Yahoo rolled out some updates to their Maps API on Tuesday night, but unfortunately they broke their Geocode API in the process. I know, I know, don’t rely on free APIs, nothing like a day without new users to drive that point home. In spite of knowing I shouldn’t rely on this API, I’m troubled by the way this was broken. I would expect better from Yahoo, who put a lot of resources into their developer network.

First, they didn’t version this release, it’s still “V1″. If they had bumped the version and kept the old one around, the problem could have been avoided. Secondly, it’s essentially a schema problem which are much more difficult to code around than the service being down or throwing errors. While the response still technically passes schema validation, it’s easy to see that the data is not right. Third, it is still not fixed after they’ve known about it for over a day.

Here’s the bug. Run a zip code lookup:

http://local.yahooapis.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid=YahooDemo&zip=97201

this is the response:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ResultSet>
   <Result precision="zip">
      <Latitude>45.507542</Latitude>
      <Longitude>-122.689796</Longitude>
      <Address></Address>
      <City>Portland, OR  97201</City>
      <State>United States</State>
      <Zip></Zip>
      <Country>US</Country>
   </Result>
</ResultSet>
<!-- ws03.search.scd.yahoo.com compressed Thu May 17 09:55:39 PDT 2007 -->

The city, state and zip are combined into the city field while the country is put into the state field. Whoops. So the city field has to be further parsed in order to put the data in the right place. I use this service to take care of that for me, and don’t have time at the moment to do it. So, I bumped the limit on my state field in the database in order to work around this, but my geo data will be all messed up until this is fixed and then I’ll have to go back through and clean it up.

I’d argue that zip code lookups are fairly common and there should be a test case for this. Time to look at Google’s geocoder I suppose.

Sites create an unnecessary roadblock to user adoption, and it seems to be becoming more common. The problem is, these tests can be unintelligible and a normal user can’t pass it. If you’re MySpace or Facebook and getting thousands of registrations a day, then it makes sense to worry about thwarting the bots, but until then, please dump the CAPTCHAs. Use email verification instead, which you probably do anyway, so no need to beat up your users before they’re actually users with too many tests.

Today, after 5 attempts, I failed my CAPTCHA test at fatsecret (techcrunch coverage). It looked interesting, I wanted to see how they did some things as the idea is similar, feature-wise, to what we do with personal finance on NetworthIQ. Plus, I could stand to lose a few, so maybe it could help me out. But, now we’ll never know for sure because I can’t sign up.

Here’s the result:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=http://www.platial.com/rss/map/1768

Platial also lets you create maps from GeoRSS, so the new Google feature doesn’t really do anything new or better, it does however make it a bit easier since I just have to enter a URL for the feed (no account required). Plus I always like playing with Google Maps and its API features and this gives me reason to learn a bit more about GeoRSS.

There is definitely no lack of tools in SEO arena. But, there is also a wide range of quality in these tools. I have a couple of favorites in my toolbox including SearchStatus and SEO for Firefox. I have to say after giving the SEO Toolbar a run through, I like the tools overall, but I give it thumbs down and will not be adding this to the toolbox. Apparently I’m wrong though, because 100% of polled people can’t live without it. (note, there was 1 vote at the time of this post)

The bad: Personal data required to download

I start off by visiting the download page for the SEO Toolbar. Immediately, a prospective user is presented with a form to fill out before they can download the toolbar. Fortunately, you just have to fill out the form and not wait for an email with a link to the download as some do. So, any ol’ data will do here. When was the last time you had to enter data to download a Firefox plugin? But, that’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves because…

The bad: IE Only

Nowhere on the download page does it say what browsers are supported. There are no system requirements of any kind on the download page, and I didn’t find anything elsewhere on the site. But, eventually, after installing it, discovered this is an IE only tool. For me, if you don’t support Firefox, why bother? How many professional and aspiring SEOs use IE? With the abundance of SEO plugins for Firefox, I’m sure Firefox is the browser of choice. However, for the person in the Marketing department that’s just learning about SEO and still uses IE, this may be helpful for them. I was a good sport though and completed the install and fired it up in IE.

The not so ugly: There are some handy tools in here

Ok, we avoided getting ugly. But frankly, if I were to just come across it normally, I never would have gone further. So, let’s look at the tools provided by the SEO Toolbar.

• Web Searches – There is a nice search function where you can choose between 11 search engines. This would have been cool a couple years ago, but FF and now IE 7 have this ability with no toolbar needed.
• Ranking – This one is handy. You can visit the target site, enter a search term and then get the rankings for that search on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. My current toolset doesn’t have this at the click of a button. I also like how it shows it summarized in a popup window.
• Site Data – Three tools in this area, a keyword analyzer, a html validator, and a site analyzer tool which gives a good overall summary of the site. The html validator is worthless here, I already have tools for this in FF, but the other two are nice to have.
• Engine Data – A quick count of backlinks and page counts in the various search engines. Again, handy to have it summarized in a popup at the click of a button (as opposed to going to a 3rd party tool’s hosted tool or loading up each engine’s query page)
• Network Data – A few logistical tools, IP lookup, load time, ping, WHOIS data, and HTTP header info. Nothing here that I don’t already have quick access too with the Firefox toolset.

So, there are some helpful tools once you get going. Perhaps if they release a Firefox plugin, I would use it. But, as it stands now, I don’t see enough to make me want to use it on IE.

Please, I beg all site owners, do not use this thing.

Clearspace looks to be bringing together blogs, wikis, forums, and document sharing into a single product, perfect for teams. Clearspace reminds me a lot of SharePoint, but who likes using SharePoint? I’d love an alternative and this looks like a good one. Sharing information on teams is often a pain. I know my current team at work has come back to email again (yuck) as the primary means of cummunication, even after installing SharePoint. Email is horrible for team communication as messages are easily lost and ignored, and they are often disruptive to workflow. We occasionally use the SharePoint forums, but most of the time people have to send an email pointing to the discussion because it’s just not part of the natural communication flow yet (not entirely SharePoint’s fault).

Blogs, forums, and wikis are ideal for team communication because they can be viewed out-of-bound from your current workflow. You can view them on your own schedule and can much easily filter unwanted information. Say I find a great new tool (like Firebug), I can simply blog about it instead of emailing everybody. Plus I can have related conversations on the forum thread or blog comment thread that only involve the interested parties. The biggest weakness of SharePoint is that it lacks good tools for knowledge sharing. It’s ok for documents, lists, and some wiki-like functionality. But, I’m looking forward to seeing the blogs, blog reading, and wiki tools in Clearspace, and if they can really help facilitate discussion and knowledge sharing.

Though it’s not likely we’ll see Clearspace adoption on my team, because it’s currently so Microsoft tool focused, I’ll still be interested in trying it out for my own interest for use on side and future projects.

If you’re interested in more on collaboration suites, see the Wordpress/Knownow agreement and the Intel SuiteTwo release.

I can describe this new version in one word: Amazing. Firebug will make debugging your web app a joy. No matter if the problem is in the markup, script, CSS, or HTTP request/response, Firebug will help you find it. You’ll actually want to have bugs just so you can use it. Great to see it’s going to stay open source too.

• stikkit
• stickytag
• Helipad
• nottr

As much as I want to like these tools, (especially local entry stikkit), I just can’t get behind them yet. I’ve tried using all kinds of organizational apps like Ta-da lists, wikis, Basecamp/activeCollab, all of the different start pages (google/ig, pageflakes, live.com) and their todo widgets, Google Notebook, and Microsoft OneNote among others.

But, as hard as I’ve tried, I just keep coming back to the same two tools I’ve used for a relatively long-time, Gmail (using drafts and yahoo mail before) and todo.txt files in different places (one at work, different ones at home for different projects). Using Gmail allows easy online access from anywhere when needed and the ability to upload related files, while todo.txt files are great when offline and when needing more room to process thoughts and lists. I find it requires too much effort at times to open a browser or another application. I’m reminded here of Cory Doctorow’s Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks presentation from a couple years back.

I’ll definitely try out stikkit because it looks like such an elegant UI and back-end engineering effort, but we’ll see if I stick with it (sorry, bad humor). How do you organize yourself?

Note, this is for my personal organization, when working with a team, I’d still recommend a tool like activeCollab/Basecamp or a wiki.

I’m trying to track down a good list of top PHP bloggers in order to keep up with the latest in the PHP world, something I haven’t been doing over the last year. It was a lot harder than I anticipated. But, I got lucky and found an article that listed several, then searched through del.icio.us/tag/php+blog (I dig tag combinations).

I’d love something like Share your OPML where you could upload multiple subscription lists and tag the list. Anything in the tagged list then inherits the tag and you could find the top blogs for the tag. Or if the OPML has parent outline elements (folders), the name could be used as the tag (therefore you’d have less work to do to break out your subscriptions). Google Reader has some potential here to, seeing its use of tags and the feed bundles. I wonder if they’ll expose the most popular subscriptions by tag? Anybody do anything like that already?

Any other tips for finding the top blogs on a specific topic?

I’ve gone ahead and published my .NET and PHP subscription lists (you don’t see those technologies combined together too often, now do ya?), but I’d love to see other good lists (on both technologies):

• Top .NET Blogs
• Top PHP Blogs

Digg this
Bookmark in del.icio.us

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

Now, I’m not a Netflix user, so I imagine there’s something like this built-in to it? I know Blockbuster online had this, but who uses them (other than for the free trial anyway). And, of course there’s also IMDB which has some ability to make lists of movies.

As far as Movietally goes, I dig the basic idea, and see some potential there to be an extremely sticky and fun site. But, there needs to be a lot more data to seed the system. There is a very small amount of movies in there, requiring users to build the database. It would be a whole lot nicer if the data was already in there (movies, directors, actors, acresses, etc) making the search more effective and decreasing the amount of work a user has to do. Perhaps using IMDB data which is available (but maybe not free) would be good start. There are continuing rumors of an IMDB API too, and Movietally would be an excellent use case for it. But, who knows where that’s at? The tagging approach is ok, but tag suggestions (what other tags have people used) on the add page would be helpful. I wouldn’t mind seeing clean urls too, making it easily hackable.

Other reviews:
PostBubble sinks MovieTally, with a focus on the movie review aspect, which I barely took notice of in my first pass. Though the reviews could be valuable long-term, I looked at it as solving my problem with remembering what I’ve watched and hopefully finding some related movies to check out, which while minor, is still a pain-point.

Update
MovieTally got written up by TechCrunch this week. Turns out it was built by a 15-year old. Nice work.

Tags: movietally imdb api

Now, it’s not a complete clone with features such as writeboards (use writely) and time-tracking not there (a feature which I’ve yet to look at in basecamp), and I think basecamp feels a little smoother and more polished. But, I can sacrifice these if it means it’s FREE! (assuming you already have a hosting account or server). Check out Slacker Manager for more detailed comparison of the two

Now, here’s the thing, I’ve read comments defending the Basecamp business model, saying how activeCollab won’t make an impact because it’s not hosted and you have to install it. Well, in my opinion, with the one-click install path, it’s easier to get activeCollab up and running than signing-up for Basecamp. Plus you’ll have a full-fledged hosting account (which you can run other apps on), all for less than a Basecamp account. Finally, for the concerned corporate people, you can keep the app (and the data) behind the firewall.

As a side note, I feel myself tiring of 37signals. I generally like their apps and message (I bought the 10 seat Getting Real to share with co-workers) and I’ve been inspired in many ways by them. But, I thought this post was complete bullshit. I mean, it’s a freakin’ magazine cover. Misleading? Sure, but aren’t most? That’s how they get people to buy them. 37signals gets lots of press, but as soon as a Web 2.0ish article appears that doesn’t include them and includes companies not following their mantra of no VC, they have to get all pissy. Let the guys enjoy their press. Digg may not sell for $200 million now, but it’s surely big enough to make Rose a lot of money someday.

Tags: basecamp activecollab 37signals

1. The fact that it was so easily comment spammed
2. The fact that comments are considered pages in their plans
3. I could find no way to mass delete comments and I was not about to delete several hundred of them by hand.
4. I replied to their automated warning (automated, but the from address was apparetnly an actual person, Michael Lee – mike@jot.com) about this issue and never got a response.

Even though this was just a temporary home until the group can build something, I am not happy with this outcome. Go use a competitor like PBWiki if you’re looking for a free hosted wiki.

Tags: wiki jot jotspot

Then we finally learned what Amigo is all about. Adsense for newsletters. Pretty simple, but one of those ideas that strike you as “hey, that’s pretty cool, hasn’t somebody done that already?” I’ll try to give it shot, especially now that we have over 1000 subscribers to our newsletter. Maybe this will be the motivation I need to actually send a newsletter consistently.

Google’s office suite is rounding into good form. I’m now using Gmail, Google Calendar, and Spreadsheets. I’m sure I’ll use writely as well when the need arises (currently just have one document in Writeboard in Basecamp’s free plan).

Anyway, I see that Redfin is in the news again with a recent funding and plans to expand to other markets. They’re also expanding their services, including representing buyers and refunding 2/3 of the buyer’s broker’s commision. Wow! That’s huge. We just bought a house without a broker and got the whole commision reduced off the price, so I know how helpful this is.
Oh, and I loved this quote from TechCrunch:

(and that is based on relatively low Seattle home prices)

Are you joking? Now, I know Mr. Arrington lives in a very high priced area, and that’s where he’s getting the relative from. But relative nationally, Seattle is one of the most expensive places to live (Adam, great data master, correct me if I’m wrong) and I bet that most people in that area would get a good laugh out of that.

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.

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.

Zillow promises to be able value your home for you, which is an interesting idea. I’m in the middle of buying and selling a house so I was really excited to try it out. I managed to get in to value my house and Zillow valued it about 10% under what we just sold it for. But, considering the market these days, I don’t think that’s too terrible. With the lack of comps for our neighborhood, I doubt an agent would have done much better (we sold by owner). I didn’t get a chance to value the house I’m buying, but hopefully will soon, if they can come back online.

I will definitely keep an eye on it, though, because this would be a great tool for NetworthIQ users to be able to value their real estate. I wonder if Zillow will have an API at some point we could tie into?

Update
It’s back up now. The house we’re buying comes up less than 1% under what we paid. Not bad. According to Zillow we’re selling for 10% more than our house is worth and buying for 1% more than the house is worth. Aren’t we the dealmakers (of course it never feels like it when you’re paying as much as houses cost these days)

Tags: zillow

(via Startup Fever, another new to me resource)

Subscribed to both.

Update
It must be contagious. Salesforce.com has also had issues .

Update 2
Fortunately, Bloglines came back up fine. Though, I’d have to disagree with Michael Arrington about their service. It’s not very fast. They still haven’t fixed the problem with subscribing to the Feedburner feed for this site and getting the wordpress feed on my server instead, and I’ve heard nothing back in over a week since they turned the issue over to their engineers. However, Bloglines is still the best online reader that I’ve tried so far, so I’m sticking with it for now.

• Basecamp (already using)
• Confluence
• Central Desktop
• Jotspot [Hosted]
• Social Text [Hosted]
• Stikipad [Hosted]
• WikiSpaces [Hosted]
• PBwiki [Hosted]
• Zimbra
• Perspective [.Net]
• FlexWiki [.Net]
• MediaWiki [PHP]
• DokuWiki [PHP]
• TikiWiki [PHP]
• PmWiki [PHP]
• Twiki [Perl]
• Kwiki [Perl]
• trac [Python]
• Zwiki [Python]

Update:
WikiMatrix looks at these too.

• Kiko
• CalendarHub
• Planzo
• Hula
• Trumba
• Zimbra
• AirSet
• 30 boxes
• HipCal
• SpongeCell

Update
TechCrunch takes a look at these too.

Final Update

Not much need for this list anymore.  Google Calendar wins.  I generally root for the small guy, but it just didn’t work out this time.

I hate sounding so negative all the time about Microsoft stuff, as I’m currently working with the .Net technology stack. So, I’m going to try to find some positive Microsoft stuff to talk about as well. I don’t have anything against Microsoft really, but the other guys are just doing a better job right now. I can tell you that Windows Live Mail is still better than Verizon’s webmail product. See, positive already.