Pin your history on the map

Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability

Lightweight models & cost effective scalability means building an application that required low investment cost and have the ability to extend it functionality in the future. There is no need to roll out all the function at once as it may incur high investment and may result serious consequence due to delay and functionality of the services provided are out dated or are not uncommon.

Web Application

A good example is Historypin. It’s a collaboration with google whereby the application allow user to upload pictures of old times of place that the pictures been taken are tagged with the use of Google map. User can search past photo by search the location and on top of that, there is a slider to choose base on the range of years of the picture taken.

The organization behind this application are We Are What We Do.  Below is a clip allow reader to have a better understanding of what Historypin application are and how user can contribute to it.

.

In terms of future expansion of functionality of Historypin, We Are What We Do are planning to do following their twitter at WeAreWhatWeDo . The scalability can be achieve by providing functionality such as uploading information such as videos and comment that enable the communication between users.

As Historypin had a large user population through different form of marketing and with the help of its current user introducing to other people, Historypin will be able to cater such increase of traffic by renting higher performance hardware as well as higher bandwidth.

Reference

Historypin – Pin Your History To The World

We are what we do

Looking for unique Audio book?

Leveraging the long tail

According to Wikipedia, The Long Tail refers to the statistical property that a larger population fall within the tail of a distribution than observed under a normal distribution. The term Long Tail has gained popularity as a retail strategy by selling large number of unique in small quantities while selling few popular item in large quantities.

The Long Tail was popularized by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. This strategy allows company to sell more unique item that are not offer by other competitors while still selling the most popular product.

To the right is the long tail which are in Yellow colour and to the left are the few that dominate which are in Green colour

Web Application

 

An example of online retail shop engaing leveraging the long tail is Audible. It was introduced  one of the first digital audio player and publish their website in 1998. Audible support multiple platform for their application such as Android, Mac and Windows.

The website gain a steady flow of customer that by 2003, it strike an exclusive deal with Apple to provide their titles in iTunes store. By 2008, Audible was bought over by Amazon.

Using Leveraging The Long Tail

Audible sell the most popular audio title to their customer while letting them to browse other title that might interest them. This increase the probability of user purchasing other audio which they may not heard off.  By looking in a bigger picture, Audible will have a large number of its customer purchase a large number of unique audio title but at the same time, all its customer will buy large number of popular audio title.

Audible enjoys a near-monopoly in the commercial online digital download market for audio books where up till today, Audible online have more  than 85000 titles worth 1 million plus hours.

Reference

Wikipedia – Long Tail

Audible – Digital Audio Book

Wikipedia – Audible

Digg anything you find interesting and share!

Perpetual Beta

In web 2.0 pattern, Perpetual beta means that application are being enhance all the time even the application had been release for the public to use.  This usually can be seen on application that does not contain any information about the version of the application that are being use by the public such as the popular application google search engine that we use almost everyday. there are no information regarding what version its running on but we as user do realise that that Google keep updating with new services provide to the public. The versioning is kept indoor for developer for documentation purpose.

The term beta could confuse most reader as traditionally, beta tells user that the application are not final and it meant to have a lot of error or bugs. This is not true for web 2.0.

Web Application

An example of Perpetual Beta other than Google are Digg. Its a simple website that allows user to submit websites or news and allow voting where the most vote of websites will get to be display on the front page. Digg started out as a very simple website and gradually refine their website design, the look and feel of it. most importantly the functions is being added and ability to integrate with other website through icon.

Below is a contrast of Digg website between 2004 and 2011

2004

2011

Today, digg are found in almost every website through a small icon where user will click it to add in. other than that, more features is also available such as uploading videos and also pictures.

Reference

Wikipedia – Digg

Digg – The Latest News Video and Images

Bookmark in multiple platform

Software above the level of single device

The next Web 2.0 pattern mention is software above the level of single device.  According to O’Reilly, Web 2.0 application are no longer limited to the pc platform. for a web 2.0 application to be successful. It need to allow different platform to be able to use the application. In today’ technology where platform span from windows, mac, andriod and blackberry. Its vital that developer must take into account the accessibility of web 2.0 in different platform.

Web Application

A good example of software above the level of single device is bookmark.  It allows user to bookmark any website and can be retrieve across different web browser such as Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox which are the popular browser and they are in the process of working with chrome web browser.

Once user install the application in windows or mac operating system, they can register an account and start adding bookmark. User can retrieve bookmark anywhere and any time through different device.

Bookmark application support wide range of device. At this moment, the device supported are

• Iphone
• Andriod
• Blackberry
• Nokia
• Windows
• Mac

User can share their bookmark with friends and have control what to share and other keep confidential to themselves. Finally, this enable user to add bookmark from any device and get their updated bookmark from other platform.

Reference

Bookmark

O’Reilly – What is Web 2.0

Rich Antetype Programming

Rich User Experience

According to O’Reilly, rich user experience is to provide user with a rich graphical user interface application that allow the interaction with the user. This enable communication between the application and its user without any request from other remote source.
Web application

Antetype is a new deisgn appllication that provides rich user experience to programmer to develop a new application user interface for iipad,iphone,mac and windows platform. The software let user to design application interface visually on the fly. The application runs on mac os but can view the user interface in web browser.

Antetype comes with many functionality. One of them are presentation mode whereby the designer can preview the action of the interface being develop and its useful in prototyping. The user can assign event to an action which allows interaction between the user and the application.

Application provide visual design for the programmer.

There are lots of widget in the library that allow drag and drop to provide better user experience.

Web application using rich user experience

In terms of interaction between the designer and the software, there are few function that allows user to do.
while doing the programming, the application itself provide a dynamic action that can suggest the element that the programmer might want to use. This kind of interaction provide user a rich user experience
The application allow programmer to come out with an user interface which provide rich user experience as it allow the programmerto assign event to such as email validation or password length verification to inform user if it meet the requirement. Using rich user experience helps user to go through the process of getting the information right and having the right information to do what they are required and needed.this will not deter user from performing task that they never done before and helps to guide the user to complete the task successfully.

Reference

O’Reilly – What is Web 2.0

Antetype – Prototyping Innovation

Are you seeking Info with SocialSeek?

O’reilly next pattern mention “Innovation in Assembly”. This is where web application utilizes other existing services and integrates them into an effective ways of present the data itself to user. By providing such application, the database are not store but they retrieve critical data from different source and present the data into a format that user can view as informative information.

Web Application

SocialSeek is a new web application that provides its user a one stop web page to find any information from sources such as news, blogs,twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Events from the keywords they enter. Once the user enters the keyword, the SocialSeek search engine will gather all the matching data with the keyword and present them into a webpage in order base on date. The web application allow user to enable or disable any source they might or might not want to see.The web application also had an auto update refresh which allow user to get the most updated information from the source.

Web Application using Innovation in Assembly pattern

From the O’Reilly third pattern, we can see that SocialSeek come out with a web application that doesn’t have any database. They utilize the advance API that retrieve data from multiple sources such as news, blogs, twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Events from the keywords user enter. Then from those data retrieved, SocialSeek will then assemble the information innovatively which allows user to visit and look for key information that they wanted to know but do not want to waste their time looking at multiple web page. The user interface provides smooth and easy to use as well as loading information from multiple sources is fast.

Reference

O’Reilly – What is Web 2.0
SocialSeek

Graspr – e-Learning Collaboration

According to O’Reilly, the second pattern is known as Data is the Next Intel Inside. Every internet application must have an excellent database that is used to provide variety of services to its intended user. Internet application that utilize the data collected through user input allows the company to so call own the data without actually research and putting up all the data into the database.

 

Web Application

Graspr is a very educational website that provides tons of new content that are intended for the public to seek knowledge. Their philosophy: “Sharing the Wealth of Knowledge”. There are videos that are uploaded by registered member who come from different profession to such as Art and Craft, Education, Money and Finance, Parenting, Origami and Woodworking just to name a few. The video uploaded by member are freely available for the public to see and educate themselves. Uploader of the video has their rights to delete the video if they want to do so.

 

User will just need to enter keywords they are interested and the search result will shows a list of video that match the keywords. Sometime when user cannot find the tutorial they are looking for, there is a Q&A section where user will post question and reply by other user. The reply can be in the form for linking to the video they might be looking for or guiding them on the solution.

 

Web Application using Data is the Next Intel Inside pattern

From the O’Reilly second pattern, we can see that Graspr start up with just a web application and utilize user who register as a member and start upload tutorial and educational videos to Graspr database. This allows Graspr to collect data from user and then utilize those data to provide services to the public. On top of this, contents are very professional as videos are uploaded by people who do have expertise in that particular field.

 

Reference

O’Reilly – What is Web 2.0
Graspr – The Instructional Video Network

Do you flook?

Flook is a web 2.0 application that allows the discover interesting places and share with everyone using flook. It’s one of the core patterns which are harnessing collective intelligence. Flook utilize the capability of iPhone GPS n network provider signal to locate GPS position of the current location.

Flook make it simple by categorise into 3F

Find – Find place that are interesting by just go through gallery for location that are near your current location.

Follow – Looking for place that are interested? swipe through the gallery and look for events or anything you are interested.

Flook – If you know whats happening around the city you happen to be now? Flook it and share with everyone!

What flook can do is allow user can take a picture, put some text about the general description or reviews and tag the GPS location and upload it.The next time when other user who like to know interesting place such as restaurant, they can swipe through the gallery to look for recommendation. It becomes personal guide for restaurant.On top of that, user can read reviews and also add their own reviews about the place. Flooks allow use to share flooks via tweeter and most important it’s a free app!

This app is another example of harnessing collective intelligence as it allow. A highly effective way of adding valuable content to flook database.It encourage users to contribute in a productive manner.  This is achieved by creating a system that allow user participation that interacts with other users through explicitly and implicitly.

Involve users Explicitly by allowing user to upload and comment and at the same time enable interaction between user through comment.

Involve Implicitly whereby flook can use different photo gallery user upload to find a pattern of the place user usually go and come up with some marketing strategies with local retailer to promote their product whenever the user are near to those place such as promotion.

Reference
O’Reilly – What is Web 2.0

Flook