July | 2005 | Webreakstuff

More on the bay area and european startups

If you’ve seen my early post about the SF bay area as a center of innovation world (particularly on the web 2.0), you know where this is going, but there’s a good post by Tom Coates at Plastic Bag that says exactly what I’ve said months ago (even if he’s limited to the UK). But seriously: where the hell is europe in the startup world?

Because I’m not even talking about Portugal (my country, as you may know) where apparently everybody seems to pay more attention to investing in stuff like the EuroMillions (only to lose all of the money put up) instead of thinking about proper ways to create new things. I’m talking about Europe here. I know there’s a whole lot of people who are smart enough to start enticing projects and startups. They just don’t really do it. Why, I’m not sure – fact is, it’s just not happening.

In my previous post, Evan Henshaw-Plath (from Odeo) commented that the emergence of interesting projects from the bay area sucks up all creative thinkers to one tiny little area (the SF bay). At the time, I was sceptical about the whole idea. Now, and it hasn’t been that long, I know he was right. Since I got into the job market again, I’ve had quite a few offers (a few a day, still), and let me tell you 70% of those are from the US. Is there a tendency here?

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By: Fred Oliveira

31-07-2005

Business, RSS, Web 2.0

Google patents RSS advertising. Do no evil?

I just read and heard about Google patenting RSS advertising. The story is both on slashdot as well as The Register. Now, I am seriously wondering how we (and I say we, the web 2.0 centered folk) are going to deal with that.

If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind that RSS was going to revolutionize how people think about web content, this may be the last stone in the wall of proof. This may also confuse those who still believe Google’s PR strategy of “do no evil”. Now, I’m not saying they’re evil, because I actually kinda like their attitude as a company and corporation – but this is a move that leaves me sceptical about how they play their cards.

I’ve seen opinions that Google is protecting RSS advertising which is something they’re now starting to profit of (remember that all of Google’s profit comes from ad revenues) so they wouldn’t be forced out of the market by other (rival) companies like Yahoo or Microsoft. Still, this seems like one of the best pieces of proof why the US patent office (and remember I’m not even in the US) does a bad job and that some things should be free.

Should RSS advertising be patented? Well, I’m one of those persons that believes RSS (or syndicated content as a whole) shouldn’t be poisoned by the world of advertising. Mainly because I believe people’s tollerance for advertising (particularly obtrusive ones – which we aren’t seeing in RSS yet) is seriously decreasing. Having ads in RSS feeds undermines the notion of the web as a means to obtain information. Even if we see things from a business standpoint (and we have to particularly now that many of us are living off of the web), there are far better ways to use RSS besides advertising (mainly targeted syndication).

Are RSS ads a good thing? They may be, in tiny little circles – not for the general public. Is Google’s patent the two weeks notice announcement of a change in syndicated content? It might be, we’ll wait and find out. This does undoubtedly undermine how companies and people view RSS. The boogeyman of ads strikes the one “last” tool of the web-for-content ideology.

If ads in feeds become the norm, investments in dealing with the technology (like Microsoft’s in their upcoming Windows Vista) will probably be a little less notable. It’ll be a poisoned world after all.

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By: Fred Oliveira

24-07-2005

Design, Podcasting

Typeradio, a podcast for designers

Every once in a while, the podcasting world slaps you in the face with the glove of wisdom. The guys at Typeradio have been filling the void for the lack of design-oriented podcasts on the web right now, with an awesome line of interviews with typographers and designers. While this isn’t the regular topic around WeBreakStuff (I know), I thought some of you who keep visiting this site because of design issues may be interested in it.

So what I mean by all of this is: go listen to Typeradio if you want a podcast that is design / typography oriented. They’re doing a terrific work covering Typecon in New York City, and have already done some interviews with people I admire in the design word like Stefan Sagmeister and Peter Saville.

One thing their example over at Typeradio got me thinking about is the possibility of me starting a podcast feed on the Web 2.0 (remember there’s already a couple of great ones on that), usability, web standards (and technologies), and whatever else interests me and my readers. When there’s a will, there’s a way, or so they say. I’ll give that some thought.

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By: Fred Oliveira

24-07-2005

Ajax, Business, Web, Web 2.0

Ajax and webpage advertising

Ajax Ajax is, undoubtedly, emerging as one of the “new” technologies with the fastest adoption rates by webmasters and developers. At Marketing Vox, there’s a really interesting post about how Ajax may have an impact on online advertising, considering users are now doing much more with each page reload (considering Ajax itself is a way to get new content from a server without needing a full new page loading – which is usually what advertising companies consider an “impression”).

They raise the question as to how advertising companies are supposed to deal with that new reality, and how exactly metrics should be read considering this (practically reinvented) medium of a webpage without constant reloads.

While this is naturally a reason for longer studies, there’s also another side to this story. Mainly, the fact that advertising companies can leverage Ajax themselves in their own marketing strategies. One thing that comes to my mind is starting to think about a page reading as a continuous temporal experience (serving new ads every X seconds/minutes/whatever) instead of a start-stop experience imposed by how webmasters organize their content.

Note: for you regulars, sorry about the lack of updates lately. I’ve been working on some really interesting stuff with extremely smart people, which I’m sure you’ll see and hear about soon enough. Stay tuned!

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More on the bay area and european startups

Typeradio, a podcast for designers

Ajax and webpage advertising

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