Now this Sounds Sweet (Phweet) – voice calls via Twitter

This post on Tech Crunch UK – Start voice calls via Twitter? No way! Way. – is very cool and sounds pretty exciting. Its too bad I am on holiday today and have an afternoon packed with playing with the kids (its still hot so water fight later in the garden!). Let face it its much better to be playing in the real world than being a tech geek online . But I will be sure to check out Phweet tomorrow.

Super Simple and Super Useful – drop.io

I’ve been using drop.io for awhile now and it continues to amaze me how useful this very simple service is. From the about section on the site:

A drop is a chunk of space you can use to store and share anything privately (pictures, videos, audio, documents, etc.), without accounts, registration, or an email address. Drops are not “searchable” and not “networked;” they just exist online as private points for exchange between individuals or groups.

You drop files and even can now start “dropcasting” things. I am sure that all sorts of new, wild and cool ways to use this “atomic” service to do many more useful and bigger things is well underway. By “atomic” I mean this service is simple and boiled down to the minimal essence of what is needed, but it can be combined with other things to create cool stuff.

Drop.io recently announced a partnership with Scribd’s iPaper and raised $2.7 mllion in series A funding earlier this year. A service to use and a company to watch.

The Industry Standard – relaunches as a beta

Well, I am not sure this is good news or a sign that we really are at the tail end of a the bubble 2.0? The Industry Standard has relaunched. I was a big fan of the orginally Standard back during the dotcom bubble 1.0 – it always had good reporting and a lot info on start-ups. Plus it had a nice format as a printed version weekly magazine (I think it was weekly?)… This time it appears to be 100% online and includes a socail networking and a prediction market angle. I will be reading and watching the site to see if its worths adding to the blogroll.

Wikia Search in Public Alpha

This is cool, innovative and completely pushing the envelop of wikinomics and wikiness… The Wiki Search engine from founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, is now available. A good overview piece in the NYT is here. Check it out, do a search and help build it – Wiki Search.

Docoloco a cool Web 2.x Social Network for Local Search

Docoloco is a new entry into the user generated local info space with a couple of unique features and a fresh approach. btw – I did a previous post on Docoloco when they launched back in July – which didn’t deserve to live (=lame post) so I deleted it.

Now let’s try to explain what this site is all about – it is an innovative twist on user generated content (UGC) meets social networking meets local search (as in a business directory, IYP)… My initial take is that the site is some combo of: UGC + social network + a pinch of yahoo answers + a pinch of yelp + Google maps (of course) + lists (some secret sauce) + ajax/ruby-on-rails UI = Docoloco!

What I like:

• Site creates lists of related entries based on folksonomy
• the look and feel of the user interface
• the design and look (nice logo!) of the site
• presentation of the data and maps
• asking questions
• global coverage (not just one country, but in theory world wide coverage)
• post to blog feature

what I didn’t like:

• not very intuitive to navigate around
• some parts of the UI hard to follow, input validations tricky
• not much help or FAQs
• geo data validation is funky for UK
• search and navigation could be improved

I am sure the founders have a ton of changes and improvements planned, so this is just an initial view [not a full(er) view]. I definitely think they are onto something here. The list feature and global coverage is sweet. I will watch and continue to use the site see how it develops. The founders have significant experience in local search, so I would bet some money this site does get better. Johnny Cussen one of the founders, who I know personally, has worked for both Looksmart & Sensis). The other founder, Chris Mander has a serious web design background, we used him to help with UI deisgn while I was working at FAST.

I hope to see Docoloco get some traction. If I were a VC or angle investor I’d be contacting them for sure.

I plan to do a follow-up post or update to this one with a little bit of a deeper dive into key features and a profile on the company when I get a chance.

Be sure to check out the great intro video on the site or below:

Here are some screen shots of what you will find on Docoloco (note: just click on the thumb nails to get the fullsize image).

1. Sample business entry with a map:

2. Sample ratings page:

3. Sample list (ie, list of related businesses):

4. Sample homepage, with live update of what’s happening (ala – Facebook):

Amazon Launching new eBook today

The big news on Techmeme and all the major blogs is the launch of the Amazon eBook – Newsweek had the exclusive scoop. Its called the Kindle.

I’ve been thinking about eBook’s lately and agree that this is going to be interesting to watch. For now I an convinced people will read that many books on e-readers. I do see a solid play for them to replace newspapers, magazines and other mobile devices as the choice for reading blogs and other ephemeral media etc. The killer aspect of real books is that you use them without any juice and you can give them away (no DRM). DRM sucks in the real world of people, it limits sharing for start! Sharing is also part of the free marketing aspect we get with books. Plus how can you resell an eBook and how can you make notations? The other thing is you can put books and othr paper based media in a pocket, fold it up, leave in the rain and it still works…

I can also see these eBooks being great for travelers and commuters. I am still thinking I want to get an e-reader myself and see if I will use it on regular basis.

News 2.0 – Daily Me and News at Seven

Both of these news sites/services look very cool. I am going to try them both out. They both look very different. Daily Me looks like a great approach for pulling together a personalised newspaper online and even gives you the option to print (they work with many major news organisations). While News at Seven is a very Web 2.x looking service – as you get an avatar to read your news show. This could be fun…

New Stuff from and Data on NetVibes

The other day, I posted briefly about the iGoogle presonal homepage service I use and it made me wonder abotu usage of other similar service such as NetVibes. TechCrunch UK has a post of earlier in the week that answers my questions.

- 2 years of operation, 25m unique personalisation pages. 69 countries.

That’s pretty impressive – 25 million personal pages. I wonder how active they are?

NetVibes have also just announced a “social widgets platform they have dubbed ‘Ginger’” – which looks very interesting. Here’s a little more on the story from the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin from TechC UK:

What’s next?

Netvibes has been a personal start page for a long time. A question we ask is we could try to be a social network. But we can’t do that, it’s too late. So what about tapping into an existing social network?

Netvibes + UWA + social APIs = Social Widgets everywhere

The full story is here and below is a diagram that explains the ecosystem.

AdJug and Ad Marketplaces

Here’s my follow-up post on the Affiliates 4 U Expo I attend last month. The most interesting presentation I attended was not even about affiliate marketing. This was the lunchtime slot preso by Satish Jayakumar who is the co-founder of AdJug. Satish’s talk was both interesting and polished. I knew Satish back when we both worked at Espotting (now Miva) in 2002-03.

AdJug is a UK start-up in the online advertising space – specifically they run an ad marketplace for publshers and advertisers. They have secured funding from Benchmark capital and are one of the hotter looking start-ups in the European digital advertising space. One to watch for sure. Competitors would be companies like Adify, AdBrite and ContextWeb. This is very much a Web 2.x space, by this I mean it’s on the leading edge of online advertising today. In this space there is innovation, push for transparency and an array different areas focus (from top tier publishers to micro-publishers, vertical networks etc).

An ad marketplace is different from an ad network and an ad exchange. This was explain eloquently during the presentation. Unlike an network or even an ad exchange both the publihser and advertiser get more control and more transparency (for example: pricing specifics, ad placement control, etc). Below is one of the slides that show how and marketplace fits into the on-line advertising ecosystem. You can also see the complete slide deck of the presentation on Slideshare over here.

Company Profile
Name: AdJug
Location: London, UK
Founded: 2007
Space: Online Advertising (Ad Marketplace)
Website: http://www.adjug.com
Related Blog: Satish – http://carnelite.blogspot.com/
Founders: Satish Jayakumar and Michael Stephanblome
Funding: $2 Million, Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark Capital Europe)
Most Similar Companies: Adify, AdBrite, ContextWeb
Hot or Not: Hot, like late spring

AdJug is an online advertising marketplace. It connects buyers and sellers of online advertising and provides them with transparency, control and choice. Publishers can take control of their online inventory to increase their earnings and advertisers can run better campaigns because they know where each conversion and traffic is coming from. AdJug seeks to become Europe’s leading online advertising marketplace.

Social Networking Hype and 7 Rules for Success

Wow, what a week or couple of weeks it has been for the hype around social networking. Please don’t get me wrong, I am a user of and believer in social networking/media serevices and sites. Plus, the wider trend in Social Media is one of the really useful and fun areas of Web 2.0 that definitely delievers something of value. I believe it is here to stay.

Namely we had the Google-MySpace OpenSocial announcement. Plus continued speculation and analysis around Facebook post the Microsoft investment and the OpenSocial stuff.

The Scoble Starfish is a great way to explain the space. Love it – so here it is again!

Here is my first crack, lets call it an alpha version, at Social Networking’s top 7 rules (please take note product managers and developers):

1. People will only maintain a limited number of profiles (probably less than 5, avg. 3)
2. Switching costs are moderate to big, more like email or a new website or moving a new laptop than web search
3. There is a spectrum of needs (or use cases) in the Social Media space, see the ’starfish’, focus on one arm
4. Metcalfe’s Law does not apply
5. Usability that is either fun or delivers some value is key, make a great UI and it will grow the user base
6. An open API for 3^rd party developers is a must have
7. Mobile use or access is still wide open for someone to set the bar
8. Bonus: Get out of jail free – it is early days for Social Networking – let’s see how things play out as we move to Web 2.x

Please suggest additions! I want to expand this to 10 for the beta.