Tag Archives: Web 2.0

Pick Yourself UP

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First a little technology cable channel called TechTV gets taken over by Comcast-owned G4 Media and becomes G4-TechTV for a short while before finally being killed off into G4 and having it’s array of hosts dismissed and programs cancelled to be replaced with stuff like Cheaters and Cops 2.0.

Then a game review company (Gamespot, actually) fires one of it’s lead reviewers for a brutally honest review that was critical of a handicapped game because it was advertising heavily on Gamespot. That’s right – Gamespot would prefer their employees lie for financial gain rather than give good, honest reviews as a review media outlet.

Well, the plot to the story of the web these days seems to be full of people that got knocked down, picked themselves up, dusted off, & trump their previous employees.

Those geeks that used to work at TechTV? Kevin Rose, Alex Albrecth, Patricmk Norton, Sarah Lane, Martin Sargent, Dan Huard, Jessica Corbin and even past behind-the-scenes operators like segment producer David Prager are just a few of the major players you might remember from TechTV and they’re back to producing a new sort of media. It’s television for the internet and it’s getting huge. Revision3 -  with twelve shows updated weekly and another five joining the set in 2008, the site is pushing out content that is, in fact, in large demand and they’re producing it for the right audience. With shows ranging from the top news stories from Kevin Rose’s Digg being dicussed over a beer with previous The Screen Saver’s cohost Alex Albrecht to a talk show with Martin Sargent where he interviews all sorts of odd personalities from the web – it’s television for a new generation.

They have the Totally Rad Show which is a mixture of reviewing new television shows, movies, and video games while also reminiscing about and comparing to older flicks and games.

But all of these shows are not just shot on hand held consumer video cameras. They’re professional shot and edited on sets in a studio. They’re actual segments ranging from daily shorts to full 30-45 minute (and occasionally longer) shows that you can stream from Revision3′s website or download in a variety of formats.

And it’s free. . .

Just like standard television, the shows are all ad-supported. Unlike standard cable, however, you don’t pay an access fee. “Commercials are typically at the beginning and end of a show and presented by the host – usually with a code that grants you discounts for things like GoDaddy.com or Netflix online movie rentals. Sponsors range from Sony’s Playstation Network to the Microsoft Zune. Even IBM and Adobe Systems understand the potential for advertising revenue and have jumped on board in the past.

So head over to Revision3 and check out the show schedule.

Oh. . . And in case you’re wondering – that reviewer from Gamespot? He’s teamed up with a buddy and formed his own review company. Look for updates on that as summer approaches.

Application Programming Interfaces

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That’s a mouthful, eh? Application programming interfaces, or API’s, essentially allow a user to code a program that uses resources from another program or in conjunction with it. More commonly in recent web trends, an API allows things like the applications on Facebook. For example, someone might write a program that sits on your desktop or in your taskbar that would notify you of comments being posted to your page or if you’ve received a message to your inbox.

API’s are all over the place and you’re most likely using one. Why am I talking about API’s? Because there are some websites that either don’t have them in place, they’re not easily accessable, or they’re handicapped in performance and don’t allow you to do much. Facebook’s API is wonderful. You can very easily, with little programming knowledge at all, create a very simple application.

MySpace on the other hand, I’m not so sure of. Google developed something called opensocial, which MySpace jumped on board for. Typically anything Google touches turns to gold and I’m a huge fan of the company – hell, they turned a search box into one of the biggest companies on the internet. (Yes, I’m using the term search box and of course know that’s a bit of an understatement.)

I haven’t taken the time to delve into the API much yet, and I’m a little concerned about doing so. While the idea is good, opensocial is, as the name might imply, very open. And the more open you are on the internet, the more vulnerable you are. One of the first sites to use opensocial was cracked within 20 minutes of going live with the API and allowed attackers to view private information. I would have prefered that MySpace had developed it’s own API with a bit more limits. Had they done so, I would have liked to have seen the following features.

*Pulling content from blog posts.

*Pulling content from bulletin posts, in a similar fashion.

*Pulling content from events and calendars.

*Providing a means to pull albums and specific pictures from a users profile.

These are very basic requests and would only be allowed on public profiles. Why would this work well? Because beyond the standard users of MySpace, there is a large amount of musician, comedian, commercial, and soon celebrity profiles. While I could care less about most of these, a solid API would simplify things for smaller bands on the web.

I’m currently doing the coding for a website for a local band in my area. If I had access to these tools, they could post news/events/photos on their MySpace page and have them appear on their website. They’re still allowed a professional web prescense of their own while being able to keep their fans & friends on MySpace updated at all times and able to communicate with them via that platform.

Anyways – I don’t know. I felt it was time for a good rant, but it’s becoming obvious I’m out of practice as my hands are starting to cramp up and this has been an unbelievably nerdy post of no worth. Until next time.