Archive for July, 2005
“As far as the average consumer is concerned, Close Enough seems to be Good Enough”
-This one makes sense, I like it. Although it’s about mapping services it has broader implications most developers and technology companies would spend all the money and the time in the world before releasing even an alpha, gettin a product to market that is close enough and getting customer feedback for refinement is likely a better strategy.“The API is a reflection of the richness of the data”
-Not sure about this one.“Change the Business Model, Change the Rules”
-I remember reading about changing business models and rules back in the late 90s. Guess what some rules we need to keep, like at some point revenues must exceed costs, you need paying customers and revenu somewhere in your business, and market share alone won’t make your business work.“Syndication of Data is the Future”
-OK. But I don’t see the value in simply syndicating everyone elses data all the time. But there is definitely some strong business cases for data syndication.“It will Self-Brand if you do it right”
-This makes a lot of sense and is quite different than the first dot.com era when start-ups spend all their time on logo, name and other BS that doesn’t help anybody. If you build a good product and provide value to your customers then your brand will be worth something, Seth Godin agrees.“Drive Usage THEN figure out how to monetize it”
-I guess so long as you can afford to wait long enough, but I think you should start thinking about this day one, or way before even. But many companies and websites built huge amounts of users and still went out of business really fast.“To push your API, do something NOT business-related”
-This does make some sense, and we’ve been thinking about to do it with our AJAX components. Word of caution though, this alone is not a business model.
My two bits anyway. I’m thinking if we’re not already in it, we’re coming up on another big tech boom and crash cycle. The more web2.0 stuff I read the more I have to believe it. However, I’m going to try to put my cynicism aside and ride the wave this time. Like the first boom, we need to take the good with the bad and hope we come out on top.
I just read a great speech by Adam Bosworth (http://www.adambosworth.net/archives/000031.html) about trying to use simpler more flexible technologies and the benefits of doing so. It compares the difference between structured WS specs and the more pliable xml formats such as RSS. Worth reading even if you’re not up to speed on these specific technologies.
Not bad for a car:-)
http://www.autoblog.com/entry/1234000063045483/
Slowly but surely we see more hybrids out there. I see at least a Prius per day and now the hybrid Escapes are becoming more common on Vancouver streets. I heard recently that in some cases old an prius is selling for more than it’s original purchase value because the waiting list for a new Prius is so long. A car appreciating?!?! Anyway, it’s all good news for the environment. I just don’t understand why the auto co’s can’t crank a few more out every year…other than the fact it’s not great for our oil baron’s down south;-)
Here are the notes (http://interraproject.org/partners/ballebc-technologies) from a the discussion John Ramer and I hosted at the recent BALLE conference.
Some of the topics include:
So we’re heading full steam ahead to be a web 2.0 type company. Mostly because we’re embracing the AJAX buzz and methodology since we’re using those technologies in our software development projects and software components. However we’re not jumping into the RSS / Blog and other web 2.0 stuff that is supposed to be based on empowering end users and easier sharing of data and content. Some of it I don’t really understand that well…especially the business model side. I just heard a new term “Lightweight Business Models”, which made me laugh and think of the dot.bomb 1.0 era. Then I read an article about it that said:
“Paradigm shift. It’s about the end-user experience, not about how much money you’re going to make. Get that right. It works in reverse to the way you’re used to.”
In reverse to making money…that was definitely the business model the dot.com crash;-) Although that’s not the intent of the article I’m still fuzzy on the business models of many of these web 2.0 companies. As we all saw the last time around merely having lots of users and providing new web tools doesn’t guarantee a good business. Being a cynic and quite pragmatic (guess that’s one reason why I’m not gazillionaire), I’ve chosen quite a simple business model: build some cool “AJAX” components that save developers days to weeks of dev time and charge them a few hundred bucks for that benefit. And we pay for this by doing consulting contracts and outsourced R&D for other software companies and channel the profit to our component team salaries. The more components we build the more we can sell. Black and white. Anyway I’m going to be studying these companies like Sxip and Flickr in more detail. There’s a lot of smart people working in this space, and the momentum in building…so hopefully I can figure it out before it gets away from me again;-) Here’s to riding the wave!
I’ve started using a new RSS reader that integrates seamlessly with MS Outlook, You Subscribe, it’s really handy since it integrates right into your outlook folders. Let’s me get email reading and news updates from a single interface. Another neat feature is being able right click an RSS link from the web browser and add it your RSS subscription list automatically.
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