[feedback20] Last feedback entries tagged with nov 7th

"Use Somebody Else's Infrastructure: Building a Webapp on EC2, S3 and Other Tools" by Jonathan Weiss

Jonathan Weiss — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:19:17 GMT

Scaling a Web Application is a very hard problem, especially for small project and teams who do not have sufficient manpower, money, and time to solve this problem. Luckily Amazon already had to solve this problem in their datacenters and offers their services to other developers.

This talk will introduce the two most important Amazon Web Services, the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and the Simple Storage Service (S3), and will present different ways to leverage them in your own web application. Ruby on Rails will be used for the examples but they will apply to any web framework.

Several use-cases will be covered that show how S3 and EC2 can be used to move load from your servers to Amazon’s or even to completely host your application at Amazon.

After the talk developers should know when and how to use Amazon’s services to scale their own application at low costs. We will also hear the CEO of Web OS platform Ghost and how they use more Amazon Webservices than anyone else.

Speakers :
-- Jonathan Weiss
-- Zvi Schreiber

"Analytics for Web 2.0" by Andreas Weigend

Andreas Weigend — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:14:07 GMT

Analytics for Web 1.0 focused on translating metrics from print and television (such reach) to online (unique users). These measures did not capture the effect the material had on the audience – they could not, since the audience had no way of expressing interest and engagement.

Traditional page view counts and time spent on the site were notable efforts in approximating engagement but it is now clear that the duration a user spends at a page is far more important than just mere page view counts.

In contrast, Web 2.0 is defined by user participation and interaction, both with the site (saving, rating, tagging, annotating), and with other users (forwarding, commenting, responding).

These clearly observable and notable interactive behaviors gave rise to a rich set of Web2.0 metrics that can far more accurately measure active user engagement and the effect the page has on the user.

Besides providing accurate representations of user behavior, these metrics would serve as building blocks for useful user-centric tools.

For example, Flickr's "interestingness" ranking is an example of how these newer metrics on engagement (favorites, comments) can also be used to bubble up outstanding and unique photos amongst millions of mundane ones. While specific sites such as Amazon.com were central to Web 1.0, the notion of a standalone site is disappearing in Web 2.0. Companies are now being represented on widgets and mini-applications on user's sites and Facebook profiles, and being reported on blogs across the web.

There has also been a strong trend towards opening up datasets via APIs and RSS feeds, and encouraging developers to build 3rd party services on top of them. Given these decentralization trends, highly relevant opinions and content are now distributed across the World Wide Web. Analytics measuring metrics on a site alone has become only one half of what needs to be tracked.

Given all these changes, how can you measure these metrics of "active engagement" in both qualitative and quantitative measures, and what are the actions that can be taken based on them? Given new usability technologies like AJAX, how should these affect the ways you measure your analytics? What instruments do you need to develop to collect relevant activities that are happening across the web, both around the data you provide and opinions about you in all the various user networks, blogs and forums?

Web 2.0 has brought about profound changes in user engagement and decentralization of sites. At the heart of companies will be their ability to identify new key metrics that reflect these changes, and develop highly actionable plans that allows for quick and effective response to short-term issues, as well as factoring in a long-term strategy.

Speakers :
-- Andreas Weigend
-- Bill Tancer

"What Happens To Print as the Web Rises" by Sam Sethi

Sam Sethi — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:10:10 GMT

This panel will cover the shifts and moves in the whole traditonal media landscape and the role the Web played/ plays in that changing media landscape.

It will begin with short presentations of the results of the three newspaper-surveys done by Luca Conti (Italy), Robin Hamman (UK) and Steffen Bueffel (Germany). All three analyses have been inspired by the Binvings Groups 2006 study of "The Use of the Internet by America’s Newspapers".

The discussion portion dive into the following trends: Decline in circulation, reach of (young) audience(s). Ad revenues shifting towards the Web, new big players on the scene (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.), Web 2.0 and Social Media (Bloggers, Podcasters etc.)

As a sneak peak here is some data from the 2006 German study on the use of interactive and "web2.0-like" features of Germany's Newspapers. They took the 100 most read papers based on circulation. In ( ) they have included our guess on what will change in the follow study of this year (- = decline, + increase).
* Message board: 49% ( - or no significant change)
* RSS-Feeds: 43% (+*)
* Videos: 37% (+++)
* RSS (Categories): 36% (+)
* Reporter Blogs: 21% (+)
* ... with comments enabled: 19% (+)
* Chat: 14% (- or no significant change
* Reader-comments on news stories: 10% (+++)
* Blogroll: 9% (+)
* Podcasts: 8% (++)
* Registration: 8% (+)
* RSS-Feeds (full story): 5% (no significant change)
* "most read": 5% (+)
* Social Bookmarking: 0% (+)

Speakers :
-- Igor Schwarzmann
-- Sam Sethi
-- Falk Lueke
-- Robin Hamman
-- Luca Conti
-- Steffen Bueffel

"Social Commerce and Community" by Jochen Krisch

Jochen Krisch — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:59:11 GMT

Social commerce is so 2.0, it almost sounds like a buzzword mashup. But the idea is really the natural evolution of the principle that your best customers are your best sales people, and it is redefining the affiliate business.

From involving the community in product wikis to providing customers with shopping widgets so they can promote and sell your products, social commerce can be powerful in the right mix. Come hear best practices in this latest take on community practice and commerce.

Speakers :
-- Hagen Fisbeck
-- Jochen Krisch
-- Jeremie Berrebi
-- Mattias Miksche

"From a Mobile Telephone to a Computer - a Reality Dysfunction" by Imran Ali

Imran Ali — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:53:43 GMT

The mobile phone is becoming more advanced, but should it? This talk is going to take a look at the reality of carrying a personal computer in your pocket.

Some of the trends that will be examined: * Smart vs simple - the buzz of iPhone/N95 vs. huge sales of low end handsets, perhaps it has to with cameras hitting 10MP with flash, auto focus, etc., storage hitting 8GB, GPS, UMTS/GPRS/HSUPA/Wifi and a net result of no battery life
* HMI (human mobile interaction) - as these devices become mobile personal computers the UI is (still) hugely flawed. Sure it can do anything, but only if you have time to click thirteen dialog boxes
* Development Platforms - there is a lot of work going on to provide abstraction layers from the device hardware (DirectX for phones) to allow easier development, at the same time operators are looking to bundle up apps into containers to simplify certification process

Led by Ian Hay and Imran Ali, two well known telephony experts who originally teamed up at Orange.

Speakers :
-- Imran Ali
-- Ian Hay

"Disrupting the Platform: Harnessing social analytics and other musings..." by Ankur Shah

Ankur Shah — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:48:49 GMT

The Facebook Platform has made accesible one of the richest demographic subsets available, yet most developers are content to create applications that rely on old world interaction.

The data available radicalises the way businesses, marketeers and developers can exploit the social graph. This enables application architects to visualise the intuitive and hence make applications that are responsive, and thus subsequently immerse the user in his own social network rather than that of the product or service being conveyed; an inherently more intimate interaction and hence more persuasive.

This presentation explores the various possibilities, pitfalls and future hopes surrounding the Facebook API in general, but also in relation to the way developers can make more socially aware applications.

Speakers :
-- Ankur Shah
-- Gi Fernando

"The Impact of Mobile Web 2.0 on the Telecoms Industry" by Ajit Jaokar

Ajit Jaokar — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:44:43 GMT

With the launch of the iPhone, the Telecoms industry enters a new and a disruptive phase - the drivers of which are no longer the traditional players in the industry.

This session explores the synergies between the web and the Telecoms industry.

It outlines the opportunities and the disruptive influences of the Web on the Telecoms industry.

Traditionally the Web and the ethos of the web (open standards, interoperability, etc.) are viewed with suspicion by the telecoms industry. The Telecoms industry in general, does not trust the Web. It is almost as if it chooses to ignore the 'Web' in 'Mobile Web 2.0'.

But the Web forms the bedrock of Tim O'Reilly’s seven principles defining Web 2.0 and it is not possible to ignore the Web any more - especially considering the rapid growth of User generated content.

Unless it adapts to the web, the industry risks missing out on the huge opportunities that can be leveraged through the power of Mobile Web 2.0.

This session talks about the Good, the bad and the ugly - in the interplay between the web and Telecoms.

Speakers :
-- Ajit Jaokar
-- Tony Fish

"OpenID: Emerging from Web 2.0" by David Recordon

David Recordon — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:40:01 GMT

While OpenID is certainly gaining traction around the Web, many questions around security and privacy have been raised.

Additionally with companies like Sun Microsystems shipping OpenID code, the question of how OpenID helps the enterprise becomes increasingly important.

In under two years, OpenID has grown from a thriving grass-roots community to being supported by major companies, service providers, and open source projects.

This session will provide an introduction to OpenID, thoughts on how enterprises can benefit from integrating the technology, as well as a showcase of innovation around security technologies combined with OpenID such as smart cards, browser add-ons, and the like.

Speakers :
-- David Recordon
-- Martin Paljak

"Location and Mapping" by Steve Coast

Steve Coast — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:34:14 GMT

Location is now fundamental to the dynamics of the web, and there are powerful tools from Google Maps to Wifi Location Based Services available today.

This talk takes a tour over the recent development of the 'where' of the web across techniques and both open and closed technologies.

Google Maps forms a core which many are familiar with but maps and location on the web really go far beyond, from base data to 3D 'spinny globes' such as Microsoft Live Local.

We will cover the major APIs (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft) as well as some lesser known but powerful players such as MultiMap and Map24 and how you can use them with simple tools such as Mapstraction, an API to provide common abstraction over various map providers. When on the move, there are a variety of ways to locate yourself including GPS, wifi location and from cell towers and we will go over the tools available to use those.

Aggregating and sharing geodata is an expanding and powerful area including tools such as mapufacture and data formats like GeoRSS (extensions to the common RSS formats) and KML. Geodata itself makes a lot of this machinery tick and has it's own section. Who owns data? What can you do with it? Where can you get it?

We'll cover these topics and cover projects such as OpenStreetMap which aim to free up data and make it more usable to all with clearer licensing. We'll take you through the community aspects of many projects and why it pays to build community by using a few simple techniques and tools. Finally, where's it all going? We'll look at the immediate future of location online and place a few bets on the coming developments.

Speakers :
-- Steve Coast
-- Nick Black

"From Pages to People: Behavioral Targeting" by Mark Pohlmann

Mark Pohlmann — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:29:29 GMT

Behavioral targeting is more than just a trend. It's a fundamental shift in the advertising world. Where once the focus lay on booking printed paper, timeslots on television, or websites with the hope of reaching the right target group, it's now possible to speak to people directly.

Advertising is no longer oriented toward edited content but rather directly toward the behavior and affinities of the user.

People instead of pages, precision instead of scattershot, for edited or user generated content alike—that is behavioral targeting, which is the future of advertising using electronic media!

Leading minds in the fields of technology, media planning and marketing will come together in this forum to discuss their insights into the development of advertising in digital media and the significance of targeting technologies.

A glance at the list of participants suggests that controversial opinions should be expected. Yet even if there remains a lack of unified understanding of the possibilities and limits of the different approaches, the market is just beginning to sort itself out.

This is the perfect forum to learn why you should be putting your bets on behavioral targeting. Form your own opinion, and help shape the field's development as well.

Speakers :
-- Frank Wagner
-- Mark Pohlmann
-- Martin Radelfinger

"People & Data: How the Gathering, Using & Selling of Data is Changing" by Andreas Weigend

Andreas Weigend — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:23:13 GMT

Data is a hot business. The recent acquisitions of NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas highlight that fact. “Data” is typically produced by specialized groups of people, producing data that is used for specific and explicit purposes.

Web 2.0 has also brought about 2 major trends here - the first is the concept of peer production, where groups of seemingly unrelated people conscientiously come together to collaborate on producing specific data, with Wikipedia being the prime example.

An example is Payscale, a website where people can contribute their own pay scale data in order to receive the aggregated data of people in their domain.

The second trend is about the emergence of implicit data which are much more than mere behavior trails, but are actually much more accurate proxies of the user's attention, ranging from intention data (search), attention data (tagging and voting), location data (GPS), to interaction data (between users on a social network).

As the complexity of production, aggregation, distribution, and terms of data consumption gets more complicated, what are the challenges facing companies seeking to manage this complexity? How will people expect to be paid for their data? Money? Attention? Quid pro quo? How can organizations process data, insights and actions iteratively through the constant use of experiments?

Speakers :
-- Andreas Weigend
-- Jonathan Laventhol

"Marketing for Mobile 2.0" by Simon Davis

Simon Davis — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:36:37 GMT

The new wave of sophisticated, community and/or location aware, mobile services, have the potential to radically alter the mobile marketing landscape: providing more targeted and more relevant mobile marketing, as well as expanding the number and type of advertisers.

This panel will discuss the potentials and pitfalls of this new environment for consumers, carriers, agencies and brands.

Speakers :
-- Simon Davis
-- Marko Ahtisaari
-- Helen Keegan
-- Justin Davies

"Living in a Multi-lingual World: Internationalization in Web and Desktop Apps" by Lars Trieloff

Lars Trieloff — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:53:50 GMT

Modern web applications pose a special challenge for developers that want to internationalize applications in order to address the European market: In the past, when applications have been a single more or less monolithic block, translation was hard, because all language-specific parts of the program code had be identified, extracted, translated, and merged back into the application, ideally everything on the fly.

With Web 2.0 applications this is not getting easier, as today there is not only one single point of translation, but four:
* the server-side web-application code
* the client-side web-application code, mostly Javascript resources
* the end user documentation on the web site, and
* often additional client programs to provide desktop integration

Additional challenges posed in web applications are:
* how to detect the language of the user * how to deal with graphical text, and
* how to internationalize user-generated content

In this talk, Lars Trieloff uses the example of Mindquarry GO, an open source collaboration software to demonstrate how to unify internationalization of server-side and client-side web applications, how to integrate internationalizable end-user documentation and how the same process can be applied to desktop applications leading again to a single point of translation, which means a lower barrier to translations and more web applications in your mother language.

The second part of the talk covers issues even more specific to web sites that use fine-tuned graphic text design, have visitors of different language preferences and how to enable cross-lingual sharing of user-generated content.

"Copy vs. Create: Learning and Innovating in a Flat Web 2.0 World" by Gregor Hochmuth

Gregor Hochmuth — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:50:14 GMT

As Web 2.0 is now a global phenomenon, its powerful concepts find their applications everywhere around the world. What primarily started as a trend among U.S. startups quickly spread to other continents where entrepreneurs recognized the potentials and were quicker than their role models to localize and launch similar companies.

Whether you agree or disagree with this trend, it certainly can't be ignored. So what are the lessons and what does localization mean in Web 2.0 terms? How do Web 2.0 applications differ internationally and where is there innovation?

Using an extensive series of examples, this talk will cover what European, Asian and American companies have learned, invented and adjusted when making Web 2.0 a global/local phenomenon.

"Conversational Design" by Pedro Custódio

Pedro Custódio — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:48:04 GMT

Once we progress from the user-centered design model to community-centered design we’ll need to identify and gather a similar set of best practices regarding community design.

This presentation collects the key features and interactions that a successful community should display in order to empower its users and facilitate conversation between its members.

The transition of user's role from consumer to producer requires that those who produce online and offline services not only to understand the process by which the conversation happens but also which interface mechanisms and flows should be present in their interfaces.

This presentation aims to be a bridge between Usability Best Practices and Community Centered Design, a practice that can maximize the networking and crowd effect under online user communities.

"Designing Tag Navigation" by James Kalbach

James Kalbach — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:44:54 GMT

Tagging represents a new type of metadata used to organize information. As with all types of metadata, there are advantages and disadvantages to tagging. Also keep in mind that metadata is independent of its UI representation, and that there are many potential ways to leverage tags in an interface. Ultimately, to bring value to your business, people must be able to efficiently navigate your tagging system.

In spite of the dearth of design guidelines at the moment, you must nonetheless understand the broader context of tagging in order to create an effective system.

This presentation offers practical design recommendations around three key steps in the tagging process, with many examples to illustrate each point:
1. Creating tags: In general, encourage tagging and lower barriers to adding useful tags. Make recommendations to help people find the right words to use, allow for tag forms to resemble natural language, and avoid space-separated tagging.
2. Navigating your own tags: People tag so they can return to a resource later. The system must allow people to effectively manage their own tags, including editing, deleting, filtering, sorting, and searching them. The ability to combine tags can also help people find the resources they are looking for quicker.
3. Navigating tags from other users: Finally, a social system let's users share resources via tags. Here, adaptive navigation proves to be helpful, such as with enhanced tag clouds. Expose other types of metadata where appropriate as well, and add structure to tag menus. And because of the social aspect of tagging, consider how to provide rich linking to other members of the tagging community.

"Federated Social Networks" by Ralph Meijer

Ralph Meijer — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:40:59 GMT

Up till now, so-called Social Networking services have been built as walled gardens, where people can interact only within the confines of that service. As people's preferences differ, they tend to be attracted to different services, roughly around the same kind of social objects, than some of there friends, family.

To keep up with everyone, people tend to just sign up on several competing services. Then, for example for microblogging services like Jaiku, Twitter, etc., they need to post to all of them to keep everyone up-to-date.

Let's make Social Networks be social, too. This talk will go into federating different social networks using the protocol behind Jabber: XMPP.

It will focus on sharing activity streams between services in near-real time using a number of XMPP extension protocols. For example, subscribing to someones Tweets from Jaiku and seeing updates appear in your overview or sent as a notification via IM as they happen. It will show you how to use these protocols to interact with other services.

"Better Typography" by Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:37:14 GMT

Given that the web is '95% Typography', why is most typography on the web so poor? For so long now, designers and developers have taken little time to learn the subtlety of good typographic design. But don’t worry, it’s not a black art; you just need to follow a few rules.

This presentation will take you through Five Simple Steps to improve your typography; type anatomy, types of typeface, choosing typefaces, size, space and weight, and basic typesetting.

"Mobile to Web and Back: Designing for People" by Kwame Ferreira

Kwame Ferreira — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:34:39 GMT

Demands on the mobile phone to become the omni-potent mobile computer mean that successful design for mobility needs to first and foremost understand people. People are more than numbers. They are mobile beings by nature.

When designing for mobility we must immerse ourselves in routine, the movement of crowds and the beauty and simplicity of casual computing.

Navigation patterns are changing. Objects are increasingly reactive to context and the new UIs are becoming services in themselves. The web is more sociable — how can mobility be more sociable?

Successful cross-platform design must understand and leverage all of the above.

Kwame will talk about new processes that designers need to understand in order to innovate within mobility.

"I tube, you tube, we tube. Unlimited content, unlimited liability?" by Oliver Süme

Oliver Süme — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:31:04 GMT

Is the legal framework in Europe ready for Web 2.0? How are Web 2.0 Services liable for user generated content? How does the legal framework and legal risks affect business models?

Learn about the evaluation and the development of the European legal framework for internet and media. Get informed about legal risks and how to avoid them in Web 2.0.

"How to Make AJAX Work For You" by Simon Willison

Simon Willison — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:26:54 GMT

Ajax is becoming a part of almost every web application. Users expect this and are increasingly disappointed when page refreshes occur for trivial updates. An Ajax framework can help you create or update your application using the best techniques available.

Simon Willison, co-creator of Django and OpenID advocate, will take you through the scenarios where you'll want to use Ajax. He'll also explore the frameworks you can use to make improving your web app that much easier and faster.

Simon will walk you through Dojo, Prototype/Scriptaculous, jQuery and YUI.

"Web 2.0 Design Patterns, Models and Analysis" by Duane Nickull

Duane Nickull — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:24:46 GMT

Many enterprises seek knowledge of the design patterns used by successful Web 2.0 companies.

This session starts with Tim O'Reilly's list of Web 2.0 examples and distills the abstract architectural patterns from behind the examples. By using the patterns notation, the core knowledge of the design principles is preserved in a template which can be reused in multiple contexts.

Duane will also show the evolution of the client server model into a 5-tier model based on the consistent concepts of most successful Web 2.0 patterns. The model serves as a useful starting point for anyone either designing business models or technology for Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 model is also used to illustrate a reference architecture.

This abstract set of technology components allows developers to start thinking about the types of technology decisions required for building Web 2.0 projects.

"Offline Web Applications with Dojo Offline & Google Gears" by Tobias Günther

Tobias Günther — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:21:10 GMT

AJAX has brought real applications to the browser. Database-backed applications, that used to be programmed for the desktop are now developed for Firefox, IE and Co. But working in the browser was usually over when you lost your network connection.

With Dojo Offline and Google Gears you can develop browser based applications that continue to work even when your network connection has said goodbye.

The ability to work offline, using your data on the road or with your customer, closes the last gap between desktop and browser based applications. "You're not connected to the internet"...doesn't matter anymore.

Realtime collaboration is also a key component to new apps. Comet, coined by Dojo creator Alex Russell, describes the set of technologies used to achieve it.

The session will teach the basics on how to create web applications that are able to run offline and how to add realtime collaboration via Comet.

"Microformats: The Nanotechnology of the Semantic Web" by Jeremy Keith

Jeremy Keith — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:17:59 GMT

They're small, they're simple, and they're showing up everywhere. Find out just how easy it is for you to start publishing with microformats and add to the semantic richness of the Web right now.