Christine

Bradley Howowitz on Yahoo!'s Product Strategy

Bradley Horowitz gave Supernova attendees a pep talk today on Yahoo! and its product strategy. (Perhaps, in the wake of Google's slashing and burning, Yahoo! has plans to co-opt Google's position as the light side of the Force?) At any rate, here are a few highlights:

Get Your I-Name Before It's Gone!

At last night's Top Connected Innovators showcase at Supernova, an excited Kaliya Hamlin told me about that day's official launch of i-names registration. I-names are an emerging standard for user-centric identity, and a solution for the problem of managing conflicting or outdated identities.

TechCrunch and Supernova Elect 'Top Connected Innovators'

Kevin Werbach sweet-talked Michael Arrington of TechCrunch into creating a "Top Connected Innovators" showcase at this year's Supernova. Here's the quick list of the award winners, apparently selected via a hyperdrive-submission process a la the usual TechCrunch review, and why they were deemed relevant:

Using Community to Create a Structured Infosphere

This conversation at Supernova 2006 was essentially a data-laden recap of this DEMO 2006 theme on harnessing the community to organize content, via social tools that access the hive mind (or the wisdom of crowds, depending upon whose book you bought).

Taking Data Out Of Walled Gardens, and Fighting About Who Owns It

Most folks are familiar with centralized data - information kept in a central location, in a proprietary format, and possibly within a walled garden. We explored implementations of decentralized data at Supernova 2006 - specifically, data which is portable and follows the user, rather than the service, and is often shared via a hosting service.

Yahoo! Local Aggressively Adopts Microformats for Competitive Advantage

Andy Baio demonstrated a brand new feature for Yahoo! Local at today's workshops for Supernova 2006. All Yahoo! listings are now tagged with microformats! When you bring up a Yahoo! Local map, starred locations use an hCard to show review information. Here's a sample result showing microformatted information on the restaurants near my house, as well as what happens when you drill down for aggregated information on a single restaurant.

What Rights Do You Have With Your Media?

When you post information, do you realize who else you are giving rights to? Patrick Reilly from the Intellectual Property Society spoke to this question at today's Vloggercon. The session ultimately devolved into frustrated questions and conflicting answers, leading the moderator to pull a steaming  Creative Commons attendee out from the audience and onto the stage. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is a funder of Creative Commons.)

...Also Heard at Vloggercon

Other interesting tidbits from Vloggercon:

ClickTV Makes Flash Bloggable

ClickTV was one of the cooler platforms demonstated at Vloggercon. In the last year or so, Flash has become a more compelling option for video bloggers. ClickTV CEO Mike Lanza showed the audience  how Flash streaming enables blogging within videos, as versus about them.

How Rocketboom Took Off

Andrew Baron, Amanda Congdon, Ruud Elmendorp, Steve Garfield, and Chuck Olsen of Rocketboom showed up at today's Vloggercon to share the history of how Rocketboom got to where it is today: 300,000 downloads/day across all formats. They also shared a PR teaser: Rocketboom is working with Boing Boing to launch a new video blog.

Video Babes at Vloggercon

Environment: Vloggercon in San Francisco. 

How Video Blogs are Driving Social Change

Instead of a lazy Saturday slurping down chai, my weekend kicked off with a panel on political blogging and social change at Vloggercon in San Francisco.

A Video Glimpse of LINES (and Videoegg-Typepad Note)

As a PS to my previous post seeking LINES General Manager candidates, here's a short video (3:13) providing a glimpse of Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, including a voiceover from internationally renowned choreographer Alonzo King on his philosophy of creation.

(UPDATE 6/08: Since VideoEgg has ceased hosting videos, here's a replacement from YouTube.)

Hiring Geeks and Arts-Lovers

Two organizations that I'm personally involved with need to make important hires...so here's a quick shoutout to that effect: