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Why Dell.com (was) More Enterprise 2.0 Than Dell IdeaStorm

By Tim O'Reilly
September 28, 2008

In my keynote last week at Web 2.0 Expo New York, I made the comment that, cool as Dell Ideastorm is, the fundamental supply-chain approach behind dell.com is actually a better example of how Web 2.0 applies to the enterprise. I also made the provocative assertion that WalMart is a Web 2.0 company (or at least a model of how...

NikePlus: From Sonar to Virtual Marathons

By Brady Forrest
September 26, 2008

Yesterday at PICNIC Nike Techlab's Michael Tchao gave a great talk on their history of integrating technology and sports. Right now Nike (and Michael) is leading the exercise industry with its NikePlus product. The first technology-running product was a bit awkward. As described in a 1987 article by the Seattle-PI One of the newest units is the Monitor, introduced...

Violet's Mirr:or: Internet of Things Via RFID

By Brady Forrest
September 25, 2008

Today at PICNIC, Violet announced that it is releasing a mass-market RFID reader. The Mir:ror will connect to your computer via USB. It will read RFID tags placed near it and can perform actions based on them. I am not sure that the mass-market is ready for an RFID reader, but I think this will one will make headway...

Donkeypedia.nl: Get a Donkey's Eye-View of Amsterdam & PICNIC

By Brady Forrest
September 24, 2008

Here at PICNIC there is a donkey named Asino being led around by a fellow named Christian. The pair have a GPS, solar-panels and a video camera. As they roam around Amsterdam they geotag videos and photos for uploading to Donkeypedia, a Dutch-language site. As far as I know it is the only Donkey-enabled mashup. The site takes a...

Web 2.0 Expo CFP is Open

By Brady Forrest
September 23, 2008

The Web 2.0 Expo in SF is our largest conference for the web community. It brings together over 10K web professionals to meet in the hallways, attend sessions and keynotes, and explore the Expo floor. If you wish to speak you'll be glad to know that the CFP for Web 2.0 Expo SF is open. We will be accepting...

Open beats Closed: Best Buy’s new APIs

By Joshua-Michele Ross
September 23, 2008

Welcome to Joshua-Michéle Ross, who joins the Radar team with a focus on how Web 2.0 is affecting business strategy - Sara Winge Best Buy is a pioneer when it comes to unleashing the talent of their own staff; from the Loop Marketplace that allows employees to submit ideas for Digg-style ranking AND funding across divisions (for example an HR...

Wingman: In-Browser Validation

By Nat Torkington
September 18, 2008

Rowan Simpson and Koz have released Wingman, a Firefox plug-in that automatically sends the pages you visit to an HTML validation server. This lets you validate dynamically-generated pages locked away behind complex logins. You can tell it ignore certain types of errors, and the website aggregates information about what types of errors are commonly ignored. I know Rowan and Koz...

ETech CFP Ends Friday (9/19)

By Brady Forrest
September 16, 2008

Hurry! The Call For Participation for ETech 2009 closes this Friday (9/19). We've got a lot of great submissions so far, but we'd like to see more. The submissions will all be reviewed by mid-October. Below are the major themes of the conference. If you've worked on technology in any of these areas submit a talk. City Tech: Our...

Apple's Big Location Chance, Or When Is The iPhone Going To Use That GPS?

By Brady Forrest
September 15, 2008

Apple's iPhone is being heralded for all of its location-aware apps like Whrrl and Loopt. Unfortunately location-aware apps are currently crippled. I want a setting to record my location throughout the day. I want third-party apps that I trust to be able to access it. Until then Apple is crippling these apps' potential and not letting the iPhone live...

Ignite NYC II Tonight!

By Brady Forrest
September 15, 2008

Tonight on the eve of the Web 2.0 Expo NY we will have 12 Ignite speakers who each get just five minutes on stage. Bre Pettis, the co-creator of Ignite will be hosting a cupcake decorating contest. Ignite is going to be at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street) where we are a guest of the New York...

How the Hell Did Matt Get People to Dance With Him?

By Brady Forrest
September 12, 2008

A couple of weeks ago Matt gave an Ignite talk at Gnomedex about his experiences dancing around the world. If you've seen the video you'll enjoy his talk - plus it ends with bonus footage of 100 of us dancing with him....

Where Camp PDX 2008

By Brady Forrest
September 11, 2008

For the past two years the geo community has hosted WhereCamp right after Where 2.0 to discuss the events of the conference. Now it looks like WhereCamp is going regional! Portland will be hosting their own geo-oriented unconference called WhereCamp PDX from 10/18-19. As they describe it: An unconference is a conference planned by the participants, we all convene...

PICNIC Network 2008

By Brady Forrest
September 11, 2008

The week of September 22nd I am going to be flying across the Atlantic for the third PICNIC Network. Ever since i heard about the conference last fall I've wanted to attend. My friends' stories last year focused on the many RFID-enabled art pieces. As discussed in this interview these were developed by Mediamatic, a digital art lab. Last...

Portable Contacts API Starts to Get Real

By David Recordon
September 11, 2008

This evening Joseph and John of Plaxo and I have been hosting a hackathon at Six Apart for the Portable Contacts API (video about PorC). The Portable Contacts API is designed "to make it easier for developers to give their users a secure way to access the address books and friends lists they have built up all over the...

Ignite NYC II: Energy, Cupcakes, and Alley vs. Valley

By Brady Forrest
September 9, 2008

On the night before the Web 2.0 Expo NY Ignite is coming back to NYC! On September 15th we will have 10 Ignite speakers who each get just five minutes on stage. Bre Pettis, the co-creator of Ignite will be hosting a cupcake decorating contest. Ignite is going to be at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street) where...

Open Trace and Yammer Shine

By Brady Forrest
September 9, 2008

I'm at Techcrunch50 this week (and will be here for most of the conference). The Enterprise group of startups showed yesterday. It was an interesting cluster of startups to include in At first glance I would have included only one in the traditional Enterprise. When I think of Enterprise in the Web 2.0 space I usually narrow my classification...

Supertruct: Crowdsource the Future

By Brady Forrest
September 8, 2008

Based on the results of a year-long supercomputer simulation, the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has reset the "survival horizon" for Homo sapiens - the human race - from "indefinite" to 23 years. - SEPTEMBER 22, 2019 This is the premise for Jane McGonigal's newest game, Superstruct. The game's goal is to crowdsource forecasting for the Institute For The...

Twitter Epigrams and Repartee

By Tim O'Reilly
September 7, 2008

I recently encountered the following zinger on twitter: @jayrosen_nyu: Scoble is like a guest at a hotel for one, where a huge staff is trying to anticipate his every need. And he's angry. Shades of noted wits from the past! As when Dorothy Parker, asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence, said "You can lead a whore...

Watch GeoEye-1 Launch Tomorrow; Thoughts on the Imagery War

By Brady Forrest
September 6, 2008

GeoEye, an imagery provider, is launching their latest satellite, GeoEye-1, tomorrow. This satellite will offer half-meter resolution imagery to commercial companies and even greater resolution to government agencies (as high .41 meters). As was widely reported last week, the new imagery has been licensed exclusively to Google for online purposes (CNET has more on the deal's terms). The satellite...

Microsoft Missing the Boat on Mobile?

By Tim O'Reilly
September 6, 2008

Yesterday's Microsoft Watch had an incisive article about Microsoft's failure to compete in the mobile phone marketplace. Echoing my own assertions that Microsoft's obsessive focus on competition with Google in search is a massive distraction, while open mobile is Google's most strategic initiative, Joe Wilcox notes: Microsoft must change its priorities. The company has wasted too much time chasing...

Web 2.0 Expo & Web2Open in NYC

By Brady Forrest
September 3, 2008

The first Web 2.0 Expo NYC is going to start in just two weeks. Just like in SF we have sessions for developers, designers, media & marketers, web ops, and executives. The Development sessions that I am looking forward to the most include John Resig talking about Visual Programming in JS, Cal Henderson talking about scaling video, Toby Segaran...

Who Put the Google Earth in my Game?

By Brady Forrest
August 29, 2008

I just saw the trailer for Sony's new game The Last Guy. In it you run around a city trying to lead people to safety with a top down view reminiscent of Google Earth or Yahoo! Maps or Live Maps. People follow you around the city creating an ever longer line, while you try to avoid monsters. As your...

Ignite NYC II - Submit a talk

By Brady Forrest
August 29, 2008

On the night before the Web 2.0 Expo NY Ignite is coming back to NYC! On September 15th we will have 10 Ignite speakers who each get just five minutes on stage. Bre Pettis, the co-creator of Ignite will be hosting a cupcake decorating contest. Ignite is going to be at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street) where...

Social Networking for Books: One Ring, or Loosely Joined?

By Tim O'Reilly
August 29, 2008

I have to confess that one of the social networking tools I find most valuable is Goodreads. (It's a close second to Twitter, and way ahead of Facebook, Friendfeed, or Dopplr.) Unlike twitter, where I follow hundreds of people (possible because of twitter's minimalism) and am followed by thousands, on Goodreads, I follow and am followed by a small...

The Google Alphabet, 2008 edition

By Brady Forrest
August 28, 2008

Google has added Google Suggest to their homepage. When Google suggest first-launched Buster McLeod (AKA Erik Benson) checked the suggested term for each letter to create the Google Alphabet, 2004 edition. When Google News Suggest launched in 2006 I did the same. Now in honor of Google Suggest graduating from labs here is the annotated Google Alphabet, 2008 edition:...

Flickr's Burning Man Map Uses Open Street Map

By Brady Forrest
August 28, 2008

Flickr is best known for its photo-sharing, but increasingly its most innovative work is coming from its geo-developers (Radar post). Yesterday they announced the addition of a street-level map of Black Rock City so that we can view geotagged Burning Man photos. Flickr got the mapping data via Open Street Map's collaboration with Burning Man. Flickr uses Yahoo! Maps...

Panamaps: A Multi-Layered Map

By Brady Forrest
August 28, 2008

A map is valuable for its ability to convey information. Too much and its illeligible; too little and the map isn't very useful. Layers are used by cartographers to make maps more usable. Layers are easy to turn on and off on digital maps, but it's difficult to have multiple ones on a physical map. The recently-released Panamaps are...

Photosynth is Released and Moves to Virtual Earth

By Brady Forrest
August 27, 2008

Live Labs has released Photosynth, the 3D-esque photo collection viewer that it first tech-previewed in 2006 (Radar post). With this release any Vista or XP user running FireFox or IE can create, view, and share Synths (Mac support is planned). I suggest exploring the Synths. There are some amazing ones available like Smith Tower in Seattle (home to the...

Is Linking to Yourself the Future of the Web?

By Tim O'Reilly
August 27, 2008

Last year, Bill Janeway really got my attention (pdf) when he noted that "over time, Wall Street 'firms began to trade against their clients for their own account, such that now, the direct investment activities of a firm like Goldman Sachs dwarf their activities on behalf of outside customers.'" As I wrote in my blog post at the time, Trading...

Lessons on Blogging from Jon Stewart

By Tim O'Reilly
August 27, 2008

Why the NY Times profile of Jon Stewart holds lessons for bloggers and journalists about the future (and heart) of their medium.

Ignite @ Gnomedex and Elsewhere

By Brady Forrest
August 13, 2008

On Friday & Saturday of August 22nd & 23rd we'll be doing 8 Ignite talks at Gnomedex in Seattle. These talks will each be 5 minutes long with 20 slides and only 15 seconds a slide (they auto-advance). We want to hear your cool ideas, hacks, lessons, and "war stories". What do you want to talk about? Feel free...

Adhearsion - next killer app for Ruby?

By Artur Bergman
August 11, 2008

Foo camp attendee Ben Black alerted me to Adhearsion, a framework for developing applications in the VoIP space. Think of it as a Ruby on Rails for telephony. Developed by Jay Philllps who got frustrated by the slow uptake of Asterisk. Adhearsion is written in Ruby and lets those even without any VoIP experience write applications intuitively and productively or...

3D Beijing for the Olympics

By Brady Forrest
August 8, 2008

Not going to the Olympics, but still want to look around the Bird's Nest? Satellite-imagery supplier DigitalGlobe and GIS modeling and simulation company AEgis Technologies have teamed up with NBC to create a realistic 3D model of Beijing. The result is a 3D city that you can zoom-around in and a portal with an unfortunate URL: http://www.DigitalGlobe-AEgisTG.com. What I...

Radar Theme: Web Ops

By Nat Torkington
August 6, 2008

[This is part of a series of posts that briefly describe the trends were currently tracking here at O'Reilly: 1, 2, 3, 4.] It has been reported that every 100ms of latency costs Amazon 1% of profit. Every company whose web site drives their business is in the same situation, they just don't know it yet. The techniques of web...

Guessing gender from browser history

By Nat Torkington
August 5, 2008

I just found a clever trick for guessing gender from browser history. I tried it and then realized that I'm a crappy test for the system: yes, likelihood of my being male is 99%. But if I read a hardcore geek tech blog, then that's probably the case anyway. I could emulate that behaviour with a simple return(G_MALE) in the...

GeoCommons + Mapufacture: Consolidation in the Where 2.0 Space

By Brady Forrest
August 4, 2008

Today FortiusOne announced its acquisition of Mapufacture, the web's original geo-feed aggregator. FortiusOne is the creator of GeoCommons, a geo-data repository with analysis tools (Radar post). This acquisition brings Fortiusone both talent and the technology to handle third-party feeds. Mapufacture was created by Andrew Turner and Mikel Maron, two well-known geohackers. In addition to collaborating on Mapufacture they have...

Earthmine: Imagery for a 3D Geoweb

By Brady Forrest
August 1, 2008

The geoweb is going 3D. Google is bringing Google Earth into the browser via a plug-in. Photosynth, 3D photo collection creator and viewer, is moving into the Microsoft's Virtual Earth team (this was posted about on July 26th; the post was removed, but is still findable in the cache's of both Google and Live). Google's Panoramio, a location-oriented photo-sharing...

Random OSCON Tidbits

By Nat Torkington
July 31, 2008

Some things I learned about at the Django/Python meetup in downtown Portland during OSCON: JS Bridge: a Python to Javascript bridge for all Mozilla applications, still under very active development (i.e., changing daily). 960.gs: a grid framework for Javascript (replacing Blueprint CSS) with a naming scheme that makes prototyping designs a lot less painful. Dojo has Django Templates: I take...

Open Source and Cloud Computing

By Tim O'Reilly
July 31, 2008

I've been worried for some years that the open source movement might fall prey to the problem that Kim Stanley Robinson so incisively captured in Green Mars: "History is a wave that moves through time slightly faster than we do." Innovators are left behind, as the world they've changed picks up on their ideas, runs with them, and takes them...

Suggestions for Web 2.0 Summit Charity Auction?

By Tim O'Reilly
July 30, 2008

At this year's Web 2.0 Summit, we're holding a charity auction as part of our "web meets world" focus. From the press release: The Web 2.0 Summit team will solicit donations, and donation ideas, from individuals and companies within the community and then choose the 10 most promising and unique offerings to auction after the conference dinner. Lance Armstrong, the...

Ignite NYC: Tuesday!

By Brady Forrest
July 28, 2008

The first Ignite NYC is going to happen tomorrow, 7/29 at M1-5. We are going to feature 16 speakers. Each speaker will get 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds for a total of five-minutes. Ignite is free and open to the public -- you're on your own for drinks. We're going to be joined by Ignite co-creator, Bre...

Announcing the Open Web Foundation

By Brady Forrest
July 24, 2008

Today at OSCON, we'd like to announce the creation of the Open Web Foundation, an organizations that will help the creation and acceptance of As the web grows there is an increasing need for interoperability between sites. As Tim recently wrote: I believe that we're collectively working on an Internet Operating System, and that it will ultimately look more...

O'Reilly Events on Dopplr

By Brady Forrest
July 18, 2008

Dopplr, the traveler's social network, has added events. In this initial implementation you have to use one of the supplied URLs. Here are the URLs for the next six O'Reilly conferences. OSCON - http://dplr.it/oscon08 EuroRails - http://dplr.it/eurorailsconf08 Web 2.0 Expo NYC - http://dplr.it/w2exponyc Web 2.0 Expo Europe - http://dplr.it/w2expoeurope Web 2.0 Summit - http://dplr.it/w2summit08 MoneyTech - http://dplr.it/moneytech09 If you...

Location Awareness on the iPhone

By Brady Forrest
July 11, 2008

I spent part of yesterday relocking, unbricking and upgrading my iPhone so that I could check out some of the new apps. After some trial and error, it worked (hint: you have to upgrade iTunes to 7.7 first!). I was curious which apps would use location (more than I expected) and whether or not I can make do without...

Google's GeoData, Open Street Map and Tele Atlas

By Brady Forrest
July 10, 2008

Recently there have been a number of interesting announcements from Google on their geo data plans. Two weeks ago Google launched Mapmaker, a site that will let anyone edit the mapping data for a series of countries. Last week Google signed a five year deal to share mapping data with Tele Atlas, the world's second largest navigation data provider...

RailsConf Europe Early Registration

By Allison Randal
July 10, 2008

The schedule for RailsConf Europe just went up last week. It's shaping up to be another great conference. A few sessions and tutorials that particularly catch my eye are David Heinemeier Hansson's keynote on Wednesday morning, "Meta-programming Ruby for Fun & Profit" by Neal Ford, "Offline Rails Applications with Google Gears and Adobe AIR" by Till Vollmer, "From Rails Security...

Testing the Long Tail's First Test

By Jesper Andersen
July 9, 2008

Web entrepreneurs have been relying on the Chris Anderson's long tail hypothesis even before he published his ideas, so it's good to see that the academic community has begun to study the effect and test for its existence. The results of the first major study looking for proof of the long tail were announced on Harvard Business Online and were...

House trying to ban twitter and qik?

By Tim O'Reilly
July 8, 2008

John Culberson (R-Tex) is trying to stir up a storm on twitter, saying that new house rules being proposed would ban services such as twitter from being used by members of Congress. He points to this letter from the House franking commission. I don't see where it bans any such thing, but he would be more likely than I am...

Should Personal Genomics Be Regulated?

By Tim O'Reilly
July 8, 2008

I read recently about the cease and desist letters sent to 23andme and other personal genomics companies selling tests directly to consumers. 23andme has responded, saying that they agree with the ultimate need for regulation, but that harnessing the consumer internet for personal genomics is a really valuable scientific tool. I have to say I find myself doubtful about the...

What good is collective intelligence if it doesn't make us smarter?

By Tim O'Reilly
July 7, 2008

Two stories I read yesterday morning are worth sharing. The first, an editorial by science-fiction writer Robert Silverberg, was entitled The Death of Gallium, a meditation on the increasing scarcity of valuable elements like gallium, used in flat panel TVs and computer displays, which is estimated to be used up by 2017. Other less rare but equally important minerals are...


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