The Paisano®
Renaissance 2.0

The current trend for web startups seems to be either the "everything but the kitchen sink" or the "aggregation or bust" approach. Sites either try to be your everything (and fail) or they try to manage and aggregate all of your data from other sites (and fail). So many startups have lofty ambitions and delusions of grandeur only to be awakened by the sobering reality that most people don’t want what they are offering.

Less is More
However, some startups hit homeruns every once in a while which keeps everyone’s hope alive. So what do these rare successful services all have in common that separates them from the majority of sites that fail? For one thing, they tend to have a laser-like focus on a particuler niche and service it extremely well. They subscribe to the less is more school of thought. It’s all part of what I call the Modular Web where services become customizable components that can be mashed up with other services. They can snap in to an existing service much like lego blocks.

The key is to provide the best possible service for the targeted niche and make it as easy as possible to implement it. So what are some good examples of this mashable modular web?

Google Maps is the ultimate example of a modular web app. Nothing has been used as much as this useful service. Countless mash-ups include Google Maps as one of its modules. The primary reason is because it does one thing and does it very well. However, because of its simplicity and ability to work with other services it continues to produce complex and very useful results.

Flickr has done very well as a service for people into photographer and hosting their pictures. Sure, they’ll add some new bells and whistles every now and then but by and large that’s what they do and nobody does it better. The ability to share images and collections has been the secret to their success.

The same is true with other niche services that have achieved mass acceptance such as YouTube which does the same thing as Flickr but for video instead. The formula for success is pretty much the same: Do what you do best and add some new little features every once in a while and change the interface a tad for good measure. No new coke formula, please!

If you consider universal group acceptance as a barometer of success then Twitter belongs in the mix. If your definition of success involves financial matters then we would not include Twitter in this discussion at this time (though few have any doubts that Twitter is headed towards a golden pay day). They serve the micro-blogging community and despite many scaling and performance issues they’ve managed to grow their membership base. They’ve also been able to spread throughout the web thanks to its open platform that allows countless third-parties to develop add-on tools that only helps Twitter in the eyes of its users. Their formula is to serve up their byte-sized (140 character messages) meals and let others add menu items a la carte style.

Divide and Conquer
When it comes to the big picture, it’s sometimes best to think small. Instead of trying to cover the vast casm that is the internet it makes more sense to narrow the scope and concentrate on a detailed zone or target area. Even if it’s a monolithic establishment, it serves them well to carve up their massive organization into smaller teams. They will find it to be more managable and more agile when it comes to productivity. They’ll be able to make decisions quicker and adapter to the ever changing terrain on the fly which is critical with technology. Their ability to remain focussed on their mission is also enhanced by this reduction in size. This nimbleness could very well mean the difference between success or failure.

Plug n’ Play

Plaxo is a service that understands what their bread and butter is:  address book management. Yes, they’ve branched out and tried a few other things like the silly greeting card service and their excellent social networking aggregation service called Pulse, but by and large their main reason for being is contact management. At the heart of their service is the address book widget that many other services reply upon to allow its members to access their address books in order to add or invite contacts to the service. It’s a perfect example of what the modular web is all about. All of these other sites didn’t have to develop the component that would allow members to access and manage their address books because they knew that Plaxo had an excellent mechanism available. Plaxo has carved a nice niche in that respect.
Others should strive to emulate this type of service. Concentrate on the core audience that they’re serving and make their solution modular like Plaxo has done so that any other site can plug-in your service to accomplish their tasks and objectives. Make it easy to use and access.

Stop trying to reinvent the Wheel
Too many sites waste valuable time and resources trying to do things that have already been done extremely well. This is not meant to knock innovation, not at all. The point is that in most cases it would be best to focus more on a new way to accomplish something rather than try to fix something that ain’t broken. There are too many things that need improvement to Waste time working on those things that don’t need it. There are also many problems that need solutions which would be a much more productive use of time.

Small But Powerful

Iphone app developers are enjoying increasing success because they are creating simple solutions for focussed niches. The don’t try to solve the mysteries of life nor do they try to funnel your tidal wave of social networking information. They build a small app to solve a simple need or problem. Web Startups need to take a page from the Iphone app playbook and do the same thing.

Summation
The Modular Web is all about collaboration and integration of services. It’s not wise anymore to be the be-all, end-all entity as in years past. Instead, the mindset should be to focus on a niche and specialize. The goals should be to strive for excellence in a specified area of expertise with great emphasis on making it as simple as possible to work with other systems and services. Ultimately, it’s about giving people options and choices. We will all be able to pick and choose which module or service to plug into our internet experience. It’ll become increasingly easier to create mashups on the fly because of the vast library of web modules that we will have some day.

IndividURLS allows you to create your very own AllTop-like collection of RSS feeds! Best of all, it’s totally free and easy! Just create an account and start adding RSS feeds to all of the sites and services that you contribute too and they will appear on your own IndividURLS page. Here’s mine as an example: http://individurls.com/myfeeds/paisano

I just added a few of the feeds to sites that I contribute to, such as: Twitter, Utterli, FriendFeed, Plurk, Rejaw, SiezingTheDay, The Paisano and Mashable.

Yes, FriendFeed and other social networking aggregators provide a similar service by collecting all of your RSS feeds in one place that you can share with your friends but IndividRLS presents them all on a page organized by the website just like AllTop does so well. This gives your friends and readers a quick over-view of what’s on all your sites. Clicking any link launches that individual post, image of video.

Hey, I don’t know how this started but somehow the people have spoken and they want me to run for office!

I am indeed humbled Pai!

Here’s news coverage of what happened and this incredible online grass roots campaign that’s taken off!

There you sit staring at the blank computer screen
A palette of Pure white so clean and so pristine

You’re a digital painter with a canvas of bits and bytes.
On the web with a browser is how a blogger writes.

Deep in thought you ponder, “What shall I say this day?”
Your mind begins to wonder, “How many hits will I get today?”

Will you blog about something you like and shower it with praise?
Or will you go on a rant and start a flame war and watch it blaze?

There’s a razor thin line between something that people will Digg,
and something that will get you lamb-basted like a roasted pig.

You’re never quite sure what will make people feel compelled to stumble,
Nor ever understand what really makes the commenting trolls grumble.

How many times can you compare a new startup to twitter?
How many Adobe Air apps can there be that look like snitter?

You think you’ll lose your lunch if you see yet another music site.
Blip.fm, Last.fm, ILike, YouLike, weLove, it makes you want to bite!

If you hear one more service say they will be just like YouTube you’ll surely hurl.
Your stomach turns even more as you watch your screen get flooded on twhirl.

Just when you start to feel a little bit better, someone sends a facebook App.
That’s when you think you’re going to lose it and could possibly even snap.

You try to get back to writing your post and focus on the subject matter.
Slowly, though, you hear a voice whispering “You’re getting fatter and fatter”

You know you need to get some exercise and some fresh air.
But there are several deadlines past due so you don’t even dare.

Then some pseudo borderline friend tries to inflict you with some social media guilt.
“Why haven’t you replied to any of my message?” and your self-esteem starts to wilt.

You fear looking in a mirror because you know that you will look very pale.
You shake your head and secretly pine for the simple days of “You’ve Got Mail”.

®Paisano 10/7/2008

Yammer just launched and the best way to describe it is like this: It’s yet another twitter clone but with a twist. It’s your own private twitter service for your company, organization or family. The key is that everyone’s email address must have the same domain. For example, John@Company.com can join the same yammer network as Sally@Company.com. It will not work with yahoo, gmail or Hotmail accounts so don’t even try it.

So, if you have your own domain name with an email address linked to it then you can start your own private twitter network. If you don’t have one, you could register one for as little as $6.99 a year and then create email addresses for everyone that wants to be a member of this exclusive network. The key is that these new email addresses will only be email forwarding accounts that redirect any emails sent to that address to the real address that the user wants it to go to. It’s a sneaky and inexpensive way to get everyone in the same private twitter network. You can add cousins, aunts, uncles, even family friends. Just create an email forwarding account and they can join yammer.

This is a good solution for other groups, not just companies or families. Organizations such as churches, sports fantasy leagues, recreational sports groups and so on can all take advantage of this now.

Just an idea I had.

Yes, I’m a big fan of Google Chrome already. I still love FireFox and have an occasional tryst with Flock and sometimes give Internet Explorer a booty call (always leaving me feeling dirty and filled with regret vowing never AGAIN!).

Here’s the complete I.T. Happens Series.

Much to my surprise, Google Chrome is actually an excellent browser! I’ll admit that I did not want to like this browser because I only recently fell in love with Firefox thanks to its excellent 3.0 release. I even have a love-hate relationship with Flock for crying out loud. I’ve been totally heartbroken by Microsoft’s horrific Internet Explorer 8 Beta releases to the point where I’ve given up on them. I still contend that they should totally scrap ie and build a whole new browser like Google has down but do it with their own SilverLight and called it SilverSurfer.

For an excellent review including a screencast checkout Rizzn’s post on Mashable. Here’s the complete 30 plus page comic book about Google Chrome. Here’s the Open Source project called Chromium.

My only gripe with Google Chrome is the logo. It kept bugging me because it reminded me of something but I just couldn’t remember what it was. Then I remembered. It looks a lot like the Simon Says game! See for yourself.

I got tagged again. This time by Daniele Rossi whom I thought was a friend and paisan! Hmph. Just kidding. I don’t mind. It doesn’t seem to require as much work or input as some others so why not? So, here goes nothing.

Six random things about Pai?

1. Even though I’m a big computer geek, I love nature and the great outdoors. I especially love gazing at the tops of trees as they sway in the breeze. I blame John Travolta from the movie Phenomenon.

2. I’m a big time sports fan and a big sports trivia buff. I’ve won countless bar bets and big time prizes from sports radio call in shows. By the way, my on-air name is Paisano. I call 790 the zone AM on a regular basis.

3. I love writing all kinds of things. Fiction, non-fiction. Shortstories, poems, novels, screenplays, proverbs, etc.

4. Despite being a big macho Italian man I’m rather light on my feet as a dancer. I LOVE dancing and even enjoy watching those dance shows. My favorite being So You Think You Can Dance. Ssshhh!

5.  Really into cooking and enjoy learning new things from the Food Network! Love Rachel Ray and Giada! Anthony Bordane too!

6. Believe it or not, I love meeting new people more than finding cool new websites! GASP!

Here are the rules:

Okay, for those of you tagged, here (apparently) are the rules, as I was given:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

I will annoy, er I mean tag the following peeps:

MouseWords

HelenMosher

Chris Hebert

Cheryl Smith

Merlene

Jill Foster

In my latest piece for Mashable, “20+ Tools to Make Any Email Inbox More Social”, I shared ways you can enhance your email experience whether it’s Outlook, GMail, Thunderbird or Apple Mail. Some of the tools were covered in one of my posts about Outlook but most of them were new which made writing it interesting. It really is amazing how much you can do these days with your email client no matter which one it is.

I stumbled across this photo of Isaac Asimov, one my favorite authors of all-time and supposedly his first computer, Radio Shack’s TRS-80.
I don’t know how true all of this was but it’s such an interesting photo that I had to share it.

It’s important to note that Asimov was one of the most prolific writers in history.  However, can one assume that the very same technology that he wrote about actually helped him write faster and thus increase his body of work? If we are believe this ad then Isaac apparently ditched his trusty underwood typewriter for this new age machine which was released circa 1977. He was approximately 57 at that time and would go on to write for another 15 years until his passing in 1992 at age 72. He’s attributed to writing and/or editing over 500 books and some 9,000 letters! How many did he complete after getting introduced to the word processor and computer is anybody’s guess at this point.

Still, it makes you wonder how many more works we would all be blessed with if other great writers had the technology we take so much for granted these days. Of course, that’s assuming that technology actually does in fact increase a writer’s production volume. Some would argue that technology not only has impacted the quantity of writing but also the quality of writing thanks to grammar and spell checkers and all of the auto-insertion and auto-correction features available in word processors.

In any event, no matter what the real deal was behind this brilliant piece of marketing, I like the idea that Isaac Asimov, the man behind the I, Robot series actually used technology to create his masterpieces.

Note: Just for grins, here’s a clip from the major motion picture adaptation of Asimov’s "I, Robot" starring Will Smith.