I really like Hunch, despite the seemingly endless list of rather nosey questions it asks during sign-up! At Jiva we have quite an interest in the next generation of Q&A sites (both HTH and Specialize IN are very much in this area) and like many web types were interested in what Caterina Fake would do next after leaving Flickr and Yahoo. I particularly like the quote that seems to be following Hunch around; “Yahoo Answers is not the answer”.
2Tor is an interesting startup in that it is targeting working with universities and higher education institutions to supply a full suite of integrated features that offer the ability for the universities to offer distance learning without developing the technology themselves . Raising $10million at the moment is pretty impressive and it’ll be interesting to track the take up of this as more and more universities look diversify their income streams.
Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief at Wired and author of the Long Tail is in Bristol to pimp his new book ‘Free’. Although as it has been remarked by some it is amusing that a talk based on the ‘Free’ model costs £6 :) This should be an interesting talk and certainly a rare occasion to see someone as well regarded in web circles as Anderson in Bristol.
Yesterday (June 2nd) Hitwise released some data about the top 100 student websites in the UK - which makes for quite interesting reading. Now I’m as familiar with the phrase “lies, damned lies, and statistics” as the next man but Hitwise have been very open about their methodology and I reckon these numbers are as trustworthy as any and make for a fun glimpse into what students are looking at.
There are few shocks at the top of the charts, all the perennial favourites are well represented; Google, Facebook, the BBC, Wikipedia and Microsoft all appear near the top. Yahoo and Myspace just about hang on in there in the Top 20 and eBay seems high at 14 (I thought my mum was the last user!)
Bebo is down at 34 which kind of blows away some of my preconceptions about Bebo users - are they not even at uni yet? Or do the swap to Facebook at the point?
Sky Sports is a very respectable 18, the first non-Beeb mainstream media showing. Personally I would choose BBC Sport over the Sky Sports site every day but I know from experience with sports (read football) mad friends that Sky is their first port of call.
Pleased to see Google Maps as the top mapping application with students; Streetmap and Mapquest seem to continue to reign in more general lists and the sooner they die off the better in my opinion.
Twitter has a surprisingly high entry at 22 - I have recently started to see a younger demographic entering Twitter but this suggests its staring to really gain momentum; maybe it was a Stephen Fry induced blip though.
There were seven sites in the list that I had never come across before;
- Surf the Channel - appears to be a listing site for various sites that stream TV and movies
- MegaVideo - looks like YouTube with less videos but also less worries about copyright!
- ASOS - some kind of online clothes retailer
- SideReel - a TV show based community, a little like Television Without Pity but with less snark
- SuperNova Tube - same as MegaVideo I think
- Tudou - I’m guessing its a Japanese video site
- Nasza Klasa - which I guess is some kind of Polish social network?
All the banks are well represented as are many newspaper websites, with the Guardian at the top. Whether this is good news for the ‘papers or not is a different question as judging by my times on uni campuses very few newspapers are sold to anyone but the staff so the students are getting used to news for free online.
The only real blog in the top 100 is Perez Hilton but I guess at this point that is more of an entertainment brand and it has long moved past its blogger roots. Blogger.com is on the list but no sign of Wordpress or Typepad.
As for anything study focused on the list? Well obviously Wikipedia and Google itself then Google Booksearch is at 40 and Google Scholar is at 63 along with a couple of dictionary style sites. That is about it.
A fun list and perhaps something that could have fed into the ‘HE in a Web 2.0 World Report‘ a couple of weeks ago.
Like about 90% of geeks on the planet I’ve been pretty caught up in the Google Wave hype this week and even now several days later I can’t really find any reason to not be impressed. Well apart from my obvious distaste for the applause hungry manner in which the demo was presented but I’m pretty sure most people this side of the Atlantic found that as irritating as me and a combination of American and Aussie attitudes was never going to lead to a modest launch.
I’m not going to spend alot of time going into deep detail on what I think about it but I love the way it handles images, the fact that it is open source is great news and the ease with which widgets can be added is amazing. I think Pete might write a more technical response at some point but for now I’ll just point to some of the best blog posts etc I’ve read on the subject over the last couple of days;
Not surprisingly the place to start is at Google itself - now the video is a long one. 1 hour and 20 minutes and I did my share of cringing during it but its well worth watching - shorter videos from Google focusing on individual elements of Wave are starting to emerge so it is worth keeping an eye out for them.
Tim O’Reilly has a typically thoughtful piece on the Radar blog - which is a great summary from someone who has obviously given alot of thought to the issues Wave seeks to resolve.
Nick Gall writes an interesting and short piece - with a huge URL - which focuses on how Wave represents another ‘web paragim shift’ towards a HTML5/XMPP driven web.
Cameron Neylon writes an interesting take on Wave as he comes at it from what he hopes it will mean to his work as a scientist and researcher. Its particularly nice to hear from someone immediately drawing parallels to their own work rather than just being dazzled by the shiny new toy.
Ryan Carson has done a nice write up on Think Vitamin that covers some of the main elements that he thinks will “change your business, career and life” - Ryan is a tad prone to hyperbole especially with the title but its a well written piece and he knows his stuff so well worth a read.
There are obviously hundreds of other blogs and traditional news sources covering Wave and these just represent a fraction of what is out these (Read Write Web in particular have great coverage).
Another presentation that has been around for a while but I have only just discovered (thanks to Dave Briggs) is Putting the Fun in Functional by Amy Jo Kim which I have found really interesting and useful.
I’m not a gamer in any shape or form, never really liked them, although I did enjoy elements of the Wii and have fond memories of Paperboy from way back when. That said I recognize the human behavior outlined in the ‘Game Mechanics’ of the presentation; 1) Collecting 2) Points and Levels 3) Feedback 4) Exchanges and 5) Customization. In fact I’m pretty guilty of all of them - especially Collecting for my sins (and my bank balances pain).
It has been an interesting experiment going back to look at the features of both Specializein and HTH in light of the concepts here and see how we have done. We do a pretty good job on embedding both the ideas of Points/Levels and Exchanges into the apps. In fact its not hard to argue that those elements are the foundation of what we have built. We are also building in some elements of Feedback as it seems to be defined within this presentation. This isn’t fully developed yet and could certainly do with a little more thought and evolution over time but it is not a bad start. Collecting and Customization have no parallels within either application at the moment nor in the product roadmap. Does this matter I find myself wondering. I’m loathe to add anymore features at the moment and while I can see a way of adding an element of Customization it isn’t really a road I want to travel down so I’m going to assume 3 out of 5 ain’t bad (in fact it is almost as good as Meatloaf!)
[photo is Creative Commons and was my favorite result for 'mechanics' from Compfight.com in case you were wondering]
