Small multi-disciplinary teams are proven to build the best web experiences. Agency segmentation of creative, media, marketing, technology often makes it impossible to build effective online solutions. It appears the trend is continuing in the wrong direction with agencies outsourcing technology. This means that creative and marketing think up the next great Flash microsite and send the cookbook to China or Costa Rica to get built on spec.
This makes Web 2.0 innovation impossible. New technologies and frameworks, open source code, opportunities like OpenSocial and creating portable content that can “go where people are already” becomes impossible. Additionally there’s the great partnership opportunities; imagine the brand manager that partners with the next Facebook or Twitter before it gets big?
“You have to have world-class creative but you have to have world-class tech folks who can translate that into conversations,” said Kvamme, currently a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s leading VC firms. “…technology is a critical component for success.”
In January Sprout launched SproutBuilder, a quick and easy way for anyone to build, publish, and manage widgets, mini-sites, mashups, banners and more. Include video, audio, images and newsfeeds and choose from dozens of pre-built components and web services. At first I thought this may be some kind of “prosumer” tool, nice for marketers or brands that that aren’t big enough for real solutions.
After a thorough review I’m recommending to clients and agency colleagues to seriously consider SproutBuilder for several reasons:
Robust design/authoring environment: Sprout provides dozens of ready built templates but its easy for more advanced Flash designers to create anything from scratch. Many of the common design tools are available and you can upload content including images, video, audio, Flash files (swf’s), and more. Adding these assets to your sprout is as easy as dragging and dropping.
Drag and drop components: Advanced components that you can add by simply dragging and dropping. Choose from slideshows, jukeboxes, RSS feeds, and more. Or “Mashup” any of components from our web service partners including PollDaddy, Google, Ribbit, ChipIn, and others. Continue reading »
Originally posted in the February ITWiki Newsletter, Network World
Web 2.0 technologies are changing the way online solutions are being developed. The popularity of social websites like Flickr, MySpace and Youtube and technology that promotes collaboration such as blogs, wikis, tags and widgets have made Web 2.0 functionality an important consideration for enterprise development. When planning these solutions there are many things to consider. Recent technology advancements have resulted in a flurry of solutions in many categories. The tree will eventually shake out; standards will evolve. Will your project stand the test of time or go the way of the Betamax? Here are 5 things to consider when planning a Web 2.0 solution.
1. Social Networking Standards
There are so many social networks and online communities, social shopping and recommendations, sites for sharing content, and each one with a process to register and manage your profile, interact with members and content. Each site with its own language or application programming interface (API). It’s difficult for developers to learn site specific API’s and then build and maintain applications for multiple sites. A common set of API’s that work across sites would provide a greater use and distribution of applications. Developers could then build and maintain a single application. Continue reading »
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.
For some reason I was having some issues publishing content on a social network so I copied the link and decided to try the function using the Flock browser. It worked fine, and within a few minutes I discovered several exciting things that have me considering a switch. Here are the 3 initial reason’s why I’m switching (for now).
For some reason I was having some issues publishing content on a social network so I copied the link and decided to try the function using the Flock browser. It worked fine, and within a few minutes I discovered several exciting things that have me considering a switch. Here are the 3 initial reason’s why I’m switching (for now).
An early pioneer in interactive media, Dean Whitney is a Web 2.0 and Social media technology evangelist. Start-up veteran, President of Garfield Group Interactive a Boston-based digital agency.
