G-Prop and U-Gen News

Posted on April 19, 2008
Filed Under | 1 Comment | Written by Gary Reid

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I just want to update the world on the progress of G-Prop (Web 2.0 Property Application) and U-Gen (User Generated Geo Directory).

Our development time over the last 3 months has been taken up with custom work and a couple of large projects so progress has been much slower than we expected. We also have a very large project starting very soon, which again will take some development time from the projects.

G-Prop is on track we will be rolling out a live beta site in conjunction with some local estate agents shortly to give the system a full live test with a few thousand properties and users.

Our main fear with G-Prop is the complexity of the system. It requires quite a lot of custom PHP modules, such as FFMPEG. We know from experience the challenges some have with software installation so be aware of the requirements.

What we may offer is a leased, hosted version to make it easier for people to get the system without going through the pain of rebuilding PHP.

Many have asked for the price as yet it hasn’t been decided, but it won’t be cheap.

Elliott will be working on getting the software ready but it depends what problems come to light during the live testing. The current public alpha at Locationate doesn’t contain all of the new features but we will be updating soon.

The same applies to U-Gen.

I’d like to say thanks to all those people who have contacted us about the applications, we have over 500 people on the list to inform once the software is released and we really want to get it ready soon, but I’m not going to make any promises on a specific date.

Badges not Badgers

Posted on February 10, 2008
Filed Under link love | marketing | publicity | 4 Comments | Written by Gary Reid

If you’ve ever visited a trade show you know how annoying it is to constantly have exhibitors thrusting brochures into your hand as you walk past and finding all new ways to scan the barcode on your badge. I thought one was trying to steal the fruit pastels from my pocket…
So, why do some websites make it so difficult to find their badges. It’s more like a badger hunt, digging through their website trying to find a link to it.

Twitter for example only provide one that shows your posts, no badge to link to your profile or follow you. Let’s be honest considering their terrible uptime who wants one of their badges slowing down your website?

LinkedIn, Xing, Del.icio.us all the same, links hidden away.

Come on guys, just make it easy, put a link where I can see it, with anchor text that makes it absolutely clear what it is.

If I put a badge on my site for my profile on your service it’s free publicity for you and free link love, it’s not rocket science.

And, if you do provide a badge (del.icio.us tagometer listen up) don’t go banning me from your bloody service just because I use it.

Article Tags>> link love | marketing | publicity

Google - I’m in your start up stealing your ideas

Posted on February 10, 2008
Filed Under blog search | google | start-ups | Leave a Comment | Written by Gary Reid

Okay, so where’s the lol cat for Google? I suppose we’ll have to make do with Matt, but really, is Google in your start up stealing your ideas?

They’ve taken over blog search from Technorati, even though their product isn’t as good yet. Even Wordpress has changed the incoming links to Google’s blog search, way to go guys.

So, you have two chances with your traction getting, Web 2.0 bling’d, VC funded, money wasting, management team’d, blog pitch’n, gradient covered start up

Get bought out by Google, hope the shares stay at a good price until you can sell ‘em and sit on a beach, or
Sit next to Dave Sifry with a cardboard sign that says ‘will come up with good ideas you can steal’ and watch Google just copy you.

I’m not saying what Google do is wrong, or am I…

I mean, yes people will copy what you do, people will be inspired to do it better, whereas Google will just do a half arsed job and use their ‘traction’ to do you over.

Maybe I’m just suffering from Future Shock.

Future Shock

Article Tags>> blog search | google | start-ups

Social Media Bio Version 2.0

Last year Rohit Bhargava blogged about creating a social media bio and then he created one.

His reasoning was

For several months now, I have been struggling with my own social media identity crisis.Â It is a crisis that many others will be able to relate to and has mainly to do with the multiple identities I have on sites across the Internet.

I really liked what he did but thought with a few additions it could be great. So for months I’ve been meaning to get around to it.

I’m coming at this from a slightly different angle, as well as Rohit’s reasons I wanted to

Make sure the bio became the authority for ‘me’ online
Extend it so that it included semantic mark-up
Enable it to be submitted to Pingerati
Use it as an experiment to see if it would be possible to roll this out as a service for anyone and everyone
Make it less reliant on PR features such as head shots, awards and downloadable bio’s
Automate gathering and dissemination of a friends list (XFN) using OpenSocial

The first phase was to create a semantically marked up bio, which I’ve done here.

The bio makes full use of Microfomats - hcard, geo, adr, xfn

If you already have the Operator toolbar installed you’ll see the Microformats, if not then go get it.

This is work in progress so let me know what you think. The next major step is to see if the XFN part can be automated using the OpenSocial API.

The only problem I can see is whether Pingerati (launched almost 2 years ago) is still live, as it appears not much is happening

Microformats

Article Tags>> garyreid | microformats | opensocial | smo | socialmedia

MyDeco - the web meets changing rooms

Posted on February 4, 2008
Filed Under Interior Design | MyDeco | Leave a Comment | Written by Gary Reid

Being married to an interior architect I’ve suffered long hours of how ‘interior stylists have hi-jacked the term interior design’ how changing rooms made interior design a question of colour and cushions rather than space etc.

So, it is with some trepidation that I mention MyDeco. Mike Butcher has done a very in-depth write up on the company who look well funded, serious and have a thought through business model. Not something you hear too often.

MyDeco has a question and answer section where EmmaJ asks

We live on the ground floor of a Victorian stucco fronted street, and therefore need some privacy from the street when the curtains are open. Are net curtains acceptable nowadays?

Hmmm… there are so many answers we could give, but I want to stay on air and we can only guess at what EmmaJ needs to keep private.

In essence you upload a photo of your lounge, MyDeco stuffs it full of furniture they can sell you and hey presto - a new look for your home as it’s delivered to your door.

On a more serious note they do have a point about aggregating home dÃ©cor. The imaging system they use, which renders the look over a 24 hour period, seems to do a fine job.

Here’s an example of someone trying a rug in their lounge

Hopefully they will find a job for Handy Andy

When the BBC laid Changing Rooms to rest they wrote

Changing Rooms has been laid to rest in an MDF (medium density fibreboard) coffin lined with recycled table linen. The makers spent less than Â£500.

Let’s hope MyDeco doesn’t need such a send off.

my rug

Article Tags>> Interior Design | MyDeco

Web Trend Map

Posted on February 4, 2008
Filed Under trends | Leave a Comment | Written by Gary Reid

A great piece of work by Matt Gerber (Information Architects Japan) to create a map of ‘trends’ for 2008 based on the Tokyo train map, check it out, but make sure you actually download it and take a close look, otherwise it will look just like a list of sites.

The good stuff is in the detail.

trend map

Article Tags>> trends

Social Network Portability Gets Closer

Posted on February 3, 2008
Filed Under google social api | social network portability | Leave a Comment | Written by Gary Reid

Today Google announced the release of their social graph api.

we crawl the Web to find publicly declared relationships between people’s accounts, just like Google crawls the Web for links between pages. But instead of returning links to HTML documents, the API returns JSON data structures representing the social relationships we discovered from all the XFN and FOAF. When a user signs up for your app, you can use the API to remind them who they’ve said they’re friends with on other sites and ask them if they want to be friends on your new site

Basically this could make all of the work on XFN worthwhile.

If this works out in the best possible way it will be a huge dent in networks that try and lock you in by holding your network hostage.

Article Tags>> google social api | social network portability

Microsoft Yahoo What Else

There has been little else floating around the technosphere this week other than the proposed possible Microsoft purchase of yahoo.

I think Mike A makes the only relevant point for the majority of us today when he writes about Google leaving the closet with a statement.

Google try and pull the David vs Goliath card, even though they own over 60% of the online ad spend.

If you run PPC campaigns across multiple networks you’ll know the pitiful views Yahoo and Microsoft can deliver compared to Google.

Mike A is dead right, Google needs a competitor.

The truth is that Google has become the new Microsoft, and if we want to avoid a repeat of history, we need to allow the formation of a real competitor to keep them honest.

Article Tags>> microsoft | ppc | seo | yahoo

Network Solutions Front Runners for Dumb Ass PR of the Year

Posted on January 29, 2008
Filed Under domains | front running | pr | Leave a Comment | Written by Gary Reid

I was in London at the end of last week and at a meeting with some tech guys at one of the UK’s biggest registrars they mentioned that Network Solutions had started registering domains as people check availability on their site (front running). I met with Mike Butcher (Techcrunch UK) the next day and mentioned it to him and he’d heard a similar thing.

Well it does appear to be true and has been rumbling around the web for a few weeks now.

It means if you decide to register the name anywhere other than NetSol, after doing a lookup at NetSol, you won’t be able to for up to 4 days. NetSol have said

…we have started protecting all domain name searches at Network Solutions by holding the searched domains for our customers for a short period of time before releasing them. This gives our customers the opportunity to register names later without fear that the name will be registered by a â€œFront Runner.â€(Have posted some background info on â€ Front Running â€œ below).

If you hear people talk about dumb ass PR, well the above is a great example.

So, lesson one for budding entrepreneurs, avoid using crappy statements like the above, they’ll make you look like you are stupid and even worse they will make you look like you think your customers are stupid.

Now, on a good day you’d either stop there, suck up the bad press you are getting and carry on regardless, or listen to customers and stop trying to tie them into buying from you by front running their searches.

But no, that would be too easy, lets go half way and say we think only half the people who visit our site are dumb, they search on the home page for domains. The bright ones who complain use the whois lookup, so we’ll stop front running whois lookup searches but continue with the front page ones.

That’s right folks, NetSols reaction to the complaints was to just take it off whois lookups, but not from the home page.

The problem NetSol has is that it’s well known, some people still think they are the Interweb - so they go there to register a domain, only to see it’s $35, having searched and found the perfect domain they see if it’s the best deal they can get and what do you know, it’s not.

Article Tags>> domains | front running | pr