Do you ever feel like you’re the different one? Like you are the geek at the dance? I feel like that all the time, and often it’s a bad thing. You see, if you are really arrogant, you can tell yourself that you ARE different, and everyone else just sucks. Unfortunately, I’m stuck with the wonderful combination of undeniable geekiness and marginal self esteem.

I’m going into this because I think I’m different about blogging. Many of my friends who blog (Jon Arnold, Andy Abramson and Alec Saunders) seem to make their bones by commenting on the news and events around them. And they do it really, really well. When something happens, and you need to know what it means, count on them to tell you. Smart people, for sure, and although I always hesitate to substitute other’s judgments for my own, their’s is nearly always as good or better than mine.

That said, I hardly ever spend time telling my three readers (thanks, Mom!) what things mean. Not that I don’t have opinions, but I tend to be a long deep thinker, and it takes me a few weeks to form an opinion, if I ever do. Bad for blogging, I suppose. What’s worse than a geek? A slow one. This makes me feel like a fish out of water.

Here’s why I blog: I’m trying to be really, really transparent in my life. There are people in my life like family, friends and coworkers, and I really want to connect with them. I want them to know what I’m thinking about, and working on, and why. Here’s a place they can find that out, if they are interested and (obviously) a bit bored. Until then, I’ll have to let the quick thoughts come from others - and that’s just peachy with me. This will stand as my professional diary crying out loud.

Hey… hold on. I saw the movie! In the end, the geeks win!

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 6:19 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Well, you can find out for yourself. On a daily basis, those neat people at Programmable Web scour the earth for mashups, and figure out which APIs are being used in them. Then, they tally who’s using what to figure out which web services are the most popular, and for what.

Today’s scores?
Yahoo leads in APIs, but google is running away in Mashups. The most popular APIs?

1) Google Maps
2) Flickr Photo Sharing
3) Amazon Shopping

Exactly 12 mashups using Voice, with 8 of them using Skype from Ebay.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 5:19 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Here’s an article in the lastest VON magazine about the mashup between Skype and Unyte. Skype, as you probably know, is an peer-to-peer VoIP service provider with a very excellent API for delivering next generation features. Unyte is a company that provides application sharing for collaboration. When you put the two together, you can provide one button conferencing for Skype users, including application sharing. Now that’s cool, but even better, saves a ton of money for the enterprise.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 2:57 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Who would have imagined couch surfing ten years ago?

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 2:56 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment