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This New York Times article describes a software project called Viewfinder. The goal is to help Internet users post pictures of buildings and landmarks directly into an application like Google Maps, or into a web mashup application. I discussed mashups in two billso.com articles in 2007:

• 12 February 2008: More web mashups
• 8 February 2008: Web mashups

The usability issues in mashup design can be tricky, as programmers are taking data and applications that might be related but aren’t directly compatible. An app like Viewfinder has to deal with location data, the map images, the user’s image, and a variety of visual issues including perspective and orientation.

See the official web site at the University of Southern California for more details. Here’s a video demo from the site.

In this post on his blog, Kevin Kelly discusses how the Internet is a massive copying machine. This is a major reason that digital rights management (DRM) does not protect business models very well.

The music and movie industries have focused on protecting content and managing copying, instead of building and offering value that is difficult or hard to copy. U2’s manager recently attacked ISPs, search engines and other companies for aiding and abetting music and video file sharing on the Internet. (CBC).

Kelly, on the other hand, proposes a network economy where sharing and abundance are key success factors that every content publisher must satisfy. He also identifies 8 key success factors that spur customers to buy instead of copy.

It’s difficult to copy reputation and trust, but it’s rather easy to offer or measure these attributes. Just look at eBay.

Reputation and trust are relevant in education. Jason Schultz published links to several YouTube videos of students demonstrating how to cheat in school. BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow discussed his own experiences with cheating when he linked to Schultz’s post.

Schools offer interpretation, which is another form of value that is difficult to copy. Grading, evaluation, advising are good examples of content that is very difficult to copy. These also have elements of personalization, which help increase their value.

Patronage is another factor. Some users want to pay for content, even if it can be downloaded free of charge.  Physical forms that cannot be downloaded through the Internet can also make content more valuable – cover art and booklets are examples in the music industry.

Convenience is also an important value generator. Immediate access to content may be more important to some users than eventually finding free access through peer-to-peer networks or file sharing. Metadata, XML and web services are some of the tools that small and independent publishers use to sell their content.

Blogs are also part of the value system that is created as multiple value chains link together from end to end. BoingBoing is a good example – that blog has several editors who promote their solo media projects through the web site. I discovered Kelly’s article on a BoingBoing post, as a matter of fact.

Microsoft Office has huge market share – an estimated half a billion users, according to this interview with Microsoft manager Betsy Frost.

But it’s difficult to compete with free applications offered by well established Web software-as-a-service providers. Today, Google announced its web-based slide show application. This wasn’t a surprise. I mentioned Google’s office apps on 19 April and 23 February. These web-based apps don’t have all the features of Microsoft software, and Google doesn’t support third-party plugins. Plugins are software that hooks in to Microsoft Office applications to provide additional features.

When does free beat market share?

But web-based apps do allow users to share documents online, instead of emailing versions of documents. There are security concerns, of course. Google’s applications are tied into the company’s single signon (SSO) authentication system. Google does offer corporate and educational versions of these services, but storage is centralized in Google’s massive data network. Google isn’t offering a database product, but one could argue that the entire Google office suite is really a vast database full of XML-formatted documents and messages. Corporate customers pay Google US$50 per seat each year for the web-based office applications and email. I haven’t seen how Google controls document sharing on academic networks, either.

Web-based office software is becoming a key success factor for the largest Internet search sites. Email, calendar and address book applications are a logical offering. In most industries, companies must use email, but it’s often cheaper to let someone else run the servers. According to the New York Times, Yahoo just purchased Zimbra, a developer of web-based email services. Zimbra’s annual pricing is reasonable: $28 per seat for corporate customers. Universities pay $1 per student account, and $8 per employee account. At those prices, more universities are outsourcing their email systems. I discussed Google’s academic email services on 11 April. Of course, Yahoo is the dominant webmail provider with 181 million unique visitors each month. Google has only 18 million.

The New York Times reported today that IBM will launch its own downloadable version of Sun’s open source office suite. Users still have to install the IBM applications, so the versioning problem still exists.

But IBM is offering its software for free. Oddly enough, IBM resurrected the Lotus Symphony brand for this product. Of course, IBM is offering technical support for corporate users, but not for free.

HELP PAGES AND TOPICS

• About Bill Sodeman and billso.com
• Academic honesty
• APA formatting and style
• Article titles
• Categories for articles and pages
• Comments about articles and pages on this blog
• Courses that I teach at Hawaii Pacific University
• Finding references for papers and assignments
• Mobile support for PDAs, smartphones, mobile phones, iPhones and iPods
• Privacy
• RSS feeds that readers can use to receive new posts automatically in a feedreader or email application
• Tags displayed in a cloud, with links to archive pages for each tag.

SITE NAVIGATION

If you have a suggestion for a new service, email me.

The menu at the top of the site has links to several landing pages and features.

Almost every page, post and article on this blog is available through several landing pages:

• site search – available at the top of the right sidebar, along with a Google search field.
• sitemap – a list of every page and the most recent articles on the site, along with a list of monthly archives.
• direct access through URLs - students do not need to log into Campus Pipeline to access this blog.
• lists of related posts or articles, appearing on some articles and pages.

I use the terms “posts” and “articles” interchangeably – they mean the same thing. These pages are linked to specific dates on the site calendar, and they’ll appear on the home page, as well as the daily, monthly and annual archive pages.

I also maintain dedicated pages for my courses and specific topics. Pages are not linked to a specific date, but they do display the most recent date they were edited.

USABILITY

I’ve added print-friendly links on the pages and articles. The print-friendly links had been removed on 5 April 2008 because of a software bug. (Added 16 May 2008)

Mobile and PDA users are automatically directed to a specially formatted version of the site at m.billso.com. Our server detects and supports most mobile web browsers. (added March 2007, updated February 2008)

There’s a calendar on most pages of this site. Links display the posts for specific days. I also list assignment due dates on the calendar for my courses.

Our favicon appears in the address bar of most web browsers. This is a miniature version of the mighty billso logo. Look for this icon in your bookmarks, favorites, newsreader and address bar.

BILLSO.COM FEATURES THAT HAVE BEEN DEPRECATED OR REMOVED

I was using reCAPTCHA as a spam deterrent in the comments boxes. I added the feature on 6 June 2007, and disabled it on 5 May 2008.

I used to repost my articles on Facebook but I stopped that service in Janaury 2008, because Facebook doesn’t provide efficient tools for managing comments on its site.

Our custom button allows users to search the entire site within the Google Toolbar. Free software required. Supports Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows and the Mac. (added 6 June 2007)

My IS 6100 students continue work on their Paper 3 assignments. I’ve found an article in Wired that describes how Web 2.0 services are coming to library research.

Web 2.0 is the general name for services like RSS, Ajax and others that extend the traditional web server-client relationship. Learning 2.0 is a site that explores how users can become lifelong learners, by using companion sites like like 23 Things.

Graduate students learn how to learn. The MBA degree is one way to develop lifelong learning skills that are suitable for organizations. MSIS students also learn how to develop organizational, managerial and technical skills throughout their careers.