USAToday.com just posted a Question & Answer session with Apple’s Steve Jobs and AT&T’s Randall Stephenson. A must read if you are at all interested in Apple or the soon to launch iPhone. Steve Jobs is the master of not disclosing to much information, but giving enough so we are interested.
In what is a regular feature here on Webtribution.com, we are doing Q & A’s with the people who matter in the current “Web 2.0” online environment. Today we hear from goowy media Founder & CEO Alex Bard. goowy media is the creator of popular and award winning widget provider yourminis.
Kieran: How did yourminis start?
Alex: yourminis.com, launched in October, 2006, is a property of goowy media, inc. goowy was started in mid 2004 in San Diego, California, by 4 friends (Alex Bard, Gary Benitt, Jeremy Suriel and Sashi Bommakanty) who have worked and played together for the last 10 years. After taking some time off and investing in a few restaurants, we decided to do get back into Internet application development. We went into a year of heads down development, and we finally launched the Beta version of goowy mail in March of 2005. Since then goowy has evolved into a personal web top with email, contacts, calendaring, integrated IM, minis (the basis for yourminis.com), file storage, games and more.
Kieran: What exactly is yourminis?
Alex: yourminis is a widget platform which simplifies the development, syndication, and measurement of widgets for content owners & 3rd party developers, and offers a social library of widgets for end user discovery while also providing advertisers a new way to engage the consumer with their brand & message.
For content owners / advertisers / 3rd party developers yourminis offers…
For consumers…
Kieran: What are your opinions of widgets and what, if any, future they will play online?
Alex: The widget space is still in its infancy. We are at a point where companies are looking to widgetize their content for added distribution and awareness. In the future you will see contextualization (better intelligent understanding of where your widgets reside) that will ultimately lead to monetization opportunities.
Kieran: What does the future hold for yourminis?
Alex: We are currently working with large media companies and big brands to help them develop, launch and measure their widget strategies. We are in a state of de-portalization of the web and big and small companies alike have to be willing to deliver their services and content to where users are, not where they want them to be. That has been a big driven of the widget phenomenon.
Kieran: What are your thoughts on “Web 2.0”
Alex: Web 2.0 means so many things to so many people. It’s about a new way of thinking about development, wisdom of the crowd, social networks, user experience, destroying Chinese walls, standards, fast product development and iteration, real time user feedback, etc…the future is the continued movement in this direction with more and more companies and end users adopting these principles.
The future will be more semantic, and contextual. The web and applications being able to deliver you more relevant timely data to filter through all of the static. The future is about not making a conscious choice to "go online" but rather a conscious choice to "go offline", it will be about the web delivering content through other devices, TV, car, phone, refrigerator, etc.
To learn more about yourminis, visit their website – yourminis.com.
HR.com announced today the launch of their newly redesigned and "Web 2.0" enhanced website. HR.com is a free website that connects companies with the "knowledge and resources" to effectively manage the people side of business. HR.com is the largest online community for "human capital" professionals with over 150,000 members worldwide. "HR.com has always been a pioneer when it comes to delivering leading-edge HR content and resources. This new website takes HR professionals to a whole other level by leveraging Web 2.0 technology to connect them with real-world solutions to real-world challenges," says Debbie McGrath, CEO, HR.com.
Some of the standard social networking / web 2.0 features HR.com has added:
So after looking at that list, what they have done is create a pretty standard community based website. Webcast’s, Blog’s, Wiki’s, Poll’s, Survey’s…yup they got the basics covered alright. Since this is a very targeted and specific social network I am actually happy to see they did not go overboard with features and functionality. Nothing is worse then a poorly designed website that confuses more then it helps.
IBM’s Center for The Business of Government released a new report today that talks about how Web 2.0 - the rise of Social Networks and Blogging - have impacted today’s Government. Basically, the report covers all aspects of how government officials have utilized and can benefit from these tools when communicating with their constituents. It is easy to forget that most of today’s elected officials have not taken advantage of these “new technologies”, they are normally tools for the public and well funded politicians.
The Report, which was put together by Dr. David C. Wyld a Professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, goes into great detail when describing how elected officials have started to leverage the Internet to improve communication at all levels - internally and externally. The report also touches on how Corporate America has taken advantage of blogging and social networking to not only build businesses but communicate with investors and employees.
The report gives some really interesting examples of how blogging and social networking has been integrated into the Government, Military and Corporate American. After reading it I did not feel that I learned anything that wasn’t already common knowledge, but it was interesting none the less. It is a long read, but very interesting - click here to download the PDF.
I have a problem, I have a list of tasks that I need to get done - but they never do of course. Therefore, today I started to look for a Web 2.0 service that can do a better job of managing my ever expanding list of tasks. The first thing I did was ask a developer friend if he knew of a solution. He directed me to “Remember the Milk“, which is in Beta even though it has been around for 2+ years. So what is the big deal? In terms of Web 2.0 sexiness task management must rank at the bottom. True. But, Remember the Milk got me hooked right away with the level of features this simple application provided.
Some of the things you can do with Remember the Milk…
So will “Remember the Milk” help me organize or just add to the chaos? Only time will tell.
