Yahoo Pipes: Web 2.0 stealing ideas from Unix

Yahoo pipes is a perfect example of how the Web 2.0 can be 'mashed' and (messed) up. You can get the RSS feed for a news website and analyze the contents and then search Flickr for images pertaining to the analysis. All through a GUI of flowcharts and modules just like building blocks in a lego set. Pipes and filters are the widely used concepts of Unix and Yahoo has just applied the same to Web 2.0. XML RSS feeds makes the job much simpler to look at a web site or content from a website as nothing but a stream of data and you can pipe and filter this list and display it any form you want. Then we can create a RSS of the output and integrate it with your site. So you would have the latest content from web for whatever your pipe's logic is.

They have to work around a edges a bit more, but the concept does provide a starting point for how all the age old programming concepts can be applied to Web 2.0.

As a starting point, i created a pipe for viewing all the pictures, pertaining to a city. Basically getting the Location input from the user and then passing it on to Flickr to generate images for the same. Check it out at

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/nOr_g9nG2xG_KLEJE5PZnA/?input1=new+york&_run=1&=Run+Pipe

IRS goes after eBay, wants info on seller earnings

. In short, the US government wants to treat eBay as a "broker" who would then be required to file notices with the government about how much money its traders have made. The US proposal calls for this reporting to take place only when people sell more than several thousand dollars worth of merchandise in a year.



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Costco: The 'anti-Wal-Mart'

Costco seems to be a steady competitor to the big retailing giant Wal-Mart. The interesting thing about Costco, when compared to other retailers is that they charge a fee of $50 to become a member which is very different from the industry norms, but people would not mind that, because of the savings they end up making throughout the year. Consequently, its margins are among the slimmest in retailing. The privileges also extend to employees, who are paid well and enjoy generous healthcare benefits. The unique selling proposition for this retailer is that, they provide the products in bulk and a rock bottom price with pretty decent quality unlike walmart. Their return policy is one among the best where it permits you to return ANYTHING (except computers) with or without the receipt whenever you want as long as you still have the same membership. This takes the fear out of shopping for many wary shoppers to swipe the credit card, with the feeling that they return it, if they don't like it at any point. Walmart and Target have a 3 month time limit, and most of the other retailers have a 14-day return policy.



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Joost takes on Cable TV

Joost seems to be the next buzzword going around the web. The 'Venice Project' started by the developers of Kazaa and Skype are going to battle, heads on with the Cable TV. With the astounding success of Skype which just reached its 500 millionth download, Joost seems very promising to change the way the television network works. Joost [pronounced yohst] uses the java implementation of the Streaming Transformation of XML (STX) technology, which does not transform the XML documents to a tree structure as XSLT which consumes memory. This seems like a faster approach and is optimal for a resource constraint system and hence the near TV quality pictures. More resources on STX is available at stx.sourcefourge.net

There has been good reviews going around for people who had the invites and Joost seems picky about giving the invites, dunno why?. There is even a site called www.joostswap.com that helps people get invites from who have already got one and trade joost related items!!!

Check out this video on a first hand demo on what this product is like, from David Clark, the Executive Vice President of Joost

Web 2.0 is redefining you

Came across this awesome video, which talks about how Web 2.0 actually transforms the way ones thinks about the web and how it facilitates the path to expressing yourself with the least amount of effort.

HTML was all about Content and Form together, XML seperated Form from Content and Web 2.0 is taking the experience to the next level.

Check it out!!

How Good Are Zillow's Estimates?

In the year since its launch, Zillow Inc. has made millions of Americans familiar with computer-generated estimates of home values, created a new online addiction and, become a staple of dinner-party chatter. But just how accurate is it? A Wall Street Journal analysis of 1,000 recent home sales shows some interesting results. As we saw earlier, the top down approach is a a bit skewed when it comes to home prices for all of America.



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Drupal vs. Joomla

I am trying to pick out the Content Management system to use for www.biggthoughts.com. Searching the web alias (google) for something that i can get started right away...

Joomla (Mambo) and Drupal seems to be very strong competitors in the open source content management domain. Lets analyze the pros and cons...

Use Mambo(Joomla) when:

• you don't know about the tech stuff at all
• you want easy install & setup with your mouse
• you don't want to learn the tool you're using
• you don't need to integrate other scripts etc. to your site
• you want a candy site and don't mind several other sites using the same template(s)
• you don't need SEO out of the box
• you don't care about server resources
• you're running (or planning to to run) only one or max a couple of sites
• you don't need one log-in to several sites
• you don't need user groups & permissions
• you don't run membership site(s)

Use Drupal when:

• you want a rock solid & high quality platform for your sites
• you want or need a real multi-site-feature (only one installation for several sites)
• you need any kind of user groups & user permissions
• you need to run also membership- and community sites, not only CMS etc
• you want a Powerful templating system
• you're ready to invest a bit of your time in order to realize all the huge possibilities of Drupal
• you understand the meaning of clear, high quality code and API (easy to integrate with other solutions etc)
• you want flexibility and don't like limitations

Looks like i'm leaning towards Drupal a little bit after going through this... Lets See.....

Free Design Templates

Some web-sites offer high quality templates for the best price you would ever get - for free. You can download Flash-based templates as well as CSS-based layouts; furthermore, you can use them for your personal and commercial projects without any restrictions whatsoever. This article shows, where you'll find them.



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The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Web 2.0: Top 25 Apps to Grow your Business

Great article on various web 2.0 resources that are useful to entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes.



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The Warren Buffet Way

Wanted to pry into the stock holdings of the second richest man, and what made this guy, what he is now. The stocks Berkshire Hathaway holds seem to be well grounded ones mostly, with a Wide Moat Rating from MorningStar. Despite having 39 names in his portfolio, the top 10 stocks account for more than 80% of the portfolio: American Express (AXP), Anheuser-Busch(BUD) , Coca-Cola (KO), Conoco Phillips (COP) Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Moody's (MCO), Procter & Gamble (PG), Washington Post (WPO), Wells Fargo (WFC), Wesco (WSC). Reminds me of his quote that Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

At Berkshire Hathaway's last annual meeting in May 2006, Buffett said that if he were starting his investment partnership over again, he would invest in securities around the world and focus on smaller companies. To illustrate this, he used the experience of his relatively recent investments in Korea, Israel, stating that since companies with strong balance sheets were trading at a meager 3 times earnings, he would have been almost 100% invested in Korea.

I was surprised not to see any dot com stocks in his portfolio, and i believe he was heavily critiqued for not getting the piece of the action during the dot com boom, but then we all know who had the last laugh during the dot com crash. Like his concept of investing in a business that one really knows and understands.

Top Ranking Sites

I was actually surprised to see that Yahoo still holds the number 1 page ranking after seeing Google literally take over the search marketing and entering into every domain possible to put its brand name. Looks like Yahoo still retains the email overall portal domain.

In the last three years, Yahoo has reshaped one of its core businesses around Web search and related advertising, making itself second only to Google in search ad dollars, with technology that many believe is keeping pace with that of its younger rival. Google--in roughly the same time span--has broadened its business to do something its executives said they didn't want to do, a portal like Yahoo that offers services like free Web e-mail, social networking, publishing tools, maps, shopping, news and video search, and now brand advertising sales. Looks like a real stiff competition for the top dollars.

Also Orkut which has infested itself only among the indian and brazilian communities is sitting at Number 8!!! They have added the videos section which can be linked to Google video or Youtube just like Myspace.

What Is Web 2.0 ?

There has been a lot of talk going around with new websites coming up with Web 2.0 buzzword and i wanted to dig into it to actually see what this means and what defines a website with Web 2.0 technology?

The concept of "Web 2.0" began after the dot com crash with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International. They initiated talks that the sites that survived the dot com crash had something in common, and the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web.

Thus emerged the Web 2.0 concept where we should be looking at it as a set of principles and practices that tie together a certain level of standards that has to be met by the website to be categorized as Web 2.0. The Meme map here kind of delineates such standards and services one would be expecting.

O'Reilly has a lot of work in progress in this domain and have come up with some initial thoughts on this matter. If Netscape was the standard bearer for Web 1.0, Google is most certainly the standard bearer for Web 2.0 and some technologies used by a website most likely delineates Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 as listed below.


Web 1.0 --> Web 2.0
DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication

Stop Watching Bad Movies

Thats what the fastest growing wesbite Flixter is all about. Basically a movie review site where you get to see your buddies review about a movie.

Why is this not like any other review site like yahoo or tons of others out there? Because you would value your buddy's opinion more than some strange critic or xyz.

They use an aggressive marketing strategy of sending messages to everyone in your address list, and the response is like viral.. They started with 300,000 hits per month from Mar '06 to like 32 million this month!!!

LightSpeed ventures have initially given a funding for $2 million dollars, which is not bad for a start.

This site tries to combine movies and social networking together and if you are a movie buff they've got tons of features for you!!!

Real Estate Wars on Home Valuation

My Currency is entering into the online home valuation domain. However the approach of this company is completely different using a rating system by the people to determine the price of the house.

Founded last March in San Francisco, the company compares its service to a stock exchange in which people come together on the Web site to settle on a price of a product, in this case the value of a home.

This is a bottom up approach which is right opposite of what zillow does, where zillow has zestimated the price of say 50 million homes in the U.S from a top-down approach

You could be an evaluator of the home where you can predict the upward and downward movement of a house and if you are right your rating and credibility strengthens.

Barring the Real Estate agents and home owners, not sure how many active contributors would be willing to take part in such a system unless they have a direct monetary benefit from this.