GigaOm one of the respected Web/technology blogs has just released an online community for open source software. The platform is for open source built on open source (Drupal). There are several open source software (150,000+) already listed in the directory.

The site also include s a Google Q&A style section.

Some nice facts which came out from the site :

• There are more than 150,000+ open source projects on the go
• 71% of the worlds developers have used open source software
• 50% of organizations have some open source software in production

Tags: OpenSource, Software, GigaOm

Looking at some popular web applications like Google Mail (GMail), Last.fm, YouTube etc its easy to see now, why they have millions and millions of users. There some apps which have continuously being  developed or in beta.

Wikipedia: beta version is the first version released outside the organization or community that develops the software, for the purpose of evaluation or real-world black/grey-box testing.

Eg: GMail: 51m users, YouTube.com: Serves more than 100 million videos a day

No good application can be built overnight. The trend (and its advisable) is to release the software as early as possible to your target market. Good book which explains this philosophy in great detail is Getting Real by 37Signals.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you should release your web app in its alpha phase (although many do), the main idea is for the application to be good enough to get something going.

Hey but wouldn’t that scare my users away ?

Not at all quiet the opposite really. If your project has a USP and it really appeals to your target audience they would like to grow with it. They will become real sneezers for your applications. When Gmail was released it had several bugs. Examples of things which did’t work April 2004 (in Gmail):

- international language support for ads
- ads not in navigation when the message is very short but all ads are displayed
- compatibility with more browsers
- option for html/plain text email
- option to insert Signature

Although its value add, interactive Ajax style interface, tagging (labels) options kept everyone hooked. Even if it didn’t work on Safari, IE and several other browsers.

Check out its popularity now! For an application launched less than 4 years ago, as oppose to Microsoft’s 11 years old Hotmail, its very impressive

My Thoughts

My sincere advice to all those currently building an application is not get disappointed when some features aren’t working as well as you would have hoped, instead continuously work on them. Be honest with your users and they will respect you.

Entrepreneur/Organisations behind these website should have that sort of attitude towards their app. Never mind what the tech journalist think of your website, most of them haven’t actually grown their own application. They seem to be brilliant at commenting how horrible an application is. Building a web app is a different ball game, so instead of slashing entrepreneurs and web app developers big them up.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: WebApplications, Tech Journalist, Bugs, Getting Real

So Facebook recently (25th Jan 2008) allowed its application developers to include apps to their website.

What does that mean ?

I’ll try and explain this using a simple example. I once built a light weight facebook application called 2wentysbook. Now I can add that to my Facebook profile or my website

Using Facebook’s latest Javascript library I can run all the Ajax Fb applications on my site. Excellent news except, I have to run the application on my website as an iFrame.

iFrame is an HTML element which makes it possible to embed another HTML document inside the main document.

So what’s wrong with that ?

iFrame is a big no no from SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) point of view. Content within an iframe is not part of that url (mysite.com), it is part of another url (facebook.com). And so a search engine will not be looking at the content of the iframe as an “on-page factor” for the parent url that holds an iframe.

So if my plan was to put the application on my site and get it indexed by search engine spiders, unfortunately it wouldn’t do my website any good.

All the user information example: real name, contact details etc are anyway not shared with me. So why should I add Facebook application to mysite ?

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Facebook, iFrame, Javascript Library

So there is a lot of buzz around DataPortability in the blogosphere. Especially how the BIG social networks are joining the group. Already we have Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Google, Plaxo

What really excites me is that the group is supporting existing technologies. OpenID, Microformats, RSS, RDF etc. Thats totally awesome! So developers don’t have to spend hours going through a new technologies like DPML.

DPML: Data Portability Markup Language. I just made it up , I’m too aware that social networks are obsessed with creating their own markup language. I’m glad the outcome of this group is to use standardised technologies.

See how it all kick started when Robert Scoble got his Facebook account disabled.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: DataPortability, Facebook, Existing technologies, Robert Scoble

Bebo has now opened its gates to the wider development community. Earlier I mentioned how Bebo would use Facebook’s platform, now it seems its adopting Facebook’s strategy to launch their product too.

Nothing wrong with it, its great that developers can build one tool and it would work for both platforms. Although we should consider the difference in demographics of Facebook and Bebo. Bebo typically attracts users below the age of 19 years whilst Facebook is used by older audience. So the apps could be very different but certainly the slideshows, superpokes etc all can be used on Bebo. Saying that I won’t be surprised if the popularity of apps vary on Bebo and Facebook.

Bebo’s Development toolkit:

There are already around 92 certified apps on Bebo. Pretty good, I think the next step is to try our 2wentysworld Facebook app on Bebo and see how it performs. I’ll keep users posted on how it performed on Bebo.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Bebo, Facebook, 2wentys, Developers, open

I was going through the web world and I found a nice blog by Tim Bednar, describing what your signup page should consist of.

I must confess I’m not a design person but this makes sense. He explains that sign up page should consist of:

• Logo
• Elevator pitch
• Description copy
• List of key features
• List of key benefits
• Call to action
• Testimonials
• Tours
• Examples of who is using the application
• Screen shots
• Life-style images
• Link to more information (price, login, about, blog, terms, privacy)

Tim’s suggestions are backed by heat map Sof 37Signal’s signup page:

Blogged with Flock

Tags: SocailNetwork, Signup, 37 Signals

The hottest news on the blogosphere at the moment is that Netscape, my first browser, will be discontinued. AOL who acquired Netscape back in 1998 for $4.2 billion, found there weren’t enough Netscape users.
.

Statistics show that Netscape’s usage is less than 1%. If you look on W3Cschools for browser usage, Netscape doesn’t appear in 2007

7

IE = Internet Explorer, Fx = Firefox, O = Opera, N = Netscape

Once referred to as a Renaissance company in 1999 is going to be discontinued in February 2008. Netscape did many awesome things on its journey. One of them was: Mozilla foundation which spun off from Netscape in 1998, with $2.3million. Firefox is part of the Mozilla foundation and generated $70 million in revenue from Google’s search deal in 2006.

Evaluation of Browsers:

Mosaic (1992) developed by Marc Anderssen >>
Renamed to Netscape (1994) >>
Mozilla Foundation formed (1998) >>
Mozilla 1.0 (2002) >>
Mozilla Firefox (2004) >>
Flock (2005)

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Netscape, Mosaic, AOL, Netscape, Mozilla Foundation, Firefox, Flock

I wrote earlier that Walmart offering SEM might be a hoax. Apparently its not as reported by Karl Ribas:

Karl says: “ Sam’s Choice Cola and Sam’s Choice Drinking Water… there’s a brand new product offering hitting the shelves. Introducing Sam’s Choice Pay Per Click services”

Wow its actually true

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Walmart, SEM, Karl Ribas, Wow