There’s a big Web 2.0 Summit happening in San Francisco, aimed at showcasing the Web 2.0 universe, although they still appear to be having problems articulating a vision that makes the slightest bit of sense:

“Web 2.0 is about harnessing the network effect, which gets better the more people use them…It could also be called user self-service. This is the start of the real disruption, with asymmetrical competition from user self service.”

Right….

Anyway, of interest to Google hounds, Eric Schmidt had a few things to say:

• Why did Google buy YouTube? “YouTube was growing faster [than Google Video] and video became fundamental data type on the Internet, so that’s why we bought them”
• The underlying draw is to see what users are doing and have computers suggest related or adjacent content. It is a whole new paradigm and important to users
• We would never trap user data
• We embarked on a strategy to build apps that are search centric and very sharable….as something use in normal life. We are not arguing it is an [Microsoft] Office replacement, but a different way of manage information

Read the full interview summary here.
More here…

Schmidt also denied the recent rumor that his company had set aside $500 million to settle copyright claims by media companies as part of its deal to acquire YouTube Inc. “Not true“.

Is there an award for the worst case of missed opportunity?

Owners of utube.com, a company selling tube and rollform equiptment, filed suit against YouTube, the company that doesn’t sell tube and rollform equiptment.

The problem?

Too many people are typing in utube, instead of YouTube, thus driving a veritable avalanche of traffic to utube.com. The simple, and quite lucrative, solution would be to monatarise that traffic and buy another domain for the business. It’s highly unlikely such a suit will succeed anyway.

Then again, perhaps the publicity is useful to them.

YouTube, and others, are becoming the destination of choice for home movie content:

“Pure Digital Technologies has announced a new $129.99 camcorder that works with Macs and PCs and features built-in software that can upload its content to video sharing Web sites, including Google Video and Grouper“

These digital camcorders are getting pretty cheap, eh. I recall my first one cost me thousands, but these days you’re in very real danger of losing one down the back of a couch.

The application of social psychology is an important part of creating sucessful social media. Here’s a few good pointers on how to get users to contribute to your site.

• Make it easier to contribute
• Make participation a side effect. For example, Amazon’s “people who bought this book, bought these other books” recommendations are a side effect of people buying books. You don’t have to do anything special to have your book preferences entered into the system
• Edit, don’t create. Let users build their contributions by modifying existing templates rather than creating complete entities from scratch.
• Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants.
• Promote quality contributors

Here’s a useful looking tool. It’s called Dabble, and you can use it to grab web data, throw it into a database, and manipulate that data, all without the need for programming. Here’s a demonstration on how to extract data from Digg.

There’s a few demos on the site - essentially it’s a mix between an online spreadsheet and database application.

“Search through your data instantly. Navigate via links and backlinks. Interactively group, sort, and filter the results. See your data in tables, charts and calendars. Save each view and share it with others“

I’ve had a play, and it seems quite easy to use. There’s a free sign-up trial period for one month.

The theory of hosted services has barely got out of the box and in looks like Google are going to make a serious play in this area. Garett Rodgers has found a few newish domains relating to Google services, and mentions the hosted communications beta test Google are running.

“This special beta test lets you give Gmail, Google’s webmail service, to every user at your domain. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.”

For services vendors, it’s surely going to be like going up against a free version of Microsoft Office - virtually impossible?

It seems that all you need to do is mention Web 2.0 these days, and you’ll fly to the top of Digg. Ok, not quite, but the ultra-geek tech bias of “social” networks like Digg reveals a flaw in the plan - you’ll mostly end up with geeks talking geek stuff.

Back to my point: For a business idea to work, a market must be identified, then a plan formulated about how to meet the needs of that market.

This article “Top Ten Underserved Web 2.0 Markets” hints at the problem with a lot of Web 2.0 thinking, which is - what markets are underserved by Web 2.0 applications?

To me, that thinking is the wrong way round. The real question is: “what market needs this software application?”.

If a developer creates a Web 2.0 app - whatever that means - s/he may enter an uncrowded market in the sense that “there are no Web 2.0 apps in this market space”, but if the app doesn’t solve a problem, then the software is redundant, no matter if the software is Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, Dos, Windows, Open Source, or anything else.

Rather obvious, eh.

Software is primarily about solving problems, and successful software is software that solves problems that a lot of people have. If it doesn’t, then it’s just a bunch of glossy features, signifying nothing.

This article originally posted at JuggoPop’s V7N Blog, which no longer exists.

How to skin a forum - the juggopop way

Here is what I want to cover:

• Basic forum software
• How to start
• CSS editing
• Header design
• Button design
• Extra graphics
• Overall finishing touches

Basic Forum Software

I would like to take a second to explain what community software I have used in the past and how this will relate to other software you may be using while following this guide.

I have successfully skinned phpBB and vBulletin communities. Neither of them was more difficult nor more easy then the other to complete. I have never worked on any other forum software, but I can imagine that they all have some basic things in common.

1. They will use graphics.
2. They will use CSS.

I recommend phpBB forums for a small to medium community where price is a factor (it’s free). I would recommend vBulletin to anyone that wants a full scale small to large forum and can afford the price.

How To Start

How does one start this process the correct way? (more…)