For those of you using XML and actionscript 1 and 2, I made this set of xml extensions that I use regularly and wanted to pass them along to help you and your projects that involve XML parsing, sending and loading etc.
Here is a quick list of functions and descriptions. Script and docs available for .zip download here.
getRootNode();
returns the root node and all its children(see docs for useage examples)
findNodes([searchName],[callBack Function])
searches all the node names and return them to a callback function as they are found.
getFirstNodeByName([searchname]);
returns the first node with the specified name in a set of childnodes. Use this when you dont know exactly where the node you need will be in relation to other nodes in the list, but you only need one node and its children for your specific function. You can use a loop to grab many of these as its a quick function that doesnt require a callback function.
getFirstNodeValueByName([search node name])
works as getFirstNodeByName but this one returns the nodevalue. Textnode or not. (I hate that nodes have to be textnodes in order to read the node value so I bypass that using a function called returnNodeValue I'll describe later.
returnNodeValue()
The XMLNode docs tell you that a node has to be a type "textNode" or type 3 or you cant use the basic xmlNode.nodeValue to grab the text in a node. Unfortunately loading in XML from anywhere generally is not that type, it all comes in as type 1. So I wrote this function to extract the nodevalue even if the type is not 3.
getTotalNodesByName([searchName]);
This returns the total number of nodes in your xml file that have the specified name. A handy searchy tool.
getNextNode([search name],[callBack])
works almost the same as findNodes except it returns an undefined node when its finished. Havent really found a use for this one yet.
findNodesWithAttributeValue([search name],[callBack])
works like findNodes but searches for a value attributed to an attribute anywhere in the XML.
findNodesWithAttribute([attribute name to search for])
Works as findNodesWithAttributeValue with just the attribute name
Enjoy! If you find any bugs or have ones you'd like to add just comment below! If my script looks lame or you have suggestions, again, comment below, I'm always looking for constructive criticism.
Make it a great week.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Side Door? Try Butterfly Effect!
Side Door Economics? Try Butterfly Effect Economics.
How does Google make a 30% increase this quarter in the middle of an economic downturn when they give everything away for free?
Selling advertising? Bums in seats?
Sorry, Charlie, its not that simple. In fact, as the social networking neural pathways develop, they create vastly more complex paths between you and financial success. Fortunatley, there are theoretically infinitely more of them.
To determine the intelligence of an animal, they are often tested to see if they can establish an abstract relationship between them and their food and thus achieve the goal. For example, if a lever is pressed, it opens a gate which allows poor rat 23756 to get his cheese. The more steps the rat is able to use his hunger to motivate him to learn, the more "intelligent" the rat is. Say the lever is on the opposite wall of the cage, thus away from the food. The relationship becomes more abstract as the rat then needs to figure out the relationship of the lever and the door without necessarily seeing them both and their mutual effect at the same time.
Add to that complexities, perhaps the lever needs to be held down while the door is open, but its too far away for the rat to rush from the lever to the door before it closes, so the rat needs to find something else (another rat perhaps?) to hold the lever while they go for the door, and mabey even figure out that sharing the cheese will result in this partnership working out in the future.
Welcome to a social networking business model. Those who manage to solve the puzzles currently being generated by the massive abstract neural network of people... connected across geography, time, and modes of communication...win the cheese. Those who give up on the puzzle early starve.
Sometimes it may be as simple as this. I have an island in Second Life. That island costs me $295 a month to maintain as my own. Many people just rent their islands to other people and get a direct A-B business out of it. Not me, no revenue, it largely just sits there, mostly vacant, with some nice free areas for people to roam and reflect in a lovely virtual forest with beautiful ambient music. What a waste of money, people might say. Wow, you must be rich, others say. Nope, neither. Im quite poor, and have significant debt at the moment (but the relationship to the island is again, abstract)
Because I have it, I take my time in second life and think about it quite often. I think about how it works, the significance of it. Because I have an island, when I do speak to other secondlife people, I get instant rapport and am not dismissed as another freeloader. It is a massive, interactive calling card that immediately demonstrates to all who visit my skills and taste in asthetic design, environment, and for those who like it, it begins a conversation without words.
What has all this brought me personally? Well, over the past year, I have had many things happen that I can trace back to my island ownership in one way or another. Amazing things. I was hired to do a job that paid me $15,000 over 3 months part time that I would not have gotten had I not set up this virtual, conversational context for myself. I met a composer who liked my island so much, he composed an album of ambient music specifically for it. This person also represented "Gibson Guitars" in second life and now my island is positioned next door to theirs.
I met an engineer/producer named Gary who flew me and my wife to L.A. for a visit thanks, in part, to my context. I was flown to SanFrancisco and met the CEO and staff of Linden Lab, makers of Second Life, again because of the context I established. In SF, I met others who were working to establish their own "contexts" and were making, in some cases, upwards of 10,000 a month with theirs. I couldnt begin to describe the convaluted paths money and opportunity takes to flow to all these people, but it does, and they were all happy, intelligent, and excited about their lives.
If you arent in Second Life, you are missing out. I dont think you necessarily have to own an island to derive value there, but it could be relative to the level of success.
Ive often thought to myself, how does Coke, Pizza Hut, and what not REALLY make money from an ad on television? Its hard to trace and probably benefits their competition just as much.
Thats THE KEY. Social networking is about you doing some action that benefits everyone. You dont get paid in money right away though, instead, like Coke, Pizza Hut, etc, you need to think about your actions creating ripples that tell two friends who tell two friends, they buy the other guy's product but are still encouraging support for your market vertical, your locale, your community (online or off).
If Dell advertises a mini laptop, Sony actually indirectly benefits in some ways because the person who saw it buys the even smaller sony...and then someone who saw these two computers at the airport makes the buying decision to get an acer aspire one. While at the mall to buy the dell, they all buy a coffee and some thumbdrives, and a lovely wicker stand. The ad dropped the stone in the pond, and many benefitted from the waves.
Of course, in TV advertising, none of those pathways can be traced by the vendor, they just assume it will happen when they pay 1,000,000 for a 30 second spot on tv for the super bowl.
In the new social networking economy, those pathways can be traced and turned into hard data that can influence the next "stone dropping" position, force, or size. For the first time, social networking enables the public to benefit from this en masse advertising for "brand awareness" that rivals or even trumps the capabilities of the big corporate juggernaut.
I used to play a game called "Myst URU", kind of the realtime 3d first person puzzle solving version of the original myst. Eventually I played a game which I believe to be one of the most brilliant puzzle games to date, called "Portal". Both of these games require the player to be observant of their surroundings, acknowledge that the answers are all there, just not quite grokked, and with time, experience, and a dash of cleverness, can all be solved with relatively simple tools. Sometimes the steps proved quite irritating and over convaluted, but the reward of solving the puzzle in both of those games were well worth the chase to me.
Another important thing to realize is that rewards will be delayed, or non monitary, but sometimes the non monitary rewards end up being the most treasured, the most valueable. If you are able to pay your rent with the income you make, you are in a position to use whatever other time and opportunity you have to build wealth in relationships, asthetics, social wealth etc. Fortunately you dont (yet) have to pay tax on those things.
I'll end with this example. Ning.com is a social network platform. Ive been setting up ning networks for clients who either 1. cant afford a big CMS / UMS but need one, or 2. are new to Social Networking but hesitant to invest the big money.
In both cases, the personal wealth I have derived from doing this work has been incalculable. No money per - se, yet, but I have established several life long friendships, gotten respect at work and among my peers, and even have an 8 ton granite inukshuk in my backyard all as a direct result of my efforts with Ning. The effort of a few hours here and there have made me more skilled, got me blogging, and helped me help dozens if not hundreds of people discover their own new pathways. I'll keep you posted. Oh and check out my virtual self's blog...he owes his existence to my virtual island!
How does Google make a 30% increase this quarter in the middle of an economic downturn when they give everything away for free?
Selling advertising? Bums in seats?
Sorry, Charlie, its not that simple. In fact, as the social networking neural pathways develop, they create vastly more complex paths between you and financial success. Fortunatley, there are theoretically infinitely more of them.
To determine the intelligence of an animal, they are often tested to see if they can establish an abstract relationship between them and their food and thus achieve the goal. For example, if a lever is pressed, it opens a gate which allows poor rat 23756 to get his cheese. The more steps the rat is able to use his hunger to motivate him to learn, the more "intelligent" the rat is. Say the lever is on the opposite wall of the cage, thus away from the food. The relationship becomes more abstract as the rat then needs to figure out the relationship of the lever and the door without necessarily seeing them both and their mutual effect at the same time.
Add to that complexities, perhaps the lever needs to be held down while the door is open, but its too far away for the rat to rush from the lever to the door before it closes, so the rat needs to find something else (another rat perhaps?) to hold the lever while they go for the door, and mabey even figure out that sharing the cheese will result in this partnership working out in the future.
Welcome to a social networking business model. Those who manage to solve the puzzles currently being generated by the massive abstract neural network of people... connected across geography, time, and modes of communication...win the cheese. Those who give up on the puzzle early starve.
Sometimes it may be as simple as this. I have an island in Second Life. That island costs me $295 a month to maintain as my own. Many people just rent their islands to other people and get a direct A-B business out of it. Not me, no revenue, it largely just sits there, mostly vacant, with some nice free areas for people to roam and reflect in a lovely virtual forest with beautiful ambient music. What a waste of money, people might say. Wow, you must be rich, others say. Nope, neither. Im quite poor, and have significant debt at the moment (but the relationship to the island is again, abstract)
Because I have it, I take my time in second life and think about it quite often. I think about how it works, the significance of it. Because I have an island, when I do speak to other secondlife people, I get instant rapport and am not dismissed as another freeloader. It is a massive, interactive calling card that immediately demonstrates to all who visit my skills and taste in asthetic design, environment, and for those who like it, it begins a conversation without words.
What has all this brought me personally? Well, over the past year, I have had many things happen that I can trace back to my island ownership in one way or another. Amazing things. I was hired to do a job that paid me $15,000 over 3 months part time that I would not have gotten had I not set up this virtual, conversational context for myself. I met a composer who liked my island so much, he composed an album of ambient music specifically for it. This person also represented "Gibson Guitars" in second life and now my island is positioned next door to theirs.
I met an engineer/producer named Gary who flew me and my wife to L.A. for a visit thanks, in part, to my context. I was flown to SanFrancisco and met the CEO and staff of Linden Lab, makers of Second Life, again because of the context I established. In SF, I met others who were working to establish their own "contexts" and were making, in some cases, upwards of 10,000 a month with theirs. I couldnt begin to describe the convaluted paths money and opportunity takes to flow to all these people, but it does, and they were all happy, intelligent, and excited about their lives.
If you arent in Second Life, you are missing out. I dont think you necessarily have to own an island to derive value there, but it could be relative to the level of success.
Ive often thought to myself, how does Coke, Pizza Hut, and what not REALLY make money from an ad on television? Its hard to trace and probably benefits their competition just as much.
Thats THE KEY. Social networking is about you doing some action that benefits everyone. You dont get paid in money right away though, instead, like Coke, Pizza Hut, etc, you need to think about your actions creating ripples that tell two friends who tell two friends, they buy the other guy's product but are still encouraging support for your market vertical, your locale, your community (online or off).
If Dell advertises a mini laptop, Sony actually indirectly benefits in some ways because the person who saw it buys the even smaller sony...and then someone who saw these two computers at the airport makes the buying decision to get an acer aspire one. While at the mall to buy the dell, they all buy a coffee and some thumbdrives, and a lovely wicker stand. The ad dropped the stone in the pond, and many benefitted from the waves.
Of course, in TV advertising, none of those pathways can be traced by the vendor, they just assume it will happen when they pay 1,000,000 for a 30 second spot on tv for the super bowl.
In the new social networking economy, those pathways can be traced and turned into hard data that can influence the next "stone dropping" position, force, or size. For the first time, social networking enables the public to benefit from this en masse advertising for "brand awareness" that rivals or even trumps the capabilities of the big corporate juggernaut.
I used to play a game called "Myst URU", kind of the realtime 3d first person puzzle solving version of the original myst. Eventually I played a game which I believe to be one of the most brilliant puzzle games to date, called "Portal". Both of these games require the player to be observant of their surroundings, acknowledge that the answers are all there, just not quite grokked, and with time, experience, and a dash of cleverness, can all be solved with relatively simple tools. Sometimes the steps proved quite irritating and over convaluted, but the reward of solving the puzzle in both of those games were well worth the chase to me.
Another important thing to realize is that rewards will be delayed, or non monitary, but sometimes the non monitary rewards end up being the most treasured, the most valueable. If you are able to pay your rent with the income you make, you are in a position to use whatever other time and opportunity you have to build wealth in relationships, asthetics, social wealth etc. Fortunately you dont (yet) have to pay tax on those things.
I'll end with this example. Ning.com is a social network platform. Ive been setting up ning networks for clients who either 1. cant afford a big CMS / UMS but need one, or 2. are new to Social Networking but hesitant to invest the big money.
In both cases, the personal wealth I have derived from doing this work has been incalculable. No money per - se, yet, but I have established several life long friendships, gotten respect at work and among my peers, and even have an 8 ton granite inukshuk in my backyard all as a direct result of my efforts with Ning. The effort of a few hours here and there have made me more skilled, got me blogging, and helped me help dozens if not hundreds of people discover their own new pathways. I'll keep you posted. Oh and check out my virtual self's blog...he owes his existence to my virtual island!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
social networking is the most important thing you can do
If you perceive social networking as a game, or waste of time, or frivolous, you are in for a rude awakening.
Social networks are the building blocks of a new organism, the latest manifestation of the collective conciousness of human beings.
As the internet was born, the first aspects of social networks took the form of irc chat rooms and email. This led to unprecidented speed and efficiency in many displaced humans sharing ideas across newly formed pathways.
Out of these rooms basic asynchronous communication developed in the form of a "forum" which allowed pathways of communication to form not only across geophysical boundaries, but now temporal ones, IE a person can join a conversation within its context with out having to be same place/same time.
By introducing ways to communicate across these pathways in non-text forms, such as posting photos, groups, fan pages, interests, changing colors, building 3d worlds, avatars etc, Social networks have introduced the latest vector across which communication paths can form.
All this is directly analgous to neural development, and since thoughts take all these kinds of forms as they move from neuron to neuron, and all the neurons are simultaneously connected in multiple dimensions, we have the unprecidented capacity to act as a single organism, a collected consiousness.
Those who choose to remain outside the collective will either be necessarily assimilated or face abandonment, just like rogue cells in a body. But the body is extremely intolerant of rogues, in that it fights their very existence for its own survival.
Interestingly though, each member or "neuron" is like no other, there is no uniformity within the neuron, only connectedness. The collective necessitates that we all remain wholly intact as we enter into it, and only expand our own individuality through the tendrils reaching to the others. This is not an oppressive utopia, it is actually the birth of our next phase of evolution, and its as unstoppable as nature itself.
Social networks are the building blocks of a new organism, the latest manifestation of the collective conciousness of human beings.
As the internet was born, the first aspects of social networks took the form of irc chat rooms and email. This led to unprecidented speed and efficiency in many displaced humans sharing ideas across newly formed pathways.
Out of these rooms basic asynchronous communication developed in the form of a "forum" which allowed pathways of communication to form not only across geophysical boundaries, but now temporal ones, IE a person can join a conversation within its context with out having to be same place/same time.
By introducing ways to communicate across these pathways in non-text forms, such as posting photos, groups, fan pages, interests, changing colors, building 3d worlds, avatars etc, Social networks have introduced the latest vector across which communication paths can form.
All this is directly analgous to neural development, and since thoughts take all these kinds of forms as they move from neuron to neuron, and all the neurons are simultaneously connected in multiple dimensions, we have the unprecidented capacity to act as a single organism, a collected consiousness.
Those who choose to remain outside the collective will either be necessarily assimilated or face abandonment, just like rogue cells in a body. But the body is extremely intolerant of rogues, in that it fights their very existence for its own survival.
Interestingly though, each member or "neuron" is like no other, there is no uniformity within the neuron, only connectedness. The collective necessitates that we all remain wholly intact as we enter into it, and only expand our own individuality through the tendrils reaching to the others. This is not an oppressive utopia, it is actually the birth of our next phase of evolution, and its as unstoppable as nature itself.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Turn your Content into Conversation
Yesterday at our staff meeting with Jeff Jarvis, I was quite inspired and came up with 2 phrases summing up web 3.0 that I want to put here for posterity:
Web 3.0 - turn your content into conversation™
Web 3.0 - stop being the wall, and become the floor.™
Web 3.0 - public conversations trump private ones.™
First one, fairly self explanatory just take your big long statements and allow comments, or further, make your content become the conversations between your customers, clients, and peers, and extract value from that like Google does.
The second one is less good as it requires the context of, you know, being a wall in a room with say a big monitor displaying all your various value props, and instead, become the platform that supports everyone else...let them walk all over you but be dependent on you, they can leave the room, but if you are a good floor, they will come back and you can look up their skirts. I suppose that metaphor works for gathering information but its a bit crass. Apologies.
Third one...basically a conversation held in private like an email or IM or whatever is useless, in that you cant reuse it or extract PR value from it, or have the benefit of other perspectives applied to it. If you instead use public statements in a forum, others can react, respond etc, plus you can demonstrate your character to your entire audience. "Humanize it" is what Jeff Jarvis said.
So thats my summary from the Jeff Jarvis meeting...and I'm trademarking those three statements ( ha ha )
Web 3.0 - turn your content into conversation™
Web 3.0 - stop being the wall, and become the floor.™
Web 3.0 - public conversations trump private ones.™
First one, fairly self explanatory just take your big long statements and allow comments, or further, make your content become the conversations between your customers, clients, and peers, and extract value from that like Google does.
The second one is less good as it requires the context of, you know, being a wall in a room with say a big monitor displaying all your various value props, and instead, become the platform that supports everyone else...let them walk all over you but be dependent on you, they can leave the room, but if you are a good floor, they will come back and you can look up their skirts. I suppose that metaphor works for gathering information but its a bit crass. Apologies.
Third one...basically a conversation held in private like an email or IM or whatever is useless, in that you cant reuse it or extract PR value from it, or have the benefit of other perspectives applied to it. If you instead use public statements in a forum, others can react, respond etc, plus you can demonstrate your character to your entire audience. "Humanize it" is what Jeff Jarvis said.
So thats my summary from the Jeff Jarvis meeting...and I'm trademarking those three statements ( ha ha )
Sunday, April 12, 2009
My RSS Feed aggregator
Finally got my RSS feed aggregator working. Whats an rss feed aggregator? The little widget below reads a list of RSS feeds RSS from an XML file and displays the RSS feed news items from all the feeds in order of most recent to earliest. Theres a few of these out there, but mine is free for you to use, and has some interesting features. If you press the grey button underneath a specific feed name you toggle it on or off in the list. Pressing the red button makes the feed become "solo" or the only one in the list, and you can toggle that off and go back to your previous settings.
The "reset" button resets your filter feeds toggles as they are saved in the flash shared object "cookie" (to let your website visitors pick which blogs they want to keep up to date on and not have to keep resetting that)
You can popup the viewer here and see it resizes with whatever window you put it in. Working on adding custom colors/fonts etc.
I'll continue improving it, but for now you can view source and embed/tweak the above code to play around with it on your website if you want. Ive tested it with blogs from blogger, twitter feeds, and NING blog feeds. Known issues...turning off all the feed sources causes a weird display I need to fix, workaround is you just turn one back on. Also if you are on a slower connection try to let the feeds load before clicking buttons. I havent really built too much "idiot proofing" into this yet. This particular one is built in AS1, my next one will be in AS3 as I get time and guage the popularity of this app. Updates to come...Enjoy!
The "reset" button resets your filter feeds toggles as they are saved in the flash shared object "cookie" (to let your website visitors pick which blogs they want to keep up to date on and not have to keep resetting that)
You can popup the viewer here and see it resizes with whatever window you put it in. Working on adding custom colors/fonts etc.
I'll continue improving it, but for now you can view source and embed/tweak the above code to play around with it on your website if you want. Ive tested it with blogs from blogger, twitter feeds, and NING blog feeds. Known issues...turning off all the feed sources causes a weird display I need to fix, workaround is you just turn one back on. Also if you are on a slower connection try to let the feeds load before clicking buttons. I havent really built too much "idiot proofing" into this yet. This particular one is built in AS1, my next one will be in AS3 as I get time and guage the popularity of this app. Updates to come...Enjoy!
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Replacing humans with technology
Recently I was asked to review a product that fit in the "powerpoint killer" category of applications. Threaded throughout the marketing material were phrases that appeal to the cost cutting business manager audience who often find themselves frustrated by the effort and knowledge required to build engaging, interactive presentations or games.
"With a click of a button... " , "reduced costs without sacrificing quality...", and "replace expensive technicians and professional designers..."
These products can be fantastic tools at extending your team's abilities, inspiring your team's experts to greater tasks and saving time and money.
That said, the products also wedge themselves between you and your basic technology. If, as in our company's case, the underlying technology we build our product in is flash, then we could buy some auto-flash generation tool to save time, but we then become dependent on that tool, its developers, and ongoing support and updates, on top of Adobe and its flash product.
Once the product is entrenched, the idea of leaving the product becomes less and less feasable for your company as you "save time" in the here and now, but become more and more estranged from the core technology as your team focuses on the middleware instead of learning the basics.
Not only are you then dependant on the product's technology and what it allows or doesnt allow you to do, you then become married to the company strategy of the product. If they, say, decide that the military vertical is their most profitable, their tool will evolve to serve that vertical more than your vertical or niche.
To avoid this kind of scenario, many platforms are "open source" or almost open source. This means you can always go into the code of the platform and tweak it to suit your needs, if you have to, as well as being able to strip out the features you dont need and extend any features you like.
Flash itself allows you to extend and manipulate it down to its core, yet Adobe also provides scores of automatable, customizable components. Beyond that, a developer base of tens of thousands of independent component developers provide innumerable tools that your team can use, expand upon, or be inspired by to push your product beyond that of your competitors.
Your product IS your people, so investing in platforms, technology, and training that will extend the capabilities of your staff and bring them to a higher level of skill will always give your company a competitive edge. Any product that becomes what amounts to a crutch for your staff to save a few minutes but sacrifice learning important skills in the process, will make your company less and less able to cope with change and market demand.
In conclusion, I encourage everyone to buy tools that can be extended, stripped, pulled apart, and tweaked, and work well with all the other tools out there. In terms of platforms I use xml, google, ning.com, mediawiki, blogger, anything RSS capable, and of course my all time favorite...flash! With these tools I feel I can do pretty much anything in terms of web based applications. When spec'ing out a new RIA, I generally start with XML and defining the webservices methods and datatypes all in XML, keeping each component as discreet and plug and playable as possible, capable of using off the shelf stuff, or moving on without it depending on the circumstance.
"With a click of a button... " , "reduced costs without sacrificing quality...", and "replace expensive technicians and professional designers..."
These products can be fantastic tools at extending your team's abilities, inspiring your team's experts to greater tasks and saving time and money.
That said, the products also wedge themselves between you and your basic technology. If, as in our company's case, the underlying technology we build our product in is flash, then we could buy some auto-flash generation tool to save time, but we then become dependent on that tool, its developers, and ongoing support and updates, on top of Adobe and its flash product.
Once the product is entrenched, the idea of leaving the product becomes less and less feasable for your company as you "save time" in the here and now, but become more and more estranged from the core technology as your team focuses on the middleware instead of learning the basics.
Not only are you then dependant on the product's technology and what it allows or doesnt allow you to do, you then become married to the company strategy of the product. If they, say, decide that the military vertical is their most profitable, their tool will evolve to serve that vertical more than your vertical or niche.
To avoid this kind of scenario, many platforms are "open source" or almost open source. This means you can always go into the code of the platform and tweak it to suit your needs, if you have to, as well as being able to strip out the features you dont need and extend any features you like.
Flash itself allows you to extend and manipulate it down to its core, yet Adobe also provides scores of automatable, customizable components. Beyond that, a developer base of tens of thousands of independent component developers provide innumerable tools that your team can use, expand upon, or be inspired by to push your product beyond that of your competitors.
Your product IS your people, so investing in platforms, technology, and training that will extend the capabilities of your staff and bring them to a higher level of skill will always give your company a competitive edge. Any product that becomes what amounts to a crutch for your staff to save a few minutes but sacrifice learning important skills in the process, will make your company less and less able to cope with change and market demand.
In conclusion, I encourage everyone to buy tools that can be extended, stripped, pulled apart, and tweaked, and work well with all the other tools out there. In terms of platforms I use xml, google, ning.com, mediawiki, blogger, anything RSS capable, and of course my all time favorite...flash! With these tools I feel I can do pretty much anything in terms of web based applications. When spec'ing out a new RIA, I generally start with XML and defining the webservices methods and datatypes all in XML, keeping each component as discreet and plug and playable as possible, capable of using off the shelf stuff, or moving on without it depending on the circumstance.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Why Facebook Looks Like Twitter...
Here is a snapshot of the traffic on these websites, ranked where "1" is the most visted website on the 'net, and 10000 is the 10000th most visited website. As you can see...Facebook is plateauing with a gentle increase in the past year, Yahoo has seen a recent sharp drop, twitter.com and ning.com are experiencing significant increases, with Twitter being the most pronounced most recently, and second life has a steady decline.
Now its interesting that roughly when Twitter sees the spike in their useage is close to just before we saw facebook change its pages and profiles to look almost exactly like twitter's.
My purpose in grouping these particular websites is to draw a comparison between sites that are "open" and let you put content from them on other websites, and others that are "closed" AKA "walled gardens" that will let you post content to them from other sites, but they wont let you pull content from them to other sites.
Yes, the sites in decline or plateauing fit the walled garden category, with Second Life being the most severe walled garden largely due to the bulky client "viewer".
Conversely the sites with the sharpest increases in traffic allow you to easily put content YOU create on their sites on whatever other sites you want. Twitter makes this perhaps easier than any of them.
Again, this is all predicted in "What would Google Do" by Jeff Jarvis, and its interesting to see which companies here need to smarten up, and which ones are the future leaders, so lets just hope for their sake when they do get to the top...they dont forget how they got there, like Mr. Zuckerberg apparently has begun to do.
Run your own analysis for free at Alexa and see how your favorite sites stack up! Just replace the sites in the text boxes with whatever you want for .com and play with the date ranges. Its a very handy, free tool that makes Alexa another big winner in the traffic world. If only the big CEO's would realize, the most honest, open companies will always win in a world where "Free is a business model".
In facebook, it would be great if you could RSS the updates feed, and all the feeds, for that matter, and get the content out from inside the "blue and white utopia" of facebook if we wanted to. Its our content after all right?
Now its interesting that roughly when Twitter sees the spike in their useage is close to just before we saw facebook change its pages and profiles to look almost exactly like twitter's.My purpose in grouping these particular websites is to draw a comparison between sites that are "open" and let you put content from them on other websites, and others that are "closed" AKA "walled gardens" that will let you post content to them from other sites, but they wont let you pull content from them to other sites.
Yes, the sites in decline or plateauing fit the walled garden category, with Second Life being the most severe walled garden largely due to the bulky client "viewer".
Conversely the sites with the sharpest increases in traffic allow you to easily put content YOU create on their sites on whatever other sites you want. Twitter makes this perhaps easier than any of them.
Again, this is all predicted in "What would Google Do" by Jeff Jarvis, and its interesting to see which companies here need to smarten up, and which ones are the future leaders, so lets just hope for their sake when they do get to the top...they dont forget how they got there, like Mr. Zuckerberg apparently has begun to do.
Run your own analysis for free at Alexa and see how your favorite sites stack up! Just replace the sites in the text boxes with whatever you want for .com and play with the date ranges. Its a very handy, free tool that makes Alexa another big winner in the traffic world. If only the big CEO's would realize, the most honest, open companies will always win in a world where "Free is a business model".
In facebook, it would be great if you could RSS the updates feed, and all the feeds, for that matter, and get the content out from inside the "blue and white utopia" of facebook if we wanted to. Its our content after all right?
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