I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what web applications I use and why, and of course how this relates to what I’m doing at work.
Keeping things simple is considered an overused idea these days in the web application world. I’d attribute some of this to the success 37Signals has had with their applications, blogs, ebooks, and seminars that push this philosophy.
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It’s been quite a while since my last blog post, and unfortunately I’m not blogging much for a variety of reasons. Essentially:
I would like to get to posting a bit more, so perhaps you’ll see some quicker posts with just quick comments. I tend to want to provide a lot of value to a post, but I rarely have the time to sit down for an hour or more and work on a lengthy post.
One thing that may help solve this is I’ve installed the wphone plugin so I can post directly from my iPhone. I’m finding that I’m interacting with Twitter and Facebook much more because I’m so often using my iPhone while traveling or out and about, so maybe if I can post to this blog easier through the iPhone I’ll do it more.
Instead of making lots of quick posts, I’ll go ahead and do a quick update in what’s going on:
1. I’ve had a number of recent offsite work trips recently that have been very productive and fun. There have been great discussions with smart people, and a lot of excitement about what we’re building at Yahoo! despite any clouds looming on the horizon. As you can see from the picture above while sailing in the Pacific Ocean, the offsite meetings also have a little fun as well. Unfortunately my team didn’t win the sailing race.
2. Ad Tech in San Francisco was quite a show, as it seemed like the largest show in recent memory. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really blown away by much there, as it seems like a lot of companies are competing in the ad network and ad exchange space without really differentiating themselves significantly from the competition.
3. The iPhone is really the most revolutionary thing web or technology wise that’s hit me in a long time. I’ve had mine for quite a while now, but it amazes me how useful it’s become. I also find that I do more RSS feed reading, twittering, Facebooking, and Digging on the iPhone than on a normal computer. Part of that may be because I’m traveling quite a bit, but I think mainly it’s because those applications all have simplified versions for the iPhone that I find more usable than the full web versions. I can’t stand the normal version of Facebook now compared to the ease of use and simplicity of the iPhone version.
4. My family is a lot of fun right now with the three kids all making it pretty wild at home.
5. I’m excited for summer and fall, as they are really the prime two seasons in Eugene for enjoying the outdoors.
Hopefully I can follow this up with an increased frequency of posts, although I anticipate keeping them pretty short until I have more time in my day at some point.
Yesterday was a bit crazy. A lot of news hit, and most of it I can’t really say much about. Just a little rundown though:
Yahoo! Acquires IndexTools
This blog originally started with a focus on web analytics, so it’s near and dear to my heart. I’m excited to see how IndexTools is used both internally and externally for Yahoo!. Web analytics expert Eric Petersen has a good post about why this could be a game changer.
Former Yahoo! SVP Tim Cadogan Becomes CEO at OpenX
A great hire for OpenX, as I really enjoyed working with Tim while he was at Yahoo!. OpenX is a very interesting business right now, it’ll be fun to watch what Tim does there.
Yahoo! Tests Outsourcing Search Monetization With Google
No comment.
Yahoo! And AOL To Merge?
No comment.
NewsCorp To Join Microsoft In Yahoo! Offer?
No comment, man this blog is exciting.
AOL and Ad.com Jump Into the Small Publisher Game With PubAccess
Not too long ago I remember it was a bunch of fairly standard ad networks as the only options for small publishers. Then we launched Direct Media Exchange (formerly RMX Direct) at Right Media which was the first “tool” to help publisher manage multiple ad networks and make their lives easier. Since then we’ve seen more in this space like The Rubicon Project, PubMatic, now PubAccess, and Google’s AdManager in a less direct way. I don’t think we’ll see the last of it either.
Definitely not a slow news day in the world of Yahoo!
Yahoo! has just gone public with AMP!, as pointed out in the New York Times by Miguel Helft.
The nice thing is now when talking with others outside Yahoo! they’ll have a bit more understanding of one of the major efforts I’m working on. Of course, there will be questions and confusion, for example Mashable saying it seems a lot like Google Adsense. I know Mashable is going off of very little information, but I thought I’d just note that’s not accurate at all. Watching the early preview video below should give a bit more feel of the direction the platform is moving.
(more…)Yahoo! today announced the launch of their new women’s site Shine. While the site looks great, and as a Yahoo! employee I probably care more about Yahoo! news than most people, I didn’t think it’d really make much of a splash in the tech blog world and the feeds I normally read.
Well, Jason Calacanis stirred up a controversy by claiming that Yahoo! was competing with it’s advertising publisher partners by creating a site that competes with them. Normally, I tend to think Jason is on the ball with a lot of his opinions, but his post on this subject doesn’t seem well thought out.
(more…)This article in Wired is a good read about Netflix’s competition to improve it’s movie recommendation engine.
I found it interesting for a few reasons. First, as a Netflix user I’ve always felt their movie suggestions for me have not been very good. I usually understand why they recommended what they did, but it’s never stuff I have much of an interest in watching.
(more…)As a father of three kids, I found the following video from Dr. Randy Pausch to be important and quite moving. Paush is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who only has a short time to live due to pancreatic cancer, and he made a special last lecture for his class and most importantly his three kids that is about his mindset and how to live life. Pretty inspirational stuff.
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The Right Media Open event we held last October in Half Moon Bay was a big success for both Right Media as a company but also for all our clients who benefited from the networking that took place at the event. Just recently some videos of some of the panels and discussions at the event were added to our Right Media Open site. The videos include: (more…)
