Who Said Yahoo Doesn’t Share for Free?

February 23rd, 2006  |  Published in Uncategorized

Just last week, pre-Valentine’s Day, Yahoo! shows it love to the public by launching User Interface Library and Design Patterns Library. Not to mention, the crazy cats over at the Yahoo! UI department have started a blog as well. Dang, they seem to be grinding and sharing great tools with everyone. I like that. You may read more about interesting technology via Yahoo! Developer Network.

Special thanks goes out to Blingo.com, that I came across Peter Freitag’s blog entry about it. It’s just too bad I didn’t win anything =|

Services Like FeedXS to Reinvent Blogging?

January 19th, 2006  |  Published in Uncategorized

FeedXS

Other than it’s bold ORANGE color, FeedXS launched yesterday. A Netherland-based company,

FeedXS gives everyone in the world and every business its own personal feed. By creating a feed, everyone who subscribes to your feed, will always be on top of your latest news.

It’s totally FREE!

Meanwhile, while this looks like a promising web application, I wonder how it will effect the Blogosphere. By reading the Personal Feeds tour section, I understand that you pretty much just add entries and publish them to your feed. Somewhat like the workflow on Blogger.com (or any blogging tool) but instead of publishing your latest entry on a webpage, it updates/appends your latest entry to the feed.

Will we see a decrease in blog-site creation in the future because of services like FeedXS? People are always wanting to take the easy route. I see this as one of those things. But, bloggers are a different class of their own. They seem to want everything they create and write under their complete control; for me at least. Also, what would happen to those bloggers who get some cheese by writing great content (i.e. Om Malik, Andy Budd and Michael Arrington to name the least)?

Interaction. What willl happen to the communication that blogs thrive on between the author and his/her readers? I guess this is a drawback. Instead of just posting a comment on the entry page of the post, one will have to click on the entry’s archive page URL; that’s even if the author has a site. I guess I just see this product as a one-way service. Even though it’ll be easy for everyone to publish an RSS feed, it does not provide the readers a way to give a way to send feedback or thoughts back to the author. Or does it?

SearchFox Bites the Dust

January 10th, 2006  |  Published in Technology

I just got an email from Esteban Kozak, Product Manager of SearchFox, with the following sad news:

SearchFox will shut down on January 25, 2006

Thanks for all your help in making SearchFox what it is. We have enjoyed providing this service, and hope that you have enjoyed using it. Please export all of your links and an OPML file with your RSS sources before the site shuts down. In accordance with our privacy policy, we will delete all personal information on January 25 after we shut down the services.

This came as a complete surprise to me. Nothing in the blogosphere signaled it’s peril or what have you. Oh man, I guess it’s back to Newsgator for me till I find another web-based RSS-reader that can do the job the way SearchFox did it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Linkage Finds Interesting Treasures for the Mind

December 23rd, 2005  |  Published in Technology

One of the “weaknesses” that I have (other than a sucker for FREE food) would probably be the fact that I like to learn a lot of new things. How can this be a weakness? Well, it’s kind of like playing sports. You would like to get into each sport you see on TV or the ones that your peers love to play. By doing so, you get to become a great athlete. However, a downside to that would be you not being able to become a great player of a particular sport. Now, this might not be true for everything and everyone but collectively, it is.

Lately, this weakness have been getting me in the world of technology, more specifically web-technology. With all of this “Web 2.0″ boom going around in the air, it just makes you wonder when this “upgrade” will be set. Applications left-and-right are coming at you at ludicrous speed. Trying to keep up with every single one of them is a chore, but also exciting, educational and inspiring.

With the boom comes competition. The will to succeed and ideology “to be better, smarter and more efficient than the next guy” are what fuels these new breeds of think-tanks and Web 2.0 innovators.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Future Is Bright

June 29th, 2005  |  Published in Uncategorized

The future is really, really bright! Today, I had the opportunity to sit down with my company for a meeting with Tickle Founder/CEO James Currier. Tickle was formerly eMode.com (if you don�t know), which was bought by Monster Worldwide last May. eMode.com, or should I now say Tickle, pretty much gave out tests for personality, IQ, favorite number, your opposite-sex type, what kind of dog you are, etc. The list is pretty much endless even back then.

Meanwhile, even though the time allotted for the company sit-down went over, way over, I really learned a lot. More than I was expecting. Reinforcing what Monster Founder Jeff Taylor quoted a few weeks back (in his own sit-down session with us), “Big ideas don’t cost no more than small ideas.” Bottom-line, GO BIG OR GO HOME.

But that�s were it�s somewhat an argument as well. Some great companies now started with small ideas as well; so it can go both ways too. But what I’m getting from it is, don’t be restricted to think big in the beginning–or think and dream at all.

One thing that I found very interesting from James’ presentation was that the Internet is just barely getting started. New technologies are being thought of everyday. Some of these to note are: AJAX, CSS2, XML, RSS and Atom Feeds, etc. Yes, sometimes we think that all great ideas (that can make us millions) are thought of already. But that�s one thought process we shouldn’t bar us from extending our creativity and imagination.

For example, look at the success story of Google. Before it, there was Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, etc. But how did it become successful? You may ask. It was through people; and small talk. Seriously, I didn’t find out about Google through ads or anything like that. It was through one of you. “You should try Google out. It’s really simple to use.” Right? Right.

Virility–to say it in all in one word. It�s just funny to how this is true with Google’s recent product, Gmail. How did people find out about this? Well, it all started probably when the Google people went to a party and met some people from Blogger and said,

Hey, we’d like to push our new email system out. How about if we invite your (Blogger) members to try it out?

So the idea sparked. Blogger members got the Gmail invites. Then they were sold on eBay for $100-200 the first few days. I think it�s those damn geeks that wanted to reserve their new email address. Pretty much get first pick from the creme of the crop.

Anyways, I am learning a lot from these company sit-downs. It shows: how people react to business; how people react in business; how ideas are made, and how those ideas make other ideas; etc. The list of the things I’ve learned so far has exceeded my expectations in the past three months I’ve been here; and the fact that there is more to come makes it even more exciting and a privilege to work for ‘em. That, and to serve those people who protects our freedom–the troops.

From my mind to yours, keep thinking. Keep exploring. Use your imagination. Network yourselves and don�t be scared to fail or fall from those small and/or big ideas. After all, we fall “so we can learn to pick ourselves back up.”