Confessions of an Undercover Geek

One of my predictions for 2007 is that Web 2.0 goes global. Companies that start these fancy little web apps are going to realize the huge opportunity for growth that their sites will have if they make them available to a global audience and not just to US or English-speaking users. The Web applications are going to have be “global by design.”

Jonathan Snook wrote a really nice piece pointing out that Digg.com is very US-centric. He mentions that for Digg.com to really take their growth to the next level they are going to have to reach out to a global audience either by either supporting multilingual content or localized content.

It’s interesting that Jonathan mentioned this because Digg had a post on their blog about how they were switching their MySQL database over to using a UTF-8 (unicode) character set. Could this mean that Digg is going to be supporting languages outside of the usual Latin-based ones?

But lets not just talk about Digg.com… I think in 2007 we’ll see things like Facebook releasing localized versions of their Web site to support Arabic supporting nations. Wordpress will start working in countries like Korea, China, and Japan.

It is called the World Wide Web for a reason. It is really WORLD WIDE. The entire doesn’t speak English. The entire world doesn’t see the Web the exact same way that we do. More Web companies are going to start to realize this.

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Now that is the start of 2007, I thought it would be good to think back on what the standouts were of 2006 in the web/technology industries. These are completely biased and just based off of what I liked.

To be put on my “best of” list is absolutely an honor and should be cherished.

Check out my picks and let me know what your picks are.
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Audio Podcast - This Week In Tech (TWiT)
Leo Laporte is by far the father of the podcast movement. Starting with his signature show This Week In Tech and then with the rest of the shows on the TWiT network, he has showed us that incredible quality programming can come from someone other then the major media outlets. More then once I have listened to the same show from TWiT multiple times in the same day.

Video Podcast - Ask A Ninja
Ask A Ninja is just ridiculously awesome. The show chronicles the life of a ninja getting asked questions by the public. If you watch one of the episodes you will inevitably watch every single other episode they have up there. What is fun is if you hear the guys behind the show do an interview they take it incredibly seriously. It’s a great show.

Soulful Blog - Molly.com (Molly E. Holzschlag)
Molly is a leader in the Web development industry. I really enjoy reading her blog. She doesn’t hold anything back. By reading her blog, I felt like I have not just gotten to know her but like we should be best of friends. I have tons of respect for Molly. She is an incredible role model for web developers and people everywhere.

Web 2.0 Insider Blog - TechCrunch By Michael Arrington
Over the last year, I have really enjoyed reading Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch Blog. He seems to have the inside scoop of everything that is happening in Silicon Valley. Sometimes you have to sift through the profiles of small companies that may not seem to deserve the attention. Regardless, most often his insights about the direction of where the web is moving is pretty spot on.

Tool You’ve Probably Never Heard Of (Except On This Blog) - Citation Machine
Even now that I am out of college, I am still writing all the time (even other then this blog.) Citations are an essential aspect of academic writing but they are a pain to do. With the web application Citation Machine, you plug in the data and it gives you a proper citation. It’s a thing of beauty. I just wish there was a way that I could combine in microformats and skip having to enter the data all together.

Best Way To Blow A Hour - Flickr
I really love traveling. I find that I can easily blow an hour or two just by looking an great photos from around the world. One of the best places to do this is Flickr. It allows you to publicly share and tag photos. If you wanna see photos of London, within minutes you can be transported there. If you love food, antiques, or photos of old computers, there are probably photos of it up there. Check out the photos.

Best Way To Find Cool Random S*** - Digg
Digg is a site that allows people to submit something they they find is cool. Then it is up to the masses to “digg it” (vote for it) or not. What you get out of this is that you find some random gems that get unearthed from the vast World Wide Web. These cool sites get voted for and raised up to the home page of the Web site. One example is the video of a USB memory stick that is a dog that humps your laptop. That is hilarious.

Best Way To Get A Job (If Your A Web Geek) - 37Signals Job Board
There has been a trend on the web of advertising job openings on web sites that are specialized to a specific industry. This has really been kicked off by the Web development industry. If my memory serves me correctly, 37 Signals was one of the first players to the game with their job board and I think they are one of the best. I think they attract some of the best players in the Web development industry. Its good. I found my job through the 37signals job board. I’m not at all biased (pssh…)

This is all that I can think of for right now….if I think of more sites that have really impressed me I will post them later.

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If you haven’t heard, the ever popular Digg.com just raised $8.2 million dollars in a round of venture capital funding. Good for them! Hopefully they’ll be able to use the money to take the site to the next level.

I still think Digg’s biggest hurdle is how do you get it to be used beyond male geeks. There was a huge example of this on the Digg home page today. As of 10:30pm Eastern time, the story “Jessica Biel high resolution bikini beach pictures” had 1830 diggs.

Do you reasonably expect me to go to my mom and tell her that she should start using Digg.com as a source for info when bikini photos is a top story? My mom wouldn’t give it more two seconds and then decide to never go to the site again.

The “mom test” is how I judge whether or not the site could go big time.

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The word is that the Apple iTunes Store is going to sell videos of whole college football bowl games. I really like this.

I really enjoy college sports but can’t always watch the game when its being aired. I can’t yet justifying paying for Cable and Tivo. Being able to download games off of iTunes is perfect.

If I had a downloaded copy of the game, maybe I’d go back and watch the game again after the first time that I watched. This is something I wouldn’t have been able to do before.

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Digg.com recently launched a really great feature which allows people to go through and digg different podcasts. You can digg a whole podcast or you can digg specific episodes. This is great for unearthing really great podcasts that I have never heard of.

I really enjoy listening to podcasts at work. It just usually doesn’t work out that I can watch a video podcast but its pretty easy to listen to something

I wish Digg.com would distinguish between audio and video podcasts. I wish I could have it just show audio podcasts.

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Apparently, Facebook’s 22 year old company chief Mark Zuckerberg has just turned down an offer of $1.65 billion dollars from Yahoo! That’s CRAZY. Mark is 22 years old. Thats my age.

I can understand how it would be easy to want to take the money and run but Mark said no. I respect Mark a lot for that. Maybe I just don’t understand but what would selling Facebook give them, other then a lot of money? Why not try and build out Facebook?

Facebook seems like one of the few companies on the Web that is really driving the way that we start conversations and form community. It seems like that is the thing you want to hold on to and not sell.

Why wouldn’t you just move to take Facebook public? Is there a business model around Facebook? Probably not. There at least doesn’t seem to be a really sustainable business model around Facebook.

This is just me thinking out loud.

Digg the story, “Facebook creator turns down $1.6 billon offer from Yahoo.”

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I have been thinking about Digg.com. They recently published a redesign and apparently have been seeing a lot of success. They have been successful with making some pretty exciting communities.

The thing is… Digg could do a lot better job of enhancing the conversations and discussion within those communities.

Digg should allow you to post stories at a much more granular level. I’m thinking within the politics section. What if you could get all the way down to the level of abortion or immigration? People could post their viewpoints on that specific topic. The opinion pieces would get dugg.

Things don’t stop there. Users would be able to discuss the topic further and try to convince others of their viewpoint. I could post an opposing or favorable opinion piece. I would be trying to get my opinion piece dugg more then yours.

If you felt yourself more so aligning with someone elses viewpoint you’d undigg the post you previously aligned with in favor of the new one.

Does this make any sense to someone else other then me?

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I was doing a last bit of Christmas shopping. I decided to swing by Barnes & Noble just to look around. I noticed in the web development section that John Resig’s book Pro JavaScript Techniques was out. I picked up a copy.

John and I took a class together at RIT. Didn’t get to know him that much but he is probably one of the brightest guys that I ran across.

Congrats and Cheers to you John. When I’m done with the book, I’ll post a review on my blog.

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I have been starting to think about what the themes of the World Wide Web are for 2006. It seems like this is the time of year that all of the blogosphere takes time for reflection.

One theme I have noticed is that if you want intrude on the experience of your users with things like advertisements and digital rights management (drm) the key is to make it as unobtrusive as possible.

The key to Google ads is that they have been text-based. They’re not too flashy. They can be on a page and you don’t feel like they are intruding on your life. Its not like the Web of years ago with BIG banner ads.

Podcasters, like Leo Laporte, are starting to experiment with advertising on their shows. The key is that ads aren’t major.

It’s all about finding the line of how much the user will deal with and just not crossing that line.

Thats why Apple iTunes has been so successful. The digital rights management for the songs, tv shows, and movies aren’t obtrusive. It is just there.

I don’t know what this means for the work that I do. It is just something I have been thinking about.

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As I mentioned before, Digg.com has added this really nice podcast section to the web site. It is a great way to discover new podcasts that you may not have heard before.

I’m really into gourmet cooking. I found Chef Jamie Oliver’s podcast. I would very much like to subscribe to this podcast because I want to put the audio files on my iPod. I don’t want to listen to or watch it from Digg. How do I do this?

I could copy the URL from the podcast rss feed into Apple iTunes but do you expect my mom to be able to know how to do this. There should be a button which says, “subscribe to in iTunes.”

Come on Digg.com. Make it easier for people to use.

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