Archive for January, 2005

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Emerging Technology Conference, March 14-17, 2005

Monday, January 31st, 2005

Citizen engineers are throwing their warranties to the wind, hacking their TiVos, Xboxes, and home networks. Wily geeks are jacking Jetsons-like technology into their cars for music, movies, geolocation, and internet connectivity on the road. E-commerce and network service giants like Amazon, eBay, PayPal, and Google are decoupling, opening, and syndicating their services, then realizing and sharing the network effects. Professional musicians and weekend DJs are serving up custom mixes on the dance floor. Operating system and software application makers are tearing down the arbitrary walls they’ve built, turning the monolithic PC into a box of loosely coupled component parts and services. The massive IT infrastructure of the ’90s is giving way to what analyst Doc Searls calls “do-it-yourself IT.”

We see all of this as a reflection of the same trend: the mass amateurization of technology, or, as Fast Company put it, “the amateur revolution.” And it’s these hacks, tweaks, re-combinations, and shaping of the future we’re exploring in this year’s Emerging Technology Conference theme: Remix.

Some of the speakers:

Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Matthew Haughey is currently the Creative Director of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization offering an alternative to full copyright and is the creator of MetaFilter.com.

Werner Vogels is Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com

Arthur van Hoff recently joined TiVo as the Principal Engineer.

Joel Spolsky writes one of the most popular independent websites for programmers Joel on Software (www.joelonsoftware.com).

Chris Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine.

Cory Doctorow is European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Jason Fried is the founder of 37signals and the Basecamp product.

Joshua Schachter founded the social networking service, del.icio.us.

Kevin Kealyis Director at AT&T Labs.

Stewart Butterfield is the president and founder of Ludicorp, the makers of Flickr, a collaborative platform for photos.

Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego

The Westin Horton Plaza
910 Broadway Circle
San Diego, CA 92101
March 14-17, 2005

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The Most Hated Advertising Techniques

Friday, January 28th, 2005

The Most Hated Advertising Techniques described by Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox:

  • Pops-up in front of your window
  • Loads slowly
  • Tries to trick you into clicking on it
  • Does not have a “Close” button
  • Covers what you are trying to see
  • Doesn’t say what it is for
  • Moves content around
  • Occupies most of the page
  • Blinks on and off
  • Floats across the screen
  • Automatically plays sound

Conversely, users preferred ads that clearly:

  • indicate what will happen if people click on them,
  • relate to what people are doing online,
  • identify themselves as advertisements,
  • present information about what they are advertising, and
  • provide additional information without having to leave the page.

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A9 Yellow Pages

Thursday, January 27th, 2005

The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is �Block View,� which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 20 million photographs. We are driving and at some point hope to cover the whole country.

Yellow Pages like you’ve never seen before.

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Textpattern Content Management

Wednesday, January 26th, 2005

A flexible, elegant, easy-to-use content management system for all kinds of websites, even weblogs.

When it comes to publishing on the internet, beginners and experts alike are met with a bothersome paradox: word processors and graphics applications allow anyone to do a pretty good job of managing text and images on a personal computer, but to make these available to the worldwide web ? a seemingly similar environment of documents and destinations ? ease of use vanishes behind sudden requirements for multilingual programming skills, proficiency in computer-based graphic design, and, ultimately, the patience of a saint.

Those who soldier on anyway may find themselves further held back by the web?s purported inflexibility with written language, with its reluctance to cope with all but the plainest of text, or by the unpredictable results brought about by using ?WYSIWYG? web editors.

Textpattern is a web application designed to help overcome these and other hurdles to publishing online, and to simplify the production of well-structured, standards-compliant web pages.

Textpattern Resources

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Free Archives

Tuesday, January 25th, 2005

Dan Gilmour writes convincingly about newspapers opening their archives.

One of these days, a newspaper currently charging a premium for access to its article archives will do something bold: It will open the archives to the public — free of charge but with keyword-based advertising at the margins.

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Stock.xchng Stock Photos

Monday, January 24th, 2005

Over 100,000 free stock photos.

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Basecamp – Web-Based Project Management Software

Friday, January 21st, 2005

At $12 to $24 a month for people with a couple projects on their plate or small businesses, busy freelancers, or contractors, Basecamp sounds like a real good Web-based solution to manage projects and keep whatever it is you’re working on organized and on track.

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