Notepad on steroids or Office 2007 replacement?

Google just introduced ‘Google Docs & Spreadsheets‘. Since I am a ‘googler’ I had to try it out. This will probably be the next big thing, right? Although I had just installed Office 2007 on my computer I coudn’t wait to see what would replace it! So, after rushing to Google and signing-in I started to write my first document, this posting actually. At first you see a lean and mean interface, good I thought. Then I got the creeps, hang on, maybe this is all there is! To give you an idea, this is what it looks like…

Is modern web analytics part of web 2.0?

The more I work with web analytics tools, the more it becomes clear that modern internet is not all about the hyped social networking, user generated content, ratings, rankings, peer-to-peer networks etc. On the contrast to this anarchy-looking front, internet services behind the “hood” are actually emerging to be a highly analytical discipline – even from an invividual bloggers. I bet most of the blogger keep on doing the following to a growing extent: 1) checking the stats-part in their blogs; 2) checking whos is referring and reading their posts and 3) becoming either motivated of dismotivated of the lack of readership or comments or at best becoming very motivated because of broad and specialised interest towards their contributions. I do know about you, but at least I tend to doing this more and more often with my blogs.

One of the key shortages that I have found so far in the blogging platforms it the whay how limited the stats-section actually are. With this I mean in their basic features. Yes, I know that one can install e.g. Google Analytics (GA) -tag to the CSS-template and start getting much richer data. But seriously – tell me an average blogger who would do this? Not even in Google’s Blogger the Analytics-part is well integrated into the system. Why could not Google make an limited, but blog customised version of their product available to all Bloggers? I think they should. Moreover, Google acquired last year Measure Map – the simple blog analytics suite. How about integrating this to Blogger & GA?

Search of the perfect personal portal

Ever since Netscape launched its “My Netscape“-portal in the 1990s, I’ve been testing with various intervals the status of the so-called “personal portals”. Must say that during the last few years, the trend has been very positive – we can really talk about personalisation, when I can really choose my own information sources from the sites that follow and create usable and readable user interface to consume the content.

In my current screening I am testing the following services:

• Netvibes: Real web 2.0 start-up, strong personalisation features and well networked in the online domain
• MS Live: Microsoft’s Live portal, with a lot of localised content feeds, pretty windows/MS like UI and feeling to use
• My Google: Google’s personalised search with lot of content, yet somewhat messy, pretty neat gadgets and networking to the online community, I like also the integration to my Google usage
• My Yahoo: Yahoo’s my section, crowded with content, layout very Yahooish = busy, currently in my opinion one of the weakest Yahoo offerings
• Newsgator: Happened to acquire in 2004 the FeedDemon-client for my RSS-feeds, now this is integrated to the Newsgator portal. Simple and straightforward for feed handling
• Bloglines: web 2.0 -pioneer in feeds and personal blogging, UI very techy, but efficient, somewhat still stuck to style of 2005, should renew its usablity

WordPress as the blogging platform choice

Ok, this is the initial post of for this site. To run the experiment, we needed a location in which our thoughts could be published. We wanted this not to be hosted by our IT colleagues at Satama. Instead, we wanted the situation to be as similar as possible to the one consumers are faced with: obtaining a quality service for minimal investment and with the maximum amount of features.

Choices that we found out and also our initial comments on them:

• WordPress: Empowering this blog and many others – we decided to aggregate our experiences here to previous experiences. WP has easy and solid statistics in it and nice customisation tools for the widgets.
• Live Spaces: Microsoft’s blogging platform – links nicely to LiveID. Yet, current stats give little information about the users and their behaviour.
• Blogger: The pioneer in blogging, new version in beta. Still decided just to try this, not to publish on it due to limited extension capabilities.
• Typepad: Probably the most robust and feature-rich blogging platform. Yet, business model is subscription-based and thus did not suit our usage.
• Yahoo Blog: Very basic blogging tool, connected to Yahoo ID.
• Blog.co.uk (or its country sites): German challenger for the blog scene

Yes, there are more in the markets- but tell us – what are your favourite blogging platforms and why?

Towards web 2.0 lifestyle

Welcome all to follow our experiment. We are two digital media industry professionals that have both worked in the industry for close to ten years. This blog will be a diary of our joint trial to upgrade ourselves to the requirements of the “web 2.0 lifestyle”.

What do we mean by this?

To be short, most the gurus and visionaries talking about the web 2.0 praise the revolutionary character of it. Most of the experts are very positive and open about their beliefs of the phenomena. Yet, very rarely we have found anyone talking and discussing about :

1. What kind of things should one carry out to “live” like web 2.0 philosophy calls for?
2. What are the challenges for consumers (esp. the mass market) to adopt to the “new user-driven internet”?
3. Practical hints and discussions on the “web 2.0 upgrade” for existing industry professionals i.e. the ones who were also there at the time of web 1.0.

We decided to make this design experiment to upgrade ourselves to the new era. Also we want to be as open as possible and boost discussions within others in the cyberspace about ideas and experiences in these issues.

Please feel welcome to read, to comment and to guide us to this new world!

Tommi & Martijn