Impressive how the product placements like Aston Martin/ BMW / Omega Watches in Bond movies, Courvoisier in Busta Rhymes video and other luxury goods have been replaced by websites and multimedia devices. There is much more to come, I believe in the future we will see a whole heap of social media, gambling and online services sites.

Are we ready for the digital revolution?

Rise of smart phones

Rise of smart phones with multimedia make email even more important. Smart phones like iPhone, HTC (using Google Android - Google’s mobile Operating System), Blackberry etc means that developers need to build applications for each phone. It’s really frustrating for a company to launch their offering first on the web and then provide it’s users with the functionality on individual mobile phones. This implies that many applications are limited to the iPhone or Google Android enabled devices. Hence many major applications are missing out potentially on a huge opportunity, whether it’s targeting business  users on Blackberry or the general public on Samsung, Nokia, Palm or other major phone providers.

Email provides us with the opportunity to solve this increasingly inconvenient experience by having a unified approach. Email allows users to send in their data: images, texts, music and videos in an easy to consume format. Given that all major email providers follow a standard, it means that sending and receiving data is easier, faster and relatively problem free.

Email is the universal App

In essence my suggestion is that email is the platform independent universal application, which any developer can be confident to build and appeal to any mobile, desktop or laptop user. Email provides a great opportunity to not only send (output) information but also receive information in a easy to understand format.

To understand how this works best to look at the non-technical version of the email, Snail Mail. Till recently (and to some extent even now), mail was the way we communicated for most formal engagements: work related, housing, invitations etc. For instance request was sent in the form of letters for a brochure of houses available in the area. Now there is an app for finding houses! Clearly this was how we use our email today and will do till applications like Google Wave, real-time un-interpretive form of communication are widely adopted.

When does Email work as an app

Unfortunately though, email doesn’t always make the ultimate app. Email is good for responding and submitting but rubbish at receiving, let me explain. Email is good at responding because you know what you are reacting to, usually the response is simple and you can easily address it to a person. Similarly when you are submitting information, it’s targeted, user understands the limitation and send appropriate material across.

Two applications for example are:

1. Facebook respond to comment via email. Facebook allows users to respond to comments on profiles via email. It formats the response and removes elements of the email which are not constitute as a response.
2. WordPress, blog via email. WordPress, popular blogging platform, allows users to post a blog via a secret email address. User’s can send their posts including images via email, WordPress then works out the content and translates them into a blog.

Innovation in email applications

Facebook and WordPress are just tip of the iceberg when it comes to using email as an application or an interface. My favourite examples are TripIt and Posterous:

TripIt allows you to manage everything related to your travel like airline bookings, hotel reservations, maps etc in one place. The unique selling point is that TripIt unlike other travel sites allows users to enter information by just forwarding the confirmation email to the TripIt system. User’s don’t have to manually enter data, how fantastic it that?

Posterous is a Y Combinator startup that was founded in mid 2008. It’s a simple web publishing platform via email. Text and files can be uploaded to the site via email. Users can send multimedia and text, which is automatically processed and is added to the user’s profile.

Conclusion

Email is a fantastic, a true super-hero tool for users. Developers should use more of it to build a unified approach to building applications. One which would save them time, money and most importantly provide users a great user experience and satisfaction.

Grow your business using Social Networks: Raj Anand (Kwiqq)

I’m currently on a mission to create a single resource for list of APIs for developers to integrate into their website. I’m releasing them in batches, this post is dedicated to integrate chat into your social network. Our favourite so far is Imified API.

Instant Messenger / Voice Chat

1. Facebook Chat API (Unofficial) : Facebook doesn’t have an API for its chat but Coderrr created a hack using the existing Facebook API. The resource is now available but doesn’t work as it is.
2. MSN: Has a JSON based API which allows users to see and interact with each other via the web. The APIs only work in IE 6.0 or greater, Firefox 2.0 on Mac or Windows.
3. AIM: Allows developers to create mashups or rich internet applications integrated with AIM. The experience developed using the API is fairly flexible.
4. Bold Chat: is a chat avialable to be installed on your website to instant message / Call / Speak with sales leads. The API is designed to supply user information via SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) over HTTP.
5. Lingr: Lingr is a community of Chatrooms (think IRC). The Lingr API helps people to incorporate the tool into any external software using HTTP requests.
6. Meebo Platform: Meebo web-based instant messaging company. It gives users the ability to access multiple chat clients from one place without the need for desktop software. Meebo has now opened doors for developers to build on their platform, think Facebook Apps for chatting (Walled garden approach?). The platform provides Javascript or Flash libraries. The platform is still in its early stages but has great potential.
7. Skype API: Skype is perhaps the biggest peer-to-peer Internet telephony service. The develop kit allows users to build their own independent applicationsusing Skype. There is an enormous resource available in Java and Python (also available in ActiveX Environment)  for PC and MAC. If you are still struggling with developing applications there are Code Snippets you can follow.
8. Imified: The IMified platform allows existing applications to instant messaging networks or create stand alone IM bots for fun or getting work done.This allows users to create virtual assistants or send real time alerts. API is available for developers of PHP and CFML (Coldfusion Markup Language). Some examples are available on their Google Group.

Although we like the industry feel that times are changing, as Facebook is moving from a walled garden approach to (restricted) export data approach. More clients are now asking for Facebook Connect and its a relief for us as we are shifting from the approach of actively suggesting to getting asked for it.

Shift to Facebook Connect

The OpenID development community have always been honest about the product. There our several features which were forthcoming like social graphs, better usability etc. Well in all honesty it took an aweful amount of time to get partners onboard like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, IBM etc. As a result many of the things on the roadmap were never actually launched in time. Facebook Connect was quick to incorporate these features from the start. The results are clear Facebook in a short time has got more people talking about it, more importantly its not just the uber geek community:

OpenId v/s Facebook Connect

OpenID has not really appealed to the non-tech savvy users, here are some possible reasons:

Usability real issue

The main reason from our perspective is Usability ! To sign-in to an OpenID site it requires users to go through these steps/screens (demonstrated on Dopplr.com):

SCREEN 1

Normal Login on Dopplr

SCREEN 2

Changed to login using OpenID

SCREEN 3

Logging in using an OpenID provider

SCREEN 4

Login Success

A two step process took four screen changes which could be really frustrating for a user. Let’s compare this with Facebook’s two step login (I’m assuming that I’m Logged into Facebook, reasonable as most users tend to be logged into Facebook):

SCREEN 1:

Click to Signin - Facebook Connect (Brightkite)

SCREEN 2:

User Logged into Brightkite

Concept of OpenID

From our experience (non-technical) users don’t understand OpenID. The concept is new to what users always knew i.e. use hotmail.com username to login to msn.com and hotmail.com. This is also the reason why Facebook Connect is so much easier to comprehend. Coupled with the fact that it all happens on one screen without being relocated to another website.

Pull your Social Graph

Facebook from the very beggining allowed users to pull their social graph from Facebook. Exploring friends on a new social network based on Facebook is fantastic for social networks. Facebook in that sense is well designed, you can mark your friends and work colleagues and export them all across the web.

It works very well for the user when they are on several (small) niche social networks i.e. find your work colleague in a tennis club close to your house and reconnect with them.

Rise of other providers

Apart from Facebook connect soon all major networks like LinkedIn, Xing, Ning (already has one) etc have the potential to become ID providers for their niche. A good example is Myspace who recently launched MySpaceID. It allows users to:

• Connect MySpace profile data to partner sites (Now available)
• Find MySpace friends on a partner site (Now available)
• Register on partner sites using their MySpace URL
• Publish activities from partner sites to MySpace
• Syndicate activities on MySpace to partner sites

Its precisely what OpenID should be and Facebook currently is !

OpenID’s fight back

As more players are looking to jump to become identity providers OpenID community is now starting its campaign to fight back. Plaxo recently announced the launch of an improved user experience OpenId solution in conjunction with Google Contacts API. In their words:

Our first live test takes an innovative “hybrid approach,” bringing together three discrete technologies into a unified experience: OpenID for sign-on; OAuth for delegated authorization; and the Google Contacts API for secure import of the user’s address book. Of course, that’s all “under the hood;” the user certainly doesn’t need to have understanding (or even awareness) of these enabling technologies – no matter how cool we think they are.

Related articles by Zemanta

• MySpace and Microsoft Team Up: What Does it Mean for Facebook and Google? (tsurch.com)
• Relationship Symmetry in Social Networks: Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric (bokardo.com)
• Facebook Joins Board of OpenID (appscout.com)

Cloud Computing

There is a lot of  talk about ‘The Cloud’.  The word cloud refers to the ability to host things remotely with more or less infinite data hosting resource, without you worrying where its physically hosted. Cloud Hosting then becomes a pay as you go solution for hosting data. A recent survey of UK and US businesses showcased the naviety on the solution. The findings show that more than half of UK (57%) and US (58%) businesses are unaware of the term cloud hosting.

The word cloud has recently been used for various concepts including PaaS (Platform as a Service). A leader in this space is Salesforce. Salesforce is building on Cloud Computing which is a dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources provided as a service over the Internet. This video can explain the concept better:

Salesforce Software in the Cloud

Salesforce’s Force.com has a fantastic business model of supplying PaaS (Platfrom as a Service). With Salesforce’s enormous business in developing CRM (Client Relation Management) and insight into developing applications it makes sense to open it up to developers to build on it. In principle its a programming language which uses Salesforce’s proprietary framework as building blocks to develop custom tools. This allows companies to build stuff and host on Salesforce’s cloud.

This is a fantastic example of a company developing a SaaS and allowing people to build things using their infrastructure i.e. hardware and software. Some corporates will certainly have an issue with the software not available behind their firewall. Some may also raise an eyebrow on building a system completely reliant on Salesforce’s infrastructure i.e. your company’s IP (Intellectual Property) is not only hosted on a cloud but also reliant on their proprietary technology.

Cloud Hosting for Businesses

As oppose to cloud computing users can use the power of infinite hosting without bring tied into a software. There are several providers of cloud hosting:

• Go Grid
• Amazon Web Services (EC2, S3, and CloudFront)
• Google App Engine
• Mosso
• Slice Host
• Media Temple
• Flexiscale
• Joyent

Hosting on the cloud is simple as demonstrated on Mosso.com (Rackspace‘s cloud hosting arm):

1) Select size of the cloud:

2) Select Operating System:

3). And off you go in a few minutes

Cost of Cloud Hosting

25% of UK businesses think the technology is actually really expensive in the long term. The reality is that no one really knows the cost of maintaining a server in-house or being outsourced, as expressed by Bernard Golden at CIO – Do the maths correctly for cloud computing:

In evaluating the (supposed) high cost of Amazon EC2, that raises the question: compared to what? In other words, to assert that Amazon (or one of the other cloud providers) is more expensive than doing it internally or outsourced, one has to know exactly what it costs to run a machine internally or via an outsourcer. And I’m not convinced those costs-despite the opinion expressed by my colleague-are truly known. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most IT organisations really don’t have much of an idea what their true cost of, say, provisioning a 1U pizza box server actually is.

Our recommendation

We think cloud computing is a nifty technology which if used correctly can have several benefits for your business. If you are sceptic about cloud hosting for your social network, we recommend you buy a server or get a hosting provider and connect it with Amazon EC2 or other cloud hosting providers.

So if your traffic goes beyond your server’s capability you know there is the cloud which will kick in. Also from your CFO’s (Chief Finance Officer) perspective, you are just paying per minute of usage i.e. no upfront cost.

We believe 2009 is the year of the APIs (Application Programming Interface). Whether it is to login using OpenID, Facebook Connect or just to easily uploading videos to YouTube. The obvious advantages are: lower the barrier to entry for niche social network, quickly build content (on your site) and give you access to fantastic online tools.

[Please Note: This is a work in progress, hence please bare with us]

Why did we produce this:

The list was originally used for Kwiqq’s team. So we can actively include these API‘s for client projects. Although as the list started growing we thought this might be useful for everyone in the community. We want your help to grow this list further. If you find any mistakes leave us a comment and we’ll correct it.

This post will have regular updates, if your API is not mentioned please feel free to post a comment and we will happily include them:

Video API

1. YouTube: YouTube APIs and tools allows integration of YouTube videos and other functionality. There are two types of APIS: Data API (search, upload videos and create playlists) and Player APIs (controls and interface)
2. Vimeo: Simple but elegant video player. Has two APIs: Simple API (user, video, album etc info) and Advanced API (User Authentication, upload )
3. Metacafe: Metacafe is a popular video social network. Matecafe APIs are very simple and allow you to recieve RSS, search results and thumbnails from its API.
4. AOL Video API: are served by AOL’s acquisition of truveo. This allows developers to search videos and are available in XML, AJAX, Flash and Ruby
5. Blinkx API: Allows you to search Blinkx’s video resource
6. HeyWatch API: Hey! Watch is a scalable video encoding service, encode videos for as less as $0.10. It allows users to create, delete, modify and get information about a resource.
7. Ipernity API: Ipernity allows user to upload pictures, videos and audios and manage them in folders. The API allows developers to undertake several actions like upload data, create albums, modify file information and several other features.
8. Joost API: Joost API allows users to watch TV socially whilst adding features like chat and IM. The API allows developers to do everything (more or less) available on the site in addition to track users viewing your content and get user related information like name.
9. LiveVideo API: Live Video allows users to broadcast themselves on a YouTube style platform. The API’s allows developers to extract user and video information.
10. Orb API: Orb provides the ability to “MyCast”. MyCasting gives the user instant access to photos, music, videos, live television, and other digital content on their home PC at anytime and from any internet-connected device, such as a mobile phone, PDA or laptop. The API allows developers to interact with Orb through XML format, transferring data or generating RSS feeds.
11. Phanfare API: Phanfare allows user to upload, share and store pictures and videos. Developers can integrate Phanfare albums, photos and videos using the API.
12. Revver API: Revver is a video network which pairs videos with targeted ads and tracks them as they spread across the web, sharing the revenue with the user. The API allows user to access the Revver system using JSON and XML-RPC APIs.
13. Veoh API: Veoh is an Internet TV service which users to watch and personalize online viewing experience.
14. Internet Video Archive API: Internet Video Archive has a good collection of movie trailers, TV trailers, game previews, and music videos. The APIs are built to search Games (video) API, Music (video) API and Movie (video) API.
15. Yahoo Video Search API: As the name suggests the platform helps developers search videos based on keywords. Yahoo allows developers to build queries and send them to the API, returning results from all over the internet from large sites like YouTube to small independent video sites.

Picture API

1. Flickr: Flickr API supports variety of functionality like user authentication, image upload / replacement / management. It also has API kits developed and maintained by external users.
2. Picnic: Picnic is a tool used to perform basic image manipulation tasks (i.e. mini photoshop). API allows you to load the Picnic interface and control some of the options. Further it allows developers the option of saving and loading images.
3. Picasa Web: Picasa is Google’s web album. The API allows developers to update upload photos, developing mobile, desktop or web applications using the system.
4. Zoto: Zoto is a picture sharing / storage web applciation. The API allows users to access all the basic functionality of Zoto. The API is available in Python although developers can use XML RPC.
5. 23: 23 is a photo sharing application. Their approach is very innovative, instead of building a 23 API they have added support for Flickr API. In other words if you have built a Flickr application you can tap into 23 very quickly (the site claims it would require 2-3 minutes).
6. SmugMug: Is a picture sharing site targeting professional photographers. The site has a comprehensive list of APIs which allow all major function the site supports, a must see !
7. photoworks.com (or AOL pictures): Photo Works allows users to upload images and buy custom merchadise like books, calendars etc. The API is very simple and allows users to import pictures from Flickr.
8. Fotolia.com: Fotolia is a royalty free photo stocker i.e. similar to shutterstock.com. The API certainly gives it an edge over Shutter Stock.  The API is specially designed for resellers or users who want to improve the Fotolia experience.
9. FotoFlexer.com: Is an online image editor like Picnik although has more tools available. The API is not very flexible but on the flip side the process of installing the Application Programming Interface is straight forward.
10. CellBlock: Publish photos / videos from mobile phones, web or desktop. The API does just that and is fantastic for sending multimedia through various input devices .
11. Image Loop: Image loop provides multimedia content like picture, power point presentations etc available as a widget. Most suited to the myspace generation.  The API allows users to import / export images and display them in various formats using Java, .NET, Flash and PhP interfaces.
12. [Update 16/02/2009 Source: Filip Sevcik] Panormio API: Allows users to upload pictures and tag them to locations on Google Map. The API pulls pictures for a particular location or area as available on the system.

Instant Messenger / Voice Chat

1. Facebook Chat API (Unofficial) : Facebook doesn’t have an API for its chat but Coderrr created a hack using the existing Facebook API. The resource is now available but doesn’t work as it is.
2. MSN: Has a JSON based API which allows users to see and interact with each other via the web. The APIs only work in IE 6.0 or greater, Firefox 2.0 on Mac or Windows.
3. AIM: Allows developers to create mashups or rich internet applications integrated with AIM. The experience developed using the API is fairly flexible.
4. Bold Chat: is a chat avialable to be installed on your website to instant message / Call / Speak with sales leads. The API is designed to supply user information via SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) over HTTP.
5. Lingr: Lingr is a community of Chatrooms (think IRC). The Lingr API helps people to incorporate the tool into any external software using HTTP requests.
6. Meebo Platform: Meebo web-based instant messaging company. It gives users the ability to access multiple chat clients from one place without the need for desktop software. Meebo has now opened doors for developers to build on their platform, think Facebook Apps for chatting (Walled garden approach?). The platform provides Javascript or Flash libraries. The platform is still in its early stages but has great potential.
7. Skype API: Skype is perhaps the biggest peer-to-peer Internet telephony service. The develop kit allows users to build their own independent applications using Skype. There is an enormous resource available in Java and Python (also available in ActiveX Environment)  for PC and MAC. If you are still struggling with developing applications there are Code Snippets you can follow.
8. Imified: The IMified platform allows existing applications to instant messaging networks or create stand alone IM bots for fun or getting work done.This allows users to create virtual assistants or send real time alerts. API is available for developers of PHP and CFML (Coldfusion Markup Language). Some examples are available on their Google Group.

Cloud and Media Distribution API

1. Nirvanix API: Nirvanix is the premier “Cloud Storage” platform provider. Nirvanix is a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, CA and backed by world-class investors including Intel Capital.
2. Pando: P2P software that makes downloading, streaming and sharing large media files.
3. More Coming Soon…

Online Presentation / ePaper API

Coming Soon…

Login API

Coming Soon…

Content API

Coming Soon…

Widget API

Coming Soon…

Location Based API

1. Geography: Collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre. The API allows users to harness the information available on the site for searching purposes.
2. More Coming Soon…

Social Networks

1. Buzznet:   (to be updated)
2. MySpace:
3. LinkedIn:
4. Facebook
   1. Facebook Application API
   2. Facebook Connect API
5. Bebo:

At Kwiqq we are always bucking the trend. Whilst many organisations are firing people left, right and centre, we are hiring. We are currently looking for a junior / graduate developer (Full Time). Specifics:
Responsibilities & key outputs

•    To work on Kwiqq client projects and Kwiqq product as directed.
•    To understand and contribute to functional user specifications
•    To implement functional specifications under the guidance of the lead developer
•    To improve and develop your own professional skills and to adapt these skills to the company’s future clients
•    To attend networking events when required.
•    To attend sales meetings when required.
•    To determine which technologies will be required for the build of the software for its optimum performance and appeal to possible clients.
•    To learn new technologies as necessary.
•    To ensure that the business is developed in line with Anderstand Ltd’s equal opportunities policy
•    To undertake other related duties that may arise as the role develops and Anderstand Ltd reviews it’s business

Technical Skills:

•    Knowledge of PHP (OOP – version 5+), Knowledge of Frameworks (preferably Zend Framework), Linux, Jquery/DoJo, Mysql, Basic Unix, SVN, HTML, CSS and the ability to drive the build of the software.

People Skills:

•    Good communication skills and the ability to converse with clients/suppliers/customers.
•    The ability to work as part of a team.
•    An enthusiastic positive personality.

Decision Making Skills:

•    The initiative to conduct all day to day responsibilities without direction.
•    To develop their own job role as appropriate.

Development Skills:
•    A willingness to learn all areas of the business and expand company knowledge.

Special Tips

•    Candidate involved with the community (Barcamp, Twitter etc)

•    Good sense of humour

User Engagement (Source: customersrock.net)

Below I’m presenting a way (almost an algorithm) to quantify engagement on Twitter:

1). Get Retweeted (RT)

One of the most powerful application from a marketing perspective is RT or Retweet. Retweet simply means another user re-broadcasting your message using Twitter. See Paul Walsh’s tips on How to get RT. If you are getting a retweet you are almost guaranteed to get more people listening to you i.e. higher chance of engagement.

Score Yourself: A nice way to measure engagement is by using retweetrank.com. The Retweet rank would give you a percentile, multiply that by ’0.05′. For instance my retweet percentile is 93.19% hence using this algorithm my score would be 4.65

@rajanand's Retweet percentile

2). Replies from users

The more @yourusername you receive from users, the more conversations you are having with people. You can keep track of number of conversations through physically counting uniquereplies on your TweetDeck, search on Twitter or use replies on Twitter.com.

Score Yourself: Multiply each unique visitor reply by 2 and from the same user by 1. For instance on average I get 5 unique visitor replies and 1 from the same person, hence my score would be 11.

3). Oops ! Someone just unfollowed me

Qwitter

If you really annoyed someone or were posting blogs they are not interested in, there is a good chance that they would unfollow you. This is a very good indicator of what people expect from you and how much noise are you contributing to. My personal experience of tweeting about non social networking items makes me loose followers. You can keep track of this using Qwitter, Social Too or following @unfollowr. Amongst the three I prefer @unfollowr, as it seems to be the most accurate.

There is major short coming of this method though, there are many users whose sole purpose is to follow as many users as possible in order to get followed back. Hence we need to discount this from your score.

Score Yourself: Subtract 0.5 for every user who quits following you. Multiply by 0.9, discounting for inaccuracy of spammers. For example if you have 5 qwitters, your total score would be -2.25

4). New Followers:

New followers implies more poeple to potentially engage with. That certainly deserves a point.

Score Yourself: Give yourself 1 point for every new person who follows you.

Scenario:

Now in the case I have Retweet percentile of 93.19%, 10 followers, 5 replies and 5 qwitters my total score is: 23.40. My personal target is to get 15 points everyday, this helps me to mark myself as a performer.

Oh ! And if you can’t be bothered to calculate all of this just use TwitterRank.

Tip for developers:

If you are developer looking to build your own Qwitter see Bobrik’s blog in Russian, translated in English.

My Twitter Profile: rajanand

Related articles

• 30 Twitter Apps We Actually Use and 140 After That (successful-blog.com)
• How much are you worth on Twitter? (tsurch.com)