metarand

Web 2.i – It’s Time To Enter Beta

Elias Bizannes has written a post about the Web 2.0 era and what’s next. His post is titled It’s all still alpha in my eyes, and he’s issued a call out to get metarand’s views.

First up, I’d say it is high time we realized that Web 2.0 has entered beta – as Elias points out and as we saw at the recent Web 2.0 Expo, big business has entered the space – big time.

Secondly, I’d like to postulate that this beta version of the web should be called Web 2.i. Here’s why I’m adding the “i”:

* iPhone: I agree with Elias that the mobile web will be a big part of this next phase, that is, the mobile web as defined by the iPhone. This device has created a ripple that will radically alter the mobile pond;

* meshed data/presence: The “i” in dataportability will coalesce with the “i” in presence (go with me on this) to create a far more integrated individual web experience.

In short, I agree with the twitterquote from Dave Winer in Elias’s post: Web 2.0 is now over.

It’s time for Web 2.i…

[Pictures courtesy of bwr, saufnase]

Video Comments Du Jour On Metarand

I’m really excited to announce that metarand is one of the first sites to have installed the video comments plugin from Seesmic.

This takes commenting on blog posts to a whole new level of engagement. I look forward to seeing many of you on comment threads from here on in.

Seesmic is currently invite-only and pre launch. However, you can simply set your comments to anonymous. {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/fh5dx3aJt8_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”Video Comments Du Jour On Metarand ”}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/1n8C8f8HGb”}}}

Microsoft Provides Mesh for Apps/Data, But Fails On Interoperability

I’ve covered DataPortability. I’m experimenting with Friendfeed. I share apps across my Macbook Pro and iPhone.

However, I still feel there is a long way to go before we reach true seamless interoperability of data, connections, applications and devices.

And so I am very excited by Microsoft’s preview beta launch of Live Mesh, a feed-centric programming model.

The promise is that:

Live Mesh puts you at the center of your digital world, seamlessly connecting you to the people, devices, programs, and information you care about – available wherever you happen to be.

That is a very noble sentiment. I applaud Ray Ozzie’s vision.

But wait a minute – this only works on devices running Microsoft software. I fully understand that they are only at beta. I also hear their plaintive cry, but we are bringing out Mac and mobile versions later this year.

Fail. They should have built in true interoperability from the get go, across all devices – period. Doing so in stages can only lead to a Here, there, everywhere patchwork.

UPDATE: Former Microsoftie Robert Scoble has gushed his views out. Yes I also like the dialogic RSS capability, by Robert you sum up why its a fail before its even out of the blocks:

Mac support? Coming in the future. Nokia support? Unclear. iPhone support? Ask Steve Jobs (translation: will be very limited due to Apple’s complete control of that platform). Firefox support? Yes! Linux support? What’s that?

[Via TechCrunch]

Twitter Safe From Ads, Blogging Takes One On The Nose

I noticed a feed yesterday that Twitter was planning on including ads. To be honest I took this as a possible fait accompli and didn’t dive into the article.

But a dialogue on Twitter between Obvious’s Ev Williams and Techcrunch‘s Mike Arrington alerted me that someting was awry – the gist of it: “what has Duncan Riley done to piss off one of the Valleys entrepreneur heavyweights, this time.”

Turns out Duncan blogged on Techcrunch about Twitter becoming ad-supported without checking with the Twitter team. This has sparked a flame of comments about Duncan’s blogging, which I won’t dive into here – suffice it to say I really like having (at least one) an Aussie blogging for one of the bigger tech blogs. [An aside: this is of course a reference to the demise of Nik Cubrilovic as a Techcrunch insider and contributor]

What is perhaps more interesting though, is the question this raises around blogging versus old media. I agree with Nate Westheimer that veracity is paramount, but speed is soooo sweet too. Think about it – stories I’ve filed with the old media can take weeks to surface in the newspapers, whereas blog posts are instant. In addition, blogs can react quickly — see my previous post re Peerinfluence as a perfect example…

Where is the trend taking us though? I believe that old media will continue to wane as long as it makes readers wait for stories, but I also believe that blogging will continue to lift its game and the major blogs will get better at fact checking especially if they want to be seen as credible.

Innovation Bay goes socially mobile

This morning was standing room only at Innovation Bay’s December breakfast event.

Click here to listen to Ben Keighran, founder of Bluepulse, wax lyrical about mobile social networking and his insights on Silicon Valley.

[Photo courtesy of Alan Jones. Find more here.]

Always On Virtual Worlds: Mobiles to increase presence

Chris Sherman Joey Seiler over at Virtual Worlds News has written an insightful piece about how the virtual world arena will intersect with the world of mobiles.

The vision of always on, ubiquitous virtual worlds is a compelling one and will make itself known through what I call the QuadPlay — web+mobile+virtual+real world. Think real world map overlays, sensor networks and embedded systems and you will begin to see the future in this area.

For now though, I point to Google’s move onto the mobile stack and the interest being shown by companies like Alcatel, Cisco, Qualcomm and IBM and as I commented on Chris’s article: it’s not too much of a stretch to see these guys making a play for embedded virtual world/gaming capabilities on mobile handsets in the next now.

Metarand is hatched on Halloween

I’ve recently been interviewed by HatchThat’s Ross Hill.

It’s a broad ranged discussion covering:

• the areas I think are hot (mobile,web, virtual and real worlds — mashed);
• UGC and CICS;
• the importance of business planning versus bplans;
• iterative, extremely agile leverage of existing platforms (Facebook, Open Social); and
• the state of venture capital 2.0 (and the lack of it in Australia).

International market for social networks remains wide open

With social networks like Myspace and Facebook coming under the umbrella of global corporates like Newscorp and Microsoft, respectively, you may be thinking that it’s game over. The following stats from Jeff Pulver show just how wrong that assumption would be.

I’ve highlighted the US and Australia to show that they are relatively saturated, but just take a look at the countries with a really high number of people – China and India. Facebook is a mere blip on their radar screens.

Besides what this highlights in terms of international growth opportunities for the incumbents, there is still a lot of potential for new arrivals to grab market share globally.

In addition, with mobile phones globally standing at around 3 to 1 computer – the opportunities within the mobile social networking arena are wide open.

I am currently scouting for entrepreneurially minded mobile developers who are keen to play in this space. Ping me on Facebook.

No friendcaps: “Bluepulse rocks” says Scoble

Bluepulse founder Ben Keighran talks with Robert Scoble about their plans to build the killer app mobile social network in this video interview.

Ben gave an interesting insight into why he moved Bluepulse from Sydney to Silicon Valley:

1. Bluepulse intends running with an ad-supported service model and given that half the world’s media spend is in the US it made sense to “follow the money”.

2. Ben rightly feels that attracting top talent can be a gamechanger. Bluepulse really understands mobile, but he wanted to attract on board the right backend talent and felt the Valley is the best place to do this.

3. His vision is to build a really big company and, realising he would need venture funding to do so, he wanted to get VCs on board who could provide strategic help – he moved to the Valley to source a venture partner who could assist with Bluepulse’s hypergrowth.

Sound reasoning from an exciting company. As you’ll hear in the video, they’ll be making some announcements at CTIA in San Francisco this week.

APML Gets Attention: Newsgator Signs On

It’s a big day in the early life of the Attention Profiling Markup Language and while still a few inflection points short of being a standard, APML is gaining rapid traction: FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and Newsgator Inbox are implementing APML.

A number of other players in the attention profiling arena have also joined the APML working group – Bloglines, Ma.gnolia, Me.dium, Peepel and Talis.

There has been some good coverage of the APML goings on:
Daniela Barbosa
Marjolein Hoekstra
Elias Bizannes
Ross Dawson
Marshall Kirkpatrick