Welcome to 2007! Americans celebrate the dawning of a new year by throwing calendars out the window, watching countless games of college football sponsored by snack foods, and nursing hangovers from a night of rowdy drinking. We emerge from this haze ready to take on a new year of challenges, hopes and dreams. Let’s take a look at three top technology trends I expect will have a big influence on our tech world in 2007
Category Archives: Thoughts
Fox Interactive should host a MySpace conference
Yesterday’s Widgets Live! conference provided an overview of an industry but I think there is enough interest in the social networking space to warrant a separate conference. I think Fox Interactive Media and Adobe should partner to create a MySpace conference in the first quarter of 2007 focused on integrating your content, brand, or products on MySpace. The event would cover topics such as the development of widgets, the right and wrong way to engage a social media community, help create new SpringWidgets and outline ways to work with Fox Interactive Media for continued success. There are currently lots of…
Let your users kick it old school
I moved off Blogger shortly after Pyra Labs was acquired by Google, but I tried out the new Blogger today anyways, to see what had changed. It was a walk down memory lane best experienced with a Blogger sweatshirt, my reward for being a Blogger Pro member for a few months before they sold. Wouldn’t it be cool if Blogger Pro users had some sort of special badging in their templates to let people know they are an old school G? I might even be less likely to change blogging platforms because I like the way that special piece of…
The machines have a blog of their own
Your gadgets are blogging. Every time you take a picture, listen to a song, or play a video game you might also be blogging. Our shoes log and share our every step, our scales analyze our weight and body fat, and our cars let the world know it’s been too long since your last oil change. The creation and exposure of data from our daily lives is creating new data available for search and subscription. It’s time to rethink what we call a blog. The availability of this new data will cause us to rethink what we want to…
PodLeaders podcast interview
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…
Live Drive and online storage
Fortune magazine mentioned an upcoming product from Microsoft named Live Drive in its story on Ray Ozzie this week. It’s compared to Google’s ambitions in online storage and other large Internet companies are starting to think of different ways to search more content online. I think Google’s potential offering (GDrive) is totally different from what a company such as Yahoo, Microsoft, or even Apple might offer in terms of online storage because these large companies sell and help users create large media files. I’ll use Microsoft and its Live products, both announced and speculated, as an example but similar ideas…
Conference WiFi is a marketing play
I’m at the Emerging Technology conference in San Diego with some cool new applications and services being announced on stage and in the hallways. The problem is, no one is able to blog about what’s happening in real-time due to an almost non-existant network connection (even for presenters wanting to live demo). A thought for conference organizers: wireless connectivity is part of your marketing budget. It allows the audience to research products and sponsors, connect to other attendees to arrange meetings and get-togethers, and enables more people to attend knowing they will be able to simply connect back to the…
Making technology simple
As Silicon Valley debates the worthiness of Ajax vs. Flash and the best new way to add tagging everywhere, my parents’ VCR still blinks 12:00. My mom listens to her favorite music and radio stations on a $40 clock radio because she can never figure out the complex home theater system. In our quest for the latest and greatest technologies we may be overlooking the masses of users waiting for technologies to enrich their lives. My mom’s a blogger but doesn’t know it. She passes along chain mail and jokes to family and friends on an almost daily basis. Each…
Overheard in a San Francisco cafe
I am at Ritual Roasters this morning in San Francisco’s Mission district. This city is so geeky it’s not uncommon to see WordPress and TypePad screens on people’s laptops as they bask in free WiFi. Today is completely different. A man in bright striped pants, a t-shirt with a stretched neck line, and a modified sport coat is chatting up girls he thinks would be perfect for Suicide Girls. I have no idea if he actually works for the company or if this is some sort of new geek pickup line, but it’s hilarious to listen to. Especially with Johnny…
Elements of an ideal cafe
A am sitting at a café working and thinking of the ideals of a social yet commercial working place away from home. Le Procope created a meeting place and exchange of ideas for great minds such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and Hugo. Is it possible to create an intellectual center for geeks to match the historical cafés of the Middle East, Paris, and London? What are the essential ingredients to creating a meeting place for geeks and a birthplace of ideas and companies? Historical coffeehouses contained small libraries, bulletin boards, and self-publishing. We now use the Internet, blogs, and cell…