Last night ended with a session by the MapQuest staff. They just launched a new OpenAPI to their service. They’ve been heavily promoting the new API here at ETech – you can almost smell the desperation as they try and get in on the mashup movement. I went in with high expectations and was sadly disappointed. No support for Canada, no free capability for commercial sites whatsoever. Google Maps has indicated (granted only informally via forums) that you can use their maps commercially as long as the pages themselves are publicly available and free. By taking a no commercialization stance MapQuest will alienate those ‘pay to post’ sites that are sprouting up. The bright spots – integrated geocoding and turn-by-turn routing/directions. All in all, they’ve taken steps in the right direction but it may be too little to late – the only reason I hear for friends/colleagues continuing to use the service is because ‘Google directions just aren’t good enough’… yet.

Post Mapquest session I took a quick tour of the vendor booths and then headed back to the hotel (which I would more accurately describe as a hostel – thankfully its only a week). At the Attensa booth I chatted with a guy about their new product offering – all the time thinking ‘where do I know this guy from?’. This morning it came to me – it was Rich Rudolph who I’d worked with at webHancer. I’ve also noticed quite a few familiar faces from the w3c conference in Hawaii a few years ago – I really do need to get some device that helps me with names. Haven’t had a chance to play with the Attensa software yet but their messaging was bang on.

This morning started with Jon Udell – who within five minutes had me reaching for a scribble pad to make a note to self about correcting our site page titles. He showcased an interesting slider implementation on wikipedia allowing you to move through diffs quickly and effectively. I’m really going to have see if I can reproduce this for browsing VSS/CVS/SVN repositories. The other very interesting thing he showcased was a URL attention over time graph – showing raw # of social bookmarks over time and also when certain key influencer individuals took note of the URL in question. Think stock history graph but for a URL in the new ‘attention economy’.

Clay Shirky was next – reminding us how we are all political – by nature of us creating the applications being used to share information in the digital age. As software developers we are building the tools that ensure values such as freedom of expression are respected. Later he showcased Slashdot as an example of a site whereby select site members form a protective membrane over the site’s valuable content. A small group of volunteer moderators rank comments to provide filtration. This keeps the site managable and relevant.

Adobe launched a new javascript/flash (read flash/ajax) integration kit – reminder that flash has 98% penetration, more than any particular browser or browser version. It is easy to forget that on the client, flash is the most univeral sandbox one can leverage. One powerful demo illustrated push from server to the client page (via DOM) using a flash intermediary. Where flash by itself is undesirable for a number of reasons, and ajax alone can’t enable things like push – the combination of the two seems to have real potential.

Brian from eventdb/eventful was a particular draw for me – esp. given that we at Semaview had been focused on the open event space since before eventdb was formed. While we approached it from the thick client angle with the majority of development going into the construction of the eventSherpa Windows software (reminder you can still download a crippled version without the integrated web hosting), Brian and team went about it from the Web services model. Ah hindsight. I really like what they’ve come up with – the seperation of the commercial application (eventful) from the open and free web service (evdb) seems to balance nicely. Brian launced their ‘demand it’ functionality today – enabling users to harness their collective power to request events. Demand aggregation – a key component of the ‘attention economy’.

I was really looking forward to finally hearing Joel Spolsky speak – he ripped into some of the recently launched services/sites, including (very quickly) the new Windows Live service by Microsoft. His point was that everyone was copying the look n’ feel of google (fonts, colors etc.) and missing the boat. You can’t just slap lipstick on the pig. He stressed a few key points – obsess on aesthetics and always think about emotions. If you can evoke emotional responses – you’ve done it. (Everytime I login to Windows Live Mail, it definately evokes an emotional response from me when I have to navigate around that HUGE banner at the top of the screen. It just ain’t the emotion you’d be hoping for.)

As is appropriate, right after the break it was Microsoft up to present the new Windows Live service. First mistake IMO – the presenter comes up with a full suit and tie. I think he’s the only presenter here that I’ve seen do so. In a room full of alpha-geeks you don’t want to be the only guy in a suit. Immediately it had the feeling of a sales pitch – and my impression was that the crowd wasn’t buying, despite some pretty impressive new functionality. One thing that looked very cool was their 45 degree aerial photos and 360 degree street level photos for Seattle. Let’s get that up in Canada please.

So what is this ‘attention economy’ that the conference is themed on? Michael Goldhaber presented his take. His position was that beginning in the 80s, we’ve shifted to a new paradigm where attention is the new currency. Once a society reaches a certain plateau and money is no longer the most important issue we jump to the next stage where attention is most desired. Instead of workers/employers we are fans/stars. Meaning in life is derived from shared meaning with others which is in turn derived from attention. I can’t do the presentation justice here – but it definately tied the conference theme in and was ample food for thought.

Yahoo is building a ‘tribal platform’. Tribes pay attention. I think they’ve got the right idea. They moved through them quickly but I’m looking forward to the release of their full UI design pattern library.

Jen King gave an interesting presentation on RFID. Staggering costs involved in embedding RFID into US passports. Scary to see that one may be able to read someone’s passport data from as far away as 30 feet. I can just imagine the havoc that’s going to be created when US citizens travel abroad and have their personal details lifted in the town squares.

Aggregate Knowledge has an interesting new product that enabled any site to have a recommendation engine similar to some of what you see on amazon. ‘Users who buy this, also buy that’ – both on your site and across domains. Very powerful stuff – I latched on to their point about recommendation navigation becoming primary navigation over taxonomy/search, this does seem to hold true when we consider learnings from the social applications. Another plus of this product – no up front fees to try it and pay per conversion when implemented. Low barrier to entry.

Lastly (yes it was a full day), Lee Bryant presented on humanizing the enterprise. I found their approach interesting – in that they typically do not try and convince upper management to throw away cumbersome software already in place (think sharepoint) but rather keep the legacy applications for storage and simply build a new UI layer on top to enable social interactions. This allows management to ‘save face’ when confronted with the large implemenation costs they incurred in past but still allows the company to move foward with new ideas/learnings. Lee showcased Wikilaw as an example of new technologies taking hold in old businesses. One question that was raised for me – is their a commercial sharepoint webpart to enable social tagging within sharepoint? Another interesting thought Lee raised – that enterprises need the equivalent of the wikigardeners we see out on the Web.

All in all – another great day of sessions. Too bad we couldn’t extend it past tomorrow.

(Note: After losing half this post due to a browser hiccup, I realize just how much I rely on Gmail’s draft save feature. If I’m missing a WordPress plugin that enables this please let me know. If it hasn’t yet been created – someone really needs to get on that.)