TechAddress

Zoho Redefines Transparency With Zoho Status

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:33:47 +0000

Outside.in is launching a new API that allows developers to tap the company’s database of local news and information to build location-aware applications. The basic idea is that your application captures a user’s location – either through manual input or via GPS – and Outside.in returns relevant content from within 1,000 feet of that spot.

There are clearly a lot of applications that could use this type of data; national news sites that want to offer local headlines, mobile apps that show news based on your GPS location, and travel information services are just a few ideas that come to mind. As a demo, Outside.in has launched Near.ly, an application that sends local news to your Twitter account (via direct message) based on the address you provide.

The Outside.in API is an example of how most web businesses should evolve. While it started out as a destination site for local content (an incredibly competitive market), Outside.in has turned itself into a platform, allowing content providers to feed content into the system, and now, with its API, allowing developers to build applications using the aggregate data. And as these inputs and outputs grow, the service becomes more valuable to everyone in the ecosystem, including end users.

More about how the Outside.in API works in the video below:

Source:Mashable!

One frequent problem with web applications and services - and thus the whole web 2.0 phenomenon - is lack of communication when something goes wrong. Sure, it’s nice to have your online e-mail client available from every computer, but what happens when it goes down? Often, it’s just you in the dark, waiting for problems to be resolved, with little or no official information on what’s happening to ease your mind.

Zoho has taken a step forward here with their latest service called Zoho Status. It displays the current status of all other Zoho’s applications: Mail, Writer, Sheet and so forth. You can monitor the response time for every one of them from the following locations: Seattle, New Jersey, Singapore, London, Germany and Australia. You can also see response time history, as well as details on recent availability and downtime.

This is a great idea. If something goes wrong with any one of Zoho’s applications, you can quickly check out if the problem is on your side or theirs. Of course, I’m sure that the folks at Zoho will continue to inform their customers about problems, updates, downtime and similar issues via blog posts, but being able to see what’s wrong for yourself, at any given time, is an advantage Zoho’s customers will certainly enjoy. All other web startups take notice: this is the level of transparency we’d like to see from everyone, not just Zoho.

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Status Updating Service Ping.fm Now in Open Beta

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:35:31 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Kyte’s particular brand of marketing has been to partner with celebrities and other influencers for using its self-publishing platform as a way to better connect with fans and viewers through live and scheduled programing. This process as a whole has been made easier with popular Nokia n95 cell phones and similar mobile devices that enable live video streaming to the Web. Kyte has been making some changes to better reflect the type of service it’s promoting, leveraging its increasing ease of use (with the right tools) and celeb endorsements to boot.

Kyte’s new types of advertising embrace the in-show overlay format, which will now display over the bottom 1/3 of the viewer canvas. There are also show production ads, which act as splash pages to be used in other video content as a form of cross-promotion or merely another advertising option within Kyte’s platform. True, overlay ads have been around for Web-based video programming for some time, but Kyte’s somewhat niche sector in the online video market has afforded it some wiggle room in regards to its ability to attract the type of brands that would want to promote themselves on Kyte’s user-generated programming.

The show production ads, however, go hand in hand with another upcoming feature from Kyte: an internal ad server for the support of brands that would like to insert their own ads from their inventory. What this will do is allow brands to directly cross promote their own Kyte content (or other content/events/promotions) within existing Kyte content, offering brands more control and making the effect of an owned Kyte channel more appropriate for individual brand’s marketing purposes. With that, Kyte will also need to improve its analytics offering. Currently, premium partners can take advantage of Kyte’s basic advertising options, but Kyte doesn’t have any robust ad analytics and behavioral reports just yet.

Source:Mashable!

Remember Ping.fm, the service that lets you update several social networking profiles - Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster among many others - from one place? It’s now in open beta, which means that everyone can sign up and try it out.

Ping.fm’s greatest strength is its support of many different platforms and applications. You can use it through AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, WAP, iPhone/iPod Touch, SMS or just plain e-mail - whichever you fancy.

As far as new features and changes go, besides adding support for several new social networks since the last time we wrote about the service, they’ve also added image uploading from your Ping.fm posting address and threaded comments (courtesy of Disqus). According to the official blog, upcoming features include personalized Ping.fm public profiles, which should be a “one-stop shop for all of your social networking management needs.”

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Is Plurk the MySpace of Microblogging?

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:57:23 +0000

Source:Mashable!

When the CEO one of the most followed companies on the Web goes on stage for two hours, you can bet that the press will be listening to every word, looking to break a major piece of news for their respective organization. But yesterday, with Mark Zuckerberg on stage at F8, why did we all (including us) feel so compelled to “live blog” the event, given it was being broadcast live on video – quite publicly - via Facebook’s own web site? In retrospect, it seems rather ridiculous.

While plenty of big news came out of the event – the launch of Facebook Connect, Facebook Translations for Developers, and the Great Apps program, just to name a few things – it seems like those who cared enough to get these announcements “live” were most likely either in attendance or watching the video stream. Beyond that, if people wanted to discuss the announcements, Twitter or Friendfeed offered a perfect medium. This is all besides the fact that the press release itemizing Facebook’s major product launches was distributed to the media moments after Zuckerberg took the stage, leading us (and a number of other tech blogs) to publish stories detailing the news before Facebook even got to that part of their presentation.

Liveblogging certainly has its place, especially for events where not everyone has access. But what are we gaining by liveblogging something that everyone else can see? And it’s not just keynote speeches at conferences either – blogs now routinely liveblog conference calls, press conferences, and other events that anyone can tune into, usually by going to a company’s investor relations or press page. While news does often break during these events, the people who really care are already tuned in, while the few people reading the liveblog have to sort through paragraph upon paragraph of unimportant notes to find the one piece of potentially breaking news.

Beyond the overkill of liveblogging public events, I also don’t see what good it does from a business perspective as a publisher either. Versus listening to an event or a conference call and making a post detailing the news when it’s over, a liveblog usually offers a boring headline (“Live: F8 Keynote with Mark Zuckerberg”), is very difficult to read, and has minimal long-term value. Compared to a post where you cover and analyze the news, write a headline that articulates what the story is about, and create long-term value in terms of content that is indexable and can be backlinked, liveblogging just doesn’t make sense.

Proponents of liveblogging such events would likely argue that it offers not only breaking news, but instant insight into the event from the perspective of someone in attendance. While that is true to some extent, there is a ton more insight taking place elsewhere, via discussions on services like Twitter and Friendfeed.

I’m sure we’ll continue to liveblog events here on Mashable, and I’m sure others will continue to do so as well. I’m just not sure why.

Source:Mashable!

In the past few weeks Plurk has released a number of updates in preparation for its upcoming API launch. Improvements include, a new customizable sidebar widget, new starter verbs such as “wonders” and “needs,” a cleaner “All Plurks,” and “My Plurks” navigation, along with a custom search feature. Plurk has even enhanced their competitive ranking system, also known as “Karma” to make the algorithm more fair and balanced.

Another feature that Plurk recently implemented that reminds me of the unofficial Twitter extended backgrounds is the ability to customize everything on your profile via CSS if your Karma is over 25. Customizing your profile background is something that some Twitter users, myself included, have wanted to see, but after seeing a few backgrounds and profiles in Plurk, I’m not so sure. Take a look below:

Plurk fail whale:

Animated gator background:

I’m not saying they’re bad - I’ll let you be the judge of that. But customizing backgrounds should be an enhancement and not a distraction to users, especially since many Plurk users are waiting for desktop integration such as Plurker, a Windows WPF desktop application or twhirl.

For those of us who Plurk on a regular basis I would say that we’re satisfied with the service’s development and features — and just this week Plurk was added to the list of supported sites on FriendFeed. However, Plurk’s community and conversations still remain a question. Currently from the twitter/tech/blog community, Darren Rowse of Problogger and Majo of Live Crunch are making headway up the interesting plurkers karma list. But still, without an API, no desktop application, and some of the most popular topics on Plurk being “good morning,” “good night,” “hi,” “sex” and “coffee,” it will be interesting to see what audience Plurk continues to build.

Is Plurk the MySpace or Facebook of micro-blogging? Only time will tell.

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