The social web is creating great opportunities for product research. Paul Kedrosky has been suggesting that web services will be “honey pots” for data. He explains, “Usage of such services throws off wonderfully rich data that is almost certainly of use to someone, but too often it is not captured and represented in a usable form.”
Paul gets his wish. Our favorite social picture service, Flickr, is now letting us all have a peak into picture meta-data. The feature is called camera finder as explained by Stewart (founder of Flickr):
See the most popular cameras on Flickr, search by camera model, check our macro, portrait, night and action shots from each model, see the trends for camera usage by manufacturer and find reviews and pricing information – it’s like a whole, um, camera finder on a web site! If you’re curious about the capabilities of a new cameraphone, how good the little point and shoots are going or what people are using the latest digital SLRs for, it’s a pretty fantastic resource.
Paul suggests that the data generated from your web application (i.e. for example Pingomatic) might be worth more than the actual service. Be careful with your data, but remember it is likely very valuable.
.
In a move that reflects the current direction of the Big in Japan business, we are launching our first true tool set ~ an API to allow web applications to build in robust voice features that are built, managed and hosted by Big in Japan. Big in Japan doesn’t want to build the applications you use, we want to make the applications your deliver better! Think BASF for web services.
We have been providing Voice 2.0 integrated applications as dedicated services for quite some time. Now we are offering a robust API (application programming interface) that allows any web developer or application developer to integrated custom phone features into their application. The first API provides hooks into our Podcall system. The API work regardless of the web technology (Ruby on Rails, PHP, Flash and of course simple HTML to name a few). Want to offer this sort of functionality found on Google:
Originally built to allow for quick and easy integration for Courtney Cox’s new television show Dirt, the Big in Japan team is opening the API for any developer who needs access to a telephone system. What can it do? The possibilities are endless. Start with simple functions like providing messages or wake-up calls to your users or clients. Then build interesting dating applications to connect people together. Or create robust identity verification system for your services for payment processing or demographic data collection. The system is robust and the applications are limitless.
Earlier today we announced that we would release the source code to several web applications built and hosted by the company in a post titled, “Opening the Source at Big in Japan.” TechCrunch even picked up on the idea. The source code is being released using the GPL.* Each tool was written using Ruby on Rails. If you review the code you will note that each tool was built at a different time. See if you can guess which tool was first and which was last. As promised:
The repositories can be accessed either by browser or via the svn client. The svn username is “anonymous” and the password is blank.
* To be clear, it is our intent that anyone who modifies the code MUST release those modifications publicly. If you modify the code for use as your own hosted service we require that you release the modified code. Get it? There is some confusion about this point in the open source community. The license explains that you are required to do so if you distribute or publish the code and some argue that a hosted application does not constitute “distribution” or “publishing” of the code and as such you are not required to release the modifications. We understand the confusion, but want to be very clear, for the purposes of our license hosting the source code for other’s use constitutes distribution or publication of the binary code. This is detailed in the source code files as well. Enjoy!
The Big in Japan team is growing and our mission is becoming clear. This morning while I was driving to work I was considering how much time we should invest in the free feed tools we built over the past year including FeedVault, PodServe, FrankenFeed, elfURL, InstantFeed, QwikPing and SocialMail. They need a lot of work to be relevant, but we are super busy working with our paying social media clients. Do we have the time to support a suite of tools that were very hot a year ago, but cooling off by the day?
We learned quite a bit about development, rss, social media, web 2.0 and ruby on rails while developing them. We learned even more about how hard it is to keep web services relevant. We are still using custom versions (i.e. mash-ups) of the tools to support our own clients.
So here is our proposal (instead of selling them on ebay). We will open up the source code for each tool (with the exception of PodServe for now) using the GPL just as we did for SimpleTicket. What do we ask in return? That anyone using the tools (i.e. building something from our initial work) contribute that work back into the SVN for that tool (FYI – the license requires it). If you don’t want to, or can’t contribute your modifcations back just let us know and we will sell you a modified license. The name Big in Japan is the property of our company as are the trade names associated with each tool. Oh, and we will keep them running as hosted services as well (don’t email us ~ your data is safe).
Check back soon for links to the SVN for each tool. Hope you enjoy taking a look at the code…
