Software, Digital Content, Geopolitics, Economics & More from of a Libertarian Serial Expat and Entrepreneur
Microsoft: "Microsoft MapPoint .NET is a hosted, programmable XML Web Service that allows you to integrate high-quality maps, driving directions, distance calculations, proximity searches and other location intelligence into your applications, business processes, and Web sites." 07/13/05 update: Yahoo and Google have mapping APIs now (see these blog entries from insiders).
In: user experience
19 Jan 2002Not very useful, but fun, this directory lets you open small frames within its pages to preview the sites it lists. 02/23/04 update: Zapmeta does that too.
In: web services
17 Jan 2002Line56: "We’re not advocating that a company change a working system," says [Intel's Chief E-Strategist Chris] Thomas. "What we are saying is that where you have manual processes that are delaying or incurring errors, the automation makes sense. EDI is too expensive to throw at a lot of these problems. But XML and proprietary standards [...]
In: web apps
16 Jan 2002Avinon NetScenario Studio: "is a fully integrated, browser-based environment designed for use by business analysts and e-business consultants to plan, design, publish, continuously enhance and manage online business services." They just inked a deal with Microsoft. 02/22/04 update: the company has been renamed Black Pearl after it merged with another firm named OneChannel.
In: web services
16 Jan 2002Cardscan: "Every six months over 30% of your address book entries become out-of-date. People get promoted, change jobs, change phone numbers and get new email addresses. CardScan’s new AccuCard Service will track and present updates for your consideration. Now your address book can always contain the latest information." This service comes with a business card [...]
In: software
15 Jan 2002Kenamea: "The core of the Kenamea offering is the Kenamea Application Network, which routes message traffic between back-end enterprise applications and end-user front-end applications. The type of data transferred in a message is left entirely to the application developer: messages might contain XML documents in one application, SOAP messages in another, and binary data in [...]
In: web services
15 Jan 2002: "[The Office XP Web Services Toolkit] gives developers and corporate users the ability to search out multiple Web services from across the Internet and integrate them within the tool kit’s development environment. Developers will also be able to cobble together applications from those Web services within the Microsoft Office environment."
Alan Reiter: "The phone keypad is an ergonomic disaster for entering long messages. But with new wireless devices with keyboards coming out this year, such as the Danger hiptop, GSM GPRS pagers from Research in Motion, and pager/phones from Motorola, it will be interesting to see if the Weblog phenomenon helps spark greater use of [...]
In: web apps
14 Jan 2002SiliconValley: "A week after question and answer search engine Ask Jeeves finished embedding the assets of Teoma, the company says it has acquired the technology of privately owned Octopus for an undisclosed amount."
In: web apps
14 Jan 2002VoiceXML Planet: "One way to develop powerful VoiceXML applications is to leverage existing Web applications by simulating a Web browser and scraping the results via a programmable HTTP Web agent. This example allows users to track a Federal Express package, using the fedex.com Web site." It dawned on many people that phones are best at [...]
I'm CEO of an online trade publishing firm in the marketing and defense verticals. We try to make news and data digestible and useful in an environment that is more noisy each day. This personal blog mixes my thoughts and interests on politics, business, software, and more, based on my business and personal experiences. Over the years I have posted items that turned out spectacularly wrong, and a few posts that stood the test of times better. Personal views only.