Bwana.org » Web

Google Comes Out Swinging At IO ’10

Bwana — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:58:35 +0000

We expected a lot of announcements related to Android (more coming today), but yesterday’s barrage of Google news was downright overwhelming. Google IO is a developer’s conference hosted by Google in California to … well this:

Google I/O features 80 sessions, more than 5,000 developers, and over 100 demonstrations from developers showcasing their technologies. Talk shop with engineers building the next generation of web, mobile, and enterprise applications.

Quick breakdown of highlights:

That’s just some of the news.

The most exciting ones for me were Google Buzz API and WebM. When Google Buzz came out, Google promised us an API in the future so that developers could write custom applications and consumers could mingle with Google Buzz’s data. That day has finally come and based on the partners that have launched Google Buzz support, the future looks great.

WebM, however, has me excited on a whole new level. Why? Because it could mean a Flash free browser for me.

[WebM is] an open web media format project and open-sourced VP8, a high-quality, web-optimized video codec, that we are contributing to the project under a royalty-free license.

Hear me out. Even though Adobe has already announced that they are going to implement this new WebM/VP8 codec into Flash, we really don’t need it. Based on what I’ve gleaned from this new open sourced video codec, it’s perfectly compatible with HTML5. (although not in the official specification…yet) Anything that gives me a way out of Flash is excellent news.

I’ll have many more thoughts as Google IO progresses, but for now, these are my two favorites. Look for more Google announcements today at approximately 10:30AM EST on their live stream.

The Challenge Of The Realistic Real-Time Web

Bwana — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:19:41 +0000

Robert Scoble shared his desktop screens to give us a glimpse of how he consumes much of the information out there. It’s kind of scary:

Do you think you could follow that? A lot of people see that and are intimidated. I believe this is going to be obstacle that the “real-time web” is going to have to surpass. I’m glad that tools like FriendFeed are enabling us to search this massive amount of information for the stuff we care about. Read my post on how to use FriendFeed filters (now called “Saved Searches”) for more information.

Let’s just hope the “real-time” web is not faster than “realistic” time. At some point, it becomes overwhelming and a waste of time if not implemented properly. It’s going to be interesting to watch this whole thing grow. What do you think? Is this real-time web feasible?

Embed Your Real-time FriendFeed Activity On Your Blog

Bwana — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:13:30 +0000

The real-time web is the buzzword of 2009. As technology advances, we become more impatient. We want our information and we want it 5 minutes ago. If a story is reported 2 hours after it happens, it’s ancient history in the age of Twitter and FriendFeed. I’m a big user of FriendFeed not only for the information it brings, but the interesting discussions that occur surrounding them. It’s a great dashboard of the social web.

FriendFeed has a real-time feature that some are not aware of. This feature is available for FriendFeed lists, rooms, and your friend streams. It shows FriendFeed activity as it happens and can be addictive if you let it Today, I found (through FriendFeed of course) a little nugget that allows you to embed your friends real-time activity right on your blog. To do so:

Navigate to your page by clicking “Me” on the left sidebar. Then click “Yourname + Friends” on the top tab bar
Next, click the “Real time” link, and then click embed in web page
You can then configure the embed width, height, and title. Copy and paste the HTML to your blog and you’re set.

I was aware you could embed real-time FriendFeed through rooms, as I wrote about back in May, but I didn’t know you could also embed your friend stream. Here’s what mine looks like:

As of now, you cannot embed your main feed, or your discussion feed which consists of your comments and likes. That would be the next logical feature to add since the FriendFeed discussion feed is rich with content that you are interested in. Take a look at mine to get an idea. I’m glad FriendFeed is continuing to improve and if you want the world to know what you’re doing on FriendFeed at any given moment, go ahead and embed your FriendFeed activity. See you on FriendFeed.

Flickr Video: I like it.

Bwana — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:23:12 +0000

I really don’t have reasons not to like it. It’s in the same category as Seesmic in terms of “video microblogging” from my point of view. I don’t really care about the 90 second limit on the video to be honest. I agree with Gruber in that Twitter is limited to 140 chars, so why can’t video be limited to 90 seconds? Time to be creative people! Don’t even start on the 150MB limitation. I was able to get a 12 minute video under 100MB using VisualHub for Mac, and I’m sure there are similar tools on the Windows and Linux platforms respectively. I’ve already gotten started:

I’ve also joined the “Fridget” meme mentioned on the Flickr blog post. iSobot ftw.

All videos shot with my Canon Powershot TX1 in 720p, and then converted down 640×352 using Visualhub.

Feedback Regarding Open Direction and Open Communities

Bwana — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:28:12 +0000

This is a response/feedback to Chris Pirillo’s blog post surrounding a huge idea surrounding web communities. Please read his blog post in its entirety prior to reading this one so you will understand the context. Enjoy.

Let me just say, I applaud this effort and believe you are on to something here. Here are my thoughts.

First off, I think it was a huge mistake to remove Disqus from your blog particularly for this discussion. You could have really spread the word using that mechanism. I think you’re going to need Disqus in the future for these ideas. Their developers are really open to ideas like this and could easily integrate Disqus directly into Drupal as an option. They could also include some of the features you outlined regarding comments as well.

As for Drupal itself, you’ve highlighted my #1 issue with it, it’s not “ready to go”. It may have power, but it requires too much love to get up and going like I want. I think this may also highlight your difficulty in finding a capable Drupal developer. It’s like asking a Linux kernel hacker to write a device driver for your specific hardware, not gonna happen. I’m hoping this situation improves.

While it may have potential, this non-unique idea presents a formidable challenge. What you’re describing sounds like what the OpenSocial foundation is “claming” to help enable. (I could be wrong here) Are you looking to build a competitor to that or to utilize it? There is stiff competition out there and this idea needs a compelling evangelist to convince people to abandon the Myspace, Facebook, and now FriendFeed platforms to support this one. While I understand you intend to include these frameworks in the grand scheme of things, it still will take man hours to make it happen.

Social relevance is huge and this may be why people went crazy over FriendFeed because some believed it enabled users to find others like themselves and discuss the social web. Toluu.com also has the same premise about social relevance. I suggest soliciting feedback from them.

Participation is the key to all of this. I’ve found that many of us on the web have social fatigue and are reluctant to try any new social services, whether they be networks, communities, or something like your ideas. We have to remove as many barriers to entry as we can. I think Drupal is a huge one at the moment. If it is to serve as the core of this idea (and it may not), you really need to make dead simple to get up and running AND to import archived content seamlessly. I can’t stress that enough.

Your idea about blog commenting and sharing ad revenue sort of frightens me. I can’t help but think about comment spammers. If this is going to be implemented (seriously), then spam protection HAS to be ironclad. I foresee a huge problem here. There are mechanisms to get around this of course (comment rankings, karma,etc) but spam protection has to be the #1 priority.

I’m glad you understand the massive undertaking with this. Not only with the technology, but the mindset of the community has to be considered. Something compelling has to be offered in order to dismiss claims of YASN (Yet another Social Network) If this is going to be open, we need to consider open standards: OAuth, Microformats, RSS, Atom, programming languages, etc. All of these are barriers to entry. It’s amazing how many people won’t touch this idea due to a few missing open standards. I’m pretty much in agreement with you here, I understand you have already considered this.

Again, It’s refreshing to see the enthusiasm presented with this idea, but I’m getting a sinking feeling it may be too much to take on considering the obstacles (mostly mental issues in the community, but some technological) ahead. Here are some more suggestions that I have that I didn’t see in your post. (I apologize if I missed it) You may have already considered these but not included them in your blog post:

Dead simple rich media support, which includes podcasting, videocasting, youtube api/plugins, blip, blogtalkradio, talkshoe, etc. Yet another barrier to entry.
UI has to be GREAT. I can’t tell you how important this is. You could have the great set of features, but if the UI sucks (you know this very well), people will NOT use it.
Cross platform support for clients. If we’re going to take an open approach to this, we have to support multiple flavors of Linux, Mac OS X, Windows XP, Vista, and other OSs I haven’t mentioned that could be important.
Mobile support is crucial! We’re moving to a mobile world with the iPhone, Nokia tablets, and Windows mobile smartphones. This idea must consider and work with just about every mobile platform out there.
The gaming community needs to be considered. There are billions of gamers out there who use web features of game servers stats, xfire, steam stats, etc. You want to tap into an active community? Tap into the gamers. 360 Gamercard support, Wii and PS3 features. All are game. (no pun intended)
Security!! Oh man, you don’t need me to preach to you about this one. Security is so important and we need to make sure such a wide coverage of features has an easy update mechanism for security patches.
Assurance this project won’t die. A lot of people, including me, are reluctant to join an effort such as this if it won’t take off. Our time is crucial and potential evangelists and developers are going to need assurance they aren’t wasting their time.

Thanks Chris for your role in the community, and I wish you all the success with this effort!