Clearspring got some great coverage today from SiliconAngle. Â I definitely love the coverage they gave us on the new analytics release the team did at the end of the year. Â By empowering both publishers and services to see how their audiences are interacting with their content the web can become a smarter place.
At peak AIM MusicLink had nearly 10M sessions per month on the AIM Windows client. Â I am confident to say it was the most successful AIM plugin of all time. Â Looking at the latest data, there are still a lot of people who are still using the plugin, for which I am thankful. Â It was the community that drove me to make this plugin, and it was the feedback from my old blog that helped drive features.
Looking at the analytics from this blog, it is clear that people are still looking for info on AIM MusicLink. Â So what happened to the plugin? Â In the middle of 2009, when I was working on AIM, it was decided that we stop supporting plugins in the Windows client. Â There were a variety of reasons for removing the support, but as soon as we did I stopped working on the plugin.
So what started out as a test for OpenAIM 1.0 in the JAMS plugin package, became a real user favorite. Â I even got a designer to give me a fancy icon for the plugin see at the top of the post. Â Before there was last.fm, Pandora, Ping and music scrobbling, there was MusicLink. Â Hopefully it made the experience of sharing music with friends a little bit more interesting.
You can still download the latest AIM MusicLink plugin here.
I really applaud Google for pushing all their chips into the center of the table on ON2 VP8 (otherwise known as the CODEC that powers WebM) rather than continue to support H.264 in Google Chrome. Â I know a lot of those in the tech community think Google is crazy to do this. Â However, when you stop to consider the cabal that the patent holders of H.264 have enjoyed, it was time someone stepped in to break it up.
The move does not come without risks. Â One of the main reasons H.264 was adopted as the standard was, believe it or not, the porn industry. Â As soon as Adobe added H.264 decoding in its Flash Media Player 9, video could be consumed at a super high quality and done so cheaply.
In the last 12 months Google has purchased ON2 technologies to compete on the CODEC front and Global IP Solutions (GIPS) for video and audio processing. Â Wiring this all up Google can offer real time peer-to-peer audio video sessions to go up against Skype and Apple in the space. Â We have to assume that Google has crunched numbers and that using ON2 plus HTML5 is cheaper to serve video up as well.
As I mentioned late in December with the Skype outage, the battle ground is shaping up quickly between Google, Apple, Skype, and to a degree Microsoft and Mozilla with their browsers. Â With H.264 going royalty free until 2015, in the end the user wins as more HD video is available on the internet, unless you are still using Chatroulette, because no one wants to see that in HD.
Courtesy: (Chris Hondros / Getty Images)
The long awaited announcement today of the iPhone being available on Verizon brought great relief to sufferers of AT&Ts sputtering network. Â But there is a catch, isn’t there always a catch?
At least initially the iPhone will only be available for Verizon’s CDMA spectrum and not the next generation LTE spectrum (Verizon 4G). Â As soon as I heard this, it reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend who works at Apple on the iPhone back in the fall. Â That person mentioned what a pain it was to work with Verizon’s CDMA network as the user experience was different than the current iPhone.
Why is that you may ask? Â Well with Verizon’s CDMA network, iPhone will only be able to do either a phone call or data but not both at the same time. Â Also, if you are an international traveler, your iPhone is a paper weight overseas.
It is not all bad news. Â The most important part of the announcement today is that we have a choice in networks. Â Choice hopefully will result in better quality networks and potentially pricing. Â Even though I will not be switching, enough people will that hopefully my experience on AT&T will improve.
The key for people wanting to buy the iPhone on Verizon is patience. Â As Verizon fully rolls out LTE, the safe assumption is that Apple will build an iPhone with an LTE chip in it. Â Apple and Verizon’s immediate goal is to get the earliest adopters to buy in, and then 3 or 4 months from now when the next generation of iPhone is released, those users pay a premium to upgrade. Â At least that is my prediction.
If you read any of the usual suspect tech blogs, everyone jumped on the Quora bandwagon at the end of the year. Â For the uninitiated, Quora is a website where the community can ask and answer questions. Â The founders are former early Facebook employees, and the idea behind the site is that the answers to questions will continue to get better over time as more people use the product and answer questions.
The product which launched a year ago has mainly been used by early adopters in the technology crowd. Â The questions that have been asked are, for the most part, well written, and get into technology issues.
As more people join Quora the question quality will not remain as high as it has been. Â As a result Charlie Cheever, one of the founders, took to the Quora blog to explain the commitment to keeping Quora high quality. Â Now before being able to ask a question, users will be prompted with a quiz before they can proceed. Â The quiz confirms that the user can answer a question about the format of question that Quora is looking for.
The challenge is that mainstream users are not always going to do what you want them to do. Â If my Mom is ever going to use Quora, she may ask a question like, “How many cords need to be plugged into my computer for it to work?” Â Questions will become less interesting over time, and potentially less intelligent. Â Keeping Quora high quality is antithetical to having more mainstream users ask questions.
I spent time with the Mac App Store this weekend, and right away I found myself downloading apps (both paid and free). Â Apple has re-created the platform that taught everyone it was easy to single click to buy music, then movies and TVs, and now applications.
Apple is smart in lowering the prices on apps like Aperture, obviously they will sell more since users are conditioned to click the buy app button, then go on the Apple store website and purchase the boxed version of the application.
The store is going to re-invigorate the OS platform for Apple and not because I can play Angry Birds on my 27 inch iMac. Â Games which may have only been popular on gaming consoles like XBox or iPhone now can be played on the Mac, and soon I am guessing on Apple TV. Â I can’t wait to get the latest EA Sports’ Madden Football game on the Mac or Apple TV.
The fact that the store had 1 million downloads in the first day according to Apple, shows that Mac owners are more than willing to re-purchase apps that they already downloaded once for their iPhone. Â Does this buying behavior really surprise anyone?
Over the past few weeks I have gotten a couple of new computers. Â I have an iMac at home, and at Clearspring I have a MacBookPro and the set up for the machines could not have been easier. Â Years ago when I would get a new Windows machine and when I was writing AIM Windows or the core cross platform IM library, the level of pain to get the machine set up was unbearable.
The biggest change, beyond not having to install all the developer tools like Visual Studio and corporate tools like Microsoft Office, is that most of my tools are via the browser. Â Now before this sounds like a complete infomercial for Google Chrome, know that this is more of a thank you note to the Chrome team. Â Installing Chrome on each new machine all of my bookmarks and plugins easily synced. Â Total set up time, 15 minutes…
While Xmarks and other tools could have solved this issue with Firefox and other browsers, it was painfree with Chrome. Â Let’s not even get started with IE, which at both AOL and Clearspring we still see users with IE6. Â In the case of Safari, one would think Apple could make this work via MobileMe, but how many people want to pay money each year for a feature that Google gives away free.
I guess the holiday vacation gave a lot of people time to examine search results they were seeing from Google. Â More and more has been written about Google’s search quality and the fact that spam is appearing in search results more often. Â I don’t pretend to know the algorithm that powers Google search results, but the basic rule of thumb is data in and data out. Â The more data you put in, the better the data you would get out, or so you would assume.
That brings me to local. Â Location, when available, should always be used to help with the data that goes into search. Â I am most intrigued by Google’s Near Field Communication (NFC) test going on in Portland, Oregon. Â The idea behind this test is that you can go to a business, hold your phone up to the sticker in the window, and get reviews on the business.
Google is taking location so seriously that Marissa Mayer is now in charge of their local strategy. Â The key is realizing that location and proximity are not the same thing. Â The use case Google is giving for their NFC test is not so valid to me. Â I usually search for a restaurant review or business review before I leave my house, but a use case that may be interesting is to know what has happened at a given location via rich media (photos, videos) or if the business is a previous Groupon participant.
Location is a huge component to the data in for search. Â It is used today on the iPhone as well as Android to help find places nearby. Â It can be used for things other than places however. Â Location can help find results based on what others in your area are clicking on as well. Â Can local solve spam in search? Â Definitely not, but it can be part of the data in that makes search results more relevant.
Last week Skype released their latest iPhone app that supports video calling. Â Color me impressed. Â I tested it out on my iPhone 3GS (I had to give up my iPhone 4 when I left AOL). Â 2011 is definitely shaping up to be the year that the battle over video goes to another level. Â If Apple and Google both plan on opening up their own technologies for 3rd parties as well as innovate on their own products, the battle between Skype, Apple and Google should be a great one to watch.
In my experience with Skype’s latest release, video calling from the iPhone to another iPhone over 3G is really pixelated and choppy, but still usable at least in suburban Washington DC. Â When I tried Skype over WiFi from my iPhone to a computer at home it was terrific. Â The image below shows the quality from my iMac and my iPhone. Â The Butterfinger package is not pixelated and it looks as clear as the stream from my desktop.
One thing Skype took great care in handling is keeping the call connected even when using other apps on the phone. Â The advantage Skype has over Facetime is that it is a full fledge communication application. Â If I want to send an IM to my contact, or search for someone I can do that easily. Â It will be interesting to see how Apple responds to Skype’s release.
One of my favorite shows of all time was The West Wing. Â Martin Sheen played President Bartlett and one of his catch phrases was asking his staff, “What’s next?” when he was ready to move on from the current topic.
As I start 2011, I decided to move on from my job as the technical lead for AIM and AOL Lifestream, and I am ready for “what’s next.”  Back in November, I reconnected with a friend of mine who works at Clearspring.  He asked me if I wanted to come by and see what was happening at Clearspring.
Well one thing lead to another, and I am super excited to join the team at Clearspring as their director of product for AddThis. Â I am really looking forward to working with the team at Clearspring, lead by Hooman Radfar. Â AddThis currently has 1 billion monthly unique users and is used by 7.2 million publishers. Â Right before Christmas the team did a great job on releasing a set of analytic tools for publishers.
I can’t wait for what’s next at Clearspring and working with the team at delivering great experiences to both users and the publishers.
