May
3
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
May
3
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
May
3
(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
May
3
We talked with Jim & Charles of Jambo before the last Refresh Dallas meeting. Check out our first vlog (look out, Irina) — at the Weblogs Worknotes page, download the file directly (~19MB .mov) or grab the whole feed.
Technorati Tags: brian oberkirch, charles+ribaudo, jambo, jim+young, refreshdallas, vlog, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
May
2
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
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