13th May 2011

Why Today’s Developers Might Be Programming Themselves Out of Tomorrow’s Jobs


Christopher Kahler is a co-founder and CEO of Qriously, a service for measuring real-time public sentiment by replacing ads with questions in smartphone apps. Follow him on Twitter

In late 2010, Apple approved 14-year-old Robert Nay’s app, Bubble Ball, for publishing on the App Store, where it quickly racked up 2 million users and, for a short while, even wrested the ever-popular Angry Birds from its perch at the top of the download charts. It’s a staggering achievement for a young teen with no formal programming experience -– never mind education. No skills. Nada. Zip.

Nay used an application called Corona that essentially allows users to build smartphone apps using a graphical interface, eliminating the need of any coding skills. He’s a pioneering user of the next generation of platform dependencies — innovations upon which further innovations can be built.

The term “platform dependency,” referring to products and services that are symbiotic with an existing platform (FarmVille on Facebook, Tweetdeck on Twitter, Rapportive on Gmail, and so on), has been discussed at length in several recent blog posts that weigh its dangers and opportunities.

While these relationships are not unique to “our” industry, the heady pace of evolution in the information sector, modeled with equal parts idealism and fantasy, is pointing toward some fascinating outcomes. The most fascinating of these is also the most paradoxical: The smartest kids are coding themselves into unemployment.

Before I’m viciously indicted with committing the Luddite fallacy, give me a chance to qualify: Smart kids code platforms that are making it increasingly redundant to know how to code — look at Nay for instance. As such, coding as a skill is becoming a casualty of efficiency, which is a beautiful thing. Coding is a means to an end, and if new methods are developed that enable us normal folks to achieve comparable results, then that’s a win in my book.

To a certain extent this is already happening, albeit to a less romantic degree. Take Google App Engine for instance. Instead of needing to set up whole server infrastructures, you just upload a simple web app and Google handles everything else, from load-balancing to scaling. Many companies don’t even go that far. A Facebook Page, with its built-in tools to distribute content, advertise, promote and engage with an audience, is often all you need.

Beyond the purely technical realm, services and layers are appearing to make aesthetic skills more and more redundant as well. Enterprise software company Cloudera used 99designs, which recently scored $25 million in funding, to crowdsource its logo on the cheap. And apps like Instagram and Retro Camera that allow users with little “skill” to take brilliant photographs.

Eventually, you won’t need to have any technical knowledge in a world increasingly defined by technology.

Rather, the only thing you will need to have is an idea, and having good ones will be the only meaningful thing setting you apart from others. I like to think of it as the triumph of creativity over learned skill — a change that some believe has ramifications for formal education as well.

The only remaining question is: Where are your ideas going to bubble up from?

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08th May 2011

48 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed

icons image

The news cycle this week has been unstoppable, with major events from international politics to British royalty dominating the conversation.

This week saw the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton, U.S. tornadoes, the death of Osama Bin Laden, and of course, this weekend’s big event: Mother’s Day.

With all the hubbub, we understand if you missed a story or two from Mashable’s trove of tools and resources published over the past week or so. This week, we have resources on bin Laden as well as our regular social media-focused tools such as PR tips for Facebook, business and marketing case studies, and the evolution of Twitter.

Looking for even more social media resources? This guide appears every weekend, and you can check out all the lists-gone-by here any time.

Editors’ Picks

Social Media

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

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Business & Marketing

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Image courtesy of WebTreats Etc.

More About: business, facebook, Features Week In Review, gadgets, List, Lists, Mobile 2.0, social good, social media, tech, technology, twitter

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05th May 2011

Facebook App Gives Venue Profile Pages a Makeover


ReverbNation already had a Facebook app for bands, and now the music promotion platform has added another tool to its belt: a Venue Page app.

“We’ve talked to venues for years and we always wanted to do something with them,” says Ferol Vernon, VP of product for ReverbNation. “Gigging and playing live music is a big part of what a band does, and venues are a huge part of that. So we wanted to bring the venues into Reverbnation’s family.”

The new app, which you can see in action over on Brooklyn venue The Knitting Factory’s Page, is a little simpler than the band app, but includes a lot of features that make venue content more shareable and interactive. Moreover, it’s free.

For instance, the show schedule features playable tracks from performing bands, links to tickets and more band info (via Reverbnation and the Knitting Factory’s website, respectively), and the option to share a show on a user’s wall. That option is particularly awesome (some ticketing sites allow you to do something similar after buying tix), as it lets a show spread virally through a person’s network. Vernon says that a later version of the app will integrate Facebook Events for easier planning.

The Page also has a prompt to join the venue’s mailing list, which Vernon says is extremely valuable to venues: When a user joins a list via Facebook, the venue owner gets a lot more info about them than just an email address, which lets them better know their audience.

And, of course, venues can add custom venues and jigger their themes as they see fit, and if they already have a ReverbNation page, info (like address, location on a map, etc.) will be integrated automatically.

Vernon also says that venue owners will soon get access to stats on user engagement, much like bands are already privy to: shares, reach of shares, page traffic, etc.

More and more, musicians and those in the industry are turning to Facebook when it comes to promotion. Services like ReverbNation’s have been ramping up their efforts of late, and even Facebook itself launched a resource page for members of the music industry.

What do you think of these new venue pages? Would they make you more likely to see a show?

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20th Apr 2011

Conga: A Proximity-Based Social Network for Missed Connections


If life is comprised of moments defined by people, places and time, then startup Conga is a matchmaker, weaving together these elements to help users turn missed connections into shared experiences.

Conga, launching in public beta in New York and San Francisco Wednesday, defines itself as a proximity-based social network. It’s designed to connect individuals from different social spheres who have or will gather at the same place at the same time.

“It started with a simple idea,” explains co-founder Ryan Kennedy, “What if it was possible to go back in time, to nearly any moment in life, and reconnect with people around any of the places we’d ever been?”

Kennedy tells me that part of the motivation for starting Conga came from a personal desire to uncover missed romantic connections — he was, of course, single at the time. Now happily off the market (but not thanks to Conga), Kennedy still believes that there’s something magical about making missed connections not so missed.

“We go through life and interact with all these people, but how do we tap into relationships with people sitting right next to us?,” he says. “We’re looking to fill that gap.”

Conga is structured around the notion of the moment, tapping into the user’s location history via Foursquare and Twitter to build out a replete record of where he’s been and who else has been. The user can manually enter moments as well.

Each moment has its own page and serves as a point of rendezvous. The site manufacturers a layer of collaboration over these moments to introduce users who have crossed paths and give them a means to communicate and share information.

The startup’s most intriguing feature is its ability to list the people the user “congas” with (ie. crosses paths with) under the People tab. Here, Conga unravels the mystery of the unknown and presents the user with his most frequent missed connections. I can, for instance, see that I’ve crossed paths with Noah, someone I do not know, at least 13 times. Clearly, Noah and I have more in common than we may realize. Conga has merely surfaced these commonalities to subtly suggest that we should connect.

But Conga’s purpose extends beyond these person-to-person connections. The founders speak of Conga as a place to reconnect with people you’ve interacted with in the real world. Weddings, conferences, reunions and other group gatherings are all Conga-worthy because users can come together around a specific place and time to share things that happened at that moment.

The service has a few drawbacks. At launch, it’s limited to users in New York and San Francisco, the site is a bit difficult to navigate and overlapping activity will be minimal until more users sign on. Still, there’s certainly something to the notion of using location data to fill in the blanks.

Conga is self-funded by co-founders Ryan Kennedy and Todd Fast. The startup is in the midst of raising an angel round to finance operations.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, RonTech2000

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12th Apr 2011

6 Ways To Visualize Your Taxes


If ignorance is bliss, then look away. Crafty data wizards have sculpted publicly accessible federal budget data into interactive visualizations, giving you — the tax payer — visual representations of your annual contributions.

In late February, Google, in partnership with non-profit art and technology center Eyebeam, started the Data Viz Challenge — a call to information architects, designers and developers to tap the WhatWePayFor.com API and create visualizations for how tax payers’ contributions are spent.

After receiving more than 40 submissions, Google has whittled down the competition to six finalists. A committee will select a single winner who will be awarded a $5,000 cash prize.

Each of the finalists, whose work can be seen below, has created a project that shows tax payers how their federal tax dollars are allocated in various machinations. The visualizations, which hinge around salaries, filing status and other data points, are quite illuminating — or horrifying, depending on how you feel about Uncle Sam’s take of your wages.

Take a look at the finalists, interact with the visualizations, rate your favorites and look for Google and Eyebeam to announce the winner on everyone’s favorite day: Tax Day, April 18.


Budget Climb




Budget Climb gives users an interactive data environment for 26 years of federal spending.

Developed by NYU students Zach Schwartz, Fred Truman and Frankie Cheung, Budget Climb displays budget data as a cityscape that the user can physically explore using Kinect.


What Do You Work For?




In this visualization, creator Jeffrey Baumes answers the question, "Where would your money go if you paid your federal taxes with your entire income starting January first?"

Here's a hint: If you file as a single worker and claim $50,000 in annual income, in the 13 working days from January 20 to February 7, your entire income would go toward Social Security. That's $2,507.52, or 5% of your annual salary.


Visualize Your Taxes




Mark Won, Salil Jain and Carl Ng have created a visualization that pits your tax spending priorities against budget realities.

You tell the app how you'd like your tax dollars to be spent by ranking priorities, and Visualize Your Taxes will show you if your preferences align with how the government spends your contributions and how this has changed over time.


Where Did My Tax Dollars Go




Where did my tax dollars go? It's a fair question that this web app seeks to answer with interactive charts.

Enter your income and filing status, and the app returns federal, social security and medicare tax contributions for 2009. A pie chart then visualizes how your money was spent, and you can click on each piece for a full departmental breakdown on where your dollars went.


Every Day Is Tax Day




With a name that gives us the warm-and-fuzzies (not really), Every Day is Tax Day, from creator Fred Chasen, reminds us that we are working for the government every day.

Chasen's visualization shows you how your time is spent by government department.

An individual making $50,000 in 2010, for example, is working four minutes each workday for the Department of Agriculture. How noble of us all.


Taxmapper




Hermann Zschiegner and John Halloran have created TaxMapper, an interactive slideshow for visualizing -- by budget category -- government tax dollar spending over the years.

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31st Mar 2011

U.S. Government Open-Sources IT Dashboard to Help Cut Tech Costs


The United States government has made its IT Dashboard, a cost-cutting tool for federal transparency, freely available for anyone, especially other governments, to use and customize.

The IT Dashboard gives citizens important information on how the government uses tax money for technology initiatives across various agencies. Citizens can see how government investments are paying off, and they can compare types of IT spending over time by accessing easy-to-reach charts and graphs.

But this clarity of and access to vital information isn’t just good for citizens; it’s also used by the Federal Government, including Congress, to make important decisions about IT budgets and spending. Open-sourcing this cost-saving tool is part of the government’s larger plan to save on IT by eliminating redundant efforts. In other words, the IT Dashboard already exists and has been paid for, and the government isn’t going to hide that light under a bushel.

Here’s a video demonstrating some of the features of the federal IT Dashboard:

The government is working with Code for America for this release. In am announcement, CfA said, “The IT Dashboard was a major component of the process the Federal Government employed to save over $3 billion in just its first two years of deployment.”

In addition to the Dashboard, the government is also open-sourcing the complementary TechStat Toolkit, a set of tools and processes for reviewing any yellow or red flags that might pop up while using the Dashboard.

In this video, U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra talks about the results the government has seen by using the IT Dashboard and how those results were achieved:


But open-sourcing something like this isn’t a cakewalk. The government worked with FOSS and government experts, Code for America and CfA’s Civic Commons project to get the job done.

Project lead Karl Fogel wrote on the Civic Commons blog, “We knew from the beginning that a high-profile project can’t be open sourced casually. It’s not enough to just put an open license on the code, move development out to a publicly visible repository, and call it done.”

He continued to note that for the Dashboard, Civic Commons had to ensure that all the code and documentation was safe for public use (i.e., not classified or a government secret) and audit the code; reduce dependencies on proprietary libraries; write documentation; ceate non-sensitive, non-classified sample data; work with the Drupal community; and much more.

Interested parties can download the Dashboard code now at SourceForge. While the Dashboard is intended to help governments cut costs and manage IT budgets, we can see such tools coming in handy at just about any large company, tech or otherwise.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, GottfriedEdelman

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30th Mar 2011

Twitter Upgrades Embedded Tweets


Twitter has updated its developer tools, making embedded tweets more interactive and functional. The new tweets allow users to reply, retweet or favorite a tweet directly from its embedded version.

Twitter introduced embeddable tweets last year — and while the end result has been quite effective, the set-up process involved in actually embedding tweets is more trouble than its worth. Fortunately, plugins like Blackbird Pie for WordPress have made the process less cumbersome.

The new functionality of embedded tweets comes courtesy of a developer tool called Web Intents. Users must first insert a script on a page that will use the intent. Those that already use the Tweet button on their websites will be able to start using Web Intents right away.

The integration process is still surprisingly cumbersome — especially for users that just want to easily and quickly embed a tweet. But the code itself looks a lot more clean. Already, WordPress.com users can take advantage of Web Intents powered embedded tweets. We imagine that the WordPress.org version of that plugin will be updated soon.

There are some cool things about Web Intents. Not only can content creators embed a tweet on their website, they can also embed a pre-filled Twitter message window. Web Intents are mobile-friendly and work with both iOS and Android, which is a nice touch.

The fact that users can send a tweet directly from a webpage or retweet messages without having to use a third-party program or extension could make for some interesting possibilities — at least for web developers and app makers that want to add more seamless social ability to their sites.

Developers, what do you think of the new Twitter Web Intents? Let us know in the comments.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

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24th Mar 2011

HOW TO: Sign, Seal, Deliver Docs Without A Printer Or Scanner


If you’ve ever had to get a signed document from Point A to a distant Point B, you know the frustration and expense of that soul-sucking task. If you’d like to accomplish it without so much as printing a page, let alone running a dozen errands or trying to email an enormous PDF, HelloFax is your killer app.

Sending documents to fax numbers isn’t a big challenge these days — and that’s not HelloFax’s focus. There are dozens of that let you send faxes online, such as eFax and Fax.com.

But the’res one major sticking point when it comes to contracts, NDAs, permission slips and similar documents: your signature. How does the average Joe or Jane manage to actually sign the digital documents before sending them?

Enter HelloFax, which digitizes the signing process. This removes the need to print out, sign, scan-in and send.

HelloFax, a web-based app, works this way. You go to the site with your document of choice. This could be a PDF, a text file, a Word document, or an image file of just about any kind.

Enter the fax number or email address where the document should go. If you need a cover sheet, you can quickly create one in a pop-up lightbox.

Upload your document, then edit and sign the document as needed. The editing tools are pretty basic; you can add check boxes or text.

The signing options are quite varied. First, you can choose to create your digital signature with a mouse. If you’re as hand-eye coordinated as I am, this will look something like the efforts of a sugar-high 3-year-old. You can also upload an image file of your signature, if you have one.

But there’s a much better option: you can grab a pen, scrawl your John Hancock on a piece of blank paper, and take a picture of that with your smartphone.

HelloFax will let you email that image to them. The site digitizes the image for use in your document as soon as the email is received.

Once you’ve created your signature, you can save it for use on future faxes.

When you’ve finished editing, signing and saving the document, you click to send the fax or email. Once the document is sent, it’s saved in your HelloFax account, just in case you need to download a copy or resend it to another party.

You can send documents to any U.S. fax number. Support for international number is in the works, as is sending the same fax to multiple recipients at the same time.

Best of all, you can fax up to 20 pages free of charge every month, and you can send unlimited signed documents via email. If you deal with a lot of signed and faxed documents — as many entrepreneurs and freelancers do — you can pay a reasonable subscription fee (after a 30-day free trial, of course) to HelloFax your way to a paperless office.

You can fax 50 pages a month for $5; this plan also offers you your own local fax number. Other plans include the $10 per month option (500 pages per month and a toll-free or local number) and a $40 monthly subscription for the heaviest of power users (2,000 fax pages per month and a toll-free or local fax number). Subscription plans can be canceled at any time.

HelloFax is a Y Combinator company. Its founders are Neal O’Mara, formerly a TripIt engineer, and Joseph Walla, who has extensive experience in public service in the U.S. and abroad.

“We built something we needed,” O’Mara and Walla wrote of HelloFax. “Every document was a hassle to sign. It involved a trip to [FedEx Office], printing, scanning, faxing and then being overcharged. An hour later, our document was signed. Not a good use of time.”

The next time you need to sign and send a document, give HelloFax a try, and report back with your experiences. Does this strike you as a useful app for the average person? Let us know in the comments.

More About: contracts, documents, fax, hellofax, office, paperless, startup, y combinator

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01st Mar 2011

The Next Big Idea in Tech: Do-It-Yourself Focus Groups?


In a class of 53 startups presenting at DEMO’s Spring 2011 conference in Palm Springs, GutCheck stood tallest. The do-it-yourself qualitative research company took home the People’s Choice award and $1 million in winnings.

The Denver-based company was voted best in show by conference attendees. The startup’s mission: to make focus groups more accessible and affordable.

GutCheck customers draw from the service’s pool of five million participants for targeted questioning. Then they interview respondents in a traditional question-and-answer survey format, or something more free-form. Interview transcripts are stored and can be shared with co-workers.

DEMO’s focus this time around: apps for mobile and the social sector. Several startups offered me-too services for social media management, news curation, mobile application development and group communication. The show was not without its standout ideas — ecoATM, for instance, is a hardware company with a futuristic solution to electronics recycling.

So, all competitors considered, is GutCheck the next big idea? Given that it has no groundbreaking or remarkable technology, this respondent would have to answer no. But, GutCheck does have the makings of a revenue-generating hit, perhaps following in the footsteps of Groupon’s low-tech success. Its low price point — $40 per qualified 30 minute interview — makes it affordable for even the smallest of businesses and startups.

Prior to its official DEMO debut, GutCheck had raised $2 million. Now, as the People’s Choice winner, GutCheck is the beneficiary of $1 million worth of complimentary advertising from IDG publications.

Six other startups were recognized by DEMO organizers for the quality of their products and demonstrations Tuesday. Webcam Social Shopper from Zugara, Nimble, ecoATM, Stratosphere by V3, Manilla and ecobe all received recognition for ideas ranging from augmented reality e-commerce and social CRM to a drop-in virtual desktop appliance.

Images courtesy of Flickr, The DEMO Conference

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14th Feb 2011

Get Rewards for Saving Money on Your Energy Bill

green image

Giving people free stuff is a great way to convince them to do something, especially when they get that free stuff just by cutting down their energy bills.

Earth Aid is a web app that operates a lot like Mint.com for your energy bill. Signing up for the free service will allow it to read your meter and track your output over time, giving you an online energy budget. The more energy you save on your electric, water, and gas bills, the more points you earn. These points can then be redeemed for rewards from local businesses and big brands such as Starbucks and Dove. The goal is to help you decrease your energy use and save some cash month-to-month.

Earth Aid recently received more than $4 million in Series A funding and has partnered with major institutions like the U.S. Green Building Council. The council uses the web app to make sure LEED-certified buildings continue to maintain their eco-friendly standards.

But the app doesn’t just rely on outside funding. “We’ve been making money,” said Earth Aid CEO Ben Bixby. “We’re really serious about finding a sustainable way — not just environmentally but economically, to deliver these solutions and this opportunity to people.” Bixby explained that Earth Aid gets paid when it helps people save energy. It earns a commission when users choose certain rewards products or when the company’s partners get new customers through the app.

energy image

Earth Aid is in the midst of launching a new version of the web app that also works on mobile browsers. New features include ways to break up your energy bill so you can read it by calendar month or in smaller increments. By moving away from the convention of seeing an energy bill once a month, Bixby hopes that usage becomes a daily conversation rather than a monthly headache.

The app also includes group features, where you can challenge and converse with friends or take advantage of the “automated bragging” feature, Bixby’s affectionate way of referring to social network integration. Depending on personal proclivities, users can share all of their usage updates or just share when they show improvements.

One major problem with Earth Aid is that rewards are based on a personal baseline calculated from your own energy usage history. This means rewards are given based on personal performance as opposed to overall output. Someone who maintains a low output won’t get rewarded as much as someone who cuts back, even if they still use more energy. It’s a problem that Earth Aid is working to fix.

There is also the question of intent. If someone cuts their output just to win rewards, isn’t that sending the wrong message about sustainability? Bixby understands there are some people that will use Earth Aid just for the rewards and others that are actively trying to monitor their ecological footprint. “Whether it’s important for you to save energy and the rewards are a bonus, or if it’s important for you to just win awards, the outcome is the same,” Bixby said. “We’re trying to build an app that serves all people. Those that are green already and people that are just trying to save money for the fun stuff in life.”

Will you give Earth Aid a shot? Does it matter if social good occurs as a result of awards or do the ends justify the means? Sound off in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flcikr, stevendepolo

More About: charity, earth aid, environment, non-profit, social good, web app

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