Digsby is a new multi-network IM (AIM, ICQ, WLM, Jabber, GTalk, Yahoo) that also integrates your email and social network accounts on Facebook and Myspace. It’s in private beta, but this site has screenshots, initial impressions, and invites.
Tag: Yahoo
Yahoo! Acquires WebJay (and a KM digression)
O’reilly Radar reports that Yahoo! has made another acquisition in their drive to transform the company’s web properties into a Web 2.0 über-community. This time it’s the music playlist community Webjay created by Lucas Gonze.
Yahoo! seems determined to be a player in the Web 2.0 world, and they just might succeed.
I often hear people talking about how Yahoo! is buying up Web2.0, but i don’t think it’s just that. It’s not only about tagging, social bookmarking, sharing, etc. It’s about rethinking the innovation process when handling social technologies. Take a look at some of the characters recently hired/acquired – Caterina Fake, Stewart Butterfield, Joshua Schachter, Andy Baio, Cameron Marlow, Chad Dickerson, Tom Coates… These aren’t even your typical Web2.0 crowd – these are creatives with attitude who have no problem telling corporate what they think and pushing for changes that they feel are essential.
What is the glue that holds all these many seemingly disjointed pieces together (Flickr, del.icio.us, Webjay, etc.)? The people, first of all. People with innovative ideas and the drive to express them. What about from the perspective of the community member? Well, there’s authentication, something that Yahoo! can help unify. There’s commenting and discussion. And there is tagging.
A KM Digression
I had a conversation last week with Darryl, Randy and Kevin about tagging. Not the folksonomy-style tagging familiar in the Web 2.0 world, but old-school taxonomy. Specifically, how much emphasis structured taxonomy (i.e. tagging with a predefined vocabulary) should have in an enterprise knowledge management environment, and whether there is a place for folksonomy in such an environment.
People clearly “get” the value of tagging. As they use web sites like Flickr, del.icio.us and Last.fm, they see firsthand how tags add value on both a personal and a community level. The debate is whether free-form tagging can apply inside the corporate firewall. I believe there’s a place for both. Structured tagging (taxonomy via vocabulary) by knowledge managers; folksonomy tagging by everyone else. Imagine being able to see three levels of tag clouds: enterprise, community, and personal. At a glance you would see what matters most at each level. Color coding could make it more revealing. Corporate tags (vocabulary) gets green; community tags get grey; personal tags get blue.
Are you with me?
Yahoo Maps Leapfrogs Google
I’ve been a big fan of Google Maps ever since it’s public release. The graphics are great. The ability to pan is cool. The API makes for some really neat mashups. Yes, Google Maps are fabulous, but the beta of Yahoo Maps is better.
If you’ve used Yahoo Maps before, the “old” service is still the default, but the beta is open and available to anyone.
Why do I like the new Yahoo Maps?
The Yahoo Maps beta is a lot like Google Maps. The map graphics have the same quality. You can click-and-drag to dynamically pan. Both Google and Yahoo have published APIs for extending their map services through mashups. Zooming is actually a bit cooler on Yahoo — with an animated zoom effect.
But there are three things that really set the Yahoo Maps beta apart from Google Maps.
- Birdseye View – After using CAD programs like AutoCAD and Microstation for many years, I’ve grown accustomed to the birdseye “finder” that gives you a small thumbnail view of the larger area, with the current view highlighted. Yahoo has done a very nice job of porting this functionality (very appropriately) to their maps. You can scroll by the old click-and-drag panning, or by clicking and dragging the highlighted area withing the birdseye window. Sweet.
- Find on Map – Google lets you search for local businesses and locates them on the map, but Yahoo adds commonly used categories for drill-down navigation as an option to free-form search. A nice touch, since not everyone is comfortable with search (as I’m constantly reminded in my KM work).
- Real-time Traffic Data – The real-time traffic data is the icing on the cake. Living and working in Southern California, avoiding traffic is an important part of my life. Sure, there are other websites that provide traffic data, but none of them are as slick and easy-to-use as the Yahoo Maps beta.
Now this beta is really a true beta… it’s not quite ready for prime time. It loads slowly, and is sometimes finicky (as true beta software often is). But it’s reliable enough that I now prefer to use it over Google Maps.
Check it out: Yahoo! Maps Beta