Beyond | IT : Popfly

Discovering Pickle - Updated

john.mullinax — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:22:00 GMT

With a name like Pickle, the options for joke-making can be overwhelming. :-) That aside, this is a very interesting service for sharing photos and videos. I'm embedding a pickle player below that shows a couple pics -- one for each of my kids -- that were taken in August 2006.

<Note: There seems to be an issue with the embed code (html) that the Pickle player generated. If I can fix it, I will. As a sad and hopefully temporary subsitute, I'm pasting in a pic of what the Player is supposed to looked like (immediately below).>

<Note: Well, making progress on the technical issues with adding a Pickle Player to this page. The nice people at Pickle noticed my post, checked into the problem, and let me know that the html to embed the player appeared to have been altered, and gave me html that should work. So that's progress. I pasted the new embed code in, and deleted the old code, and voila! No change. Darn. For some reason, community server is altering the html between when I paste it into the html form and when it gets published (or even previewed). Funny thing is, the html embed code that i orginally grabbed from the player, as well as the html sent directly from Pickle, actually works in Windows Live Writer. But once it's sent to Community Server it seems to be getting altered. Authoring in a web form vs. in Windows Live Writer makes no difference -- the html gets altered either way. Grrr. Wonder if Telligent can help...? Strangest thing of all - the player will paste in the far right column just fine -- just not into the body of the post.>

I'm sure it's obvious, but I'll point out these could also be videos. One interesting feature is the "add your photos and videos" button. By clicking this button, viewers can add their own stuff to the "album" showing in this specific player.

Pickle calls this content collection a "channel", as in a TV channel. Allowing others to add content to the channel is something that the Channel Owner can turn on and off -- so it can be just a static set of pics and videos you choose, if that's what you want. As a channel owner, you can also turn the feature on, but require your approval before someone else can add content.

Pics and videos can be added via email or via an upload screen, so you can publish from events in "real time" using your camera phone. Not a big deal (anymore) -- at least not by itself. But when combined with the notion of a shared channel that everyone at, say, a party could contribute to... then you can do some neat things.

For example, you could project pics and videos from a party that people add to during the night, making a running documentary of the action. Once the party's over, there's a great collection of content in the channel from multiple folks that makes it easy to share what happened with those who couldn't make it. Think about weddings -- easier and cheaper than than buying/distributing/collecting disposable cameras at the reception, and the way digital technology is giong, soon the pics will be better, too.

By allowing those who embed a Pickle channel in their sites to easily expose the embed code to their own visitors (using the "Get Code" button), there's a nice viral dimension to Pickle. This gives you a little part of what you get with Popfly's ability to mashout (that is, share mashups), although it lacks Popfly's abilities for one-click publishing to Windows Live Spaces and 2-click publishing to Facebook. It's probably not fair to compare Pickle - a social media site with Popfly - a social mashup site.... However, in the cases when a mashup is a collection of media objects, there are a lot of similarities. (BTW, I've written more about the viral dimensions of Popfly here and here. And you can see a list of all my Popfly posts here.)

While I like the direction Pickle is going, I do think there's room for some improvements, as well. For example: The site felt pretty slow. Also, the pics get down-converted to a lower quality (I know, a lot of sites do this, but it's still not ideal). I'm not sure yet about video, but wonder if it gets down-converted, too? I would guess so, as the player is Flash -- which means they would have problems with HD video (I'm told Adobe has recently added HD capabilities to Flash, but the inefficient codec they use means it takes huge bandwidth to stream it). This would be an awesome site with Silverlight and Silverlight streaming.

It would also be nice if Pickle had a Windows Live Writer plugin that would make it easier to insert pickle channels/player into blogs. They do have some blog "management" stuff online at Pickle.com, but it doesn't work with all blog services (and none of the ones I use). Moreover, it requires that I go to Pickle.com, which is sort of a pain as I write blogs in Windows Live Writer.

Windows Live Writer, as well as most other pieces of recently created software, is network-connected. I'm not sure why I should have to stop what I'm doing in Windows Live Writer, open a browser, and navigate to Pickle to see my "channels" before I can add one to a post. Why not just let me browse and navigate to my channels from where I'm already working in Windows Live Writer? (see my post here for more generalized comments on the wisdom of empowering consumers).

</Micro Rant>

I haven't explored all that Pickle has to offer yet, but will be spending some more time with the site over the coming weeks and will post an update if I come across anything noteworthy.

Technorati Tags: video,social media,popfly

Popfly Video Tutorial - LOL

john.mullinax — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:00:26 GMT

Daryll McDade knows I'm a big fan of Popfly, so he sent me over to see recently released Popfly Tutorial video. Educational, and funny, too!

Technorati tags: Popfly, Funny

Surface, Popfly, Photosynth, Silverlight, Windows Live Platform, and consumer value stream links

john.mullinax — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 05:39:00 GMT

Was talking to some folks the other day about some of the cool stuff emerging from Microsoft, and after mentioning to folks they could learn more on this blog, I got request to consolidate some links together into a single post. Voila! :-)

Technorati tags: Surface, Popfly, Photosynth, Seadragon, Silverlight Streaming, Windows Live Platform, Consumer Value Stream

Enterprise Mashups = Service Oriented Reporting?

john.mullinax — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:48:34 GMT

Josh Holmes posted here about the article on Enterprise Mashups he recently co-wrote with Larry Clarkin for Architecture Journal.

It's a good article, and he talks about presenting the paper at SAF (Strategic Architect Forum) recently, and the feedback that he and Larry received from attendees. A brief quote:

"Enablement and Governance were the two largest parts of the discussion. How do I safely allow more people to create mashups without compromising the IT department, the data and everything that we hold near and dear? The fear, that I think that we resolved, is that this is the Excel or Access database of this generation and that if we as the IT department don't have control over it that we will have the wild west and everyone will be working off of non-record data. The counter point is that if someone is creating a mashup with approved services, they are actually leveraging the authoritative data source rather than creating new rogue ones."

Sounds like a good discussion. Here's a little different angle for approaching this topic....

Reporting tools have been building a primitive form of mashups in the enterprise for a long time. The ad hoc reporting tools (e.g., Business Objects and even Excel) feel the most "mashup-y" to me, as you can put together any data sources that can be meaningfully related. On the other hand, structured reporting tools offer the "live" connection to data. If these capabilities came together in single tool to expose enterprise services along side the more traditional data sources like a BO universe or a relational data store, you'd be 90% of the way there to an enterprise mashup tool, wouldn't you? And if some of the services were external, then you'd be all the way there - or darn close, I think.

With all the attention SOA, service repositories, service composition, and service governance have gotten, it's interesting to me that something like enterprise mashups have not emerged under the name "service oriented reporting".

Maybe because mashups emerged first in the consumer world the reporting technology providers were not "tuned in" to this trend very early on? Or, perhaps this just shows the real genius of Popfly? That is, now that it's here as an example, enterprise mashups just seem like such an obviously good idea. Whatever the case, enterprise mashups by any name look to me like an innovation that reporting providers could capitalize on -- or be disrupted by.

Technorati tags: SOA, enterprise mashups, reporting, popfly

Go ahead -- Rip my blog! (And web IM me, too)

john.mullinax — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:26:54 GMT

That is, if you like my blog. I've added a couple new gadgets a little ways down the right hand column of the blog. The first is a Popfly gadget of my blog. Why a gadget of my blog on my blog? Sort of redundant, no? Well, yes. But, if you like the blog...(read more)

Building brand and transcending walled gardens

john.mullinax — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 03:46:10 GMT

Ok - so I've been posting about Popfly a lot lately. Why am I so excited about Popfly? It's simple, actually. Popfly is more than a mashup maker. And it's more than a Mashout tool (for sharing mashups) -- though it is that, too. What makes Popfly so exciting...(read more)

How to make Facebook app with Popfly

john.mullinax — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:44:16 GMT

Tom Foremski has a post on ZDNet that talks about how easy it is to make a Facebook app with Popfly . It's a good post in it's own right, but I especially like that he also includes two videos with Dan Fernandez (a Product Manager on the team building...(read more)

Popfly is growing up... Now everyone can mashup and mashout!

john.mullinax — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:55:22 GMT

Technorati Tags: Popfly You might have heard that Popfly has graduated from Alpha to public Beta. Congratulations, Popfly! This means that anyone can now join the fun mashing up and mashing out (sharing your mashups). If you're not sure what I'm talking...(read more)

Computing Is A Liberal Art, Part 3: Strategies for Reinforcing Loops and the Hive Mind

john.mullinax — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:59:05 GMT

Technorati Tags: innovation , systems thinking , complexity science , adaptive , change , learning , Popfly , computing is a liberal art , knowledge , cyborg Here's a conundrum: if knowledge is personal, how do I benefit from what you "know"? ...(read more)

Want more info on Popfly?

john.mullinax — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:46:44 GMT

I recently got into the Popfly alpha, and have been playing around with it off and on for the last week or two. Here's a screenshot of a simple, compact News Reader that pulls in RSS feeds from the blogs of the members of the Microsoft's DPE team that...(read more)

Popfly - new Silverlight mash-up maker - is now alpha!

john.mullinax — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:18:54 GMT

Popfly is a new tool from Microsoft for people who have great some ideas about how to use technology, but might lack the software development skills to realize them. Basically, it's a fun and easy way to build and share mash-ups, gadgets and Web pages...(read more)