w.illi.am/ participera au plus grand rassemblement québécois d’experts en technologies web.
Venez nous rencontrer à notre kiosque ou durant le Salon de l’emploi.
Nous vous invitons également à voir la conférence : Optimiser les applications web, une approche thérorique, donnée par Sherif Zaroubi, Conseiller senior, le vendredi 12 mars à 14h45.
Imagine your at the supermarket, you wonder what you will be eating next week. You pop up your iphone, look at your favorite recipe list directly from your favorite recipe website. You decided what recipe you will do, you look at the ingredients, check ingredients you don’t have, it automatically add them to your grocery list. Popup your grocery list, off you go find what you need for the week. What if you could even do this offline like a real app from your ipod touch?
No this is not a application from the Itunes Appstore, what I am talking about is a mobile web application that could work on Iphone, Ipod touch, Palm Pre, and all Droid phone.
If you own a mac you are probably familiar with the web browser Safari, well the Safari gut called Webkit is what is powering all the devices up there I am talking about, even blackberry is working on a browser based on webkit. What so special about webkit? Well it’s cutting edge technology. They implemented every animation you could have in a real application directly in the web browser using CSS3 and it have most features HTML5 will bring in the future, today. Most notably offline website and databases directly in the browser.
With all these devices, you get the big pie of the mobile web browsing, and you get a very good browser to work with. These was neither the case before. You had Windows mobile which use IE 5.5 rendering engine (ouch!), the nokia, backberrie browsers which was actually worse and opera mobile, which is actually pretty good, but do not have a big pie as smartphone goes.
Showtime is using jQTouch for its mobile website, you can save favorite shows and get your weekly schedule
On top of that, we get mobile frameworks popping up to ease the web application development. jQTouch is based on the jQuery javascript framework. To have used it before, it’s a pretty good rapid development kit for mobile website. You can create basic website with lists and articles in a couple of hours and really feel like a mobile app. Pastrykit is the unofficial framework used by apple. It’s not officillaly released but some developers took the time to open the API to everyone.
As you can see, pretty much every giant step we took on the mobile web is based on the fact that Webkit is king of the mobile platform. What if the Firefox mobile would come to dethrone Webkit? Well that would be pretty bad for website based on webkit out here, most mobile framework are based only and directly on Webkit. But this is really not the trend right now, with blackberry soon switching to webkit and Google android phone becoming more and more popular (HTC, Samsung and others are developing phone on it), Webkit mobile seems to have at least some great years ahead.
Stats from Admob Metric
Google is a constant source of criticism among the “technocracy” here at the conference. Last night’s dinner conversation remained critical of Google Books and how it will further Americanize the websphere. Europeans feel especially threatened by Google, as they “own” not only American, but also European online culture. I agree 100% that these are serious issues. To quote the first president Roosevelt (not to be confused with FDR) “Yes to big business… Yes to big government.”
Alas, day two of the conference was the source of discussion that kept me thinking about business culture and global culture – both very interesting topics. Here are some inspiring quotes and my thoughts for the day: (Quotes are not verbatim. My comments in italics.)
Online merchandising that inspires
“Whatever you are thinking, think BIGGER…culture, customer service, clothing….we didn’t spend much on Adwords…viral is the best thing to do, as well as building the customer experience online and offline.”
(Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com)
Quite amazing really, from 2001 to 2008, Zappos’ revenues grew from 0$ to 1 billion. They focus on selling a culture. Almost all their employees are on Twitter, and active on other social network sites. They are extremely focused on their HR department, and ensuring employees are a good fit. Hsieh says they have offered employees $2000 to quit after one week if they thought they had made a mistake. They have two interviews with employees: one classic interview, and one focused on assessing cultural fit. “We want people who will be able to share our culture… the definition of happiness is different for every person.”
His speech was very inspiring. I am motivated to take more time for HR and get better support for recruitment 
“Be there before the sale”…let users promote your product…you don’t have to sell directly…”
(Chris Brogan, President, New Marketing Labs, Author, Trust Agents)
I agree; instead of spending thousands of dollars on PPC and Cos, it’s better to make good use of social networks. PPC is to online advertising what traditional ads were a few years ago. Everyone is spending on it but most don’t take the time to optimize it. Costs are rising as agencies are growing – it’s time to react and use social networks instead.
Let them build it for us
In response to market demand and nuances of banking regulations in different countries, Paypal is opening up its payment system. “We need programmers all over the world to work on the development of whatever remains to be done, focused on our use cases…”
(Osama Bedier, Vice President of PayPal Platform and Emerging Technology)
Smart. Paypal is letting programmers outside Paypal develop with Paypal’s APIs to accomplish their goals. I was saying this to my customers just a few weeks ago: invest more money on an API program instead of developing new features that will only be used by a few people.
…let others innovate for you…
Real-world Counter-Culture
(Danah Boyd, Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, Fellow at Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society)
Danah gave a brillant presentation. It was very likely my favorite one.
Danah Boyd does random word searches on Twitter to discover twittering outside her normal comfort zone. …from racist words on Twitter to youth video content… she looks at the power of visibility online, getting a true picture of the real world. Is it sometimes better to be stuck with televised network programming? Not a chance.
Grinda: ‘le retour du succès”
OLX is a new classified site, very popular locally… it focuses on the South-American and Russian markets. 10M$ revenues per year with ad sense only…”
(Fireside Chat with Fabrice Grinda, Co-CEO, OLX, Inc. and Loic Le Meur, Founder, Le Web)
Grinda says “Whatever you do, you have to be within the top 3 leading markets. This could include your local market, but its best to focus on your top three.” I agree but I also think you need to think outside the box…there are other markets besides the US and Europe. I remember UNYK in Quebec, they were number one in South-America! Finally, they were sold to Viadeo (in France).
Russia Roundtable: Emerging Markets: Focus on Russia
Moderated by Jennifer L. Schenker, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Informilo.com
Sasha Galitsky, Almaz Capital Partners
Bernard Lukey, CEO, OZON.ru
Edward Shenderovich, Managing Director, Kite Ventures
Arkady Volozh, CEO, Yandex
Google is not a leader in Russia which is going to be the largest EU Internet market (Arkady Volozh, CEO, Yandex)
Amazon is not present at all in Russia and OZON has taken the lead (Bernard Lukey, CEO, OZON.ru)
The blogosphere is not as well set-up as it is in the west…it’s more kitchen conversation. (Edward Shenderovich, Managing Director, Kite Ventures)
There is more US investment in the US. (Sasha Galitsky, Almaz Capital Partners)
I often wonder how it will all play out in Russia. Just like in Quebec, language can protect the market – that is why Russian companies have a lot of success – but it doesn’t last forever…just think of the Berlin Wall… it came down long before we thought it would…
Have a good week-end.
damien
I’m truly enjoying myself listening and participating in the discussion at LeWeb09 in Paris this year. There’s a lot of mental energy here and my brain is certainly feeding on it.
API integration and predicting the next big social networking craze is keeping the debate going. As always, everyone wants to predict what we should expect as the next killer app and who will introduce it?
william is a company that keeps its clients on the cutting edge and integrates next-generation Web 2.0 assets. Being here discussing with the top thinkers in social networking is certainly jump-starting my ideas for the coming year. 2009 was a great year for us, with new departments, projects and clients, but 2010 is sure to be even more exciting, with all the new API’s we see on the horizon. There will be ever-more interesting tools to integrate and collaborations to make. It also makes me wonder who will by first in line to announce an IPO, signifying that the recession is behind us!
I’m gathering great food for thought, and there’s even better food to eat here in France. My mind and stomach are well satiated. Ah Paris! Some things should never change…
Here’s are a few pearls of wisdom and statements I’ve gathered from CEO’s, COO’s and thinkers from cutting edge technology companies from around the world. (Bear in mind they are not 100% verbatim). I have included my my immediate reactions to some of the key panelist statements. I hope to offer more insightful, lengthy thoughts after the conference.
ON SOCIAL NETWORKS: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
“The battle for identity is not over. Myspace ID and Facebook Connect are great tools that are going to have tremendous success down the road”
… “Mark my words: Twitter is dead”
(Mike Jones, COO, MySpace)
Have I missed something?
Open Social is not dead but they don’t have that killer app to make it a success….they are going to stay behind the scene without it…. (Panelists)
“We can’t scale ourselves”… “Community Control is bullshit….the user is in control.” (Chris Pirillo Founder, Lockergnome)
I do agree… mostly… however, the user must be able to remove content!
“Twitter and Facebook will not be around forever”. (Chris Pirillo Founder, Lockergnome)
Of course not; from the Roman Empire to the communist regime….nothing lasts forever.
THE NEXT KILLER APP
LeWeb iPhone App: official web app for the conference.
I have to admit that the signature conference App “LeWeb App” is very useful. Just this morning I used it to get to the conference. No paper needed. Everything is included: Agenda, video, Tweets etc.…
Shazam: has more than 300 mobile carrier relationships in order to distribute (Andrew Fisher, CEO of Shazam).
Shazam is my favorite app, my pick for 2009. I think it’s one of the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Square: (demo by Jack Dorsey, the inventor of Twitter): To be launched in March 2010: After years of talking about it, we may finally be able to use our mobile phones as a payment device. You need to add a small gadget to your phone. Meant for personal and corporate use from garage sales to restaurants.
-I was not impressed by the demo, but it sounds like a great idea.
THE BOTTOM LINE
“Entrepreneur is a French word, we are Entrepreneur” (Marc Simoncini, Founder & CEO, MEETIC)
Okay, okay, sure, you are are entrepreneurs, but I would like to point out that Meetic is a carbon copy of Webseducation, a Quebec dating site that launched several years ago.
“Youtube is not a social network, we leverage social media. “There is no magic formula for revenues… always improve the way to present Ads…Few users have more than 1M$ in revenues.” (Chad Hurley, Co-Founder & CEO, YouTube)
There was also talk about whether Youtube will basically become an online movie rental shop. There is no clear answer, but that might very well be the direction they are moving in.
Summary of the Day: APIs are keys and Mobile platforms will be everywhere next year….
jQuery has been kind of a buzz word in the last 2 years. This technology started really small but it is now endorsed by a lot of major web players, have a complete development team of more than 10 talented developers, and there is currently 3 or 4 conferences a year organized by the team on the sole purpose of talking about it with other web developers. It is a technology we use heavily at w.illi.am/. If for you jQuery only rings in your head with some kind of AJAX, well read this out and the next time you ask you your developers team about jQuery they might not look at you with round big eyes and say « yes… yes… »
The jQuery mojo is write less do more, and this is exactly what it’s meant to do. This is an API that help you write better javascript. Unfortunately it is really hard to write good javascript on all browsers. What jQuery does is take your jQuery code and dispatch it to every browser in the more efficient way possible. This enables developers to write faster and better javascript. It adds some functionalities too, like for example animations.
Not unlike Adobe Flash, with jQuery it is possible to animate objects on your web page, this is however limited. While you can do easing and opacity effects, you cannot rotate or use « photoshop effect » directly from javascript. Well used, you can create nice and clean animation with jQuery, but trying too hard might result in a look that feel like flash but not really as good as flash.
This is a common error for non-tech teams to actually refer jQuery as AJAX, in fact this is only a subset of functionality of javascript and not javascript itself. AJAX refers to asynchronous JavaScript and XML, what it means is that you can load external XML or HTML to and from your page. For example, a form on the web normally sends you to another page when submitting it. Using AJAX, you could submit the form to your server in javascript using AJAX without quitting the page. Most recent websites make a major use of AJAX without the user noticing it to update content or save users preference.
Using it without an API like jQuery is pretty hard because of it’s weird syntax. This is somewhere jQuery really shines, because it enable you to do a lot, without wanting to bang your head on the wall. Because of javascript API like jQuery, using AJAX has been made a lot more easier and also popular, this might have to do with why people often call jQuery as an AJAX technology.
If you want more information on jQuery I would suggest you visit the official website. There is a lot of information on the website and looking at the documentation might help you understand how jQuery can be beneficial for your website or company.
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