btrax blog

MyTown takes social networking to whole new level – beating giants like Facebook to the punch through its addictive location-based gaming approach.

Much like Foursquare, which has recently emerged as a serious challenger to Yelp, interaction isn’t limited to only personal communication, but engaging the user by having them make their neigjhborhood and environment part of the experience.

It will give you a whole new experience on exploring your own city or others, because of its central gaming elements. The user (or player) can “purchase” real places near your location, such as a Starbucks., then collect rent from people who visit your places. The experience is like playing Restaurant City on Facebook, but in real life.

As similar social gaming platforms in Asia have experienced, MyTown has zoomed from a small startup founded in 2008 to a 800,000 users platform with 3.5 to 4 million check-ins per day. The brains behind MyTown is Booyah and CEO Keith Lee says that average users spend 50 minutes per day on MyTown.

Because of Foursquare, the gaming concept of check-ins has gained traction and is gradually becoming a must-have for social networking site. Even Yelp is getting into the action, rolling out a check-in function on its iPhone application. Facebook is also currently developing this function too.

One of the reasons Facebook has lagged is that gaming has not been a core part of its business plans, instead farming it out through APIs to secondary app developers. Yelp was also founded on very different community principles, rewarding an elite, serially posting set of super-users.

By comparison, MyTown was developed by a group of veteran game designers.

As smart phone ownership and usage continue to rocket upwards, Foursquare and MyTown will only grow, either eclipsing their competitors or more likely get acquired by their more heavily funded counterparts.

What’s Beyond Web 2.0?
It’s been a while since Sramana Mitra has defined “Web 3.0”. She predicted that the next generation of Web technology would aim to integrate a variable “Place” with Content, Commerce, Community, Context, Personalization, and Vertical Search. And the trends are increasingly bearing out that description.

Nowadays, for example, you search for a local (community) car dealer near you. You see the locations on maps, and you can drive there instantly. But if I were a customer, I would need more information.

Applying Social Media & Geo-Location Tools
For example, even after Toyota’s ecall news, suppose I am still interested in the gray color the Prius with a sun roof. I want to test drive it to make sure that the pedal problem is fixed.  I want the best deal. Which dealers have the exact car in stock? I don’t want to waste my time driving around to dealers on the map to find the answer to my question.

According to Sramana, the “place” variable is more than just location, but it shows where ‘things’ and ‘places’ are that you are searching for through GPS. Then people want to take actions. They want to visit the place and make a purchase or dine out after they search “Place”.

So people want to be sure that they do not waste time when they visit these places. They want to know inventories, available spots, menus, and other information when they search for their target places.

The Open Source Era
As these data became accessible by the general public,  it will get difficult  to draw a line between trade secret and public information. If a competitive company gets the data of your inventories and prices, it can take an advantage of them. They may offer a lower price of the same item or they may promote an item in different colors which you don’t have.

Suppose you want to protect your website code from viewers, then you need to hide the “View Source” option. If you want to disclose anything to a certain group of people, you could send out passwords and log-in names. But it prevents timely interaction and people may not want to go through the trouble of getting login information.

Open Information Speeds Up Innovation
It is said that Silicon Valley has a spirit of sharing information, reflected in its very high employee mobility rate. They also move within a small geographic area. And people talk! So it is realistically hard to keep trade secrets. Even Apple has been relatively unsuccessful in fully hiding its next major product release up to a year in advance.

In addition, it is said that Silicon Valley does not appreciate people suing former employees over trade secret violations.  So it seems that the Silicon Valley’s love for sharing information is likely to prevail, which in turn helps drive innovation at an ever faster speed.

Photos by xwelhamite and rnair

今話題のホットなインターネットベンチャー企業が集中するサンフランシスコの小さなSOMA（South of Market）地域。 2002年に「.com」バブルがはじけた後も、その人気はいまだ根強い。
新しく流行るものを作り、大不況の風にも負けずWEB業界で一世風靡しようと、夢と情熱と独自のスタイルを持った若い才能で活気だち、いつもSOMAのどこかの片隅で、アフター５に最先端のWEB技術・文化を紹介するイベントで盛り上がっている。

Photo by Maurice Ramirez

最先端のブログソフトのひとつWordPressを開発するAutomattic本社もSOMAにあり、btraxのオフィスからサンフランシスコ ベイに向かって徒歩約10分の距離にある。今日は、そこで行われる「Chic meets Geek」と「サンフランシスコ オペラ ブラボー」共同主催のイベントに、btrax チームがプレス（記者）として出席することになり、皆で仕事帰りAutomattic本社に足を向ける。

「Chic meets Geek」は直訳すると“上品・洗練された娘とオタクの出会い”。一瞬、「電車男」のストーリーを思い浮かべがちだが、イベントのスピーカー及びVIPリスト（下記）や、会場で行なわれているプロダクト デモンストレーションリストを見ると納得。　SOMA（ここで）の辞書を1ページめくると、「Chic meets Geek」は、「Geek（コーディング　カルチャー）とChic（エンターテイメント カルチャー）の融合」と訳されるらしい。

スピーカー及びVIPリスト：
Geek（コーディング カルチャー）

• Matt Mullenweg、WordPressの創立者
• Randi Zuckerberg、( facebook創立者の妹でエグゼクティブの一人)
• Edith Yeung、BizTechDay のエグゼクティブ・プロデューサー
• David Weekly、PBWorks創立者

Chic（エンターテイメント カルチャー）

• Damon Dunn、旧フットボール　プレイヤー（Dallas Cowboysチーム）
• Mattin Noblia、Top Chef Las VegasTV番組のリアリティスター
• Terry Disley、 ポール・マッカートニー等をレコーディングした伝説的なジャズミュージシャン

プロダクト デモンストレーション提供企業リスト

• PEANUT LABS MEDIA
• OneRiot
• NetworkedBlogs
• MixMatchMusic

デモンストレーションを拝見しながら目に止まったのは、MixMatchMusic社によって作られた、iPhoneプラットフォーム用のMobBaseサービス：

主な特徴

• ミュージシャンが、低コストでiPhoneアプリを作成・公開・管理可能
• 写真、ミュージック、歌詞、ビデオ、またイベント情報等をファンとシェアできる
• ファンが気に入ったミュージックを購入できる機能
• ある特定のミュージシャンに関するTwitterの全ての”つぶやき”がみれる
• CMS機能（独自でコンテンツをリアルタイムで追加・削除・更新可能）

先週N.Y.Timesに、無名だった23歳のAdam YoungがMySpaceやiTunes等を使ってオンライン上で自分のミュージックを広めてゆき、毎週約2,000 トラックが売れるようになり、今や彼の“Fireflies”はBillboard一位に輝き、来月ニューヨークのマディソン スクエア ガーデンで主催されるZ100 Jingle Ballコンサートに、超人気ミュージシャン達と並んでパフォーマンスすることが大きくとりあげられていた。

iPhone等のモバイルプラットフォーム上で、才能ある駆け出しのミュージシャンが早く発掘され易すく、又ファンとリアルタイムでコミュニケーション（交流）できる場を提供するMobBase。ミュージシャンやミュージックファンにとっては今後、ちょっと目が離せない。

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is set to take over the world’s largest potential wireless market.

WiMAX’s (IEEE 802.16) superior wireless can go up to to 30 miles (50 km) from stations and 3-10 miles for mobile stations. The network speed is also faster and more stable than regular wireless,  providing better quality mobile internet surfing experience.

China is viewed as a strategic region for WiMAX’s future growth because China has the largest number of internet and wireless mobile users in the world. Although China’s 20% of “netizens” (people able to connect to the internet) is less than US’s 70%, China’s growth potential is vast and transforming into one of the most advanced wireless internet leaders.

The trend most strongly driving this shift to WIMAX is the 400,000 netbooks in China, which are projected to rise to 2 million in 2009.

The popularity of netbooks and the rise of WIMAX are closely entwined and likely to spread far beyond Asia, especially to developing countries with little exisiting infrastructure.

Photos by P_Canales and Kongharald

Hitachi’s ZoomSight is a tool to help those with low vision or difficulty in distinguishing between colors to browse website content more quickly and conveniently.

Features:

• Zoom Scale
  Magnifies text and pictures from 50% to 300% for better readability, especially useful for the elderly

• Display Color
  Black on White, White on Black and Invert Color options all make it easier for users to read content depending on the user’s specific sight impairment

• Text-To-Speech
  Reads out web pages using a sophisticated synthetic speech engine

• Pronunciation Guide*
  Adds hiragana or romaji pronunciation on top of kanji or katakana characters within Japanese pages, making them faster to comprehend

  *Currently, “Pronunciation Guide” is only available in the Japanese version.

Text-To-Speech is a compelling and very much anticipated feature – if it  becomes widely adopted on the mobile platform, it could solve some presentation issues by allowing users to directly listen to a website instead of reading or to listen to content like a blog podcast style while walking around.

If this solution gains wide acceptance in Japan it’s sure to spread to English and other major languages as it gets rolled out in more devices.

Job-less Keynote
In stark contrast to Steve Job’s largely solo format, Apple’s marketing baron Phil Schiller farmed out much of the presentation to three other senior engineers.

They also paraded no less than seven different App developer teams to showcase how their apps will use the new capabilities of the iPhone 3GS and iPhone’s upgraded operating system.

While appealing to the 1,000+ developers present at Apple’s annual WWDC developer fete, the presentation seemed a bit long winded – with much of the time spent on only incremental changes.

Some of the more substantial themes running throughout Apple’s presentation:

Not Quite All About Apps
Apple’s game plan is both powerful and straight forward: provide raw ingredients (SDK and APIs) and a buffet table (App Store and iTunes) to developers. App downloads passed 1 billion in April 2009 and keeps growing with 40+ million iPhones and iPods on the streets.

Apple’s gamble on entering the cutthroat mobile industry and prescient view of your phone as a pocket computer is paying off – the iPhone represents 65% of all mobile web browsing.

More importantly, Apple has created a seamless system were it maximizes profits while outsourcing risk:
• AT&T and other carriers foot the wireless infrastructure costs
• Content piped in by major movie studios, music labels and individuals
• App developers code and market software for both mainstream and niche audiences

Apple Everywhere?
Apple is tipping its global hat, accelerating release schedules abroad for its core products. Also iPhone OS 3.0 is built on a truly universal base – no differences in the code on every new iPhone despite the 30+ supported languages.

This doesn’t mean just translation of UI text, but full localization with different layouts for email input, etc. The new OS adds several new languages, most notably Arabic and Indonesian.

As Apple keeps reducing product prices, their potential market reach expands exponentially beyond the semi-luxury category.

Feeling the Economic Squeeze
The most evident theme throughout the WWDC keynote was price – every product covered had a price drop. The largest ones were for the MacBook Air (top end dropped by $700) and the iPhone 3G, which now will be $99 and sold alongside the newer iPhone 3GS.

Putting the iPhone 3G under $100 is a key move, coming the same week as the launch of the most sophisticated challenge to the iPhone yet – the Palm Pre, which we covered last week.

Photo by Tim Wagner © 2009