Bitcasa is a new startup that positions itself as an ‘Infinite Storage on Your Desktop’. I saw their demo, and backstage interview with Jason Kincaid at this weeks TC Disrupt conference. Most of the judges seem to compare them with Dropbox. However, the founder/CEO Tony Gauda say’s they are not like Dropbox but instead a user’s hardrive in the cloud.

I am yet to try their product, but based on the backstage interview it seems to me that Bitcasa is an extension of Dropbox without the contents of the data in your local machine(s) Dropbox Folder.

Dropbox Model
———————-  

-  The actual file is stored in the local machine and an exact copy in the Cloud.
-  You always request a file from the local computer(s) (unless you use the Web Client).
-  All changes you make are in the local copy of the file. These changes are ‘synced’ to the copy
   in the cloud. 

Bitcasa Model
———————

 - The actual file is NOT stored in the local machine. The reference to a file is stored in
 the local machine. [A 'hash' as Tony metions]
 - When you request a file from the local machine, Bitcasa is actually making a request to it’s  Cloud(BitCasa) and gets the file back that matches the hash. [If not already present  in the local cache based on past user behavior]
- All changes you make are stored in the cloud. There is no local copy except for cached data
to stream data faster to your computer(s).

The problems I see with the Bitcasa model are the latency issues of getting the data to my local machine. It might work perfect for me living in Silicon Valley with a decent high speed internet connection. However, if I am in some remote town with a dialup or slow internet connection, I will most likely have issues trying to access my own data. In the Dropbox model, I at least have access to the latest data before I venture into a no-internet zone.

I was lucky enough to have acess to Google+ during the first few days of launch. I played with it for a while and was able to see some similarities and differences between the services.

What I like about Google+ ?

• Design: The interface for Google+ seems very clean and intuitive for most of the simple tasks.

• Huddle: This seemed like a feature that I could see myself using. It’s fairly normal for most people to send a group text for a random last minute outing, but the replies are adressed only to the initial sender. This solves the problem that all the conversation is visible to everyone added to the huddle.

What I like about Facebook+ ?

• Closed Network: I have been using facebook since the fall of 2004 while I was doing my undergraduate degree. It was a nice and simple service that was public only to my own college network. Firstly, every friend on my account was someone I had personally met at least once. Secondly, every non-friend’s profile I was browsing was someone who already was going to my college and the probablity of meeting them was higher than using any of the existingg services of the time like frendster, hi5, where you could add people from half way across the world and have no clue if they are real or not.

• Being myself: Since everyone in my network is(or was ) in my age group that I hung out during classes, libraries, or in the evenings, I am more comfortable talking about anything or being just plain silly. This was a true migration of the offline activity to the online world(read facebook wall) since it was just pure fun. This activity extended to “status messages”, “photos” as and as they were introduced with time.

What I dont like about either services today ?

• Public Network: Facebook had to eventually open up it gates due to it’s viral growth (and make money) to the general public. This meant anyone/everyone could have a facebook account and add you as a friend. Now, you had this new problem of deciding if you wanted to accept the friend request or not and then accordingly start curbing your “Being myself” behavior.

• Circles/FriendLists/Groups: Facebook came out with filters by placing friends into lists and having the option to create groups. And Google came out with the concept of Circles, which is basiclaly friend lists and groups repackaged in a nice and easy to use UI. It does solve the problem of segregating people from seeing private posts, but then it creates a new problem of having to mentally sort out content and deciding if/which posts should which set of friends see it.

• Circles (Google Specific): It’s been roughly 2 weeks since the service lauched and every other day I get an email saying “So and so” has added you to their Circle. Many of these are from people whom I had an email exchange or met them, but don really want to add them into my network. If I don’t add them, they will figure this out since they never got an email saying “I have added them to m circle” and/or find out from my profile. If I do, I need to create a new circle (again more work) for such people and start being careful what I share with whom. As of today, I do have grouped people into different circles, but all my posts are public since I am only sharing articles, or posting pictures of food/scenery. Posting content based on circles is too much work.

In all, I feel, I need a complete different network for my needs and not just UI filters like lists, groups, and circles. I liked the idea about keeping my college friends and similar people in facebook, my co workers in linkedin and so on. Ofcourse, I could always add a coworker into my facebook if we are pretty much like friends hanging out a lot and vice versa. Facebook definitey has the upper edge in real people social behavior being ported to the online world by starting as a closed college network. This didn’t happen overnight, it took years. In my opinion, I dont feel Google+ will be able to disrupt the social behavior that easily. Instead it might become a twitter like service where photos, videos, blogging is all inbuilt into the service without the 140 character limit, which is still a WIN for Google. 

I have been playing with google’s appengine for quite a while. I have
followed up on their tutorials and also made a really simple web app
where people can submit a quip. I use facebook connect for
authentication and other cool stuff from their graph API like the
“comment system”, “like button” etc to interact with my web app.

It’s live but I have not really tried to promote it either, as it was
more of a project for myself to make something using appengine and
facebook API’s. However, since it’s purely a fun webapp similar to
hotornot, fmylife, etc I am unsure how many people would like to
authenticate using their facebook accounts. I can always change the
login system to use just a simple user/password, since i don’t really
need the social graph.

Now, having some background dabbling with app engine, facebook I would
like to make a utility app that would definitely benefit a lot having
access to facebook’s social graph for a user and also the somewhat
limited followers graph on twitter. The dilemma I am facing is should
I actually rely on people using their facebook (or even twitter)
accounts to authenticate into my web app. Or do i come up with my own
authentication system and build relationships within it. What do you
guys feel ?
]]> http://socialapp.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/facebook-connect-vs-twitter-anywhere-vs-new-login-system/feed/ 0 socialapp http://socialapp.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/are-social-games-evil/ http://socialapp.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/are-social-games-evil/#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:02:54 +0000 socialapp http://socialapp.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/are-social-games-evil/ ]]>

A few weeks ago I had gone to a networking event in Mt View and met up with a lot of entrepreneurs and likewise hacker oriented people. I also bumped into a friend of mines that I had met up in earlier networking events. He had taken a job at one of the big social game publishers since we had last talked.

I enjoy following the innovation being built on top of social networking platforms like facebook, twitter etc. So, I asked him how it felt to be working for one of these game publishers. He said it was a fun and a busy job, since they have to constantly innovate to keep up with the user’s engagement and also come up with the strategies to monetize them. And he also described a little bit more about the user behavior, demographics etc. However, he made a statement that stood out of all this conversation. He mentioned that he does not feel good about wasting people’s time since most of the social games are built around user engagement and trying to keep them playing for hours.

I think he is right to some extent that these games encourage a lot of unproductive hours for the users. However, you could also look at it from the flip side that these games provide entertainment, happiness etc along with the ability to socialize with other players in the game. As a kid I remember playing Super Mario Brothers and other video games for hours and hours. Could I have been productive doing other things ? Yes. Do I regret playing Mario Brothers for hours and hours back in the days ? No.

In conclusion, I feel the game developer should make his game as engaging as possible and provide them with value like entertainment, social interactivity with fellow users. However, the user’s should be smart enough to know when to pull the plug and do other activities in their life as well. What do you guys feel ? I would love to hear your commentaries.

The web has a lot of information on any topic imaginable. All this content could be hidden anywhere from the latest news, blogs, videos to even a 140 character tweet. So, the process to read an article on a given topic of interest become tedious and involves “Searching” and “Filtering” (or jointly discovering) for the right content.

Dan Olsen, the CEO of YourVersion, gave a live demo of the product at the Facebook App Meetup in Palo Alto that lets you “Discover” content based on topics of interest that matter to you. It’s called YourVersion, a real-time discovery engine. He mentioned that the company was bootstrapped since 2007 and they have hardly spent any dollars on coding. The service currently offers a free iPhone App, a Firefox toolbar to check out YourVersion of the web. They will soon be launching an application for Facebook and an IE toolbar.

The service has integration with Facebook using Facebook Connect for authentication. Once you have setup your topics of interest (the service auto-populates the tags for each interest as well), the service will automatically populate the main page with content filtered by categories like news, blogs, webpage’s, twitter, videos, and products.  Each story in the list has an easy to share option via email, twitter, facebook. You can also give a quick thumbs up/down to the story and even bookmark it for future. YourVersion also lets you share your Topics/tags to the world based on privacy settings that can be enabled from the Profile page. The service looks promising and it would be nice to see if they let you integrate RSS feeds as well. Check out the Product Tour on their website.

Screenshot

Plurchase let’s consumers shop on eCommerce sites like Amazon, Zappos and get feedback, advice from their friends using a sidebar widget.(They actually display the eCommerce site in an iFrame). You can bookmark products, search for products and share them on Facebook using Facebook Connect. They have also integrated a chat system to get real time advice from your friends. It currently supports only 3 eCommerce sites Amazon, Zappos, and Craigslist respectively.

Tom mentioned that they plan to make money via the affiliate program when a user/friend makes a purchase through their system. A typical payment in Amazon’s affiliate program ranges from 4 to 14%.

I am eagerly looking forward  to see the service go live and see it’s impact on online consumer spending. Leveraging the social graph of facebook(and maybe other newtworks) for online shopping seems like a smart move. You can follow them on twitter @plurchase for updates or read their blog here.

I have attached a few screenshots below

1.

2.

Update: The site is live so go play with it.

PayyAttention is another service that offers readers the means to support the blogs, sites, etc that provide them with their online content.  Stephen Farrell gave a demo of their service at the SiliconValleyNewTech meet up in July minutes after Cynthia gave a demo of  Kachingle, a similar service.

They have two models for the content providers to use:-

1. Patronage Model – In this model the content owner places a widget on their site so that the patrons (or readers) can donate some money to the site. It’s voluntary for the patron to disburse any sum of money. PayyAttention pays the entire money to the content provider except the transaction fees unlike Kachingle, which takes a 20% cut.

2. Paid Access Model – In this model, the content owner can charge the reader for providing access to exclusive content, or for removing adds from the post. PayyAttention take’s a cut in the model, which also help’s subsidize the cost for the Patronage model.

As an example GigaOm’s main site can use the Patronage Model, whereas the GigaOm Pro Network could use the Paid Access Model.  I can definitely see a lot of content providers having the ability to use the services of PayyAttention for increasing revenue or even cover basic hosting fees.

They also seem to have an integration with Twitter and provide statistics for shared links etc. To get an insight of their service you can request for an invite by email and also follow them on Twitter.

Demo Video from SiliconValleyNewTech Meetup

Screen Cast from PayyAttention

Every good product irrespective of their base industry is a result of great feedback. There are tools to review word documents with comments and feedback from each reviewer.  Google Docs makes it even easier as you can share the documents on the web. Similar tools exist for reviewing software code with comments.  However, one was missing for web designing.

I have myself tried to give feedback on website design & layouts or even share my idea visually by using a Photo Editing tool and then emailing the picture to the respective team members.  It did work, but was clumsy and time consuming, and the exchange of feedback via email between multiple members will make it complex to digest the feedback as well. However, in the New Tech Meet up I was delighted to see a the demo of a tool called Notable App, that seems to address most of my issues.

Notable App is a product by Zurb that makes sharing web page design and assimilating feedback really simple.  Hunter from Zurb gave a really good demo of the product. It comes with a firefox plug-in with which you can take a screen shot of the page currently open in the browser and then send/update it to your account in NotableApp.

Some of the notable features:

Screenshot/Annotate: The ability to take a screenshot of the page and then annotate any part of the page with comments.

Workspaces: Create separate workspaces for multiple projects.

Collaborate/Share: The ability to share your workspace with ‘certain’ team members. You can also create a PDF document as well.

Track: You can also track which member has seen the document but is yet to comment on it.

I am sure there are some other features in the tool, but these do the basic job for me. They are currently offering a 2 weeks free preview after which you will have to pay a monthly charge to use their services.

ScreenShots

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