• chat widget
• revenue share

UserPlane Boards—a realtime forum

• API

Widgets and Monetization

• Build – create right widget for you and your users
• Distribute – get your widget out there
• Analyze – can’t see
• Monetize – can’t see

Build

• Define your goals
  • (What do you want the widget to do for you?)
• Understand customer appeal and value
• What will the widget do (functionality)
• Personalization
• Performance

Distribute

• Your site
• Galleries
• Snag / Grab / Copy
• Social
• Scale

Analyze

• Understand how your widget is being used and improve…
• Once your widget is out there, what tools will you use to understand how users are engaging with your widget? You should be asking questions like:
  • How many people are using your widget day-to-day?
  • Where are users coming from?
  • What environment are they using?

Monetize

• Widgets as Ads

• Ads Within Widget

• Transactional Widgets (widgets that facilitate money transfer?)

hehe.

The FOWA people provided bag lunches with:

• a sandwich
• potato chips
• a cookie

They also provided soft drinks.

After lunch, we found a table to sit at and worked on MetaNotes.

intro

Cognitive Seduction 3.5

• Legacy Brain (not your friend)
  • How do we get through to users?
• Chemistry
  • The short path is to get people to feel something.
• What makes people feel?
  • Scary
  • Novelty
  • Surprises
  • Cuteness
  • Joy
  • Mystery (things that are not fully resolved)
  • Thrill
    • Diane Ackerman—Deep Play
• Key Point: LEGACY BRAIN (cater to it)
• haha
• Where there is passion, ...there is a user “kicking ass”.
• (Sideways—wine snob movie?)
• Being better is better. (Nobody is passionate about something you suck at.)
  • Suck Threshold vs. Passion Threshold
  • Get your users past the passion threshold as soon as possible. (That’s our job.)
• But it’s not about the tools we build.
• It’s not about being a “tool” expert.
• It’s about what our tools let them DO.
• Usability is merely a prerequisite.
• What do you help your users kick ass at?

Why are you here?

• In the beginning, there was the waterfall…. (requirements don’t change)
• then the spiral (requirements do change)
• then rapid? (requirements? lol)
• TELEPATHY DRIVEN DESIGN
• Design by Mind Reading
• Facial expressions are important.
• Movement is important.
• Mirror neurons allow us to run simulations of another person’s brain.
• Key: It’s not about reasoning.
• In order to understand your users, you have to (physically) see them.
• We need:
  • Prior Experience
  • Careful Observation
• Bad news: You must observe “live” users.
• Good news: It’s very powerful.
• Give your app a way to know they are confused.
• Add a “WTF?” button. ;-)
• remember, even if your tool is easy, what about the thing they do with the tool? (people can still be confused.)
• The point is to let users express their confusion.
• Touch matters.

The Architecture Behind WordPress.com

• Scaling
  • Platform
  • Business
  • Community
  • People

• Don’t underestimate spam

Scaling Platform

• Matt’s Magic Mini-Cluster
• 7 Boxes = $1500/month
• 2 Load Balancers
  • Any CPU
  • 2 GB memory
  • Any disk
  • Pound + Wackamole + Spread
• 2 Databases
  • Any CPU
  • 4 GB memory
  • Fast disks, RAID
  • Master + Slave MySQL setup
• 3 Webs
  • Fast CPU
  • 2 GB memory
  • Any disks
  • Well-configured $Web_Server

• HyperDB – wordpress’ db layer – only thing that’s fancy
• put everything in subversion (or some source control system)
• Be stateless
• memcached

Scaling Community

• (bootstrap your community by being your own most passionate user)
• institutionalize serendipity
• let people personalize
• http://ma.tt/about

Scaling Business

• Upgrades
• He advocates against flat rates.
• He likes a-la-carte style (...like a good buffet).
  • But it didn’t quite work.
• Ads
  • Only show ads to certain users.
• VIP

Scaling People

• Great People = Rich Environment + Worthwhile Problems
• Passion for (the) Space
• Personality Fit
• Ability to Learn / Curiosity
• Familiarity with Technology (don’t over-emphasize)
• Taste (you can’t really teach this)
• Say No (if you get any red flags)
• Firing is hard, but don’t put it off.

Scaling Brand

• P&G White == Ivory (proctor and gamble)
• Words are Important

The past, present and future of the UI for Distributed Applications

this was a sun commercial

The Future of Social Networks

Brian

• The Problem with Social Networks
• Make them work together! (like the web)
• Work like the web—Small pieces loosely joined.
  • Simplicity
  • Modularity
  • Decentralization
• Why don’t social networks work like this today?
• Identity Management is a big issue.
  • Your identity
  • The identity of your friends

• How can we make social networks work together?
  • microformats
  • rss
  • oauth
  • openid
  • creative commons licensing

Tantek

• XFN
• hCard
• The Social Graph API is an API for the whole web.
• The next big step is to import and subscribe your relationship information.

Joseph

• Being open has been very good for Plaxo.
• impressive aggregation of identity.
• We are on the cusp of the Social Web.
  • The pie is about to get a lot bigger.
• (Plaxo has been around for 6 years, even before social networking took off.)
• Innovation happens when you don’t have to ask permission.
• You don’t have to be more public, but you CAN.
  • (this was a concen of mine)

The Evolution of Web Applications: They’re Not Just for the Web Anymore

Building The Real-Time Web

The Future of Web Services

Launch a Web App in 40 Minutes

Upcoming web-apps from Microsoft…

• 3D mapping app
  • “Use Google Maps!”—heckler from the crowd
• photosynth
  • This was actually kinda cool.

How to Grow a Community in The Future

with complimentary wine for the crowd.

What Makes the Next Great Startup?

1. x
2. x
3. x
4. x
5. x
6. x
7. x
8. x
9. x
10. x
11. x
12. x

(The guy needs to work on his delivery.)

From the web, to the iPhone and beyond!

The Future of APIs

Lots of talk about OpenSocial and its implications.

During the Q&A session at the end, people expressed their concerns about privacy.

The Application of New Features to an Established Application

...

There was no way we could wake up in time for this.

It was good to see her back in action after her long hiatus.

It was great talking to you guys at the FOWA after party. Best of luck with MetaNotes! – luke from awesomehighlighter

Facebook has been infiltrated by Nigerian scammers and other cyber criminals who use compromised accounts to con users out of cash.

Now that even non-tech savvy internet users know not to respond to, or click on links in, emails from strangers, online thieves have turned to social networks and are finding it is easier to trick people when posing as their friends.

On Friday, Sydneysider Karina Wells received a Facebook message from one of her friends, Adrian, saying he was stranded in Lagos, Nigeria, and needed her to lend him $500 for a ticket home.

Adrian used relatively good English but, after chatting further, words such as “cell” instead of “mobile phone” tipped Wells off that she was not talking to her friend but someone who had taken over his account.

Using sites such as Facebook allows scammers to research and target victims more effectively and avoid having their messages blocked by spam filters, said Paul Ducklin, head of technology at Sophos Asia Pacific.

It is likely the scammer obtained Adrian’s Facebook login details after he was infected with a virus delivered by email or in an infected web page.

There are a number of viruses which, once installed on a computer, send back to the hacker a detailed log of everything entered using the keyboard, including online banking details and passwords for services such as Facebook.

Wells played along with the scammer, who asked her to transfer the money into a Western Union account.

“Naturally I was concerned as, to all intents and purposes, this seemed to be legitimate,” she said.

“I pretended that I would help, obtained all the details of where he was and forwarded them to both Facebook and the relevant authorities.”

But while the Nigerian scammer used the compromised Facebook account coupled with social engineering tactics to try to convince Wells to hand over money, many are using compromised accounts to spread malware.

Typically, the victim receives a Facebook message from a friend with a subject such as “LOL. You’ve been catched on hidden cam, yo” or “Nice dancing! Shouldn’t you be ashamed?”

The body of the message contains a video clip link that appears to go to a legitimate site such as Facebook or YouTube but, when clicked on, it takes the user to a bogus web page.

Before the users can play the video they are told they need to download a video player upgrade, which is in fact a password-stealing virus.

The next time the victim logs into Facebook the malware-laden message is sent to all of their friends and the infected link is automatically added in comments on friends’ pages.

Other less sophisticated attacks on Facebook members use spam emails, some appearing to come from Facebook itself, to spread viruses.

In September security firm WebSense reported on spam emails, purportedly sent from an @facebookmail.com address, that tell the victim they have received an invitation from Facebook to add a friend.

“The spammers included a zip attachment that purports to contain a picture in order to entice the recipient to double-click on it. The attached file is actually a Trojan horse,” WebSense said.

i miss u john beppu. hope you return soon to metanotes.