Edgeio has opened to the public. Edgeio is as some of you may know, the project I’ve worked on from September to the end of last month and the reason I spent 2 great months in California. It is great to see the service open doors for several reasons, but most importantly because of my involvement, and secondly because of it’s significance in the world of online content publishing.

The basics

Edgeio monitors the blogosphere for classifieds. Basically, if you post something on your blog and tag it “listing”, edgeio picks it up and categorizes it, making it available to a much bigger audience. This means that your blog or website can now become your store - even if you don’t think of it that way.

In practical terms, lets say I was going to sell the powerbook I’m typing on right now (because you know, Macbook Pros are much better). I could, just as I’m writing this entry, write another one about the powerbook, tag it appropriately (I’d say: listing, powerbook, apple, 17inch) and bam - edgeio would pick it up. Now everyone who visits edgeio (and maybe had no clue about my blog in the past) can see I’m selling a powerbook and get in touch.

Why is this relevant?

Remember the old age of centralized portals for news, discussion, shopping, or any other kind of data? They have been (and keep being) replaced, even as you read this story, with decentralized services aggregating content. You’ve obviously seen it happen because you’re reading a blog, not CNN.com. Also, there’s a fairly good chance you got here with an aggregator.

The old center of the online content network is now a space for aggregating (instead of archiving or controlling) microcontent from the edge. People are posting on their webpages and own domains. They want to control their own data but still make it available. Edgeio allows for just that, with microcontent that is for sale, on RSS powered websites - like weblogs.

Get out there and try it

So February 27 marks the date edgeio opens to the public, and the day a whole new concept of selling and listing classifieds online comes about. It’s all about the edge of the network. You know, websites like yours or mine.

Congratulations to everyone that was involved in the project since the beginning - I guess that includes me as well. There’s a lot of people who’ve been helping edgeio since it was just an idea, but I leave that for Keith and Mike to post about on the edgeio blog - that needs a new layout, got damn it :-).

Om Malik is also talking about the launch.

How many times have you seen Flickr fail? I have seen it happen quite a few times, but something behind the “Flickr is having a massage” message, shown whenever someone tripped on a few cables, keeps me comfortable - it lets me know my photos and those of my friends, are in good hands. It will all be okay, even when something has clearly gone wrong.

The human side of web applications is not about deception. It’s about showing the world that you, the developer, are still behind your keyboard - and that you haven’t given up on your audience. What would you have thought if Flickr said “SERVER ERROR” instead? You’d be climbing up the walls.

Spend some time thinking about how to make your application connect to the user. Make him feel at home and constantly taken care of - they’ll be happier, and you’ll be happier. More information about how the application should speak to its users on this previous blog post.

Robert Scoble once told me (in a Berkeley geek dinner he and Dave organized) that the problem with Microsoft was that moving the huge machine it has become is so hard that for many people seeing it from the outside, innovation in the company is close to none.

Recently we’ve been given the (amazing) chance to work with one of the market leaders in an extremely important sector of the worlds economy. We’ve seen the other side of their story, how they see themselves and how that compares to how the world sees them. Things are different from the other side of the glass - breaking it is the tricky part.

Changing anything that’s been around for so long, and who’s values and traditions seem to have grown with the spirit of the start-up and sillicon valley world is no easy task. But moving worlds, the capacity to work with people who set high standards and put a little of ourselves into that (huge) machine, is amazing.

Suffice to say this is one of those oportunities on which we get to show how much we love what we do. More on who we’re working with in a very near future.

Yahoo! keeps showing the world how much they get web 2.0. This time, they’ve done the unexpected and opened the sources to the UI library (that includes visual effects, connection handlers - think ajax -, dom handlers, and drag-and-drop controls) under a BSD license. Also, they’re now sharing their design patterns under a Creative Commons license.

Yahoo! UI library
Yahoo! Design Patterns

This is clearly celebration time for the online development community and open source movements. Big players embracing the need for open standards - thus stimulating innovation instead of re-invention - are definitely something we need more of. Excellent! [via O’Reilly Radar]