We are seeing more and more applications/software pieces going into beta. I am a memeber of so many beta software companies – box.net (which is finally out of beta), everything Google, Yahoo just launched their new site look which was in beta for some time, AOL has a new beta viedo set to rival YouTube. It seems everyone has a beta product.
Don’t get me wrong my intention for this post is not to paint a bad pictures around betas – IE 7.0 has been in beta since my son was born two years ago. I just find it amazing that everyone seems to be pushing out semi-release software. It shows what I believe to be a big shift in the user driven software market.
In the past we were given software in select groups. You had to be a partner or a user with 10 hours to spare a week and it was a select few. If you remember, you were sent a username and password to some secret site and you had to sign some sort of NDA. I think what is happening is a great idea. Give people the software in an early stage with the bare minimum from a features standpoint and get feedback. What works, what doesn’t work.
I applaud this movement and I see it as a symbol of this user driven Internet that is beginning to take shape and form.
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I have spoken a bit about RSS in the past and this topic runs along those lines. If you get into RSS feeds and readers you may also get into sharing your feeds with others. You could liken this to the ability to sharing links (a la del.icio.us). The site (which was started by the creator of RSS – Dave Winer) is
http://share.opml.org/ a little light on the feature list and quite frankly I can not see this site growing really large but it is interesting anyways.
The basic idea is that you would export your RSS readers list of feeds using a technology specification called OPML Outline Processor Markup Language. Most readers will export the list in that format so this process is pretty painless. OPML in short is an XML file with a particular layout. Once you create an account and upload your OPML file you get some links on the right side of the page. The two nicest features that I can see are the “Subscriptions Like Mine” and the “Top 100 Feeds” links. These are indexes, the first based on match ups from your list and the second being the most popular RSS feeds found in everyone’s list. Unfortunately, the “Subscriptions like mine” link does not appear to work. It may be that I had just signed up and the tools on the site had not caught up with my post.
What I think is interesting about this site is that it is a litmus test of sorts. If you look at the top 100 you will notice that besides a few feeds like CNET News.com and Bloglines, these feeds are all technical feeds. If you remember before we talked about the masses here and while there has been some debate as to what will drive RSS to the masses, a site like this will at least let us know when that shift will be made.
What I would imagine will happen is that the distribution to the masses will happen automatically. What I mean is that people will be using RSS without really knowing it. Much like HTML. When the web hit the masses back in the mid 1990′s people had no idea what HTML was. They understood the power of HTML but did not know that they were using it. I could see that same process happening with RSS. More importantly, for this technology to truly meet the masses, it has to happen. People don’t care about the architecture, they care about the functionality.
So what would that look like? Is Firefox’s definition of “Live Bookmarks” the answer? They don’t call it RSS, the call it “Live Bookmarks”. So what people may understand is that they can create a bunch of Live Bookmarks which show “snippets” of content from their favorite sites directly within their browsers without having to go the page. The browser would be using RSS behind the scenes without the user ever knowing this.
A natural extension to this would be the ability to “share” my Live Bookmarks. This extension would behind the scenes be enabled using OPML. The browser could also be enabled to show “recommended” Live Bookmarks based on the cross-reference of your feeds against others.
So you may know it is hitting the masses when you see feeds in here from WWTDD.com.
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Everyone remembers the hey day, or have read about it. Daily massages, in office happy hour specials, boat cruises, pool tables, TV Rooms with every cable channel immagineable, Play Stations (the PS2 and XBox were still on the drawing board). Work was a forest of toys and playthings. It hardly resemebled a place where money was actually made. But, for someone spending 70+ hours a week at work, what was 5-10 spent around a ping pong table. It just made sense.
In light of the recent fever sorrounding Internet Development again, I can't help but wonder what we have learned this time around. Certainly we have learned that the companay in order to be successful, needs to have some customers. They can not just be some idea that makes sense. Additionally, the "prototype" needs to be as close to production as possible before large amounts of funding are turned over. But what about the working environment. Did we learn something there? Was our open attitude towards "distractions" a misstep or was their some value there?
Working environments will change and are changing. I think that motivation to spend "extra" hours at work will still be driven internally, instead of the top down approach of typical brick and motor companies. While we will not see a full return to the early days of Interent development you will see an occasional fosball table here an there and early Friday cocktail hour will make a comeback.
People work a lot here in America especially in a time of growth like we are seeing here. During that time of growth you need to produce a working environment that is enticing. If you are not ready to give up equity or do profit sharing inside your company then you should at least set up (or designate some as your) entertainment committee. Get the husbands, wives and families of your workers involved. Spouses that compete with the company for precious time like to be involved.
In any case, like I stated before, I am ready for the next wave!
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Ok, so I have been in a shell for a few years, gliding around entrenched in my work and traveling. I pop my head up for a minute and all of the sudden there is this software revolution going on! What the heck.
For the past 4 years I have been working for a Web based CMS written in ColdFusion. Since our product has been around for so long (since 1999) our architecture supports pretty old technology. When new stuff comes out I usually read about, fool around with it and the watch it pass by. I am amazed at what is available and what is still being built. It seems if you want you can find an application to manage your shoe collection. It's amazing.
Well I have been reading a lot more (a lot of the sites listed to the right) and I am psyched! I feel much like I did back in '96 when I realized the power of web applications and started building them. It was a ton of fun building, architecting, testing (yeah right).
It seems that there is a rejuvination of that spirit. Just read TechCrunch, SolutionWatch and the Read/Write Web. If you don't get pumped about the software that is available your dead or boring. Some of my new favorites:
- Zillow
- Google Calendar
- Box.net (a bit scary but cool)
- Google Earth
- Anything IPod Related
Will this increse in software development produce the same type of tech fever that was created in the mid 90's? Without a doubt. We have a ton of smart people out there who have been studying the social aspects surrounding our increased use of the Internet. With the renewal in VC funding in the past few years, it is only a matter of time before applications become more main stream.
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