Schrade.Blog

Richard MacManus on Read/WriteWeb:

Watching Google and RSS is like watching a high school student experiment with a chemistry set. Meanwhile Yahoo and Microsoft are busy inserting RSS into their DNA.

Thinking about it, I get almost all of the information I now consume via RSS. Currently, I'm even looking for a new apartment by using the Craigslist RSS feed, instead of heading off to their website for info like I used to do. I think that I'm using Google less now than ever, and I only see my usage of them continuing to slide. The train has already left the station here, Google better hurry up and get on board.

Just saw a post about Plazes over on HorsePigCow and I have to say that it's a pretty awesome app. I can never seem to figure out where any of the people that I consult with are at any given time, and, on the flip side of that coin, no one ever seems to know where I am since I seem to fly back and forth between San Francisco and New York on about a weekly basis. Now they'll be able to check my whereis page and find out right away.

It looks like there are a few ways to get the information about where I am out of system, but I'm not seeing an RSS feed, which I was hoping to integrate in to my blog. Hopefully I just missed it or there's one coming soon. I would rather not have to redirect everyone to that whereis page all of the time.

Now I just need to get everyone else I know to sign-up for Plazes and I'll be able to see where all of my friends are.

Evan Williams posts his list of rules for web startups here. These rules aren't just for startups though, they should be taken as general guidelines for building any sort of software.

Almost every software project, from a small feature addition to an existing product, to an entirely new idea, should be run with these same basic ideas. I can't understand people who still want to drop a big bang on the world with their projects. Rule #9, unless you're building pacemaker software, should be applied to all attempts at software creation. I've yet to come across a software project where anyone involved really know what they want at the start.

So don't spend time trying to cram everything in the world in to your software, just get it out the door, get some users on it, watch how they use it, and start refining. No one knows for sure how users will use their software until we actually put it in front of them. The rest of the rules will make sure that it gets where it needs to go from there.

I was just reading the New York Times Article (via CrunchNotes) about the new Froogle Local shopping service and the following seems like an awesome feature:

Additionally, local merchants will be able to send Google product information that will be searchable from Froogle. For example, if users type "iPod Nano New York," they will see map information with the locations of stores that have the iPod Nano in stock.

except for the fact that it won't work. There are probably 50 places that I can buy electronics in my neighborhood in NYC and I bet that the only stores that will send Google this information will be Best Buy and friends.

If I already knew that I was going to buy at Best Buy or Circuit City, then I would probably just call there in the first place.

Hell, Google Local can't even find all of the electronics stores around my apt. If it can't even do that, then I have no faith in them keeping inventory data up to date.

This pretty much encapsulates my morning browsing habits. Best Thing Ever. (via TechCrunch, of course.)

Sombody needs to make a tool where I can just feed in a number of feeds like this and come up with a site that aggregates them and kills the dupes. Can't be that hard, right?

As I've been looking at how to write a business plan lately, I've been reading everything I can about the matter and the only consensus I can find is that there is no consensus. Today we've got another post about the matter from David Cowan over at Bessemer that, while helpful, is completely different from what I've heard and read from other people.

Going through this exercise, I've realized that, for me at least, the best thing to do is write a short business plan, pull a couple of pitch decks (long and short) out of it and then get back to work on the technology. I just get the feeling that it's better to blow away a VC (or a VC's friend, or family member, etc) with a nice tech demo and then back it up with whatever form of the business plan they ask for, than to just drop a 20 page document or Powerpoint deck onto their desk. I would much rather have someone put their time and money into me and my idea who's seen at least a rough draft of my vision. Am I way off base here or does this make sense?

As I was walking home from work yesterday (and by home I mean the SF hotel that I've been residing in for the last couple of months) I heard a person loudly exclaim to the group of people he was with, "Guys who wear suspenders get respect!" After stopping to record this awesome quote in the Moleskine where I've started collecting my thoughts, I started thinking about what technologies I've been playing with lately could use some metaphorical suspenders.

Tagging, for one, could really use some suspenders. Despite the fact that everyone I know seems to be tagging things lately, I bet that >99% of the US still doesn't know what tagging is or why it's useful. Perhaps someone could come up with an elevator pitch for tagging that would convince my mom why it's cool. Stuff about "self-generated metadata" just isn't going to cut it. If there's already a good one of those, someone please let me know about it, because I need a good explanation for people.

Also, while we're on the subject of tagging, I would really like a service where I can feed all of my accounts into it and then get an RSS feed of all of the tagged data together. For example, I want to have an RSS feed for my halloween tag and get the blog entries, Flickr photos, del.icio.us links, etc that I've tagged with it. Anybody working on this sort of tag based aggregator, or do I have to write it myself?

Now that the eBay APIs are free, I'm betting that we'll see a sudden surge of innovation in that area.

Extra points to the first person who builds a Google mashup that shows me where to buy from to save on shipping.

I've been seeing a lot of talk about Riya over the last few days, and I must say that it looks pretty cool.

I'm not sure if Riya is going to have open APIs to their service, but if they do then I hope that someone takes the opportunity to build a dating service on top of their technology. It seems to me that, with minimal training, the system could match up people with others who they find attractive, as well as give an indication of how attractive they would be to that person. Although this probably wouldn't be a great indicator of how well those people actually get along, it would be cool nonetheless, and a killer feature for a dating site to have.

Om blogs here about the general trend lately of one company copying another, copying another, copying another, ad nauseam. This most likely began when Google came along and looked at a field that was essentially dead, (search, and then eventually advertising) and then waltzed in and proceeded to dominate it.

I think this flipped the light on in everyone's head that, on the Internet, if you can do something better than everyone else and get some mind share, you can leapfrog them, seemingly overnight. I think we're just seeing this process continue to accelerate. Now people are trying to copycat before the site they're copying has even launched. Hopefully we'll continue along this path to it's natural end, where an infinite variety of all possible Web 2.0 ideas will all be launched simultaneously. I hope that I have the good sense to start a server farm before that day comes.