View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Josh Catone
April 28th, 2008 — startup
Tomorrow a new breed of investment firm called Prototype Invest will officially launch, though the site is available now. Prototype Invest is a unique type of early stage investment firm. Rather than put money into startups, Prototype supplies technology in exchange for equity. This is an investment firm for anyone who has ever been told, “Ideas are a dime a dozen, kid. Come back when you have a working prototype.”
Founded by web developer and Denmark native Michael Christensen, Prototype Invest will provide people who have an idea but don’t possess programming or design skills a way to take their idea and turn it into a prototype to show investors. “Think of us as a Venture Capital firm providing software, web applications and guidance, instead of money,” says the company on the site. “All we ask for is equity in your idea – you don’t have to pay anything for our services.”
The company has a network of developers and designers which it will employ to create prototypes or full products based on ideas submitted by entrepreneurs. In return, it will take an equity stake in the app it helps create. Prototype Invest will evaluate ideas submitted to it based on merit as well as the character of the entrepreneur who pitched it.
“There are so many great ideas wasted for the wrong reasons – we are here to change the rules of the game,” Christensen told me. According to Christensen, any entrepreneur who is unhappy with the results of their relationship with Prototype Invest can walk at any time.
Prototype Invest has a lot riding on trust — in fact they say on their front page that “without trust we simply can’t exist” — which means that ideally, anyone willing to fork over an idea to the service has not only been told that ideas are a dime a dozen, but also truly believes it. Prototype will work out contracts and the amount of equity taken on a case by case basis, and Christensen tells me that they’re open to signing an NDA with entrepreneurs prior to being pitched.
But there will need to be a certain amount of trust on both sides that ideas won’t be stolen or misappropriated.
Along with development services, Prototype Invest also offers to help entrepreneurs pitch their idea (and newly minted prototype) to investors, which makes sense given that Christensen and team will only make money if the app is a success. At some point in the future the team is also considering offering Y Combinator-style microfunding.
Will Prototype Invest work? It’s hard to say, but there is little doubt that they won’t lack for ideas being sent their way — they are a dime a dozen, after all.
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Marshall Kirkpatrick
April 17th, 2008 — openSocial
OpenID, a technology that allows users to sign in to new supporting websites through a single trusted ID provider of their choice, is notoriously hard for non-developers to implement and in many cases use. One of the biggest challenges may have been eliminated, however, by the recent release of a new service called MyOpenID for Domains.
The service makes it remarkably easy for anyone to create OpenID accounts through their own domain, using the MyOpenID authentication service.
For example, my new OpenID is http://openid.marshallk.com/marshallk, based on my personal site marshallk.com. It was really easy to set up and now I can offer other users of my site their own marshallk.com OpenID as well. (Hi Mom!)
How It’s Done
MyOpenID for Domains lets you set up OpenIDs in one of two formats: Wildcard subdomains like member.yourdomain.com or as a single subdomain + path like openid.yourdomain.com/member.
I chose the single subdomain plus member path because I want to be able to use other subdomains for other purposes.
It’s really easy to set up either path. For my Wordpress blog I just filled out the form below, then I had to call my webhost (Bluehost – great customer service, terrible uptime) and ask them to make a small edit to my DNS record. I gave them this information:
Name: openid.marshallk.com
Type: CNAME
Value: www.myopenid.com
They made the change needed, basically setting up a redirect, in less than 5 minutes. Other hosts will let you edit your own DNS info. I then posted a page on my blog with a particular URL and a short code for MyOpenID to detect. That’s it – I was done. Now I can use my own domain name as an OpenID. The next step was to make sure that my user identity page was looking spiffy.
If MyOpenID ever closes its doors, it will be easy for me to edit my DNS record back and keep my OpenID URL from becoming a 404 out of my control. I’ll also now be able to verify that I am in fact the owner of marshallk.com.
Limitations of the Service
This is the easiest way I’ve found to use my own domain name as an OpenID. There are other ways to do it but they’ve always given me far more trouble than they should. This service from MyOpenID is also an easy way to offer and administer OpenID accounts to other users of a particular website.
MyOpenID is a good OpenID provider. MyOpenID for Domains does require that you use their service in particular, however. There are many different OpenID providers offering many different advanced features. Check out SpreadOpenID.org for a comparison of many different providers.
As you can see below, my MyOpenID profile is now tied to my domain. All I need now is the ability to put HTML links in my summary info, display recent items in an RSS feed of my choice on this page and some other customization options. Then I’ll be doing great.
Watch this space for more forthcoming news on big increases in OpenID usability.
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Sarah Perez
April 9th, 2008 — tech
Today, a story on Techmeme caught our eye. It was entitled "We Need a Wikipedia for data," and the article, written by X-Googler Bret Taylor, discussed the difficulty of finding open data sets on the internet, something which could spur innovation, allowing programmers to build new applications the likes of which have never been seen before. What was interesting about this story, in addition to, obviously, the concept of a Data Wiki itself, was the amazing and insightful commentary around this concept, not just on the blog, but all over the net, something which led to the discovery of some pretty good data sources that are already available.
In Bret’s story, he mentioned some of the common data sources currently available, like the US Census Bureau’s map data and the Reuters corpus, but his commenters came up with a few more. (See? This is why blog comments matter).
In addition, as CNet and Ryan Stewart’s blog spread the story, more people chimed in with suggestions. And of course, the Hacker News guys had some more ideas themselves.
So what did everyone come up with? A lot of data sources are already freely available on the net, as it turns out, if you just know where to look. Here’s a summary, do you have anything to add?
CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network)
The CKAN site is a registry of open knowledge packages and projects. Here, you can find open knowledge resources or register one of your own. What kind of stuff can you find at CKAN? They mention a set of Shakespeare’s works, a global population density database, the voting records of MPs, or 30 years of US patents as some examples, but they also point you to some useful URLs, like flickr’s Creative Commons page, where photos can be searched by license type.
CKAN
Infochimps.org
This project is attempting to assemble and interconnect the world’s best repository for raw data – like a giant, free, open almanac. The best way to describe it comes from MetaFilter, where the project was spotted recently: "Just as Wikipedia will help you find out something about everything, infochimps.org will help you find out everything about something." What can you find there? Every wikipedia infobox, each infobox type in its own table, 50 years of global hourly weather data, all the tables from the US Census Statistical Abstract, oh and 100,000 official crossword words, too.
Infochimps.org
OpenStreetMap
Not a data set in the traditional sense, but definitely a useful tool, OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map of the world where you can view, edit, and use your own geographical data. The project was started because most maps actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use.
OpenStreetMap
MusicBrainz
A user-maintained community metadatabase site which collects music "metadata" like artist name, release title, list of tracks, etc. You can browse through the site or you can use a client program, like their own taggers, to help identify music collections.Â
Musicbrainz
Jigsaw
Dismissed by the blogosphere as a bad idea, if not downright evil, Jigsaw, the marketplace that pays you to give up other people’s contact info now boasts 7 million complete contacts for the taking.
DBpedia
This site is a community effort to extract structured info from Wikipedia and make that data publicly available on the web, essentially turning Wikipedia into a database you can query. Is this the beginnings of a semantic web? Check out their downloads section for the datasets and then scroll to the bottom for even more links to data sources on the web.
DBpedia
flickr wrappr
Where DBpedia takes Wikipedia and makes it semantic, flickr wrappr extends DBpedia with RDF links to photos posted on flickr. Here’s an example. Here’s another. This is pure geek hotness.
Freebase
Freebase, an open, shared database of the world’s knowledge, received a lot of mentions in the comments, so this must be a good one. Community built and maintained, it pulls from open data sources like Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, and the SEC archives to create structured information on many topics, including more popular ones like movies, music, people, and locations. The site, unlike some of the others in this list, is also easy to navigate and well-designed, which makes it that much better to use.
Freebase
Opentick
Perhaps one of the less interesting items due to its dry subject matter – financial data – it’s certainly worth a mention because a free database of real-time and historical market data for trading systems and platforms is the kind of thing that really floats some people’s boats.
ThingISBN
Thanks to LibraryThing, ThingISBN is the site’s first API, and even though its competitor became a paid service, ThingISBN is still free for non-commercial use. The API doesn't just return the usual book data, but also something called "edition disambiguation," meaning it also returns a list of "related" ISBNs—other editions, other media, and translations.
Numbrary
Like the title suggests, Numbrary is a library for numbers. This free service helps you find, use, and share numbers from public record data sets, like census data or the CIA World Factbook.
Numbrary
theinfo.org
This site isn’t just a place to build or collect data sets, of which they have quite a nice list, but a place where you can interact with other number-lovin’ folks like yourself.
theinfo.org
The Data Wrangling blog
This blog post lists a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of open datasets on the web, which just goes to show how much of a cursory list my post really is.
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Sarah Perez
April 3rd, 2008 — openSocial
You’ve heard a lot about OpenID, the decentralized framework for authenticating users across the web. OpenID is convenient for end users, allowing them to login to numerous web sites using one set of credentials – their OpenID. But how is OpenID doing today? Where can you get one? And more importantly, where can you use it? We took the pulse of OpenID to see how it’s currently faring.
Where To Get Your OpenID
Mainstream Sites:
Many people still don’t realize that they don’t even have to go get an OpenID – they already have one. Several mainstream web sites function as OpenID providers. If you have an account at one of the following, then congratulations – you already have an OpenID!
Well-Known Providers:
You can also pick up an OpenID from these providers.
- ClaimID – free OpenID providers
- Clickpass – OpenID provider that makes OpenID easier for developers to install and users to understandÂ
- myID.net – free OpenID provider with support for groups and Korean language
- myOpenID – free OpenID provider
- myVidoop – free OpenID Provider that eliminates passwords with security features, customization, and browser integration.
- VeriSign’s Personal Identity Provider – free OpenID provder with support for multi-factor authentication
Other Providers:
- AlwaysKnownAs.com – OpenID provider, plus user-centric contact management system with address book plug-ins wrapped around OpenID
- Beemba- Supports Information Cards as well as traditional forms-based authentication
- certifi.ca – Browser-certificate-based OpenID service; free; no passwords, no phishing
- gpgid.box43.net – OpenID provider using PGP/GPG public key authentication
- id7r.com – Id7r turns every email address into an OpenID identifier. No registration is necessary
- Identitude – An OpenID Provider backed by Facebook Accounts and profile information
- IDMobs.com First OpenID provider for mobile phones. Free, light, secure
- idproxy.net – lets you use your Yahoo! account as an OpenID
- My vAuth ID OpenID IdP supporting speaker verification for strong authentication offered by VxV Solutions
- openid.35.com OpenId.35.com is a FREE,Secure SSL-enabled OpenId Service provider, combined with some social network features that let users connect with each other
- openid.nabber.org – Free proxy that translates your existing e-mail address into an OpenID URL and authentication service
- OpenID.org.cn Free OpenID server and authentication service with multiple credentials such as single password, Google Account etc.
- OpenProfile Extends OpenID to maintain and serve profile information via hcard and vCard
- Own-ID – free service that lets you use your own domain name as your OpenID
- prooveme.com – Certificate based OpenID; Strong authentication without passwords
- ProtectNetwork OpenID, Shibboleth and SAML standards compliant identity server by 9Star Research, IncÂ
- SignOn.com – OpenID Provider with support for Information Cards
- SmartCom
- StartSSL- Uses only client-side SSL certificates for authentication and SSL/TLS encryption for transport.
- sxipper – Firefox plugin for OpenID
- Typekey – and here’s how to make TypeKey your own OpenID server
- Videntity.org
- tiny.id7r.com – provides short URL as "alias" of long OpenID URL
- TrustBearer OpenID- Uses smart cards, security tokens or biometric readers to authenticate users
Providers Outside the U.S./Foreign Language Support:
- Anonymous OpenID – Free, Anonymous OpenID Provider. No signup required. Also the First (free) Indian OpenID server
- Daum OpenID- Korean OpenID provider by Daum.net
- fcid.net – a chinese OpenID provider.
- IDtail.com – OpenID provider for Korean (by Hedgeplus.net in AhnLab.com; English planned)
- isOpenID- Russian OpenID provider
- netliberty.ru is an identity provider that includes OpenID server
- OpenID.cn Free OpenID server and authentication service in Chinese
- OpenID.cz Free OpenID server (Czech)
- openid.blogs.es – First Spanish OpenID server; free
- opendaumid.net Lets you use your DAUM account as an OpenID.(korean)
- openid.com.gr – The first greek openID Provider
- OpenID.ee – Ultra-secure OpenID provider using smart cards – requires no registration nor passwords and uses Estonian eID card and GSM SIM cards for strong authentication
- OpenID Espa, Spanish free OpenID provider
- OpenID France – First French OpenID server; free
- OpenID in Estonia
- OpenID Italia, OpenID Italia, free OpenID provider
- OpenID.LT – Lithuanian OpenID provider.
- OpenID.me.uk First United Kingdom OpenID provider with strong authentication. (2008/02/05 – not yet currently live)
- OpenID.ne.jp – First Japanese OpenID server; free
- openid.net.in Free Indian OpenID Provider
- openid.openminds.be – First Belgian OpenID provider; Free, uses Strong authentication (SSL); Vraag je gratis OpenID account vandaag aan
- OpenID.ph – OpenID Philippines (English and Tagalog) is the first Filipino OpenID server (free)
- OpenID.PL – first Polish OpenID server; free
- OpenID Portugal, First Free portugal OpenID provider
- openidprovider – A new Open ID Provider Based in the netherlands.
- openid.xmpp.za.net – The South African XMPP Federation OpenID Server (uses XEP-0070 to authenticate any jabber/xmpp account)
- MeinGuter.Name Secure German OpenID provider with focus on reputation building
- mi OpenID – Spanish free OpenID provider with strong authentication and hostname as OpenID (user.miopenid.es)
- Mi ID.es- First OpenID provider with activity stream from several web services.
- MijnOpenID.nl First Dutch OpenID server. Is controlled by the OpenID Europe Foundation. Each OpenID user own a part of the Foundation
- MoiKrug.ru – Free OpenID service with profile in the largest professional social network in Russia
- mojID.com, First Slovenian secure OpenID provider.
- myID.net – First Korean OpenID server; get Free
- myID.pl – Polish OpenID server; free. The shortest URL.
- mysecond.name Free OpenID server and authentication service in Chinese , also support internet account management and open icon functions
- my.xlogon.net Free german OpenID provider, T&C according german laws, multiple Identity, multiple Personas, SSL only.
- regged.de provides a free OpenID server in German, now has IPv6 support
- ThaiID.net- The first free OpenID provider for Thai people
- Wong Cyber Wong Cyber – Indonesian first OpenID server
- www.hkopenid.com, Hong Kong OpenID , Hong Kong free OpenID provider, targeting on providing extra localized service.
- www.ohmyid.com – Free OpenID provider for Korean
- www.openid.hk, OpenID Hong Kong, free OpenID provider
- www.tunnnus.com, Finnish OpenID provider. (Also homepage forwarding from your OpenID-url)
Feeling Geeky? You can make your own OpenID
OpenID Resources
Where You Can Use OpenID (Major Web Sites Only)
Other websites:
You can find a more complete list of sites supporting OpenID logins at the OpenID Site Directory.
Conclusion
It seems that there are currently many more places you can get an OpenID today than there are places to use one. We covered some of our concerns about the adoption rates previously in this post: “The Troubles with OpenID 2.0.”
Right now, everyone is still counting on Digg to be the next big player supporting openID, thanks to this January, 2008 blog post, mentioning their plans to support more open standards.
Despite its benefits, OpenID still remains too hard to add to your site and logging in is not always a smooth process. That’s where a company like Clickpass has a real edge. Clickpass, which is powered by OpenID, wants to make OpenID easy to use in order to bring the benefits of single-sign-on to everyone. Currently, only a few places support Clickpass – Disqus, Ma.gnolia., Plaxo, TrustedPlaces, and Wordpress (via a plugin) – but they promise there are more to come. I certainly hope so because using Clickpass was just as easy as they promised, so I really hope it takes off.
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Sarah Perez
March 28th, 2008 — rss
Have you heard about Toluu yet? This new RSS-based service, currently in private beta, lets you share your OPML with others in order to discover new feeds, see what your friends are reading, and even discover new people who share your same interests. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because Toluu is very much like the reincarnation of the once-popular site, ShareYourOPML (now defunct), which used to do the same thing. But Toluu not only revives that site’s spirit, it does so it a much better fashion than ShareYourOPML ever did.
Toluu is the latest newcomer to the RSS scene, joining a crowded space dominated by online readers and communities like Google Reader, Shyftr, Bloglines, and aggregators like RSSMeme, the soon-to-return Readburner, and the everything lifestream of FriendFeed. Unlike those sites, however, Toluu doesn’t aim to take you away from your current RSS reader. Instead, what Toluu offers is a way to share your feeds with others in a quick and easy way.
So why does this feed sharing service have so many other bloggers talking? And why should you bother with yet another RSS service? Here are 10 good reasons why you should give Toluu a look:
- You can sign up with OpenID: Toluu starts out on the right foot by letting you sign up for the service with your OpenID. You can also choose to save yourself some typing by letting them import your profile using the hCard microformat on your profile at flickr, twitter, Technorati, Last.FM, or Upcoming. Not into OpenID yet? A regular sign-up form is still provided.
- It’s Easy: There’s not a whole lot to it. Sign up, login, and upload your OPML. You don’t have to find your friends or fill out a big user profile.
- You don’t have to do anything: Besides uploading your OPML, there isn’t anything else you have to do to benefit from the service. Although you can go through your feeds and mark your favorites, those of us with hundreds of feeds won’t take the time and we don’t have to. Toluu can make recommendations based on your feed list alone.
- Collaborative filtering helps Toluu learn: As activity on Toluu increases, what you and your friends read and tag as favorites will help you discover new feeds that you may enjoy reading. The recommendation engine is right on target. It shows your matches, what percentage compatibility you have with them, what feeds you have in common, and which ones you like. This is much better than anything ShareYourOPML ever offered.
- You won't be recommended "one-hit wonder" blogs: Remember that one guy who wrote that one post that one time? The one that hit Techmeme and then you never heard of him since? That feed wouldn’t be recommended to you, unless you showed interest in actively reading the rest of his feed on a regular basis.
- The Toluu bookmarklet helps you add new feeds with ease: Because re-importing your OPML after ever new feed added would be a pain, Toluu offers a bookmarklet that lets you add a feed to both Toluu and your preferred feed reader which will first add the feed to Toluu before continuing on to add it to your RSS reader.
- It’s not trying to replace your RSS Reader: If you wanted to, you could use it as an RSS reader, but that’s not what it’s designed to do. So it’s not a matter of you having to switch readers to enjoy using this service.
- The Feeds! No matter how many feeds you currently subscribe to, you’re bound to find more that you didn’t know existed. Plus, you can spy on the shared feeds of anyone, provided you know their username, which is a great way to find out what people read.
- The Activity Stream: The Toluu activity page gives you a quick glance at what your friends have been reading and doing on the Toluu service.
- The Potential: Granted, this, like most services today rely on having a decent userbase to find success. However, based on ShareYourOPML’s former popularity, Toluu has a great shot at filling the void that was left behind when that site disappeared.
A Toluu Profile Page
All that being said, the site still needs a bit of work before it can really take off, but since it’s still in private beta, they have the time to work out the kinks and maybe even add a couple more features, too.
For example, a search feature to find other Toluu users would be a big help, especially as they grow. Also, the notification preferences are all switched on by default, which means you’ll get emails whenever someone adds you as a contact, adds or removes a feed, or recommends a feed, and you’re automatically subscribed to the newsletter. That’s a bit much.
If you’re interested in joining Toluu, you can request a beta invite or you can comment here. I have seven to give away, so first come, first serve.
UPDATE! There are 100 invites available now. Comment here for yours!
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Sarah Perez
March 25th, 2008 — web20
Last month we showed you some of the more popular and useful Adobe AIR applications (see "6 Adobe AIR Apps to Check Out"), but there are so many great Adobe AIR applications currently available, it would be a shame to stop at just those six. As we delved through he Adobe AIR directory, what became apparent to us is that there are a lot of AIR applications that will appeal to our fellow bloggers. So many, in fact, that it was worth putting together a list of our favorites. Here are the top ten AIR app that bloggers will love:
Tumbleweed: The Tumbleweed AIR application is a desktop application for posting to your Tumblr blog. With this app, you can quickly post text, photos, videos, links, audio, and chats from your desktop to your Tumblr blog, without ever having to open a web browser.
Flickr Flipper: Looking for an image to go with your post? The Flickr Flipper app lets you browse through Flickr for photos. You can also search for photos from a specific user by typing username: followed by a Flickr user’s username.
Digg RSS Reader: Did your post just hit front page? You’ll know right away with the Digg RSS Reader. You can keep tabs on all the top stories, or filter them by choosing to view only the News, Videos, or Images. Clicking the links will open the Digg story in your web browser so you can vote for your favorites.
FotoBooth: Ustreamers will like FotoBooth, an AIR app that lets you use your computer’s webcam to snap pictures of yourself, add filters or distort them, and then upload them to Flickr with just one click.
Websnapshot and WebKut: Let’s call it two for the price of one: Websnapshot lets you quickly take snapshots of a web site by entering in the URL or dragging-and-dropping it from your browser to the app. You can specify whether you want a thumbnail, a browser-sized pic, or a full page snapshot. An auto-save feature lets you save the pictures to the location of your choosing. Webkut goes a step further – you can enter the URL or you can Google for it right within the AIR application, a nice time-saving feature.
Color Browser: Get inspired to re-design your blog! With the Color Browser app, you can create and organize your favorite color palettes. If you’re a blog designer, this is a must-have app.
Joomedit: Are you using the open source content management system from Joomla? Then you need Joomedit, a desktop editor that lets you edit, upload, and publish to your Joomla CMS.
SHIFD: Doing research? The SHIFD desktop app lets you save notes, places, and links from the web into the SHIFD AIR application. This content is then available on any device with internet access – whether your desktop, laptop, or mobile phone.
Apprise: The Apprise application is a sample AIR app, which means you can download the source code too. Apprise is an online/offline RSS reader which features importing and exporting of feeds, search, and support for RSS and ATOM.
We would add Google Analytics to this list, but it was covered in our previous post (and besides, isn’t everyone running it by now, anyway?). We would have also loved to include AirPress, but sadly, this desktop blogging AIR app has not been kept up-to-date.
An honorable mention goes out to Userplane Desktop, a brandable Adobe AIR app for bloggers in the big leagues. This white label solution can keep your users informed as to your site’s news, keeping them engaged even when they’re not on the web site itself.
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Marshall Kirkpatrick
March 20th, 2008 — web20
The timing couldn’t be better for the release of Semantify, a new service from Israel/San Francisco’s Dapper.net. One week after Yahoo! announced that it will begin indexing the semantic markup and meaning of content on the web, Semantify offers a remarkably simple way to get your website marked up semantically. Automatically, forever.
Once you learn how to use Dapper’s basic interface, it can take less than five minutes to set up the Semantify service. Hello SEO, 3.0.
Just a Few Steps
Here’s what it takes:
1. Identify your website and show Dapper a few different pages on it.
2. Point and click to identify particular fields on your pages, like the titles, dates and authors of articles. Sometimes this requires a few extra clicks to exclude false positives in the previewed results.
3. Name those fields according to any number of Semantic Web naming protocols. In my test of Semantify, for my personal site marshallk.com, I used the Dublin Core namespaces “title,” “date,” description” and “creator” to name my fields in Dapper. I could have designated fields as the names of my friends or as particular locations. There are simple descriptions of other namespace conventions linked to from the Semantify page and this part is pretty intuitive.
4. Once you’ve gotten this far, in the standard method of using Dapper you’d grab an RSS feed that would deliver changes that get made to the fields you’re monitoring. With Semantify, though, you get a few lines of PHP code to paste into the header of your website. See the screenshot at the bottom of this post.
And then you’re done.
Dapper GUI + Semantic Web vocab list + PHP embed code = automated Semantic Web markup for your site. It’s like a point and click sitemap creator on the element-by-element level. It’s a perpetual standards-based SEO machine. That’s the incentive for publishers. For the rest of us, once the meaning of content is machine readable – there’s a world of sophisticated information processing we’ll be able to automate and leverage.
It’s The Early Days
It’s as simple as that, or at least it will be once all the little kinks are worked out. At launch the embed code is only available in PHP but the company says more options are right around the corner. The company rushed to get this service out the door and that’s a little obvious right now. It’s also clear that the problems are small ones that they’ll be able to solve quickly. There’s more sophisticated options coming (more granular control over namespaces, for example) and the user interface could always be improved over there. None the less, this service could end up being very, very big.
You can go through those steps above today, I have, and whenever the Yahoo! spider hits your webpage, it will be shown a semantically marked up version of whatever content is live on your pages at the time. It will come from your domain and everyone will be happy. Wash, rinse and repeat for all your domains. Then, thank Dapper for making it so damn easy.
Historical Context
Many people have questioned the viability of the Semantic Web vision, asking who will do the markup. Yahoo! has stepped in and provided the incentive for every publisher to do so, now Dapper’s Semantify is hoping to provide the service that will make it easy, too.
Once it’s just a matter of course for publishers to publish semantic markup with their content, look out world. My favorite example, from our coverage of the Yahoo! announcement, is this: show me all the movie reviews written by a user’s friends who live in Europe. Today, that would be hard to do. Once semantic markup is widely published and indexed – then such queries will be trivial and the only question will be what we want to do with that information.
The Semantic Web could change the world. The only things missing are incentive like Yahoo! now provides and ease-of-use, as Semantify began offering today.
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Josh Catone
February 28th, 2008 — ui
Crowdsourcing firm Kluster officially launched yesterday at the TED conference, which is underway this week in Monterey, California. Founder Ben Kaufman, who bankrolled the company in part with money from the sale of his last company Mophie, has organized a gimmick over the course of the TED conference he hopes will prove Kluster’s worth. Kaufman intends to let TED attendees — and users from around the world — design a completely new product over the course of 72 hours.
The idea behind Kluster is that a group of passionate people working together can come up with better solutions for any decision-making problem than a single person. Whether that is planning an event, designing a new logo, or creating a new product, Kluster believes their system can work.
Kaufman got the idea after the Bevy, one of Mophie’s most popular products, was designed by the crowd at Macworld using sketch pads and a precursor to the system that evolved into Kluster. The keychain/bottler opener/iPod shuffle case was one of Mophie’s best selling products, and it was designed in just 72 hours by a crowd, and launched as a product just 2 months later. Kaufman realized he was potentially onto something.
The Kluster system works by breaking down products into manageable chunks. For each chunk (or “phase”), people submit what are called “sparks.” Sparks are proposed solutions for that phase. For each spark, other participants can submit “amps” — which are improvements to that idea. Users also assign “watts” to sparks and amps they like. Watts work kind of like investments. You accrue points based on participation and other factors, and can invest those points (watts) in ideas you like.
Then an algorithm that takes into account “each user’s successes, failures, reputation, areas of expertise, and overall history” goes to work to determine which sparks are the best. Companies interested in using the Kluster system, put up cash prizes that are doled out along the way (at the completion of each phase).
The whole concept is similar to the one behind Derek Powazek’s new site, Pixish (our coverage). The main difference is that where Pixish is strictly for design related tasks, Kluster is for anything suited to crowd creation. And at Kluster, the crowd is also being relied upon to pick the best result.
During the TED conference, Kluster is hoping to use their system to create a new product in 72 hours. It will be unveiled on the last day of the conference, March 1 at 8am. Unfortunately, the Kluster site has been having a lot of problems, so getting in to participate might be easier said than done. There are $15,000 in phase prizes up for grabs.
Can lightning strike twice? Or was the Bevy a fluke? Kaufman admitted earlier this month that right now most companies see participation in Kluster as a means of viral marketing to connect with their die hard fans. It will take a few hit products to come out of the Kluster process to prove that it is a viable way for companies to conduct their R&D. Do you think it will work? Let us know in the comments below.
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Marshall Kirkpatrick
February 22nd, 2008 — openSocial
An open source identity platform called the Higgins Project launched the 1.0 version of their service this week and it’s a nice look into what could be the future of user-centric identity online. Higgins offers a variety of features and services, but the basic premise is that it serves as a portable container you can use to carry multiple identities with you around the web.
Why would users want that? Because you don’t want to sign in to a social network with the same identity card you use to sign in to financial websites. Higgins aims to replace the assorted user names and passwords we all use today with a set of simple, standards-based identifiers that you can take from site to site.
Think of it like a wallet with different credit cards and forms of ID inside. Unfortunately, that’s only a metaphor and there’s nothing about Higgins that’s so easy to do today. Additionally, without a meaningful selection of sites that support the various protocols Higgins lets users leverage – then it’s pretty much a nonstarter. Let’s assume though that identity landscape is going to open up and that OpenID isn’t the only way it will do so. In that case, Higgins is a great idea and interested developers will likely find the project worth a look.
In addition to a browser plug-in for users, there’s libraries that site developers can make use of and an API that will let developers make use of the Higgins Global Graph (HGG) and a quite a few other things with even less hospitable acronyms. OpenID is at least intelligible and end users will not run away when they hear it said out loud.
RSS has changed the world because it is simple. OPML is fun to take to parties because anyone can learn the rules in minutes. I understand that security is by necessity more complex, but any party where as many acronyms show up as is the case with Identity (see below, for example) is not a party I look forward to attending.
The Real Value of Identity Diversification
That said, there is some comprehensible stuff here that’s clearly worth checking out. You may have stopped by someplace like SpreadOpenID.org and noticed that many OpenID vendors let users expose any of multiple “personas” when logging into a new site. Is that sufficient for security, though? Now that I see the Higgins vision explained, I do think that using one service for everything and trusting that single service to keep personas separated from each other is more trust than I care to put in anyone. To some degree, Higgins is asking you to put your trust in them instead, but the assertion is that you the user are in the driver’s seat.
I’m cheering for a clear, simple interface. Hopefully it will arrive sooner than it took the OpenID community to start to move in that direction. That said, I think there’s a lot of potential here in addition to the straightforward and compelling value proposition.
Below: The Higgins Interoperability Framework – don’t be scared, it’s ok.
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Josh Catone
February 18th, 2008 — web20
Outages aside, there’s no doubt that the rise of web scale computing platforms, like Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services, have lowered the barrier of entry for Internet startups. Going completely serverless would have been unheard of during the late-90s dot com boom, but new cloud computing platforms have made it possible for small companies to scale quickly, easily, efficiently, and cost effectively. However, even if services like Amazon’s have made hosting and scaling a web app more simple, there is still a good deal of server management involved. Enter Mosso, a Rackspace-backed company that merges the idea of cloud computing with the familiarity of a managed, shared environment.
In September of 2006, Richard MacManus theorized that “in the future [...] the big Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, will operate ’server farms’ that become too cost efficient for other companies not to utilize.”
So far only Amazon of the big web companies have opened their hosting architecture up to outsiders, but a number of smaller players have tapped into the growing market for cloud based hosting solutions. Mosso’s platform seeks to match the scaling power of a compute cloud with the ease and simplicity of a shared hosting environment.
Unlike competitors such as Joyent or Amazon, Mosso’s system does not offer customers root level access to their servers. Instead, servers are preconfigured with a range of software options and are fully managed similar to a shared hosting environment. Keeping their hosting platform standardized is what allows them to easily monitor and scale the service as needed. For example, last week Mosso experienced a significant spike in load on its PHP cluster and added 10 servers without customers noticing, company executives told me.
Today, Mosso is announcing a new payment scheme that they feel is an industry first for a cloud computing platform. According to Mosso, scaling on Amazon or other compute cloud options means adding more instances, which means you’re still paying on a server by server basis. Mosso’s new pay structure is based 100% on requests, which they feel is more accurate in terms of charging you only for the resources you use.
Mosso’s pay structure starts with a base fee of $100 per month, with a rate of $0.25 per gigabyte of bandwidth, and $0.50 per gigabyte of storage. They also charge $0.03 per 1000 requests with 3 million included. Being charged per gig on bandwidth and storage is a familiar pricing structure for anyone on shared hosting or a managed server.
The company is also announcing an updated control panel and will soon roll out a MySQL backup utility that will take automatic snapshots of databases down to the table level. That sort of utility wouldn’t be possible on EC2, accoring to Mosso, because every instance is configured differently.
Or at least, they’re supposed to be announcing these things today. As I write this Mosso’s homepage has been kicking up a 404 for about the past 45 minutes. Some of the sites they host still appear to be online, but not being able to keep your company homepage up doesn’t really inspire confidence in your hosting platform. Maybe they’re more like Amazon than they care to admit…
