The board now has members from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. If we can find a member from Apple's RSS team, we'll be in an even better position to help the big companies and enterpreneurial companies like FeedBurner and Six Apart work together to promote RSS interop and resolve some incompatibilities between different software that supports syndication.
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Like all developers I take a keen interest in what’s happening in the industry in general. Recently it's been the 'web 2.0' buzz, the 2.0 is geek talk for the next iteration of web applications. The general theme surrounds web applications such as gmail, digg and other social networking applications like myspace. These web applications typically take advantage of the modern features in web browsers, so usually they are easier to use.

The emergence of google adsense and the increased uptake of online advertising has had the effect that online companies can now offer applications free of charge, the advertising revenue can in most cases offer a good revenue stream, so ultimately the end user benefits.

My concern is with this particular revenue model and how much revenue can be sustained from it, for example myspace was recently bought by news corp for $500 odd million, another company Bebo offering the same sort of application turned down $550 million looking for a $1 billion takeover. It might just be me, but how can these companies pay so much, can you really turn a billion dollar investment into something more (or even recoup) before the application's shelf life expires? I mean lets face it, I  can't really see myspace being the same powerful force in say 8 years, how many other social networks have come and gone (friendster, facebook), can news corp recoup the $500 million in that time and can they use myspace to propel it into the future?

To me these old media companies are looking around at whats happening online with blogging, podcasting and video casting (look at the popularity of rocketboom) and see that if they don't react they will become less relevant. Then they consult the old school business books and go out and acquire the current big name applications without really thinking about what they could offer in this new business environment. Personally I think the big media companies aren't going away any time soon, I do however think that they will become smaller and more focused on a particular niche (maybe the older generations?). But these companies have had a monopoly for too long and want that to continue for as long as possible.

Ultimately I think all this money being thrown around is a waste, but the effect it will have on the average person is positive, the big media companies will waste a fortune now for little gain, which just means they will get smaller sooner rather than later. The media companies seem to be following the lead of companies like Google and yahoo who have a vested interest in getting more eye-balls onto screens. Isn't it great to be around in such an interesting time, but if I had any long term investments in news corp, via-com, time-warner etc,I would be seriously considering my options.

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Check out some news on the Psi front: What we’re doing - Psi Forum

Also, I haven’t seen anything else about this, maybe they want it hush-hush. Oh well. As recently blogged by Justin Kirby, Qunu is an expert matching service. You’ve seen these before, Yahoo and Google and several smaller companies during [...]

At a speech in New Orleans on Monday I said we were just five percent of the way into the Internet -- that of all the things that could simplify our lives and save us time, only five percent of them are here so far. New companies such as Pandora are pressing the envelope to do great things but unfortunately many existing companies have not kept pace with expectations.

This morning I checked on the status of a medical prescription at Express Scripts, my "online" pharmacy. The web site had an order number but did not show the name of the medication. Clicking on "check status" gave a line that said "In pharmacy" -- since May 6. No information available. Sending an email to them is hopeless -- I have done it before -- they respond to the email by telling you to call if you need information. I called and was told they had received the prescription on May 3 and it then takes them three days to enter it into the system. Four days later they determined that it needs "prior authorization" and so they faxed a form to the doctor requesting that he fax a form to the insurance company who would then need to fax a form to customer service who would then notify the pharmacy it is ok to ship the medication. The pharmacy and customer service are the same company. There is no feedback to the customer at any point. Meanwhile everyone is calling everyone and the doctor's office is so overloaded with calls about prescriptions that you can't get through to them. This is the status of online pharmacy. Five percent would be an overstatement.

Then I made a reservation at Marriott.com. At the end of the form was a "comments" box and I entered some things that I thought would be helpful. Upon hitting the submit button I got an error message saying "Comments too long". The form only accepts 45 characters -- a ridiculous limitation in these days of inexpensive storage. Well designed online forms that limit the text input tell you how many characters you have remaining. Not this one -- there is no indication given of how many characters have actually been entered and the text box actually has four lines of 64 characters each. You just keep shortening and entering submit until it is satisfied. What could they be thinking? The confirming email arrived quickly but because they had embedded some javascript in the email to make it look pretty, it could not be printed. Travel sites generally are getting better but they still do a lot of dumb things.

The point that top management of these and many other companies are missing is that the perception of their company and their brand is no longer based on their past history or even the reputation of their products and services. The way we see them is the way we see their web sites. Unfortunately, a lot of things we see are not pretty. Increasingly our loyalties will shift to the companies who make our lives simpler and save us time instead of frustrating us. Many are trying hard but they have a long way to go.