The new interface for the web may be maps:
Benfield thinks online maps will increasingly become the interface for the Web. "In building its map application, Google made use of a new way of programming Web applications," said Benfield. "It is known as AJAX. Also, Google created an API, allowing users to implement maps within their own applications. Almost overnight, this has made MapQuest almost irrelevant."
...via Smart Mobs
So, today is the day you start that new project?
Here's a list of things Not-to-Do from 52 Projects:
Great post at 43 Folders on how to make your e-mail worthwhile and manageable for the recipients:
Before you type anything into a new message, have explicit answers for two questions:
If you can't succinctly state these answers, you might want to hold off on sending your message until you can. People get dozens, hundreds, even thousands of emails each day, so it's only natural for them to gravitate toward the messages that are well thought-out and that clearly respect their time and attention. Careless emails do not invite careful responses.
Think through your email from the recipient's point of view, and make sure you've done everything you can to try and help yourself before contacting someone else. If it's a valuable message, treat it that way, and put in the time to making your words count.
From Wired:
Online search leader Google is preparing to launch a wireless internet service, Google WiFi, according to several pages found on the company's website Tuesday.
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A Wi-Fi service, which offers a high-speed connection to the internet, would take Google even further from its search roots and move it into the fiercely competitive world of internet access providers and telecommunications companies.
...via Smart Mobs
Consistency versus the user's Current Knowledge:
When you think about consistency, you’re thinking about the product. When you’re thinking about current knowledge, you’re thinking about the user. They are two sides of the same coin. We’ve just noticed that the designers who spend more time thinking about the users are the ones that end up with more usable designs.
Why do we gravitate to consistency? Because it’s easier to think about. You don’t actually have to know anything about your users to talk about making things consistent. You only have to know about your design, which most designers are quite familiar with.
Current knowledge, on the other hand, requires in-depth knowledge of the users. And that takes research time and investigative effort. It doesn’t come cheap, like consistency does. But it produces much, much better results.
...via elearningpost
...The eBay presentation talks eloquently and at length about the role of Skype in accelerating commerce on eBay and opening up new lines of business, new monetization models and new geographies. I agree that adding voice to transactions makes for richer communication and reduces friction, especially in certain types of transactions and certain national cultures. But then again, adding shipping services helps to reduce friction as well – does that mean eBay should go out and buy FedEx? Yes, markets are conversations as Ross Mayfield reminds us, but does that mean you need to buy a phone company to participate or even orchestrate those conversations?
Pay per call lead generation models are an interesting step beyond pay per click models, at least for certain kinds of businesses. There clearly are interesting opportunities to cross market to each other’s user base (one interesting statistic from the presentation – there is only a 1% overlap in their US user base – although this can be read both ways, as either an opportunity or a challenge).
But here are the bottom line questions:
Why couldn’t they have negotiated cross-marketing programs to reach each other’s user base?
Google is launching Google BlogSearch:
Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you're looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.
Your results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you'll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well.
...via BoingBoing
Knowledge workers prefer closed offices, but seem to communicate better in open ones. Of course there is great variation among open and closed office types, but the most extensive research in the area (from Cornell professors Frank Becker and William Sims) suggests that while most knowledge workers prefer closed offices because they are better able to concentrate, they communicate informally and build trust and social capital more easily in more open office environments (even high-walled cubicles, they say, restrict interpersonal communications). They note: "Our research, done with employees in job functions ranging from software development to marketing and business development, indicates that the more open the 'open' plan office environment, the more conducive it is to overall work effectiveness, when communication and interaction are critical elements of the work process."2 Becker and Sims are undeniably experts on this topic, but I feel that, like many corporate executives, they downplay the need for concentration and quiet when knowledge work is done in office environments.
...via elearningpost
BoingBoing reports on Librivox, a project to get volunteers to create audio recordings of public domain books:
LibriVox is a hope, an experiment, and a question: can the net harness a bunch of volunteers to help bring books in the public domain to life through podcasting? Here’s how it works (for now):
A book will be selected by LibriVox from the gutenberg project’s database of public domain books
(We hope that) a few volunteers will step up to read and record to mp3 one or more chapters from the chosen book, so that we’ll finish with a complete audio book (or audiobook).
If you have your own podcast, you could do a special LibriVox edition of your show, and let me know about it; then I’ll grab the audio and put it up on Ourmedia.org, which stores files on the internet archive
If you don’t have a podcast, let me know and we’ll find a way to get the chapters uploaded to the LibriVox Ourmedia.org site
Each new chapter will be linked from LibriVox, and podcast through feedburner.
Once all chapters from a given book are finished, a new book will be chosen and the process will begin again!
eBay began as Auction Web ten years ago and was renamed eBay in 1997. Some key milestones: