Jaiku bought by Google

Google and Jaiku logos in love

So this came out of the blue, but I noticed it today when looking through my RSSOwl. So the obvious question is what happened to Twitter? Well lets be honest, Jaiku fits into Googles plans better that twitter at the moment. Atom support alone makes it perfect for Google *smile*. Will Jaiku move to the UK? Where the rest of the Google Mobile activity seems to happen? Now that would be amazing, Jyri alone is certainly the kind of person you want to share a coffee with and discuss the future deep into the night. What exactly is google doing with activity streams and mobile presence in the future? Well many people have theories, but I'm edging for the lifestreams or social overlay angles.

Its so odd because Jaiku kept coming up in the Future of Webapps conference as a successful european startup along the lines of last.fm. And whats even stranger, that BarCampLondon3 will be at Google's Headquarters in London next month. Maybe some of the guys from Jaiku might have moved over by then. More about BarCampLondon3 soon.

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The Future of Webapps, the best presentations

So I did a sum up of the Future of Webapps on the Backstage Blog at the end of last week.

But some of the best presentations deserve more discussion. So here's the presentations which really stuck out and grabbed me.

The Future of Webapps day 2
Leisa Reichelt (Flow Interactive) on Ambient Intimacy
Leisa's talk was one of the best of the conference, the room was packed and its very hard to put into words. Luckly Lesia has put the whole presentation on Slideshare and her blog. My notes were not great, but Suw's notes were bloody excellent. The talk centred around Continual partial friendship as coined by David “Jono” Weinberger. Leisa led the crowd through different examples of how we know people through 3rd party systems like twitter, blogs, social networks. She wrangled with the concepts of false connectiveness and information overload and even had time to explain dunbar. Then left some excellent hints how to design for this social new world, Lesia also used Twitterific as a example of how to do this right. But generally… (nicked from Suw)

1. Keep it lightweight – it' not supposed to be the centre of attention, small footbrint, keep in mind that copious functionality isn't necessarily a good things, keep it simple.
2. stay out of the way – invisibility, your app is about facilitating a social network, it's not aobut you or your company or your app, so more you reduce resistance this message being delivered and recieved, the better your app is. So if you send an email to say there's a message on your social network, so you have to log in to see it, then that's not a good way of staying out of the way. Desktop app that shows me your stuff, that's better.
3. open your API – not about controlling the way your communication happens. Twitter and Flickr do this, once they opened their API, the innovation that developed blossomed.
APIs support openness between platforms, your app is not an islenad, you are not going to hold people in your space. Need to recognise that people use different apps in a suite, so how can you integrate with that group rather than siilo ourselves off.
4. portable social networks – Think that people use different apps all the time, and i fyou usre more than two or three you know there is no joy in maintaining lots of lists of friends. This isn't about locking peole in, you are part of a greater environment, so look for ways to make use of other lists, or make your list more portable.
5. use the periphery – small movements, just be there hovering in the background, grab attention only when you need to.
6. allow for time-shifting – whilst its about being in the moment, we do need to be able to go back and catch up on stuff.

Amazing presentation and lots to think about.

The second presentation which hooked me was Matt Biddulph on Dopplr.
The Future of Webapps Day 2
Matt Biddulph, /images/emoticons/laugh.gifopplr) Smart Web App Integration With Third Party Sites & Services
Matt gave away a load of free invites to Dopplr the new social trip site. He talked about his motivations including Small pieces loosly joined and the web as a platform done so well you don't need to visit the website at all. He claimed dopplr was so open you can interact with it via rss, openid, etc, etc. That there is no need to login. I did question how he was going to make enough money to stay up, but he said they are using advertising for most people and expecting to find other ways to make money off people who don't login. This is great because finally someone is creating a social network which is open enough that your not having to login everyday to see whats different – ala Facebook. Someone suggested I check out Matt's thoughts on social network portablity but I can't find it right now, so I found a Foaf based one and the Microformats guys version too.

The future of webapps day2
Paul Graham (Y Combinator) The Future of Web Startups
Paul Graham is always a great writer/reader but never without some controversy. This time in a list of reasons why there will be more startups and how they could be more sucessful. He made the comment that you need to be in Silicon Valley.

It might seem that if startups get cheap to start, it will mean the end of startup hubs like Silicon Valley. If all you need to start a startup is rent money, you should be able to do it anywhere.

This is kind of true and kind of false. It's true that you can now start a startup anywhere. But you have to do more with a startup than just start it. You have to make it succeed. And that is more likely to happen in a startup hub.

I've thought a lot about this question, and it seems to me the increasing cheapness of web startups will if anything increase the importance of startup hubs. The value of startup hubs, like centers for any kind of business, lies in something very old-fashioned: face to face meetings. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who tells you how to fix a bug that's been bothering you all weekend, or visiting a friend's startup down the street and ending up in a conversation with one of their investors.

This caused quite a chill in the room, as Paul added Silicon Valley is where you want to be. Paul Graham's talk prompted Ryan Carson to stand on stage and disagreed with him about Silicon Valley afterwards. Paul Graham had gone by then, or I guess cared not respond.
The future of webapps day2
The second was his point about college. College will change, if the degree system is all about impressing your next employer and your aim is to setup your own business. He claimed the meaning of college will change if you don't need to worry so much about the final result. Maybe students will bond together a lot more and setup more little businesses during their college time? Here's the actual texts.

8. College Will Change

If the best hackers start their own companies after college instead of getting jobs, that will change what happens in college. Most of these changes will be for the better. I think the experience of college is warped in a bad way by the expectation that afterward you'll be judged by potential employers.

One change will be in the meaning of “after college,” which will switch from when one graduates from college to when one leaves it. If you're starting your own company, why do you need a degree? We don't encourage people to start startups during college, but the best founders are certainly capable of it. Some of the most successful companies we've funded were started by undergrads.

I grew up in a time where college degrees seemed really important, so I'm alarmed to be saying things like this, but there's nothing magical about a degree. There's nothing that magically changes after you take that last exam. The importance of degrees is due solely to the administrative needs of large organizations. These can certainly affect your life—it's hard to get into grad school, or to get a work visa in the US, without an undergraduate degree—but tests like this will matter less and less.

As well as mattering less whether students get degrees, it will also start to matter less where they go to college. In a startup you're judged by users, and they don't care where you went to college. So in a world of startups, elite universities will play less of a role as gatekeepers. In the US it's a national scandal how easily children of rich parents game college admissions. But the way this problem ultimately gets solved may not be by reforming the universities but by going around them. We in the technology world are used to that sort of solution: you don't beat the incumbents; you redefine the problem to make them irrelevant.

The greatest value of universities is not the brand name or perhaps even the classes so much as the people you meet. If it becomes common to start a startup after college, students may start trying to maximize this. Instead of focusing on getting internships at companies they want to work for, they may start to focus on working with other students they want as cofounders.

What students do in their classes will change too. Instead of trying to get good grades to impress future employers, students will try to learn things. We're talking about some pretty dramatic changes here.

There was a bunch of thoughts from Paul on this topic and what was interesting was how it echoed back from university to college to schools. I asked the question what could a public service broadcaster be doing in this area to stimulate growth? He replied, saying that the BBC should create good polished documentaries about what its like to be in a startup and grow a idea into something special. Although a reasonable answer, I was hoping for something a little deeper like his thoughts in how schools would change.

Anyway there were other good presentations but these were the 3 which hooked me and caused me to take the most notes. I want to say thanks to the Carsons again for putting on a great international conference. Future of Webapps is huge and I wish them lots of success with there other future of's…
The Future of Webapps Expo
I know me and Ryan haven't always seen eye to eye on somethings but you got to respect a couple (Gillian is as much of this as Ryan) who could enjoy playing Wii while there running a major conference.

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Lightweight Attention Preference Markup – examples one

Ok so here's some rough and ready examples of how LAPM could work. Do let me know which one you prefer and why. I'm sure I'll add some more soon too.

<div class="profile">
<div class="apml">
I like <a class="explicit" title="Playing and Watching Volleyball" rel="4.0" rev="concept" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Vollyball">Vollyball</a> and <a class="explicit" title="playing and watching Basketball" rel="3.0" rev="concept" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Basketball">Basketball</a>. I am a socialable <a class="explicit" rel="5.0" rev="concept" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/geek">geek</a> who mixes work and play together
</div>
</div>

//embedded RDF style 1

<div id="#me">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Vollyball" rev="4.0" type="concept:explicit">Volleyball</a>
</div>

//embedded RDF style 2

<div id="foaf:me">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Vollyball" rev="concept:explicit" class="4.0">Volleyball</a>
</div>

// Creative Commons style 1


<div id="openid:http://www.cubicgarden.com">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Vollyball" rev="explicit:4.0" title="concept">Volleyball</a>
</div>

// Creative Commons style 2


<div id="openid:http://www.cubicgarden.com">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Vollyball" rev="concept-explicit-4.0">Volleyball</a>
</div>

// Rev with a Rel


<div id="openid:http://www.cubicgarden.com">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Vollyball" rel="tag" rev="concept-explicit-4.0">Volleyball</a>
</div>


// Rel concept instead tag


<div id="openid:http://www.cubicgarden.com">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Vollyball" rel="concept" rev="explicit-4.0">Volleyball</a>
</div>


// Rel concept with a class for amount


<div id="openid:http://www.cubicgarden.com">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Vollyball" rel="concept" rev="explicit" class="4.0">Volleyball</a>
</div>


// Rel concept, this time I've swapped the class and rev


<div id="openid:http://www.cubicgarden.com">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/Vollyball" rel="concept" class="explicit" rev="4.0">Volleyball</a>
</div>

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BBC.co.uk 2.0, why it will happen

Myself

So since my post in reply of Jason's post there's been a lot of discussion and conversation. Technorati as usual doesn't quite get as close as Google. Either way, its the emails and im's I've been getting which are also interesting. Most people have been really supportive, while others have been less that supportive. They felt I was slagging off the BBC and making things worst by talking about my own views. I mean how dare I express my own personal views on my own personal blog right? The same blog which has the subtitle, The views and thoughts of a dyslexic British designer/developer. Anyway, its late again but I'm going to finish what I was writing before as somethings were not explicit.

When out and about people ask me many things about the BBC, one of which is about the iplayer. Even in Boston, people once they know you work for the BBC wanted to know more about the decisions which formed to create the iplayer. They ask if I use it myself and I say no. Most ask why, and I try and explain my media consumption diet in a short period of time. But the main point is people ask, I'm sure all BBC employees get this? Its great, people are very interested in consuming BBC content and services but are very puzzled about the whole DRM issue. They ask why would a public broadcaster apply DRM to its content? Some more clued up people ask the same question and then point out that our analogue and dtv content has no such restrictions. Yes the BBC puts out press releases and has a official website with discussion boards (not indexed by google), but people still ask. So I put across the point of most of the content we play on TV, we only have broadcast rights to and that indies own a good proportaion of the content rights which goes out. However the question remains why DRM?

Some of my non-supporter, seem to think its just the geek world which are upset about this. Well we have to remember its the geeks which are fixing and installing stuff on their parents computer come Christmas time, geeks that are willing to test drive a beta service/product like iplayer and finally geeks who lead the way into the mainstream market. So thats a sure reminder not to just write off this stuff to geeks. However what also prompted my other post was this video by Robert Llwellyn. Its a rant and his own view but its interesting to note, like I have done up till now, Robert bundles the iplayer into one. Yes and that is the vision but has also wound people up royally. So to explicit here, when I say iplayer is a mess and I'm sure when most people say they hate the iplayer, its not because of the system behind it or the interface or the delivery system or even the quality of the video. No its all down to the DRM. The DRM is so attached to the iplayer, and because of it over 2mins of Roberts rant was about DRM in iplayer.

The iplayer team have worked damm hard on a good solid product/service and are hearing lots of negative comments about the iplayer when actually people mean the DRM. However, because the whole service is robustly built, I'm sure it will out live its current form and who knows whats around the corner?

Right to address, if I should be talking on my blog about this stuff. This seems to rub a lot of people up the wrong way., some seem to think I might be bigging myself up at the expense of the BBC. Well I'm not and I'm not going to let you guys bring me down. I love working at the BBC and love my job, its ground breaking and I go places and speak to people most never get a chance. So, I want to make meaning and I believe the BBC is capable of moving into the next curve with its unique funding model. Unlike Jason, I think its unique public funding model will be an advantage over the advertising or subscription models. Oh at the same time can I make it clear I was disagreeing with what Jason was blogging about. So why write anything at all? Its the Cluetrain effect. Things have changed. Take a look at the difference between the Newswatch and the editors blog. Its not so much about the layout but more the conversation or voice. So rather than talk any more, here's a few Cluetrains which sum up what I'm getting at.

#3 – Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
#10 – As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
#12 – There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
#14 – Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

#34 – To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.

Some good examples, Wikipedia entry on the iplayer, Imp's ultimate review of the iplayer, E-petition and Currybet's first 14 days.

So at the end of day, iPlayer is just the start (and in beta), over the next few months you will see a BBC which will silence its critics and launch a range of services which will impress. Transparency and conversation is important and it will take time for everyone to adjust but with time… BBC 2.0 it will happen. Look at projects like Backstage, Innovation Labs, TV Backstage, BBC Blogs, etc… to get a feel of the changes starting to happen.

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What party?

So someone you don’t know, starts talking to you on Facebook and through a couple of blog comments. Then invites you to an exclusive private party in Central London. Would you go?

Well thats what happened to me. A woman going by the name (redacted) invited me and it would seem quite a few bloggers to a un-official future of webapps after party. I thought well I’ll give it a try, what could go wrong? So on to Drinks & Canapes in St. Martins Lane Hotel. Well thats how it was advertised along with this little blurb…

A perfect opportunity to chill out and relax with drinks and canapes at the luxurious Light Bar, at St. Martins Lane Hotel in the heart of London.

I got there about 9pm expecting not much but someone to tell me it was all a hoax or some suits party. I did have a thought that this could dangerous too but decided I’m big enough to keep myself out of any trouble, plus most people knew where I had gone. Anyway, so got there, asked the doormen, staff, front desk, restaurant manager, etc, etc and no one knew anything about the party, Fowa or (redacted). So I had a look around myself and went home. No harm done I guess. No Facebook friendship for you (redacted)…. There’s a lot more to this that I first thought, so I’ll fill in the rest of the details below…soon

So it turns out that (redacted) had cancelled the event but the message didn’t get out quick enough. (redacted) had some very bad news which required her presence elsewhere. I received a facebook mail from (redacted) about 10 days later saying how upset she was with my post, which was fair enough but bear in mind I wrote it straight after coming back. So hopefully this clears things up a little.

Diggnation Live in London

So thanks to the guys at Carsonified, Revision 3 finally (50+ episodes later) landed in London and did a live version of Diggnation in front of 1000+ people after the first day of the Future of Webapps conference. Honestly the only way to get close to describing how mental the atmosphere was in that arena is through pictures (mine and everyone elses) and videos. I'm really happy it went down this way, if I me and Kathy had got the guys over, we would only have got a venue which would hold about 500 people max. Anyway back to yesterday I have a ton of videos and shot in HD with my shakey hand which I still need to upload but others have already done so. As the guys would say, good times… good times.

The offical video is now out on revision3.com

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bbc.co.uk 2.0: Why it isn’t happening and shouldn’t happen

Jason Cartwright

Jason who now works for Google instead of the BBC had some crushing words to say about the BBC's online future on his blog. I hadn't noticed because my RSS Owl is playing up (yes I'm going to write a bug request for this problem) so I've missed a lot of what my friends have been writing about. Anyway Jason makes the point that the BBC's web efforts are doomed to fail because we are a broadcasting company with broadcasting type funding in a nutshell. So when I first read his blog entry, I was going to respond on the backstage blog but felt the backstage blog wasn't the right place to reply, as some of these points are my own view and not of the BBC. So I may just link to the post on backstage and leave it as that. It won't spend much time on the front page either because there will be posts from the Future of Webapps Expo tomorrow.

Here's some choice quotes.

Moving away from the economic analysis of the situation facing the BBC, we can see the tide already turning. The BBC was an innovator in radio (2LO – in beta 1922, v1.0 when licenced in 1923) then TV (BBC Television Service – beta from 1929, v1.0 release 1946) but not now in the online age. Sky Anytime, 4OD, and ITV.com's video revamp have all launched before the BBC's iPlayer service (iMP beta 2005, iPlayer in beta, v1.0 not released at time of writing) showing commercial efforts in this field have trumped the BBC. One person working on the project called it “worse than boo.com”. With the lead now lost, how can they pull it back?

Frankly and I'm sure I'm breaking some part of my contract here. iPlayer is a mess and I can't / won't defend it on my own blog. Everyone I speak, asks what happened? Why would the BBC put out iplayer and think it was acceptable? Even in Boston the developer of Miro/Democracy player was asking me seriously why would a public broadcaster do such a thing? I don't have an answer, I really don't. In the first BBC Backstage podcast, Dave Crossland answered Tom Loosemore's question if the BBC should have done nothing over releasing iplayer. He answered yes, do nothing because it was morally wrong. Well thats his view but lets be honest would we better off if we didn't do iplayer? I actually think so. Tom Loosemore was right, we do need to deliever to those who don't understand bit torrent or simlar technologies but I wonder how many of us we're eating our own dogfood?

Lets go through the some of the principals of Web 2.0 and the BBC…

  • Rich user experience: archaic BBC tech standards say that you can't rely on javascript/flash to deliver content, and pages need to be below 200kb in size. Buh bye innovative user interfaces, widgets/gadgets, Google or Yahoo Maps style interface, or YouTube for that matter.
  • User as contributor: BBC requires moderation of content before publishing it – see above for 606 example.
  • Participation, not publishing – as above.
  • Enable the long tail – BBC tech has limited ability to cater for large amount of content in the first place. CMSs are disparate and clunky, content distribution network is run off one single, overloaded computer (!).
  • Radical trust – this simply doesn't happen at the BBC, see 606. Not even to employee's, see first point.

Right so, point one. The BBC Standards and guidelines are under consistent review and lots of those archaic are being shifted as our audience become more internet savvy. Backstage also doesn't have to live by those standards and guidlines. Jason is right publishing is cheap and free, we need to reflect that. Yes long tail, we need lightweight cms which don't require a room full of people to understand how it works. Trust I won't talk about right now.

Anyway, there's lots more I want to say, but its late and I got a early start tomorrow at FOWA. So I'll finish off later (maybe Thursday).

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Bloglines officially announce APML and OpenID support

Bloglines announced today that OpenID and APML is in the near pipeline. Cheers Chris for the heads up on this.

Today is our first release devoted to supporting OpenID for Bloglines Classic and Bloglines Beta. In the near future, Bloglines will also support consuming OpenIDs and OpenID 2.0 which was just released this week.

Now our more technical users will know right way what's going on and will be excited. In that case, you can go to id.bloglines.com and get started. Note – OpenID is just the beginning of us working with true open standards. Other formats getting our attention include oAuth (Open Authentication) and APML (Attention Profiling Mark-up Language).

I had never heard of oAuth before but it looks good and could be a killer solution for use with something like Keepass. I'll be checking it out more in the future. Hummm, imagine using the bloglines sync with oAuth too.

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I’m just glad someone still working on the Xbox 360

A long time ago, a hack was found so you can play copied games and backups on a Xbox 360. So the hacking went dead except for a little blip here and there. Well now it turns out that people have already got Linux on it and have been working on running unsigned code on it. Maybe I wrote the platform off too soon?

From Xbox-scene.com,

Since we have an exploit in the hypervisor (kernel 4532 and 4548) and recently found a way to downgrade to these kernels, some hackers over at the XBH forums are working on a way to boot homebrew code on the Xbox360. Linux was already done via the linux bootloader, but for homebrew we'll need another bootloader obviously that will allow to boot 'unsigned' xbox 360 code.

If this works, then I wonder if someone will convert xbox media centre over to that platform too? Imagine Linux, PC, Xbox, Xbox 360 and PS3 all being choices for XBMC.

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