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WebGuild covers technology topics from startups to news to enterprise applications, and we'd love to hear more from you. If you are a tech blogger WebGuild would like to feature some of your technology opinions. If you are in management we'd be interested in hearing more about what you and your company do with online technology.

To submit material or ideas for articles contact WebGuild President Daya Baran dbaran@gmail.com or WebGuild Blogger Joe Hunkins jhunkins@gmail.com

We also love comments on the posts. A lot of people read WebGuild but only a tiny number leave comments. If you like - or hate - the post feel free to let us know, or add anything you think is relevant to the conversation.

Goodbye to Google's Hello

Google Picasa is an excellent photo service, though in my view and those of many others it is not as good as Yahoo's Flickr, which most would say represents the leader and key innovator in the competitive-but-not-lucrative photo sharing, storage, and photo community space.

Part of Picasa was a service called "hello", which allowed photo commenting in real time and as Matt Ingram notes "hello" was actually a great application.

So why will Google close it down on May 15th?

The likely answer is that it's a drain on Google's human resources without presenting a clear path to profitability. In simple terms, hello has probably failed to capture enough interest to make it worth Google's precious time. Perhaps Google could have put more resources and promotion behind the tool, but I think in some ways Google is comfortable having left the online photo business to Flickr and others.

One of Google's many brilliancies is focusing laser-like on those aspects of the business that they do very well and that do very well for them. Search is the key, and it's made Google one of the most successful companies in business history. Contrary to their sterling reputation Google has actually failed to deliver much if any profit in the key online venues of video sharing (despite owning the major player YouTube), photo sharing (despite owning Picasa), and social networking (despite owning Orkut). Google's failure in these venues is conspicuous given their success in search, though this probably mostly just shows how fickle and habit-driven we are as online application consumers.

Papa Johns Raking In The Dough Online

Online pizza ordering has become a key component of the massive US pizza business. Papa Johns recently reported that they have now handled over a billion dollars in online pizza sales and it is also reported that over 20 percent of all sales come from online or text messaging

CNN Reports

Myspace and Data Portability

Myspace will be supporting very open data portability standards which will make it easy to share information across different websites with a single login as well as other excellent features. This is separate from the Open Social initiative which will also be supported by Myspace but represents the same type of open, data sharing approach that is becoming a key component of "best practices" for online development and interaction.

Ben Metcalfe is a key player in all this and will certainly be a great steward of the project. He's a very knowlegeable social media consultant and participant, spearheaded work at the BBC's superb website, and most importantly can be trusted to make sure these standards are not co-opted or abused by the major players.

It's very exciting to see the shift from guarded, proprietary approaches to openness. Ironically the general principles of open standards formed the foundation of the early internet but as commercialism, big money, and search optimization started to rule the internet we saw less transparency, less user-centric behavior, and a lot more BS. Open standards represent a step back to a friendlier, more functional, and more personal online experience.

Judge Orders Torrentspy to Pay Motion Picture Association $30,000 .... x 3699

A California judge today ordered Torrentspy to pay the Motion Picture Association of America a total of over $110,000,000. This was a win for Hollywood Studios although technicalities in the case mean it may not be all that significant because Torrentspy destroyed critical evidence which may in part have led to the huge judgement against them.

$30,000 per infringement x 3699 infringing movies is a bill nobody would want in their mailbox, and Torrentspy says they'll fight the verdict.

More from News.com

Postgres Plus Ajax = Web 2.0 Made Easy!

WaveMaker announced a partnership last week with Enterprise DB, specifically their blades program. Enterprise DB (based on Postgres) is being bundled with the next release of WaveMaker to beef up the database part of our Ajax development platform.

Now Lewis Cunningham, a Senior Solutions Architect for Enterprise DB, has posted a great WaveMaker product review. He compares WaveMaker to Oracle Forms and Oracle ApEx, with the difference that WaveMaker works with standard Java and the Oracle products only work with Oracle PL/SQL.

Lewis says:

Wavemaker Studio is much more of a GUI IDE than the ApEx application builder. ApEx looks and feels like HTML while Wavemaker looks and feel like a rich, desktop application. Wavemaker Studio just doesn't feel like you're running in a browser.

I will be posting about my progress with Wavemaker as I play with it. I am liking it now that I have it configured and working. I think one of the big things that both Postgres and EnterpriseDB have been missing is a very robust application tool. Wavemaker might just be the tool.

The cool thing about the WaveMaker/EnterpriseDB partnership is that it took exactly one phone call between myself and the Bob Zurek, the CTO of Enterprise DB, to "negotiate" the entire relationship. As I pointed out in the Silverado Rules for Open Source Success, open source is not just good for creating user communities, it rocks for creating vendors ecosystems too!

Internet Archive Challenges FBI, Wins

Infoworld is reporting that the Internet Archive was served a subpoena by the FBI some time ago that requested information about users. They also got a letter prohibiting them from discussing the request but they have decided to ... discuss the case.

When the Archive refused to release the information the FBI withdrew it's request as it has in at least two other similar cases.

Microsoft's Organic Plan?

The normally very perceptive Kara Swisher appears a bit nutty with her latest Microsoft granola post. Kara appears to misunderstand the term "Organic" in the context it's getting used by Microsoft, though complicating all this is the fact Microsoft is about as likely to succeed online "organically" as they are likely to succeed in crop farming.

By "organic" Microsoft is trying to say that they will seek to develop their online environments internally and with their own talent and resources rather than buying up the competition. My take is that all of this organic talk is a part of the big Ballmer bluff that will probably lead to an acquistion of Yahoo, but it's possible that Microsoft actually believes they can actually succeed where so far they have so dramatically failed to succeed with Microsoft LIVE search.

On Charlie Rose earlier this week Mike Arrington noted how, unlike Yahoo and Google, Microsoft has no search "brand". Despite an enormous internal spending spree and some external marketing, few outside of the industry could tell you that Microsoft intended to make "MS Live" their key search brand as they slowly phased out "MSN Search". This of course was the key reason that Ballmer has been so intent on aquiring Yahoo. Without a search / internet brand Microsoft has little hope of winning the epic online battles with Google. Yahoo's quality brand, second place search market share, and huge internet empire would have given Microsoft the recognition they needed to fight Google head on in the online spaces Google has come to dominate so dramatically.

Can Microsoft build their brand organically? Probably not, which is why - correctly understood or not - the organic talk is nonsense and Microsoft is probably working many angles right now hoping to buy as big a piece of the internet as they can. Will they succeed? Almost certainly yes. Microsoft may not have much of an internet brand but they have something almost as good. Cash. And lots of it.

Yahoo's board - which includes some people who lost *hundreds of millions* in stock value on Monday, is rumored to be considering heading back to the negotiating table with Microsoft. Given that Microsoft has offered $33 per share and is likely to go at least a few dollars more and given that Yahoo's hopes of seeing $33 per share anytime soon given their lackluster performance, low morale, and angry shareholders, a deal still may be looming on the horizon. However even if Microsoft Yahoo is not to be look for Microsoft to be on the hunt for major internet properties.


Disclosure: Long on YHOO

Beginner's Guide To Using Twitter

Since we started twittering our blog posts a couple of months ago, several of you have asked about Twitter, how it works and how to use it. So I decided to put together this quick guide. I would also like to thank Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com for his contribution to this guide.

What is Twitter?
Twitter is a service that enables you to stay in touch and keep up with friends no matter where you are.

What is Twittering?
Twittering is similar to sending SMS text messages from your cell phone. However instead of it being from one to one it is from one to many. Any message sent on Twitter is public.

What is Twitter Used For?
Twitter is commonly used for instant updates. On the WebGuild site we use Twitter to send an instant alert when a new post is made. The Los Angeles Fire Department uses Twitter to keep the community apprised of fire emergences (LAFD). Mostly it is used to notify friends and family of what you are doing at any given moment.

Examples of Tweets
Here is an example of some Tweets (messages sent via Twitter) and the messages that you send have to be short, 140 characters or less. If you messages are over 140 characters it will get cut off.

Having drinks at the Horseshoe Bar with my co-workers.

zappos 2 minutes ago

--------------------- OR ----------------------

Yahoo Takeover Imminent http://tinyurl.com/3e6806

webguild Jan 13, 2008

Anyone Can Follow You On Twitter
You send an SMS text message to Twitter with your note, and your message will be automatically broadcast (like CB radio) to whoever is choosing to follow you (your friends). If people don't care what you're doing, they won't follow you, so don't worry about sending out trivial messages. Twitter is free, however depending on plan your phone carrier might charge you for sending and receiving tweets (similar to text messages).

So here's an example where Twitter came in handy for Tony. He was at a bar and he twittered. "I'm at bar X" and the message was broadcast to his Twitter network. A couple of his friends happened to be close by, so they stopped by and they all had a drink. Pretty cool!

Here's another example: I was flying in to the Vegas airport, and I twittered "Just landed in Vegas airport." I would have never texted anyone that message, but in the Twitter culture, that's exactly what you're supposed to do. It just so happened that someone on my Twitter network was about to fly out of Vegas, so we met up at the airport bar and had a drink. I would have never known otherwise that this person was at the airport, nor would I have ever sent him a text message or called him that I had just landed.

Setting Up Twitter
1. Go to twitter.com and click on "Join"
2. Create a username, password etc. and click “Create my account”.
3. Click on "Skip" at the bottom of the next page, don't worry about signing up your friends yet.
4. Click on "Settings" at the top of the next page
5. Update your name (first name only is fine), Time Zone, and Location and click "Save". You can fill out the rest later. Do not choose "Protect my updates" for now. You can always change your mind later, but to really understand the full power of Twitter, you should go for the first 2 weeks doing what most people on Twitter do, which is have everything be public.
6. Click on the Devices tab, enter your phone number, check the box under your phone number and hit "Save".
7. You will be given a 6 letter code.
8. On your cell phone, create a new address book entry called "Twitter", and use 40404 as the phone number (for those in the United States).
9. Send a text message to Twitter on your cell phone with the 6 letter code that you saw on the web site. You should get a confirmation text message back from Twitter.
10. Your account is set up! Now you just need to follow some people and have people follow you. Let your friends know what your username on Twitter is and tell them to follow you. If you have friends already on Twitter, you can follow them. To follow someone, just send a text message to twitter in the following format: follow username

Add & Remove Twitter Followers
To follow our blog updates simply type follow webguild. So send a text message to Twitter: follow username.Then, anytime I send a message to Twitter or post a blog, then my message will show up in your cell phone.

And to start following our blog send a text message to Twitter: follow webguild

And to stop following our blog send a text message to Twitter: leave username

Tracking Keywords
One really cool feature that Twitter has is the "track" feature. Basically, it allows you to track any keyword or phrase, and anytime anyone in the world twitters something using that phrase, you will see it on your cell phone (remember, Twitter broadcasts are public). So it's a great way to overhear conversations. I use it to track what other people in the world are saying about WebGuild. To use the track feature, simply text message: track keyword

And to start tracking a keyword, text message Twitter: track webguild

And to stop tracking a keyword, text message Twitter: untrack keyword

If you need help or forget the Twitter commands, text message Twitter: help

That's it for getting started! I recommend you track something you're interested in when you first start so that you can get an idea of what the Twitter culture is like and how other people are using it. For example, if you love clowns, then text "track clowns" and also text "track clown". You can untrack them at anytime or once you get the hang of it.

Twitter & Marketing
Twitter is now being recognized as a valuable marketing tool and I will cover some in a follow-up post. If you would like to share your ideas or experience please twitter webguild (there is a way to send direct messages on Twitter) or email webguild.

Wimax Consortium Coming Very Soon

Sprint's wimax initiatives appeared to falter last year as they faced serious challenges from ATT and Verizon and broke up with Clearwire, but there is a new broadband wind in Sprint's sails and the New York Times is reporting that a major wimax technology consortium will be announced soon - probably tomorrow. The consortium includes Sprint Nextel, Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner and Clearwire.

Two big advantages of wimax broadband is that it can provide extensive rural connectivity where a single tower can provide broadband coverage over an area of many square miles. Also, wimax offers great opportunities for mobile broadband. e.g. Police cruisers throughout a city can all have high speed connectivity at a very modest cost.

If the consortium is successful, look for more communities to adopt this standard and more widespread rural high speed connectivity. Perhaps unfortunately, the more lucrative urban environments already have many broadband choices in the form of DSL, Cable, EVDO, and Satellite. With the heavy capital costs of these deployments there will hopefully be enough profit left in the equation to provide consumers with many low cost choices for their broadband connection.

Hyatt Launches Travel Network "Yatt It"

Hyatt has launched an online travel community called yatt’it. Hyatt said the goal of the web site is to offer travelers credible, candid, fellow-traveler advice, lively discussion forums and direct-booking options. The site features expert insight, advice and tips frequent travelers as wells as Hyatt's concierges in more than 40 destinations around the world.

It's 3am: Is Your Social Network Up?

Pingdom.com has a nice chart showing the major social networking sites and their uptime percentages for the first Quarter of 2008. The graph is here.

There has been a lot of talk about Twitter's uptime challenges and this graph does indicate that Twitter is down a lot more than the other networks, yet with a 98.72% uptime it would hardly appear that many users are experiences major problems with Twitter downtimes. It's certainly frustrating to log on expecting something and have no access, but I'd suggest this is hardly the same issue as ISP uptime which is a very reasonable requirement for a robust internet to thrive.

However for some users and businesses that have begun to rely on Twitter as an internal communications tool or for social networking architects like Dave Winer, Twitter downtime has become such a critical issue that a Twitter rebellion appears to be brewing, where the insurgents are suggesting that Twitter's infrastructure is simply not up to the standards that should be required by the community.

Andreessen to Become Facebook's 4th Board Member

Kara at Boomtown is reporting that web visionary Marc Andreessen, who brought us Netscape and Ning, is likely to become the 4th board member of Facebook.

This is particularly interesting because Ning is a major player in the Open Social Alliance spearheaded by Google, an alliance that includes Myspace but not Facebook. Is Facebook seeking to bridge that gap in the social networking space? Certainly Facebook's power plays in the executive and board areas suggest that the social juggernaut has even bigger plans.

With the Microsoft Yahoo merger on the skids, many have suggested that Facebook may be a key new aquisition target for Microsoft.

Mark Zuckerberg's Email To Employees On New PR Chief

Below is the memo Mark Zuckerberg’s sent to all Facebook employees announcing the hiring of Elliot Schrage as the company's new VP Communications and Public Policy.

Hey Everyone–

I’m writing from India to share with you the good news that Elliot Schrage will be joining our management team as VP Communications and Public Policy. In this role, he will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do. The goal here is to help people understand how the internet can strengthen people’s relationships. Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things.

Elliot is joining us from Google where he has been their VP Global Communications and Public Affairs since 2005. At Google, he broadened the company’s messaging from a focus on only product PR to include all aspects of corporate, financial, policy, philanthropic and internal communications. Before that, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a public policy think tank, as a professor at Columbia Business School and as SVP at Gap. Early on, he began his career as a Harvard-trained lawyer.

This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness, and honest internal communications.

Elliot will be starting on ***, although you may see him around the office before then. If you want to send him a note to congratulate him on joining, his email is *** and I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.

Mark

Google PR Chief Heads To Facebook

Google's PR Chief Elliot Schrage left the company to take the same position at Facebook. Schrage will be Facebook's VP Communications and Public Policy, reporting to Sheryl Sandberg who herself left Google to become the COO at Facebook. Schrage was famous for putting the best spin on several "Don't Be Evil" protests at the company's Mountain View campus and elsewhere.

Notes in Google Reader

Like Matthew Ingram I'm not really feeling Google's excitement about their "notes" feature in Google reader, which allows a sort of "post it note" and sharing web items with friends.

But maybe we are missing something? Read the announcement at Google Reader blog to get the scoop, which includes:

Now you can finally show all of your Reader friends that awesome talking cat video you found, your favorite grilled trout recipe, or reviews of the best brunch place in your neighborhood -- all without a subscription.

I can't wait for my friends to start pelting me with *more* cat videos, recipes, and long-winded reviews. As much as I love the social web, I fear that it is becoming far too easy to *pester people* when the power of online has been that we can filter our content and read it on our own time.

Google Files Patent For Targeted Video Advertising

Google has filed a patent application for "Targeted Video Advertising" with the USPTO, for "a computer-implemented method of providing targeted video promotional material".

The process being patented includes transmitting a promotional item for display on a video terminal, monitoring a viewer's interactions with particular advertisements, such as skipping advertisements and presenting advertisements determined to be similar to those that the user has watched and less like those the user has skipped. The "Targeted Video Advertising" patent application suggests it may go into set-top boxes.

The patent also covers the following user behavior patterns:

1) "Users may be allowed to skip particular commercials, but required to watch or accept a set number of commercials in order to watch a program. The required number may be, for example, a set integer, such as 11 commercials."

2) "The system…may also require the user to fully watch at least four promotions before the program will continue."

3) "The profile includes some demographic information of the user, such as income, age, and gender. This information may be obtained when the user registers for the video service."

4) "A commercial with the interactive format is an advertisement that requires user interaction to be completed (e.g., a survey)."

Yahoo Shares Drop as Microsoft Merger Melts

Yahoo shares opened this morning at $23.02, down $5.65 from yesterday's close. However Yahoo has bounced back a bit to just under $25 per share at 1pm, perhaps reflecting investor's optimism that a deal will still be struck with Microsoft after what some - including me - think was a case of MS CEO Ballmer calling Yahoo's high price bluff.

Jerry Yang wrote investors and the public today at the Yahoo Andecdotal blog in a post titled "OK, so now what? There he writes:

We’ll continue to execute on our plan — making your Internet experience as personal, relevant, open and social as possible, serving advertisers so well they insist on working with us, and opening up Yahoo! in a way that developers dream of. And, we’ll also continue to pursue strategic opportunities that position us for long-term success.

Jerry also appeared to be doing a bit of covering Yahoo's butt in what is likely to be a spate of shareholder lawsuits suggesting Yahoo should have sold the company at the price offered:

Frankly, there’s a lot of nonsense and misinformation in what’s being reported. Just so we are all clear, here’s what happened. The board took its mission very seriously. We clearly indicated to Microsoft that we were open to a transaction but only if it were on terms that fully recognized the value of Yahoo! and was in the best interests of our stockholders.
No one is celebrating about the outcome of these past three months… and no one should.

But wait ... didn't somebody hear a champagne cork pop at Jerry's house? His statement does not really jive with the open letter from Steve Ballmer or the rumor mill where it has been strongly suggested that Yahoo was a lot more interested in killing this deal at all costs than compromising in any reasonable way.

Disclosure: I am (still!) long on YHOO

India Times: China Cyberattacking India

The Times of India has a very provocative article suggesting that China is in a constant state of cyber warfare against India, maliciously mapping major India websites for attacks and installing bot networks that could launch a major cyber strike at China's command.

The article fails to give enough details to know how much of this could be hype or how much is a misinterpretation of "normal" and intrusive but not necessarily malicious logging and tracking behaviour that is part of China's massive internet censorship program or private entities in China.

If your company has more than a trivial exposure to India networks you'll want to review logs and statistics for malicious activity originating in China (or anywhere for that matter!)

Times of India

Startups...Incoming!

If you want to get a first and fast look at some of the new startups in Silicon Valley that are showing off over at Startup Camp 5 here is the link to the "speed geeking" sessions where startups have 5 minutes to showcase themselves to small groups that travel from table to table.

The little startup pitches are usually fun and fast paced, and surprisingly you can usually get enough information in a few minutes to really understand the concept and implementation of even a large scale project.

Although I'm not at this Startup camp I'm enjoying the online coverage and happy to be able to preview so many ideas and companies in such a short time.