The Facebook platform. Facebook's new open platform has proven to be a great way to give Facebook users more to do, while putting eyeballs on and dollars into developer's sites. While the usefulness of some of the apps is questionable (see the misses category below), Facebook has built a solid foundation for new social applications, something that did not exist previously. Google Gears. This platform lets developers write Web apps that can work offline. It is in its infancy, but it's an important step in the right direction for road warriors and anyone who wants to use Web 2.0 apps while away from a live connection. So far, it's limited to just a handful of apps, including Google Reader, Zoho Writer, and Remember The Milk, but with a developing API and support from Google, we think you'll be seeing Gears as a standard part of new Web apps in 2008. Adobe AIR. AIR lets Flash (and other) developers take their apps off the Web and put them onto people's desktops, and it's seen a lot of progress this year. From launching an alpha version in late March, AIR has been met with considerable interest from both developers and users. Many of the apps that have been created are slick and easy to install. AIR, like Google Gears, is a key technology in the development of "hybrid" apps--Web services that work for users whether they are connected or not. AIR's special power is that its apps work outside of a browser. AIR apps look and feel like real desktop programs. Twitter. Twitter was one of the first microblogging platforms to get it right. In addition to its open API, which has encouraged the development of dozens of ways to read and post Twitter messages on a variety of platforms, Twitter got the social angle right. It's simple, but not too simple, and it's fun. Twitter's brief messages tend toward the forgettable, but that's the platform's blessing: it doesn't ask too much of its writers or its readers. Ning 2.0. The launch of Ning v2.0 in February gave anyone the chance to create their own social network with a series of highly focused and customizable modules. At CNET's HQ in San Francisco, a group uses it to track and discuss local lunch spots, but with a little know-how, anyone can use Ning to create simple and useful private social networks without having to know a lick of code. Google Maps. Google has been busy with its maps property this year. Since launching in early 2005, the service has seen a wealth of updates, but this year brought some of the most useful ones for day-to-day use. Our favorites include: MyMaps, which lets you create your own maps with easy-to-use icons; StreetView, which lets you get a 3D street level look at buildings and local features; a rerouting feature to let you tweak any side stops or road preferences, and aerial, terrain, and live traffic views. Hulu. Hulu serves up TV shows, movies, music videos, and many other pieces of video content in a simple Flash player. While still in private beta, those who have used Hulu (including us) are impressed with it. It brings all the goodness you'd find on the Web video players from TV networks' video sites, but puts them all in one spot with advertising that's both tolerable and far better than sitting through the four minute ad breaks you get when watching the show on regular TV. The service is beginning to add HD video to its repertoire, which might just be enough to get people to stop pirating content via P2P services. Flock. For a long time now Flock's been on the outskirts of the browser world. Who really wanted a social browser? With the popularity of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter making a splash in 2007, Flock's v1.0 offering finally had that value proposition of ditching the stock version of Firefox for something that would save us some time, and make it easier to keep tabs on our friends while continuing our browsing activities. The real hook of using Flock is the integration of social networking and publishing tools, which offer more right off the bat than a standard Firefox installation. Users don't have to muck with tracking down and installing plug-ins that might not be updated when the browser is. With Flock, you don't have to worry about that with the core components, and if you really want to add on, nearly all extensions that work with Firefox are Flock-compatible. If you're still on the fence, check our our Newbie's Guide to Flock. Picnik. There was a time when you really needed Photoshop, or some other installed software, to edit a photo. Nowadays there are dozens of Web-based photo-editing solutions out there to help you tweak and edit shots. Picnik was one of the real standouts from this year, not only for its slick look and feel, but because it gives fantastic results without requiring users to know much at all about editing. The launch of a premium service, and integration as Flickr's default photo-editing tool give it a leg up on the competition. Netflix movies-on-demand. Forget these expensive boxes you need to hook up to your living room TV for renting movies a la carte. The future is direct downloads, not optical discs. If you're already a Netflix subscriber with one of the supported plans, you can take advantage of their on-demand streaming service that gives members a multi-movie pass that's only limited by how much time (in hours) they're allotted each month. The only bummers are the reliance on Windows Media DRM, the lack of Mac support, and noticeably smaller video collection than you'd find on disc. Despite this, it's still better than waiting for the postal service when you need a movie fix. The service launched in late February--we've got a hands on here. MySpace News. The first-leaked reports of MySpace News made it sound like a dream come true for both advertisers, and enthusiasts of sites like Digg and Reddit. A social news service working off the massive, multimillion member userbase of MySpace seemed like a great idea, but just seven months later the place seems deserted with no real changes since the late April launch. Front page stories are only getting a small handful of votes, while the competition is getting hundreds and sometimes thousands of votes and comments per item. NBC leaving iTunes. There are many reasons for the split, but the No. 1 is money. NBC Universal simply wanted more per show than Apple was willing to allow. NBC has since moved its various content to other distribution channels like Hulu.com (seen above earlier as a hit), and its own streaming service, NBC Direct. After years of advertising iTunes as the place to get your fix of portable, digital, and multiplatform copies of shows like Scrubs, Battlestar Galactica, and The Office, ditching the iTunes media store just made the company look greedy. Livestreaming. The technology and platform solutions for livestreaming are here and wonderful, but we're giving this one a miss because the content is simply not up to snuff. While JustinTV was a fun project to watch, what it's evolved into is simply not worth your time. Justin Kan's original solution was to strap a camera to his head and go on daily adventures, but the service has devolved into a slew of people sitting in front of their Webcams talking to a bored audience. Recent second-generation Livestreaming service ModMyLife puts a slight spin on the idea by giving users a bit more control, but it's not enough to get us away from professionally produced content. We're still really impressed with services like Mogulus, UStream.tv, and Operator11, but besides Chris Pirillo, who is making this technology interesting for the watchers? Creepy ad platforms. Nearly everyone with a start-up is hoping to make some money, although two new monetization services of 2007 stuck out as a little creepy. The first was Facebook's Beacon, which sounded like the best of both worlds for advertisers and big companies, who would have a direct way to get some free advertising from Facebook users using their services. Thecompany's big faux pas was to make the default method of input opt-out, meaning if users weren't savvy to uncheck one of those little check boxes when signing up for a service, or making a purchase, the information would be beamed back to Facebook. Despite a massive backlash, the company took a longer than expected time to respond, and eventually caved in to switch to opt-in by default, meaning users would have to check that box to participate in the program. The other platform is The Pudding, which lets you make VoIP calls to people's landlines for free. The one caveat is that the company running the service will be monitoring your conversations and attempting to pull in contextual advertising. Somehow we're OK with this going on with our e-mails and Gmail, but the idea of voice calls with friends and family just creeps us out. HD DVD's hexadecimal decryption key/Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Trying to keep something secret that's been put on the Internet is just about impossible. This proved to be the case earlier this year when Digg.com's front page exploded with stories that either related, or simply were the secret code to decrypt the copy protection from the still-struggling HD DVD format. The act of exuberance was a mob reaction to Digg's attempt to remove the stories to be in compliance with a cease and desist order from theMPAA. Incidentally, Digg's traffic skyrocketed shortly after--at least according to Alexa. This garnered a miss from us, not for Digg, but from the MPAA for attempting to censor Digg's stories to preserve a pretense of control over a format nobody really cares about. Citizendium. If you Google Citizendium, you'll see the Wikipedia entry about it is pretty much the first link besides the site. That's part of the problem. Citizendium was created to solve the problems that can arise from letting Wikipedia be written by anyone with a keyboard and a 56Kbps modem--regardless of intellect or educational background. It's essentially Wikipedia, but with the hopes of having credible, scholarly sources that will both write the content and help moderate everyone else. While Citizendium has already ramped up a considerable amount of articles, why not put that effort toward bettering the larger, more established Wikipedia? Zoho. We like Zoho, and on paper the number of products it's launched this year puts Google to shame. But more important than volume is polishing the ones that are there, which simply hasn't happened quite as much as we were hoping. We want integration and less disconnect between services. We're also looking for a little more pizazz and something to pull us away from our desktop office apps. We're hoping 2008 is the year of integration for Zoho. Vampires and Zombies. And Ninjas vs. Pirates vs. I just slapped you with a sheep, etc. These Facebook apps might have started off cute, but now they're cluttering up the Facebook experience. The original poke was simple, subtle, and ingenious. Everybody could do it, and no one was left out. Now we've got to add an app to even tell you to stop it in the way you'll understand. 3D Mailbox. When's the last time that e-mail from mom needed aDirectX 9 capable video card to read it? 3D Mailbox was designed to make e-mail fun and exciting by turning your messages into onscreen 3D events, be it bikini-clad babes, or spam (represented by overweight beach goers) getting eaten by sharks. The company's latest foray has moved locales to LAX airport, with airplanes representing messages, complete with cargo for attachments. We found the app to be difficult to use, and a massive resource hog. As CNET Download.com's Peter Butler noted in his hands-on, "I don't know anyone who wants to spend more time managing e-mail." The one saving grace is the promotional video, which will leave your jaw agape. iPhone apps. The premise of Web applications built for Apple's shiny new iPhone is simple: turn any Web service into a simple app that you can use with your fingers. The major snag? You can't download them to launch right off the phone and use local resources like mass storage and saved files. The other snag is speed, which is hampered by the outdated EDGE network. Whilean SDK for developers and 3G version of the iPhone are due out in 2008, early adopters have spent most of 2007 dealing with slow speeds, and having tohack their phones to get proper localized applications that can help overcome the EDGE network's inadequacies. Got any hits and misses of your own? Share them HERE2007: Hits
Misses
HITS AND MISSES 2.0(07)
FACEBOOK TO LET OTHER SITES ACCESS PLATFORM CODE
This post has been updated with information about Bebo's implementation of Facebook's code. And now, for something we didn't see coming: Facebook has announced that the architecture for its developer platform will be made available to other social-networking sites, potentially rendering moot the criticism that its strategy is too "closed"--and potentially dealing a huge blow to Google's yet-to-launch OpenSocial initiative. Facebook senior platform manager Ami Vora posted a blog entry Wednesday with the announcement. "(We) want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model," Vora wrote. "In fact, we'll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms." A developer page elaborates that "the 100,000 developers currently building Facebook applications can make their applications available on other social sites with no extra work." In the official wording from Facebook, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social network is "making its platform architecture available as a model for other social sites," and sees this as the natural evolution of a constantly changing product. This announcement comes in the wake of three OpenSocial partners--LinkedIn, Friendster, and Bebo--all releasing their own developer platform initiatives independent of the Google-run program. One of them, Bebo, specifically designed its developer code to be compatible with Facebook's. As it turns out, that's all part of Facebook's strategy; Bebo is the first major social network to implement this new "open" platform code from Facebook. "We're glad to see Bebo take advantage of the work we've put into designing and building a complete, usable platform," a statement from Facebook said of its would-be rival. "Having similar platforms across multiple social sites is good for everyone: developers get more reach for their applications, social sites get more people developing for their site, and users have better experiences no matter where they are on the Web." But the Facebook release also stressed that this is not any kind of special alliance. "No, this is not a collaboration or partnership with Bebo," the statement reminded speculative readers. "A core Facebook principle is openness and access for everyone, so we've decided to enable any social sites to model their own platforms after Facebook Platform." The initial launch of Facebook's developer platform in May sparked a frenzy of developer activity and interest in third-party contributions to social networks. Google announced OpenSocial months before it was ready,largely as a PR move to counter the Facebook juggernaut. And some OpenSocial partners, like Plaxo, have already claimed that OpenSocial has shown results. But others are waiting until the code has proven itself stable--and that has meant that OpenSocial is still largely a concept, not a concrete phenomenon. Facebook could use a move toward "openness," too. In addition to "walled garden" criticism, Facebook's image as the darling of Silicon Valley took a tumble with its controversial Beacon advertising program andshady allegations about CEO Mark Zuckerberg's past. It's likely that this new move will make Facebook look friendlier. "This is just another step toward the vision of easy, open sharing of information," Vora continued in the announcement. "We look forward to supporting other social sites as they release their own platforms, and look forward most of all to the added benefit for developers and users."
BEBO UNVEILS NEW APPLICATION PLATFORM, TOUTS FACEBOOK COMPATIBILITY
SAN FRANCISCO--When Bebo co-founder and CEO Michael Birch took the stage in a theater at the Metreon complex here to announce the social network's Open Application Platform, he made the eyebrow-raising claim that the new initiative was, "dare I say it, 100 percent compatible with the Facebook platform." Bebo representatives had hinted at Facebook compatibility last month when the social network officially joined Google's OpenSocial initiative. The new platform officially goes live on Wednesday night. "There's a little bit of a land grab with social networks," Birch said on Wednesday morning, acknowledging that Bebo, which was founded in 2005, was late to the game. Creating an application platform, he explained, had been part of Bebo's strategy for quite some time, but then Facebook launched its heavily hyped developer strategy--and that changed the landscape for Bebo. "That kind of changed our course a little bit because we don't want to launch another platform," Birch said. "It just becomes like a format war." Consequently, Bebo's platform uses compatible APIs and markup language so that Facebook applications can be easily converted. When OpenSocial (which has yet to launch in full) is ready and stable, Birch said, Bebo will add those APIs to its developer arsenal, too. "OpenSocial and the Facebook Platform are clearly different platforms," he said, then added jokingly, "Our lazy development team said they couldn't do both at once." About 40 developers and companies have created applications for Bebo's platform launch. Among them are NBC Universal, which has created two new applications for the Bebo platform, one based on the hit showThe Office, and one for Astrology.com, part of the company's iVillage brand; movie-centric social-media company Flixster, which has created a version of its application for Bebo; and virtual world Gaia Online, which has created the "Gaia OMG" application so members can access the service through Bebo. "We want the good quality applications to rise to the top," Birch said, demonstrating the ability of Bebo users to rate applications on a five-star scale. The home (or "canvas") pages for Bebo applications are a little more extensive than Facebook's, with custom "skins" that members can then opt to add to their own profile pages. "It is a full-blown profile," Birch explained. Birch stressed that Bebo is a platform for media consumption in addition to socialization. "We're very much focused on self expression and on content and media," he explained. Indeed, earlier this year, Bebolaunched its Open Media Platform so content creators could start a presence on the social network. The Open Application Platform, Birch said, will do for developers what Open Media did for media companies.
TRY CELL PHONES BEFORE YOU BUY, ONLINE
The buying experience of cell phones has always been frustratingly full of unknowns: you don't have a good idea of what the service coverage will be like before switching plans, you don't know what reception your specific phone will get, and you are usually stuck with a dummy non-operative phone to look at in the store that gives you little idea how it will actually work. A new Web site has come into beta that aims to plug that last hole. TryPhone provides onscreen simulations of handsets and shows how different button presses let you navigate through the user interface. Right now the phone selection is limited to four hot models (iPhone, BlackBerry Pearl, Verizon Juke, and Sprint Muziq), and not all functions can be tried out, but it's certainly a big help. You can do your own freeform actions (within the limits of the functions simulated), including important ones like making a call, taking a photo, adding contacts, or sending text messages. You can also try out some of the customization options, but they don't (understandably) actually take effect on the phone demo itself. There are canned demos of key functions, and you can imagine how this can be used as a rich online tutorial for post-purchase. Perhaps users will also be able to generate their own walkthroughs. In addition to these dynamic elements, the site also offers standard items like user reviews, specs lists, and the ability to buy the phones through vendors (presumably paying TryPhone a fee). I tried to buy a Pearl, which popped up a dialog box to pick between Amazon and another vendor. I chose Amazon and was presented with a page for the Sprint Muziq. Oops! In my trial of the site, it worked fairly well, but seemed either buggy or slow at times. On the iPhone demo, I couldn't get back to the home screen after trying Yahoo mail. On one of the canned demos for the Pearl, things got out of sequence. And in general, the iPhone demo was missing much of the user interface magic that comes from its animations and gestural touch control. The Pearl demo missed the scrolling capability of the pearl "button" itself, part of the whole point of the design. Indeed, one wonders how TryPhone will simulate what are sure to be more complex interaction methods in the future. For right now, however, kudos to TryPhone for filling a knowledge gap that the carriers and retailers themselves have sadly been slow in addressing. Let's hope they can work out the kinks during the beta period.
(Credit: TryPhone)
Silicon Valley celebrates Commodore 64 at 25
The Commodore 64 may be the best-selling computer of all time. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., celebrated the C64's 25th anniversary Monday night. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--I don't want to date myself, but when I was in high school, one of the things I remember was that, among the geeks like myself who hung out in the computer lab, a bit of a culture war was under way. No, it wasn't Macs versus Windows. But Apple was a player in this battle. In fact, it was the Commodore 64 versus the Apple IIe, and while the school had a collection of Apples in the lab that all of us had to use, those of us who had C64s felt like we we owned the superior computer. Maybe it was because the machine seemed pluckier. More accessible to the common man. Easier to use. Better looking. Whatever. We knew we were right. Those Apple owners were stuck-up elitists. I suppose today some people probably feel the same about the Mac versus Windows stand-off, and, well, once again, as a Mac user this time, I'm on the right side of the fence. But Monday, it was all about the Commodore 64, as hundreds of Silicon Valley's best and brightest came out to the Computer History Museum here to celebrate the machine's 25th anniversary. It's hard to believe it's been that long. But I can still remember the day when my dad and I went to the local Long's to pick up my new C64. It was one of the happiest days of high school I can remember. Over the years, I put that computer through its paces. I played endless games on it. I wrote BASIC programs. I word processed. I connected to my local BBS and illegally downloaded copied games. And so much more. That machine and I were like best friends. I must not have been the only one because it turns out that the C64 may well be the best-selling computer of all time. At the 25th anniversary celebration for the Commodore 64 in Mountain View, Calif. Monday night, Commodore founder Jack Tramiel was on hand for a rare public appearance. At the celebration Monday night, Commodore founder Jack Tramiel, who was the guest of honor during what I'm told was a very rare public appearance, told the gathered crowd that the C64 sold between 20 million and 30 million units, a staggering number. So given the presence of luminaries like Tramiel, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Pong designer Al Acorn and many others, I decided to ask some of them if they agreed that there had been a culture war during the early '80s, with C64, Apple IIe and, to a lesser extent, Atari 800 devotees carving out their sides in a pitched battle of self-righteous geekery. I got to spend a little time talking with Tramiel and I first asked him what was different about people who bought C64s and those who ponied up for the Apple IIe. "The only difference was the price," Tramiel said. "Because it seems that in this country, if you sell something cheaper, it couldn't be as good. If it's more expensive, and it's the same product, that must be a better product. That didn't stop me. I still wanted to sell it for a low price. If a person pays three times as much for a computer, he has to be proud of it, because he paid for it." Fair enough. But does he agree that there was a culture war, maybe even one akin to today's Mac/Windows split? Not really, Tramiel suggested. In fact, how could there be a culture war when one platform has 95 percent of the users, he asked. Never mind that Mac users are probably infinitely more passionate about their machines than Windows users. So, since Tramiel didn't buy my premise, I decided to give Wozniak a try. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was on hand at the Computer History Museum to help celebrate the Commodore 64's 25th anniversary. Woz didn't seem to buy it either. In fact, his position was that, secretly, most C64 users really fancied themselves Apple IIe users. "I talked to young people," Woz said, "and a lot of Commodore 64 users (told me they) would have gotten an Apple II if they could afford it." He added that users felt they could learn more from the Apple's open system, while the C64's closed architecture offered only a cheaper price. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that these two didn't acknowledge the culture war the way I did. After all, they were unabashed partisans. But if you read between the lines of their comments, you can see that I'm right. Tramiel bashed the price of the Apple; Wozniak said everybody really wanted an Apple. Atari engineer Al Acorn, who designed 'Pong,' speaking at the 25th anniversary celebration for the Commodore 64. But, there was still an evening of celebration at hand, and I decided to press on with checking out the scene. One thing I hadn't expected was that a lot of former Commodore employees had come out to be with their kind, and to talk to Tramiel, who they mostly hadn't seen in years. I ended up talking with Bil Herd, who worked for Commodore from 1983 to 1986, and who was the lead designer of the company's consumer group. He said he had designed the Commodore 128, as well as several other of the company's machines. Herd explained that he had gotten lucky as a high school dropout who just happened to know how electrons worked and had landed his job at Commodore. He said that he worked his butt off while under Tramiel's tutelage and that one thing he remembered about his time there was, "You learned not to give excuses. You learned to just get it down." Herd said he had come here Monday from his home in New Jersey just because he wanted a chance to see Tramiel again. "You just don't get Jack out in public," Herd said. He began to reminisce about his time at the company and smiled as he recalled how Tramiel had come up with the idea to give consumers $100 off a Commodore 64 if they traded in their existing computer. "It got thousands of the competition off the street," Herd said. "We had a warehouse full of the competition's (machines)." And what did they do with those old computers? "I used a Sinclair as a doorstop," Herd laughed. Later, the several hundred attendees filed into the museum's auditorium for a panel discussion moderated by New York Times reporter John Markoff. New York Times reporter John Markoff interviewing Commodore founder Jack Tramiel on stage during the 25th anniversary celebration of the Commodore 64 And Markoff seemed to prompt the panelists--Tramiel, Wozniak, former IBM PC developer William Lowe and former Commodore International vice president of technology Adam Chowaniec--to answer the question of whether there might just have been a culture war after all. Most didn't seem to want to bite. But then, at last, one final nugget from Tramiel, riffing on the fact that the Apple IIe cost more than three times as much as the Commodore 64: "We made machines for the masses, (Apple) made machines for the classes."
