http://del.icio.us/ - A social bookmarking web site… if you don’t use it, try it out… You can see all of my “favorites” at http://del.icio.us/rjmartino.

Does anyone use twitter.com?

      

Google’s OpenSocial is exciting. I talk a lot about “integration of applications” being the future of software; OpenSocial is proving my point.

OpenSocial is a set of common API’s which will allow developers to write applications that leverage a number of different functions from participating web sites…

Good usage of an API can be seen at FORECLOSEDmaps.com. FORECLOSEDmaps.com uses Yahoo Maps… the way we’re able to use Yahoo Maps is by utilizing the Yahoo Maps API. If we decided to switch to Google Maps, we would have to register with a different vendor and re-write all of the code… Long story short… its a pain to use multiple API’s

OpenSocial will allow developers to quickly leverage mutliple sites using 1 API!!!

There are a ton of articles about it and everyone is really excited but the API isn’t publicly available yet… I can’t wait… I’m going to make something cool… I don’t know what… but something cool.

My Predictions

1. As I stated (and its been proven) with the facebook platform, there are going to be a lot of new applications developed.
2. The first (not necessarily the best) applications developed will see a flurry of users and will quickly go from thousands-of-users to hundreds-of-thousands.
3. Acquisitions of the most popular applications
4. You will see many new integration applications… that is… applications that allow you access to many of your favorite web sites from a central location (Facebook, myspace, linkedin… all from one location)
5. People will become more transparent and data will become more seamless. Now that developers can easily marry your information across different platforms you will be able to connect a linkedin profile with a facebook profile.

      

GrandCentral.com is a phone project brought to you by Google… free of charge.

My GrandCentral.com phone number is: 501-859-6035. You can call me now or you can even click the “call me” link on my page.

I’ve recently started using it and I’m really impressed. It make screening phone calls (something I do a lot) easier. Here’s the short version… Once you sign up, GrandCentral.com assigns you a phone number. When someone calls your phone number it immediately asks you who you are and why you’re calling… it then starts ringing… you can play any ring back… it also gives you a list of funny ring back options.

I told GrandCentral.com my “real” number and GrandCentral.com then calls my cell phone when I get a phone call from 501-859-6035… I pick it up and it says “X is calling.” I then have the option to answer it by pressing “1″, ignore it by pressing “4.” If I press “4″ to ignore, I can listen to the message that they leave… if I feel like answering while they’re talking, I can press “*” to pickup immediately… while they’re leaving a message! I can see a list of calls that I recieved on any day… and

It records the conversations and allows online access to voice mail. I can change my “real” cell phone at any time and just redirect where GrandCentral.com calls me from… I can switch phones while I’m on a call… I can immediately block unwanted calls (telemarketers hear a “disconnected” ring)…

Its pretty cool and worth taking a look at… if you’re interested, call me and ask me for a private beta invitation (I have a few left).

PS… I think this will be heavily used with the Google Phone. As a matter of fact, my prediction is that it won’t be network specific (like the iPhone, which only works with AT&T)… it will work across any network because the features are independent of the network you’re on…

      

One of my non-techy friends introduced me to something pretty cool a few months ago.

Did you know that you can send a text message to Google at 46645 (which spells “googl”) and it will return to you a list of things….

the main thing I use it for is when I’m looking for a phone number. I can text “Pizza, 72211″ and Google will instantly reply with the phone number and address to pizza places near 72211. Alternatively, I text “Pizza Hut, 72211″ I will receive the phone number and address of the pizza hut.

This is a broader search and returns more information than the traditionall “*411″… and it’s cheaper! It only costs you a text message.

For more information, check out Google’s SMS help page.

      

This week I was able to show someone the power of RSS… If you don’t know what RSS is, or if you know what it is but don’t know why its so cool… check out the wiki for RSS it or try using an RSS reader like Bloglines.

      

I think its funny that you’ll see celebrities reading gossip magazines. Yet they kick and scream about how much they hate paparazii. They feed the frenzy by reading the magazine. I don’t blame them, I just think its ironic.

Facebook is the same way… when the minifeed was released, people were outraged. They yelled that they didn’t want people to know all their business. Yet every day (yes… daily), we log into facebook and skim the minifeed looking for entertainment or gossip.

And if you can’t view someone’s information, you kind of get upset. Is it a laziness/convenient issue??? Is it a “need for gossip/entertainment”? Who knows. The point is, the minifeed is just like the paparazzi… we love to hate it… and although we may hate paparazzi, we love them when they focus on other people.

      

I’ve been a big fan of Google Trends since it was released. Google Trends allows you to view a graph of search terms and compare how often those terms are searched over a time period. I’ve had a good time comparing random things like Jesus Versus Satan (Jesus trumps Satan), Girl versus Boy (girl wins), Jesus Versus Paris Hilton (Paris Hilton usually wins), etc.

I’ve got a new habit now… it’s Google’s Hot Trends. Google’s Hot Trends show the top 100 most popular searches for the day… I’m not real sure how things get on the list but I think its some kind of time calculation.

      

Hundreds of startups are started as widgets (third party item that can be embedded in a web page) on myspace such as photobucket, rockyou, etc.

The new facebook platform will do the same thing except with a smaller audience (about a third of the size of myspace) but a better platform. It will be better integrated with the existing system (news feeds, note posting, etc) when compared to myspace. Myspace simply throws the widget on the page and has no way of tying different parts of the site together (you cannot tag people in photos, tag someone for a note, or view “news feeds”).

Myspace has an unstable infrastructure (we’re all use to the page crashes and unidentified errors), ugly design, and poor integration. IMHO, myspace it the thousand pound gorilla that was created poorly in the beginning. It’s gotten so big, that changing the infrastructure is difficult to do. They can’t implement the things as fast as facebook due to their popularity and due to the fact that they’re tied to a fat, ugly system. It’s like trying to move three thousand people from a raft, to a cruise ship… It just can’t be done. Moving them to dump they’re users in the water (aka it requires you to take a system down for a bit).

Rather than moving them (the users have to be in the water for a little bit), myspace is slowly trying to patch holes in their raft. They’re trying to turn the raft into a cruise ship…Tuff Luck.

Myspace… you’re only hope is this… admit that you don’t have a cruise ship… build one. Take the site down for a little bit and move everyone over to a cruise ship. Quit trying to make the cruise ship out of the raft. If you don’t… you’re going to sink. Or… people are going to dive off of your raft and swim to a cruise ship.

Do you get the point? I expect a response Mr. Murdoch.

      

When many of us use the internet, chances are we may be using a web application without even knowing it. A web application is a type of application that uses the internet or an intranet as its “front-end”. To the normal eye, a web application looks like a web site, but behind the scenes it is a uniformed integration of immense databases and other software applications.

There are several scenarios where web applications make more sense than typical applications. It could be that you already have a piece of software that handles your inventory. You could create a web application that lists all “available” inventory based on an already existing database.

Maybe you have an internal “knowledgebase” where you store all of your customer’s frequently asked questions (FAQs) and you want all of your employees to be able to add, edit, and delete questions. The problem is that half of them use Windows while the others use mac or linux. The web application allows them to work with the same dataset regardless of operating system.

The bottom line is that web applications give users access to data; making it searchable, sortable, and interactive for the user.

Communicates with User
A serious advantage of web applications is that they communicate with the user. That means that the user has the opportunity to customize the application based on their needs. Just think if eBay was just a bunch of static pages that you couldn’t search through, sort, or compare prices. It would be worthless. Web applications communicate with users.

Database Interaction
Additionally, web applications are able to interact with databases. This means, if a website has a dynamic content set with constant changes, the updates to the site will be made almost automatically. Without a web application, the updates would have to be done manually. This means that when you change your eBay price, it’s immediately communicated to your potential buyers.

Interact with Current Applications
As stated in the earlier example, many of our web applications are put into place because they already have an application that they use to take orders but it doesn’t interact with the web, we can easily create a web application that ties into a current system.

      

I’ve been making changes to my blog for a number of reasons. But one of the reasons is because I’m going to try and monetize the blog. Currently it doesn’t make any money, not directly. I hope that some of my “technical” articles have resulted in new service contracts for iProv, but either way, I haven’t personally seen a check for this site.

I’m going to keep everything public and feel free to ask any questions, I’ve making RSS feeds more visible. I’ve always been a big advocate of RSS feeds but I’ve never really “advertised” the ability.

I’ve also added the ability to leave a donation via paypal… really… EVERYTHING HELPS… It takes time to write a blog and I’m hoping my blog isn’t going to be so much of a “journal” but more about information and a knowledge base. Just click on the page that says “Donate to RJsWeblog”

I’ve added Google Adsense to show advertising to my main links. I will get a small royalty each time the link is clicked… SO CLICK THEM.

I’ve added “Recommended Amazon Stuff” so that if you order from that link, I’ll make a small referral fee. Yeah, small. But I get to choose what is “recommended.”

And lastly, I’ve added text-ad-links.com to the right hand side, these ads will also be published in the RSS feed as soon as I do the WordPress upgrade. I recieved $100 in free advertising just for signing up as publisher as well

I’ve reorganized some of my link categories too. I like to think I’ve organized them in order of interest.

I’ve got a list of other changes I’m going to make but I’m only spending about 2 hours a week on making the changes. The other time is going toward writing and my “real job.”

I’ll try to keep track of how much time I take as well.

Hopefully this weekend, I’ll upgrade from Wordpress 1.5.2 to Wordpress 2.1. Wish me luck.