The Web 2.0 Blog

Stikkit Quicksilver Plugin

I think my life has just changed. My personal data manager of choice, Stikkit, has had a plugin released so that it works with the best task launcher ever conceived, Quicksilver. If you head into your Quicksilver preference pane, you can now add a Stikkit plugin which allows you to add and amend Stikkits as well as accessing your current Stikkits. Have a look at this post over a The Unofficial Apple Weblog which will run you through the setup process. This is really how things should work, the integration between Stikkit and Quicksilver is pretty seemless and having access to all my Stikkits right there on my desktop, and then being able to use them in the ways Quicksilver allows, is a revelation.

I’ve posted about Stikkit before and praised the way in which it uses natural text as an input mechanism. This remains extant when using Quicksilver. I’m convinced this is the future. So long as there are great desktop applications out there, Quicksilver being one of them, many people will find it hard give them up. Likewise, which web apps are as easy to use as Stikkit, many people will want to start using it. This is the perfect balance. One of the things I like about Stikkit is that I can just type information in there and Stikkit sorts it all out for me, tagging it and setting up reminders and generally acting like my mother (i.e. picking my socks up, doing my laundry etc.). With the amount of time it takes for me to create a Stikkit greatly reduced, its become my go to app for pretty much everything. A word of warning though, occasionally you will need something a bot more structured. For me, Stikkit works great as a place to hold to-dos, meeting minutes, general notes and such like. I back it up with a more formal and structured application for when its required. My personal choice for this is Active Collab, which you’ll need to host yourself, but provides a very usable solution. That may come as a shock to many of you as I was a long time proponent of the 37 signals application Basecamp. unfortunately, it just doens’t seem to be moving in the same direction as me, which is a shame. I’ll cover this at a later date, as it seems to be happening with a few of my old favourite we applications.

Permalink Comments (One Response) TrackBack

Filling a gaping hole?

Google has announced that Google Apps for your Domain has gone all enterprise. Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) has launched and rather predictably inspired a billion blog entries already, well maybe not a billion but my feed reader is over googled. There are many questions that need to be answered. Some blog posts point out that Google apps aren’t geared for business while others question the reliability and security that Google can provide. I think these are all moot points at the moment. Yes, there have been some issues with Google and security/reliability in the past but this is a hosted, enterprise targeted service. Not something Google has done before. So this is an interesting time, not least for those who offer competing services such as Zoho. And notice I mentioned Zoho and not Microsoft. Anyone who really sits down and thinks about it will quickly realise that Google is not, and will not be for a long time, a competitor to Microsoft and Microsoft Office. The reason is more institutional than technological.

One of the interesting things about GAPE is that organisations that sign up will likely still need another solution to go along side it. For starters, they will need storage for files not dealt with through the Google apps and secondly, they are missing the oh so crucial presentation application. For anyone who has worked in any medium to large company,PowerPoint is practically a best friend. There are fairly obvious limitations to online based presentations, one of the most obvious being that many places where said presentations are presented simply aren’t internet connected. Personally, I use and like Google Apps for your Domain. i also use Google Docs, which is bundle with GAPE but not GA4YD, and they do a job. Saying that, they exist in my workflow as a stop gap. I would never sit down and write an important document using writely, and I can’t see that changing any time soon. Its not that it doesn’t work, or that its not reliable (I’ve never had any problems) it just doesn’t feel right. And this is coming from a guy who has welcomed web based applications with both arms.

For enterprises, the problem runs much deeper. Firstly theres the trust hurdle. Yes, early analysis seems to show a saving of around $200 per person most enterprises will see that as a small price to pay for total in house control of their environments and apps. Theres also a large psychological barrier for the end users who have been used to MS Office and its ilk for many, many years.

So where does this leave GAPE? Well, interestingly, in a very strong position. We have two competing industries here. We have the kings of the Internet in Google and the Kings of the desktop, Microsoft. Theres a certain barrier to entry there, consumers will have to start of one living in the others domain. And we’ve seen Microsoft attempt this previously by trying to break into Search Engine market and their other enterprises. it will be interesting to see if Google has any success going the other way.

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

YouTube and Revenue Sharing - Unanswered Questions

A story popped up on the BBC News Website a few days ago stating that the monster of all video sharing sites, YouTube, YouTube Logo was about to roll out a revenue sharing feature. This isn’t a new idea, in fact Revver has been doing it, with some success, for a while. Considering YouTube is comfortably king of the online video market, wyy would they be adopting features from one of their not-quite-as successful rivals? YouTube has built its success on the fact that it is just so easy to upload and share a video through YouTube. The difficulty increased for “Directors”, special users who are allowed to post videos over ten minutes long, and people accepted the additional inconvenience of jumping through those hoops for the benefit. I’m sure people will happily jump through just a few more hoops to get a cut of ad revenue. The benefit vs bother ratio is still favourable.

One aspect of this feature that must not be overlooked is the fact that YouTube is going to have to increase its ad revenue to support sharing. YouTube, despite its high profile buyout, is still not exactly flushed with cash generated through ads. The suggested solution appears to be running short advertisments before each, or selected, video(s). Personally, I have a problem with this. If I’m watching something on YouTube, its not likely to be Pride and Prejudice. its more likely to be of around a minute in length and of questionable quality (in more ways than one). At the moment, there is no site out there that makes it as easy to consume content of that type than YouTube. it’s interface and viewing widgets are very geared to that goal. and one advantage they certainly have over competitors, especially after the Google Acquisition, is speed. I can usually just hit play on a YouTube video and have it stream, without interruption. That is not true of Revver, for example.

(more…)

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

Will digg redesign force a change across the internet?

One of the Web 2.0 Golden Boys, digg.com, launched a redesign last week. Alon Digg Logo g with some new categories, navigation and design (barely) there was one fairly major change in terms of impact on the rest of the internet. Of course, I’m not talking about the move away from news, or indeed the backing out of some of the more social features, but more this whole content serving “feature”.

In case you haven’t, although I’m sure you have, check out digg.com post redesign and you will find a new video and podcasting section. These aren’t necessarily all that new. People have been digging podcasts and videos for quite a while on digg. In fact, an earlier feature bump this year introduced thumbnails for videos, so it should have been clear that digg was heading in that general direction. Its the way in which this content appears on the digg site that is potentially going to cause the problems. Read on…

(more…)

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

Is YouTube aquisition an admission of failure?

So, by now, everyone on the entire world knows that Google has bought YouTube for more than one and a half billion dollars, in shares. That’s an awful lot of little pieces of paper that say “1 Google Share” on them, no doubt there multi-coloured with a bit of AJAX thrown in.

So what does this mean for the internets, that great series of tubes we all know and love. Obviously it seems like a huge amount of money, and it is, so why now? And what’s the future for Google Video? Many people are pointing to a potential bidding war for YouTube prompting Google’s action. With Yahoo, MSN and Google all launching video services and none coming close to the success of YouTube, its not a bad call actually. With YouTube’s huge popularity, eclipsing all similar sites it offered the possibility to capture a massive market share in one foul swoop. Its a very tempting proposition, even considering the numerous legal issues that are constantly hovering around.

There is another possibility of course. Many have suggested that the purchase of YouTube by Google is an admission of failure, they are admitting that their own Video service hasn’t worked. And you know what, there not that far off the mark. Google Video is clunky and hard to use. For a company known for usability, they’ve really dropped the ball on Google Video. This is something YouTube just nails. Its easy to find, view and upload videos. There’s one thing that seems to have bee overlooked, and that’s the target audience of the two services. I may not be a typical user of the internet but I tend to see completely different types of video on Google Video to YouTube. Videos on YouTube tend to be short and dirty, usually not the greatest quality and typically reasonably short. The videos on Google Video tend to be longer and of a better quality. This seems inevitable really. YouTube was based on MMS messages, the short, low quality videos that people take on their mobile phones or digital cameras. The videos you take without planning, when you see something you’ve just got to record. It seems obvious that Google video is set up a little differently. The player, by default is bigger, and the way you find content is different, you have to really know what you’re looking for. This lends itself more to higher quality, paid for content, such as TV shows. While its true that Google launched without any paid for content, it came quickly and was widely predicted, for obvious reasons. Also remember that Google video moderates video allot more tightly than YouTube.

So what will come of this? It seems like a fair bet that Google Video and YouTube will polarise in terms of content. You can quite easily see a future where Google Video provides promotional and high quality paid for content and YouTube keeps well away at the other end of the market, sticking with videos the kids are uploading. That way Google corners two opposing ends of the market. If that is their aim, its a very clever tactic.

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

THE best RSS reader

In case you haven’t noticed, Google Reader has undergone a bit of a rework by those crazy lads over at Google. And let me just say, it’s superb. Its such an improvement over the old Google reader (which you can switch back to in preferences by the way, not that you’d want to) its hard to believe its come from the same place. One thing that really caught my eye is the video introduction which has a great description of why you should use an RSS reader, it would be a good introduction to some non tech savvy friends or relatives and goes along the lines of “When you check your email, you don’t have to go to Bob and check whethers he’s sent you mail and then go to Lisa to see if she’s sent you mail, you just check your mail and it’s all there. So why would you go and check all these different websites everyday, why not just check Google Reader”.
And its an email, Gmail infact, style interface Google Reader provides. If you choose the “All Items” view you just get a list, ordered by time, of all the items from all your RSS feeds. It is just like checking your email. For the more organised amongst us, you can tag them, order them in folders and select them by feed. You can also go through All Items while expanded, which is just like a giant web page. And of course the Gmail like interface is very AJAXY and smooth. Plus, adding feeds is so easy. Not only do they give you a bookmarklet but theres also a superb, and very accurate search box. Fancy subscribing to the Google Blog, just type in “google blog” and it will return a list of matching RSS feeds. And seeing as its a Google powered search, its probably going to be pretty good. You can also just paste an RSS feed address in there as well.
There are a couple of things I’d like to see. Firstly, something I seem to keep going on about with Google Products is that I’d like to see better integration with their other products and really leverage the advantage they have in being the market leader in some key areas. With it being Google, I’d also like the ability to search across the items in my feeds, preferably archived items as well. Also, at the moment things like embedded video only seem to work with certain feeds, specifically the You Tube and Google Video top ten feeds. Also, it still seems a little buggy. I keep getting the “An Error Occured” message and trying to mark all items as read is a bit hit and miss, as is using their refresh button (you have to reload the entire page, not a huge problem). Overall though, since trying it out I’ve not been to Netvibes, my previous RSS reader, once. It’s THAT good.

Permalink Comments (2 Responses) TrackBack

Podcasts Vs Netcasts

I’m sure many of you reading this are a fan of Podcasts, there a great way of keeping up with the goings on and I for one find them an easy way of assimilating alot of information which also doing work. I’d also be willing to bet that if you are a fan of Podcasts you’ve also heard of Leo Laporte of This Week In Tech (TWiT) fame and podcaser of the year. I was suprised to hear him speak up against the word podcast in a recent TWiT podcast.

My suprise if born from two things, firstly, Leo is a Mac (and therefore Apple? Debate…) fan. In fact one of my favourite podcasts as a Mac user is MacBreak (check out the MacBreak vidcast, its production values put most TV shows to shame), which is presented by Leo among others (It’s strange that I feel comfortable calling Leo, Leo, almost like I know him through his shows). The second reason is that Podcast is actually a very clever term to use with regards to marketing. The iPod brought digital music to the masses. No longer was it the preserve of nerds in their bedrooms, the average person understood that this white box could store their entire music collection. It broke down barriers. Now we have podcasting which, for the most part, is limited to tech savvy people, standing on the brink of wider acceptance. I would argue that by associating it with the iPod, rightly or wrongly, will give it the final push into mainstream acceptance.

One other thing that sticks out with this, as the unofficial apple weblog (TUAW) points out, is that Leo wants to coin, and trademark, a new term, netcasting. I can see two problems with this. Firstly the term conjours up nerdy images for me, things which alot of people don’t want to be associated with for whatever reason. i can’t see people like Ricky Gervais, the UK’s number one podcast, using the term, its just not cool enough. The other problem I have is the fact that Leo wants to trademark this term. Supposedly the reason for this move away from Podcasting is partly down to Apple putting legal pressure on people using the term. Now correct me if I’m wrong but I was under the impression that under Americal Trademark law you have to make efforts to protect your trademark or you will lose it. This is the reason Apple gave for their legal pressure and I for one would like to believe them. The flipside of this is that if Leo is successfull in trademarking his term, he also will have to enforce it or risk losing the trademark. Its the use it or lose it mentality. I’m not suggesting that Leo Laporte wants to trademark this term for personal gain but surely he will have to become the thing he hates, a litigous entity, if he is to be successfull in establishing the term.

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

Google Launches Checkout

Google has just announced Google Checkout, a service that provides a one stop shop for payment processing online. The idea being that you sign up to checkout, then if you come across a site that accepts checkout you pay using the service. I guess this means you don’t have to go and enter your credit card details in every website you buy from. It’s similar to PayPal payment processing, which never really seemed to take off. Google seems to have provided some management functionality for sellers and has some interesting adwords integration where a small Google checkout icon appears for merchants that accept it on their ads.

There appears to be three options for sellers, a simple “Buy Now” button, a pre created cart from partners (read web hosts and tool vendors) as well as an API. I think the majority of users will be going with the API option, quite how versatile the API is, is yet to be seen. What isn’t clear, is what’s available for consumers. Will there be a centrally managed control panel that tracks things like previous purchases and order statuses? I’m genuinely intrigued to see what sort of take up this service gets, its bound to be more popular than the PayPal solutions, purely because its google, whether its better, remains to be seen.

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

The Death of Kiko : The Inquest

This is a really interesting read on the demise of online calendar app kiko. I would thoroughly recommend giving it a once over, and even some of the linked pages. Hopefully you’ll build up a picture of some of the problems web 2.0 startups encounter.

I was really interested to see the author, Richard White (the guy who tried to fix Kiko’s flawed UI), play down the impact of Google Calendar, something which got me to stop using 30 Boxes. The other interesting point is that he identified a lack of a plan to go mainstream as a key factor in the sites downfall. By mainstream, he means out of the tech community and into the realm of Outlook using cubicle dwellers. Dare I say that this seems a tad at-odds with one of the other points that seems to suggest that a specific market segment had not been identfied. Surely the tech sector is a valid market, albeit a demanding one.

Personally, I looked at Kiko ages ago and just found that it didn’t work. The interface was illconceived and it all came across as a bit overdeveloped but underthought. In case you’re interested, the site fetched over $200k on ebay, not a bad night out that.

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

Google keeping bloggers in business

In an attempt to cement its position as the most blogged about company, ever, Google have release publicly two new services in as many days. You can hear the keyboards tapping away from here.

The first is the excellent Writely online word processing. I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the closed beta for some time but haven’t really bothered writing about it, lets face it, there are a plethora of reviews out there already. Suffice to say its light years ahead of similar services such as AJAX Write. Its collaborative, stable, very usable and oh so Web 2.0.

The other service launched publicly is Google Analytics which is a very comprehensive website visitor statistics package. It offers so many features at such a high level its definately worth a look. If you run a website, it will certainly help you figure out who’s visiting, where they are coming from and what they are reading. You also have the option to set goals (and track your progress against them) as well as linking your stats to your adwords account. Most certainly worth a look.

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

« Older Posts