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A quick search around the web and you’d think Google’s Application Engine announcement was Google taking aim at Amazon’s Web Services. While there maybe some cross-over, for the most part I don’t believe Google is taking aim at Amazon, but Facebook’s f8. I’d also like to point out that amongst all the news everyone seemed to forget about Microsoft’s SSDS, while not an application engine yet is a large part of the offering. Also missing are the startups, e.g. Zoho creator.

So, from the top…

Your phone is your social network.

If you don’t believe this in my opinion you’re mad, bonkers, a fruit cake. I carry my social network, my contacts, my friends in my pocket. I have access to them via voice, text/sms, and email from my iPhone. I had the same access on my Nokia N73 before that. Blackberrys do it, Skype does it, everyone does it. I’ll assume you do as well.

Enter Jaiku. For those that don’t know, Jaiku was acquired by Google on October 9th 2007, many people talk about Jaiku as a competitor to Twitter, Joi Ito described it as a ‘bunch of Helsinki mobile jocks getting into the Web 2.0 of it all whereas Twitter is the Web 2.0 crowd “getting” co-presence.’. The Jaiku vs Twitter discussion is for another time, but of relevance here is Jaiku’s J2ME client. Even while it was a battery sucking beast it proved it’s worth, it linked the online-ness of Jaiku into you phone contacts, synchronized and kept you updated.

p.s. this thinking makes all the ‘Sign into your Gmail/Facebook/Twitter to get contacts’ some what redundant, but we’ll wait for everyone to catch up. (oh, if you’re a J2ME guy/gal with time and are interested in that, ring me…)

The mobile platform, Android.

If the phone is your social network, what are companies doing? Well, the long and short of it is, not much. Sure, Facebook has possibly the best iPhone application in the market, and a mobile friendly version, however it’s not enough (and if you know of a mobile social network with traction please let me know). Contacts integration? Application platform? Oh, wait, yes, Android. I’ve not looked at Android, but I’m pretty sure it’ll allow contacts integration. Jaiku is moving to Google Application Engine, what about the mobile application? It’d make perfect sense to move it to Android as well.

… a summary in my theory so far…

• Contacts, integration of the new[er] thinking of ‘your phone is your social network’ with the worlds current thinking of ‘your mail client is your social network’. CHECK
• Data portability, see Contacts Data API. CHECK
• Mobile application platform, Android. CHECK
• Web application platform, Google Application Engine. CHECK
• Mobile & Web application platforms that are open as a platform and ecosystem, while solving a number of issues for entrepreneurs making adoption an easy process. CHECK
• A great demo application to show it all off, Jaiku. CHECK

Voila, an open application platform with more features than Facebook and I believe Google has more users then Facebook. I’ve not touched on OpenSocial, however isn’t this just Google taking a step back from OpenSocial and aiming for the bigger picture? e.g. Google Application Engine powers OpenSocial applications, that distribute onto all social networks.

p.s. no disrespect to Jyri Engeström and the Jaiku folks, Jaiku’s much, much more then a demo application.

The knowledge worker

Knowledge worker, a term coined by writer Peter Drucker in the late 50’s and related thinking summarized basically is: hire the top-notch, smartest, most efficient people you can find… put them together, and let rip. Good things will come.

I am a believer of the knowledge worker model and to quote my own Twitter, “API’s basically allow for the Knowledge Worker pattern to exist outside your business, while on-topic to your business”, so what does that mean for Google? They’re in the business of among other things, web applications, they’re opening their internals to the world via API allowing the world to build on-topic applications to their business (changing their famous 70/20/10 to 70/20/10/100). The proof in that is the launch of OpenID provider, built on Google Application Engine, in under 24 hours development.

Leaving notes

Many questions are unanswered, at least from an outsiders point of view. I’m sure I’ll post observations as and when, probably on Twitter. But, for now I’ll be thinking about:

• What does this mean for us? Among other things, that the first Google acquisition that runs on their Application Engine will be a notable event.
• How will Google Application Engine and Android integrate? Will they?
• Google Gears is mobile, no talk about integration yet. Maybe a Google Gears SQLite to GQL synchronization?
• Google Checkout integration. It’ll happen, follow the money…
• The google.appengine.api.urlfetch inside Application Engine fetchs URL’s, a long shot, but they could pump those straight into their Googlebot. Another way to boost their main business?
• Yahoo is embracing the Semantic Web, is this an attack on Yahoo? They’ll be a lot of semantic data in GQL. Mix that with Google Base.
• How’s users data ownership/privacy going to work across the board on this?

Please leave me your thoughts.

My good friend Ben told me about his workshop for non-geeks on Friday while at the weekly coworking. I think it is a fantastic idea, and if you know someone in the area that would benefit from an introduction to any of the following, let them know:

• How the web is changing
• Social Bookmarking
• Feeds (RSS)
• Blogging
• Collaboration
• Shared Calendars

I’ve worked with Ben in the past, and known him for nearly 10 years (… really that long already Ben?). I’ve been following him on Seesmic recently, much to my enjoyment, because he’s a thinker, and in-turn continually makes me think. I’m sure he can get your non-geeky friends thinking about what social media can do for them.

Sign up over at the Upcoming event, or check out Sussex Digital for more Brighton events.

MyBlogLog (acquired for $10m about a year ago by Yahoo!) is a nice idea. You include a small line of code on your site & it displays who your readers are. I won’t go into the stats you can collect from from doing something like that, but needless to say you can get a lot of information. It’s valuable information as well.

To your website visitors it provides social proof; that they are in the right place, that your content is worth reading, that their friends read your site. For you it provides reputation by association. But, it’s a lie.

• Visiting a site doesn’t make me a reader
• I don’t consider myself to be associated to someone because I read their blog
• By visiting a site, I don’t endorse it, or it’s content.

It’s not social proof, but it’s cleverly disguised as social proof. What’s more, I think people trust it as social proof.

p.s. screenshot of MyBlogLog’s widget nicked from Will McInnes’s blog. Few familiar faces in there; Nic Brisbourne, Ivan Pope to name a few. See, social proof?

p.p.s. with people moving from visiting sites to feed readers how valuable is it really? Google saw that, and with Google Reader & Feedburner need I say more…

p.p.p.s. without manually removing cookies from your browser there is no way to stop it tracking you (logging out won’t work)

What does it do? Gets your friends 3 most recent public photos from Flickr in a mobile friendly page.

How did it come about? Josh and I have recently been discussing doing a few really quick, small but useful web applications. I commented on Seth Levine’s blog post Twittering Away which lead to an email discussion. I asked for his thoughts on Radar and later mentioned I’d been thinking about doing something much more basic, but similar with Flickr, as that’s where my data is. Then I found an hour to hack it together.

It was done very quickly so it’s not without problems (consider it beta), but is a good proof of concept, and I’m enjoying using it. Point your mobile’s browser to http://prototypes.builtbydave.co.uk/f3 to follow your friends photos where ever you are.

It’s all become a bit a little complex!

A month or two back, I bit the bullet and decided to join all the social networks I found with at least another friend on. Previously I’d ignored MySpace, Facebook, and the rest of them and dedicated my time to the one I still enjoy most, Twitter. I join them all as a bit of an experiment, looking to learn and analyze how people interact online more. I’m left wondering a few things:

• Why has my usage of smilies has gone through the roof
• Social networks allow you to add “friends”, however, some people have tried to add me that I don’t consider a friend (I’m not a person full of hate, but that person you knew from 10 years ago that you really didn’t care about then, and don’t want to stay in contact with…), I’m interested in how people respond to a “denied friend request”, Facebook allows you to show limited profiles, maybe that’s a nice way of saying “I don’t like you much”.
• Most of my female friends that are online work in marketing, why is that?

My main problem now is I have friends all over the place, both online and offline. Some of these have my address/phone/im, others don’t, some are on Twitter and Facebook, but not on MySpace. To combat this I’ve got a filter in gmail that moves all emails from social networks to a different label so I can try and see everything in one place (also, I can see out of my friends what gets used more).

Thing is, my email has become voicemail. I login and see that Katy has messaged me back on Facebook (go and check that then, reply), and that Tom added me on Twitter (go and add him back), nothing from MySpace but, they don’t seem to email me (check that as I’m doing the rounds) and Rosie sent a message to everyone (read that, reply). Radar told me Pete and Josh have been adding photos on Radar (have a quick look). Then I’ve got Flickr telling me about my friends photos in Google Reader, and a similar setup with del.icio.us. Then I walk out the house, and my mobile gives me updates from Jaiku, and Twitter is my browser homepage on my N73 as well.

I love being connected, but seriously, this has to change?! If anything, just because it’s a drain on productivity - every time I check my email I’m on 10 sites doing ‘admin work’ on my ‘online social life’. And, when I want to ring Sam, he’s on my Twitter but I don’t have his number. And then there’s Skype, AIM/MSN/Yahoo/Gtalk/etc, I’ve not even got onto email yet (sorry if I’ve not replied yet). And, really, I much prefer speaking to someone.

Rant over