Digital Trends is one of the best web business stories in the Portland area. Founded just a few years ago, it has bootstrapped its way to a thriving online business focusing on consumer electronics reviews and news. Through the power networking group known as “mom’s groups,” I met Ian, the CEO, and after a few discussions about the latest TechCrunch reviews, I asked, “hey, why don’t you guys do web reviews, seems like a great fit for the current audience.” Next thing you know, I’m the one writing them.

My goals with these reviews are different than with a typical “Web 2.0 blog.” I don’t care about the latest breaking news, funding, the latest gossip, the business model, who the founders are, or anything like that. I’m only concerned with the site itself, and that’s what I focus on. How useful it is to the web audience. The site must at least be a public beta too, no private, invitation only ones. It needs to be ready for anybody to use it. The hardest part is picking, with so many sites to choose from. I make my picks on mainly a gut feel when I see the site, that “this is interesting.”

You may have also heard me rail against the Web 2.0 blogs posting so often, making it too difficult to keep up, and so my goal is to write 1 and maybe 2 a week. My inspiration comes more from the Solution Watch approach. The audience at Digital Trends is much more diverse though, so it’s fun to distill the great stuff we early adopters come across to a wider group of people.

The first batch went live a couple weeks ago. Take a look. I’d love to hear what you think, good and bad.

• Me.dium
• StreetAdvisor
• Satisfaction
• Footnote

I welcome any submissions. My email is over there in the right-hand column. I can’t promise a response, but I will promise at least a look at your site.

TwitterWhere

TwitterWhere is a cool new project from local Portland developer Matt King. Similar to how Local Signal tracks an assortment of feeds for a specific city to filter and discover news, events, and people, TwitterWhere tracks Twitter activity for a given location, making it easy find local breaking news and other Tweeters. (Silicon Florist and Read/Write Web coverage)

ChoiceA

ChoiceA is a new national real estate FSBO site (Silicon Florist and Read/Write Web have more).

Platial

Platial made a pretty bold move it seems in acquiring one of their direct competitors in the social mapping space who had been doing better, traffic ranking wise. Should be interesting to see what happens with the combined companies.

Jump right into the Portland news to take a look.

LocalSignal is built for 3 types of uses:

1. Quickly get the latest news, event info, and social media content from around the web for your city
2. See what’s happening in a city you’re traveling or moving to
3. See who’s online around you in your city

As is my custom, I usually give a back story when launching an app (here’s Web 2.0 Innovation Map and NetworthIQ). Basically, I was subscribing to a whole bunch of Portland feeds, and it was beginning to clutter up my reader. Feed readers are great, but the more feeds you follow the more difficult it is to keep up and need arises to find faster ways to filter. Also, when I took a trip last year to San Diego, I had been looking for something like this to get an idea of what was going on down there, maybe if there were any Web 2.0 type companies or events to check out. I also like to know what’s happening in Seattle to get a feel for overall Northwest happenings, but I certainly didn’t want to subscribe to those feeds, and didn’t want to build a new page in PageFlakes/Netvibes for any city I all of a sudden cared about. Finally, I’ve met a number of great people locally here in Portland as a result of my online activities, and would like to continue that tradition by finding the local people using various social platforms.

Putting those ideas together with my increasing use of Original Signal for news scanning, and the city-based single page aggregator now known as LocalSignal was born. Originally I was just trying to filter out universal social media platforms for local content (topix, newsvine, del.icio.us, technorati, MetaFilter, Ball Hype, Upcoming). If a site had feeds and some way to filter content by tag or location, I tried to utilize it. Unfortunately, I think the vision falls short by only relying on that method. Some feeds were too stale for that fine grained of content, and some too busy to find anything useful. For that reason, I’m starting to add more locally produced content.

If you’re wondering what the heck I’m doing building another app right now, as if I have the time. Well, I wonder myself sometimes. Focus was never my strong-point. But, I like to tinker and the feed plumbing was built back in February as I was brushing up on my PHP. Todd and I discussed some organization and design ideas in Aprilish, but I still let it simmer. Some recent events have given me the motivation to bring it down from the attic and get it out the door.
There’s still a number of things to do: UI improvements, showing new items since last visit, showing popular items (determined by clicks), and of course content content content (adding, removing, ordering) for the 53 cities currently being tracked.

Here’s some additional resources about news filtering methods:

• 5 News Aggregation Methods Compared
• Tracking the web with Single Page Aggregators

I should be happier for them, more exposure for the personal finance space and all. But, I’m feeling a little down today. As is the case with Wesabe, Expensr and Geezeo, I don’t view them as a competitor. They are more traditional Personal finance managers, focusing on expense tracking and bank account aggregation. NetworthIQ looks beyond bank accounts into your whole financial picture at a simpler/higher level while adding a social support network and way for you to chronicle your financial decisions. It’s really more of a complement to any of these apps. Unfortunately though, even if we’re not competitors, NetworthIQ will be viewed in the same general realm and thus be buried further in the noise and battle for new users. This also hit home reading this month’s Money magazine article about social personal finance that ignored NetworthIQ (Jean Chatzky, what’s a guy gotta do to get on your radar?). We were the first doing anything personal finance related in Web 2.0/social software. Now, there are lots out there. One thing’s for sure, I’m going to have to pick up my game a lot more.

As a personal finance software user myself, I’m not impressed with Mint. It’s web-based and very pretty, but I’ve been using MS money for 8 years and there’s nothing in Mint that will make me switch. I’m a BIG proponent of web-based software, and Money is probably the only reason I keep Windows around (ok, I guess I need it for .NET development too, but it’s the only software app that I use on Windows). It would be great to have a web app for this, but I’m not ready to give a new web service my usernames/passwords (I gave one to test it out), and it only tracks bank and credit card accounts. It can’t track mortgages, brokerage accounts, etc, so it’s not really a “track all your accounts in one place” app. I’d still have to use Money. The weekly email summary was a neat thing I admit, but I think there’s a lot more power in a client PFM in analyzing and reporting on spending. In the end, Mint feels more like an affiliate marketing scheme than a PFM.

To win the “best presenter” award at TC40, I honestly think that’s ridiculous, but really says more to me about the conference than Mint. For two reasons. 1) If this is the best app out of the 40, I can promptly ignore the other 39. 2) This has to be one of the best funded companies there, and I don’t think companies with VC funding should be in the running for conference grants. Those should be reserved for companies still battling in the funding game.

This is interesting to me, one because I love trying collaboration tools and two, because I noted LUNARR way back last february and for the longest time, I was getting a good chunk of my paltry traffic from google searches for Toru Takasuka, the CEO. I’ve now been relegated to page 3 of the google results.

So, now that LUNARR is out, let’s look at the description from back then:

“He says he will develop a Web-based product that will allow business people to handle their computer needs, boosting productivity through collaboration. Information will be accessible via anything from a personal computer to a cell phone to a television.”

The collaboration part is definitely there, and I see some interesting things there. The whole “turn the page over” idea is kind of cool, and importing web sites to comment on was a nice touch. We’ll see how the cell phone and television part plays out.

If you want an invite, let me know.

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070909.html

This is a very cool feature that gives a nice, quick snapshot of a company. It looks like it was released in posts beginning last Wednesday. What’s especially interesting is that on the same day, Niall Kennedy’s Startup Search was released and it’s almost exactly the same thing as the TechCrunch database. Startup Search has better linkage among people and investors in addition to tracking traffic indicators, but the company profiles are nearly identical.

I wonder if Mike and Niall will work together to built a more complete database faster. Both appear to have pretty limited listings (only 47 companies on startup search and I could only find a handful on TC DB, in contrast I had over 300 on the web 2.0 map last year and that number has at least doubled by now). And hey guys, bring back an updated version of the Web 2.0 Innovation map, I still think that’s a cool way to visualize startup activity.

I used to play a lot of sports and do a little coaching before I got bit by the side-project entrepreneur bug, but not enough to warrant the use of TeamSnap. I don’t think it will help my golf game much either. If I start playing or coaching sports again (which I definitely want to do), I’ll have to remember to give this a shot.

First off are the 500(!) requests to urchin.js, locking up my browser. Once that is fully swallowed, you are presented with a half-empty UI. I guess there are no “Amateur Programmers” in the system? I play with the job category thingamabob and still can’t get any results. Next I try these filter widgets, and boy are they slow (this is client-side slowness, having nothing to do with the load on the site). Oh, I see that I’m “Already Logged in,” well no actually I haven’t logged in. Finally I entered some stuff to the “Get Ranked” form (I put some skills, not sure exactly what they mean by accomplishments, seems kind of vague) and hit go, and after about 30 seconds my browser finally came back to life with absolutely nothing changed on the screen. After that, I’m outta here. I can’t wait until uncov gets on this one.

User Experience is hard, I can relate with my own struggle to to create positive experiences that really get the message I’m trying to spread, across. But, simplicity can go a long way to helping that, and I would give that advice to the TalentSpring team. I think the problem is that the home page is trying to do too much with multiple kinds of filters in the browse area, the results area itself, and the “get ranked” form. But, while trying to do too much, nothing gets accomplished here, I never saw any results. Perhaps getting rid of the “Get Ranked” form and prefilling the latest resumes into the results (then the filters can be used) would be a good start. Just some thoughts.

Let Go! 8 Steps to Succeeding in a Post-2.0 World

Lane Becker and Thor Muller, Satisfaction (slides)
I didn’t write down the 8 specific things, perhaps they’ll show up here, but this talk wasn’t really about presenting the 8 things, it was more a conversation about their message, “Be Like the Internet.” What does this mean? It means giving up control, opening up more, looking outside for solutions, embracing chaos, being more agile. Again, look to the wiki they setup, hopefully they’ll build it out a bit.

More:
http://www.commoncraft.com/webvision-2007-review

Social Media Strategies for your Organization? Connecting the Dots

Jeremiah Owyang (presentation) (slides)
Jeremiah discussed ways to present and implement social media strategies in organizations. The slides should sum it up well or watch the presentation. I need to try some of this stuff with my company. The Air Traffic Controller idea is a good start, though hardly anything is ever said about my company in the blogosphere (perhaps that’s as good a reason to start doing this).

More:
http://www.elainenelson.org/2007/05/04/social-media-for-cos/

http://blog.vibrantjourney.com/2007/05/04/web-visions-presentation-page-hierarchy/

http://www.elainenelson.org/2007/05/04/web-application-hierarchy-after-lunch/

Lunch

Apparently neither Jacob nor Cliff have experienced a Burgerville milkshake, unbelievable. Fortunately we survived the throng of pre-teens and made it back to the conference.

Web Application Page Hierarchy

Luke Wroblewski (slides)
Luke W. is my new design hero, I just hope to never have to pronouce his last name. Not only does he work for Yahoo!, but has his own design business, writes books/articles, and is a prodigous speaker (not always covering the same topic). His slides on Best Practices for Web Form Design are the most useful, actionable advice I have ever seen in a presentation (i.e. you can put the stuff to use immediatley). I didn’t even see that presentation, just read the slides.

So, the talk was great with some sound and straightforward advice on how to focus your pages on the things that matter. Good point about the importance of a good presentation layer, it’s not just making it pretty.

More:
http://www.elainenelson.org/2007/05/04/web-application-hierarchy-after-lunch
http://blog.vibrantjourney.com/2007/05/04/web-visions-presentation-page-hierarchy

English: Web 2.0’s Universal Language

Kevin Smokler
I left the content square-table discussion for reasons similar to Adam’s and ended up in this one. It was ok. Kevin’s a smart, energetic guy, but the topic wasn’t the most exciting to me, or maybe I was just ready to go home. The discussion was on being clear in our language and making product descriptions easier to understand (passing the mother-in-law test). RSS was a common topic; it’s so great, but a lot of people still don’t really get what it is after all these years.

More:
http://www.bitclone.com/wp/105/webvisions-2007-rockstars-of-design/

I had to jet and missed the Friday keynote, sounds like it was pretty funny. Instead I spent the next two hours in the parking lot know as I-5.

Tags: webvisions, webvisions07

AJAX Inside Out (Workshop)

Jack Herringon
Slides: http://muttmansion.com/webvisions.pdf
Code Samples: http://muttmansion.com/webvisions.tgz

Waste of time. They should give refunds for this. Not sure if it was a horrible mis-communication between WV staff and Mr. Herrington, or between WV marketing and attendees. This was a demonstration of AJAX, that’s all.

Inventrepreneurship

Paul Ingram (slides)
Very inspiring talk on ideas; where to get them, and how to bring them to life. I’ve recently begun trying some of Paul’s ideas myself in regards “private virtual parnerships,” utilizing informal collectives of people to build projects so am glad to hear others are comfortable doing this as well (as opposed to creating formal organzations/agreements and hiring employees and contractors). I loved the Segway video (a hypothetical discussion of the importance of the Segway as if all of the initial hype came true) and will have to try to find that.

More:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?533

Social Architecture: Modeling the Next Generation

Sean Madden (slides)
Emergence, ubiquitous computing, calm technology, genetic algrorithms. Wow, this is heady stuff, and apparently this guy grew up in Tualatin, which is a stone’s throw from where I currently live. The driving point is about making systems more flexible and easier to change/evolve from the community’s use. I encourage you read the summaries below, this was one of my favorite sessions and I need to let this sink in a bit more.

More:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?534
http://www.jasoneiseman.com/blog/?p=168

Sensory Trasformation: How to Sip from the Information Firehose (Keynote)

David Pescovitz (BoingBoing blogger among many other pursuits)
Interesting stuff on information overload, ubiquitous computing, predicting the future. I enjoyed it. I’ll have to dump all my RSS feeds one of these days and start over, one of things David does to manage overload and find new and interesting stuff.

More:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?535
http://www.jasoneiseman.com/blog/?p=169

Tags: webvisions, webvisions07

• Top Web 2.0 Blogs (opml file)

If you don’t want to worry about adding subscriptions, a great resource for keeping up on Web 2.0 is the Original Signal singlegator site.

This week has seen a relative slew of new locally produced social sites to launch or that I noticed.

Gone Raw
PDX Web Innovators Ray and Kandace from Needmore Designs launched their newest creation at the Wednesday meeting, which unfortunately I skipped this month, so I didn’t get to see it there. Looks like a nice entry into the social food space and seems like a great site to help people get started and maintain when they go raw. Gone Raw follows Cuppin’ which launched earlier this summer.

Art Face Off
Social networking company for artists, curators and art lovers. (via)

12 Step Space
Recovery oriented social networking. (via)

See previous discussion of the Portland web startup scene here and here.

Aggregators
Why search so many places, when these guys bring everything to you? And by everything, I mean everything. Of course it depends on how focused your search is, but be prepared to mine though a lot of listings.

• SimplyHired
• Indeed
• Rails Related Jobs – Ruby on Rails Specific aggregrator

Social networking
What you get when you combine social networking with a job site.

• Jobster
• Whototalkto.com

Niche job boards
Sure, they all have their own audience right? Wrong. But, hey it’s easy money so who can blame them. Seriously though, if you’re looking for full-time work in a specific industry/field, these are much more focused than the big job sites.

• 37signals Job Board – design, development, business
• CrunchBoard – design, development, business
• GigaOM Jobs – design, development, business (I’m sensing a pattern here)
• paidContent.org Jobs – mostly business
• jobs.joelonsoftware.com – Software Development
• Authentic Jobs – Web Design & Development
• Think Vitamin Job Board – Web related
• Npost – tech startup related, mostly northwest
• jobs.codebetter.com – Software/Web Development
• Venture Beat Job Board – high-end management, tech, finance ($100,000+)
• TechGigger Jobs – start-up jobs
• CSS Beauty Job Board – web design/development
• Problogger Job Board – blogging jobs
• jobs.originalsignal.com – aggregates many of these sites

Gigs
You’re a contract/freelance web professional and you want to get paid for your work? Check these out. You think TechCrunch is going to add a gig board now?

• Authentic Jobs
• 37signals
• oDesk – want to work remotely, but have big brother watch your every move? Yikes.

Matchmaking
These don’t necessarily pay, but if you’re looking for help on that hot startup idea or looking for the next Sergey & Larry to hook up with, they’re worth checking out.

• Programmer Meet Designer
• Buildv1
• Go Big Network
• OregonStartups.com – (Portland/Oregon specific)

Crowd sourcing
Have some time and want to tackle some tasks that may earn you some cash? Then crowdsourcing may be for you.

• CambrianHouse

Green Jobs
This category isn’t really tech/web2.0 specific, but if you’re as concerned about the environment as Al Gore is, then this could be your ticket to doing something about it.

• Green Dream Jobs
• TreeHugger Jobs

Managing your search
We wouldn’t be truly Web 2.0 without something to manage all of this, what with the todo managers, time trackers, etc. growing like weeds.

• Isabont

What did I miss? Add other job sites/board that you like?

Digg this
Bookmark in del.icio.us

Tags: jobs jobboard web2.0

Admittedly, Microsoft has executed unoriginality better than anyone in history and better than the current crop of Web 2.0 startups, especially since they have paying customers. But, my point is you don’t have to be original to be successful, and Web 2.0 founders will find their way with experimenting with these features. We should all think hard about the value of adding these types of features and strive to come up with innovative stuff, but it’s certainly not sad or depressing to see people give entrepreneurship a go.

Update
Looks like it was just an eBay technicality that forced them to re-list, here’s the current auction.

Tags: web2.0 kiko

With all of these Web 2.0 sites coming out, it’s easy for them to fade away and get lost in the noise. When the founders realize that they’re spending all their time on something that isn’t meeting their goals and expectations (whether monetary or something else), they’ll try to sell it and find something better to spend their time on. Why do I think this? Because I’ve had these thoughts about NetworthIQ, and I’m sure there are hundreds of others who have considered it as well. It’s business. Fortunately, I’m not competing against Google and I still have a lot to do before I reach that point.

But, before we get all sensationalistic and start saying this is the start of Crash 2.0, let’s take a step back. The high number of new startups/sites shouldn’t be considered a bad thing that we become too cynical about. If these entrepreneurs succeed, awesome. If not, think of all that’s being learned. Whether it’s gaining skills and experience in software development, or business, these experiences can only make us stronger (as a friend told me, it’s “skill-building”). Nobody is getting hurt, and the good ones will rise above the noise. The Web is not going away. Just be careful, as Rick Segal mentions, not to forget about your day job too soon.

I say ignore all this “bubble 2.0″ talk. Investors should be smart enough to identify good risks (note the word “risk”), it’s their job, and there will not be a dot.com public market crash this time because the overwhelming majority of these companies will not go public.

(more on the Kiko blog and of course TechCrunch also weighs in)

But, a couple of things struck me as a bit off. I don’t really understand this software they need money to develop. Pre-built, pluggable modules? Seems like a tough market, as “automatic integration” into an existing website is a pipe dream (though many businesses could very well like to learn this the hard way) and using them to build a site from the ground up is a questionable approach. For proprietary, little-used technology, it would be difficult to find somebody to maintain your site, but I guess Site9, like any good drug dealer (I mean web agency) will surely maintain it for you.

Then they go and try to attach themselves to web 2.0:

“The Web site design and Web 2.0 software development firm”

Hmmm, ok, if you say so. Seems like a questionable use of Web 2.0 that contributes to its derision in cynic circles. Finally there’s this:

“Next-generation features like social networking, podcasting, video-on-demand, RSS feeds, AJAX interfaces and blogs are integrated into the tool.”

A little buzzword happy are we? I mean, c’mon where are the tags? And the APIs? And mashups? How can you be a Web 2.0 software development company without those?

I wish them luck, but I think their marketing needs some tuning. But, who knows, maybe it works, cuz it got me to blog about it.

Now, how do I say this without sounding petty…. I was essentially the first to publicly spot the trend, nearly two months ago, so it seems like cnet should have tossed a little credit this way (and an upcoming report on the same topic will be doing so). Rachel did in her blog intro, and I appreciate that. It’s disappointing that cnet offers no source and practically claims it as their own idea. Maybe I should’ve trademarked the term (inside joke for followers of the recent Web 2.0 controversy). Anyway, just remember, you heard it here first.

This seemed like a good topic to get me back into the blogging spirit. Since I’m working on a Web 2.0 app (NetworthIQ) using the Microsoft platform, I’ve got some thoughts on the subject.

1. Free Developer Tools.

Over the last month I’ve been migrating NetworthIQ from 1.1 to 2.0 using the Express editions. We signed up for the Empower program thinking it was the greatest thing ever. All the Microsoft software you want for a few hundred bucks a year. How can you beat that? Well, you know what they say, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The catch is you have to build an installable application, then make an effort to get certfied by Microsoft, among other requirements. A public web site, even one you charge for doesn’t make the cut. We could build an installable client app or something to satisfy the requirements, but that’s too much of a distraction, and frankly, after spending the last 18 months doing it at my day job, I don’t like (building or using even) installed apps very much. Now, since we’re disciplined about separating work from side-company, we need to use our own tools. Free is about all we can justify right now, so the express versions fit the bill perfectly.

Going from full Visual Studio to express isn’t the most fun, but it’s a workable solution short of switching platforms. My issues with it are:

• Being limited to a single web site solution sucks. we have to run two IDEs, using VC# express for our non web code (domain, data layers, etc.). App_Code was just too full and I didn’t see an easy way to embed NHibernate xml files into the generated assembly.
• The debugging is a pain since you can’t just attach to a process.
• The publishing options are lacking and the Web Deployment Projects don’t support express. However, we still have the power of MsBuild, so that one’s not too big of a deal.

However, I am really enjoying ASP.NET 2.0, and am starting to become really productive with it (it helps that I’m now doing it at the full-time job as well). VWD Express satisfies me enough for now. Plus, based on what I’ve used for PHP development it’s pretty darn good (I don’t know enough about developing/debugging tools for Rails to comment at this time).

2. Free Database

I haven’t spent a lot of time with SQL Express, but I am happy it’s free and it’s definitely aimed at MySQL. Competition is a good thing.

3. Microsoft Atlas makes AJAX easier.

I spent some time with Atlas at work over the last few weeks, developing a proof of concept app for the project I’m on. I wasn’t too impressed. To me, it’s buggy, bloated, and poorly documented. But, I do like the Web Service proxying that makes it easy to get data back and forth. I know it’s a long way from release, but for me, it’s not usable yet.

4. Microsoft doesn’t HAVE to get ALL of your business.

I don’t see many if any LAMP shops using Atlas.

5. Microsoft solutions can scale.

It’s definitely reassuring to know MySpace is using .NET. But, why does it look like they’re still using ColdFusion? Are all 1.5 billion page views on .NET?

6. Microsoft pricing is flexible.

This will be the breaking point for us I think. If and when we have to start scaling, are we going to want to pay the Microsoft tax for Windows and possibly SQL Server licenses? It remains to be seen, but there’s a reason we’re playing with Rails.

7. Ray Ozzie

Not a factor for me. Maybe I’m ignorant, but I haven’t even bothered learning about SSE and Live Clipboard. Should I?

8. Robert Scoble

I like Robert and have read him for a long time. He even posted about NetworthIQ. I agree that he’s doing a lot of good for Microsoft.

9. Being based on the Microsoft platform doesn’t limit your acquisition options.

Glad to know . But seriously, I wouldn’t pick a technology for this reason. Pick something that you can build a great product with, FAST.

10. Microsoft wants to be a part of the community

Ok.

11. Microsoft employees aren’t evil.

I’m definitely not a rah-rah Microsoft developer. I hate IE (ok hate is a strong word, perhaps saying I prefer firefox is better), and most of the Live.com stuff is crap. But, I like ASP.NET and I know there are people working hard there and reaching out to be better. Scott Guthrie comes to mind as someone doing great work for ASP.NET.

12. Microsoft has good development resources

For getting up and running this is pretty true. However, there are ongoing wars between the RAD (everything’s declarative) camp and the non RADs. Just hope you don’t get caught between the two when trying to figure out a good solution to a particular problem.

13. Microsoft speeds web application development

Ahh yes, this is the clincher for me (for now). Sometimes ASP.NET can be terribly frustrating and feels like it’s getting in the way when you want to do something simple. It produces crappy markup at times that is difficult to control, and you have to constantly be aware of ViewState (page size) issues. But, in the end, once you get up to speed, it’s a nice framework.

In the local reviews race, it looks like Zipingo is trailing badly. Yelp, Insider Pages, and Judy’s book look to be going strong except for a recent drop-off for Judy’s book.

Anyway, I mention Trixie Tracker, because I’ve been following Family 2.0 applications like Trixie Tracker, Minti, Amiglia, and Families.com. I’ve had similar ideas in these areas, so it’s been interesting seeing them pop up.

Trixe Tracker attemtps to solve a piece of what I thought was missing in the existing apps; baby tools (tracking, sharing). You probably figured I’m big into tracking, being that’s what NetworthIQ is all about. Trixie Tracker doesn’t take care of it all though, I think there’s still some good opportunities in this area. But, Trixie Tracker appears to be a very useful app focused in on babies eating, sleeping, and you know what else schedules. The graphs and charts look very cool. I think it’s a bit too spendy (personally, I’d consider say a $20 annual subscription), but I respect them for charging off the bat for it. I’ve come to the conclusion (excuse me for stating the obvious) that if you’re going to bootstrap, charging is the best way to go. You may get away with a freemium business model, which is where we’re heading with NetworthIQ, but a pure ad-based revenue model will be a tough climb (NetworthIQ was never intended to be a pure ad-based model, but that’s all we have at the moment).

I enjoyed the launch post, this hits a bit close to home:

“It’s really hard to do anything else when you’re taking care of a baby/child/toddler”

and

“I could reliably count on writing about 3 or 4 lines of code a week.”

I know the feeling well, as idiot me managed to wait until we had a baby to get inspired enough to start building something. The absolute worst. timing. ever.

They even use a pretty similar “Track. Share. ….” slogan I coined for NetworthIQ. Just a coincidence? Who knows, I’m either flattered or know there’s somebody who thinks like I do. Either way is fine with me.

Update

Missed Cingo and MyHomePoint the first time around. Both are trying to provide tools to keep families organized. I’ll have to check these out a little more. For myself, I might really like them as I’m still trying to nail down a calendar app (even though there’s no shortage of them). But I’d have a hard time convincing my wife to keep it updated.

Update 2

TechCrunch has word about another parenting site in the works, Maya’s Mom.

Update 3

JotSpot has released JotSpot Family Site, which looks to be an easy way to get a family web site going, complete with a calendar, blogs, maps, etc. (via MOMB). They make no mention of ‘Wikis’ which is a smart move as I’d guess that a large percentage of people know what one is.

Update 4

A couple new ones to mention:

• MothersClick – I’ll indulge with a link even though they issued a press release mother’s day weekend when the app isn’t even available yet. I thought that was a bit tacky.
• Ookles – Billed as Flickr+YouTube+Riya for parents. The current intro page is incredibly annoying though. They’ve got a long way to go.

Update 5

Rachel Cook from Minti has started a blog, family2point0, to track these apps. Look there for new stuff.

The Top 100 – a list of the 100 most popular betas (and alphas, and pre-betas, …) based on the number of how many bookmarks there are in del.icio.us; this list will be updated biweekly, and

The Hot 100 – which is a kind of mini-zeitgeist and displays the most popular betas (and alphas, and pre-betas, …) based on how many bookmarks there have been added within the last 7 days; this list will be updated every Sunday.

But, say I want to find the best calendar app with reviews, ratings, a screenshot, in a easy to navigate list. Where do I go to get that info?

I’d say the Web 2.0 Awards is pretty close to the answer to that question. The Web 2.0 awards is a beautiful list that has rated, ranked, and awarded the best of Web 2.0 sites across many categories.

Of course I also like it because NetworthIQ got an honorable mention in the “Business, Money, and eCommerce” category going up against some pretty big competition.

The other lists I mentioned before are still great going forward to keep an eye on new stuff and there’s still room for the versiontracker.com type site with more user opinions, and tracking new features. But, we have to stop and admire the Web 2.0 awards for a while. Well done.

One of the companies that had escaped my radar was Platial, a company right here in Portland doing some exciting things with maps. Platial is billed as a collaborative atlas. You can create maps of places meaningful to you, share them, tag them, and connect with other users. I really dig the combination of a map visual with a storytelling aspect that goes along with it. It’s understanable that they’re flying under most radars, the site is in its very early beta stages (launched in December, just hit 1000 users yesterday). I imagine the buzz level will be escalating before long.

So, anyway, after hearing from one of their developers, I put them on the map and got a note from one of the founders, Di-Ann Eisnor. Being the budding entrepreneur, I took the opportunity to do a little networking and so yesterday I went to visit Di-
Ann and the rest of the Platial team. They really have some extremely bright people, which when it comes down to it, usually determines the success of a company. I had a great time learning about what they’re doing and sharing a bit about what we’re doing. It’s fun finding people that are passionate about the same things you are (and hold that thought for a later post, Adam DuVander and I are thinking of something for Portland to make this a more common occurence). I anticipate big things from Platial and am looking forward to seeing what’s coming. Thanks for letting me stop by.

The irony though is that they had actually started a Web 2.0 map (seen here) about the same time I started mine. If their map had taken off before I finished mine, I never would have had this opportunity. Goes to show, the release early motto can pay dividends. I’m also now intrigued about integrating my map more with Platial.

Tags: platial geo maps

1) The domain name is terrible (as mentioned previously).

2) The masked URLs are lame. Use some unobtrusive javascript or something to track clicks if you must. But, I’d really like to see the real link in the anchor tag, so I can easily right click and copy the url (should I want to). This is too obtrusive.

3) Build a firefox extension. Bookmarklets are ok, but an extension with quick access to adding, viewing, viewing popular, viewing tags, etc. makes it much easier to use a social bookmarking site.

So, it’s back to delicious for now, but if they keep at it, I’ll try it again later on.

Update
I emailed them this same feedback and I got a response back from Todd Sieling, the product manager. Sounds like the domain name is here to stay. But, they may be open to changing the re-direct urls into something a little less obtrusive. Todd also reports that an API is on the way which may spur more tools/extensions.

Maybe it’s just because I made one myself and tend to notice these things more now, but it seems there are an over abundance of web 2.0 tracking sites popping up. However, there is still not a clear winner when it comes to providing a way of finding the best of the new online services. This weekend Pete Cashmore launched his Weblist blog which adds detailed reviews and user ratings to the mix. Another one that’s gaining steam is this list on listible which actually started back in January. The diggwatch blog has added a list, based on the Web 2.0 logo mashup. All of these go along with the previous set:

Web 2.0 Blogs (news/reviews/analysis):

• TechCrunch
• Read/Write Web
• WebWare
• CenterNetworks
• Web 2.0 Explorer
• Solution Watch
• Mashable
• Outside the Valley
• Uncov
• Startup Squad
• alarm:clock
• PostBubble
• TechCrush (dead)
• Web 2.0 Central (appears dead)

Web 2.0 Listings

• Web 2.0 Innovation Map
• eHub
• Museum of Modern Betas
• Startup Search
• All Things Web 2.0
• Web 2.0 List
• KillerStartups
• Web 2.0 Directory
• 2.0websites.com
• BuzzShout
• NEO Binaries
• koolWEB 2.0
• web 2.0 slides
• Seth Godin’s Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List
• Go2Web20.net
• Complete List of Web 2.0 Applications
• Weblist (appears dead)
• Web 2.0 logos and links (dead)
• categoriz (dead)

Best of lists:

• Web 2.0 Awards
• Best of the Best Web 2.0 Web Sites
• Top 10 Innovative Web 2.0 Applications of 2005
• The Best Web 2.0 Software of 2005
• More Great Web 2.0 Software

These all serve their purpose in one way or another . Mostly, they are best suited for promotion and demonstrating the explosion of internet services along with keeping early adopters in the loop of new stuff. But, say I want to find the best calendar app with reviews, ratings, a screenshot, in a easy to navigate list. Where do I go to get that info? Seth Godin tells us categories matter, yet only eHub and Hinchcliffe’s lists (which aren’t perpetually updated) have some sort of categorization.

The blog format of TechCrunch, WebList, Web 2.0 Explorer, and Solution Watch is great for an initial review, but breaks down quickly when it comes to trying to scan hundreds of applications. TechCrunch does try to solve this with the occaisonal rollup of a segment. eHub is more concise and has categories, but lacks reviews and ratings. The innovation map lacks descriptions, categories and ratings. The listible list is also concise and has a rating feature, but lacks reviews, categories and editorial control, so at some point it will probably become worthless.

One of the commenters on Pete’s Weblist introduction mentioned a versiontracker.com type site. That’s exactly right. What we need is something like Programmable Web’s api and mashup databases. These have a nice concise listing, with descriptions, creator, tags/categories, popularity, ratings. Take this and add a TechCrunch/SW/Weblist style review, screenshot, and comments to the detail page. Expose an RSS feed and a simple API to enable mashups like the innovation map. Then you’d have something great. That would really help people discover Web 2.0 apps of interest.

Since Weblist has ratings, it’s probably closest. Add a rollup page like Programmable Web’s, track click-thrus for popularity, and add tags and you would pretty much be there. Hopefully somebody will build this. If you’re looking to promote something or yourself, this would be a great way to do it. If not, I’ll add this to my todo list, but I really do need to focus on my other projects, so don’t tempt me.

• SF Bay Area Tech Companies
• European Web 2.0 map
• A Web 2.0 meme map

In the O’Reilly Post, PJ from Wayfaring makes a comment about creating maps like ours there. For some reason, none of my comments went through (I got in the blog itself, but I can’t get a comment through?). So, responding here, I hadn’t really considered using another site, as I wanted to funnel buzz through Fourio and our projects. Plus with so many points, using Wayfaring would have been very painful (I didn’t see any bulk create functionality, but maybe I missed it?). But as you can see, someone else did.

Wayfaring’s interface is well done. I especially like the tooltips and zoom for each point. Going forward, the Innovation map will probably evolve into more of a community created resource as to minimize maintenance. Something to think about.

(via Russell Beattie)

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.