I highly recommend playing around with del.icio.us direc.tor: A High-Performance AJAX Web Service Broker.

Johnvey Hwang has created a really cool AJAX web application which builds off of del.icio.us. Essentially, it is a completely new GUI for del.icio.us written by somebody outside of del.icio.us. This is the power of web services in action. Johnvey even explains how he built this cool web application. And he has released everything using GPL and CC licenses.

Why I blog this? Needless to say, I was impressed. The web is finally moving in the right direction. Get ready for much richer web interfaces than we are used to. The del.icio.us direc.tor gets a spot on my bookmarks toolbar.

via Ajaxian.com

via IT Conversations comes a great presentation by Paul Graham about hackers.

In one of the most entertaining presentations from OSCON 2004, Paul answers the questions, what motivates great hackers? What do they need to do their jobs? How do you recognize them? How do you get them to come and work for you? And how can you become one?

I listened to the audio version of this presentation and I have to say I was impressed. It is not very often that someone understands us, let alone puts it all into words so others can try to understand us.

Why I blog this? Much of what Paul has said resonants deeply in me. Paul’s talk is highly recommended listening (or reading), especially if you would like to know more about me.

I just came across a post entitled “Free Software Has No Pirates“. The content of the post did not surprise me very much, so why am I making this post? Because what did surprise me was where I was reading it - on Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems weblog.

So why on earth would we give our OS away for free?

Because it’ll ensure those without the economic wherewithal to pay for it will still consider using it. Companies that suffered from piracy a decade ago now know the lesson well - piracy is a good thing so long as the pirates are folks who could never afford your products. So stop calling them pirates, call them users. Free software has no pirates. As I’ve said forever, there’s value in volume, even if you’re not paid for it.

Why I blog this? I blog Jonathan’s post because he is bold enough to say what others are too afraid to say. Piracy can be a good thing - in his words, “Free Software Has No Pirates”.

Olivier Toubia, a Ph.D. candidate at the Marketing Group (MIT) has an article (PDF) on Idea Generation, Creativity, and Incentives.

Idea generation is critical … However, there has been relatively little formal research on the underlying incentives with which to encourage participants to focus their energies on relevant and novel ideas.

This paper examines whether carefully tailored idea generation incentives can improve creative output.

Toubia used three types of incentives to trigger idea generation:

• A Flat condition where participants got $10 for showing up,
• An Own condition where participants got $3 for every idea they submitted, and
• An Impact condition where each participant got $2 for each time an idea they submitted built on one of their previous ideas.

See the sift everything experiment for a graph of the results.

Why I blog this? Because, as Jeremy says, “There is a lesson here for entrepreneurs regarding individual effort. If you can’t spend this kind of time [>20 hours], how can you hope to come up with deep, novel, thought-provoking ideas?”

iUpload Perspectives Applied (what’s this):

 Technorati Tags: Creativity, Ideas, Idea Generation, Incentives, Management Science

My previous post was written the typical way, using the WordPress interface.

For this post, I have bypassed the WordPress interface completely. It only took me a few seconds to write up this post using our new Perspectives QuickPost tool. I had to find a copy of xmlrpc.php for old (1.2) WordPress install, but that proved quite easy.

I have also added a Technorati Perspective with a couple of relevant tags to this post. Cool.

Anyone can use this tool now, for free. Click here to sign up for Perspectives.

Why I blog this? This is a first for me - a blog posting on my own blog using a blog tool that I helped create. I am sure you can understand why there is a smile on my face today.

iUpload Perspectives Applied (what’s this):

 Technorati Tags: iUpload, Perspectives

Only months ago, iUpload made a with a big splash at the annual DEMO conference - a leading industry conference for launching innovative technology products. At DEMO, the world was introduced to iUpload Perspectives. So, what is Perspectives and what does it have to do with blogging?

iUpload Perspectives lets you live in and communicate from one blog rather than wasting time going to different communities to submit content. You probably read your content in a single application - why not write it in single application as well.

Using iUpload Perspectives you can publish content to multiple different communities (such as Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, Yahoo Groups, or even your own MovableType or Wordpress blogs) with ease. Or, you can choose to limit who can view your content by applying Perspectives such as the Salesforce or Plaxo Perspectives. In addition, you can add valuable, content specific Perspectives, such as a Technorati tag or the office favorite, the Google Maps Perspective. Included below is an example of the Google Map Perspective, in this case showing the location of the iUpload corporate office.

Perspectives has been included in iUpload’s corporate blogging suite for the past few months. But now, Perspectives are available for everyone to use.

To start using iUpload Perspectives today, you have two options:

• If you do not have a blog at all, you can sign up for a free Personal Publisher account here.
• If you already have one of more blogs or communities that you would like to use with Perspectives, you do not need to use an iUpload Personal Publisher blog. You can simply use our new QuickPost tool with your existing blogs!

When you sign up for iUpload Perspectives, a link will be generated allowing you to use our new QuickPost tool as a toolbar button. The QuickPost tool allows you easy access to many of the features in Perspectives, without any hassle.

Why I blog this? I have been working at iUpload for about a month and a half now, and much of that time has been spent working on Perspectives. It feels great to be working on the cutting edge of blog software, especially since I get to work with such a solid team of people. Expect even more innovation from iUpload in the coming weeks and months.

And, I look forward to hearing any comments, suggestions, criticisms, enhancement ideas, possible Perspectives, and so on, from my wonderful readers.

The boys (and girl) at iUpload are up to something…

As you may or may not have noticed, I have not made many posts lately. But, there is a reason for the lack of content - and a damn good one at that.

I have been working on a world-class blogging application with the amazing team of entrepreneurial software developers at iUpload.

Please buckle your seat belt and remain in a seated position, while I write up some of the juicy details.

In the meantime, take a look at where my mind has been in the last little while. I just happened to have started a del.icio.us account a few weeks ago, so the links it contains are a pretty good idea what I have been up to. Or, to put it visually, here is my extisp.icio.us over the last few weeks.