Shame we didn't get to meet Amber MacArthur at SXSW, as she's evidently a fan of Big in Japan. She talks about the Big in Japan toolkit on this episode of CommandN.
Then Alex and I did an Inside the Net interview (mp3) with Amber & Leo, all about Big in Japan and the building block ecosystem of newer Web apps.
Technorati Tags: alex+muse, amber macarthur, biginjapan, brian oberkirch, commandn, inside+the+net, leo+laporte
Seems like some folks are getting bent out of shape about YouTube policies. (We heart YouTube as a viewer, but haven't really published much there.) Here's what going on with PodServe, one of the Big in Japan tools.
The podcall feature is getting play in the media and from potential clients. Frank Barnako @ Marketwatch said this:
Your podcast is calling
PodServe.com, a quick way to create standard, social or public podcasts is working on technology that you might call "going retail, door-to-door." Brian Oberkirch and Alexander Muse, founders of Podserve, said their free hosting service for podcasts is going to offer production tools, too.
One of them will let you type your phone number on a Web page and Podserve will call and allow you to record. Podserve will then create and upload the file to the Web.
"I am so frustrated with these stupid microphones and Skype and Audacity and Gizmo … if I could just pick up a phone and make a podcast, that's what I want to do," Muse said.
Oberkirch and Muse talked about Podserve, and their other free software applications, on a recent "Inside the Net" podcast. Listen to it.
Plus we're talking with two large companies about doing OEM installs of PodServe, primarily because of the ability to integrate VoIP telephony into a corporate podcasting program.
What is PodCall? It's a new feature where you give us a phone number and PodServe will call you at that number, let you walk through a simple phone tree and record a podcast just like you would leave a voicemail. PodServe will then automatically drop that sound file into the right podcast stream for you, within minutes of completing the call.
Also, we've secretly added the ability to add .mov and .mp4 files to your PodServe podcasts, so you can vlog as well with the service. We'll limit the files to 100MB right now.
Technorati Tags: biginjapan, podcast, podserve, youtube
(Photo by Tantek)
A great interview with Chris Messina a bit ago about a lot of things. (Can you just talk with Chris about one thing? We think not.) Here he talks about microformats — a standardized approach to structuring metadata making it easier for everyone to remix & reuse stuff to further the emerging info ecosystem. It's the first in what we hope is a series with lots of folks talking about microformats. Tantek? Kevin? Ryan? We'd also like to interview other developers, designers, business guru types or anyone interested in taking up the cause of microformats.
Listen to the podcast:
Technorati Tags: brian oberkirch, chris messina, microformats, podcast, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
We talked with Anil Dash to get his POV on the good, bad & ugly of corporate blogging. As usual, he's charming & insightful. Can you tell we're Anil fans? We even have the t shirt.
Listen to the podcast:
Technorati Tags: anil dash, blog comments, blogs, brian oberkirch, corporate+blogging, movabletype, sixapart, typepad, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
In the final installment of this morning's Sphereorama, here is a podcast interview with Tony Conrad, CEO of the new blog search service. I talked with Tony a few weeks ago when I was visiting Southpark and getting my Web dev on. We talk, of course, about why they felt compelled to build a new blog search service, the features included in today's release, and the new culture of sharing powering most of the Web ventures we are excited about.
You can check out the full Weblogs Worknotes set of casts, listen to the MP3 (~16 MB) or subscribe to the feed.
Technorati Tags: sphere, tony+conrad, weblogs+work, Weblogs+Worknotes
We've been playing with Sphere for the past week and are able to start sharing it with our clients today. Sphere is a new blog search and discovery tool. (Hey, don't we already have Technorati, IceRocket, Google Blog Search, Feedster, etc.?) Sure, but this issue is far from solved. First, as we monitor for our clients and help them track conversations, it's clear that no one tool is comprehensive enough to rely on. Secondly, we waste a good deal of time on spam blogs & the leading services have yet to really work through that problem.
So, Sphere. Sphere's basic premise is that everyday folks want to get right at the good stuff. They don't need a zillion features that would interest power bloggers — they want to find good posts about topics they care about. In other words, give me fewer results that are more relevant to my search. Give me less to wade through. Filter for me, don't just find. The focus is on simple search & introduction to other blogs and other media discussions related to these search terms.
Sphere builds its index three ways: link structure (which T'rati prioritizes), analysis of meta data and semantic analysis of the post content. Sphere then lets you review its results and use them as a jumping off point in a number of ways. First, you can use its blog search results filtered by relevance (the default) or recency:
You can also use sliders to customize the date range you want to search for something — around a certain event, say.
Once you've identified a relevant link, you can easily find out a bit more about the blog itself by hitting the profile button.
(More is coming on these blog profiles. They'll add descriptor text to this initial bit of information.)
Then you can move off into discovering other relevant blogs for certain search terms by using the Featured Blogs. Sphere CEO Tony Conrad said that Sphere can generate dynamic featured blog lists for about 15,000 terms today.
Here are the featured blogs you get when you search for 'podcasting'. You can also suggest other blogs to include, and I expect the results to improve as time goes on and more users help groom the system.
You can also see how the conversation is being carried out in other media, using Sphere's Related Media link.
Here you can see that a search for 'blogging' gives us Webshot photos using that tag, Yahoo news stories that are related, as well as books and podcast listings.
The cool thing is: Sphere is creating links between relevant content where none previously existed.
The most whiz bang example of this is using the Sphere bookmarklet — Sphere It!. You install the bookmarklet in your browser toolbar, and click it when you want to see what relevant blogs are saying about any Web content that you are reading. Let's say we're reading yesterday's story about Apple's song pricing. Sphere It returns the following results:
Again, Sphere has created these connections through metadata and semantic analysis, so I can follow blog discussion about the topic, even if the blog in question hasn't actually linked to the article I want to use as the basis of my search. Kind of like having a memeorandum engine in your browser, aimed at whatever topic is important to you at the time.
There is a great deal of discussion out there today about Sphere. Check out the tech.memeorandum conversation.
Mike Arrington has a thorough review and a podcast with Tony Conrad & Toni Schneider about the launch.
Om has a rundown the initial investment for Sphere.
Sphere is one of the first companies involved in Adapative Path's New Ventures program, and Ryan Freitas has an extensive essay detailing the design and development process for the service. The whiz kids at Mule Design also lent their handiwork.
Technorati Tags: adaptive+path, mule design, new+ventures, sphere, toni+schneider, tony+conrad
As I uploaded the podcast interview from yesterday, I showed Mike PodServe, the first of our Big in Japan tools we put out for folks to start playing around with. Big in Japan is an integrated set of tools for prosumer bloggers & podcasters. We’ll make it easier for you to create & manage multiple feeds, get stats, etc. We’ll be showing off some of Big in Japan this weekend at Barcamp Austin & SXSW. Mike is thinking about doing some podcasting for TechCrunch, so he played with the app a bit and reviewed it today on his site. PodServe makes it simple for you to create, list, host and manage a podcast feed. Just upload your mp3, and PodServe walks you through the steps of creating a podcast, listing it in Odeo, iTunes, iPodder, etc. We also have special features like social podcasts and public podcasts, which Mike focused on in his review:
Second, PodServe also allows “social podcasts”. A channel can be created that allows a number of podcasters to submit files, and all will be included in the feed. The third notable feature is really interesting. Users can create full public podcast channels that anyone can add their content to. Two great examples are Brian’s Naked Conversations Discussion (podcasts discussing Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s new book) and Alexander Muse’s Elevator Pitch Podcast, which is a podcast that any company can use to submit an elevator pitch. I’m considering using the service to create something similar to the Elevator Pitch Podcast for use by TechCrunch readers.
You can read more about Big in Japan on Alex Muse’s blog. Alex is the brain behind Big in Japan, and he’s done some really great work on it. Rodrigo Franco is the lead developer. Scott Ryan has helped immensely. Dan Cederholm did the design work. Merlin Mann contributed some really great ideas that we can’t wait to implement as the project develops.
Technorati Tags: alex+muse, barcampaustin, biginjapan, dan+cederholm, merlinmann, mikearrington, podserve, rodrigo+franco, scott+ryan, simplebits, techcrunch
We’ve been using Plazes lately, which is a fun little location app. If we were more urban (and younger, let’s face it), we’d probably use Dodgeball, too. Location-based services are going to be big. Big, we tell you. (Instead of plastics, now you’d tell young Dustin that the future is about location.)
Steve Rubel posts news about a new feature at Topix — mapping where the contributions of bloggers are coming from. Coolio.
Odeo’s Noah Glass & Tim Roberts handle the blog thang with perfect aplomb. Right after we stuck a ’send us an odeo’ button on our Like It Matters blog, Noah & Biz Stone zapped us an odeo saying ‘cool, thanks for playing.’ Tim & I have since exchanged notes (via their new feature) about how to improve it, questions about RSS, etc. A few quick moments on their part translate to a great experience with the company on our part. So:
Technorati Tags: blog+monitoring, blogs, noah+glass, odeo, tim+roberts
Edgeio is about to launch a free service that will make it simpler for you to use your company blog to widely distribute job listings, a service or product for sale, or anything else for which you’d have traditionally used eBay or Craigslist as a centralized market.
You’ll post a listing on your own blog and add the tag ‘listing’ or ‘listings’. That’s it. You can also go claim your blog (as you’d do for Technorati), use more descriptive tags to improve visibility, and add the Edgeio ping servers to your blog (Weblogs Work will be doing this for our clients) to make Edgeio work even better for you.
We wrote more about Edgeio here. You can also follow the launch at the Edgeio blog. Or track what people are saying about it.
Technorati Tags: corporate+blogging, edgeio, job+search, keith+teare, listings, mikearrington, webreakstuff
Josh Hallett has a great post where he talks about surprising a potential client by being up to date on hiring & product rollout plans. He didn’t have an inside spy, he just monitored what was being said and analyzed it. We’re going to round up our blog monitoring survey responses today, but in the meantime, check out Josh’s guide.
Technorati Tags: blog+monitoring, josh+hallett
Dave Sifry updates his state of the blogosphere numbers, with the following findings:
About 1/2 of blog posts are tagged now, and Dave correctly shifting the discussion to discovery as the key issue. Cory keys in on the spam blog, signal-to-noise problems this current batch of numbers reveal. Ben Barren wonders aloud how you’d parse the numbers for bloggers Down Undah. Brad Feld feels the opportunity in these exponential growth curves.
Technorati Tags: david+sifry, technorati
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