Mobile Web Server

NRC

As a mobile phone contains quite a lot of personal data it is easy to semi-automatically generate a personal home page. And contrary to websites in general, a website on a mobile phone always has its “administrator” nearby and he or she can even participate in the content generation. For instance, we have created a web-application that prompts the phone owner to take a picture, which subsequently is returned as a JPG. That is, on a personal device the website can be interactive.

We believe that being able to run a globally accessible personal website on your mobile phone has the potential of changing the Internet landscape. If every mobile phone or even every smartphone initially, is equipped with a webserver then very quickly most websites will reside on mobile phones. That is bound to have some impact not only on how mobile phones are perceived but also on how the web evolves.

Hands down, the coolest thing I’ve heard about in a while. Other than what MindTouch has cooking, of course. 😉

Searching for revenue models

DEMOletter

…the parade is back and this time the start-ups are beating the drum of free software and services. These so-called Web 2.0 businesses give away sometimes outstanding functionality now in hopes of finding a business model somewhere down the line. In the meantime, most of these companies are tapping advertising networks and hoping to build a revenue stream (trickle?) from click traffic. (Feels a whole lot like monetizing eyeballs, doesn’t it?)

I don’t like businesses that are dependent on other businesses for their customer revenue. Effectively, these businesses are held hostage to the revenue-sharing and engineering of Google and other ad networks. It may be an easy way to get some cash through the door early on, but it isn’t sufficient to building a valuable growth business.

First of all, let me say: Chris Shipley is cool. Now let’s consider the fact that savvy users can (and do) easily install a greasemonkey script to strip out all ads from a site. Or, similarly, install an ad blocker plugin to their browser. There goes the business model of the majority of the Web 2.0 companies out there. Currently, scraping ads away isn’t mainstream, but as this business model becomes pervasive (again) and people really do see the benefit from an app that is being provided ‘free’ of charge then this will undoubtedly grow in usage. Especially if these are apps they ‘live’ in, which is now more true than ever before.

When I was at Etech06 back in March this is what struck me more than the really cool apps I saw. The majority of these apps/companies simply had no business model. My response to those who asked me how the event was: “lots of really really cool technologies with absolutely no business model.”

Anyway, as a rebut to the article, which quite frankly I agree with, there is the potential that with the new level of interactivity evidenced among this new breed of web apps by which users are involved in content creation, that this can be mined for market trends/patterns/interests with a new level of granularity not previously accessible from the passive days of the Internet.

'Caped Crusader' foils Uptown robbery

KSTP

“I heard footsteps behind me, and I stopped to turn…,” Teresa said.

A strange man grabbed for Teresa’s purse…they struggled. The man eventually got the purse and took off.

What followed had Teresa doing a double-take–In a flash, someone was giving chase to the robber.

“He had on a white tunic, a beige leotard, and tights and boots,” Teresa explained. The man was also wearing a cape.

“I thought, ‘wow, who’s that?'”

It was Cameron Evan–Superhero.

“Typically we just deliver some pizzas (dressed like this), and that’s about it. But when we run into a situation like this, we’re forced to act,” Evans explained.

Two other bystanders joined in the chase and eventually knocked the robber down. He got away, but not before giving up the purse.

It turns out, superheroes fit Galactic Pizza‘s mission. It’s a socially conscious business, thus the electric cars to deliver pizzas. And all of the shop’s
equipment is powered totally by wind.

Apparently, this is PeteE’s favorite Pizza Joint. It’s definitely mine now too.

Latte and Linux in Toronto

NewsForge

When Patrick and family finally opened the doors to the linuxcaffe in June 2005, he had lived up to his goal of 100% open source. The business runs Ubuntu Linux on five servers. The point-of-sale server runs the L’âne POS application on a Celeron 700, with a Javelin Wedge P150 touch screen thin client terminal. There’s also a media server on a Pentium 4 that runs the jukebox, videos, and webcams; a Pentium 3 development server running Asterisk and anything else they’re testing; and the “burn unit,” Patrick’s nickname for the Pentium 3 machine that is dedicated to burning CDs and DVDs for clients.

Patrick and his employees gleefully burn and distribute free Linux CDs to anyone who shows an interest. In a post at the linuxcaffe blog, he tells the story of a young Rwandan girl who saw the shop’s marquee promoting Ubuntu Linux, came in to inform them that Ubuntu 4U meant “free for you” in her language, and walked out carrying her very own official copy of Ubuntu.

Wi-Fi access is free at the café, but visitors may also rent a computer while they’re there. “We’ve standardized on ThinkPad 600s for rental units,” Patrick says, “and they run beautifully as thin clients. The great thing about it is they’re inexpensive [and] customers feel special because they’re using a laptop.”

LinuxCaffe is such a great concept! Minneapolis-St. Paul needs one of these. This is a perfect project for Open Manufacturing.

Collax

Paula Hunter joins Collax to Lead U.S. Marketing

Collax, Inc., a leading European vendor of affordable, turn-key, Linux-based server solutions for small and medium businesses, today announced that Paula Hunter, formerly of the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), has joined the management team as vice president of U.S. marketing.

Go Collax, Go Collax…

Update: 6/2/2006 10:24 PM CST

So, when I initially posted this about Collax I bit my tongue. What I wanted to say was: C’mooon! This marketing is never going to work. At least, not for Small and Medium sized businesses (SMBs). Sure for enterprise, but no SMB wants to buy technology; especially technology that involves Linux. The less SMBs hear about the components the happier they are. They simply don’t care what solves their problems. Do you know what your Tivo is running? Of course not! Why do you care? Well, it is Linux, but who cares. We just want solutions. Maybe this sells in the EU. Alas, who am I to question someone like Paula Hunter? Perhaps they haven’t changed their messaging since she joined. I don’t know, but I am sure that saying “Don’t think about Linux” is the equivalent of saying: “Don’t think about pink elephants.”

F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox

232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. We found that users’ main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:

  • Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.
  • Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.
  • Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.

It’s funny, in the last couple weeks I have been thinking about how I’ve been programmed to scan the top, down the left, and then across to the right. Specifically, I’ve recently become cognizant of the fact that I completely skip the section just below the top most section, usually this means I completely miss the second paragraph. Some one should put this to practice by providing complete nonsense in the second paragraph. I suppose, this is the second paragraph. I’ll bet I can provide: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nullam in neque vel nisi pharetra sodales. Donec dignissim gravida tellus. Etiam at nunc, and no one would notice.

CSS Cornucopia

There are a ton of great CSS and design resources available on the Internet these days. Here are a list of some resources that have piqued my interest in the past couple months (in an arbitrary order):

If you’re throwing together a website there are lots of great open source designs in the above list that you can grab and cobble together with some of the fancier design patterns. A crappy designer, like myself, can very quickly throw together a very presentable site with just a couple of the above resources. I know, I’ve left off some obvious resources, but like I said these are ones I’ve noticed in the last couple months. Moreover, you’ll find a much more complete list in the above listed “very very big…“