Web Things Considered

A very successful day in blogosphere for the map.

Made the Digg front page and del.icio.us/popular page for the first time! (we got close to the del.icio.us/popular page for NetworthIQ).

But even more exciting was that Tim O’Reilly (yes the one who publishes all those books on your bookshelf at work), who helped define the Web 2.0 movement, posted:

“It is indeed interesting. A lot of apps I haven’t followed (and missing a lot that I have) so I can’t speak to how thoroughly it covers Web 2.0 as I think of it. (There are a lot of different aspects to Web 2.0, so this is going to be hard to do.) But it’s really interesting to see how many of the apps Ryan has selected are not in Silicon Valley.”

The other big piece of news was that Google itself mentioned the site at the JP Morgan and Connector Group Showcase last night (podcast available). That’s pretty cool, considering the presenters and attendees. (if any of those influencers and/or investors would like to know about what else we’re up to at Fourio, please contact me)

Feel free to follow along with news/reviews/comments with these links:
del.icio.us bookmarks
digg.com/links/Web_2.0_Innovation_Map
del.icio.us/url/02fd90592645b39be9052955c9e7f9cb

Looks like the map is going over well. Here’s what’s happened so far.

Dion Hinchcliffe says:

“Visually shows where Web 2.0 development creativity is actually happening, using the latest Web 2.0 software lists. A pretty cool data point.”

Google Maps Mania posted its review:

“Ryan Williams has put together a great new Google Maps mashup called ‘The Web 2.0 Innovation Map’”

Emily Chang added it to eHub and is going to let me see the entire feed. This will make the next step, adding brief descriptions to the listings so much easier.

The Innovation Insider looks at some of the distribution.

The biggest news so far though is that the map made the del.icio.us/popular page.

Be sure to digg it if you get a chance: http://digg.com/links/Web_2.0_Innovation_Map.

Not a bad first day.

Introducing the Web 2.0 Innovation Map. We all know Silicon Valley is hot when it comes to web startups. But, what about other areas of the country? Are there any hidden hotbeds of web talent? What other groups were in the northwest along with Fourio? These were some of the questions I was looking to answer. Now, Web 2.0 can be visualized, using what else, but the Google Maps API and Yahoo Geocoding API.

I’ve taken 200 applications, tracked down their addresses, geocoded them, and placed them on the map. With some help from Todd on the design, this map was put together in the last week. It was much more work than I thought it would be to track down the addresses. Without a good (open/free/structured) WHOIS API, most of the address lookups were manual. And don’t get me started on sites not listing a contact address. Fortunately, my geocoder app worked great, so getting lats/longs was fairly painless. Then it was just a matter of exporting the Excel data to a JavaScript array and hooking it up to the map.

On a side note, I’m not here to debate the “Web 2.0″ term. For this application, Web 2.0 is simply defined by the explosion of internet applications that have come out over the last year or so. I’ve used other people’s lists to compile the apps to be mapped.

The map isn’t completely finished (what web application ever is?). I’d like to add descriptions, include company information, and maybe add a little thumbnail of the site. But, I like to release early and see what kind of interest there is before investing too much time. Any feedback is appreciated.

If anybody knows of a good source for WHOIS data, or has a well structured (XML preferably) list of web apps with the name, url, and brief description (along the lines of an API for eHub or TechCrunch), please let me know.

Thanks to Adam Trachtenberg’s eBay Motors & Google Maps mashup for being a great example of how to do a mashup. It’s one of my favorites as far as implementation goes and was a big inspiration for the innovation map.

Update:
I see that TechCrunch has added an OPML file, which is a very big help. The one problem is that it points to the TechCrunch post. If there was something similar that pointed to the actual site’s URL, that would be awesome.

Chris Mullins presents a great startup tool kit. I’ve seen most of these before, but there were a few new ones for me, and it’s nice to have it all in one place.

(via Startup Fever, another new to me resource)

Subscribed to both.

I was looking through my Bloglines subscriptions this morning, trying to prune back inactive blogs and seeing what kind of subscriber counts certain blogs had. It’s interesting that Business Week’s Well Spent blog only had 5 subscribers (Granted there are 8 available feeds for this blog, so there may be more subscribers across the different feeds. But, why on earth do you need 8 feed URIs?). So, I went to the site and see that Well Spent is not in the list of blogs anymore. I wonder what happened? Is it dead? Is the pf blogosphere not attractive enough for them? Are the citizen pf bloggers doing a better job?

For most of my life, prior to this thing they call the web, sports was my #1 passion. My goal was to play pro baseball. That didn’t quite work out and I only made it as far as small college. But, it’s always fun to read some great sports stories and take your mind off everyday life. I just came across a couple good ones by Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball:

• Absolutely, Power Corrupts (via Kottke)
• Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep (recommended by a friend and also is on Kottke’s list)

I think I’m going to have read Moneyball soon, even if a little late.