Yahoo! Digg clone getting traction
Posted on 14. Mar, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
Last month Yahoo! relaunched Digg clone Yahoo! Buzz with much fanfare. Just like Digg Yahoo! Buzz lets people submit articles either by a link on the article page or directly on the site; and then the user community promotes and demotes articles (social ranking). What’s different is that Yahoo! not only factors votes but also the Yahoo! search engine logs to determine popularity. The big incentive is that top stories also get listed on the Yahoo! home page. Clearly there’s some advantage to being on the front page of Yahoo! vs. Digg. Will Yahoo! Buzz be successfull or end up like like AOL’s Digg clone Propeller?
45 start-ups to watch in 2008
Posted on 14. Mar, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
The Dow Jones VentureOne Summit featured CEO’s from the top 50 start-ups to watch in 2008.
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4HomeMedia - Brad Kayton, Founder
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AdaptiveBlue - Alex Iskold, Chief Executive Officer
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Aptera Motors - Steve Fambro, Chief Executive Officer
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Cake Financial - Steven Carpenter, Chief Executive Officer
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ClearContext - Deva Hazarika, Chief Executive Officer
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Click Forensics - Tom Cuthbert, President & CEO
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Coupa Software - Dave Stephens, Chief Executive Officer
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DeviceVM - Mark Lee, President & CEO
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DigitalSmiths - Ben Weinberger, Chief Executive Officer
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Elastra - Kirill Sheynkman, President & CEO
6 Super Stars of Web 2.0
Posted on 11. Mar, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
I attended the Future of Web Applications (FOWA 08) conference in Miami and it provide d great insight into Web 2.0 and social media technology than. Most 
importantly is to see this trend through its leaders – the super stars of Web 2.0 represent a major shift in business values and culture. This list leaves out many more amazing folks than it includes; but it represent a new wave of values. Openness, passion, striving to make other peoples lives better, to add value. Web 2.0 makes that possible on many levels.
- The open source technology frameworks and APIs to build and share services and information.
- Infrastructure, cloud computing, scalability with open source platforms.
- Market reach through networks of people and influencers nearly free of brand marketing, word of mouth, viral social media.
- The common desire to see each other success and to mutually benefit from each other’s progress.
It comes down to making really great stuff that people can use, making it free, helping each other and if your ‘thing’ is really ‘all that’ you are going to be incredibly valuable. The whole movement seems to put significance behind something we used to reserve just for vacations and occasional weekends: Happiness.
Remember the Milk (RTM) Blackberry Application
Posted on 05. Mar, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
At the FOWA Miami 08 conference I didn’t hear that a Blackberry application for RTM will be available soon. I did hear that the RTM team Omar Kilani and Emily Boyd both have Blackberrys and that I may be pleasantly surprised very soon (even though Omar admits he doesn’t see why someone wouldn’t just get an iPhone) .
Invite all your LinkedIn contacts to Ning
Posted on 05. Mar, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
I just found an easy way to invite all of my LinkedIn contacts to my Ning community. Ning is a leading white label social networking platform which means you can brand it so to your members it looks like your very own online community. I’m using it now for the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX), a community called MITX Exchange. I’m sure it works in a similar way for other community platforms.
Remember the Milk is the leading Web 2.0 productivity tool
Posted on 03. Mar, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
David Allen isn’t the first time management guru to suggest that productivity is all about not keeping stuff in your head. 
I’ve used the Franklin Covey Planner for years; the trick has been keeping it all in the same system, a system you can trust so you don’t have to keep yourself from forgetting something. The DayPlanner would be great if that was our only calendar; but it doesn’t quite ’synch’ with outlook.
We have calendars, sticky notes, todo list; and just about everyone has had so much going on they had to stop and make a list. The real victory comes when you can maintain the list and stay in the habit of ‘never leaving the scene of a decision without taking action’. If you can’t immediately check “do it” you need to put it on the list (or forget it).
We are constantly making and owning commitments. Wether its verbal or mental, we make a decision and until we fullfill the committment its an open loop. Everything we are keeping on our mind is consious drain on our mental capacity and is subject to inadvertantly being forgotten, details lost, innacurate information etc.
Why Remember the Milk?
The right solution needs to be easy to use anywhere. It needs to be easy to take the next step and record it. Keep in mind this is a system for managing next steps, personal productivity, not a system for large scale project management. That’s a different topic.
FOWA Miami
Posted on 03. Mar, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
Fowa Miami was an amazing event. I met some very cool people including Digg founder Kevin Rose, Flickr engineering lead Cal Henderson, Pownce founder Leah Culver, Twitter architect Blaine Cook, Google evangelist Kevin Marks, Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg, RTM founder Emily Boyd… the list goes on. Right now I’m testing the ‘blog this photo’ feature on Flickr, to post to my Wordpress blog (that will also show up on my Twitter account). I’ll blog some more about the event soon. There’s lots to report.
Mobile phone camera app reads more than bar codes
Posted on 27. Feb, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
There’s been a lot of talk about mobile phone applications that read barcodes using built in cameras to deliver instant offers, product information and many other interactions.
Skuair, a new cell phone application developed by Daem Interactive works with any mobile phone camera reads not only barcode lines and numbers but can read product logos or images. Take a picture of an ad or logo and their robust image recognition server returns associated content. They are currently working on a user generated content feature.
Microblogging sites make content more relevant
Posted on 22. Feb, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
Since the popularity of Twitter microblogging sites have been taking off. New sites like Pownce and Tumblr have added functionality so that users can post not only about what they are doing right now but also post video, audio, events and other more structured content. So why are these sites so becoming so popular even addictive for some of us?
One reason is that they help us experience more relevant content on the web. The major aggregators of content typically have so much content that its difficult to effectively identify what content you want to see. The recent comScore study suggests “heavy clickers” distort reality of display advertising. In the same way it distorts what is presented as “most popular” on sites like YouTube. The ”heavy clickers” most likely aren’t people that are ‘like’ you.
5 Steps to optimizing your website’s click-through rates with Google’s Website Optimizer
Posted on 21. Feb, 2008 by Dean Whitney in Uncategorized and has 0 Comments
If you could change a headline, graphic, or promotional text on your website and increase click-through or conversion rates, would you do it? Of course you would. However, knowing what to change can be a challenge. Even more challenging is tracking which changes have the most effect. This was a daunting task, until now. Google’s Website Optimizer gives you the ability to make changes that create alternative layouts on your site. You are then able to track site visitor’s actions from one page to another based on the different scenarios you created. For instance, if you wanted to see if changing a certain graphic increased conversion rates, you could set the Optimizer to change from the original graphic to the new graphic and then track the different layouts to see which one has the better success.
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