With the web as the new platform, it’s very clear that client-server application architecture of yesterday must migrate to the Rich Internet Applications (RIA) of tomorrow. This new RIA platform yields significant improvement to the user experience (UXP) while lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). We will present several cases of real deployment (using Curl RIA Platform) by large customers and discuss the lessons learnt - such as demands for robust scalability, high security, and super high performance. The need for very flexible architecture and agile development will also be covered.
The DemoFall and TechCrunch50 conferences launch Monday. Demo’s posted its list of it 72 presenting companies. TechCrunch will post a part of its list, we’re told, at 6 a.m. Monday.
You can see the full Demo list at the end of this post. But here are the top 10 companies I’d be paying the most attention to if I were going to Demo (I’m going to TechCrunch with Josh; CNET News writers Elinor Mills and Daniel Terdiman will be at Demo). I’ll do a list, or lists, for TechCrunch too, time permitting.
Rafe’s Top 10 previews from Demo
(Please note that I haven’t talked to all these companies yet, so my understanding of these pitches is incomplete, and my post-conference Top list will likely be different.)
(Note #2: I have replaced one my original picks due to a press embargo error on my part.)
Clintview by Clintworld: This is a financial analysis tool primarily for mobile phone carriers. It simulates customer behavior related to pricing and helps create pricing tiers and plans that generate the most revenue. It brings a disciplined approach to pricing services, which I think is smart. Might be applicable to paid Web services as well.
CrowdSpring Private by CrowdSpring: The company is not new, but I still love the idea. It’s a new twist on the open marketplace for intellectual work. At Demo, the company will unveil CrowdSpring Private, which lets companies create their own, closed markets, so creativity doesn’t leak out onto the Web, heaven forbid.
Infovell: Very interesting new search service. It lets you type in arbitrarily long queries, and then ranks results based on importance and frequency of word clusters. Also lets you use entire Web pages as queries, generating a “more like this” function that doesn’t currently exist. Could be great for researching complex medical or legal topics.
Sharelift by Mapflow: Adds intelligence to casual carpooling with a car-service-like gizmo that tells drivers where riders are that want to go where they are going. It’s hitchhiking 2.0: Scary but cool, and very green.
PaidInterviews: Pays job candidates for going on interviews. Totally whacked economic model, if you ask me, but that makes it interesting.
Plastic Logic: New science for electronic books, possibly competitive to existing e-Ink technology. Real chemistry at a start-up conference. What a breath of fresh air.
SpinSpotter: Claims to spot bias and inaccuracies in news stories. Helpful, if it works. Although it will probably expode if pointed at the blogosphere. And who watches the watchmen?
.tel by Telnic: One of several new companies that lets users create personal calling card Web sites using a new top-level-domain. I am highly skeptical of this model, but I want to see how it develops.
WebDiet: Location-based diet helper. Gives you food advice based on what’s close to you. Unknown if it gives you an electric shock and shrieks, “Keep walking!” when you pass a McDonald’s.
Xumii: Makes a service that access all your social sites from your mobile phone. Could be very useful for the younger, multiply-connected set.
One of the things that impressed me most during my interview with Mint CEO Aaron Patzer was his focus on iterative development and rigorously testing new features before they are rolled out. As I’ve said, most of the Web 2.0 companies I see focus on building new features more than they do on analyzing what their users are actually doing with them. It’s crazy. It’s like they all work at Microsoft in 1996.
There’s a conference coming up that focuses on measuring and improving the user experience: Startonomics, October 2 in San Francisco. The conference will be run by Dave McClure, an entrepreneur, investor, and familiar face to Web 2.0 conference goers.
McClure’s main point is that when you’re building a new service, you want to think about “conversion events,” in other words, moving users from one state to the next (from browsing to exploring, exploring to buying, etc.). That has nothing to do with releasing features.
However, you can’t overthink things or dawdle. Release early, watch the right metrics, and revise. McClure points to Slideshare and Teachstreet as companies that are working this way. (He’s invested in both companies.) Who’s doing it wrong? “Anyone who takes longer than a year to ship,” he says. Examples of this include Chandler and Trillian’s Astra. By being late, they are missing their market windows. The world’s moved past them.
I’ve worked a little with Dave at various conferences, as well as with the Startonomics conference producer, Debbie Landa. (Her company runs the Under the Radar conferences where I often moderate start-up pitch presentations.) I like what these people are doing with this conference, and I think more entrepreneurs should pay attention to the message.
Here’s McClure’s five-minute start-up pirate talk. He says this is the pitch that has morphed into the day-long conference.
Andrew Mager posted an illustrated play-by-play of today’s WordCamp, a conference devoted to the popular open-source blogging platform WordPress. According to Andrew’s report, the hosted version of WordPress has 2.3 million new blogs in 12 months and 35 million posts, and more than 6.5 billion page views.
(Credit: Andrew Mager)
Of particular interest for the WordPress crowd is BuddyPress, a set of plugins that brings Facebook-like features, such as friends, groups, private messaging, status updates and extended profiles, to the blogging platform. (WordPress competitor Six Apart also recently introduced a social dimension to its Movable Type platform.)
BuddyPress is slated for 1.0 status in December 2008.
(Credit: Andrew Mager)
As Andrew reported, unlike the popular social networks, BuddyPress isn’t a closed environment: “Why do we need another social network? BuddyPress is not another “data silo” like Facebook and MySpace. It’s mission is to be more open source, handle better control of data, give people better choices, and build greater support for open standards.”
Being more open isn’t a necessarily going to move people out of Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or other semi-permeable walled gardens. However, the combination of emerging open standards, such as OpenSocial, and the growing WordPress and Six Apart communities will have an impact on embedding a social dimension into the fabric of every application.
Adobe.com’s online CS3 tutorials have received 5 million plays over the first year.
(Credit: Adobe Systems, Inc.)
So you got yourself some Adobe CS3 products, but you’re still trying to get your workspace organized or iron out your cross-product workflow or how to use the Puppet tool in After Effects? Apparently lots of other people are in the same position according to a case study from EffectiveUI, developers of Adobe’s online Video Workshop application built using Adobe Flex. The tutorials have seen more than 5 million plays over its first year.
The video tutorials cover 22 of Adobe’s products including all the CS3 components and span 47 topics. The information comes from product experts across the Adobe community and the videos are produced by Lynda.com. And aside from viewing them online, a number of the tutorials can be downloaded for viewing offline.
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