Today's publishers need to think beyond the fixed location of their website and fully integrate with the large hubs of user activity on the desktop, mobile phone, social networks, blogs, and web pages at large. Syndication and widgets power new opportunities to carry content beyond the walls of a single site and into some of the largest brands in the world yet some publishers still haven't gotten the message. I recorded a 1-hour video presentation earlier this week to better explain the syndication and widget landscape to web publishers.
Social computing has changed the way we interact with the Web. Our information consumption and production benefits from the participation of the crowd in its various forms, creating niche audiences and new types of curators independent of space and time. We're connected to local experts on hiking, cooking, parenting, programming, and much more. Yet social media extends beyond the realm of content creators, bolstered by the comments, ratings, rankings, sharing, and reading masses that help us find the content we seek. Forrester Research released a report last week, Social Technographics, detailing levels of social media participation among 10,000 adults and…
Rich Internet applications are stepping out of the web browser and onto the desktop, helped along by a new set of toolkits. Web developers are able to code against desktop resources using familiar languages and toolkits such as JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, or HTTP interactions. Offline access for web applications is about much more than planes, trains, and automobiles — it can accelerate performance and integrate with established desktop interactions as well. Offline web applications are a hot topic, but often misunderstood. In this week's podcast I step beyond the myths of offline web applications with special guest Brad Neuberg….
Last Friday I visited Six Apart's headquarters in San Francisco to talk about widgets with Byrne Reese. Byrne is the former product manager of TypePad, currently a product manager of Movable Type, and a developer of plugins and widgets used in both products. Byrne and I talked about the current state of widgets in Six Apart's four blogging products: TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, and Vox. Our 25-minute conversation about Six Apart widgets is available as a 11 MB audio download. I will summarize a few highlights from our conversation below. Listen to Niall Kennedy interview Byrne Reese of Six Apart…
Rasmus Lerdorf led OSCON attendees through a series of optimizations for modern web applications using PHP at O'Reilly's Open Source conference today. Most programmers use default installations and configurations for their web applications and never really dig deep within their stack or their own code to optimize page load and latency. The full slides from Rasmus's talk are available online and I recorded audio of the entire session from the front row. Rich web applications make better use of browser user interfaces through the use of less visible round-trips to the server (through AJAX or other methods). These new…
Widgets are taking over the web, small pieces at a time. Big web destinations are opening their templates to custom configurations by users and pre-configurations with special partners. Mix and match your favorite content from around the web on your personal start page from Microsoft, Google, or Netvibes. Share a few live and always updating bits of information in your blog sidebar using widgets on WordPress or TypePad. Small(er) businesses can leverage the huge distributions of users across most of the top web properties. Over half of the top Internet companies for home users currently open up their pages for…
Seth Sternberg of Meebo joined me and Om on this week's edition of Om and Niall PodSessions covering the latest trends and developments in instant messaging. Microsoft and Yahoo! launched new versions of their messaging software this week, including many features I will never use. What do end users want from their instant messaging software? Seth doesn't think the big portals have added a new feature that users have been clammoring for in years. Chinese company Tencent has captured about two-thirds of the Chinese market with its QQ client. Estonian company Skype has enjoyed tremendous success with its P2P and…
Last night Om and I sat down with Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of open-source blogging software WordPress and a recent founder of Automattic to record our latest PodSession. Automattic is a software services company centered around the WordPress blogging platform. We chatted about how to successfully scale a new web application. WordPress.com currently hosts about 200,000 blogs with mirrored hosting in San Diego and Dallas. Matt and I agreed that it's best not to over-optimize at the beginning but instead sit back and watch the actual usage of your web application to fine-tune. Check out Cal Henderson's new book,…
Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are showing off their latest gaming consoles this week at E3 in Los Angeles. Xbox 360, Wii, and PlayStation 3 each feature an ethernet jack and online gaming experiences built-in. These new devices are increasing demand for HDTV, broadband, and networking gear in the home. Game developers are able to push out new content after the game has shipped, or introduce smaller, more niche games through a console maker's online marketplace. The connected console is changing the way games are made and causing consumers to rethink their living rooms. Om and I cover these topics and…
I few weeks ago Tom Raftery interviewed me over Skype as part of his weekly PodLeaders podcast. We chatted about Technorati, Macs, Microsoft, podcasting, and many more topics I've been meaning to blog about. Tom is a fellow Irishman and some of my answers are aimed at a European audience. I've briefly answered the questions from the podcast below. You can listen to the entire interview for my full responses to questions from Tom and his listeners. I recorded the interview from my home at 8 a.m. after a brief cup of tea, so hopefully it all makes sense. Can…
Want to found a startup! First you should go to school and learn a few things. Last Saturday's Startup School at Stanford brought together about 600 people from across the country and in some cases the world to learn what it takes to take a business from zero to profit without going broke. Om and I both attended and talked about the event and the current environment for new startups in this week's PodSession. The event was organized by Y Combinator, a venture firm focused on seed funding for geeky projects. Students in the Y Combinator program can try startup…
Om and I received a variety of feedback last week as podcast listeners stood up against research reports about podcasts and their audiences. Some people thought a 20-minute discussion of hot tech news was just right and others wanted even shorter, more digestible chunks. This week Om and I recorded two 10-minute podcasts to try something new and introduce a little variety. It was also tough to pick just one topic this week since both Apple and Google had big announcements last Wednesday. You're being watched Your cellular carrier knows where you are at all times. Pinpointing your location helps…
I want high speed Internet everywhere. Forget the WiFi hotspot locator attached to your keychain or the questionable reliability of a local cafe, I want a reliable and fast connection everywhere I go, even if it's on a train or car moving 60 mph. Thankfully the cellular phone industry is up to the task and rolling out wireless data connections with up to 3 Mb/s in the San Francisco Bay area and other large metropolitan areas throughout the U.S. These new mobile technologies are known as EV-DO or HSDPA depending on the carrier and are delivering high enough speed…
In this week's PodSession Om and I talk about online storage and the increased need to backup your digital lifestyle. The launch of Amazon's Simple Storage Service was just the beginning of online storage utilities. Companies such as Amazon help people feel their data is safe with a company that already manages large amounts of data and will be in business for a long while. We are starting to see some enterprise-level backup and storage technologies applied to the consumer space. Home computer users are consuming more and more storage space by ripping CD collections, downloading music and movies, and…
In this week's episode of Om and Niall PodSessions Om and I talk about Google Finance, the latest piece of the search company's portal play. According to Hitwise, 10% of Google UK's visitors clicked out to Business and Finance sites last week. Yahoo! Finance received .02% of those clicks. Is Google in denial about its move towards a portal service? I liked the new Google Finance, especially the chart overlays and integration with other Google products. Om found the new product lacking a few of his favorite features from Yahoo! Finance such as institutional holdings and insider trading. A search…
In this week's PodSession Om and I discuss voice and mobile technologies currently available for platform integration. When does it make sense for a web application to add voice or mobile capabilities? What are the costs and benefits? Are so called "web 2.0" companies just shinier versions of existing applications? Is anyone actually pushing the envelope and inventing entirely new industries? IP-based voice applications have already changed the way we think about communicating online. Mobile phones are now common tools of daily communication with relatively fast data connections with always-on access to the Web and focused data. Why are we…
In this week's episode of Om and Niall PodSessions we talk about newly popularized methods of interaction within web applications. JavaScript, Ajax, and Flash have all seen a huge surge in demand and mindshare over the past year. What is the current state of the technology and is there enough talent to step up and fill the demand? JavaScript developers need to account for a variety of different implementations and parsers across browser platforms. You need to apply special tricks and hacks to the interaction experience consistent and dependable. I'd prefer to develop for the latest version of Firefox only…
In this week's episode of Om and Niall PodSessions we discussed the current state of online privacy and the options presented to users with their choice of product and features. Do users pay any attention to EULAs? Does anyone realize what data is being stored about them online and shared with advertisers and potentially governments? This week's podsession, Online privacy: who's watching you?, is 29 minutes long and a 13 MB download. Tags: privacyonlineprivacy…
The latest episode of Om and Niall PodSessions is now available. This week Om and I talk about VoIP and the new applications with seamless integration of new voice technologies. A recent study by In-Stat found 73% of all VoIP subscribers have migrated to VoIP without making a conscious decision to adopt the new technology. On Sunday my dad asked me about Vonage, and the various boxes he saw advertised with the services in the Sunday newspaper inserts. To him, Vonage was just another long distance provider and happened to have cheap rates to call Ireland. He had no clue…
On this week's episode of Om and Niall PodSessions Om and I discuss changes in the search industry over the past week and their implications for future business development around the world. This week's session is titled search around the world as we cover the changing landscape in the United States, Europe, and Asia in about 20 minutes. The DOJ paid Google a visit this week after the company refused to hand over search logs and information for its hundreds of millions of users. The long list of requested data made online users realize just how much personal information is…
The latest episode of OnPodSessions, When to sell out, is now available for download. This week Om and I talk about large companies acquiring startups, what they are looking for, and how various startups position themselves. The selling out podcast is 23 minutes long and a 10.6 MB download. Last week I read a blog post and PowerPoint presentation by Joel Toledano of Yahoo! Search's business development team. The presentation and blog post was a follow-up to an entrepreneurial event organized by CalTech and MIT. I felt like the presentation suggested small companies need approach Yahoo! about being acquired and…
The latest episode of Om and Niall PodSessions is now available for your listening pleasure. This week Om and I talk about the latest consumer electronics announcements from CES over the last week and some of the emerging trends for new gadgets in the living room. I liked the Intel Core Duo announcement and its energy-efficient design. New laptops utilizing the technology have over 11 hours of battery life! I was also impressed by XM Radio's new XM Passport hardware, a tiny 1.5″ square satellite radio tuner that can be inserted into multiple devices similar to a SIM card. Om…
Om and I sat down this week to discuss the current and future state of video creation and distribution technologies. We both expect many video-related announcements from this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that will bring a wider variety of video consumption products into the living room. We also talked about new ways for amateurs to create and share videos online and using specialized portable hardware such as the iPod video. I don't think any search company currently is doing a good job indexing video content. Even audio content has been a big challenge. Closed-captioning provides a bridge…
The latest of Om and Niall PodSessions is now available. This week Om and I talk about the emergence of paid placement or prioritization of services on networks run by broadband providers such as your cable or telephone company. Cable and phone operators currently prioritize the handling of data packets from their own services flowing across the network. A call placed using a carrier's Internet telephony product will receive priority handling ahead of calls placed using competing services such as Skype or Vonage. The carriers are now in discussion with other businesses dependent on fast delivery of their content to…
The latest episode of Om and Niall PodSessions is now available. This week's theme is APIs and the new opportunities for service providers, developers, and end users. Kevin Burton of TailRank joined us to add an independent developer perspective to this week's discussion. This week's session is 26 minutes and 28 seconds in length and a 12.2 MB download. Topics Amazon introduced its Alexa web search platform on Monday. The new services give developers the ability to use content from Alexa's crawler data and other web services in a hosted environment. Amazon is letting developers upload their own data, process…
