Aug 0925
From homemade movies on YouTube, to movie and book reviews, comments on blogs, and entries in Wikipedia, user-generated content (UGC) has changed the Web forever. I can’t imagine the Amazon shopping experience without comments and ratings from other moms, the posts from the 500 or so people I follow on Twitter could keep me occupied and interested all day, and I thank God every day for the thousands of homemade Thomas the Tank Engine movies on YouTube that keep my five-year old enthralled on a rainy day. Mashable reported that more than 82 million people in the US created content online in 2008.
So how come most organizations shy away from incorporating UGC on their sites? Read the rest of this entry
Aug 0918
I just discovered CoolIris, a browser plug-in that lets me surf images and videos in a cool, new way. Browser plugs-in are small pieces of software that extend the capabilities of your Web browser. In this case, I downloaded the CoolIris plug-in for Firefox, installed it, restarted, and I was good to go. So what’s so cool about this plug-in?
Cooliris lets me scroll through images and videos on my computer and sites that support Cooliris. For example, if I want to browse photos from my son’s birthday party, I point Cooliris to the proper directory and the photos will appear as a wall of photos in my browser. I can scroll through the images by using my mouse to drag images, or I can use the Cooliris scroll tool.
It turns out that many of my favorite sites now support Cooliris, like Flickr, Facebook, Hulu, images from Google,and Getty Images. I can tell if a site support Cooliris if I hover an image and the double squares appear in the lower left corner of the image. I can then click on the double squares to launch the photo album, collection of photos or RSS of images and videos in Cooliris.
It’s super fun to browse friends’ albums in Facebook in Cooliris without having to press Next, Next, Next. And I love being able to surf hundreds of images in Getty Images in one long wall of photos.
Is Cooliris here to stay? Who knows? It’s free, it’s cool, it’s convenient and it’s fun to play. Check it out and let me know what you think!
Jul 0914
We did it! We launched a microsite for the Matrix Group 10th anniversary! It took us several months and a whole lot of research, but we did it. Why create a site for the occasion?
10 years feels like a real milestone to us, especially to me. Like I say in my “Where We’re Going” letter, when I started the company, I wasn’t thinking about balance sheets or Web standards. I just wanted to help companies with their Web sites. And when my Advisory Board Chair asked me about my five-year plan (during year one), I just laughed; I was so focused on surviving the first year, five years felt like a lifetime. So it felt right to create a microsite that lets all of us at the company see where we’ve been and think about the future. Read the rest of this entry
Jun 0902
I just got back from a week in Mexico. Despite the dire warnings from the national media, my family attended a wedding and vacationed in Playa del Carmen on the Riviera Maya. Were we nuts to travel to Mexico, home of the dreaded H1N1virus?
If you read The Washington Post, you’ll think we were insane to go. The Post has stories about swine flu pretty much every day. I count no less than 10 stories that feature or mention swine flu in today’s online edition of the Post. The Post also tells me that the World Health Organization is set to declare swine flu a global pandemic.
So why did we decide to go? First of all, what was not widely reported was that the CDC downgraded its travel advisory from a recommendation against non-essential travel to a travel health precaution. Second, reviews from bloggers in the US and Mexico assured us that Playa del Carmen and the Yucatan Peninsula were safe, having pretty much zero cases of swine flu. This, despite, the news media reporting that swine flu was all over Mexico. I found this blog post by Toni and Cheri useful, TripAdvisor (one of my favorite sites for travel and restaurant reviews) had a whole forum devoted to swine flu and Playa del Carmen, and a Google map of swine flu cases around the world showed no confirmed or reported cases close to where we were going. All of this information, together, reassured me that I would not be putting my family’s health in jeopardy by going on this trip.
Read the rest of this entry
Feb 0918
Many of my friends and family ask me, “what’s your favorite site?” Recently, my answer has been “Twitter and StumbleUpon.” I love these sites, I keep them open all day long in my browser, and I tell everyone about them.
I can give you all kinds of reasons why I love Twitter. It’s terrific for knowing what my friends are up to, it’s a great way to promote my company and blog, but most of all, I love the crazy variety of sites and pages I learn about. My favorite tweeters are people who introduce me to new sites, interesting statistics, gorgeous photos, and news articles I would otherwise never chance upon. One of my favorite tweeters is Guy Kawasaki. Some of the recent gems I learned about from Guy are: 9 resistance-boosting foods and ingredients to help you win the cold war, 50 of the world’s best food blogs, and 10 evolution stories Darwin would love. I suspect that Guy spends all day trolling the Web or has a vast staff that does same and then he tweets the coolest and most interesting of his finds. Thanks, Guy! Read the rest of this entry
Nov 0825
Every morning, while drinking my green tea, I peruse The New York Times online. Like millions of people around the world, I have canceled my paper subscription to a local or national newspaper and instead rely on the Web to deliver the news.
But here’s a news flash: an increasing of us are getting our news from citizen journalist sites, or sites that feature news, photos and videos from people like you and me. Armed with camera phones and video cameras, average folks are reporting on news in their neighborhood and covering news from their perspective.
Here are some of the most popular citizen journalist sites and why I love them:
Oct 0828
Whitney Houston sings “Where do broken hearts go?” Me, I have often wondered what becomes of broken or lost Web pages — you know, the URLs that used to work but now display a 404 or file not found error. Are these pages deleted from the servers? Or have they just been unlinked? And what do I do if I really need the information and it’s now gone?
You’ll be glad to know that there is a whole movement devoted to changing the content of the Internet from ephemera to artifacts. Internet libraries are springing up everywhere to catalog and preserve Web pages, images, even audio and video files.
The largest (I think) Internet Library is the Internet Archive, a “nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free and openly accessible online digital library, including an archive of Web.” The archive is a collection of snapshots of Web pages from the around the world, taken at various points in time. Read the rest of this entry
Sep 0816
When my in-laws were told to evacuate their home in Houston last week, they were lucky; they managed to book a flight out to our home in VA before the two Houston airports closed down. We spent Saturday and Sunday watching the news and hoping their friends and home were safe. The most frustrating part about watching the news was the lack of local news — news about the neighborhoods, the houses, the schools, the people. Thank goodness for the citizen journalists of Houston.
While CNN, MSNBC, and all the networks showed the same footage of the Hilton’s wall falling off, and the Houston highway that was six feet under water, my in-laws wanted to know how their Clear Lake neighborhood was doing. Did everyone evacuate? Is everyone okay? Did the bayou flood? How much tree damage was there? Does the neighborhood have power?
Slowly, and then more rapidly, especially by Monday afternoon, we got lots of information from the citizen journalists of Houston.
Here is a YouTube video of a couple driving down the highway looking for their boat. This road is close to where my in-laws live. Read the rest of this entry
Jun 0827
That’s how many logos are listed in the largest directory of Web 2.0 applications and services http://www.go2web20.net/ as of today, June 27, 2008. I want to thank Ani Matson from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) for alerting me to this site.
Some of the Web 2.0 applications I like:
I am going to go crazy checking out all these sites and applications. How long do you think it will take to check out 2520 sites? That could be a perpetual project, seeing as new applications are sprouting everyday, including apps developed on top of other apps. I don’t know how anybody can keep up!
Orli Yakuel, editor of the popular blog – http://blog.go2web20.net/ – writes about the ever-evolving Web 2.0 industry. You can read her perspective on what’s hot, what’s not, and why.
Be sure to let me know about your favorite Web 2.0 applications. I’d also like to hear about your least favorite ones and why.
