There is an article in the New York Times about private cell phone numbers. I’ve never been super secret about my cell phone number. I’ve posted it here once, but I don’t have it listed on the contact page ala Robert Scoble. But I do like the idea of psudeo-numbers so I signed up with Privatephone. Now, not only do I have a number I can share, I get to show my pride for the 206 (before I was rocking the 267). So do you want to get in touch with me? Call my cell – 206.855.6693.

It just goes to a voicemail, so you won’t be bugging me directly. We’ll see how this goes.

[tags]privatephone, phone number, cell number[/tags]

I just saw over on Dave Coletta’s blog that Virtual Ubiquity is hiring a Flex developer. I talked with these guys at MAX this year, and I can tell you that if you get this job, you’ll be working on one of the best Flex applications out there. Their app was shown in the keynote at MAX and after talking to them, I think they have a good chance to push Flex 2 into some mainstream places.

What are you still doing here, GO!

Wait, you’re still here? Brian reminded me that Brightcove is also hiring. I’m going to be covering them on ZDNet in the next couple of days. Needless to say, they’re doing some very good stuff with video. If you get either one of these jobs, just remember to kick some cheddar my way after your stock options get you some sweet house in Cape Cod.

And seriously, what is with all of these Massachusetts Flex companies? Is Boston the capital of the Flex world? Perhaps. Seattle still has the best Flex User Group though.

[tags]Flex 2, Flex Jobs, Virtual Ubiquity[/tags]

Beet.tv has an interview wtih David Hallerman, an analyst with eMarketer about the advertising market. As he notes, we’re still in the infant stage of video advertising, but he’s also correct when he says paid search is just direct marketing. It’s targeted and efficient direct marketing, but oatmeal is just oatmeal until you put something interesting in it.

Interactive Video is the cinnamon and sugar of online advertising. David estimates that spending for online video advertising is going to skyrocket from $410 million dollars next year to $2.9 billion by 2010. In his Beet.TV interview he talks about the emotional appeal of video and how that can help build a brand. That’s exactly why Rich Internet Applications can be such a persuasive advertising tool. You can emotionally connect with your users on an application level. You can easily blend that interactive video advertising with your application so that the user doesn’t even see it as an ad. They see it as something fun, interesting and memorable – exactly what an ad should be.

I think there’s room for a term like Rich Internet Advertising to describe the ways that brands can engage users with a great Internet experience. As more people get that, and we start to see metrics showing the result, technologies which enable that are going to be in huge demand.

There’s also some stuff about video forgeries but I stopped reading when I saw it came from Dartmouth. -ZING- (just kidding)

[tags]Video Advertising, Advertising, Rich Internet Advertising,  Beet.TV, David Hallerman, eMarketer[/tags]

I think I’m losing my touch. Here’s this very interesting photo sharing application done in Flex and I didn’t even know it existed until JD posted about a party they’re having. Even though I’m smarting a bit because I’m missing what is very possibly the first Web 2.0/Flex 2 party, I checked out Pikeo. I must say, I’m pretty impressed. Jaz has a good roundup, but Pikeo is a photo sharing site from Orange (a subsidiary I think of France Telecom)

First thing they do well is not make it look like every other Flex application out there. That’s key, because we’ve seen so many of those that it makes Flex look bad. But Pikeo proves that you can use Flex to build a great experience while branding your application to your taste.

After playing with it, I can see how some people might think it goes a bit overboard, but I disagree. I think Pikeo shows off what you can do with Flex and Rich Internet Application technologies. The Pikeo UI is good and the effects and transitions give the user a feel of depth. It’s mostly eye-candy, but it’s cool eye candy, and there are no performance hits to speak of. The app just feels more uniform than an Ajax application.

On a pure photosharing side, I like what Pikeo did. I think the who/what/where tagging options are a good idea. I think the map integrates with the pictures somehow, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. If it does what I think it does, that’s great, but the fact that I can’t figure it out is a negative.

Overall I think Pikeo does a good job of showing off an RIA photo sharing site. The application flows well, it contains some rich interaction between pictures which is good. Of course this could have been done as an Ajax application, but I think Flex 2 gives them more room to grow as demands increase.

[tags]Pikeo, Flex 2, photos sharing[/tags]

What a bad night. We flew from Grand Junction, Colorado to Denver and then to Seattle. We kept hearing about a storm coming through Denver, so we were worried we would be stuck (again) in DIA but luckily got on the flight with no problems. Unfortunately, it snowed here in Seattle and when it snows here, people go absolutely crazy. They don’t know how to drive, the roads are all pretty icy because of the climate, and it’s a recipe for disaster. In this case, it meant that Ciara and I had to wait in a 300-person taxi line at SeaTac for 3 hours. I wish I was kidding.

But, the long flight did give me a chance to read John Battelle’s The Search (I know, I’m late). I wanted to grab Robert’s book, Naked Conversations, but the small Borders in Grand Junction didn’t have it.

I was impressed by The Search. I always enjoy technology histories and while John does a good job of covering the search industry, the profile of Google is a good one. I came away thinking that Google is still a very vulnerable company. I think back to my own search history - WebCrawler, Yahoo, AltaVista, Google, and how quickly I made the switch when something better came along. While Google seems to be more sticky than previous search engines, SEO spam and people who want to game the system will always be a threat and if the results are tainted, I’ll jump to the next best engine.

The other thing I noticed is how far we still have to come in Search Google has done a great job of collecting and cataloging information, but we’re still trying to find it in a pretty rudimentary way. There’s something to be said for a more human search experience. I’m not necessarily advocating something like Ms. Dewey, but I think Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) could have a big place in search. What if users could leverage RIA technologies to visualize their results? Move the results into a 3D space where the most recent documents are first and the older ones are farther away? It may seem like bloated eye-candy, but humans perceive things in a 3D world, and treating results as objects that can be manipulated in a way that makes them more meaningful could be a great concept for search.

But, as of right now, Ms. Dewey is much more novelty than functional, and we’re not going to see the end of the single text input box any time soon.

[tags]The Search, John Battelle, Ms. Dewey, Rich Internet Applications[/tags]

Bill Thompson has a good post about the technology behind Web 2.0 and why it may hinder us more than help us. Unfortunately, he does a huge disservice to himself by painting Tim O’Reilly in the same light as the infamous Yugoslavian Dictator and then using the final paragraphs to perform a chop job on Tim.

The second section is where Bill gets his actual point across, but you do need to weave through the personal attacks to figure it out. Here are the guts of his point:

Ajax is touted as the answer for developers who want to offer users a richer client experience without having to go the trouble of writing a real application, but if the long term goal is to turn the network from a series of tubes connecting clients and servers into a distributed computing environment then we cannot rely on JavaScript and XML since they do not offer the stability, scalability or effective resource discovery that we need.

There is a massive difference between rewriting Web pages on the fly with JavaScript and reengineering the network to support message passing between distributed objects, a difference that too many Web 2.0 advocates seem willing to ignore. It may have been twenty years since Sun Microsystems trademarked the phrase ‘the network is the computer’ but we’re still a decade off delivering, and if we stick with Ajax there is a real danger that we will never get there.

It’s a very valid point, and one that I’ve been following for some time. With Flex Data Services, Adobe has taken a similar position and has worked to move applications to the messaging model that Bill advocates. And technologically, there is a huge benefit to that. Adopting it means that we can do things in real time and really take advantage of the collaborative aspects of the web. Products like WebORB show how much demand their can be.

It’s ashamed that he goes after Tim. I’m as big an Ajax critic as anyone, but I think Ajax has done a lot to raise the expectations of end users and gotten developers to think differently. Is it the final answer? No, but it’s been beneficial and the folks at O’Reilly have always been advocates of better ways.

[tags]Web 2.0, Flex Data Services, Distributed Web[/tags]

I’m in the process of writing a blog post for my ZDNet blog about Wallop. After a strong start it seems to have slowed down considerably. Because Flash developers were a major target for the site, I thought I’d put out a call and see if any of you are building flash widgets for Wallop. If you looked into it and then just never jumped in, that’s even better.

Feel free to email me if I can pick your brain.

[tags]Flash, Wallop, Developers[/tags]

I’m having a long, great Thanksgiving vacation here at my parents house and before I left I installed Vista on the laptop I use for all of my development and take with me everywhere. After a few days of putting it through semi-rigorous testing, I have to say, I’m still amazed at how good it is.

I had been using the betas and RC versions before, but seeing it all come together (without the blue screens) has been awesome. I know there are some driver issues still outstanding, but on my Dell laptop I haven’t had any issues.

Performance is top notch (I have a Vista experience rating of 4.0 and I’m running a Intel Pentium M 2.13 GHz processor with 2 Gigs of Ram). It’s stable, and it looks beautiful. As an operating system “experience” it’s heads and tales over anything that Microsoft has had before.

I think Vista is going to be a huge boon for Rich Internet Applications because it sets a new bar for what kind of experiences to expect. The transitions and the subtle UI improvements make a huge difference and I can’t wait to see web developers implement it.

Big hats off to Microsoft.

[tags]Microsoft, Rich Internet Applications, Windows Vista, Vista[/tags]

Marshall Kirkpatrick takes a look at MochiAds, a new ad network from MochiMedia. I think this is a great idea and an example where Flash brings a different advertising paradigm. Sure the idea of an adnetwork and “preroll” ads aren’t new, but Marshall makes a very valid point when he notes that most people expect loading screens with Flash ads.

The biggest part of this is what it brings to Flash developers. There’s a huge groundswell around enabling Flash developers to monetize their trade. Consulting rates are sky-high, the new deal with Verizon will help with Flash Lite developers and this adds another tool for creative Flashers to make money. That’s an important step in adoption, and if MochiAds are as easy as Marshall says they are, it could be very profitable.

[tags]MochiMedia, MochiAds, Flash, Advertising Networks[/tags] 

Just a quick reminder, the Seattle Flex User Group is meeting tonight. It’s the inaugural meeting, so come with ideas and be ready to help put together the best Flex group in the world. The meeting starts at 6:30 and is over at Adobe’s campus here in Seattle.