I haven’t really got much to post at the moment. As I have mentioned previously, I intend to up the quality of content on this site from basic commentary to essay-length posts. This post is a sneak-peak of a couple of technology reviews I will be doing in the coming weeks.

The sites I will be reviewing are WasabiTV.com.au and Tiinker.com. Both “Web 2.0″ type start-ups created here in Australia. I won’t go on  in detail at the moment but do check them out for yourself.

Stay tuned for the full-reviews in the coming weeks. They are great sites!

I am not a great fan of regurgitating other peoples information but David Sag over at Carbon Planet had some interesting news over at his blog today:

Social network sites have traditionally been seen as either playthings for bored office workers, dating site equivalents for lusty students, helper kits internet-stalkers or fronts for the CIA, but today I think I actually found something useful in facebook. Carpooling.

Previously, online ride-sharing was a risky and difficult endeavour for any user. Finding a ride on a website like Craigslist (currently the most popular ride-sharing site) would be fraught with uncertainty and hazard. There was simply no way to find out about a potential ride-sharing partner - your driver could be your real-estate agent or a newly released axe-murderer. He (or she?) could come pick you up on time, or leave you hanging. There was no accountability, no trust and consequently no real step-change in the culture of ride-sharing in the real world. Car owners still prefer to drive empty cars over long distances, paying hefty gas costs, and passengers still have to desperately beg for rides, rent cars or suffer a long, expensive bus/train ride. Everyone still loses.

Social-networking has changed the game. This disruptive technology has made it possible for people to establish trust in an online environment, thereby shattering the bottleneck for online-ridesharing. And Facebook Carpool, the new ride-sharing application that is embedded into the Facebook interface, is the first sophisticated utility to take advantage.

Resource use optimisation is the name of the game here. If I can find someone already going past my house to the airport (tomorrow afternoon say) then, by sharing a ride with them I will save both money and CO2, and, to be honest, might even make a new friend to play facebook scrabble with too. — DS

Thanks David. Cool post; cool find.

I read today that Co-founder of Topix, Rich Skrenta is looking at taking on Google with new search engine, Blekko. I discussed this with a few people at work today and the response seems to be very negative. The responses I got: “Sif!”…”As if anyone can compete with Google”. To be critical of yet another so-called competitor of Google, I believe, is rational. It’s been tried before and giants like Yahoo! and Live haven’t even managed it. So what is so good about Blekko?

Well, one of the problems I think Skrenta and his team are trying to fix is when you type in a word like “Kylie Minogue” you get many pages of results: images, news, scholar, books, et al. Not to mention the hundreds of pages of search results. I feel, Blekko is trying to achieve a more integrated Google. One page and summaries of what you actually need (want) to know. And apparently no PageRank algorithm.

I’m really excited to see what Blekko has in-store. I am, admittedly a Google-aholic but I am also open to better ways of doing things. For example, I am looking at making the move from iGoogle as my home page to PageFlakes as the latter looks and moves a lot better, whilst still being integrated with the likes of Gmail.

Apparently, Blekko will not be live until 2009. At the moment by going to the domain you get a picture of some cute, puppet-looking creature. I wonder how cute and fun Blekko is going to be…

Lootist: Specialist-Guided Product Discovery

I was reading a post on EJ (Entrepreneur-Journey) the other day about a new start-up, Lootist.com. Lootist is gift shopping site with a twist. You have your Amazon’s and Epinions which, sure, offer you a huge range of goods at your finger tips but how does one find what they want when they don’t really know what they want?

Mike Sonders, the founder of Lootist says “In mid-2006, a couple of months after graduating with my MBA, I needed to buy a gift for my then-roommate for his birthday. He was (and is) a DJ, and I wanted to get him something really cool that he’d appreciate and enjoy… but I didn’t know the first thing about DJs or the stuff that they use”. This is how Lootist was born.

How it Works and How it is Different

I shall walk you through the steps of how I became a ‘specialist‘.

Signing-up is no big deal. I won’t bore you with the details of that. Once you’ve signed-up and activated your account (etc) you go to the ‘My Specialities’ tab. Here, you can select a category (e.g. Music), related words to this category (e.g. cd’s, alternative, hip-hop, downloads, etc) and a bit about what makes you a specialist in this particular category. You may be a musician, a record producer, an aficionado - as long as you can provide value, go ahead and make yourself a specialist.

Now you need to drag and drop the ‘Loot It‘ tab into your bookmark toolbar - I suggest Firefox. To add a product to your area of speciality you go to, say, Amazon, bring up the product page and just click the ‘Loot it’ button. This will activate a pop-up where you scribe some basic information in the fields provided and your done.

The competitive advantage of Lootist is its ability to help people that are not in the know to purchase specialist gifts. Ideal for mums and dads buying Christmas presents for picky offspring.

[I highly recommend checking the FAQ’s before you get started. It’s always handy to, when it comes to using a new site. Find the FAQ’s here.]

Conclusion

Well done to Mike on this achievement. It’s embraced the whole Web 2.0 movement (dare I go there) in that it creates an experience and value through user-interaction. With Loot you’re not being spoken down to by mathematical algorithms and Amazon, you’re following suggestions by people experienced in various categories. A create features is that you may be a ‘buyer’ looking for a gift for your music-minded cousin but you could well sign-up as a specialist in your favourite hobby. It goes both ways. Users become contributors!

I wish Mike the best of luck with Lootist. Also, if you find any bugs do send them through to him via email. He’s one easy guy to get in touch with! Thanks Mike!

In reply to Valleywag’s 25 Predictions for 2008, I shall do my own version. Well, lets make it 6 Predictions for 2008.

Telstra:-

I don’t think Sol Trujillo will be at Telstra by the end of 2008. Who replaces him: I don’t have the foggiest. I think Telstra will chip away at extending the reach of its HSDPA network and the other carriers will try their best to match all but its remotest coverage. Telstra won’t win the iPhone contract. I feel Vodafone will: the two align much better than Mac-unfriendly Telstra.

Apple:-

Hopefully Apple will release the iPhone to Asia by the end of 2008. It will be a 3G model and the battery issues will be worked out. The 13″ Macbook Pro will be announced at Macworld Jan. 08 (please let this be true).

Google:-

Google’s share-price will hit $800 (I agree with Valleywag on this). They will go on an acquisition-rampage.

The Internet:-

The whole Web 2.0 movement will charge ahead and brilliant ideas will continue to rise, survive and/or die out of Silicon Valley. Social networking will continue to be dominated by Facebook, MySpace and Linkdin (in order). There will be loads of consolidation and acquisitions in this space.

Telecommunications:-

All I have to say is one thing: ULL.

Pajago.com:-

We shall continue to tap-away at the keys - hopefully - producing content that you, the readers, enjoy to read. Again, feedback and suggestions is important for us to continue to produce quality. Contact us here: suggestions@pajago.com

Done.

P

As any student would know, Wikipedia is a no-no when it comes to referencing. The fact that the information on Wikipedia is compiled by the general public ensures there will be inconsistencies in its validity. It’s not to say that all that you find on Wikipedia is incorrect, after all, a lot of it is directly quoted from credible references but there certainly are some gaps.

The thing I like most about Wikipedia is the ability to research information in a clear, intuitive manner. But what if you want to use the information in a university assignment? Well there are a few things you can do. I shall go through these in-depth:

(For the purpose of this article, I shall use ‘market segment’ -see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segment- as an example)

References

You will notice at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry, the ‘reference’ section. This contains references that were used in the composition of this entry on market segments. One of the references, for example, is:

Day, G. (1980) “Strategic Market Analysis: Top-down and bottom-up approaches”, working paper #80-105, Marketing Science Institute, Cambridge, Mass. 1980.

My suggestion if you would like to use a reference like this is to first Google it to see if it is available from a free source. In failing this, as a student you may have access to valuable databases of journal articles through your university website.

Also note, some of these references have a link to a PDF file of the listed journal article. This is really handy. Truth is, markers love you to reference academic journal articles!

External Links

One of my favourite parts of the Wikipedia page is the ‘external link’ section down the bottom. Here, you will find a group of links to various related websites. Websites which can of course be referenced. Well, provided they are creditable. An example of one of these links is:

Using market segmentation with digital marketing strategies [HYPERLINK]

Again, these links are generally to sites that have been used to build the Wikipedia entry.

Buzz Words

An overlooked part of the Wikipedia post is its buzzwords. By reading the entry, you are absorbing these words and discovering the definitions but they are handy for finding suitable references as well.

Lets say you have been reading this article on ‘market segments’ and you discover some information on ‘cluster analysis’. Well, by dropping this term into Google will open up a whole world of other sites that talk about ‘cluster analysis’ - sites that you could reference in your work.

Conclusion

I am sure what I have talked about is old news. But I am also sure many people out there are stuck when it comes to getting the most out of the usability of Wikipedia for research.

Back in “the day” (when ever that was) people met others and met potential partners in social, real life situations. Nowadays, the internet is playing a bigger part. This is especially the case with the introduction of “Web 2.0” -to use that term lightly. The Web 2.0 movement has produced such social-networking facilities as MySpace, Flickr and YouTube. Dating wise, a Google search reveals numerous sites of which you can sign-up to meet your potential life-partner.

To a point, I guess the web can be looked at as a 2nd world -hence Second Life. Thus, we intermingle online much as we do in the real world.

Take a look at Adrian Cooke’s article, A Lesson From the Online Dating Industry.

Pajago

MAKING a name for your business in a national market is never easy. It’s even harder when you’re a small start-up company based at Ballarat in regional Victoria.

Sometimes a lateral approach to the market can help - such as providing a free service to get your name out there and get potential paying customers hooked.

That small start-up, Imaging Associates, decided that a web 2.0 tool could help give them that edge. Imaging Associates provides a specialist service and software to help professional digital photographers calibrate their computer systems.

Read full article. 

With the birth of Web 2.0 it seems many common applications are being taken over by “open source” or “web based” varieties. Two Microsoft offerings are at the top of the pile: Internet Explorer and the Office suite. The contenders that I’d like to name are Google Docs and Firefox.

Google Docs is a broswer based “office suite” containing spreadsheet program and word-processor. To give Microsoft (MS) its due; these programs are very basic but when it comes to basic word processing (which is what I do) and simple data management, they shine. That’s what they are intended for -word-processing and general spreadsheet duties. Currently, Google Docs is a free service. Not sure how many people use Docs worldwide.

Firefox, on the other hand, has taken over big time. The market share as at April 18 2007 and according to XiTI Monitor, are: 15.1% USA, 24.1% Europe and 24% in Oceania. Firefox is different and cool because of it’s power, it’s add-ons and, because it’s “open source” you can change the programming to suit. I love the tab browsing capablities of Firefox.

Pajago