BarCamp is a user-generated event — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants.
There is no audience, only participants. Attendees must give lead a discussion, give a demo, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. All sessions are scheduled the day they happen. The people present at the event will select the demos or presentations they want to see.
Attendance is free of charge.
Topics may include, but are not limited to: online services, social media, startups, UI design, entrepreneurship, VC, Web 2.0 technologies, online marketing, online advertising, online payment, e-commerce, open source software, hardware hacking, robotics, mobile computing, bioinformatics, programming languages, even the future of technology or global issues.
The current logo you’re seeing on top of this page is the logo of Barcamp Hanoi 1. Several months ago, right after we put it on the homepage, some people gave us feedback that we should change the logo. And we see that other Barcamps also change their logo for each individual event. So we think it’s right time now to announce a tiny logo design contest for Barcamp Hanoi 2009. Then we can use the winning logo to print banner, T-shirt, official documents and put it on the homepage. You can read more detail about the contest below:
Barcamp Hanoi 2009 Logo Design Contest
Help Barcamp Hanoi create a unique and meaningful logo for the event of 2009.
Reward for the Winner
Community-Wide recognition for designing the official Barcamp Hanoi 2009 logo featured on the official homepage.
A free Barcamp Hanoi 2009 T-Shirt to show off your winning design.
Make sure your Flickr account is linked to an active email address; this is the only means of contacting the winner!
Don’t forget, the submission deadline is Saturday February 28th 11:59 PM (GMT+7). You have a week from now to prepare and submit your logo. Start right now!
Yesterday, Google just launched Social Bar as a part of Google Friend Connect. The bar enables users to comment on any page of the website as long as it has got Social Bar enabled. Brilliant! The bar is alot better than Members gadget which people have integrated since Google Friend Connect announced. From Social Web Blog, here are the features of the social bar:
On the far left, visitors can join your site, see their identity, and edit their profiles and settings.
Your visitors can also delve into your site’s activity stream to see what’s happening throughout your site. It includes links to recent posts made anywhere on your site, helping other visitors quickly find where the hottest conversations are taking place.
The wall gadget can host a discussion for the whole site, a section of pages, or each individual page, letting your visitors easily read and leave comments.
Lastly, visitors can see the other members of your site, check out their profiles to see how like-minded they really are, and even become friends.
After integrating the “Social Bar” to my blog, here is my first thought:
Google leaves so many options to integrate. It’s good but some are quite unvalued. Put the bar on top (disappeared whenever user scroll down) and enabling to comment on the entire site don’t make the site more social. It’s just like the members gadget and comment gadget in another format. So classic and This only makes me to miss the good old days when people were interested in dynamic websites.
Viral ability is not really good. It’s so hiden and unatural. Although your activities are brought across the websites you have joined, your friends only can see your activities when click on your avatar on the bar or gadgets.
After all, Google has done a good job. You can check out the bar right in this blog and leave your comment via either worpress’s comment form or the comment gadget.
Watch the video below to know how to add the social bar to your website.
I admit I am a Google fanboy. That only makes me to miss the good old days of Google more. I know this time is hard for not only Google but also every companies. But it doesn’t mean that a company is willing to lose its philosophy to survive. The first thing of Google’s philosophy is not right anymore:
Focus on the user and all else will follow.
From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site:
The interface is clear and simple.
Pages load instantly.
Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.
By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another.
Google’s products are being more and more complicated, many features have been added hastily and no more fine details. Maybe I am too sensitive but I feel Google is going down.
For me, 2008 was an eventful year with many incredible things. They’re really inspirational. To begin a new-year writing, here are my predictions for web in Vietnam next year. Feel free to comment and contribute to my list:
Vietnamese bloggers will move to other blogging platforms when Yahoo! shutdown Yahoo! 360 which is the most popular blogging service in Vietnam now. The best choices are services based on Wordpress.
Bloggers will be affected by the new blogging rules. Some bloggers may be held because of their violations as in the circular which has been released by Vietnamese goverment.
User-generated content will move to other forms beside blogging, maybe podcast and video podcast. And the quality will be improved. Users will care more for authority,…
The war among SNS in Vietnam is just beginning and we will not be able to know which will win next year. But they will compete with Facebook directly when it comes to Vietnam (It’s really coming). More niche SNS will be launched.
Wifi will be everywhere in big cities and services in mobile will grow, from sms-based to something like mobile social networks.
Not any significant movement in Vietnamese search engines.
Economic crisis will affect VC and start-ups financing. Some services like products search, price comparison will be launched. E-Commerce will grow but still slowly.
Social media (Blog, Social news, Wiki,…) will prove its role in media revolution in Vietnam.
Some big companies will come and do something for online market in Vietnam as Youtube did when they have put their servers in Vietnam to improve the loading speed for Vietnamese users.
Well, in this online chaotic world, not only blogging, tweeting also requires passion and authority.
There is was an interesting debate on Techmemetoday few days ago about authority-based Twitter searches. Loic Le Meur wants Twitter to rank searching results based on authority i.e number of followers and Mike ’s with him. But I totally disagree with this idea. Although the goal for finding better tweets in searches is (very) good, they’re so wrong on making it. Number of followers on Twitter only shows us the popularity, not authority. Everyone is cheating this number and what is the meaning when their tweets don’t make sense at all for most of their followers?
See, this is why I really don’t care about Mike Arrington’s claim that I should blog more because my traffic is going down. If I cared only about building a business or making money then he’d definitely be right.
Yeah, more and more you care about traffic, making money, blah blah… less and less authority, quality you get. You will don’t have enough time for something really valuable.
PS: I was too busy and kept this port as a draft so long…is it too late to publish this post?
For Google, this’s a big improvement. Most of people use Gmail IDs to sign-in and join sites integrated Google Friend Connect and that only makes a members list for the sites, no more. For me, it’s so classical. Members list, shoutbox widget,… just like 10 years ago when people were excited with Dynamic Web. With Twitter integration, Google Friend Connect is more social a bit. The friends in the list are your actual friends – or, at least people you’ve got an online relationship with.
For users, it just means now you can use your Twitter account to sign-in and join sites integrated Google Friend Connect. Furthermore you can know whether your Twitter friends join the sites or not. Personally it is not really meaning to me.
For Facebook, why so serious?
Yep, for a conclusion, I still choose Facebook Connect for my blog.
I have used Twitter for 6 months, not a long time, although I had heard a lot about it as a representation of micro-blogging for years. But recently I have been really addicted to Twitter especially after Mumbai attacks.
People talked about how fast Twitter broadcast info about the bridge collapsed last year or the earthquake in China this year. But only when the Mumbai attacks happened few weeks ago, I did have a chance to witness the miracle Twitter can do. I followed the news stream updated every second about the attacks as many others all around the world on Twitter. Right after I had found out that Twitter was the best news source at that time to catch latest information in Mumbai, I set up a breaking news page based on Monitter that can display live searching results of some specific keywords from Twitter. For 36 hours, the page reached about 6000 people. I agree with Bernard Lunn on RWW. Twitter’s live search is really good in some cases especially live events like this one.
Nearly at the same time with Bernard, Nick Bilton wrote on O’Reilly Radar about the Twitter Gold mine. He belives that semantic ads would be the key in its incredible business model. But as far as I know, the road ahead will be very long with semantic web. It’s not simple like you tweet: “I want a new car” and you will get recommendations based on what you have tweeeted before. I think recommendation is good but it should be based on need of receivers, not senders. Don’t put useless recommendations everywhere, it would be the same as spam and Twitter will be an ads machine.
It’s not too hard to see value of Twitter and many people have been talking about Twitter monetization. My question is: “where will the money come from?”. Some talked about modifying Twitter platform to something else that can make money but I believe that making money from something built on top of Twitter (or value of Twitter: Real time demonstration, fast propagation, social graph, user experiences,…) is the way. I mean money won’t come from inside Twitter like Display ads, Tweet ads, Search ads,…bla bla (or come but little) but outside and based on the value of Twitter. I know, it’s vague, but I believe, at least now.
The post was written last week and saved as a draft. A week passed and still have no more idea about this so … I just publish the post and keep thinking
On the internet, a dog can use Facebook Connect to let everybody knows it's a dog (of course, if it had got a Facebook account and wanted to show its activities in dog communities)
I have seen carefully identity 2.0 keynote of Dick – CEO of Sxip Identity although I had known before that Erick from Techcrunch threw **** to Dick’s face. But not everything around Dick is ****. I agree with him in some points. Identity is not only about name, photo, birthday,… it’s also about what you say, what you do, what others say about you,… But actually I have no idea about Identity 2.0. Well, recently people put 2.0 after everything they claim that it’s making a revolution, or at least as what I see in Vietnam. What Tedd Dziuba said is true in a sense:
A revolution doesn’t mean that you pseudo-sexually “poke” someone from Facebook to MySpace. It doesn’t mean that you can type in your password once and have access to every authenticated service out there. It certainly doesn’t mean that you can make a word processor program work when you’re not connected to the internet (we’ve had that feature for decades).
No, a revolution means that somebody gets beheaded.
More about stories around “identity”, Kaliya at IdentityWoman.com linked to my previous post and said that she feels strange when people like Facebook Connect because of “real identity”. I think I will have to explain more detail about this point.
What do you need to identify someone in a (online) community?
I have different identities in different (online) communities even somewhere I use the same account names. Each identity is “real” in the community it belongs to, only that not every relates to my real life (or at least my life people around me usually see in reality). Yeah, your avatar, your status, your account name, your articles, your conversations,…that’s enough for me to identify who you are in the community and it’s “real” in sphere of the community.
You choose what to show up in real life.
In my opinion, one of characteristics to distinguish Facebook from other Social Network sites is “real identity”. “Real” here means your identity in Facebook has connection to your real life. Come back to Facebook Connect, you don’t have to connect every sites, every communities to Facebook. It’s your choice. You choose which site you want to display your activities there in Facebook. In other words, that means you choose what you want to show in real life. Facebook also lets you set privacy settings to make sure right people see right activities you want they see.
For example, you can make a video of you having sex, upload to porntube or whatever, submit to reddit with the title “The most f*cking amazing sex scene” and broadcast on Twitter that “I have never seen anything amazing like this video…” with different identities. And what do people think when looking at this in each community? Just a sex tape leaked and someone uploaded it, another found that it’s amazing and wanted to share to everybody, that’s all. If you want to show these whole things as yours in reality, connect it to Facebook somehow.
In my case, I am blogging with my real identity so that integrating Facebook Connect into my blog is worth as what I said in my previous article.
PS: I did have to remove the Facebook Connect plugin for Wordpress because it’s still buggy. Hope it will be more stable soon in next version.
Both Facebook and Google have released their products for connecting people in this week. This is really a fight where they try to get more websites to integrate their products. So which should I choose? At the moment I choose Facebook Connect instead of Google Friend Connect for my blog.
Google Friend Connect – Connect through widgets
Right after I had received Google’s email about the product, I took a look but couldn’t see anything special. It’s based on OpenSocial so they can allow webmasters authenticate their users from various social networks and through Google or Yahoo accounts so that its reach is really wide. But at this time all I can do simply embed widgets such as community listing and community wall, no more. Although it’s really easy to embed these widgets but I think people are not really connected with Google Friend Connect now.
Facebook Connect – Connect through real integration
On the other hand, Facebook Connect can be integrated more deeply. It’s not only allow webmasters authenticate their users through Facebook account, it also adds more value to their website. So what do I get when I choose Facebook Connect? In fact Facebook already told you most of their strong points of this product. But here what are most important I think:
Deep Integration
This can make better feeling for me and whom follow my blog. Developers and website owners like it although it requires a little knowledge about software development. This can obstruct Facebook Connect’s spreading but it’s not really a big problem now. Privacy rules are also up to date and brought to all websites that integrate Friend Connect users move to.
Real identity
Really important nowaday. I can have as many Google or Yahoo accounts as I want but at least now I only have one Facebook account with real identity, real photos, real information, real relationships. What is the point? Somehow Facebook account is worth more than Google or Yahoo account I think. And if people who have high authority follow my blog, that not only can prove quality of what I write but also confirm my own authority.
Social distribution
I can share and distribute my content to Facebook’s feed (my feed and feed of people who follow my blog). It’s really useful when it helps me to broadcast my content and helps others to discover interesting things. Very nice.
Yeah, and that’s why I choose Facebook Connect at this time for my blog. Simply it’s worth.
I admit I am a Google fanboy. That only makes me to miss the good old days of Google more. I know this time is hard for not only Google but also every companies. But it doesn’t mean that a company is willing to lose its philosophy to survive. The first thing of Google’s philosophy is not right anymore:
