May 2008 Archives

Drew Blas posts this excellent, in-depth summation of Friday night at RailsConf. Blas reports on Charles Nutter’s talk “The Sun you don’t know,” the winners of the Ruby Hero awards, and contributes a thoughtful, detailed exploration of David Heinemeier Hansson’s thought-provoking keynote.

Sean Michael Kerner enters this perspective on recent Twitter hiccups and RoR.

Paul Krill reports on Microsoft’s demonstration of their new Silveright browser plug-in technology at RailsConf this year.

Scott M. Fulton, III examines the ramifications and implications of Twitters recent technical problems.

Two weeks ago, following the rapid spread of rumors that the Twitter service — recently besieged with technical troubles — may be abandoning the Ruby on Rails development platform in building a replacement platform for itself, the company’s co-founder Biz Stone flat out refuted those rumors in a comment to BetaNews.

David Simms examines Intridea’s new launch Scalr, which debuted at RailsConf Thursday, May 29.

Savio Rodrigues reports on Engin Yard’s Rubinius project which previewed at RailsConf.

What’s interesting is that since Ruby doesn’t really have a specification, it’s difficult to say that platform xyz is not a compatible implementation of a Ruby runtime. In response, Rubinius decided to create a test suite that could help standardize Ruby as a language across the growing number of VM implementations for Ruby.

Henry Work reports on the FiveRuns launch– TuneUp, a “social debugging tool for Rails applications.”

Renaud Euvrard reports on the conference and maps Paris with Google Maps.

Glenn Latham reports on his experiences and observations at Where 2.0, including some of his favorite job titles.

Sheeri K. Cabral has posted extensive photoes, video, slides, and notes from last April’s conference.

TechCrunch picked up on Frank Taylor’s post about the coolest things he saw at Where 2.0, including this demo from Gold sponsor Earthscape:

Writes Leslie Rule:

Where 2.0 happened May 12-14 at the San Francisco Airport Marriot just south of the city. This annual event, now in its 4th year, is a strange mix of grassroots geo-enthusiasts and entrepreneurial geo-hackers. Where 2.0 is primarily a developer’s conference, so the majority of time and certainly the focus was on tools and how they function and less on how these tools are being used. (Or not being used. For the most part, location apps are in beta.) There was definitely the Field of Dream feeling “build it and they will come.” The exceptions were the tools and apps in the social activism thread.

We’re starting the preparations to launch the 2009 edition of Money:Tech, and to that end we’ve started posting select video from the inaugural 2008 event, including this VC panel led by program chair Paul Kedrosky:

Michael Bauer provides a thoughtful and detailed summary on this year’s conference:

A number of other notable presentations included Sam Altman at Loopt, the provider of a mobile location client for different devices and carriers noted their growth, focus on privacy, and the move towards subscription models for mobile location. Sean Gorman from FortiusOne provided an update on the GeoCommons and how its interacting with FreeBase, OpenLocation, and MapMixer. Mok Oh from Everyscape presented looking at the inside of spaces like malls as well using different anonymous individual tracking techniques.

Don Jewell contributes these posts on his experience at Where 2.0, noting the unique and effective format that this conference follows:

It does not matter whether you are the president of Microsoft, the CEO of ESRI, or the president of a two man start-up, you only get 15 minutes and indeed this year some have only 10 and some as little as five minutes to tell their story. But you know it works, because it cuts out all the fluff. In the Marketing Business, one of the first things you learn is that you have to have your elevator speech or your five-minute spiel down pat and that is what we are hearing at Where 2.0 and it is refreshing. None of the fluff, just the Joe Friday facts, ma’am.

Great coverage from Frank Taylor at Google Earth Blog:

Where 2.0 - Day 1
Google Geo Search API, ESRI and Google Collaborate
Where 2.0 2008 - Day 2 - Tuesday
Where 2.0 2008 - Day 3 - Wednesday

Select sessions from GSP West are going up on blip.tv. Check out Charlene Li’s kick-off presentation:

If you’re thinking of heading over to GSP East, this footage should give you a pretty good idea of the kinds of content and people you’ll encounter.

Last Friday, BW posted this excerpt from BW columnist Sarah Lacy’s book, describing how the co-founder of Netscape backs a social networking site named Ning.

Rodney Rumford (on FaceReviews.com, a GSP East Media Partner) posts this enthusiastic preview of the conference: “If you have not had a chance to attend these events because you did not want to travel all the way to the west coast now is your chance to hit GSP in DC. These events bring together the sharpest minds in the industry for 3 days.”

Rafe Needleman contributes a great run-down on “the Webware takeaway on the most interesting of the dozen apps” at Monday night’s Launchpad.

Stephen Lawson posts this on “Nokia’s next generation of mobile-phone navigation technology, Nokia Maps 2.0″ launched Monday, at the Where 2.0 Conference.

Adam Jacob joins Velocity program co-chair Jesse Robbins for a discussion around automated infrastructure, iClassify, and Puppet on IT Conversations’ Technometria series with Phil Windley.

Chris Nuttall posts this, detailing Adrian Holovaty’s presentation, “EveryBlock: A News Feed for Your Block,” and John Hanke and Jack Dangermond’s “The State of the Geoweb.”

The first of select video from Where 2.0 has been posted:

OMX, the first-ever O’Reilly Open Mobile Exchange, is for everyone involved in building out the open source mobile space, including platforms, standards, applications, hardware, integration, browsers, location, and services. This full day of insightful conversations, demos, technical presentations, and panel discussions brings together innovators from a broad swath of perspectives and backgrounds to share ideas and foster new thinking across technologies. Mobile guru Jeff Waugh is the OMX program chair–he’s putting together an agenda that will thoroughly explore the nexus of mobile and open source.

We’re looking forward to the Frank Taylor’s coverage at Where this year, he posts this on Seero:

Seero is a new service which offers geo-spatially aware video content in either Google Maps or Google Earth. You can even watch the position of a video broadcast change during the playback of the content, or you can do your own broadcasts.

Up Next, who participated in last years Launch Pad, are at Where again:

This year we going as observers and look forward to hearing from a great roster of speakers and seeing some interesting demos.

James Thornett is excited about attending this year’s conference.

“We’ve covered Whrrl, and several of its competitors, already on Webware,” writes Rafe Needleman, “but with the Where 2.0 conference coming up next week, I thought it’d be interesting to dive into this product just a bit more, since it represents some very interesting trends that are central to the creation of location-aware apps.”

Mashable posts this on Seero’s upcoming debut, “Seero is hoping to stand out from the growing realm of live-streaming widgets by being among the first to launch a GPS-enabled widget stream.”

Nicole Ferraro reported on conference highlights:

Vysr Beats Yahoo to the Punch With RoamAbout

What’s Next for Social Platforms?

Tim O’Reilly: Web 2.0 Is Not Over

Yahoo: Social Is Dimension, Not Destination
MySpace Talks Apps & Facebook (But Not Yahoo)

Fake Steve Jobs Invades Web 2.0 Expo

Searching for the Next Search Engine

Slideshow: Web 2.0 Expo

The prolific Juan Carlos Perez reports that “Marc Andreessen had no idea that the Mosaic browser he co-developed would kick off the Web revolution and become such an enduring and important piece of software.”

More from Juan Carlos Perez on Yahoo opening its platforms:

Juan Carlos Perez reports on Expo, starting with the great opening line:

D. Mark Hornung is attending this week’s Web 2.0 Expo because he doesn’t want to get hit by a tsunami.

Where 2.0 program chair Brady Forrest rounds up geo activities: “Where 2.0 starts next week on May 12th, but that’s not evening the beginning of the geo-related activities that some people are calling ‘Where Week.’”

• Mark Andreesen Talks About Netscape and Ning
• CEO Max Levchin at Web 2.0 Expo
• Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs at Web 2.0 Expo
• Jonathon Schwartz Interviewed by Tim O’Reilly
• Yahoo Announces New Open Strategy

Web 2.0 Expo earned world wide coverage. Here’s what Jan Becker wrote for German readers

The News Blaze crew covered many of the major events and announcements at Web 2.0 Expo SF.

Bernardo Parrella reports on the conference: Prosegue l’abbraccio tra socialità online e mondo high-tech, mentre al Web 2.0 Expo di San Francisco Tim O’Reilly mette in guardia contro il “lato oscuro” della Rete…

More international coverage of several conference highlights in FayerWayer, Dosis diarias de tecnología en español.™

Velocity conference co-chair Steve Souders recently participated in a webcast on “Even Faster Web Sites”:

Mathieu Ramage shares his take on the conference for French readers.

Caroline McCarthy contrasts the revelry of Web Expo parties with the more cautious tone of the conference itself in this post:

The economic attitude of the Web 2.0 Expo hangs in an awkward limbo: The tech industry relies on innovation, but no one can deny that these economic times demand caution. What’s a geek to do?

Mitch Wagner, on FriendFeed:

So I took a break from Web 2.0 Expo to get some alone time with my laptop and FriendFeed. Yes, I am aware of the irony: I have traveled all this way to a conference saturated with social networks, and I left the conference to connect with a social network.

Therese Polleti contributes this article on the shaky future for Web startups:

Comments from savvy executives like Andreessen and a pep talk given by Web 2.0’s Tim O’Reilly, are signals of the tough road awaiting Internet companies looking for venture funding…

Deborah Gage and Ellen Lee look at another side of Web 2.0.

San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Expo conference brought together thousands of people responsible for crafting the future direction of the internet, and the world of applications - or apps - was front and centre.
Maggie Shiels contributes this excellent discussion of change and commerce and the net, and what “open” means for the future of Web 2.0.

Yardena Arar highlights the coolest startups, innovators and exhibitors on the Expo show floor:

The Web 2.0 Expo at San Francisco’s Moscone Center West, which wraps up today, doesn’t take up a huge amount of space: Startups predominate, and most don’t have money for big flashy booths. But there’s more cool new technology per square foot here than at many big trade shows.

Thomas Clayborn gives Dan Lyons kudos for his engaging Keynote in this post:

I was all set to dislike Lyons, perhaps anticipating that he shared the arrogance of his Fake Steve Jobs character. But he was just too funny. Granted, you have to enjoy snarky, disrespectful insider humor. But I found Lyons’ remarks were more illuminating than many of the more serious presentations at the conference.

Leslie Katz rounds up the highlights, launches and green innovation at Web Expo.

It was all Web apps, all the time in San Francisco this week, as some of the Internet’s most prominent movers and shakers gathered for the giant Web 2.0 Expo.

Dave Matthews contributes this article on Keyword Spamming, what it does, what it means for SEO and what Google’s “spam maven” Matt Cutts had to say about it, in his Friday keynote: “What Google knows about Spam.”

Dan Beyers discusses the various lauches by Intridea at Web 2.0 Expo:

Upender, the chief executive of Intridea, said the speed of development today forces the company to rapidly launch and improve products.

Oracle executive offers perspectives on newfangled, data-linking Web apps, including what they need to provide in order to succeed in enterprises
Paul Krill reflects on Oracle’s Vince Casarez’s Wednesday presentation, “Mashing Up: Taking Enterprise Mashups to the Next Level”

George Shirk writes, “Among the various engines driving the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco - and arguably it is the biggest engine - is the attention on all things mobile.”
Shirk continues,

Indeed, on Thursday the conference featured a number of “focus tracks” specifically dealing with mobile. Developers and content specialists crowded in, hoping for clues as to what “Mobile 2.0” will look like.

Susan Kuchinskas covers Artur Bergman’s presentation at Web 2.0 Expo: Tips for startups work for any Internet business.

Over on the Bay Area’s News Station, Brian Shields was very busy at Web 2.0 Expo, shooting over 17 interviews, including this overview with Jen Pahlka:

and this interview with George LeBrun and Joshua Ross, the O’Reilly InPractice team that launched at Web 2.0 Expo:

Everyday new applications and ideas come out that expand the way we’re all able to use the Internet. KRON4.com is giving you a peek inside the future of the web courtesy of some of the innovators and visionaries who attended the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco in April, 2008. Watch the videos, follow the links, and share your thoughts on the Internet’s Next Big Thing.

Check out video of Jennifer Pahlka, General Manager and co-chair of the Web 2.0 Expo and TechWeb, who sat down with Liane to talk about the community-driven content and events.

Jennifer Pahlka On Web 2.0 Expo’s Community Driven Content - Girls Gone Geek from Girls Gone Geek on Vimeo.

Liane also spoke with TechWeb’s VP of Marketing, Stacy O’Connell about the active community that is Web 2.0 Expo.

Web 2.0 Expo Is An Active Community - Girls Gone Geek from Girls Gone Geek on Vimeo.

The open social party is apparently the place to be,” writes Maria M. Diaz:

Even old Microsoft just announced LiveMesh). Now Yahoo, who’s Flickr photo sharing site is the second most popular used API on the web, has rolled out a limited preview to the developer platform they announced in February called SearchMonkey. The limited developer preview was announced by Yahoo! CTO Ari Balogh at his keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Conference held last week in San Francisco.

Fritz Nelson, Executive Producer at TechWeb, talks with Tim O’Reilly at the Web 2.0 Expo 2008 in San Francisco about the corporate and IT uses of Web 2.0.

Brady Forrest has posted an entry about one of the co-chairs of Velocity:
“Last week Steve Souders, the author of the O’Reilly book High Performance Web Sites and creator of Firefox plugin YSlow, presented his latest website performance findings at the Web 2.0 Expo.”

“In this issue of Release 2.0, we consider the Wall Street/Web 2.0 mashup from a number of angles, writes Jimmy Guterman. “We talk to Paul Kedrosky, chair of our Money:Tech conference and an influential blogger on the topic (as well as others), about why some on Wall Street hate Web 2.0 — and what Web 2.0 can do to infiltrate Wall Street nonetheless.”

Ari Balogh, CTO at Yahoo! just offered a preview at Web 2.0 Expo of a very new kind of Yahoo!. One that invites developers to take advantage of our huge scale to write applications that build on our existing properties (think Mail, Sports, Search, our front page, mobile, My Yahoo!, etc.), tap into millions of loyal users, and make Internet experience more relevant and useful.