Posts from June 2006

Yahoo! Local has added microformats support -- including hCard, hReview, and hCal markup -- to almost all of its business listings, search results, events, and reviews. The new markup allows parsers of Yahoo! Local pages such as web browsers and search engine to automatically recognize the structured contact, review, and calendar data present on Yahoo! Local pages. Yahoo! Local is an entry point for small businesses on the web. The new markup should help Yahoo! market its listing services as optimized for machines and humans, giving businesses optimal exposure for their extended listings. The new microformats markup on Yahoo!...

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A poster child of the dot-com boom, LinuxCare has rebranded itself "Levanta," raised another round of capital. BusinessWeek profiles the company though it's rise and fall and attempt to rise again and I found the details rather amusing. Levanta sounds a lot like erectile disfunction drug Levitra but it's possible the company may be able to get their finances up again. Renaming the company seems like an attempt to hide from its past, which BusinessWeek covers in detail. Some highlights from the company's history. Raised over $70 million in venture capital, including big names such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield &...

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Lately when talking about the Atom Publishing Protocol I can't help but think of O.P.P. from Naughty By Nature. I don't remember how it first got in my head, but now that it's there I feel the need to share this brain worm. You down with A.P.P.? Yeah, you know me. A.P.P. how can I explain it I'll take you frame by frame it To have y'all jumpin' shall we singin' it A is for Atom P is for Publishing scratchin' letters The last P...well...that's not that simple Geeky protocols meet early 90s rap music. Army with harmony....

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Yahoo! Messenger now supports plugins, allowing developers to reach a potential audience of 60 million users inside their IM client with HTML and JavaScript. The new plugins can be integrated directly into a chat window or inside a user's contact list view. Messenger plugins provide easy access to a user's favorite content but they can also interact with a contact and his or her actions. If your baseball-loving friend logs in the scoreboard plugin could be activated so you have something current to talk about. You can even pre-format a message with the latest statistic from the game. The...

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Windows Live just released its first official product, taking the beta tag off Messenger and opening it up to the other 90% of its users. Windows Live Messenger adds a new UI for 240 million users of the application formerly known as MSN Messenger. The new IM client allows you to place a call from your PC to any phone, connecting PSTN networks to the soft client through a relationship with Verizon. All Messenger contacts are synchronized using the Windows Live Contacts across Mail, Spaces, and soon other services such as Mobile. Offline messaging is in there too. My favorite...

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When I think of standards I think of the Stephenson gauge. Two pieces of steel laid at 4' 8.5" apart carries rail traffic for 60% of the world's railroads. The standard has been around for centuries, allowing easy interoperability between rail lines from different companies and countries, creating new and cheaper opportunities for commerce around the world. Railroad companies did not always believe in the power of standards but eventually came together for big contracts and their rewards. Next Friday I will lead a discussion at Bloggercon IV about the affects of standards on the lives of users. How...

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Box.net had humble beginnings as a Berkeley class project to revamp an industry in need of change. Aaron Levie (pictured above) and his cofounders thought online storage, backup, and sharing could use a makeover and they built a prototype and business reasoning for the class. Fellow students bought-in and encouraged the team to further develop the service in exchange for a few dollars a month. Box.net currently offers 1 gigabyte of free storage, with upgrades available starting at $5 for 5 GB. They don't offer the most free space or the cheapest but see their strength as integration with...

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Fabrik creates smart networked attached storage software and online storage to help home users backup and share their digital media assets such as music, photos, and videos. Fabrik's founders were previously executives on Maxtor's OneTouch line of storage products, a product line with hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly revenue, and have spent many years thinking about the networked and online storage space. Fabrik's software is included in Maxtor's new Fusion line of networked storage. The first product launched on Thursday, and Dave Tang of Fabrik came by SF Tech Sessions on Thursday evening to show us the...

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Amazon shook up the world of onlien storage with the introduction of Simple Storage Service (S3) in mid-March. The web service is aimed at developers, providing REST and SOAP access to file storage and retrieval for 15 cents a month for a gigabyte of storage and 20 cents for each gigabyte transferred. The service has BitTorrent support built-in, and developers have extended developed many libraries and services in the three months since its launch. I was lucky enough to have Jeff Barr of Amazon present on S3 at this month's SF Tech Sessions. Amazon needs to store its own...

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Live.com is sporting a new look tonight and I like it. The new header graphic draws attention to the search box and login, two services that help drive revenue. The Live.com homepage now has five different groups of preselected gadgets for users to fill up their homepage quickly. You can choose a basic set (news, weather, stocks), a news set, sports set, entertainment set, or all of the above. There is even a set of World Cup gadgets to help you track the latest soccer information on every visit. The soccer page includes videos tagged "worldcup" on YouTube, image...

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