mark-up language.
And whereas the Microformat community took as a fundamental principle that they wouldn’t modify HTML at all, we took advantage of one of the key extension mechanisms of HTML which is that unrecognised attributes should simply be ignored by an HTML parser (i.e., they should not throw an error). So by adding a handful of new attributes to HTML and XHTML, RDFa doesn’t interfere with the existing uses of attributes, such as for accessibility.
Microformats and RDFa
Ultimately, if people can put their prejudices to one side, there should be no reason why these two ground-breaking technologies can’t work together.
To illustrate, take the rel-license Microformat. It’s a nice, simple, self-contained document about how to use the license value in @rel and @rev. To specify the license of a current document, an author can add something like this:
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" rel="license>cc by 2.0</a>
This is perfectly valid HTML, making use of @rel with @href, and it’s nice and easy to explain–the key component of Microformats.
But it’s not widely known that this is also perfectly valid RDFa.
However, RDFa takes this a step further, and provides authors with the ability to talk about other things, not just the current document.
Individual licenses for images
A common situation is to have a number of images on a page, and to want to indicate the license of each of them. With RDFa you now can.
Imagine we have this image in our page:
<img src="http://www.flickr.com/photos/detached/2529217704/" />
Our previous example of a license link needs only minor modification to make it refer to the image:
<a about=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/detached/2529217704/” href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_GB” rel=”license> cc by 2.0</a>
It’s difficult to argue that this is complex, since it’s only a minor change for authors.
Extending rel-license
But there is no reason why this formulation shouldn’t also be included in rel-license; after all, the key purpose of a Microformat is to promote re-use and provide bite-size pieces that authors can quickly learn and put to work.
rel-license could remain ‘the last word’ on the use of license in @rel and @rev, but it could also provide information about how to use license in HTML, XHTML and RDFa. That way there is only one place that authors need to go.
Solving the BBC problem
I said at the beginning that the BBC still needed to create a vocabulary, even if it adopted RDFa. In other words, it may gain a solution to the accessibility problem by dropping hCalendar, but it loses the advantage of having a community-maintained syntax.
That doesn’t mean we have the answer straight away, but I strongly suggest that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
The Microformats community is responsible for getting many people to look again at the semantic web, after having been put off by the more theoretical approach. But it needs to build on this success, and look at updating its formats to make use of the new attributes and generic parsing algorithm provided by RDFa. That way it can solve its technical problems, and continue to lead the way in defining ‘agile’ vocabularies for the semantic web.
And whilst the RDFa community has shown that it is possible to have a syntax that supports the ‘full’ semantic web, without it needing to exist in a separate space of complex mark-up and extra documents, it should remember that a generic syntax is nothing without vocabularies.
I’ve just started work on an exciting project to mark up job vacancies in the UK public sector, using RDFa. And although the use of RDFa will make it very easy for departments to publish the metadata, it’s still going to require the creation of a vocabulary of terms. I’m going to be looking all over for suitable terms and vocabularies, and I’ll certainly be looking at how Microformats might fit in.
Originally
from XForms and Internet Applications
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reBlogged
Openness and Innovation Presentation at Media Futures 2008
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Yesterday I had a lot of fun at the Media Futures 2008 conference at Alexandra Palace. The panel I was on was called Openness and Innovation, and included Robert Cailliau, Ian Forrester, Matt Webb and myself. The chair was Bill Thompson.
My slides are here:
Originally
from XForms and Internet Applications
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reBlogged
5 Reasons The World Hates Mobile Video, Should You Too?
Thursday, August 21st, 2008In the mobile blogdom lately, Ive noticed quite a few discussions about mobile video suck-age. The format of the discussion is as such: Company X gets funding or Company Y hits 4 million subscribers, followed by a bloggers anger, resentment, and lamentation of how mobile video is decades away.
Don’t think so? Read the majority of blogs about MobiTV, and notice how bloggers talk more about MobiTV’s slowing subscriber base than the 4 million-person milestone.
Just the other day we were meeting with a Valley-based VC, and he too had nothing nice to say about mobile video. Ive theorized as to why so many people are mobile video nay-sayers… Please feel free to add to my list, and I would love for mobile companies to explain to me why these thoughts are wrong:
1. Bigger is Better….
Growing up in the belt of America I have always been taught that bigger is better. I want bigger tires, bigger houses, bigger TV’s. Why on earth after being so intrinsically programmed that bigger is better would I change that schema and pay to watch a tiny Dr. McDreamy? Its like paying more for less.
2. Slow upload, adds insult to my squinty eyes….
Argh!!! I have to say that like a pirate because I look like Captain Black as I stare at the little 4×2 screen. All these slow moving uploading videos do is demonstrate the depth of the crows feet around my eyes. We are impatient people. We have fast food, fast cars and fast…everything. I would rather watch grass grow with un-squinted eyes, than wait for an episode of Friends to load up. After all, I already know Monica married Chandler and Rachel and Ross never get together which broke my heart
In all seriousness; can this ever work? Weve come across several companies trying to solve this issue (Avot Media, Azuki Systems, Kimia) but is this enough?
3. Pushing an ad to my phone as a walk down the street watching a video aint gonna change my behavior
How much would you bet on the ad- based model for mobile video? Does it matter if it is location based? Can we really say that the missing piece in a mobile advertising connection to consumers is proximity identification? Will I really choose Pete’s Coffee over Starbucks if you shoot me a Pete’s coupon to my mobile as I walk into the Bucks? Can 50 cents of a cup of Joe overcome my lazy feet? We have several guys who bet millions of duckets as to yes, but I want something more compelling.
4. Speaking of Millions! They keep getting money and other ideas get ignored….
Honestly, maybe were just envious. Many VC’s keep shelling out the dough in order to see that these companies keep on keeping on. Is that a good or a bad thing? Is it just an exit thing? Do these guys believe in the viability of the business, or are they just really betting that someone else is willing to raise the ante’ so their Ace’s wild wins the pot allowing them to exit into the Sunset. Enquiring minds want to know, however, I can’t help but think that a lot of the people complaining are complaining because they couldn’t get money to build their own RonCo empires, while these guys could or could not be building the next big thing.
5. Tell me the 5th reason mobile video stinks, and Ill send you to the Under the Radar: Mobility conference.
The person who comes up with the best answer to this question will get 2 tickets to Under the Radar on November 12, where 32 mobile startups will demonstrate how theyre revolutionizing the world one handset at a time.
For Mobile Video Lovers: On the other hand, I will give 2 tickets to Under the Radar for the best 4 reasons why mobile video is awesome comment.
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on Aug 19, 2008, 5:21PM
Paul Graham’s advice on raising money for a startup
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Important piece of startup advice: Listen to Paul Graham.
He is a programmer who has written oodles of elegant code, the author of three books and numerous essays, and a VC who was one of the founding members of Y Combinator.
Paul has done a considerable amount of work in the area of passing on knowledge from experienced entrepreneurs to the next generation. This is a concept that I am especially fond of and spend a good deal of time thinking about (Startonomics & Strategy Series ).
Today I spent some time with Pauls most recent essay : A Fundraising Survival Guide.
Here are some droplets of wisdom from Paul when it comes to fundraising:
1) Have Low Expectations
“There will be a tendency, as a deal progresses, to start to believe it will happen, and then to depend on it happening. You must resist this. Tie yourself to the mast. This is what kills you. Deals do not have a trajectory like most other human interactions, where shared plans solidify linearly over time. Deals often fall through at the last moment. Often the other party doesn’t really think about what they want till the last moment. So you can’t use your everyday intuitions about shared plans as a guide. When it comes to deals, you have to consciously turn them off and become pathologically cynical.”
2) Stay Lean, Not Starving
“At YC we use the phrase “ramen profitable” to describe the situation where you’re making just enough to pay your living expenses. Once you cross into ramen profitable, everything changes. You may still need investment to make it big, but you don’t need it this month.”
This essay is worth a slow careful read if you are a young genius just getting started as an entrepreneur. You will even find it thought provoking if you have been buddies with Ron Conway since he started Altos Computer Systems.
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on Aug 19, 2008, 1:57AM
Four Reasons To Be Transparent As A Startup
Thursday, August 21st, 2008We research startups everyday and many of the websites we come across have very little information about the company or the team. There are probably a wide variety of reasons why some startups choose to obscure this information but there are good reasons why you should be transparent.
1. Trust When you share information about yourself it creates a sense of trust with your audience. If you are vague, the automatic assumption is that you are hiding something or that its just a side project.
2. Perspective If you are young, bootstrapped and beta its better to open the kimono and let people engage then to stay closed and be judged.
3. Connection The most loyal users feel like they are part of a club. Stay open and engaged and youll build a loyal following.
4. Reference Knowing a teams background and past experience can help potential partners, investors and customers quickly recognize that they want to track your progress and get to know your company better.
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on Aug 14, 2008, 7:21PM
Like finding a Chippendale in an Ikea warehouse
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Everyday I slog through heaps of information about mobile startup companies. Searching, sifting, scrutinizing, summing up and starting all over again. Most of the startups I encounter are disappointing (to put it kindly) but every now and then there is a gem amongst the junk. Today I saw a gem called Digital Sidebar (thanks to Satya Patel at Battery Ventures).
Digital Sidebar has a creative concept that was meticulously researched and executed by a crack team. It is refreshing and invigorating to find such a company amid the masses of day job as an Initech engineer/ startup founder by night type websites.
Founder and CEO Stephanie Grossman is building a company that delivers ads to mobile devices. Does delivering ads to mobile devices sound familiar? It should. I have seen 20+ companies who fit that description in the last 2 weeks. Digital Sidebar is not just following the flock - they are working on a better way of presenting ads on mobile devices.
The twist is an innovative use of screen space. The ad content is place within the white space of the screen. This new style of ad will be much less obtrusive and represents a leap forward analogous to the transition from the annoying banner ads to the more subtle and sophisticated sponsored ad column.
Using underutilized screen space for unobtrusive ads it’s clever, right? But is a clever idea all by itself enough to carry a startup? No. Definitely not.
Luckily for Digital Sidebar, their clever idea is backed by solid business plan and an experienced team. Looking forward to getting a closer look.
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on Aug 14, 2008, 1:07AM
Wanna do a deal with T-Mobile?
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Good news to anyone out there who’s been trying to get in the door with T-Mobile - here’s your shot. I just confirmed Joe Sims as a judge at the next Under the Radar conference on November 12th. Joe is the VP & GM of Broadband Products and Services & Business Development @ T-Mobile, so he’s the guy you wanna meet.
And here’s why everyone doing anything mobile should give a damn about T-Mobile:
MocoNews recently reported that T-Mobile is poised to open its deck to almost any developer, creating their own App-store for the entire handset line-up. To understand the mega-impact of that move, think of it this way:
# of T-Mobile subscribers (all handsets): 31,500,000
# of iPhones Apple projects to sell by year-end: 10,000,000
MocoNews states:
“Developers will submit their applications online; the revenue-share agreement will be based on how much the application uses the network; and the applications will be presented to the user in order of popularity, not according to T-Mobiles preferences. Its all pretty straightforward, but the more interesting aspect is that this will apply to all the carriers platforms from upcoming Android to Java to Sidekick and Windows Mobile. “
It looks like the rev share agreement will be similar to Apple’s 30/70 split, and details are fuzzy at this point on the certification process, which obviously is paramount - meaning: T-Mobile needs to give love to the developers and make the process as simple as possible, something Apple has yet to achieve.
Now let me tell you a bit about Joe: He heads up T-Mobile HotSpot, HotSpot Home and T-Mobile’s web and content business. He’s responsible for all new business development and strategic partnerships. So he’s like the all-purpose dealmaker at the company.
What will Joe Sims be looking for at Under the Radar? Well, you’ll get to ask him yourself - in person.
If you’re interested in this story, register for Under the Radar: Mobility on November 12th at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, Ca. The early-bird discount ends in a couple weeks. REGISTER HERE.
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on Aug 13, 2008, 5:45PM
On Cloud Nine: How Cloud Computing is Attracting Big Dollars
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Gone are the days of stacking up your developers in the corner of the office like a cheerleader pyramid to make way for more hefty servers and computers (just replace the white sweaters and skirts with blue collared shirts and pleated khakis…). Welcome to the age of cloud computing and virtual hardware.
On Cloud Nine: An Under the Radar Success Story:
Just how do you tap into the power of the cloud? An Under the Radar presenter (March 2008) set out to help enterprises do just that. Today, Elastra announced they secured a $12 Million Series B round. Congrats!!
Aimed at being the “bridge” that helps applications be deployed to public (like Amazon EC2 and S3) clouds and private clouds - they make the process more streamlined for IT departments, thus unlocking the value of the cloud faster by taking on the burden of deploying, organizing and supporting.
Their pitch was a hit at Under the Radar for a few reasons:
1) They were working in a space with just “enough” buzz: Cloud computing was generating a lot of interest and head scratches at the time, and Elastra had a well-defined, proven, innovative (and on-demand) way to help companies work with the cloud.
2) They solved a pain: Enterprises needed a secure and efficient way of deploying data to the cloud.
3) They had a business model: no one will partner or invest in any company no matter how cool the “Idea Guy” is unless revenue streams has been properly identified.
Want to be our next success story? Under the Radar past presenters have gone on to secure numerous strategic partnerships, investments, customers and publicity after hitting our stage. The next Under the Radar will be on November 12, 2008 and will focus soley on emerging mobile startups. If you think you have what it takes, apply to present now.
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
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on Aug 12, 2008, 11:56PM
Mobile Startups that Blow My Socks Off
Thursday, August 21st, 2008The Im Rich app that had the iPhone world buzzing last week is 1-part pure marketing genius, 1-part pure jackass.
For the mobile application developers building truly useful, entertaining and educational applications for my beloved iPhone, the Im Rich app was a slap in the face. It was nothing but a red icon that screamed, I cost a sh*t load of money!
Now that said, weve been testing out bucketfuls of mobile startups lately, trying to find applications, gaming companies, LBSs, advertising platforms, etc that are ripe for the stage; and weve been poking holes in their business models and technology in hopes of finding the sweetest fruits.
I have a few chosen mobile startups in my back pocket for Under the Radar: Mobility, but I have to admit something: my socks have yet to light on fire and rocket themselves off my feet.
Got a mobile startup that will rock my world? Blow my mind? Make me want to call Momma Snodgrass and tell her all about my great day at work?
Tell me about it, then. The deadline for applications is Friday.
Whats in it for you?
Deals: Dealmaker Media puts the Under the Radar conference together for one reason to put you in the right place to get deals done.
Our Audience:
The UTR Audience consists of all the players you need to move your company from an upstart to a disruptive force. This upcoming event is about mobile. Mobile is what our audience knows. One third of our audience will consist of the key players in the mobile space, one third will consist of our exclusive VC Circle, and the final third will be the bloggerati and press folks.
Our Team:
The UTR team is serious about picking great companies, serious about putting together a top-notch event. And serious about seeing the success of our Startups come to fruition.
Our CEO’s Shiny Happy Face:
Which is what we are all after right? Not sure your startup can cut the mustard? Come check out Startonomics. Are you in LA. We have another amazing event coming up in Santa Monica come startegize with us at our Strategy Series!
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on Aug 11, 2008, 6:08PM