Blogs

Late last night we produced our second Ajax podcast covering a variety of topical issues we were thinking about this week. Topics include:

• Yahoo web service API’s – Google API’s and Pushpin (www.pushpin.com)
• Windows Live Mail
• Law suits
• Enterprise Ajax (the book!)
• Java and Ajax
• EBA Grid 3.05 point release!!

Check out the podcast (in MP3 format)!

We’re a software company and we sell software products. We require that customers agree to the terms of our EULA (license) when they use our software. The EULA lays out some general terms that describe what we will do for the customer, what the customer will do for us, and who is responsible for what. A large part of that is indemnification. Basically, we don’t want to put our business, and employee’s livelihood at risk if somebody screws up and sues us because they think our product caused them harm or damage (even indirectly). Honestly, we don’t think this is a likely outcome (or we wouldn’t be selling it), but it’s very customary for companies in our position to protect ourselves and our employees in this way.

What I don’t understand is why sometimes when we deal with larger companies and lawyers get involved before buying our product, they ask us to remove clauses that protect our people from liability. Why on earth would we agree to that for one sale? Why in good conscience would they ask us to do this? Another request we get sometimes is to add clauses to the license that require us to deliver significantly more to the client than we otherwise would, without any consideration for these deliverables. In other words, we’ll do much more for the customer than we would for another customer for no compensation.

Here is a recent example. In this paragraph, the client has modified the EULA to limit our protection from law suits. So if the client uses the product in a high-risk situation and indirectly experiences a loss, we can be held responsible. You lawyers out there may see this differently, and I invite your comments.

C. In addition to the other requirements set forth in this Section V, you hereby agree to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend EBA from and against any and all liabilities, damages, losses, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising from or related to any third party claim, action, proceeding or allegation that arises or results, either directly or indirectly solely from your the use and distribution of any of your software application product(s) or components that include the REDISTRIBUTABLES.

Example 2. The amount of our liability has been arbitrarily increased to double the amount of the license fee. In my view this serves no strategic purpose other than to sweeten the pot should we in some scenario be liable for damages. The fact is that we sell software components worth on average $500. The cost of modifying this agreement no doubt exceeded this enormously. Also, terms protecting the client against willful misconduct on our part (fair enough) AND gross negligence where added. The term gross negligence is very troubling as it is open to interpretation – would leaving a bug in the software be termed negligence? In software especially it would not be my preference to have this interpreted by someone with no engineering background.

EBA’s liability, whether in contract, tort, or otherwise, arising out of Licensee’s use of, or in connection with, the SOFTWARE, or otherwise under this Agreement, shall not exceed a sum equal to two times the amount of the license fee paid by you to EBA. EXCEPT FOR EBA’S INDEMNIFICATION OBLIGATIONS IN SECTION VII OR ANY LOSSES OR DAMAGES ARISING FROM THE GROSS NEGLIGENCE OR WILLFUL MISCONDUCT OF EBA, IN NO EVENT SHALL…

Here’s another quick one.. changing the jusdiction to their local state instead of our region. This dramatically increases the cost of responding to a complaint should the situation arise. This seems like gold-plating to me, and I’m surprised a large firm would require this of a small components vendor for a $500 license. This was one particular client, but of course this has come up more than once. The state has been changed to preserve anonymity.

You agree that you will not export or re-export the Software without the appropriate Canadian or foreign government licenses. This LICENSE is governed by the laws of the State of New York. Canadian province of British Columbia as applied to agreements entered into and to be performed entirely within British Columbia.

The point here is that there seems to be a perception among some
lawyers that because we are a ’small business’ we will accept any terms
given to us. I’m personally surprised that they would spend the time and money inserting these clauses and bartering with us over minor terms for dollar values that are typically in the petty-cash range.

Search is breaking. Every day around the world people are getting more and more bad results from Google searches. Snap.com is shifting the pendulum in the other direction.. I like what I see.. and it’s not the Ajax per-se, but how it integrates the human brain into the search process.

What is happening? Commerce-skew is destroying our ability to get useful information for one thing. A lot of really smart people have made it their lifes mission to get their ecommerce site listed super high for stuff that it shouldn’t be listed for. Here’s an example. “dvd player reviews“.. try it on Google – I dare you. Try to find a database of actual product reviews and comparisons.. and not just another pyramid-scheme link scam trying to sell you dvd players. It’s hard! I was searching for digital camera reviews a few months ago and wandered around for about an hour looking for decent resources. Try the Snap.com version of this search.

Product information is one thing.. but this problem extends to all domains and becomes a kind of ‘tragedy of the commons‘ in that people are perfectly willing to spoil a resource for others to suit their own immediate selfish needs. Google uses an inbound link algorithm (partly) to determine the relative importance of sites.. but this technique just doesn’t work anymore.

I know that Snap.com doesn’t acutally have a better search algorithm.. at least from what I can tell I get about the same results on Google as I have been getting on Snap. They may be the same for all I know. What I like is that they provide an interface that allows me to scan and determine quickly which results are worth investigating. I have seen criticism of this that imply that this is ‘bloat’, ‘fluff’, and so-on.. but in my view it’s not. It’s letting me use my own really good search tool (my brain) to do that last little bit of filtering. I feel that that at the end of the day, search engines will need to do stuff like this in addition to improving their algorithms because:

• folksonomies, tagging, other collaborative search refiners suffer from the common field problem
• the human brain is incredibly good.. better than computers at detecting patterns
• usability improves information search

Along the lines of this human brain thing.. take a look at what Amazon.com is doing with Mechanical Turk..

So what am I talking about with Snap? Is this just a more usable view into the same data? If so, can’t this be easily duplicated. Yes. Well.. the Ajax stuff they’re doing looks pretty slick.. I think they’ve but a lot of effort into their web search and news search tools.. But it could be duplicated. I just they’ve done a stellar job of their interface. I’ll be comparing the SERP’s (results pages) for a while to test the quality of returned results but I think I’ll be switching over.

OK so here’s what I’m talking about.. take a look at these screenshots and think to yourself.. if I was searching for a DVD Player Review (not a place to buy) which would help be find the information faster?

Google’s search for dvd player reviews – these are all bad results.

Snap.com search for dvd player reviews – still bad results, but I can use my amazing human brain to filter these results easily.

Dr Kedrosky, whom you all know as the prolific author of Infectious Greed, is speaking to us about VC. Always an entertaining speaker, here are the main points. I think somehow.. he’s like actually blogging while on stage talking to us.

The law of the VC bubble.. it takes a lot of dead bodies to fill a swamp.

The first bubble in 2002 was not actually a bubble at all.. (maybe)… it was actually just a reaction (a rapid one) to what was going on. There is as much money out there right now as there was during the first “bubble” but its just more concentrated in the top VC firms.

It’s really the richest VC’s that continue to make money because they have access to the best deals!

Paul tells a good story about one VC recently who floated a vague offer to raise money and in 24 hours he had billions in committments for ‘anything’.. (at least I think thats what he said)

If you don’t need venture capital, DON’T TAKE IT.. do something else.. be revenue funded. Anything else. retain 100% of your stock for heaven’s sake! But if you don’t take it and you really need it, then when the worst rolls around and you really need it then you’ll have to take the terms they give you (bad).

What’s the problem with Web2.0 firms? LOW barriers to entry! Rediculously low. Easily duplicable products. You just need a little cash – which big firms have.

YouTube.. interesting.. no currently visible business model, but they kindof look like what a television network of the future might be.. hmmm…

Growing companies economically is not as easy as the giants make it seem.. Amazon.com – capital expenditure growing faster than revenue.. same thing with Google! How can they sustain this?

The 3 most interesting companies in the Web2.0 space in the last 3 months were ALL in the B2B space. DabbleDB in Vancouver and (editor’s addition: eBusiness Applications in Vancouver also.. B2B software components)

Another community based one that is actually profitable.. generating $10-15k per day is plentyoffish.

So many Web2 firms are trying to sell features, not companies..

The visionary behind Micropersuasion is lending his thoughts on the future of marketing.

Public relations has to mean what it says.. relating business activities and engagements with the public. PR people need to interact with people as people. With 37 million people blogging to their own motivation.. we need to play to that and understand what is going to feed that motivation. How do I help blogger x succeed at what she wants, and also help me succeed?

Do clients get it? They do if they are ready to invest.. invest in the conversation that is.

But.. PR feels a bit like a military campaign without end.. is that right? No. It should be about befriending the community. Eg: The State of Pensilvania decided to give bloggers free trips to Pensilvania and experience it first hand. Bloggers started talking about it, and it generated some bucks.

But lets not be too narrow.. blogging is just 1 piece of the pie. A person like you or me (a peer) is the mosted trusted source of information.. more than the media, more than any other source like search or whathaveyou. But that just means we need to reach people’s peers.. blogs are not the only way.

Advertising is still working! Its changing.. TiVO is changing the way advertisors view the 30 second spot, but still the amount of money that people spend (particularly on online marketing) is huge and growing. More dollars will slip away from TV and go online. Marketing isn’t dying, PR isn’t dying.. it’s just spreading out into different channels. ok.. people fear online marketing.. the whole industry does. They need numbers.. proof points.. cases… to alleviate fear.

Who specifically should we engage with? The community will tell us. Just reading blogs will tell you who to listen to very quickly and it’s transparent. There are millions and millions of blogs and the question of who you should be talking to is different than who you should believe. Technorati score is not the answer. It’s not a numbers game.

Start with mainstream media.. use that to get reach.. then find a narrow vertical in communities (ok, blogs) and bring them directly into the conversation. Yes its a lot of work.. and people need to be willing to invest. Have budgets for community marketing. Microsoft does that. Lego does that. The main community marketing guy knows the 100 most influential people in lego communities. He knows who they are, where they live, and he brings them in, talks to them, and engages them positively.

Reaching community is about quality of reach, not numbers. Its unfortunate though because clients like to play the numbers game. They want the traffic, bla bla. But its an education process to make people see that it should be a balancing act. Volume isn’t everything.

Where what who?

Look at where people are hanging out. If your product is about social networks.. you need to look at social networks to do this vertical community marketing. But! You really need to be engaging in a way that furthers the community. Think about

• What do people want to accomplish?
• Why do they do what they do?
• What can you do to help them?
• What can they do to help you?
• How will you engage them?

And remember…

If you’re going to engage the community.. you have to take the good with the bad. It can sometimes blow up in your face.

Other thoughts

Community games – Second Life

• Companies are buying up islands in second life and using it as a way to reach people. But you need to be careful! You have to engage in a way that will be acceptable to the community.

What skills do you need to do community marketing?

• You don’t need to learn new skills.. just techniques… just be people and seek to interact with people.

When is ROI worth it?

• It works when companies have high interests online.. but the math often doesn’t add up.. CRT doesn’t make sense, but does the PR value make it worthwhile? Not always the case.

Should we PAY bloggers to talk about us?

• No! Its unnacceptable.. but we can send them on trips (wink)

How do we MEASURE ROI?

• How many touch points did we have with an influencer, and what kind of response did that generate? What happened on Google? What happened to sales?
• When making proposals for this kind of PR, metrics are always baked in.. but sometimes we can’t measure what clients want to measure.

What’s the worst of blogging and PR?

• Character blogs – its all fake. Captain Morgan’s blog, Snap, Crackle, Pop.. not interesting.. fake.. not going to generate community.

• OK but sometimes maybe its entertaining.. funny.. whatever..
• Some for kids.
• But there are alternatives to character blogs.. flash anims etc.
• Also it’s a shield.. between you and your audience.
• but.. if Darth Vader blogged.. wouldn’t you want to hear what he would have to say?

What about PREACHING TO THE CHOIR?

• Valid criticism.. are we just preaching to the choir with people that read certain kinds of blogs?
• Look for people with a higher interest that maybe is not directly related to your product or category or subject.. but has a higher calling or interest that relates to something fundamental about your product.. eg: if you sell Smuckers Jelly.. reach out to nutritionists.

Presentation by Phillip Smith of Social Tech Brewing. How can we use the web to build grassroots action…

Oreilly Principals of Web2.0

• The Long Tail
• Web as Platform
• Bi-directional Communication
• The Perpetual Beta
• Cooperate, Don’t Control
• Above the level of a Single Device
• Users Add Value
• Data is the Next Intel Inside
• Network effects by default

What are the components of Web2.0?

• Folksonomy, tagging
• Blogging, participation
• the Browser,
• Wikis, Ajax
• Two-way communication

Great examples:

• Action Network – Cooperate Don’t Control! Connection with people on local issues.
• Murmur – Open source telephony software to create an audio tourist experience of toronto – network effects.
• Wireless Toronto – Aggregation of community based information.
• One Free Minute – Anonymous Public Speach

One idea to facilitate a local election with Web2.0 Principals.
What are the issues?

• Interest in election issues
• Apathy
• Awareness

Idea:

• Create a billboard in a high-profile area
• Hit local gatherings with a SMS based interface to the billboard and corresponding website
• Choose local issues and encourage people to voice opinions via SMS and SMS each other.

Author of Broadbandits, and Business 2.0 writer Om Malik talks about the Future of Media. Incidentally, Om is a very funny speaker.

Whats the difference between “old world” and “new world” media?

• The traditional media if anything is more sanitized version of the world.
• No replacement for the Globe and Mail, New York Times, etc.. these are important media institutions.
• What’s driving new world media is primarily advertising.. the free-ness of information is made possible by ads alone.. people don’t pay as much for media.
• Everyone has made a big committment to online presences.
• Newspapers.. good newspapers will not disappear anytime soon. They will need to find their niche though.. it will be good to see some of the newspapers go.
• Blogs are killing off the trade press.. but the big media is still the big media.
• Not all behaviours can be changed easily. People still want television media, but it is basically a passive medium – relatively unimportant. Will work against it.
• Credibility in blogging comes from your content.
• Newspapers are also being forced to change because of the proliferation of “free” services – classifieds (Craigslist), news (especially trade news), etc.
• Someone in the audience says “When information is free, the only thing of value is point-of-view.“
• Om says: “When information is free, and so are opinions, context is more valuable.” Context is lacking from a lot of blogging.. people confuse what he writes for opinion when all he is trying to do is provide context.
• Om is part of John Batelle’s Federated Media Network, which is an ad network for high-traffic blogs.
• What will the online media do about people that turn off ads? Om: Most people don’t know how to do that.. the media will need to stay ahead (technologically) of that 85% of Internet nubes.

I’ve arrived at Mesh in Toronto. Looking forward to an amazing lineup! I was really fortunate yesterday to spend some time chatting with some of the gang from TorCamp yesterday – David Crow and Albert Lai (of Bubbleshare), and discovered to my surprise that they’re both speaking at Mesh!

Listening to Stuart MacDonald right now launch the event. The room has an electric feel.. and I think people are really excited about Canada’s first real Web2.0 conference!

Looking forward to hearing from a lot of the speakers, including Om Malik, Mark Evans, Stuart MacDonald, Steve Rubel, Albert Lai, David Crow, and everyone else..

Also going to see if anyone in the unconference area are interesting in talking about Ajax, the future, the present, the quick wins and pitfalls.

Boris Mann, a fellow Vancouverite, is talking to us about what he learned in San Fran at the Identity Workshop (Here at TorCamp 2.0). Thanks to Boris for a really informative talk!

Usernames and Passwords suck! Having to register is a barrier to entry. Its also insecure.

Before you get started reading.. here is another great comparison (although its from one of the providers)

SAML – Security Assertion Markup Language
    – Big and crazy
    – Enterprise focused.. super complex
    – Java or C implementations
    – No Scripty  implementations
    – WS* components

OpenID
    – Plugins for Ruby, PHP, Perl, etc
    – YADIS – Yet Another Digital Identity System

SXIP – Simple Extensible Identity Protocoll (Dick Hardt)
    – DIX – Digital Identity Exchange
    – SAML compliant – projectliberty.org
    – Extensible
    – Multiple accounts per person
    – User Centric Identity – You are in control of what you pass to other systems (you being the user)
    – Plugins for wordpress and movable type?

Microsoft InfoCard
    – Will Ship with Vista
    – Windows XP version too
    – SmartPhone, Mac extensibility
    – IE7 will communicate with your desktop using InfoCard on registrations etc
    – Visual metaphores like business cards
    – Will be built around desktop apps
       – Will probably be Firefox plugins too

I might not quite have the concept yet – but these seem to be divergent from the MS model in that the information is not all channelled through a single provider channel (IE: Microsoft) – helps with adoption, but it seems to me that users need to be made aware of where and how their information is being used.. they need to be educated about the model.. this is a marketing task.

It seems like another marketing requirement for this is to make users feel as though they are in control.. not the vendor or provider.

Just arrived at BarCamp Toronto (TorCamp).. it’s a great open warehouse-type space with lots of opportunities to kindof drift easily from discussion to discussion.

Listening to Albert Lai from Bubbleshare. He’s chatting about Designing for Novice Users. By the way, didn’t know this, but Bubbleshare is Canadian. They compete directly with Flickr and other photo sharing services like iPhoto and Picasa.

Removing barriers to using servces.

• RSS is a hard concept for non geeks to understand
• Albert’s mom is a Skyper!!
• Photosharing is not about photo sharing.. its about story telling

Barriers to Web Services:
    #1 – Registration
      – why? You dont really need this to have an identity
    #2 – Bandwidth
    #3 – User expectations

Bubbleshare inspired by

• Craigslist – Simple, no signup
• Picasa
• Flash
• Desktop apps

Know your audience! Bubbleshare has very clear targeting for non-geeks.. Dont solve every problem.. really focus in on what these people need. Consequently it may not appeal as much to geeks.

Example.. Choosing to build caption bubbles instead of tags. Targeting, and marketing focus.

User 14pt text on your website to increase sales!! (Thanks Dave from Voices.com)

Why did MySpaces succeed and Friendster Failed?

• Personalization – Myspaces enabled it and embraced it

The Desktop Desktop

• Bumptop

Oops.. running out of battery!