Web 2.0 Expo
23-25 April 2008
Some of the presenters posted their slides to:
http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008/public/schedule/proceedings

Keynotes and Lectures

1) "The Dark Side of Ajax" by Jacob West: Jacob at fortify dot com
Mostly about security problems raised by Ajax.
More flexibility in a tool makes it harder to get security right.
Terms:
Black hats exploit a vulnerability in your code.
Same origin policy forbids Cross Site Scripting (XSS).
In a Cross site request forgery (CSRF), black hats read the cookies on your computer to get id's to use in logging into other sites like banking sites.
Malware is malicious software.

2) Max Levchin started many successful companies, and he said his secret is to "hire for drive"

3) Microsoft announced "Mesh"
Someone can take a photo with their phone and it will automatically be uploaded to the web and someone else can see it nearly instantaneously.

4) Scott Berkun said on his blog:
"We have always been collaborative. Always been social. It’s in our genes and it’s what we have evolved to do well. Good technologies enhance our natural abilities, give us useful artificial ones, and help us to get more of what we want from life. Web 2.0 and social media make the process of collaboration and developing relationships more fun, efficient, powerful and meaningful."

Clay Shir that Web 2.0 products should carve out society's cognitive overload (which is now spent watching tv) and bring it onto the web. Harness people's free time and put it together to form community intelligence that everyone can take advantage of

5) Marc Andreesen invented the first browser around 1993. He gives Bill Gates credit for creating a horizontally structured open industry.

6) Jonathan Zittrain wrote the book "The Future of the Internet and how to stop it".
His premise is that because the devices are on closed platforms and tethered to their makers (ipods, tivos), the generative, free nature of the internet could die.

7) Steve Pearman of MySpace claims that 11% of all internet minutes are spent on myspace.

8) Daniel Appelquist of Vodaphone
"Mobile Ajax and the Future of the Web"
Within 5 years a majority of web usage will be from mobile devices.
snurl.com/25n2s
deviceatlas.mobi
betavine.net

9) "Influence is Overrated" by Jonah Peretti
jonah at buzzfeed.com
He said he would let me know when his slides are ready to be distributed.
Duncan Watts published research in Journal of Consumer Research 2007. Watts disputes "Tipping Point" by Gladwell and says that whether or not influence can spread depends mostly on the network structure. He values the "Bored at Work" network, which works for funny, silly things but complex products will have sub-viral growth. Sub-viral growth is still growth, though, so in that case you just have to start with a larger mailing list.
So you need three things:
• contagious media
• big seed (mailing list)
• business up front, party in the back
aka "mullet strategy", this lets users party, argue, and vent on the secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page of your website looking sharp.

10) "Do Try this at home: Ajax bookmarking, etc"
Brian Dillard from PathFinder - slides posted
Examined the ways in which standards bodies, browser vendors and library/plug-in authors are shaping the future of our foundational web technologies - and how individual developers can participate in that process.
"Walled gardens" are the closed web
Google Gears has client-side storage, Dojo and GWT implement bookmarking and back button.

Expo floor:
As usual, I was trolling the expo floor looking for local employers. I found LOTS this year!

1) Intuit.com/careers
In Mountain View, they develop Quicken, Quickbooks and TurboTax.
QuickBase is a free online database that you can use to create customizable apps

2) WordPress
Small (20 people) virtual company where everyone works at home.

3) Rearden.com/jobs
This stealth company is an incubator for new ideas. Hiring now!

4) Ebay
Hiring testers
developer.ebay.com

5) Yahoo
hiring testers
miraglia at yahoo-inc.com