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May
12
2011

  • You can actually call up the developer relations people and find out if anything is particularly troubling they can think of before you go through an expensive dev phase.

    Their comments aren't binding (or even something I'd reference), and the approval criteria is constantly evolving, but they're pretty good at pointing out concerns from a 30 second description of the app.

    This is good to do if you're doing something you think may get you in trouble, but think it won't necessarily do so. They've been very helpful in the past about their criteria for the different GPS APIs etc.

Jul
22
2010

  • "The stuff you care about, all in one place."

    Except the stuff I care about will never be in just one place. Somehow "more stuff you care about, all in yet another place" doesn't have the same ring to it.

    To be clear: I don't mean to knock Flipboard. I'm very impressed with their high quality work, and I'm sure it can be a fun and useful tool. I'm just interested in the broader notion of "all in one place."

    My hypothesis is that there will never be "one true venue" for finding news. We're foragers by nature. Our valuation of a piece of content is (in part) proportional to how hard that content was to find. We will always seek new venues for content discovery.

  • It would appear they are doing some server side magic to determine which stuff shows up (hence the need for their own server):

    "...Well, it has a set of algorithms that are looking for highly engaged items. You know, items that have lots of comments, likes, or retweets. It also has an algorithm that senses photography that’s been linked to from Facebook status messages and it lays those photos out."

    Quoted from: http://scobleizer.com/2010/07/20/exclusive-first-look-at-rev...

  • 5 more annotation(s)...
Mar
5
2010

  • One of the worst myths floating around the blogosphere is the wait by some for a “unifying technology” that will make things “simpler and easier” to develop services and apps for the global mobile market.  At times, some have claimed that Java (J2ME) was the answer, then Flash Lite, then Webkit browsers, and most recently HTML5. While each solution has its merits, there will not be any unification anytime soon. Even as HTML5 richness has improved substantially, browser support will still vary and many, many phones will not support HTML5 for 7+ years.

     

    Anyone who is waiting for a single silver bullet to solve fragmentation issues in mobile will be waiting a very long time, especially if they want to go after the global mobile opportunity. As such, it is important for mobile entrepreneurs to wade in and sort it out for themselves.  No one is going to flatten the industry such as Microsoft did in the PC-era to make it simple.

  • Ask former execs of PSINet (bankrupt operator), AST (bankrupt PC maker) & Packard Bell (bankrupt PC maker) about the impact of the WINTEL “standard” on other PC industry players, and you’ll get a sense why Nokia, Motorola,Verizon, & Sprint aren’t rushing to follow their PC-era predecessors. Common standards = commodity standards for many players in this industry. Sadly, whether or not there is an elegant technical answer, it will be hard to drive any single set of worldwide standards given the different economic incentives of the many players, however good it would be for developers.
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Nov
19
2009

  • This is a huge point, and one that often goes overlooked in reviews. For the past 10 years, Apple has really only done one thing, over and over: they’ve taken something we thought worked fine, and then simplified the hell out of it while maintaining the feature set. That’s exactly what they did to the idea of the smartphone with the iPhone, and it turned the damned market on its head.
  • Two thousand plus words later, you might be a bit sad to read: Nope. But I wouldn’t recommend the iPhone over the Droid, either – and that’s the Droid’s real win here. This is the very first phone in over two years that I would consider carrying for day-to-day use instead of my iPhone, but that doesn’t mean I would recommend it whole heartedly to everyone.
Nov
17
2008

  • Me.dium offers a service in which users can see what Web sites their friends are visiting. That allows the company to collect information about what sites have “buzz” at any given time, said Kimbal Musk, the company’s chief executive. Me.dium will use that information to rearrange and supplement Yahoo’s search results, creating a service that captures the “social zeitgeist” of the Web, Mr. Musk said.

  • “We think that for a good percentage of searches, we’ll get people to where they want to go a lot faster than regular search engines,” Mr. Musk said. He said it would have been impossible for Me.dium to create a search service on its own.

    Yahoo estimates that it would cost $300 million to build a search service from scratch.

  • 1 more annotation(s)...

  • After you decide on a gateway, you’ll need a merchant account, or someone who can actually process the credit card transactions. If it’s starting to sound tricky, don’t worry because obtaining a merchant account is easy. Authorize.net has a list of approved resellers for you to choose from. We went with United Bank Card because they had a respectable-looking web site, a solid reputation, friendly customer service reps, and competitive pricing. The application process consisted of filling out and faxing some basic business information and waiting a couple days for approval. Once approved, they provide us with an Authorize.net login and transaction code to get our store up and running.
  • Some vendors such as PayPal are all-in-one solutions and provide a merchant account along with a payment gateway. This might seem more attractive and less of a hassle, but tends to come at a cost. With Paypal, you’re charged between 2.2% to 2.9% plus .30c per transaction. With the merchant account/Authorize.net combo, you should be able to negotiate somewhere around 2% plus 20c per transaction. All of the merchant account providers are selling the same product, so don’t be afraid to haggle a little. In the long run, every cent counts.

  • What is a Gateway?
        

    In short, a gateway connects your ecommerce Website to your merchant account.

      

    The gateway facilitates online payments by connecting your secure order form with your specific merchant account at a processing bank. The gateway takes the submitted form data and presents it to the processing bank. When it receives a response from the bank, it presents that return data to the site of origin for appropriate handling.

      

    The gateway itself doesn't provide ecommerce features such as shopping carts, Web hosting, or merchant accounts, although, as you'll see, many larger gateway providers do offer additional services like these.

  • Platform . Much of the promise described in the Book about Google Chrome (Charmingly cartooned by Scott McCloud, but a 2 page doc would have been an easier read) is about the platform. Improved security, enhanced performance, and an architecture that makes plugins and extensions easier. It’s hard to test or evaluate these things in an afternoon. I definitely liked their story for what they’re doing and why, but platform plays require getting FireFox and IE developers to take advantage: a long and slow process, no matter how amazing the new kid on the block is.
Mar
30
2008

  • Somehow, I find myself trusting Diigo more than Facebook, although you   can connect to Facebook via Diigo. What's also present is the potential   for "Diigo-spam." Ok, I've spammed everyone in my addressbook. I can't   remember the last time I did it, but I hope that if you received an   email via Diigo from me, you'll jump in and give this a try. If you   don't want to, hit delete. Do I think Diigo is that powerful a tool?   Well, yes. It offers something Delicious doesn't--groups, and a base of   operations that interfaces with other tools. If I could share   information using Diigo, ohmygosh, one ring to rule them all. 

     

      One of the other aspects of Diigo I liked was that the Diigo crew is   hopping to improve things. Importing bookmarks from Delicious API wasn't   working well (i had to try 3-4 times), so they came up with an   alternative way to accomplish the import. Dean   Shareski complained about the interface, and they re-did the user   interface. There's also talk of creating an education (student) friendly   Diigo.... 

  • Easy group subscription - I wish there was a URL I could share with   people. They click on it, and bam, if they have a Diigo account,   they're subscribed. If they lack an account, it walks them through the   process then makes sure to hook them up with the group. I just don't   see how to do it easily now.
Mar
29
2008

  • During the assignment, students are at first skeptical that they will find anyone with similar interest. Usually it is not till they find a “Gem,” or exciting link, through someone else’s tags that they see the value in the exercise. More importantly, the assignment hammers home the ways in which social bookmarking can help them become part of a network of scholars, collaborating albeit indirectly at times.
     After a few weeks of my stressing the importance of effective tagging and annotation, however, students are often a bit disappointed with the disorder they see in the tags of others. I remind them, “That’s right. Stay off the streets. It’s two clicks from chaos out there.”
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